Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival Read online

  "Sheriff," Wayne said, catching his attention.

  White looked up, and chuckled. "Oh, you caught me playing with your wonderful little toy here. Don't mind me."

  White got up and walked over to shake Wayne's hand, carrying a small black bag.

  "Mr. Cole," the sheriff said, "How do you do?"

  "About as well as you can imagine, given the circumstances." Wayne replied. "Telephone's been ringing all morning long about the factory. I had to get away from it. I take it you're here to discuss what happened this morning?"

  "And you'd be right, Mr. Cole. I suspect I might be able to shed some light onto the nature of the incident."

  "How's that?"

  "Well, Mr. Cole—"

  "Wayne, please."

  "Wayne. Ah, I'm prepared to make a statement that the explosion at your factory site was no industrial accident. It was a bombing."

  "Luddites. Goddamn Luddites, trying to blow up my work to Kingdom Come."

  "I managed to intercept a couple of banditos not too long afterwards. Familiar faces, past associations with the Lotus Boys." The sheriff placed his black bag on the table. "They were taking photographs of the factory. I recovered the negatives and developed them."

  "They were gathering intelligence," Wayne said. "About what was inside my factory."

  "I believe so," the sheriff said. He blinked twice, and looked like he was holding back his tongue.

  "What's on your mind?" Wayne asked. "Go ahead, you can say it."

  "Well, Wayne…don't take this the wrong way."

  "Oh, this is gonna be interesting."

  "Now, you've obviously contributed a great deal to our town. Heck, you just about put us on the map! But I don't think you've been entirely forthcoming with us about the nature of this factory you're building out there."

  Wayne furrowed his brow. "It's all in the proposal we delivered to the mayor's office last fall…"

  "Right, right, the proposal. Well, see, I looked up the proposal, and it said you were planning on making patent radio parts. Funny, I thought you were still making watches in there. I must be falling behind the times. World's passing me by."

  Wayne nodded. "There's only so much to be earned in the watchmaking enterprise, Sheriff. It was a great way to start a business. But anyone can put a watch on a leather strap and call it a day—and they are, believe me. My board and I agreed that we were capable of moving on to more ambitious challenges. So, if I need to update the mayor's office's plans, that's fine, I can do that—"

  "Well, well, now, hold on just a tick," the sheriff said. "I'm no engineer, but it seems to me that judging by these photographs, whatever you've got going on in there, it's a lot bigger than radios, even, or telephones."

  Wayne broke out into a grin. "Sheriff, I can see there's no fooling you. You're quite right." He bit his lip, then looked the sheriff square in the eyes. "Why don't you come with me, right now, to the factory? I do apologize for all of the secrecy, but when I show you what we've got going on, I think you'll understand why."

  He began to untie his smock. "Humor me, with a few more minutes of mystery, so I can show you in person what we're working on. For maximum dramatic effect."

  "Alright," was all the sheriff emitted.

  Wayne led White out the side door of the ranch house, to a covered garage. Within, he had two horseless carriages parked. Next to these, under a tarp, was a third vehicle.

  It was the Jeep, that had once belonged to Jesse. Wayne and his team had disassembled and reassembled it fully three times, each time studying and recording, with a Talmudic reverence, how it was put together.

  From those exercises, Wayne had built the other two cars in the garage. His team of engineers mimicked the basic frame and the mechanical underpinnings of the Jeep. The first car had been an exercise in trial-and-error. The end product worked well enough—it ran—but it was evident that it was the product of an inferior society. Even compared to the utilitarian source material, the Cole Automotive Mark I prototype was bare-boned. Only the bravest would only tolerate its roughshod ride on town streets and established highways. Its headlamps were equipped with dim, off-the-shelf light bulbs not capable of much throw. And it broke down constantly.

