Abbeville. Jack Fuller

I had any chance of avoiding being pushed into a terrible mistake,” she said.

      “What do we do?” he said.

      “I guess we should take some time and find out,” she said.

      For the next several months Karl spent his days in the chaos of the pit just waiting for the moment he could leave and call on Cristina at her aunt’s. Sometimes they stepped out for dinner, and he could barely control the surge of feeling he had with her on his arm. On a number of occasions they visited the sprawling white World’s Columbian Exposition on the lakefront and witnessed all the marvels of the globe and the colonnaded promise of the future.

      It took weeks before they dared to embrace. Then weeks more before she offered her lips. Even then she did not open them as Luella had.

      At some point Karl felt compelled to tell Uncle John what was happening.

      “We don’t want to go back and work the farm,” Karl said.

      “There are other ways,” Uncle John said.

      “Abbeville is so small,” said Karl.

      “In the center of a very large world,” said his uncle, “and increasingly connected to it. Today the train and telegraph. Tomorrow, who can know? But whatever develops will offer opportunity, opportunity that a man of promise such as yourself is uniquely prepared to seize. Become large in a small place, and eventually you can make the world come to you.”

      “But things are so tough right now,” said Karl. “Businesses going under. Banks failing.”

      “The very time to be bold,” said Uncle John.

      Over the next several days the two of them studied large books at the Board of Trade that showed patterns of membership. As Karl’s uncle had suspected, Abbeville was a niche waiting to be filled.

      With Uncle John’s financial backing Karl got a place on the Board of Trade. Karl signed a contract that bound him to a relationship with Schumpeter & Co. for ten years, during which time he would pay off the loan. Karl’s board seat would allow him to avoid the gouging price every Chicago elevator and trading firm extracted, so even with loans to pay, he could make a decent income for himself and still do better for his neighbors than any of the competition.

      Next he planned the construction of a modern grain elevator. Abbeville’s farmers had to take their crops either to Simon Prideaux, the Frenchest of the French, or to distant locations, which cost them precious time and forced them to deal with strangers. The construction of a new facility would be costly, of course, but land was readily available along the railroad, and any bank would see that Karl’s proposition was nothing short of inevitable.

      Uncle John took Karl to his own personal banker to do the deal. It was a simple mortgage, structured so that no money moved until Karl needed it and thus no unnecessary interest accrued. At his uncle’s suggestion Karl made the instrument out to cover another property upon which he had secured an option. This was to be the location of a grand new home across the tracks from the elevator.

      “Be careful, Karl,” Cristina said.

      “Don’t worry,” he said.

      “I mean thinking it is easy,” she said. “You have fought a horse and plow. You know the kind of effort this money is based on, the seasons of disappointment.”

      They were walking at the lakeshore. A light breeze kept them cool under the sun of a perfect day. It also blew the city smells back inland so that, as they looked outward, to all their senses they might have been five hundred miles from anywhere.

      “I think it is time,” he said.

      “I’m afraid to ask for what,” she said.

      “To go home,” he said, “together.”

      She stopped and faced him.

      “Are you asking me to marry you, Karl Schumpeter?” she said.

      “I know you are promised to someone else,” he said, afraid now to look at her.

      “I am promising myself to you now,” she said.

      “What about Harley Ansel?”

      “He already knows,” she said.

      Then she kissed him the way Luella had. Before God she did.

      They wed in the church next to her aunt’s flat, honeymooned at a hotel near the Auditorium, where they went to a concert. They also took in the majestic Columbian Exposition one last time. Karl wanted another look at the machine that fired the lights so bright that they said the man in the moon could see them.

      Before leaving for Abbeville, he entrusted to Uncle John the funds he had accumulated in the pit.

      “I will treat your money as if it were my own,” Uncle John said. “By the way, have you had any further contact with that girl who worked here? What was her name?”

      “I wrote her,” said Karl. “She didn’t reply.”

      Strictly speaking, this was true. He was afraid to tell him anything more.

      “Good,” said Uncle John.