City Of Promise Part 8

"All arranged, Mr. Turner." Tickle turned away and put two fingers to his lips and emitted a shrill whistle. The other men all looked up. Tickle pointed to one of the dwarves and beckoned him over. "This here's George Higgins, been a foundry monkey practically since he came off the teat. Mr. Turner's the man we're working for, George."

Josh put out his hand. George wiped his on his trousers before taking it. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Turner."

"And I you, Mr. Higgins." The other man was around Tickle's height, with an equally astonishing build. And his grip had much in common with the iron he'd spent his life making.

"George keeps the time sheets, Mr. Turner. Get the ledger, George."

The dwarf moved off into the gloom. Tickle used the pause to introduce the others. The third dwarf was Israel McCoy, and the pair of black men-brothers apparently-were Washington and Sampson Smith. Josh wondered if the Negroes knew the history of the building they were working in, but decided against asking. By the time the introductions were complete George Higgins was back, carrying a board with a sheaf of papers attached by a nail. The top sheet contained the name of each of the workers, along with seven columns headed with days of the week. The hours of labor were indicated by large crosses in particular boxes. The thing was a picture of who had worked what hours, printed in pencil in carefully drawn block letters. The doc.u.ment gave the impression of having been written with much attention and effort, by someone licking the lead pencil every few strokes to be sure of dark and clear results.

"Got a summary sheet next page," George said. "Shows how many hours is regular time, how many overtime. Mr. Tickle here, he makes his mark each day to say I got it right." Pointing to a large letter T written at the end of each day's column.

"My responsibility to say everything's as it should be," Tickle said.

Josh hesitated, not knowing how to question Tickle's ability to check George's work, given that the foreman couldn't read. Tickle picked up on the question without it being spoken. "I know how each man's name looks," he said. "It's an honest accounting, Mr. Turner."

"I'm sure." Josh was still looking at the time sheets. "However, there are seven names here. I don't recall meeting anyone named Obadiah or Henry. But they're shown as working. Today and yesterday I note."

"Obadiah Tickle and Henry Tickle. My cousins," Ebenezer said.

Josh peered into the gloom of the foundry's distant corners. "And where might they be, Mr. Tickle?"

"They've gone to Kentucky. To Eddyville. On your business."

"Eddyville, Kentucky. Where you worked for the Kelly brothers?"

"Correct, Mr. Turner."

"And I am apparently paying them fifty cents an hour to make the journey."

"Plus overtime. And feed for them and the pair of horses. The wagon belongs to Obadiah. He said there weren't no need to charge you for its use. Since you're our employer."

"So, a trip to western Kentucky with a wagon pulled by two horses. Sounds as if you're planning to bring something back, Mr. Tickle. Something heavy."

Tickle nodded. "That's right. It'll be here soon enough. That's another reason some of us'll be sleeping on the premises from tomorrow night. It's a thing of value, Mr. Turner."

"How so, Mr. Tickle?"

"Because we can't make steel without it."

"But these furnaces, all this equipment you're so busy cleaning . . ."

"This is my part of the job, Mr. Turner. My part of getting the building off the paper and standing on the ground. You don't think I know what I'm doing, you best get yourself another foreman."

It was all the explanation Josh was going to get and he took it.

The dining-room table was littered with papers of various shapes and sizes. Josh was sitting in his shirtsleeves, making quick notations on first one, then the other. Every once in a while he shuffled them into different piles.

Mollie watched the process for a time, apparently keeping her attention on her embroidery. After a bit she got up and lowered the window. "No breeze whatever today. We may as well keep out the noise."

Josh made a sound that pa.s.sed for agreement.

She went to stand behind him. "Joshua, can I-"

He interrupted her words by reaching for her hand and bringing it to his lips. He did not, however, lift his head and look at her. "Sorry to be so preoccupied, Mollie. I'm not a very attentive new husband, I'm afraid. Once I've got these flats built we shall have a honeymoon. I promise. Maybe even go to Europe."