  So Wayne began work on the Mark II just a few weeks later. Again, his engineers labored like the Manhattan Project scientists, toiling away in secrecy. This time, he spared no expense sourcing the right raw materials. He hired the brightest electricians and propulsion experts in the Western world to build on what they'd learned forging the Mark I. They'd weatherproofed it and road-proofed it; this time, Wayne would have happily driven every man or woman of money in Bridgetown without fear they'd think it a death trap. Compared to even the most lavish horseless carriages being built in Europe, the Mark II was easily in a class of its own, in both comfort and technical sophistication.

  It was into this third auto, painted ivory with meticulous hand-detailed trim lines and capped with a shining new Cole Automotive ornament, that Wayne and the Sheriff now climbed aboard.

  Once White was situated in the Mark II, Wayne backed the car out of the garage and began to drive down the long dirt path that snaked away from the ranch grounds and towards the factory, visible in the distance.

  "This is a nice horseless you have," White said. "Can't say I've ever seen one like it. German-made, I take it?"

  "No," Wayne replied. "It's American."

  After a few minutes' ride in near-silence, Wayne pulled his touring car up to the edge of the factory construction site.

  Thankfully, it looked like the damage from the bomb had been fairly muted; it wouldn't take his crew long to patch it up. It worried him, though, what it meant going forward. How much of this kind of regressive nonsense would he have to put up with, once the town knew what he was actually planning to build?

  Wayne and White made their way into the cavernous hangar-like interior of the plant. The Sheriff wore a baffled look, as he stared at long parallel tracks that traveled the length of the facility.

  "An assembly line," Wayne proclaimed. "The product is assembled by different workers, each man performing a single, simple task as it travels the length of the line. By the time it reaches the end, the product is complete."

  "And what is the product, exactly?"

  "You just rode here in it."

  White was flabbergasted. "That horseless carriage?" You're building automobiles in this factory?"

  "We intend to make a thousand in the first month."

  "A thousand? Where on Earth will you find enough customers to afford them?"

  "Producing at these kinds of scales reduces our operating costs by a significant factor, Sheriff. In ten years' time, every middle-class family in America will be able to afford a car."

  White turned to Wayne, a bewildered look in his eyes. "Well, goddamnit, why did you hide this from us?"

  "Solving the technical details of a problem is all in a day's work for an engineer—that alone is not a determinate for genius. Staying ahead of the competition, constructing in absolute secrecy is the only way to preserve the sanctity of an idea, Sheriff.

  "If I had told the town ten months ago what we were planning here, the wires would've been spreading the news to the East as fast as an operator could tap it out. And the moguls on the East have the advantage of capital."

  "This is really something," was all White could say.

  "If they'd had the brains to invent the assembly line, they'd have brought the everyman-car to market before I could break ground on this facility."

  The sheriff huffed air out his nostrils. "You'll have to announce this to the world eventually, you know."

  "Oh, we will. On the first day of the fall, we will host a grand event, to usher the world into the twentieth century."

  Susanna watched the activity on the factory floor as she did every morning, from her office high up overlooking the premises. She tried to focus on her task at hand, but something was bothering her this morning.

  She'd h
ad a dream the night before. She was in the Dark place, the place she'd encountered after falling into the light in the desert five years earlier. The last time she'd seen Jesse. She hated the Darkness. Hated how disorienting it had been, hated the sensation of being totally lost and separated from her physical self. It haunted her, knowing such a void beyond reality existed.

  In her dream, Jesse called out to her. Tried to reach her. And then, he was gone.

  She sipped her coffee, trying to steady her feelings and redouble her resolve.

  She had to sit down for a few minutes. If anyone asked, she'd say she was just a little spooked by the bomb this morning. But she couldn't care less about that. It was a diversion, a fireworks show from the backwards hillbillies beyond the town who wanted Bridgetown to remain a podunk outpost.

  No, the real reason she was so shaken up was because the dream had brought her right back to where she'd been all those years ago. How she'd felt, when she first dropped out of the sky and into this topsy-turvy world. Back to who she had been when she first stumbled into town, a lost, frightened girl. Alone, with no idea where Jesse was, or, at first, Wayne.

