Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival Read online

  "Wasn't until that brother of his showed up last week with his movie picture that folks got to talking. Got to thinking that maybe the time's right for the vermin of Town Hall to get cleaned out." She added, "No offense."

  "None taken," White added. It seemed they could both agree there was an infestation in Bridgetown. The question was, which way was it? The Lotus Boy termites, or the rats in Town Hall?

  Footsteps clanked along on the squeaky floorboards of the Jameson home, and White could see someone approaching in the darkness.

  "Momma, who's there?" came the voice of a young woman.

  "I'm talking to the sheriff," Mrs. Jameson replied, in the short-tempered short hand with which he'd known parents to address their children.

  "The sheriff?"

  "Yes."

  More footsteps. White watched the figure step into the light. She was tall—nearly as tall as he—and built for farm work. She had a jawline that looked as strong as her forearms, and one slightly lazy eye, and yet her masculine attributes worked to highlight what remained of her feminine qualities. Her soft, wispy blonde hair clung with to her face with beads of sweat.

  "You son of a bitch," the younger Jameson said, sneering.

  This jolted White back to the unpleasant business at hand.

  "Shut your mouth!" her mother exclaimed, and snapped back to face her daughter. "Now, I may think Sheriff White here is a son of a bitch, but I run a respectful home. And cursing will not be tolerated!"

  "But he is what he is, Momma," the girl said. "And folks like him is ruinous to folks like us."

  "Thank you for your time," White interjected, looking for an out before this scene got any more heated. He put his hat back on. "And for your honesty." With that, he turned away from the porch and began his walk back.

  On his way out, he took one last look at the oil derrick pumping behind the Beaumont property, and the old farmhouse with that hole in its roof. Then he started back up the gully wall.

  Susanna gazed upon her form in her bedroom mirror. She wore a floor-length light blue dress, ruffled and lacy. Her neck was constricted in a high collar, just like the geese-women of the Ladies of Bridgetown. She hadn't had the chance yet to pin up her hair, and at the moment, there was little she wanted less to commit the time to, for it was the morning of the gala to inaugurate the Cole Automotive factory.

  She knew what Wayne expected of her today: she was to ride with him to the factory, allow herself to be helped down from the Mark II before the crowd gathered outside the factory, and stand at her husband's side. Then she was to say a few words, perhaps some niceties to the Ladies of Bridgetown for their help, and then clear the way for the men to stake their claim as pioneers of industry.

  The bedroom door opened with a crack. Wayne entered. Susana turned to face him, and found he looked amped up for the day's events, a slightly manic gleam in his eyes. He sweated beneath his tuxedo, and the buttoned-up collar seemed poised to make his head pop off. He drank in her appearance with a wide grin.

  "You look lovely," Wayne said. He gave her a big hug, a less reserved show of affection than was usual for him. Then he planted a kiss on her forehead with a loud smooch. "Are you ready for today?"

  "I am," she replied. But it sounded like she was bracing, and even she heard it.

  Wayne's smile tempered a bit, but he didn't say anything. They'd gone around this carousel for weeks.

  "I appreciate the dress, Wayne," Susanna said. "I really do. But I'm not going to wear it."

  "Okay," he said, plainly. Perhaps he had feared worse. The dress he could deal with. "What's wrong with it?" he asked.

  "I'm wearing my jumpsuit."

  Her husband looked like he was stifling a laugh just picturing it. "You can't be serious."

  "Why not?"

  "Because this is a formal event, Suze," he replied. "A black tie affair. I'm in a penguin suit, look—tails!" He flapped his jacket tails in mock ceremony.

  "I know, Wayne, and, listen, that's great for you. This is your chance to stand up and take a bow. You should. But I'm not gonna have that chance."

  "Sure you will."

  "No," she affirmed. "Not like I ought to."

  "Oh come on, Susanna, don't politicize this. Let me have today at least—"

  "I have to politicize it," she retorted. She felt her toes curl up. "The people should see me in the clothes I labored in. The grease stains, the rips in my denim—I want them to know that I wore them out. That I put those holes, and those stains, in them. I can't be up there looking like your china doll."