"I don't crave a honeymoon, Josh. Truly I don't." She did not say that she expected to be blossoming with his first son or daughter by the time he finished building his flats. Since they had been married only three weeks she could not yet guarantee that to be the case. Though considering the numbers of times they performed the requisite first step, it seemed to her likely. "I was thinking of something else."

"What?" he asked, still looking not at her but at his papers.

Before they were married, Mollie knew, his office and his living quarters had been in the nicest of his rooming houses, the one in Bowling Green. It was in fact two brownstones he'd knocked together into a s.p.a.cious establishment that maintained the look and feel of the once-fashionable residential neighborhood. Now that he and Mollie were established in Zac's house on Grand Street, Josh had rented both the Bowling Green rooms once kept for his own use.

She was, however, aware of those facts only because he'd told her. She'd offered to keep his books, pointing out she'd been doing so for her aunt since the age of eleven, but Josh refused. You keep my house, my love. Business is my affair. "I was going to suggest," Mollie said, "that I arrange a proper office for you. So you need not gather up everything and put it away each time we sit down to a meal."

"A proper office where? One of the bedrooms upstairs, I suppose."

She knew from his tone the idea did not appeal. "No, that's not what I had in mind." All manner of people called on him for reasons of business. Dwarves even. The idea of strangers traipsing about upstairs where she and Josh slept, where someday soon she hoped their children would sleep, was not pleasant. "It does not seem to me we have any need of a drawing room, Josh. And there's room downstairs next to the kitchen to store the parlor furniture. I can see about a proper desk for you. And a cabinet for your papers and some chairs. It wouldn't cost a great deal."

He put down his pencil and raised his head and looked at her. "You are honestly proposing to turn your drawing room over to my affairs? You wouldn't mind?"

Mollie shook her head. "Not in any serious way. Oh, it's nice having a place to receive visitors, of course. But just now no one's coming to have tea and gossip. It's all business. And while the children are small-" She saw his expression and broke off, feeling the heat of a fiery blush. "The children I hope we have, I mean."

"Ah-Then you're not telling me you're . . ."

"I'm not. At least not yet. I mean I may be. I don't know as it's only three weeks." Her cheeks were hotter than before, though that did not seem possible.

Josh stood up and put his arms around her. "I love that you can still blush like a girl, though I can personally attest to the fact that such you are no longer."

"I wasn't a girl when I married you, Joshua Turner. I was a spinster and you took me off the shelf."

"My spinster," he said, kissing her between the words. "And I chose you off a Macy's shelf, where everything is known to be of excellent quality." Then, drawing back his head to look directly at her, "It's probably sensible to wait a bit before adding more expense and commotion to our lives, but I suppose I must prepare myself for the consequences of the exercise of my marital rights. Very well, so be it." He was, meanwhile, fumbling with the b.u.t.tons that marched up her back. "I have no intention of forgoing them."

"Josh, what are you doing?"

"I'm undressing you. Prior to ravishing you."

"It's barely four in the afternoon."

"Ten past in fact," he murmured, bending his head to nuzzle her neck. "I don't care. I want you right now."

"Josh!"

"That cook you hired starts tomorrow, right?"

"Mrs. Hannity. Yes, but-"

"And the maid is nowhere about that I can see."

"Jane. It's not one of her days. She comes three times a week."

"Excellent. So we're entirely alone, are we not?" He was still struggling to loose the bodice of her dress. And kissing whatever part of her he could reach.

"We are alone, Josh. All the same, I-" Mollie broke off. Auntie Eileen's voice was as loud in her head as if she stood beside them. If the wives of the gentlemen who come here provided what we provide, mark my words, we'd soon have no clients.

Mollie reached down and lifted her skirt and the two petticoats that were all she wore because of the late summer heat. "Stop fussing with my b.u.t.tons," she said. Kissing him back between the words; quick, impatient little kisses as heated as his own. "Pull down my pantaloons," she commanded. "Hurry."