  And now this life she'd built for herself, over the last half-decade—it felt alien to her, as it had in those early days. She didn't belong here. Wayne didn't belong here.

  This factory certainly didn't belong here.

  Where's Jesse?

  Why had he never dropped out of the sky like they each had? Why had he never found them?

  Or was he out there now, somewhere, looking for them? Lost and alone?

  Maybe he'd learned the truth about her and Wayne, about the life they'd built together, and had decided to stay away.

  If she ever did see Jesse again, what would she say?

  How could she explain her and Wayne?

  Jesse'd have to understand, wouldn't he?

  Now she, too, felt lonely.

  She drank the last of her coffee, sat up, and straightened out her outfit. She needed to work, that's what she needed. It would help her keep her mind at ease. Keep her focused, keep the ambiguity away.

  She left her office and descended the staircase to the factory floor.

  Within moments, she was back to her daily routine, barking orders at the construction crew. Her men, for their part, took her authority in remarkable stride, given their era's views on gender relations.

  Susanna had always chalked her ability to command respect from this crowd to how pragmatic and blue-collar her workers were. The worst sexism she'd experienced in Bridgetown had been leveled against her by other women—the would-be aristocratic upper crust she had the distinct displeasure of having to deal with from time to time. Socialites from the East, paraded through town on a whirlwind publicity tour designed to legitimize Cole Co.'s inventions in the eyes of the world.

  By contrast, here in Bridgetown, few had the luxury to subscribe to Victorian morality. The hookers were as important to the morale of this place as robust industry ever had been.

  So Susanna was irritated when she made eye contact with Sheriff White—who, for some reason, was standing in the middle of the factory floor with Wayne. The lawman's eyes nearly popped out of his head at the sight of her bossing around her subordinates.

  No matter. She'd hold her own against her doubters; she'd prove them wrong. Maybe she'd do for feminism what Cole Co. was doing for the Age of the Automobile: jump-start it with a ten-thousand volt electric shock.

  She made the first move, sticking a firm hand out for the sheriff to shake. "Sheriff White, how do you do?"

  The sheriff blubbered for a moment, then: "Quite fine, Mrs. Cole. Yourself?"

  "To tell you the truth, Sheriff, I hardly know these days. My mind's on making sure the line's rolling by the time of our opening." She indicated, with a breezy hand, in the direction of the tracks. "The first car we make will roll off the assembly line carrying a turkey dinner and all its dressings."

  White chuckled. "The papers will enjoy writing about that, I'm sure." He paused for a moment, glanced at his feet and then back at her. "With all of your, ah, construction duties, how will you have time to prepare the decorum?"

  Susanna gave no visible reaction. "Leave that to Mayor Sheldon's wife," she said in a plainly dismissive tone. "We can cart her in here at the eleventh hour to, I dunno, string up some ribbons or something." Then she laughed, a big laugh that was an invitation for the sheriff to laugh as well.

  Susanna, One, Backwards Entrenched Gender Roles, Zero.

  "I must say," the sheriff began, "If any man should doubt your abilities, he need only lay eyes upon what you've accomplished here."

  "Who's doubting my abilities?" She raised an eyebrow.

  The sheriff stammered. "Well, no one in particular, I mean, you just know how people are." Then he leaned in, and spoke in a hush. "It's a bit unusual, is all."

  "What is?"

  White was more flustered by the moment; Susanna only smirked as he continued. "Well, a...woman...foreman, Mrs. Cole. A forewoman. Not to put to fine a point on it."

  Susanna, dryly: "Of course not."

  Wayne stepped in to break up the pissing contest. "Are you through interrogating the Sheriff, Susanna?"

  Susanna shot him a glare the sheriff didn't see. She didn't need him ganging up on her. She put her work gloves back on. "The rest will have to wait. Deadlines to meet. Good day, gentlemen." She made her exit, with an ironic little curtsy.

  Making her way back towards her office, she spotted the bomb blast's damage from a new angle. It stopped her in her tracks.

