The Fourth Life of Sean Donoghue by Trish Hanan (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

in factories and bought their produce in markets and the day of the farm was passing. Sean spent so much time in his workshop he didn’t see the world changing on him.
His wife did, she organized women who wanted the right to vote and people began to leave the six territories which were becoming very crowded and move westward.
“Here, take this and when it rings in a few minutes pick it up and answer it,” Sean said and handed his eldest son a small black box. The five boys were sitting around the table waiting for pie to come out of the oven. Sally had promised them apple pie and ice cream and it was almost done.
“How do I answer it?” Kalin asked. Sean grinned.
“Just pick up this, this is the receiver, put this part in your ear and you’ll hear my voice and talk into the mouthpiece and I’ll hear you,” he instructed. “Now don’t pick it up until it rings or I’ll get a busy signal, okay.” The boys nodded and their dad left the kitchen.
“What do you think he calls this?” Bobby asked. The others shrugged. A few minutes later it ranged, quite loudly.
“Well, pick it up,” Ryan shouted. Kalin glared at him.
“I’m going to, hold on a minute,” he snapped. It rang again. He picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” he spoke hesitantly into the mouthpiece; a big grin appeared on his face. “Oh, my God, it’s Dad, I can hear Dad on this thing,” he announced and then he handed the thing to Bobby, “He wants to talk to you.” Bobby took the receiver and listened for a minute.
“Oh, my God, it’s really Dad, it works, hello, Dad,” he said and listened for a minute and then handed the receiver to Ryan and then it went to Danny and then to Zack and then back to Kalin and then it got hung up and then Sean came back into the room. They were all excited.
“How did you do that, Dad?” they all asked when they saw him. Sean hugged them.
“It’s my new invention, I call it the telephone and with it people are going to be able to talk to people all over the country and not even leave their house to do it,” he bragged and they all beamed.
“Oh, my God, this is so cool, how does it work?” they wanted to know and he told them about the black crystals which he was now calling communication crystals and putting them together with energy crystals. He looked at his sons.
“This is going to be yours to handle, Sons, this is going to make you richer and more famous than anyone of the face of the planet, you are going to be more powerful than the King or the president,” he informed them and they were shocked.
“With a telephone?” Bobby asked and he nodded.
“Every single home in every country and every single business in every country is going to want one of these,” he informed them. “And you’re going to be the men to give it to them. And they’ll all need numbers so they can call each other to talk so you’ll have to print books with names and addresses, and some won’t want their names in the books but you’ll have to have them to give them a phone, and you’ll charge extra to keep the names out of the books.” They looked pleased with that. Sean continued.
“You’ll have to have hundreds of people working for you, all over the world, from the people making the phones to the people fixing them when they get broken, and the people delivering them and printing the books and delivering them,” he explained. “This is going to be the most important invention ever made, communication always is and instant communication is the most important. Think of being able to tell your parents that you want to get married right when you ask the girl. Or you want to call your friend Pete and ask him if he wants to go fishing before you leave the house. Or your grandfather dies and you want to call your sister in Jamestown to tell her. People are going to want this I guarantee it and the Donoghue Telephone Company of Donoghue Valley is going to give it to them.” All the boys cheered. Then Sally wanted to know what all the fuss was about and the pie was ready so they all ate pie.
When Claire found out about the telephones she was intrigued. When she found out first hand how they worked and used one she was ecstatic and kissed her husband.
“Why didn’t you tell us what you were working on in the workshop, this is wonderful,” she gushed. She got lost when he tried to explain how it worked but she loved it. Especially when he drove down to the town store and called her on it and it still worked.
“I can’t believe that you’re all the way down at Jack’s and still talking to me,” she gushed and he put Jack on the phone so she could talk to him. Everyone in the store then had to talk to Claire and they had a great time, they couldn’t believe they were talking to her when she was up the mountain in her house and they were down in the store.
