A firm handshake was Erastus’s preferred greeting. It always had been.
Paul turned to introduce his companions, but his father beat him to the punch.
“And you,” said Erastus, “must be Miss Huntington.” He bowed politely. She returned the gesture with unpretentious grace.
“Your son has told me so much about you, sir. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”
“Oh, my dear, you mustn’t listen to too much of what Paul tells you. He does so like to exaggerate.”
“Father,” interrupted Paul, “this is Nikola Tesla.”
“My, you’re tall. And it’s a great pleasure to make your acquaintance as well.” He extended a hand, but the inventor merely stared off into the distance. He seemed largely unaware that there were human beings around him. Or that one of them, Paul’s father, was attempting to say hello.
“You are unwell, my friend,” he said. “I understand. Let us see if we cannot get you better.”
He gestured to Big Annie, the family horse that Paul had named in his childhood. She was tied to a post beside the family’s carriage, which was older than she was.
Paul and his father didn’t speak much during the hour-long ride back to the house. Instead, Paul pointed out various sights to his guests. Though Paul had been born in Ohio, the family had moved to Nashville when he was five. His sister, Bessie, had been born soon thereafter. Bessie was off and married now to a respectable husband in Clarksville. She wrote to him occasionally. He didn’t always have the time to respond.
Nashville had grown since Paul had last ridden up the Cumberland River. The noisy docks now teemed with young workingmen, a generation of laborers who’d been able to trade farm tools for barrel lifts.
Erastus and Ruth Cravath lived in a three-story farmhouse northwest of the town center. It was quite a hike from the university, but Paul’s mother appreciated the separation from her husband’s working life. The Cravaths had selected the farmhouse for its spiritual simplicity, not its practical comforts. They had never made any proper attempt at farming. They kept no livestock in the adjacent barn, save their few horses for transportation. They grew no crops. With Paul in New York and Erastus traveling so much to raise funds, there was no one around the house that could be counted upon for field labor. The barren acres surrounding the house stretched to the horizon.
The slanted wooden roof had worn since Paul had last laid eyes on it. The whole house seemed to have fallen into a state of comfortable dishabille. Neither Erastus nor Ruth would demand thicker windows or sturdier front steps until one of those parts had completely broken. In Paul’s childhood, no one wanted for anything they truly needed, but no one had anything they might merely want.
The house was the color of Tennessee dirt.
“Hello, Mother,” Paul said as he pushed open the squeaky screen door. “I’m home.”
Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.
—STEVE JOBS
IT TOOK A long day for Paul and Agnes to explain their rather unique predicament to Erastus and Ruth Cravath. In letters, Paul had described the basic events of the past eighteen months: Tesla, Westinghouse, Edison. He’d told them about his difficulties in court and the looming disaster surrounding the electrical chair. None of this information was new. But the fact that Paul and Agnes had conspired to house Tesla in secret, to keep him safe from Edison without even Westinghouse knowing…this was not a fit subject for a letter home. Ruth and the reverend both took it well. They seemed more concerned for Tesla’s safety than anything else. Erastus’s faith prized nothing so much as a man in need.
Ruth suggested that Tesla might take the bedroom that had belonged to Bessie. It hadn’t yet been cleared of her childhood detritus. But Erastus hoped that Tesla wouldn’t mind the clutter.
“It’s a kind thing you’re doing,” said Agnes to Ruth.
Ruth shrugged. “It’s a kind thing you’ve already done.”
“He might be here for…a little while,” said Paul.
“It would be our pleasure, my son,” said Erastus. He turned to Tesla, who sat straight-backed on the sofa. “Would you like me to show you to your room?”
Tesla stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on a point midway up the white wall. The activity of the past days seemed to have caused his recovery to regress.
“The universe wears coats. The universe wears shirts. The universe shall be unbuttoned.”
Everyone stared at Tesla for a moment. “We’ll get him well,” said Ruth.
—
Later that night, after his parents had retired to bed, Paul came out onto the back porch to find Agnes sneaking a cigarette. It startled him for a moment to see her there, on the porch of his childhood home. The moon lit her curly hair better than any light bulb ever could.
“Miss Huntington,” he whispered.
She looked as if she’d been caught committing a crime.
“Sorry. I know your father hates smoke.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
He sat next to her on the porch. The old wood creaked under his weight. “I know how much you’ve done for Nikola. Thank you.”
“Ah. Well.” She took an inhale. “It’s not as if he has anyone else.”
She gazed out at the night sky. She puffed a plume of smoke into the air and watched it disintegrate between the stars. A colony of crickets hummed from the faraway weeds.
“Have you ever met someone so alone?” she said suddenly.
“He’s the emperor of his own private kingdom.”
“He’s its only inhabitant.”
“Yes.”
“So that makes him its slave as well.”
She seemed reflective. Almost philosophical. She’d been that way since they’d arrived. He wasn’t sure what had brought about the change in her demeanor. On previous occasions on which Paul had seen Agnes delivered from her mother’s peering gaze, she’d been fiery and playful. Now she was wistful.
All Paul’s worries on the train about how she would take to Nashville had proved unnecessary. She’d made herself very much at home. She’d been friendly with his parents. She’d insisted on helping Ruth make up Tesla’s bed. Agnes settled into what had once been Paul’s childhood bedroom like a long-lost cousin.
She took another puff of her fading cigarette. “Nikola Tesla arrived in Manhattan with, what, a few nickels in his pocket? He was homeless. He had no job, no connections, no family or friends to rely on. Do you know what he had?” She gestured to her skull. “His mind. It was his very otherworldliness that made him what he is. He did not become the most famous inventor this side of Thomas Edison by playing the game so well—he did it by refusing to play at all. And as someone who’s played awfully well myself, I respect him for it. I’d very much like to live in a world that doesn’t see people like him eaten alive.”
“And Henry La Barre Jayne?” asked Paul. “Would he agree?”
He’d never said the name aloud to her before. His voice sounded petulant, even to himself.
“You apparently have a lot of opinions about someone you know nothing about.”
“That was mean.”
“It was.”
Paul had avoided this conversation for two days on the train. He’d avoided it many times in New York. But the intimacy of having Agnes in his parents’ house made him feel unable to preserve such polite silence any longer.
“I’ve spent my life coming in second place to men with last names like Jayne. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
“Second place?”
Paul searched her face. Her mother had apparently not told her about his invitation to a Sunday walk among the flowers. Was this a generous act on Fannie’s part? It had saved Paul some measure of embarrassment, without his knowing. Yet he no longer had anything to lose by honesty.
“I asked your mother if I might take you walking,” he confessed. “She informed me of the time you’ve spent in the company of Mr. Jayne.”