  Wayne pursed his lips. All the same, to his credit, he didn't fight her on it. "If it's that important to you."

  Susanna had a sudden recollection of the last time she'd seen her father, when she told him she was leaving with Jesse, and the way he'd similarly conceded to her will with a shrug of his shoulders. She couldn't help but smile.

  Wayne saw her grin, and returned it. "You love giving me a hard time, don't you?"

  "Just you wait, Wayne W. Cole," Susanna said. "I haven't fucked you over for good yet. We'll see whose name history really remembered. When you and I are nothing more than dust, we'll see who really won."

  Wayne took her in his arms and kissed her, such that she could not have escaped if she'd wanted to. "You're just a rich woman with an overactive sense of self, and delusions of grandeur," Wayne said, with a saccharine sweetness that testified he was being playful.

  Susanna mussed his hair with her hands, and pushed back against him. She threw him to the bed. "And you, my dear, are nothing more than a rich man growing fatter every day," she said. She began to unbutton his shirt, feeling a sudden lust for conquest. "And one day, when you're choking on a chicken bone," she said, straddling him atop the bed now, "I will inherit your fortune and remake your empire in my name."

  She pulled off his pants, and felt his manhood through his undergarments. "This is mine," she said, giving him a light squeeze. "You can take my glory from me now," she said, as though bellowing from the rooftops, "but I can take this from you any time I want. I can cut it off in your sleep whenever I choose."

  Relief coursed through her system, and seemed to be met in Wayne's. Weeks of pent-up aggression had suddenly found a release.

  A part of her hated Wayne. A part of her loved Wayne.

  A part of her saw him as her chief villain. An equal part of her saw him as her only ally in this world.

  He worked to destroy her career. To undermine her. So too, however, did he give her the chance to make that career in the first place.

  She was ruled over by him, suffocated by him. And yet here she sat, atop him now, witnessing his private vulnerability in a way no others did.

  "You are a great man," she said, "And a pathetic creature. And I will fuck you into subservience."

  With that, she pulled his pants off completely, and proceeded to give the best blowjob she ever had. When her husband came, a minute later, she spat it onto his tuxedo jacket. Then they laid there, in each other's arms, silent for some time.

  Ten til noon.

  Susanna looked up from her wristwatch and watched her factory grow ever-nearer. Its impressive brick form stood out against a silvery-gray sky. The humid, cloudy weather was unusual for California's August. She'd have expected it in May or June.

  She sat in the passenger seat of the Mark II, victorious in her dirty old jumpsuit. Wayne drove. Ahead of them, Sheriff White sat atop his horse, point man for security. They were flanked on both sides and at their rear by White's team.

  There would be opposition here, of that she had no doubt. The usual protesters she'd grown accustomed to, as well as Jane Carlyle and her merry band of SLPA operatives. White had had a lengthy conversation with her and Wayne about what to do if there were any problems—or more accurately, if there were any problems that seemed to Susanna like they were about to spiral out of control. They'd established an exit plan out the rear of the factory. And, of course, she knew the intestinal inner workings of the fa
ctory better than just about anyone else. She could make it out if, say, the Lotus Boys came crashing in through the windows.

  Still, she was had pressed to imagine anything so dramatic happening here now. The crowd that she saw—big, several thousand big—just looked excited for the pomp and circumstance. As the procession made its way down the line, she waved like a hometown pageant queen. In spite of everything, in spite of her demotion and Rimmler's heir apparent status, she was beaming with pride. She had waited too long for today to do anything but.

  Those comprising the front of the crowd were not vagrants or incidental passer-by. These were moneyed interests from back east. D.C. politicians in velvet hats, and Parisian socialites with their fingers on the pulse of international culture.

  As they continued on towards the factory, Susanna could see the crowd was even larger than she had first thought. This herd melted into a sea of bowler caps and dark dresses towards the horizon, and stretched on in all directions like rows of corn. In recent days, she'd heard that shopkeepers and ranchers alike were renting out spare rooms for visitors.

