Fall

The weather had been strange all year, and that strangeness continued until the very day that Justice Penn Strawbridge and his household returned to Philadelphia from his country seat in the county of Chester. Winter hadn’t wanted to give up its grip, leading to the farmers fretting about the winter wheat freezing in the ground. Then summer had been cool and dry, but riven with impossibly muggy weeks where the rain was torrential. Farmers fretted about the dryness all season, and then fretted about soil and even entire fields being washed away when it did rain. And then summer never left - even now, on the first day of the month of Thanks, the trees still held their leaves and it was pleasantly warm

That warmth should have been the first warning that Penn had. He should have taken it for the sign it was, perhaps from old Franklin himself, to delay his departure another week. The last time he’d returned to Philadelphia from summering early the yellow jaundice ripped through the city one last time, taking another three hundred of the city’s residents with it. Including his Mary and their infant daughter Michelle

But while Penn could have comfortably stayed in the countryside a while longer, he could no longer stand the company. A couple of young Columbian cavaliers, the son and nephew of one of his business partners to the south, had stopped in on a grand tour of the Coast. He’d graciously invited the two to summer with him rather than test themselves against the jaundice, and for a few weeks it had been fun. The Columbians passed the time in very different ways, enamored as they were of aristocratic, martial leisure activities. They hunted daily, with lance bow and hawk (Penn had quite enjoyed the hawking), challenged each other to feats of horsemanship, and fought mock duels. But mostly they drank. Pennsylvania applejack and the rich beer he bought from the nearby Dutch were famous, and he could hardly deny a limitless supply of the good stuff to the son of the man who he sold much of his orchard’s produce to

But after a few weeks of playacting as a cavalier, he’d tired of the experience and consequently, his guests. The hunting and riding and even dueling was fun to a point, but there was no substance to it. And the cavaliers were uninterested in more cerebral pursuits - while in Philadelphia he could spend hours discussing the Histories and debating philosophy in a coffee house or tobacco parlor, the Columbians were not just uninterested in these things, but were all but illiterate!

It got to a point that Penn began to deliberately avoid them, welcoming instead the petty responsibilities of a county Justice. He toured the day workers and tenant farmers who tended his land, nosed in on the applejack distillers, and even made an effort to hold court daily instead of weekly, spending that oddly cool summer hearing every petty squabble and dispute that the farmers, both tenant and freeholder, had with their neighbors, and issuing verdicts and justice. All while his honored guests drank and hunted So when near the end of Oktober he’d woken to the sight of the first frost glistening on the barren fields, harvest now complete, he made the decision - warm as it still was, he would be returning to his townhouse in Philadelphia, and the cavaliers were strongly advised to leave immediately, so as to reach New York safely before the first snows. Penn left early in the morning, while his unwelcome guests were still recovering from their final debauch at his expense, and his household train wound its way along the rutted track that was the Lincoln Highway. Penn’s personal entourage - a pair of carts with his most essential household furnishings, a stagecoach for the few ladies of standing accompanying the party, a gaggle of servants and household staff walking alongside the wagon, and Penn and a handpicked party of his local Sheriffs and their deputies. Penn’s standard, red strawberries and green apples in each quarter, faced with a brilliant blue, snapped in the late autumn wind

The Lincoln Highway was the most direct route to Philadelphia, but at the crossroads of Overbrook, Penn indulged his riding party with a detour. While the staff and heavy wagons headed on, Penn instead rode north a shortways, into the valley of the Wissahickon. The trees of the Wissahickon were ablaze in brilliant yellow,, offset by a shocking deep red from a certain kind of tree that Penn had only ever seen in this valley. A dirt track wound along the rocky banks of the lively stream, steep cliff walls towering above them, trees just barely clinging to the soil against the pull of gravity. It was perhaps the one unspoiled bit of nature left in Philadelphia - much to the outrage of the local charcoal burners and millers, the great Franklin himself had blessed this valley, and dams and clearcutting were forbidden. The only men permitted to live in the valley were the mysterious Kelpi - a brotherhood of hermits living in secret caves, said to possess knowledge of the fate of the world. Not permitted to shave or cut their hair and dressed in rags they cut wild figures, more animal than man, but had never molested a traveler. Penn paid them his customary donation - while more doctrinaire Americans considered the Kelpi to be heretics, Penn thought their traditions to just be a local esoteric view - Franklin had written of the Kelpi, after all. The Founders were all men of reason and tolerance, and a brotherhood that survived both Founding and Fall must know something

