Franklin Affair Read Online Free PDF

cast-iron doorstops, telescopes, chemistry sets, binoculars, and publicity photos of Pat Hingle, Robert Preston, Lloyd Bridges, George Grizzard, Richard Widmark, Melvyn Douglas, Howard da Silva, Richard Easton, David Huddleston, Dylan Baker, and other actors portraying Ben onstage, or in movies, television, and radio.
    These things were all over the house but particularly on shelves and tables and windowsills in the main parlor, where the funeral director’s people had laid Wally out for viewing.
    There, in the center of the room amid curios, white silk, and red roses, in a polished mahogany casket, was the embalmed body of the man who had been the single most important person in R’s professional life—his mentor extraordinaire. Here lay the now-spent force that had opened R’s mind forever to the wonders of the Revolution, the Founding Founders, and Benjamin Franklin.
    Here lay a man whose corpse could pass for Franklin’s.
    Wally’s paunchy body was dressed in a long collarless chocolate-brown coat with matching breeches. White stockings were on his legs below the knee; white lace showed from a shirt at the top and at the cuffs. There was a modern-day necktie arranged loosely around the neck, but everything else was pure Ben. Wally’s long brown hair was even combed straight back off his pudgy face and forehead and arranged on his shoulders just behind his ears. His square wire-rim glasses were in perfect place. He really was the spitting image of Benjamin Franklin.
    â€œYou did it, Wally,” R said out loud. He stood alongside the casket, which was raised waist-high on a bier decorated with greenery and small flowers. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
    R remembered when Wally changed his signature slightly to resemble Ben’s flourishes and began to walk like Ben, even using a cane although he didn’t need one. He switched from wearing heavy black horn-rimmed bifocals to a pair in Ben’s distinctive style and commenced to overeat so he would have a Franklinesque paunch. Then he let his gray hair grow and dyed it brown, in a near match with some contemporary descriptions of Ben’s hair. Once a full-throated and precise speaker, Wally even moved to a quiet flat-speaking manner—again patterned after well-documented descriptions of his hero.
    Bill Paine had had no need to tell R to brace himself for what he was going to see. R was not surprised by Wally’s final morphed appearance in the coffin. It was clearly the final touch, along with the April 17 death date and eighty-four-year-old death age. Ben and Wally. Ben/Wally.
    â€œWell, whatever, there you are, Wally, you blessed man,” R said. He leaned down into Wally’s face, which had been fixed in a slight smile and made up with rouge and powder to appear robust. “You could pass as Ben in any
Law and Order
lineup—in appearance as well as in spirit and intellect. I honor you, my friend. I cherish you. I will miss you. And I will go to Eastville.”
    R’s father, a Presbyterian minister in a small Connecticut town, had spoken and prayed frequently about death as something terribly sad but perfectly normal. The message: This will happen to everyone, including you, so get used to it. From the age of seven, when an uncle died, R had been expected—required, actually—to keep himself together while participating fully in the passing rites of family and friends, which included looking at their laid-out corpses. As a result, he was not ill at ease around the dead. His study of history had even raised his comfort level. How could you wonder about the lives and times of those who had gone before if you were uncomfortable with their remains?
    Suddenly R’s eyes fixed on Wally’s necktie.
    Damn! It was one of those hundred-dollar-bill ties. Some Italian entrepreneur had put them out a few years ago, despite objections from the U.S. Treasury Department, among other