  The convoy pulled up to the front doors of the factory at last. Wayne left the Mark II running while he got out and waved to the cheering crowd with both hands. He rounded the other side of the car, and opened the door for Susanna. She put out her hand, delicate, and allowed him the photo op of leading her down from the car. Then she turned to the crowd and waved. Finally, the couple, along with Sheriff White and his chief deputy, proceeded through the front doors of the factory while a staffer drove the Mark II away.

  She was struck with the impression that she was the bride in an exceedingly strange wedding. There was a cathedral quality to the factory, in fact. The Cole Automotive plant shot taller into the sky than any other structure in Bridgetown, with great big glass windows that let light rain down into the nave. Just as cathedrals had been erected to overwhelm one's senses with the glory of the hereafter, this factory had been erected to overwhelm one's senses with the glory of Man's achievements in industry.

  She and Wayne had never actually had a wedding ceremony, of course: their cover story had them married for some time before arriving in Bridgetown. In a way, today was an iron-clad monument to the raw driving power of their union, more sweeping and grandiose than any mere wedding could have aspired to.

  To look upon the interior of the factory from her vantage point was to see a massive, deep-reaching backdrop of complicated, incomprehensibly dense machinery. The assembly lines spat forth from dark machine-mouths and towards an elevated stage built for this gala. The wooden stage was dressed in dark maroon carpet, with gauzy curtains draped from the ceiling allowing only a suggestive hint of the labyrinth of technology in the background.

  I built this.

  Susanna and Wayne broke their formation at the front of the stage. Wayne went left, up the stairs to the podium, and Susanna went right, to the row of seats where she and the other leadership figures who weren't Wayne were to wait their turn.

  Once she was seated with the others, a band started playing a brassy rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." Susanna sat patiently while the piece played out, and exchanged a brief glance and a smile with Sheriff White, who was standing in the wings.

  When the band reached its rousing climax and denouement, streamers fluttered down from above. The audience burst into applause. Wayne stood up, which summoned another thundering wave of claps and whistles. He bowed a few times, glowing like Hamlet at curtain call, and indicated with an open-palmed hand towards the others onstage.

  He then took up the mic. The tinny P.A. system that carried his voice was, naturally, a Cole Co. product.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he began. "Today, we mark an historic occasion. In five years' time, I have been proud to oversee a company that has introduced the radio, the telephone, and over twenty other innovative products to the common marketplace."

  Susanna looked out at the crowd, and saw their faces in a similar kind of quiet, anticipatory gaze. They were transfixed, leaning forward to fully absorb every word Wayne said.

  Wayne went on. "Cole Company is expanding. We're already selling our products in England and France, and our vision for a better tomorrow will soon touch Germany, Spain, and Japan. On the heels of all this, today I introduce to you something so unprecedented, it required building an entirely new kind of factory. A new approach to what it means to make."

  Wayne broke from the podium, pacing a few steps towards the center of the stage.

  "No doubt you're familiar with the horseless carriage," he went on. "But likely few of you have ever had the chance to ride in one. I can almost guarantee that none of you own one. That's because they're expensive. Prohibitively so. And dangerous, difficult to maintain, and often limited in range. At least, that's been true thus far. But not after today."

  Wayne's arm shot out in a proud gesture towards the rear of the stage.

  The curtains parted, and revealed an automobile rotating on a showroom dais.

  Compared to the Mark II, this one's lines were smoother, its profile minimized to the only the most essential of the basic sedan form, as if Le Corbusier had designed a car. Its wheels were thin and primitive compared to the Mark II prototype. Susanna knew this was a compromise Wayne had made in order to keep the production model affordable. She'd been privy to endless tableside laments as his vulcanization team had struggled to get the formula just right.

