by John Keene
The next few days I undertook my usual tasks, including trips to purchase twine and paint brushes. I also assisted Ulysses and the others in rigging the bigger balloons Professor Lowe was putting on his boat, or “aircraft carrier” as Mr. Edward called it, which would soon venture down the Potomac. Every chance I could I reread the letter from Jonathan, struggling not to drift off into a daydream and end up injuring myself with a snapped cable or dropped tool. Mr. Edward continued his preparations, but a hour before mess, he asked me to take dictation for a brief letter, with the quill and ink, to his former professor at the Lawrence Scientific School, Dr. Joseph Lovering, about possible study in Berlin. To stop thinking about Philadelphia and the letter and my family, I engaged in my count-ups and downs, and even convinced Mr. Edward to play several rounds of Takeaway using twigs, he winning three games and I two. It was a relief that night that Nimrod joined Ulysses and me for supper, even staying over almost till next morning’s bugle call. A few nights later, on the eve of the next early morning observation, I could barely fall asleep at first and tossed fitfully, hearing what sounded like thunder though I reckoned it was in my dream, but it wasn’t exactly a dream, nor a nightmare, I couldn’t see anything and attempted to speak it, describe it, to myself, but I couldn’t, my mouth wouldn’t open, there was a hand or hands over it, on me, holding me, heavy as an ironclad, down, I was sinking down into the earth and I fought whoever it was holding me hard as I could, I fought them off and leapt up, yawning, no one was there, Ulysses was still curled under the blanket, snoring. I kept yawning as I scrubbed myself in the cold October morning air before I headed to where Mr. Edward slept. I fished out my letter, reread it, at the same time wondering where Dandy was, somewhere here in Washington, in Baltimore, had he gone there? back in Philadelphia, had he ended up in Buffalo or Boston, wondering how I could see him again, send him a note.
I collected Mr. Edward and his bag, heavy with various items, and walked with him to the balloon. No one else was there. The sky was as gray as gneiss and the balloon, inflated the night before, was twisting about at the neck in the chilly wind whipping around us. I considered asking whether he would be ascending today, but he preempted me with, “Ah well, Professor Lowe hasn’t arrived yet,” and then “the wind is blowing north-east, north-north east, or maybe it’s southeasterly,” and then “I need to check the altimeter, which should be perfectly calibrated, and also just ensure the telegraph wires are still connected.” He handed me his notebook but did not move. He remained where he was, staring at his bandaged right hand, patting his pockets, lifting his left hand to his face, and said: “Theodore, do you have my pipe and glasses?” I shook my head then felt around in the full bag I had brought from his room. He and I both had packed a great deal, but neither the pipe nor glasses were in there. “Mr. Edward, Sir, I can go back and look for them,” I said, and proceeded to head to his tent, but he stopped me with his good hand and said, “You’ve never been in the balloon before, when you drop my bag in there, why don’t you make sure the altimeter is lashed, the main valve is tight, and the telegraph wires are connected.” I stood there looking at him, since what he said made no sense, I wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near the baskets, but he continued, “You know exactly how they are supposed to look.” Of course I had wanted many times to climb in the balloon basket, had even thought of hiding in there the first time Mr. Edward was to go up, but on the other hand, I knew my doing so was forbidden. Most of the white men could not set foot in that basket, and certainly neither Ulysses nor I had permission.
I had never defied him, but I said, “Mr. Edward, Sir, I don’t think I’m supposed to get near that basket, Professor Lowe especially might get very cross. I’ll gladly go get your pipe and glasses.” He assured me, “Neddy—and Professor Lowe won’t mind your being in there for a second or two. Really, Theodore, I’ll be right back, I think I know where I left them.” I nodded, but nevertheless hesitated and began to say, “Mr. Edward, we can wait till you come back,” but instead, watching him walk back to his tent I took slow but steady steps toward the basket, and climbed in. I set his bag down, reviewed the altimeter, which was securely knotted, and the valve, tight as a balled fist, but when I bent to inspect the telegraph wire I tripped and fell against the edge of the basket—
—While out of the corner of my eye I see someone, a white man, darting from behind a shed toward where the rest of the balloons are lying in assembly, and I experience this strange sensation like the ground is moving, like time is slowing and I see Mr. Edward, bespectacled, pipe in his mouth, advancing toward me, running but not running, yet simultaneously moving farther away as he’s crying out, “Oh my heavens, no, Theodore,” and my first impulse, after realizing I don’t understand what is happening, is to scream as the basket hooks upward to my left, then my right, my jaws snapping open, my eyes beading on the pale pattern and elaborate housing of the vast silk globe above me, I want to scream back at him, at anyone who’s nearby that I’m up the air, I’m flying, I want to holler even if just to myself about how it’s not at all like I had imagined, how my weight is dwindling to nothing, how gravity is flipping upside down, time stalling to a standstill, how my stomach is twisting itself into tiny knots catapulting themselves into my throat, and Mr. Edward, I can hear him clearly now, is screaming, “Who cut the cables? Oh stars, somebody cut the cables, Theodore—”