And when he had, she stepped out of them and forced him back in his chair so the peg would present no problems of balance, then herself unb.u.t.toned the front of his trousers before straddling his lap.

Josh's first indication of the return of the Tickle cousins was the presence of a large and st.u.r.dy wagon outside the ironworks on Thursday afternoon of the second week of Tickle's occupation of the premises. There was a considerable quant.i.ty of straw still evident in the back of the wagon, and a trail of bits and pieces of it leading to the foundry door; indicating that the material had been used to cushion the transport of whatever it was Obadiah and Henry Tickle had brought back from Kentucky, and that the mysterious object was now inside the foundry.

Josh pulled open the door and stepped into the dim interior. Thanks to the thick brick walls it was a few degrees cooler than outside, but reeking of the musk of men's sweat and echoing with the clang of metal on metal as the workers went about hammering the old equipment into working order. Josh had grown accustomed to the appearance and smell and sound of the ironworks. Not, however, to what he was looking at. "Jesus, G.o.d Almighty. What is that thing?"

"A Kelly converter," a voice said at his elbow. "Only one of its sort still in existence. You must be Mr. Turner."

"I am. And you are-"

"Henry Tickle, Mr. Turner. Ebenezer's cousin."

He knew there was no reason the dwarf's cousins must be dwarves as well, but he'd gotten it in his head they were. Not so. Henry Tickle was taller than Josh himself, while the man he took to be Obadiah-standing beside Ebenezer, the pair of them working on the halfa.s.sembled structure called a converter-was only a bit shorter than Henry. Despite that, the three cousins looked alike; dark hair and square jaws and prominent noses. As for the thing brought back from Kentucky, it was a broad-bellied ovoid some eight feet tall that immediately reminded Josh of the drawing the dwarf had shown him that first day on Dey Street. Just then it was sitting on the ground, though Josh figured the two iron stands not far away were meant to eventually lift it clear of the floor, and would add another four or five feet to the height.

The role of two other pieces of equipment he'd not seen before was less obvious. "Those are trunnions, aren't they?" he asked.

"That they are, Mr. Turner."

He'd recognized them from his army days. Trunnions were the things the artillery used to pivot their big guns. "I take it then that thing you're calling a converter, once it's mounted on those stands, swings in some way."

"It does, Mr. Turner. All topsy-turvy, you might say. Straight over. So's we can pour the steel out from the hole at the top."

"And this converter is somehow superior to the furnaces already here?"

"They's a different thing entire, Mr. Turner. These here furnaces burn c.o.ke and melt pig iron. It's that liquid iron what gets ladled into the converter. Then the charge comes. Twenty minutes later we're pouring steel out the top. Converted. From pig iron."

It was an explanation of sorts. "It's enormous," Josh said. "How'd you get it in the wagon?"

"It was all in pieces. Put aside like. And it ain't so big as all that. This was the Kelly brothers' first converter. Only takes five tons of melted pig iron."

"And presto change-o," Josh said, "turns it into steel. In twenty minutes you said."

"That's right."

"This charge you mentioned, what is it?"

"Air, Mr. Turner." The answer came from Ebenezer Tickle, who had left his work to join them. "Ordinary air. As I told you on the first day." Then, turning to his cousin, "Go help Obadiah finish up, Henry. I'll be explaining all he needs to know to Mr. Turner."

Josh was still trying to fathom the process. "If you somehow apply air to that thing when it's full of molten iron, Mr. Tickle, does it not cool and become hard, and therefore impossible to pour out the top? Presuming you manage to use those trunnions to tip over something so heavy."

"Trunnions'll work. You can take that for gospel. Seen 'em do it with my own eyes. Plenty of times. As for the air, I thought the same as you once. Cool everything down and what good's that? But it don't happen like that. Pump air into the bottom of the converter and it sets liquid pig iron boiling fiercer and faster than any kettle on a hot stove. Shoots flames right out the top and burns off the carbon. Thing is to know when you've burned off enough but not too much, then pour it out. Matter of judgment," Tickle said. "Matter of experience."

