Jimmy Quick and His Electric Soldiers

Dedicated to my brother, Tim. A creative soul whose power will remain electric and undying.

CHAPTER ONE

It had been three years since I set foot in Louisiana and part of me was dreading it as a man might dread the harsh cold of a northern winter.

I could hear my friends' voices in the click clack of the wheels of the mighty locomotive as it rolled on and on. My mind drifted back much like the ever drifting scenery beyond my window.

“I urge you to reconsider!” Professor Woodrich pleaded. I looked up from my half packed bags, newly minted letters in my hands. The sun was setting, casting my dorm room in an orange glow and the professor’s eyes were full of concern.

“You could have a good career here in Chicago. Down south, you’ll be taking your life into your hands.”

The grip of his gnarly hands on my shoulders was gentle even as he shook me.

“Why risk your life?” He asked.

I slid from his grip and our eyes met.

“Reconstruction is in its waning days.” I said, laying my framed engineering degree gently into my suitcase.

My eyes drifted from the professor to the large steamer trunk in the corner. “I read the newspapers. No matter who wins this presidential election, the army will soon be pulling its men. When that happens those thugs who've been running amok in the south will have free reign. But my invention might just be the key to unlocking a future worth living in, if I can sell it to the army!”

The professor’s stone gray eyes also fell to the navy blue steamer trunk dominating the corner of my dorm. Its brass buckles reflected the brilliant light of the setting sun.

“The thing in that trunk is a marvel.” Woodridge said. “That you alone were capable of inventing it proves you one of the greatest engineering minds alive… I mean of any race! If you go down south and let those savages get their rope around your neck, it will be a tragedy for all mankind. You are too important to end up lynched in some backwater swamp for daring to be a black man with a big brain!”

His words touched me. Woodrich was a man I'd looked up to for three years. My mentor, my friend and on many occasions, my champion in a world stacked against me.

I beat back a tear in my eye. That this man whom I respected viewed me with esteem struck me in the heart like a bullet. However, nothing he said would shake my resolve. “I have to go home.” I said. “The plan was always to go back and open a workshop, maybe someday a factory.”

The suitcase was full. It squeaked as I closed it. I pulled each latch shut with a loud clack as the professor listed off the many horrible ways that the Klu Klux Klan and White League terrorists would find to kill me.

“Your brilliant mind won't protect you.” He said. I have to admit that I was not unaffected by his warnings. In fact I was terribly afraid.

“I have to fight.”

My reply knocked the argument from his breath. Maybe it was my tone of voice. Maybe just for an instant I had let my mask slip. The smart, gentle hearted lad whom I had let the northern white folks come to know had perhaps fallen away long enough to reveal the stone hearted boy whose acts of sabotage had left so many rebels dead.

The train’s shrill whistle brought me back to the present. People tend to liken that sound to fantastical creatures like Banshees. In my mind there could have been nothing more elegant than the purely mechanical truth of a steam engine releasing its pent up pressure. If only the pressure which had built up inside of me over these past three years could have been so easily released.

A pressure which built from anger. Every piece of horrendous news stoked the flames as I put on a false smile day after day. I went to classes, I did my homework, I spent idle hours with my friends and took the abuse of those peers who were less accepting of me. I did it all with calm and good cheer. Yet beneath the surface I boiled.

As I read each new report of intimidation, terrorism and mass murder inflicted against the freedmen, the newly minted American citizens who like myself had paid for that citizenship with a lifetime of blood and tears, I felt a need for action.

I wanted to do something, if I’m honest with myself I wanted to strike back.

That building pressure set my mind spinning like a turbine. In that state it gave birth to such ideas as no sane man had ever thought possible, ideas which became solid and real through my own two hands.

It began as a wild notion as I lay up one night, burdened by the weight of anxiety.

I hadn’t been at school for more than a few months. I’d just completed my first semester and had opted to spend the summer up north. It wasn’t as cool as I'd hoped but better than the sweltering heat of Louisiana in August.

My windows were open that night and I couldn’t sleep one wink, not after reading the news out of Coushatta. So many were dead and yet I could only be thankful that it hadn’t been as bad as Colfax or Opelousas where hundreds had perished.

Still sitting on my desk was the copy of the Louisianan which detailed the nightmarish event as if it was something to be celebrated. Along with it came a letter from my Aunt Harriet. She wrote to tell me that the Klan had ridden into Freedomville late in June and burned our church to the ground. Old Jones, an elderly parishioner, was trapped inside while trying to save the records. When I closed my eyes I saw fire.

How did it come to this?

When I left home Freedomville stood as a shining example of what whites and blacks could accomplish together. It was a beacon of hope in a south which seemed to be moving slowly past the legacy of slavery.

But it was beginning to look like a fading illusion.

