Arachnodactyl (3 page)

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” Admiral Daughton said as he adjusted the lapels of his coat. “Suffice it to say, it’s a task of a mechanical variety that awaits in Whitby for the touch of a young man with such aptitude.”

Ikey swallowed. Whitby. That was by the sea. Across the moors. Farther than he’d ever travelled. His stomach tightened at the thought of leaving. He glanced at Uncle Michael, who stared over at his brother-in-law with an expressionless face.

Ikey’s dad shook his head. “I need him here.”

Ikey’s grip tightened on the mechanical arm. Hearing his dad needed him almost knocked him over.

“I see,” Admiral Daughton said. “Of course I’d be willing to compensate you directly. You may hire a nursemaid for…” he nudged his head at Uncle Michael, “whatever assistance you may need.”

Ikey’s dad crossed his arms over his chest. “Nursemaids aren’t cheap. Labor shortage is so bad that women have taken to working fields.”

Admiral Daughton shook his head. “It’s a temporary situation. A simple task. With him on my crew, shouldn’t take more than a few months at most. While he’s gone, I’ll send his pay directly to you.”

Ikey’s dad lifted his eyebrows. “How much?”

“Five pounds to start. A pound a week as long as he works. Another five as a bonus upon successful completion of the project.”

Smith tapped the back of Ikey’s hand. Brought back to the task at before him, he fitted the arm into its track with a snap. Before Ikey secured the straps across the coachman's chest, he wiggled his mechanical fingers and flexed his elbow until he touched his shoulder.

Admiral Daughton clapped his hands together. “Oh! Astounding. Absolutely astounding, young man!”

Ikey’s dad chewed at his cheek. “Well, a pound a week will take care of a nursemaid, but it’s nothing to compensate for the work lost around here.” He shook his head. “People always coming to our door to have this or that patched.”

“I’m sure,” Admiral Daughton said. “Five pounds up front, and a pound a week should be more than enough.”

Ikey’s dad shook his head. “No one else around here can fix this stuff.”

“I believe Mr. Lynch, here—“

“He’s a lame fool. A burden. I can’t be carrying him around like a sack of potatoes every time someone needs something fixed. That’s what the boy is for.”

Ikey clenched his teeth and pulled Smith’s straps tight.

Admiral Doughton took a swallow of beer. He regarded Ikey’s dad through eyes half-closed. His jowl bulged.

Once Ikey secured the final strap, Smith sat on the bench and thunked his mechanical elbow onto the table. With a wry grin at Ikey’s dad, he clenched his fist, then wiggled his fingers. The gears and escapements inside his hand clicked and purred. Ikey tilted forward to better hear such music.

Admiral Daughton laughed. “I do believe you are being challenged, Mr. Berliss.”

Ikey’s dad glanced to the back of the barn where heaps of junk filled stalls once meant for cows. “I don’t want to break it again.”

Smith frowned and shook his head. He wiggled his fingers again.

“Go on,” Admiral Daughton goaded. “If you break it, I’ll pay your boy double to fix it. If he loses, I’ll pay you triple our agreed-upon price.”

Ikey picked up his pliers and slid them into a pocket in the tool roll. What if Smith won? What would the admiral expect in return? The same question played over his dad’s face until his jaw clamped down on it.

Admiral Daughton folded his arms back behind himself until he looked like an egg in a top hat. “If he wins, then you must agree to my conditions. Five pounds for your boy’s service up front. A pound a week until the job is complete.”

Ikey’s dad looked at his son. “And five when he finishes. If he agrees.”

Admiral Daughton nodded. “If he agrees, and upon his successful completion.”

Ikey’s dad rubbed at his chin as he stared at Smith’s tin-plated fist.

“Well,” Admiral Daughton said with a shrug of his shoulders, “if you’re not sport…”

“I’m sport,” Ikey’s dad said. He plunked himself down across the table from Smith. He returned Smith’s grin with a glare, then gripped the man’s mechanical hand in his own.

With his flesh hand, Smith pulled the pipe from his lips and laid it upon the table. Ash spilled from the bowl in dark flecks, but no smoke rose from the remains of the tobacco.

“On the count of three,” Admiral Daughton said. “Ikey, please do the honors.”

On three, Ikey’s dad gritted his teeth. His hand trembled as he pushed at Smith’s arm. The coachman did nothing more than curl the corners of his lips into a slight smile. Shades of red passed over Ikey’s dad’s face until scarlet clouded his features. A small grunt escaped him. Beads of sweat popped out across his forehead and glistened in the lantern light.

