she sold his lumber company and took his money and her mother with her. She now runs a four hundred-acre cattle spread somewhere near Austin. Has two little ones. Is completely happy from what Esther tells me.”
“Texas!” Marveling, Gina stared out the window at the sugar maples and the elms framing the green clearing.
“That’s the only part you heard? Texas?”
“Texas is just shorthand for what I’m feeling.” She sat for a moment, hand on her heaving chest, trying to squeeze relief from her repentant heart. She took a deep breath. “And Harry’s family is well, I hope? Herman, Esther?”
“Yes, everyone’s all right now.”
Gina perked up. “Now?”
“Harry’s father had a heart attack a few years ago. In 1912.” Ben paused for meaning or maybe for a reaction from Gina.
Gina lost her baby in 1912. She shuddered. “But he’s better?”
“Yes. Of course now Esther is out of sorts.”
“Why? She must be happy you’re back home.”
“I don’t know about that. Elmore, her husband, just left for England.”
“What on earth for?”
“Some archduke got shot in Bosnia.”
“Ah, yes. The pesky archduke.” She sounded exhausted even to herself.
“Dr. Lassiter went with the Red Cross as a medic. Esther is not pleased with him, to say the least.”
“I know how she feels.”
“Why?” Ben asked. “Has Harry become an army medic and gone to England?”
“Sure.” Gina stared out the window. “Something like that. And your mother?” Ellen Shaw had quite a reputation around Boston, demonstrating day and night against each affront to the independence of women and every encroachment against the isolationism of the United States.
He nodded agreeably. “Fine. Militant as ever.”
“Tell her to be careful,” Gina said. “Or she’ll be sharing a cell with Harry.”
“So I keep telling her. What did he do?”
“Which time? I don’t know. Kept arguing?”
Ben whistled in fond amazement. “Don’t they know he is the original objection-maker? They can’t punish him for his essential nature. But seriously, what did he do?”
“Broke the terms of his probation by inciting a riot in Paterson during the silk strike. Have you heard about that?”
“Yes,” Ben said. “I heard something about that. Where is he?”
“Nearby. Up in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution near Warner’s Pond. That’s why I’m here every weekend. I work Saturdays and take the bus to visit him on Sundays.”
“Prison!” Ben looked disbelieving. “That doesn’t seem like the Harry I knew.”
“It’s really been an unending smorgasbord of humiliation.” Gina almost cried. “No, no,” she quickly said, catching herself, keeping away the hand that reached across to her. “My own life is the last thing I want to talk about. I am, however, completely enthralled by your wonderful reappearance. Tell me really why you’re back.” She made an effort to smile. “Who’s getting married this time?” Ten years ago Ben had sailed home from Panama to be best man at Harry and Alice’s wedding.
“Just like last time,” he said. “Nobody.”
They sat cupping their tea, warming their hands on it. The New England flaming fall was on full display; inside and outside glowed with light like fire.
“The papers have been writing about nothing but your canal.” Gina smiled with pride. “You always said the impossible was possible. And you were right.”
“You mean I was a lunatic. I looked at nothing but mountains and mud and said we would build a fifty-mile waterway above sea level with concrete dams to push giant ships through.”
If she could whistle and she weren’t a lady, she would have. “It’s extraordinary.”
“It’s madness.”
“It’s a phenomenon! They’re calling it the engineering wonder of the modern world. Just like you said it would be.”
“It was nothing like I thought it would be.” He shrugged. “I said a lot of things when I was young and foolish. I received a healthy dose of reality in Panama.”
“Did you get yellow fever, too?” Gina asked, appraising him. He seemed toughened, but somehow worn-out. He looked as if he needed a juicy steak, a stiff drink.
“Yes. Washed my face in the river. Teaches me.”
“Well, you don’t need to go all the way to Panama to catch yellow fever,” said Gina. “Mother Jones’s husband and four of her children died of it somewhere in Tennessee.”
“It was touch and go for me, too, for a while. Though now I’m immune for life.”
“Really? From malaria, too?”
“No, but do I carry a small bottle of quinine with me everywhere I go.”
“I don’t think there’s much risk of malaria in Concord, Ben.”
“One can never be too careful against that wretched blight.”
“That’s true.” Her elbows were on the table, her head resting between her hands. “So they didn’t need you in Panama anymore?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that in August we finally had our first ship navigate through. I stayed until mid-September to make sure there were no irrecoverable disasters, and at first sign of trouble, when one of the levees failed to open, I sailed home.” He laughed. “I told them I was testing the time of travel through the canal instead of around Cape Horn.”
“How did you get here?”
“The liner took me to Key West where a railroad met me.”
“A railroad in Key West? Isn’t it an island?”
“So you would think. Little did I know that in the last ten years, some man named Henry Flagler was bringing a railroad over one hundred and fifty miles of sea to Key West, precisely because of our canal. He thought the United States could use a southernmost port connected by rail to the mainland.”
“Oh, that is amazing! So many amazing things everywhere. People working, making things.” She shook off her words, coughed. Why were the simplest things so hard to talk about? “Are you home for good?”
“We’ll see.”