In our town there had never been this kind of violence before. Yet in towns just a few miles away lynchings happened almost every Sunday.

Was racial progress just an image in the clouds? Were we only seeing what we wanted to?

All I knew was that the news of intimidation, murder and massacre was rising out of the south with alarming frequency. I worried day and night as my anger grew.

Crickets chirped somewhere in the bushes outside my window and I longed for the simplicity of war.

Back then I was only a child but I knew my mission.

How easy it was for me to build a timing mechanism, attach it to a fire bomb and drop it in a munitions room. Slipping in and out of small windows unseen.

Playing the innocent child if I was spotted.

Wait and watch the fireworks.

But there was no device I could build that could fix things at home.

But what if there was?

It came to me in a flash.

I quickly jumped from my bed to find a pen and paper. I began to write and sketch and spent the next three days in a frenzy of inspiration. The results of which were the plans for seven unique inventions and inspired modifications for twenty six existing pieces of technology. All of this when combined would become something out of legend.

I thought of the Greek colossus or the Hebrew Golem.

It took nearly two and a half years of trial and error, of sweat and blood and every spare cent but in the end it was completed.

The sound of the train breaking pulled me from my memories. I realized we had made our scheduled stop in Memphis. The train would be on layover for about an hour as it took on coal and water.

I had made plans to meet an old acquaintance from the war, one Colonel Ned Jackson. I pulled a briefcase from under my seat. Each brass number of my secret combination snapped into place and I reached into the open case to pull out two items. Firstly, my immaculate Colt pistol. Secondly, a specialized gun belt of my own design. I strapped it on knowing that armed with my Colt and a belt full of surprises I was ready for trouble, though not looking for it.

It was this last thought which reminded me to throw on my duster. Anyone stepping up on me would see that I was armed but I wouldn’t draw looks from the types who take exception to colored folks walking around with guns on full display.

After years in Chicago, as I was met by the dusty Memphis streets outside Calhoun station I was struck by the less than generous thought that the town looked like a pile of dung.

Of course it wasn’t my first time in this dung pile. I’d been here as a child, I first arrived aboard that thrice cursed steamer. It was a regular stop for the ugly little boat. That old drunken engineer whose fists were my constant companions would send me out on errands as he got plastered at a saloon and more often than not, chased out of a brothel for crossing the line with one of the girls.

We were shipping guns bound for the frontline rebels. I had to guide my master back to the boat and endure his abuse every step of the way. I was maybe five years old at that point, certainly no more than six. But I already knew those engines inside and out. That night I was certain I'd need every ounce of that knowledge as the fat ugly bastard would be totally useless.

None of us could have known that the little boat would be nothing but splinters by morning. I certainly didn’t know I had it in me to help slaughter the entire crew.

The sound of two gunshots changed my life forever. It was followed by a sight I'd never forget. A black woman with shoulder length braids charged into the engine room brandishing two pistols while holding a metal box tight under her arm.

“Stop that black bitch!” Someone shouted. Two more gunshots were followed by the sound of bullets tearing up the wooden wall paneling.

“These guns are bound for the bottom and so are you!” She shouted back, squeezing out two rounds from each gun before ducking back into the room. Up to that point she hadn’t seen me but then she smiled and tossed the box at me.

“Hold onto that.” She said as she marched over to the engines and looked almost lost as she stared at the valves and levers.

Her back was to the old drunk as he began to stir. He shot bolt upright as he saw the girl messing about with his engines and reached for his gun. I heard the rattle of coins inside the box as I hit him over the head. He toppled over, a great bloody gash on his crown.

I’d gone and committed myself.

The woman was still puzzled over the engine and began to randomly turn knobs and pull levers. She didn’t know what she was doing!

The small crew it seemed had gained their courage and I heard the sound of running footsteps.

“You trying to blow us up right with 'em?” I shouted, shoving her to move. “I’ll handle this, you deal with them.”

Now she heard the footsteps too and ducked behind the engine to pop off shots at the men in the doorway.

“Give it up girlie!” One man shouted. “Ain't no way out of there.”

“You can blow it out your steam hole!” She shouted back. Then whispered in my direction. “Is he right?”

I was concentrating on the gauges, trying to get the timing down. She had to repeat herself before I even heard her.

“Old man cut a door to the supply room to sneak booze.” I said, barely noticing the bullet whiz right over my head.

“Damn you, Jimmy!” The first mate shouted. “You ain't got no loyalty in you, boy.”

Another bullet came my way and It occurred to me that my life was in real danger. In fact it seemed as if the first mate was targeting me as opposed to the one actually shooting back at him.

“I guess you got me pegged.” I shouted back as I turned the last knob. “I ain’t never been loyal to a damned one of you piss drinkin skunks. That’s why I'm fixin to blow y’all sky high!”