  The irregular, scorched cavity the dynamite had created formed a kind of archway proscenium. And through it, calling to her, was Devil's Peak.

  She took a step towards it. And another. And another.

  A familiar chill shot through her bones.

  The Darkness. The void.

  First her dream, then this—she had the distinct impression that somehow, the mountain was calling her.

  She stepped through the twisted wreckage of the blast site, and continued walking in the direction of the mesa. She wasn't sure why.

  In her five years since she was transported here, she'd never returned to the mountain. She had never tried to find that narrow passageway leading to its hollow heart, nor sought out the mystic waters at its core. It was so full of secrets that these people, the people of Bridgetown, were completely oblivious to. Even Wayne, who thought he was the smartest man on earth because fate had given him the chance to steal from the greatest inventors of his time, didn't know what lay at the heart of Devil's Peak.

  Only Susanna did. And, somewhere, Jesse.

  But neither of them understood it.

  She stopped walking a hundred or so paces from the factory, Devil's Peak still far in the distance. She fell to her knees, kneeling before it like a pilgrim facing her mecca, and let the high desert wind blow through her hair.

  It was quiet, when she got far enough away from the factory. Quiet enough to think. It reminded her of that last night at the commune site.

  "Please," she whispered. "Tell me why I feel this way."

  On the hill that Wayne's ranch house sat upon, the same winds whistled through dry California brush, as Jesse walked past. The sun was starting to set, the sky a champagne tint.

  Footprints in honeycomb patterns cut through the hills, their illegible Chuck Taylor logo stamped in the dirt hundreds of times in a breadcrumb trail along the path.

  The modern ranch house was long, flat, and unlike the other Neoclassical mansions beside it. Jesse had no doubt that this was the palace his brother called home.

  How could this have happened? How did Jesse end up so far removed from his two companions? He dared not think what might have transpired between her and Wayne. A house like the one before him wasn't built in a few weeks. That meant a lot of long nights spent missing home, with only one set of sympathetic ears who could possibly understand her plight. This Modernist structure, out of place and time, was a portent of bad news for Jess
e.

  He managed a slow march up the winding paved road to the front gates of the ranch.

  A machined metal button sat dead-center upon the left column of the perimeter gate. Jesse pressed it. After a few moments, static leaked out of a speaker hidden somewhere.

  "Who is it?" — an unfamiliar voice.

  "Tell Wayne that Jesse is here to see him." He put extra emphasis on his own name. He tried imagining what the look on Wayne's face in a few moments would be. Maybe he had been expecting him all along. Would he be joyed? Resentful?

  After an extended few moments of silence, the voice returned. "Mr. Cole says to meet him in the parlor room."

  The gates remotely unlocked, and Jesse pushed them open. He walked the path to the front door. A rotund, gray-haired older woman with cherubic features let him in.

  "Welcome to the ranch, Mr. Cole," the woman said, with the trace of a distant Irish accent. "He'll be waiting for you, just down that hall. I'll show you the way."

  Jesse wiped his dirt-covered shoes on the mat, and walked past her. He turned around and asked her, "What was your name again?"

  "Martha," she said, with a little dip.

  "Pleased to meet you, Martha. Jesse," he said, and shook her hand.

  Martha led Jesse deeper into the impressive estate. The foyer held the unmistakable touch of Wayne's pragmatic sensibilities. From high on the farthest wall, a black and white portrait of Nikolai Tesla seemed to observe them.

  Martha took him to the parlor. Inside, two men stood on opposite sides of a wet bar.

  Jesse's heart skipped a beat. Behind the bar, tonic in hand, was Wayne.

  Wayne's hair was a little thinner, his skin much tanner than it had been when Jesse last saw him. He had allowed a little stubble to grow in, and he had trimmed some of the paunch that had traditionally filled out most of his features. Wire-framed glasses befitting the era sat upon his nose.

  Wayne raised his glass to Jesse. The ice sloshed.

  Both brothers hid something—sadness, elation, maybe something else entirely—behind their eyes.