Smith’s arm didn’t budge.

Ikey held his own breath. His dad appeared to be arm wrestling a fence post. He didn’t stand a chance. And once he lost, Heaven help Ikey and Uncle Michael. His dad would be livid and sure to take his rage out on them both. And there would be nothing to do except ride out the storm.

Ikey looked at the admiral. His fat face glistened and split into a wide grin as he watched Smith taunt his opponent. Perhaps Ikey could make a case for Admiral Daughton taking both himself and Uncle Michael?

“Had enough?” Admiral Daughton asked.

Ikey’s dad grunted and hissed and grunted again. His eyes focused and burned on the greasy light reflected off Smith’s knuckles.

“Finish him off, will you?”

With a roll of his shoulder, Smith’s arm fell over and pinned Ikey’s dad’s hand to the table with all the difficulty of pushing over a knee-high sapling. Ikey’s jaw dropped. It was one thing to look at the mechanisms, to understand what they were capable of, but another thing entirely to see them in action; to see how easily and handily Smith trounced his dad despite muscles and might.

Ikey looked down at his own hands. Had he an arm of iron, he could stand up to his dad. Raise a greater fist.

Ikey’s dad’s breath heaved through his nose in a ragged whistle. It disrupted his attempts to hide his panting. As he pulled his hand out from under Smith’s, he glared at Ikey.

“I should call that a fitting demonstration,” Admiral Daughton said. “Very good work, Ikey.”

“Yeah, if you showed half that effort at actual work, I wouldn’t have strained myself lifting bags of chicken feed.”

Smith grinned and Admiral Daughton slapped his thigh. “Chicken feed, indeed! How about it, my boy? What say you? Would you like to give your hand a try at working with my crew?”

Ikey glanced to his dad. The man rubbed at the flesh of his left palm with his thumb. The color drained from his face and left an expressionless mask. Ikey waited for a sign, some guidance. As he started to turn his attention to Uncle Michael, a slight twitch of Ikey’s dad’s face told him no.

Uncle Michael gave a single nod.

Ikey turned to the floor, to the scuffed dirt and the hay and the remains of animal droppings long since dried out and tamped down into the earth, back in better times. “No. I should stay here.”

“Are you sure?” Admiral Daughton asked. “You’re passing up a great opportunity. My foreman is an expert engineer. You could learn a great deal from him. You’ll see things that you won’t see out here in The Dales.”

“Ikey,” Uncle Michael spoke up, “I need you to help me out back.”

Ikey nodded. He pulled his uncle’s chair away from the table and pushed him out the back and into a yard that once held pigs. There, Ikey swiveled the chair to his left and rolled it onto a small, wooden platform.

“You have to take the admiral up on his offer,” Uncle Michael said as he undid the fly of his trousers.

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“I can’t. What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. I can mind myself,” Uncle Michael said as he leaned forward and grabbed a vertical rail attached to the side of the barn. “Ready?”

Ikey’s grip tightened on the back of the chair. “Ready.”

Uncle Michael grunted as he pulled himself up onto his good leg. The bad one dangled from his shattered hip, the knee bent. His arm trembled as he clutched the rail. Ikey looked past the stone fence, up the hill slick and wet and heavy with rain and cold.

Urine splashed into the mud. The ammonia scent of it billowed around them.

When it stopped, Ikey braced himself against the chair. Uncle Michael fell backwards into it.

“You heard the admiral,” Uncle Michael said. “We’ll have money enough for a nursemaid. Your dad will see to it. He won’t be taking care of me himself.”

Ikey shook his head. “I don’t even know what I’d be doing.”

“Something mechanical. Does it really matter what? It’s all the same. A machine is a machine. What’s important is that you have a chance to get away. A chance to get off this failing farm and make a name for yourself. Do a good job for this admiral, and he might keep you on. Take this opportunity, Ikey.”

Uncle Michael flung an arm over the back of the chair and twisted himself around until he stared at his nephew through the crow’s feet and bloodshot corner of his eye. “Take this. For me.”

Ikey looked away again, to the absence of long-silent family members who might suddenly speak up, hush Uncle Michael, tell him how wrong he was, because Ikey could never say no to him. Never. As much as he wanted to escape with Admiral Daughton and Smith and never look back, he couldn’t leave Uncle Michael behind. Not with his dad.

But now that he had seen the arm and he knew how it worked, he could build one for himself, and perhaps use what he learned to build a brace for his uncle’s leg. Seeing the mechanics of the arm provided him with enough information and inspiration. He need not follow it to wherever Admiral Daughton led him.

