McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [231]
—Is that the one you flew in to Africa? Jeff said.
—No, I fear the Livingston was destroyed upon my arrival there, Uncle Thomas said. He smiled. Hacked to bits by the Mtabebe.
—Can we fly all the way to England in that? Without even stopping? How high will we go?
Frank applied a furtive knee to his brother’s bottom, hard. Jeff crumpled and then turned his traitor’s gaze to Frank. For an instant he looked angry, but the reproach in Frank’s eyes banked his fire and he rubbed at his backside with a sheepish air.
—We ain’t going anywhere, Frank said.
The basket scraped the tiled cornice, bounced against the galvanized tin of the roof, and settled. Uncle Thomas took hold of Jeff under the arms, and hoisted him over the side of the basket. Frank stood, fighting against the longing to fly. He would not abandon his mother. He would ensure that there remained at least one man in New Orleans, in the Louisiana Territory, in all the vast Crown Colony of Columbia, to mourn the death of Cuyahoga Drake.
—We shall make London easily, my boy, Uncle Thomas said, as if to Jeff. We could make it as far as Istanbul. The Mordden Mark III is a dreadfully efficient engine.
He looked at Frank, fixedly, his womanly mouth curled at one corner, as if reading the hunger to know that underlay his nephew’s stoical demeanor. He scattered specifications like crumbs to a reticent deer.
—There are a pair of them, he said. Four-cylinder compound engines. Vertical coil, parallel-flow flash boiler. Firebox above the boiler coils. Honeycomb condenser with vacuum pumps and complete automatic firing. One hundred and twenty horsepower apiece.
There was a burst of drum clatter from the yard of the old Presbytère, a workman’s ragged laugh. Jeff reached for Frank’s hand, but Frank would not take it. He did not want his brother distracting him with useless tappings at his palm.
—You won’t be abandoning her, Franklin, their uncle said. There is no way that you could.
Frank caught his breath. The laughter of the workmen in the jailyard became general and merry. Down in the workshops of St. Ignatius he could hear the chiming hammers of a coffin being nailed.
—My poor boy, Sir Thomas said. You must accept that I am all the family you have left.
—That’s a lie!
—Come aboard the Tir-Na-Nog, Frank. And one day we shall sail her straight to the moon. To Venus or Mars.
Frank craned his head to try to catch a glimpse of the pale Presbytère; he envisioned his father waving from one of its stone window ledges, putting on a jaunty smile, saluting him. But all he could see was the high bell tower of St. Ignatius, part of a spike-topped stone wall, a rounded stucco corner of the prison, a dusty brown patch of tamped earth in the prison yard, a pair of colored workmen leaning on the handles of two pickaxes.
—Stay if you will, then, his uncle said curtly. He gave a signal, and with a jerk the basket rose off the pitted zinc of the roof.
—Frank!
Jeff threw himself against the side of the basket and tried to climb out, wild, in tears for the first time since the night of Custer’s surrender. He managed to get one leg over the side. Sir Thomas caught him by the collar and hauled him back in.
—Frank!
Frank remembered the promise he had made to his father; surely to have broken it would be the greater abandonment.
The basket dragged, skipping, along the roof, and snagged against the cornice. In the instant before it would have freed itself and started upward, Frank crossed the roof and threw himself headlong into it, landing in a heap at his uncle’s feet. He stood up, steadying himself. He wiped his hands against the knees of his patched cadet’s uniform, and looked levelly at his