I ducked for cover as they all started shooting at me. Bullets ricocheted over my head as they bounced off of the pipes and machinary.

I waved for the woman to follow and I crawled along my belly.

“You got a real mouth on you, kid.” She said before popping off another round at the door. She was on my tail pretty quick as I crawled over to the port side wall. There was a little handle that I tugged on and the wall swung out over open water. There were handholds drilled into the wood which I grabbed onto and began to climb sideways. The smell of the river hit me before the mist or the cool air. I sensed the girl right behind me, her dress whipping in the wind.

“We have maybe five minutes.” I said, my eyes firmly on the dingy dangling maybe thirty feet to stern and five feet up.

“We have to go back inside!” I shouted over the noise. One yank pulled open the door to the supply room as the woman came up behind and followed my lead.

None too soon as the first mate and his son were hanging out the open engine room hatch and shooting right up our asses.

Once we were in, the woman grabbed a screwdriver from the shelf and jammed it into the hidden door.

She took a spare moment to reload her pistols and gave me a look and winked. Before I knew it I was following her through the corridors as she shot off those twin revolvers at anything that moved. The shaggy, red eyed captain nearly toppled over as he rounded the corner. I didn’t know if she got him and I didn’t much care.

We were on deck now and thunder rumbled in the sky. It was raining just a bit and I remember almost slipping into the drink as we ran but she caught me and kept me on my feet as we scrambled into the dingy.

There was a lurching freefall followed by a splash and the sound of guns going off. An oar was thrown into my hands.

“Row like the devil!” She screamed. I threw my back into paddling and the wood inches from my feet jumped out of place as a bullet came that close to hitting me.

Then, the whole world turned upside down. For an instant night became day and a sound so much louder than thunder left my ears ringing.

Our little boat spun around on the river until crashing into a sandbar and throwing both of us free.

I felt the shock of cold water and thought I was dead.

The woman pulled me out of the drink, digging in with her fingers as she scrambled for land. We both lay on our backs in the sand, catching our breath as the universe spun.

“I’m Jimmy.” I said. “You got a name, auntie?”

“Call me … Harriet.” She replied with a smile. “I did just lead your ass to freedom, didn’t I?”

The reference was lost on me. But I smiled back as the meaning sunk in. I was free!

Of the steamer there wasn’t a trace. Not until the light of dawn touched the river and we saw a few floating timbers bobbing atop the water.

“You did pretty well back there.” She said to me, prying open the metal box that I'd held onto. Inside were more gold coins than I'd ever seen.

She scooped out a handful and put them in my hand.

“Your cut.” She said, with an ear to ear grin. ”You could take it and pay your way north or you can stick with me and we can have some real fun.”

***

I’d set a brisk pace from the train station and made the eleven blocks to the hotel in just a little over fifteen minutes as timed by my recently acquired Rockford pocket watch. A gift from a Chicago girl I'd probably never see again. She was a real sweetheart.

The doorman seemed keen to keep me from entering through the front door. Strongly suggesting that I go around back. A lightly greased palm settled his objections and I marched in through the front. I drew a few dirty looks from the typical types, white haired men who thought I belonged in a field and the high falutin southern belles who had to act offended by my presence or risk all kinds of slander.

The guy at the front desk tried to ignore me. I wouldn’t let him.

“I’m here to meet one Colonel Ned Jackson.” I said for the third time. “Now, he is expecting me and will be madder than a wet hen at whoever holds me up.”

That seemed to get the weaselly little man’s attention. For the first time he looked straight at me.

“The colonel’s expecting you, nigger?” He asked, looking me over with a grimace. “What are you his new houseboy?”

I shifted my weight just enough to let him get a glimpse of my gun. Not as a threat, in fact my arms were crossed over my chest. But a negro who walks into a fancy hotel with a gun at his hip and demands to see a northen colonel is probably not the kind of negro you want hanging about your lobby longer than a moment.

“Room twenty five.” He said almost with a snarl.

The room was easy enough to find and I only had to wait a moment after knocking before the door swung open. I was met by a man with alarmingly huge mutton chops curled at the sides. It took me a heartbeat to see past that facial hair and recognize his expressive green eyes.

“Colonel?” I asked, still a little unsure if this was the man I knew. Then his eyes lit up and I found myself being lifted off my feet in a huge bear hug.

“Jimmy!” He shouted as he pulled me into the room and clapped me on the back so hard that I nearly toppled over. “So, you went and got yourself an education.”

He threw himself into an armchair and produced a familiar looking corncob pipe out of somewhere and was puffing away before I could even sit down.

“Not that you ever needed it. You could have taught those bookworms a thing or two by my reckoning.” He said. I shrugged off the compliment. He was rather free with them anyway. I’d never known the man to say a negative thing about anyone. He’d even sing the praises of the enemy commanders just before sending Aunt Harriet and I off to blow up their command tent.

