The Lightning Keeper by Starling Lawrence Page B

their home, where the snow fed a river that ran for four kilometersbefore vanishing into a chasm in the ground. The mill in this place looked like all the others from a distance: the same pitch to the roof, the same arthritic poles holding the precious machinery up out of the current. But the wheel itself was not the same, for his cousin, a man with bright eyes and a lurching gait, had sited it differently. He had placed two great rocks so that the water must bypass the wheel, except for an angry jet that issued from between the rocks, caught one side of the wheel, and was hurled down and away by those whirling blades. Because there was no water to drag on the blades as they turned to meet the jet again, his cousin’s wheel spun on into the early months of summer, when the flow in the streams had dried to a trickle and the men were grinding the grain by hand. His wife, a woman who always found fault, complained that the stones ran too fast, and the flour had a singed taste.
    With his hand on the behemoth, Toma wondered about his cousin, about what was in his mind when he placed those stones. Where do such ideas begin? and where do they stop? Perhaps the old wheel had simply broken, and the man, partly out of frustration, had rebuilt it in a different way. Perhaps those rocks had been there all along, or nearly in the position that produced the jet. Perhaps also, the man had other things in his mind, and only the necessity of gathering and grinding the barley prevented him from experimenting further with his design, positioning the wheel vertically, which would have required belting or gears to drive the machinery. Tesla, in his lecture, dressed like a wizard, his eyes burning with unseen things, had declared to his audience that what he would show them—he gestured here in the direction of the glowing tubes and the friction generator at his back—would find no practical application for years to come. They are now without use, he said, challenging his listeners to follow his mind, taunting them, perhaps, but this is the future, make no doubt on that. Tesla, too, was a Serb, and perhaps as much his kinsman as the man with the bad leg.
    And why was this wheel now not more than it was? Why not a gleaming steel turbine a fraction of this size? He imagined Tesla, in his place, contemplating the wheel: Burn it, he said…there is enough wood here to keep a house warm for a month in the winter.
    Toma slapped the wheel with the heel of his hand, and the report filled the shed.
    â€œWhat was that, d’you suppose?” The mason’s voice surprised him: he had forgotten how close they were.
    â€œMaybe it’s just Horatio’s wheel falling down by itself, in which case we needn’t be fussing with these God-damned rocks. Maybe we’ll be having the whole week off after all.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t know what to do with a week off, Flaherty, and I don’t think the wheel is falling down. I think there’s somebody in there.”
    â€œWell, it’s all the same to me if it keeps that black bugger busy and off our backs. I says to him, ‘Why me? Can’t I go home like everybody else?’ And the man just looks at me, like I’m not worth the breath it would take to answer. The man has no respect.”
    Soft laughter greeted this pronouncement. “Well, Flaherty, you’re a good enough fellow and all, but I’m not sure I respect you, exactly.”
    â€œAnd maybe you’re as ignorant as he is, then, and you being bog Irish. But you don’t turn your back on me when I speak my mind to you, or say good morning. And besides, you’re white, which makes a difference as I see it.”
    â€œNo denying the man is black, but who’s to say what the difference is.”
    â€œAhh….”
    â€œCome now, bucko, do you think there’s another man, black, white, or green, who knows what Horatio Washington does, and could keep that thing cranking