  In almost every other way, however this car, with its chrome accents shimmering before her and a thousand wide-eyed souls under the factory lights, was a philosophical quantum leap over the open-air buggies being hand-built in Germany. Electronic tail lights signaled turning and braking, and eliminated the need to make gesture-based signals while operating the car. Seat belts were standard, and a trustworthy Cole Co. radio was available on the Futura trim level. Wayne had registered over two thousand new patents in the last few years, ensuring Cole Co. would be collecting royalties for a very long time.

  "Today," Wayne bellowed from his stage, "Cole Company is proud to introduce the Everyman car. The Mark III Touring Sedan, the most significant miracle of modern science and industry!"

  The sea of applause nearly drowned out Wayne's line, and Susanna shared in the pride. She looked over to where the sheriff had stood, but found he was no longer there.

  "Sheriff," came a worried voice at Errol White's feet.

  White looked down from his spot at the side of the stage, and saw a familiar ruddy face. It was that fellow from the saloon, the one who'd stabbed his friend in that barroom fight. What was his name?

  "McInnis, sir," the man said, out of breath. "From the saloon."

  "Yes, I know who you are. What's the matter?"

  "Someone intends to shoot Wayne Cole dead. Here, now."

  Reflexively, White's eyes scanned the crowd, as though hoping to spot the assassin. He quickly realized that was nonsense—the room was packed full.

  Think straight, Errol. Take a breath and think straight.

  White stepped down from the stage, with as much apparent calm as he could muster, and grabbed Fitzgerald firmly by the arm. "You're gonna help me find him."

  White heard Wayne's voice booming over the speaker system. "This is the summation of my life's work," the industrialist said. "Now, it's my pleasure to introduce you to the man who helped make it possible, my chief engineer, Harris Burrows."

  The sheriff talked directly in McInnis' ear so he could hear him, but no one else could. "How do you know someone's out to kill Mr. Cole?"

  "He was talking about it, down at the saloon," the old drunk slurred, as he hobbled along on his peg, struggling to keep pace. "Said he was prepared to die if it meant dragging Cole down to hell with him. An' you know how fellas get, but then I seen him here just a few minutes ago, and he gave me a wink, you see, and flashed me his pistol under his jacket."

  "What's he look like?"

  "Oh, about your height, white, two eyes, a nose—"

  "I get the pictu
re. Where was he?"

  "Making his way up the center of the crowd, from the back of the house. I think he's making his way slowly, tryin' not to be noticed"

  A wave of applause ran through the crowd, starting at the front and rippling out to where they were. Wayne's engineer stepped down from the podium, and signaled for another man to come up.

  Susanna declined to join in the applause as Howard Rimmler and his stupid beard walked up to the podium. If she could claim one small, hollow victory, it was that the applause had become more tepid than it had been for Wayne or the chief engineer. Apparently assembly line methodology was too esoteric to rouse this crowd's emotions.

  Rimmler spoke for a few minutes. She tried not to listen to any of it. Her bitterness came roaring back. Here were all these people, witnessing history play out on the stage before them. And she was playing second fiddle.

  "—Susanna Cole," Rimmler announced.

  Susanna suddenly shot to the ready, realizing her archenemy had just called her up to the podium. Another wave of applause broke out, this time bigger than the one either Rimmler or Burrows had received. Being a regular feature in the gossip column got you more goodwill with the public than actual achievement did.

  Rimmler didn't move away from the podium as she stepped up to it. Susanna wondered what the big idea was. Rimmler leaned into the microphone:

  "Now, Mrs. Cole and I have not always had the warmest of working relations," he said. The crowd was quiet, focused. Susanna give him a look.

  "No, no, it's true," he went on. "You see, I may be the Project Manager here at the factory, but it wasn't always that way. Mrs. Cole is a very smart, very capable worker in her own right. And I wouldn't be doing right if I didn't acknowledge that she poured just as much blood, sweat, and tears into these bricks as any of us men did."

  Well, Susanna thought, you got it half-right, at least.

  "Now," Rimmler went on. "I want to give her and this dirty old denim suit of hers a fair chance to speak. Thank you, Mrs. Cole."