“God you’ve gotten big.” He said. “Shot right up like a weed. Of course, we were all bastards to use a kid like you in war.”

“Better than the alternative.” I said as I pulled out my own pipe. I had no great love for tobacco but in college learned that when a white man smokes he expects you to join him. So, I bought myself a pipe and took up the habit as needed.

I took a few puffs and Colonel Jackson laughed.

“What are you doing,kid?” He indicated the hand carved pipe in my hand. “It’s clear as day that you hate it.”

“Sorry, sir. People like it when you join them in a smoke.” I replied.

“Since when has Jimmy Quick ever cared what another man likes?” He asked. “I remember a time when you were eight years old and shot a prisoner’s kneecaps off just for calling you nigger.”

I remembered laughing when I did it.

“I shot him to get the location of the bushwhackers camp.”

Brandy sloshed around in a small glass that he poured me before taking a swig directly from the bottle.

“He told you where the camp was after you shot out his first kneecap. The second one you did for kicks.” He laughed again.

I drank my brandy.

“How have you been, sir?” I asked, hoping to steer the subject away from things I'd rather not remember doing.

The sound of that guy’s sobbing rang in my ears. It was when he started calling for his mother that I shot him in the head just to shut him up. At least he got to know his mother.

“You are looking at a genuine carpetbagger!” He said with a grin. “I’ve been down here buying up properties which are still wrecked up from the war and making a real killing. I’m well on my way to being a very rich man. If you’re looking for a good job, I’ve got plenty.”

“I was actually hoping to start my own business.” I said, edging him back towards the subject of my visit. “I wrote to you to ask about a letter of recommendation.” I said.

He stood up and stretched his back before walking over to his drawers.

“You want to sell weapons to the army, I didn’t forget.” He pulled out an envelope and tossed it at me. “You’ll want to try with Colonel Ewing at Baton Rouge Barracks… I’ll send him a telegram, he owes me a favor.” He said, pointing with his pipe at the letter he’d just tossed me. “Between that letter and my telegram you’ll get in the door and you’ll get your shot. But I warn you, It’s a lion’s den you’re walking into.”

I smiled, not one bit discouraged.

“I’ll have those lions eating out of my hand like pussycats once they see what I’ve cooked up.” I said.

Jackson laughed from the belly.

“Well, college didn’t cure you of your nerve!” He said, whacking me on the back so hard I rocked in the chair. He downed one huge gulp from the bottle and wiped his lip.

“How’s that auntie of yours doin?” He asked, eager to change the subject to something more personal. Now it was my turn to drink.

“Infuriating.” I said. “She thinks I'm wasting my time with this. That I should be arming up some kind of black militia.” I shook my head at the thought but was thrown off by the serious expression on Jackson’s face.

“She’s a shrewd woman, don’t dismiss her.” He said. “What’s she up to, nine identities?” He asked.

“Twelve last I heard.” I replied. It was actually fifteen that I knew about but Aunt Harriet drilled into me to never give away too much about her operations even to our friends. Old habits died hard.

“The point is she gets around, sees a lot.” Jackson said after a pause and another drink. “If she tells you that its so bad in the south that the negros need to organize for a fight… and she’s telling you she needs your help…” He let that hang in the air like a bad smell.

“I’m telling you that what I’ve invented is the solution.” I said.

“You really think a machine can save the south?” He asked, shaking his head at me like he did when I was a boy. Like I’d just suggested personally assassinating Jefferson Davis to end the war all over again.

“It’s a hell of a machine.” I said, not backing down.

I checked my watch and saw that it had gotten very late. I’d miss my train if I wasn’t careful.

“Tuesday, ten in the morning. The colonel will be expecting you.” He said before handing me my coat and hat. “He won’t be expecting you to be black. However, my personal letter of recommendation with your enclosed war record and engineering credentials should shut him the hell up.” Jackson reached for my pistol before I could react. Appraised it with a look and smiled before handing it back.

“Nicer than your last one. Still quick on the draw, I hope?” He asked.

I nodded, taking it back.

“I hope I won’t have to be but I’m faster than I was.” I replied. They didn’t let me join the shooting club at college. That motivated me to stay the best.

“I hope we have an occasion to meet again.” I said, trying to remain formal. He was having none of it.

He had me in another tight embrace before I could blink.

“Don’t be a stranger, I never considered you anything short of kin.” He said, pulling me tighter. “I’d say you were like a son but you are just too damn smart to come from a fool like me… so I’ll call you my little black brother instead!”

His outlandish whiskers were starting to tickle my face. He finally let me go, mist in his eyes. I shook his hand and I was back on the dusty street within minutes. He was always a sentimental drunk.

My watch said I had fifteen minutes to catch my train.