“That Sean Donoghue is so clever, what will he think of next?” someone asked and they all laughed.
They built a huge factory on the mountainside and Sean’s two oldest sons immediately came to work for him.
“The main problem we’re going to have is making enough numbers so that everyone has a number that’s unique for them and no one else has the same number,” Sean informed them. They both nodded.
“Right, Dad, if they dial one number, they can’t be reaching two people,” Bobby said and his dad smiled at him.
“That’s right, Son,” Sean praised him. “The way we do that is we start with a Territory code first, a set of three numbers that identify the Territory, like one oh one for Maryland Territory,” he suggested. They both nodded and wrote it down. Then Sean continued.
“Next we have a town code, like for everyone living in Sweetwater, we use a town code three two three and three two, two, so every number begins that way,” he said and they again nodded.
“Last we used a four digit number because mathematically that gives us the most numbers to play around with, with three digits, you run out of numbers really quick and we want a lot of numbers to play with,” he told them. “So my home phone number here in Sweetwater could be one oh one, three two three, four oh four two, see how it works?” he asked and they both grinned.
“Oh, yes, but how come it has to be nine numbers, that’s a lot of numbers to remember?” Bobby asked and Sean nodded.
“Yeah I know, but we have to think of the future and how many people are going to be using these telephones later,” he informed them. “Besides when you’re dialing someone who lives in your Territory code, you don’t have to dial it, just the town code and the last four numbers.” They both sighed.
“That’s easier,” Kalin said.
So while Sean worked the production lines and helped the workers make the phones which everyone called them, the boys and their teams made up the lists of numbers for all the Territories and towns and small cities. It was a lot of work and it took them over three years but they finally had enough to start with.
They began selling them in Sweetwater and Sean and his boys put up a tall Communication Tower high on the top of the mountain and had a ribbon cutting ceremony. Both of his sons were married that year, Kalin to a nice girl named Jenny and Bobby to a nice girl named Annie so Sean was very grateful that everything was happening like it was.
The telephones sold like hotcakes to starving people and soon every house and business in town had one, even the Freedom Church and the St. Charles Church, both places who had sworn never to speak to Sean Donoghue ever again. And Sean was right, some people and business paid extra not to be included in their telephone book which came out two weeks after the last phone was sold with the people listed in white and businesses in a separate section divided by the people with a piece of thick red paper. And in the front of the book, Sean listed the numbers of the police and fire departments so people didn’t have to look up their numbers.
Next they moved their phone service to the Ridge and built another tall communications tower with a big black crystal on top and people were astonished that they could talk to people who lived hours away. They sold out in the first day.
It took Sean and his company five years to put telephones in every house and business in Anamylia but unfortunately when they sent one to Ennis, they couldn’t hear a damned thing. But the people in Ennis could hear one another so they purchased all the phones the factory could make and they worked twenty-four hours a day for the next hundred years to keep the world talking.


Chapter Five - Deja Vu

“Did you hear about the new Indians they’ve discovered living west of here?” Zack asked at dinner one night in May. Sean glanced at his nineteen year-old son and the only one living at home.
“No, I haven’t, Zack, what are they?” he asked him and Claire his wife of twenty-three years frowned.
“I hope they’re not some fierce savages like the Keetiks were, remember how we had to get them out of this valley?” she said with a shudder. Sean smiled and patted her hand. Zack grinned.
“These are called Omahas and they’re supposed to be great warriors of the desert that’s beyond this mountain range and they don’t like the people that have been crossing it to get to the mountains on the other side,” he informed them. “They attack the wagon trains that they find and murder everyone on them and carry off the children to sacrifice them to the Great Spirit.” He seemed quite pleased to inform them of that. Sean frowned at him.
“Don’t repeat rumors that you’ve heard, you don’t know what the Indians do with the children they carry off, maybe they just adopt them,” he said and Claire shuddered.
“Sacrifice, adopt, who cares, think of those poor children, alone without their parents, after seeing them murdered, how horrible,” she