Penn and his party splashed across a rocky ford over the Wissahickon and up a steep hill to reach the left bank of the Schuylkill, riding hard to catch up to the baggage train that should be crossing at the Girard ferry at that moment, Penn immediately noticed that something was wrong. The Schuylkill was crowded with barges and watercraft bringing produce down from the outer counties and Deitscherei lands beyond on an average fall day, but today the river was choked. A daring horseman might have been able to cross the river by jumping from barge to barge, and as the ferry came into view, the reason became clear - some damn fool had erected a pontoon bridge across the river. A line of boats lashed together with hemp and braided horsehair rope, with planks laid across, completely blocked the river to barge and boat traffic

The City Fathers occasionally erected one of these pontoons on particularly important market days or ceremonial occasions, so that foot and cart traffic could easily cross the great river. But only in winter or summer - winter when the great river’s water was at an ebb, and summer when the spring rush had passed, but before the harvest started to arrive in earnest. The boats would be told in advance and pole into sheltered anchorages for however long the bridge was up, awaiting their turn.

But doing so at the height of the fall crush was madness. Boats further up the river pressed south, unaware of the blockage. Boats that reached the only slightly yielding bridge were trapped, unable to row or pole themselves back up the river. Worse yet, many of the craft were enormous flat bottomed barges piled high with grain, corn, apples, stone, hay, coal, and the myriad other goods that a great port city like Philadelphia demanded in fall from the agricultural regions upriver

Penn could only watch as the disaster unfolded. He spotted his own house’s colors, thankfully still safe on the right bank and yet to cross the perilous pontoon. But the bridge was packed with wagons and travelers all the same, jeering the boatmen that normally charged exorbitant rates to transport them across. Barge after barge piled up, pressure grew and grew, until finally it happened. The ropes holding the pontoon together snapped with the sound of a bullwhip and the great push of boats forced their way through the pontoon

Horses, oxen, and people were immediately dumped into the water, horses and people screaming alike. The boatmen were no more prepared than those on the bridge, and the packed boats were forced downriver at alarming speed by those behind them. Heavily laden barges used to placid river water and with gunwales just inches above the water, were soon swamped at the bow. Barges smashed smaller boats and their passengers and crew into kindling. The crunch of breaking bone and shattering wood was the only thing that drowned out the screaming. It was a slow moving disaster that spread out all along the river as the current forced barges and boats, shattered and whole, as well as survivors clinging to white eyed horses or bits of flotsam down toward the malarial estuary of the Delaware. Taken by the press of the crush and the water, boats and people could only ride the water to their fate. Penn even spotted the incongruous sight of a perplexed man seated precariously upon an enormous sack of apples, bobbing and floating calmly through the chaos

One thing nobody could fault Philadelphians for was a lack of courage. As soon as the disaster unfolded, the assembled crowds surged to the riverbank to try and rescue the survivors. Penn and his company were no different, and spurred their horses to the bank. Stopping only to strip off his shoes and coat, Penn dove into the shockingly cold water. The first man Penn saw was a heavy black bearded Deitscherei bargeman, floating face down just off the bank. Dragging him ashore, Penn pounded on his chest until the man coughed up brown river water. Back into the river, this time a panicked young farmwoman clinging to a barrel of applejack. His fellows on the shore threw in a line and Penn stood chest deep in water, pulling her and the barrel alike with them. Then to Penn’s shock, he noticed a Senator who Penn didn’t immediately recognize, powdered wig and all, calmly riding his panicked horse as it swum for the bank. Penn tossed him a line but the man ignored it, looking like he was out for a leisurely ride through a disaster. And on it went like that for what seemed like hours - in and out of the water, dragging survivors - and increasingly corpses - to shore, rubbing his hands red hauling lines to try and pull boats from the chaos

Exhausted, the survivors and rescuers collapsed on the bank. Fires were lit to help sodden refugees warm and dry themselves - and as night fell, to allow survivors to search the faces of the fishbelly pale drowning victims. Every few minutes the murmur of exhausted conversation and crackle of fires was broken by wailing or sobbing, as another loved one was discovered

Ever the model of a Philadelphia gentleman, Penn invited the Senator - his name was McCune, from Lancaster, and the Deitscherei stonemaster (Hermann) to his townhome on the south side of Chestnut street. Penn truly loved this house, and would rarely go to the country were it not for the damnable jaundice. He’d added a vanity fourth story just so he could peer over the houses across Chestnut street and get a full view of the glorious ruins of City Hall, white marble shining in the moonlight, a splendid pile of stones only slightly diminished by its ruined state

Though most of his belongings and staff would be stuck on the other side of the Schuylkill for as long as the blockage took to clear and barge service to resume, his home had a skeleton crew of servants to attend it. Near death experiences have a way of erasing formality, and Philadelphia was not New York or Washington - rank and title meant less here, honor and acumen more. Dust covers were hurriedly thrown off the scarce remaining chairs and they were unceremoniously clustered around the great fireplace in the kitchen, which was already warm and stoked for the morning’s baking. Applejack, fruit and cheese was passed around, and instead of sipping the fine vintage Penn always stocked, everybody was tossing tumblers back with abandon