So Ikey said nothing to his uncle as he pulled the chair back into the barn. He didn’t have to tell his uncle no, or even say a word. The final decision rested with his dad. The burden would be off Ikey. Uncle Michael could direct his disappointment at his brother-in-law, and not at his nephew.

As they entered the barn, Ikey’s dad stood from the bench. He wiped a hand over his chin, glanced at the admiral, then nodded to Ikey. “Put Michael in the house. Then grab your kit. We have to get their carriage out of the ditch.”

T
he cart hit
a pothole and jostled Ikey. He placed a hand against the bed of the cart to steady himself, then he drew his tarpaulin closer around himself.

Smith, sharing the back of the cart with him, rocked with the motion. Smoke leaked out from under the hand cupped over the bowl of his pipe. Rain dripped off the brim of his hat and disappeared behind his knees, drawn up before him, his heels planted firmly on the bed.

Admiral Daughton looked back over the bench and pulled his own greatcoat tighter around himself. He chuckled. “You look like something we pulled out from around the axle.”

Ikey looked away, out towards the hills behind them, the rain filling the tracks of their cart and the hoof prints of the mare. He closed his eyes. The world disappeared, reduced to the steady hush of rain, the squish of cartwheels and hooves, the cold odor of mud threaded through with the warm scent of Smith’s pipe.

“I must say,” the admiral said, “you’ll have a distinct advantage when your call-up comes. From what I’ve heard, the trenches are very much like this; cold and damp and muddy. It’ll be like home to you, will it not?”

Ikey pulled the tarpaulin tighter. A shiver played over his skin. Goose flesh prickled him.

“Are you looking forward to your call-up?” Admiral Daughton continued. “When it comes?”

Ikey shook his head without opening his eyes.

“It’ll come soon enough,” Ikey’s dad said, his voice hardly floating over the rain. “The King will be sure not to leave one young man untouched in the whole country.”

“We all must make sacrifices, Mr. Berliss. It is our way.”

“Aye. But what do we do when we run out of things to sacrifice? What good is your victory if it costs me my farm?”

“You will still have your freedom.”

“I’m not keen on the freedom to be a pauper, or to trade my farm for a bunk in a workhouse.”

The balance of the cart shifted as Admiral Daughton readjusted himself on the bench.

“I can appreciate your special predicament, Mr. Berliss. I see you and Mr. Lynch both rely on the young man an inordinate amount. His deployment to the Continent would be a particular hardship to the both of you, would it not?”

“I’ve been saying so,” Ikey’s dad said.

“How about an amendment to my proposition, then? Ikey, if you join my crew for the summer, then I will see to it that the Ministry of Defense recognizes your service to king and country as complete and honorable.”

Ikey opened his eyes and looked over to the admiral. His jowl bulged and flexed as his body dipped and swayed with the motion of the cart.

“How about it?” Admiral Daughton asked.

The air felt suddenly reduced, thin and watery, as if it could neither fill Ikey’s lungs nor hold him to the earth.

Ikey’s dad cleared his throat, then coughed into his fist. “A man who offers me a stallion’s price for an old, swayback mare is either a fool or a felon. I take it you are no fool, sir.”

Color dashed across Admiral Daughton’s face. “Are you calling me a felon?”

“Why’s his help so important to you? Surely there are tinkerers paving the road between here and Whitby. Why this one?”

Admiral Daughton looked away, out to the sheep who stood along a hillside and largely ignored their passing.

“He’s the only son I got left,” Ikey’s dad added.

“I can appreciate your situation, Mr. Berliss. I can. A down-on-his-luck farmer who is shouldering an unfair amount of our national burden. At the expense of the economy, the war, and may I say, a run of bad luck, I can see how very close you are to losing everything. And not out of pity, but appreciation for your family’s services today, and for your great sacrifices to king and country, I am offering you a break. Your son is undeniably clever, and may I say, brought up in a fine manner; quiet and raised with a respect for authority sorely lacking in the character of today’s youth. Precisely the kind of young man I need to round out my crew. And certainly the kind of young man who would respect the wishes of his father, should his father command him to change his mind.”

Ikey’s dad flicked the reins. The mare shook her head. Ikey swallowed. His grip on the tarpaulin loosened. If his dad told him to go, he’d have no choice. Ikey glanced to Smith. A bolus of smoke leaked past his lips. It swirled into eddies and was shredded into nothing by the falling rain.

