Counternarratives (27 page)

At the western end of the War Department Building portico, a white
patrolman asked me what I was doing there. I answered that I was waiting for Nimrod,
an official Army messenger, but we went halfway through a document check before
Nimrod appeared beside him with a white orderly who cleared us to go.
Th
e patrolman eyed me all the way off the War
Department's property and was still watching me even when we reached the covered
wagons waiting to take us down to where the Corps was headquartered. I asked Nimrod
where we were going but he told he wasn't allowed to say. Once we had helped several
enlisted men load all the supplies and gear, I climbed in the rear of the wagon
beside several of them and other men and Nimrod, and we took off. It was a slow,
bumpy ride. I held on tight to the back of the wagon, my other hand on Nimrod's
knee, trying to make sure when we crossed a rut or uneven pavement I didn't go
flying out the back. Between the journey's unpleasantness and my rising nerves I
could hardly pay attention to what the men were talking about.
Th
e rocking of the wagon began to stir me so I forgot what was going on
until someone broached how there were snipers everywhere, how someone else had
almost gotten killed by an errant shell. I thought about asking Nimrod how close the
Confederates were or we were going to be to them, but I just held onto the backboard
and him, and listened, and peered out at the city streets as the day closed in.

Every so often the wagon would stop, and the driver would speak to
patrolmen. At one such checkpoint I heard we were heading west into Georgetown. When
we neared the water Nimrod said, “Red, you seen the Monument yet?” I looked to my
right and there it was, the lean gray blade of obelisk slicing the blue morning sky.
I wasn't sure, however, how it was supposed to represent President Washington, the
capital or the Union. As we crossed the Aqueduct, as one of the men called it,
across the Potomac into Virginia, I could again feel my nerves ginning, but Nimrod
knew at that moment to calm me, patting my shoulder and assuring me the federal
troops had full control of
all
of Alexandria. Before I knew it we were
climbing the road up through the green bluffs of Arlington Heights to our stop at
Fort Corcoran. We stopped just outside the main gates and began unloading most of
the baskets and crates, soldiers streaming past the high palisades and the piles of
trees, which Nimrod called abatises, to collect them. I asked him before he ran off
to deliver his messages where the Balloon Corps headquarters were, a query he
answered by glancing first at the fort itself then at the cleared terrain ringing
its walls, finally telling me when he found out he'd escort me there. As I waited I
moved back from the main road, the wagon traffic, and pressed myself as close
possible to the fort's walls. I observed the waves of blue-clad figures, most from
the 13th New York Infantry Regiment, I would learn, all the other white men
galloping up or off on horseback, the fusillade of commands and conversation. For
whatever reason at that second I wondered what my mother had said about my letter,
what Jonathan thought about it, what Horatio was thinking about and doing right
now—

—“Let's go,” Nimrod called and I followed him, my sack slung over
my back, we two heading towards the rear of the fort, between the walls, buttressed
by a revetment of riprap and soil, fascines and planks, and a long row of tents,
toward a group of white men standing in a circle. Behind them I could see a balloon
bag, uninflated and spread out like a flattened lampshade, its vast silk head
trellised with linen cord, its large wicker basket double the size of a standard
well, festooned on its sides with sandbags. The men didn't notice us at first and
continued their discussion, one of them I immediately recognized by face as
Professor Lowe, standing at the center of their circle and pointing towards the
clouds. None wore the Federal's uniforms I'd seen for weeks, but instead dressed
like regular working gentlemen I might see on the streets of Philadelphia. Nimrod
engaged one of the men in conversation while I hung back, watching him and them,
their exchange inaudible though the man looked over at me. He led Nimrod to the
balloon, where I could now see on its far side more men kneeling and fiddling with
strings and cables. Nimrod yelled, “Red, come on over here.” I readied my papers in
case there was any further confusion. On the ground, tinkering with a mechanical
contraption and wires, a pencil, ruler, and notebook splayed opened before him and
several other men, was Mr. Edward Linde.

“Professor Linde,” the white man with Nimrod said, “this boy has showed
up saying he's in your employ,” yet Mr. Linde continued his work on the metal
device, twisting and arranging the wires. The white man did not repeat himself but
walked away, while Nimrod and I hovered there, until Mr. Linde finally raised his
eyes, squinting first at Nimrod then at me, his face initially a portrait of
bafflement, and I opened the letter to hand to him and prepared once again to
recount everything when he stood, gathering up a ruler, notebook and pencil, which
he passed to me, his expression suggesting that I had just accidentally dropped them
there to undertake some other minor task, and said, “Ah, Theodore, there you
are.”