—And I feel something jerking on one of the cables, and peer over the edge to see him trying to hold on with his bad hand, and here come Professor Lowe and Ulysses and Mr. Steiner and Mr. Starkweather and Patrick, almost all the others, they are jumping and reaching for the ropes and Ulysses is hollering, “Jump, Red, I’ll catch you, little brother, jump,” and Mr. Edward is crying out, “No, Theodore, tie yourself to the inside of the basket, and don’t stand too close to the edge.” I’m thinking to myself this really is flying, I’m flying, the wind humming against the balloon’s surface and the basket, and I notice for the first time beside me a metal flask, which may or may not be empty, two white flags, attached to metal poles the length of my forearm, bound by knotted waxed cording, as well as the rope descending from the valve over the balloon’s closed hole, and I hold onto one of the coils of additional rope and wire ringing the rest of the basket walls and remember to tie myself to the hook in the floor, and I also remember to check the altimeter and telegraph transmitter, and from the bag grab Mr. Edward’s notebook, though I remember pretty much everything he has been saying about aeronautics and balloons and flying since we got here—
—While all around me the sky is churning between silver and mother-of-pearl, and below the rigid grid of the federal capital, circling it on all sides verdant countryside, the hills and meadows, the farms and homesteads, the bends of the ochre river, some of it Virginia and some of it Maryland, one direction straight to Pennsylvania and the other to the Carolinas, one to the Atlantic Ocean and the other to the Bull Run and Blue Ridge Mountains, I can barely hear Mr. Edward, Ulysses, and the others calling out to me, their voices growing ever more distant, “Theodore, Theodore,” and I sit in the center of the basket as it grows colder, knowing now that I am tethered to nothing at all, the basket and me now in a free float, a drift, a soar—
—And I stand and remember, can see out there all the forts and encampments and troops massed like tumors along the river banks, the ramparts and howitzers armoring the hills, the works teething at the edge of the foliage, the terrible danger snaking through the vast green and brown rolling land, and I feel something not quite fear and not quite elation, I can’t put a name to it, I try to utter it but cannot, I place my hand on the valve st
ring, then reach over and check that the sandbags are in place, pat my winter coat, feeling not only the weight of my papers and my pocketwatch but my heart, when my throat finally relaxes as if something, sound, will issue from it, to say Mama, and Jonathan, and Horatio, and Neddy, and Ulysses, and Nimrod, and Daddy Zenobia Zephira Lucius Professor Lowe President Lincoln, Hansome, somebody HELP ME, but only the gas hisses in assent as I pull on the string, as I open my mouth even wider and remember to—
RIVERS
What I’d like to hear about, the reporter starts in, is the time you and that little boy . . . and I silence him again with a turn of my head, thinking to myself that this is supposed to be an interview about the war and my service in it, from the day I enlisted despite being almost a score years too old, having several mouths to feed, and running a tavern under my own name a grasshopper’s jump from the riverfront, to the day we were sent by wagon and train down to Brazos de Santiago, where we launched the fight that ended on that spring day, ten years ago, along the Rio Grande on the meadows of Palmito Ranch, which, we learned later from a scout we captured from the other side was the final battle in the first great war for our freedom, or between the states as they like to call it these days, so I ain’t about to devote a minute to those sense-defying events of forty years before.
Yet the mere mention of that boy’s name, one I seldom think about, not even in dreams or nightmares, retrieves the sole two times since those years that I saw his face. That first time the name and face had become molded to the measure of a man, still young and with a decade before him but rendered gaunt and taut by struggles unknown to me and perhaps to that writer, also from Hannibal, who had made him, both of us, briefly famous. That face with its narrow angles and sharp agate eyes, with the sandy tufts of hair now framing it at the cheeks and chin, that glanced past me on Chouteau near the Pacific railroad tracks as I passed it and that other one I knew so well, on my way back to the public house where I worked, near the waterfront, ten years after that voyage down the Mississippi—my folly, when I could have crossed with my wife of those years, and my children, then still little, right there at Alton, and made my way east and we all would have been truly free—ten years before the conflagration that would cleave the country in two.
The other face, the Sawyer boy’s, froze as it glimpsed mine, and when it had passed several steps beyond me said loudly to its companion, “Whoa, Huck, I think that was your old boy from Hannibal!” and then, “Old buck, hold up, now,” and “Ain’t you Jim Watson, you, that keeps on walking without stepping to the side when you see two gentlemen approaching, like you ain’t heard one of ’em call out your name?” So I paused and turned around, and faced them. There they were, Huckleberry, now in his early 20s, and Sawyer, same in years, both taller than me now, still lean in their youthful frames, each one looking from their clothing alone fairly prosperous as so many were during those charging years, though in Huck’s mien I could see that all the gold they had gotten from that mess in the caves had not alleviated whatever inner torments afflicted him. “Well, now,” Sawyer said, brushing the sleeves of his worsted suit coat as he approached me, Huck behind him, “I should have figured we would come across you one day down here.”
“Howdy now, Jim,” Huck said, and extended his adult hand.