“I don’t need your favors,” Ikey’s dad said.

“No,” Admiral Daughton said, “most certainly not. I can see plain as the nose on my face that you are a man of self-reliance. A true Englishman. But it would be a pity to see such a man taken under by circumstances beyond his control. I hear that the Ministry of Defense will shortly be looking over this area for young men who have come of age. He shall receive his call-up when they do. May even be mere weeks ahead.”

“I don’t care for blackmail, sir.”

“Neither do I,” Admiral Daughton said. “Do not mistake my offer as an attempt at blackmail, my good man. It is just how things are. It is the English way: a stout resolve to do those things that must be done.”

Silence fell over the cart. Ikey turned his attention to the road behind them. Dare he ask Admiral Daughton to bring along Uncle Michael as well? Or perhaps he might jump from the cart without warning, run back to the farm, suit Uncle Michael up in the harness and stagger off, somewhere, head for Leyburn or someplace else. They could get work fixing things. And they could hide from his call-up, avoid it like he avoided his dad when his face glowed red, jaw jacked up tight, fists clenched into rocks.

Uncle Michael would never agree.

“Ah! There she is,” Admiral Daughton called out.

Ahead of them, the back end of a steam carriage appeared around a curve in the road. It sat with a front wheel buried in the ditch, a rear wheel cocked up over the road.

Ikey struggled to his knees to get a better look at the vehicle. He’d seen steam carriages from a distance, but never up close. The admiral’s appeared to be a type of Clarence carriage, but without the horses, of course. The whole thing appeared longer than a Brougham, with the cab extended out past the passenger compartment. Atop the rear of the carriage protruded, a thin, delicate funnel.

Once they drew up to the carriage, Ikey’s dad bade him crawl underneath it and secure a chain. Meanwhile, Smith filled the boiler with fresh coal and kindling and struck a fire. A short while later, as Admiral Daughton watched from a post on the opposite side of the road, Smith climbed into the coachman’s seat while Ikey’s dad readied himself with the mare’s bridle in one hand, a short whip in the other.

“Ikey,” he called out to his son. “Get around front there and push. Put your back into it, right?”

Ikey nodded, glanced to the admiral, then climbed into the ditch and braced himself against the vehicle. As he stood at the ready, he marveled at the bristle of levers arranged before the box. As Smith began to shove and pull on a variety of them, the carriage roared to life with an ear-splitting thunder.

The horse shrieked behind them. The carriage rocked back as the horse startled and strained against her harness.

“Go, for the Lord’s sake!” Admiral Daughton bellowed. “Out with her!”

Smith gave a half salute, then redoubled his attention to the levers. The carriage chugged like a locomotive.The wheels spun in the mud. Ikey heaved himself against the front of the carriage, bracing a shoulder below the dash board. He pushed with all his might. The men yelled at each other. Ikey gritted his teeth, pressed with his legs, pushed with his knees. The urge to scream welled in his belly, pressed against his lungs, wishing to catch them up in a great tidal wave, a guttural scream that would thrash against the carriage, chip its paint and ding the polished wood underneath.

He let up in order to gulp in a great breath.

The carriage jerked back a few inches. Ikey’s balance tottered, and as he rested his weight on the carriage, it tilted up and back, then lurched away.

Ikey fell forward. His knees submerged in the ditch, and the rest of him landed chest-first in the mud of the road. He watched as the carriage barely missed the opposite ditch before Smith drove it into a swerve. As he brought it to a stop, the coachman sat atop the coachman’s box and grinned around the stem of his pipe. Admiral Daughton clapped his hands together and yelled at Smith. Behind the carriage, Ikey’s dad tried to calm the mare as it struggled against its harness and attempted to escape its anchor.

Smith raised his mechanical hand to the brim of his hat and gave Ikey a sharp salute.

Ikey returned a wan smile, then pushed himself to standing. He brushed the worst of the mud from his clothes.

The racket of the carriage subsided into a loud, chugging hum.

“Excellent work!” Admiral Daughton shouted as he rounded the carriage and approached Ikey’s dad. “Excellent work all around. I commend each of you for a job well-done.”

Ikey’s dad jabbed a finger at his son, then pointed under the carriage. “Get that chain off.”

Once Ikey crawled back out from under the carriage, chain limp in his hand, Admiral Daughton pulled a pocketbook from within his coat.

“Now for the boy’s repair job…”

“A half crown,” Ikey’s dad said as he held out his hand.