F
rom that minute forward I was working alongside Mr. Edward, who
insisted I call him “Neddy,” although all the others, around whom I always said,
“Mr. Edward,” had to be correctly addressed: Mr. John La Mountain, Mr. John Wise,
the Misters Ezra and James Allen, Misters Paullin, Steiner, Starkweather, the
different assistants to each, as well as Professor Lowe and his father, Mr. Clovis,
and his wife, Mrs. Leontine, who would periodically visit us. Soon as I set my bag
down I was sharpening Mr. Edward's pencils, tracking the placement of his spectacles
to ensure he didn't lose or sit on them, replenishing his stash of tobacco and
filling his pipe, ferrying messages to the various other members of the corps, and
posting his letters to his parents, his siblings, Mr. Peter Robins and other friends
who had not volunteered. More than anything else I repeated verbatim what I heard
him say whenever he was musing scientifically or assisting Professor Lowe,
especially when they were devising a device, so that he wouldn't fail to record
it.

Like most of the others Professor Lowe at first didn't really notice me
at all. Then early one morning about a week after I had been there he said, “So you
are Neddy's little computer key, the boy from Philadelphia,” but I didn't grasp what
he meant. Later that afternoon Mr. Edward told me, “That kindly
savant
Professor Lowe is convinced you are helping with my calculations, so please keep
quiet and both of us in his best graces,” before he added, lowering his voice,
“though the rest of these characters are, as my father would say, a
Schlangennest
.” I asked, “Mr. Edward, Sir, excuse me but come
again?” and he replied, “Nidum serpentium,” and I said I didn't understand,
worried I was supposed to get what he was talking about, but he chuckled,
“
Neddy
—and perhaps it's best you don't.”

Usually I was referred to as an “aide to Mr. Edward Linde,” or
“Professor Linde” as Misters Paullin and Starkweather called him, and often when
that particular combination—“aide” and “Professor Linde”—was uttered, shortly
thereafter I found myself at far more tedious, difficult work. I slogged sandbags to
the baskets, unfurled the telegraph wires that rode up with the balloons, arranged
the necessary tools for the various aeronauts or others on the team, helping unpack
or break down the campsites as we moved along the Potomac, either on the Maryland
side when we weren't based at Fort Corcoran or temporarily stationed in one of the
other ones along the Virginia banks. The periodic gunfire and talk of snipers made
me always want to stay behind the cordon of federal troops and forts that guarded
the north shore of the Potomac and Washington. I also always offered to lend a hand
with the meals, though the white man in charge of mess, Paul Danahy, didn't want me
anywhere nearby. Point of fact whenever Mr. Edward wasn't right beside me and I
wasn't busy with one of their tasks nearly all of them ordered me to stay out of
their way.

There was only one other colored man working for the Corps; his name was
Ulysses Harris. Twenty-five and a good foot-and-a-half taller than me, he at first
didn't say much of anything or even look in my direction. After he realized,
however, that he and I had to eat together and do everything else personal together,
sleep and crap in the same place, away from everybody else, he started to grow a
little and then considerably more friendly. I learned he was born in Winchester,
Virginia, up in the Shenandoah Valley not all that far from where we were or from
Harper's Ferry, where the great martyr John Brown had launched his raid, and that he
and his family escaped north to Maryland and then into Pennsylvania, where he had
spent a few years near Greencastle. He said he had a wife there, Lizzie, a former
escapee like himself, though she was from Martinsville, as well as a baby son,
Lysander, and after the war wanted to be a minister rather than digging ditches,
pitching tents and securing pulleys. I told him I lacked the introspection to be a
preacher, the gift of insight to be a teacher, no contacts to undertake an
apprenticeship, the strength to be a stevedore, the patience to be a waiter or
porter, and no money to pursue any of the higher professions open to us in
Philadelphia, so like my father before me I was going to be a cook and, I hoped,
eventually a caterer, though I didn't say I was choosing this path mainly because I
couldn't think of anything else. Sometimes in the evenings when Nimrod was free he
joined us, and we sat and chatted, both of them asking a hundred questions about
Philadelphia, which they really hoped to see someday, and me asking about Annapolis
and Washington and Greencastle. I wanted to tell to them about my train trip down
with Dandy and ask about slavery, though from Philadelphia etiquette I knew better
and didn't dare. We'd gab until the sky grew black and our lids heavy, forcing
Nimrod to hurry back or lose his post. When it started to get real cold at night
Ulysses didn't even have a blanket, but Mr. Edward had given me one of his extras, a
quilt with all of Pennsylvania's counties sewn on it, so I invited him under it with
me and soon we were sleeping arm in arm.