“Howdy, Huckleberry, howdy, Tom,” I answered, tipping my hat ever so slightly and taking his palm only momentarily in mine.
Sawyer leaned against a stile and proceeded to tell me all about himself, how he was working during the day in the law offices of Judge Thatcher’s brother and after spending a year at Centre College in Kentucky and another at the University of Virginia, President Jefferson’s school he proudly pointed out, he was studying law at night at Reverend Eliot’s new seminary not far from here, though he reminded me neither he and Huck had to work and that I certainly should not have forgotten why. He told me he had traveled down the Mississippi on a steamboat several times, including by himself, all the way to New Orleans, which is where he thought he might eventually settle if he didn’t stay in St. Louis, since the culture and people down there appealed to him, and that he would probably write about it all when he was past the bar and in an equitable position. He kept talking for a good while longer but I confess that though my eyes never left his mouth I rapidly quit listening.
After Sawyer had finished his personal resume he spoke about Huck, who he said had gotten himself some schooling too up in Cambridge, Illinois, near Rock Island, where he had gone to stay with some distant relatives of his late father’s, and between stints in the cooler for “minor infractions,” which he did not detail and about which I wasn’t going to ask, he said that Huck liked to sample a little of every kind of job. Tom chuckled as he spoke, Huck for his part peering off into the roadway, as though he was searching for a way out of the story Tom was telling and a new path into himself. Such a “river rat,” Tom continued, his words bubbling with laughter, Huck was that he now served as an assistant foreman in the river salvage company run by Captain Eads. Just before this new position, Huck, Tom concluded, his laughter evaporating like mid-morning dew, had just returned from Kansas. “He went out there to see what the troublemakers were up to, the ones from New England and the East and Iowa and here as well, who want to overthrow centuries of civilization and take away our way of life and liberty and tell us what we can and cannot do and own.”
I said nothing, looking intently at him and then at Huck, who finally said, “This winter I gone out to Lawrence, which is a good ways past the state border. I got up to a few scrapes but nothing serious,” and then, “I don’t think old Jim wants to be bothered with hearing about any of that.”
“Hearing about it and us ain’t no bother to Jim,” Tom said, and trained his gaze on me.
“All the same, he don’t want to hear some scuffle with a troublemaker. He sure looks like he been minding his business and it’s good to see him.”
“Thank you, Huck,” I said, and nodded at Tom, who frowned.
“He ain’t got no business that’s more important than what we’re doing, does he?” Tom said. “Can’t be likely, can it?”
“Not certainly,” Huck said, and when Tom turned away from him, he shrugged his shoulders for me. “Then again I don’t know nothing about his business these days.”
“When did you get yourself down this way?” Sawyer said, his razor lips cutting me a smile. “Cause I reckon soon as you knew you had got your freedom we all woke up to find you gone.”
I thought to tell the boy that although once Huck and I got back and I learned Miss Watson’s will had freed me, a man in town, La-Fleur, and his brothers, all later to take up arms for the Confederate cause, would come into the stables where I worked and keep on making jokes about selling me back into bondage since Washington had cut off the trade and our bodies were a premium further south down the Mississippi, so I planned out resolving the matter once and for all by crossing to the other side, practicing a number of times when I knew the tide was low, since I knew how to swim and even a blind man in a blindfold behind a high blind wall could see Illinois from Hannibal. One night when I was waist-deep in the water I had to remind a white patrolman strolling the levee I was emancipated and showed him my papers which I kept in a waterproof metal locket that hung around my neck, though they were also on file down in the main courthouse of Marion County, Missouri, and he said he ought to lock me up just for talking so freely, like I was equal to a white person, but since I had belonged to the late Miss Watson, God Rest Her Soul, he would let me go, which I knew well enough to nod to, before I crept carefully back to my little room in the b
lack section of town, and resolved even more to flee.
I thought to say that I had sworn to my then-wife Sadie, who had taken up with another man when she thought I had murdered that white boy, Huck, that I would buy the children’s freedom and hers, which I intended to hold fast to, but when I told her I was leaving she convinced me to take her and our children with me, though I was not about to bring her new man along, she could send for him later, and as for my children, at that time there was only two of them, Elizabeth, who was deaf and mute, though sharp as a whipsaw, and Johnny, who looked like a little me, and I was going to fetch them to their freedom soon as I had gotten settled in. When all the signs confirmed the time had come I brought us to the farthest end of the levee, where I had identified a raft I would commandeer, and we stuffed all our necessities in one small sack and a canvas traveling bag I borrowed from the stables where I worked, I say borrowed since I eventually mailed it back, postage paid, and I could see Sadie was looking around as if that man of hers was going to steal away with us so I told her she could go with me and the little ones or continue in her bliss with him. I was prepared to carry those children on my back like St. Christopher all the way to the other side, and her too if it came to that, but not her lover, yet we reached Illinois easily on that cool spring night, landing far north of where the main docks in Alton were since I knew there were patrolmen to ensure none of us made it, and I had been warned to watch out for a notorious Negro who would run straightaway and alert the white constable, but that Rastus wasn’t anywhere to be found.