Penn was the first to broach the topic at hand, finally getting past the polite small talk and introductions. “That blood today is on -” he paused, collecting his manners, “Lord Mayor Kenney’s hands. The damn fool has been taking payments from the Schuylkill barons and bargemen for years. Probably ordered the pontoon thrown up overnight to remind them of who held the power on the river, what damage to their trade a bridge could do”

McCune took off his wig, revealing thinning grey hair, and spoke up. He had a surprisingly high pitched, feminine voice coming from a man who looked well into his fifties. “A bridge was exactly why I arranged a visit to Philadelphia. The Susquahannah trade is far too dangerous these days, the Chesapeake is infested with pirates, but the cost of overland trade along the Lincoln Highway is exorbitant, and if we have to wagon our trade up to the Schuylkill, the cost becomes prohibitive. Lancaster is being strangled - there’s no more fertile soil between Boston and Washington, yet we can’t export our damn produce!” The older man’s Pennsylvanian was heavily inflected with Deitscherei words, but Penn did enough business with the Deitsch that he could understand

Hermann the Stoneman nodded his enormous shaggy mane of black hair. In heavily accented Pennsylvanian he said “Stone too heavy to wagon, but boats too expensive. Toll here, toll there, toll for the ferryman, toll for the bargeman. Hermann could sell twice the stone to Philadelphia, but too expensive to ship”

Penn was the next to speak. “It all comes down to a bridge. Boston has bridges, Washington has bridges. A bridge would deal those damn robber Justices a heavy blow. And the bargemen might have to work for a living”

“And properly paving the Lincoln Highway to the west would open the interior. We are the only Americanist country that does not face great threats from cultists or Columbian vandals or even common pirates. Yet our country withers on the vine because of simple monopolies, letting damn common tradesmen extort titled men!”, said McCune. He paused, then nodding to Hermann, said “present company excluded of course, my apologies

Hermann waved it off. “Bridge need stone. Highway need stone. Hermann has stonel” he paused. “Many of the volk troubled by the situation on the river. Both this one and the Sesquahannah and their pirates. Wish to sell more to Philadelphia but cannot”

They were all now into their fifth or sixth (or seventh, in Hermman’s case) tumbler of applejack. “What we need”, Penn slurred, “is a movement. That bastard Kenney will try to pass this off as an unavoidable disaster, extoll the rescue effort. We can’t let him get away with it. There are lots of knives in the city ready to be drawn after today”. He then sighed, and dramatically threw back another tumbler. “But it’s hopeless. Most of the city gentry hate Kenney, but he’s got the City Fathers in his pocket. We wouldn’t be the first movement for a damn bridge, and we probably won’t be the last. Kenney’s just got his roots too deep in this accursed city.” He grew maudlin “Franklin’s holy city, and we can’t even build a damn bridge. What has this country come to”

But McCune dramatically threw back his own tumbler and stood up. “Your Kenney may have his hooks deep here, but I have friends elsewhere! I occasionally correspond with President Ironwood - Lancaster and York are minor sites of reverence for our faith when compared to Philadelphia, but Ironwood has expressed interest to me that they not fall too much under the sway of the Deitscherei”. He apologetically inclined his head to Hermann again

An idea began forming in Penn’s head. “Popular anger in Philadelphia will not oust Kenney’s corruption. But popular anger here, plus outside pressure? Washington alone won’t sway him either - no offense intended to our glorious President, but Washington doesn’t exert much sway north of Baltimore anymore. But if the city’s trade were at risk too…” He turned to Hermann “Your people are self sustaining in many ways. If a consortium of your, what did you call them, wolk? Could close your quarries and timber yards next season. Fatten the hogs up for another season instead of slaughtering and salting them this winter. Distill your grain instead of shipping it. Come late summer and fall the tollmen and bargemen will be hard pressed for customers, and harder pressed yet to pay Kenney’s bribes. And if Kenney doesn’t get those bribes…”

McCune completed the train of thought. “The City Fathers might find themselves more receptive to, how could we say, alternative leadership and new proposals.”

Hermann nodded. “The volk and our traders have become frustrated indeed these years. Cannot speak for them, but will carry idea back”

McCune stood up so fast he knocked his chair over, raising his tumbler high. Amid peals of laughter from the rest, his squeaky, oddly feminine voice rang out “A toast gentlemen! This time next year we’ll meet again, but this time, we’ll do so on the first bridge over the Schuylkill!” The rest joined in enthusiastically and the Conspiracy on Chestnut Street, as it became known, had begun