One Saturday toward the end of September, General McClellan ordered
Professor Lowe to ascend in the
Eagle
above Fort Corcoran and report on the
rebel positions south of us, near Falls Church, in preparation, everybody was
saying, for a battle. We were all commanded to stay inside the fort's walls, to the
rear of it, well behind the line of fire. Though Mr. Edward said the Confederates
were at least three or four miles away and we had nothing to worry about, my heart
hammered whenever I imagined they might be closer. “Worse comes to worst you can
play a bondsman,” he said to me, drily, “but they will surely slit my throat with a
bayonet since our dear President can't see fit to sign off on our commissions, and
where, pray tell, would that get us?” I wanted to tell him I knew nothing about
commissions but was not about to play, let alone be anybody's slave, but instead I
kept quiet and calmed myself down by helping him and the other assistants ready the
telegraph cable and the relay machine, the gauges, which he said he had ensured were
perfectly calibrated, and several flags that Professor Lowe was going to take up in
the balloon with him.

Soon as the balloon was filled, all the white folks, save Mr. Edward and
the receiver operator, and Ulysses took hold of the cables, easing them through the
pulleys. Up Professor Lowe rose into the air, slowly, then more rapidly, finally
hovering about 1000 or so feet above. Mr. Edward and I reeled out the telegraph wire
until Professor Lowe was so far up we could see only the basket's square brown
wicker bottom and the immense tan curves and slope of the balloon's globe. Professor
Lowe gave a signal for the cables to be tied and staked, though several assistants
still held on. Where I sat, along the slope of the real wall's revetment near the
telegraph operator I could see and hear Mr. La Mountain grumbling about something to
Mr. Paullin, and Mr. Edward, approaching me and observing them as well whispered,
“That one is the most notorious of vipers.” I didn't dare reply but I had seen Mr.
La Mountain and Professor Lowe, and Mr. Wise and the others arguing several times
since I arrived. I continued watching them, Mr. La Mountain flailing his arms about
then walking away towards a group of soldiers. As he left our area Mr. Ezra Allen
came over and asked Mr. Edward how the transmission was going. The telegraph
operator working at the receiver was writing down the messages as quickly as
possible, which led Mr. Edward to say, “Just dandy,” provoking a double-take from
me. Finally Nimrod appeared with an older soldier who asked both Mr. Edward and the
telegraph operator, “Do you have the coordinates?” and the receiver handed them
over.
Th
is continued for a while, Nimrod and that white
man coming and going, taking the pages with them—

—Till suddenly two orderlies rode up and all around us curtains of
gunfire and the periodic boom of cannonade. Professor Lowe is making signals with
the flags, though I can't tell what he's conveying but Mr. Edward says he is helping
to calibrate the position of the guns. But I don't understand, and Mr. Edward
repeats, “The guns, the position of the guns,” when something batters the outer
walls of the fort and we all slide lower down the revetment's slope, while others
even lie flat on their stomachs on the ground.
Th
e
fusillade continues without relent, more balls blasts the front palisades, while
Professor Lowe continues high above making signs with the flags and Mr. Edward is
raising his voice yet I can barely hear him above the gunfire, “We are taking the
traitors out,” and I say, “But Mr. Edward, Sir, what is Professor Lowe doing with
the flags?” and Mr. Edward hollers, “
Neddy
,
Th
eodore,
Neddy
—and why don't you just be quiet for a damned
minute!” I shut my mouth as the orderlies ride in again, they and we all watching
Professor Lowe, and this pattern persists, with fewer and fewer bullets or miniés
falling our way though we can hear the cannons and field guns firing from our fort
and the stench of the gunpowder lingers, Mr. Ezra Allen whistles, everyone,
including me, stands and hauls Professor Lowe down, hauling on the cables as he
releases the gas, descending, until the basket gently yet firmly hits the ground.
All of us, save Mr. La Mountain, who has disappeared to who knows where, applaud
him, as another military orderly arrives with a report from the generals.