"Which you have."

"I do, Mr. Turner."

And later, after George had presented him with the reckoning of the cost of Henry and Obadiah Tickle's journey, "Do you realize, Mr. Tickle, that I have paid seven hundred and thirty dollars to bring this Kelly converter all the way to New York by horse and wagon? And neither the wagon nor the men served any purpose of mine on the journey to Eddyville. It would have cost considerably less if we'd arranged a local hauler to get it to a port in, say Raleigh, or even Norfolk. Could have come the rest of the way by sea. Perhaps on a Devrey ship at a favorable rate."

"No, it could not, Mr. Turner."

"Why not?"

"Converter was all in pieces. Stored at different places. Weren't no one in Eddyville knew how to collect 'em all, much less be sure nothing was missing and pack everything for safe shipping. Had to send Henry and Obadiah for that."

New information. Josh considered it, then looked around. He and Tickle were standing on the foundry floor, somewhat apart from the others, but not totally out of earshot. He motioned his foreman to follow him, then walked out the door, waiting until Tickle had closed it behind them to say, "You're telling me the thing was hidden, aren't you? Scattered about down there in Kentucky. And no one knew the whereabouts of each piece except you."

"Not exactly." Tickle had produced his pipe and a portion of tobacco and was preparing a smoke while they talked. "Henry and Obadiah knew as well. That's why they could go and get it. Not n.o.body else. You'll earn back your seven hundred, Mr. Turner. My word on it."

That nagging something, the one thing he wasn't entirely sure about in the matter of Ebenezer Tickle, started buzzing in Josh's head. "Trenton Clifford's involved somehow," Josh said. "I know he is. How?"

The dwarf had taken some safety matches from one of his many pockets and was busy striking one against the sandpaper strip on the side of the box. Josh waited until the pipe was lit. "You're not denying Clifford's involved, are you?"

"Converter don't belong to him, if that's what you're thinking. Belongs to me. Mr. Kelly gave it to me in return for back wages."

Josh turned his head, as if he could see through the closed door to the thing that lay behind it. "A thing of value, you said. Kelly must have owed you a considerable sum of money."

"Six months' pay," Tickle said, with the stem of the pipe still between his teeth. "But he said the converter weren't worth all that much. Not seeing as how he'd sold the patent to Bessemer."

"Where's Kelly now?" Josh asked after a number of silent seconds, aware that the other man was avoiding a direct gaze.

"Last I heard, Louisville. Makes axes and such like."

"Not steel?"

"Not far as I know. And not unless he's built himself a new converter. Smashed up all the bigger ones after he went bankrupt and sold out. Only this one left."

"And Trenton Clifford's not involved?"

"Not with the converter, no." Punctuated by a puff of smoke that curled above the dwarf's head and hung motionless in the hot, still air.

Josh turned and looked again at the foundry door, then out across the docks to the river. "Jesus," he said.

"That'll do fine, Mr. Turner. You pray. Me and the others, we'll make your steel beams and girders."

Josh spent most of September tramping around the city looking for a building site. Until summer was over and there was an autumn nip in the air, and he still had not located anything suitable that fit his plans or his budget. "Cart got put ahead of the horse," he told Mollie. "Not how I intended it. I got involved in making steel before I'd had a chance to think it through."

"Because the opportunity presented itself," Mollie said.

"Something like that."

"Josh, what about Auntie Eileen's promise? Won't that extra hundred thousand help with the purchase of a site?"

"It might do, but the truth is I've calculated your aunt's loan in ten different ways for ten different parts of the project. And I can't go to my brother yet again. Devrey's is having the devil of a time just staying afloat. Literally and figuratively. What's that expression about borrowing from Peter?"