Franklin Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

concerned parties. The guy had used a simple photocopy process to replicate a real $100 bill on a heavy silk material, putting Ben on the front side of the tie and Independence Hall on the back—just as on the bill itself.
    This really
was
too much. R reached down to snatch the tie.
    â€œPlease, sir, let’s not disturb the departed,” said a man in a black suit, who appeared seemingly out of nowhere on the other side of the coffin.
    â€œThat tie is tacky and out of place,” said R. But he did remove his hand from inside the casket. “I am R. Raymond Taylor, his friend and literary executor, and I have the right to remove it.”
    The man was young, black, and large. “I don’t question your authority, sir. But I am sure that we have prepared Dr. Rush in exact accordance with his wishes. As a matter of fact, I personally worked with Dr. Rush before his death in choosing and acquiring all the clothing he wished to wear today—including the tie.”
    â€œHe looks silly with that awful thing around his neck.”
    The young man smiled. R had to fight off a laugh himself. What could be sillier than a man dressing up like Benjamin Franklin for his viewing? Then R remembered something else—another item Wally had somewhere in his collection. It was a white T-shirt with a small portrait of Ben on the left chest and the Ben saying LOST TIME IS NEVER FOUND AGAIN lettered across the back. At least Wally didn’t chose to wear
that
as part of his death costume. He also didn’t swaddle himself in another possession, a huge piece of cotton fabric that was covered with colored mementos of Ben’s life: a printing press, a
Poor Richard’s Almanack
cover, the Treaty of Paris, Independence Hall, the Declaration of Independence, his birthplace in Boston, the Liberty Bell, a Franklin stove, a kite, a lightening rod, a horse-drawn fire wagon, and the Craven Street house in London.
    R decided to be grateful for little things and move on.
    â€œThere are refreshments in the library,” said the young mortuary attendant. “Go through that door up to the second floor and down the hall off the landing.”
    R knew where the library was. He had spent some of the best years of his life in that room with Wally and his books, his ideas, and his enthusiasms.
    He had to travel a long hallway to get to the library. And on the walls everywhere were more pieces from Wally’s collection. R had already been stunned by the sight of a gigantic—6-by-6-foot—plastic-coated poster that greeted everyone on entering the front hall. It was a black-and-white computer-generated portrait of Ben that resembled the one on the hundred-dollar bill. Wally supposedly bought it on the Internet from somebody in California, who claimed it had been used at a Republican Party fund-raiser at Balboa Park in San Diego. Having seen the item, R had no trouble believing the claim.
    There were also other smaller framed drawings and paintings of Ben on the walls, not only in the foyer but in all the halls. Some were legitimate engravings and copies of real oil paintings; others were financial, insurance, stove, and other commercial advertisements, mostly from magazines. Some of them were accompanied by one of the thousands of Ben’s sayings from
Poor Richard’s Almanack
and his other writings.
    The first one that caught R’s eye on the way to the library was in an eight-by-ten-inch picture frame. It quoted Ben in old English script superimposed over a blue sepia reproduction of the well-known drawing of Ben flying his kite in an electrical storm:
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to prosper.
Next to it was a
Saturday Evening Post
ad for a washing machine that carried Ben’s quote about liberty: “They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” R was unable to tie that to washing machines, but he had no trouble