“And another half for wrenching my carriage out of the ditch,” Admiral Daughton said. Instead of producing a coin, he pulled a five pound note from his pocketbook and held it between his index and middle fingers, inviting Ikey’s dad to pluck it.

“Will you not reconsider my earlier offer? It’s a very generous offer. I am essentially paying you to ensure your son is
not
sent off to be killed in the trenches.”

Ikey’s dad’s eyes shifted from the note to his son, then back to the note. Rain pinged the note and it shivered in the chill air. Ikey’s dad looked up at the admiral.

“Very well,” Admiral Daughton said with a sigh.

Ikey’s shoulders drooped in relief. A shiver took him. The chain pressed into his palm like ice.

“All right.” Ikey’s dad snatched the note from the admiral’s fingers as he started to replace it. “Five pounds. A pound a week as long as he’s gone. Another five pounds when the work is done. And you still owe me a crown.”

Admiral Daughton grinned. “Grand. I’m glad we could come to an agreement.” He fished out a crown and pressed it into Ikey’s dad’s open palm.

“Now, Ikey,” the admiral said as he snapped his pocketbook shut and thrust it into his coat, “put that chain away and climb up there with Smith.”

The chain slipped from Ikey’s fingers and splattered into the mud. He crouched down and grabbed it. In his crouch, he looked out along the road, past the legs of his dad and the admiral. The hills pressed in on either side of the road, ready to lunge forward or thrust a wall of rock and earth up before him and send rivulets of water rolling down, washing away any handhold he might scramble for.

Ikey stood. The chain links clinked in his hand. “What about Uncle Michael?” Ikey asked his dad.

Ikey’s dad shook his head as he tucked the money into a coat pocket.

Ikey turned to Admiral Daughton. “Can you wait? I want a change of clothes. A few more tools?”

Admiral Daughton shook his head. “I haven’t time to wait. I wish to be back in Whitby by nightfall.”

Ikey turned back to his dad, his jaw open, all arguments lost and limp.

“Go on,” Ikey’s dad said to Admiral Daughton. “He’ll be right with you. I want a word with my son before he leaves.”

“Understandable,” Admiral Daughton said with a nod. He returned to the carriage. The body of it rocked as he stepped inside. Atop it, Smith swayed with the shifting, looking ready to ride out the end of the world upon the coachman’s box if need be.

Ikey’s dad stepped up to his son and took the chain from his grasp. Ikey stared down at the man’s boots.

“Listen up,” Ikey’s dad said. “This is your ticket out of the war. You don’t want to go off to the Continent and get shot or gassed, maimed or worse. You don’t want to end up like your brothers, or come back like the Fedders boy. You go with the admiral, do what he needs done, and do it well. Get all the experience you can and make yourself indispensable. You have an opportunity to make a future for yourself, and I want you to take it. There’s no future on the farm. Estates are driving down the price of yields with their damned machines, and the war is driving up the cost of labor. The only future to be had is in those machines. You do your best. Understand?”

Ikey nodded.

“Good. And don’t worry about your uncle. I’ll see he has a proper nursemaid. Someone to keep him out from under my feet.”

Ikey’s dad gripped his son’s shoulder and leaned in. “And speaking of which, you remember that what happens on the farm is no one’s business but our own. Understand?” His grip tightened. His fingertips dug into Ikey’s shoulder until he winced.

Ikey nodded again.

His dad let loose and patted his son’s shoulder. “Good. Now get your tools out of the cart and get going. Don’t leave the admiral waiting.”

Ikey turned away. From the cart, he plucked his satchel up and slung it over his shoulder. The road ahead invited him, pulled at him, but there was nowhere to go. Uncle Michael wanted him to leave. His dad now wanted him to leave. Admiral Daughton said it’d be a few months, then he’d be back. Uncle Michael would have to hold out until then. Once he returned, they could get to work on what Ikey had learned.

Ikey approached the carriage.

“Remember what I said,” his dad called out behind him.

Ikey continued on. As he reached for the carriage’s door, Admiral Daughton waved a hand and shook his head. He pointed up at Smith. “You will not soil my interior, young man,” he bellowed through the glass window. “Ride up on the box.”

Ikey sighed. He passed around to the opposite side of the carriage where Smith extended his mechanical hand. Ikey grasped it as he planted his foot on a spoke in the wheel. With a tug from the driver, Ikey stepped up and landed on the box seat next to Smith. The man gave a slight nod, then stood and motioned for Ikey to do the same. Once he stood, Smith flipped the seat up and pulled a neatly folded tarpaulin from a collection of stowed gear.