Isaac's Storm (6 page)

But
other
forces
played
on
Isaac.
He
came
of
age
in
a
time
of
broad
technological
awakening,
in
an
America
transformed
by
steam
and
telegraphic
communication.
He
read
everything
by
Jules
Verne.
Between
bouts
of
plowing,
while
giving
his
mule,Jim,
a
rest,
he
would
join
Phileas
Fogg
and
Captain
Nemo
on
their
elaborate
adventures.
Isaac
loved
science
—
his
greatest
dream
was
to
write
a
scientific
treatise
on
something,
anything,
as
long
as
it
resonated
the
world
over
—
but
he
also
loved
the
Bible,
so
much
so
that
toward
the
end
of
his
years
in
high
school
his
friends
urged
him
to
become
a
preacher.
At
sixteen,
he
entered
Hiwassee
College
in
Tennessee,
where
he
studied
mathematics,
physics,
chemistry,
Latin,
and
Greek.
A
few
friends
had
set
their
sights
on
becoming
lawyers,
and
for
a
time
Isaac
joined
them
in
reading
the
works
of
Sir
William
Blackstone,
the
eighteenth-century
English
jurist,
but
never
with
a
serious
desire
to
practice.
"I
first
studied
to
be
a
preacher,
but
decided
that
I
was
too
prone
to
tell
big
stories,"
he
later
explained.
"Then
I
studied
Blackstone
for
a
while
and
soon
learned
that
I
was
not
adept
enough
at
prevarication
to
make
a
successful
lawyer.
I
then
made
up
my
mind
that
I
would
seek
some
field
where
I
could
tell
big
stories
and
tell
the
truth."

He
chose
the
weather.

ACTUALLY,
THE
WEATHER
chose
him.

Gen.
William
B.
Hazen,
in
charge
of
the
U.S.
Signal
Corps
since
1880,
wanted
only
the
best
men
for
his
new
weather
service.
Smart
men,
moral
men,
scientific
men,
but
above
all,
strong
men
capable
of
wading
against
a
mounting
sea
of
skepticism
about
the
corps'
ability
to
report
and
forecast
the
weather.
He
wrote
to
college
presidents
asking
them
to
recommend
likely
candidates
from
their
graduating
classes.

The
president
of
Hiwassee
College,
J.
H.
Bruner,
recommended
Isaac.

"I
accepted
with
pleasure,"
Isaac
wrote,
"for
it
was
just
the
kind
of
work
I
wanted."
General
Hazen
telegraphed
instructions
directing
him
to
report
to
Washington
on
July
7,
1882.

ISAAC
REACHED
WASHINGTON'S
Pennsylvania
Railroad
Station
early
on
the
morning
of
July
6.
He
was
twenty
years
old
and
had
spent
his
entire
life
in
the
hollows
of
Tennessee,
but
suddenly
his
world
got
much
larger.
Gigantic.
The
minute
he
stepped
from
the
train
he
found
himself
standing
where
a
president's
blood
had
flowed.
A
marker
showed
the
exact
place
where
President
James
Garfield
had
been
shot
one
year
earlier
by
Charles
J.
Guiteau.
Guiteau
was
hanged
the
week
before
Isaac's
arrival.
Now
the
platform
was
crowded
with
men
whose
great
bellies
and
mutton-chop
whiskers
spoke
of
power.
Already
the
air
was
sticky
and
hot.
It
smelled
of
horses
and
smoke.
The
men
wore
black
suits.
They
did
not
appear
to
suffer
in
the
heat,
but
the
air
carried
a
certain
added
pungency.
Never
had
Isaac
seen
so
many
people
gathered
in
one
place,
amid
so
much
noise
and
such
a
rich
battery
of
scents.
The
whistles
of
locomotives
shrieked;
their
boilers
hissed.
He
heard
an
intermittent
ringing
and
knew
instantly
it
came
from
telephones
somewhere
within
the
station.
Shiny
black
cabs
clattered
to
the
station
doors,
hailed
by
porters
pushing
high-wheeled
handcars.
Isaac
saw
telegraph
poles
so
heavily
strung
with
wire
they
looked
like
the
backs
of
grand
pianos.
And
there
was
talk
of
still
more
wire
—
that
soon
cities
like
New
York,
Philadelphia,
and
Washington
would
be
lighted
with
electricity.

Isaac
was
exhausted,
lonely,
thrilled.
He
took
a
cab
to
the
hotel
booked
by
General
Hazen,
and
there
spent
the
rest
of
the
day
indulging
in
a
very
uncharacteristic
pursuit:
doing
nothing.
Partly
it
was
the
fatigue.
But
mainly
this
young
man
who
had
trapped
the
night
forests
of
Tennessee
at
the
age
of
six
was
frightened.
He
had
never
been
in
a
city
this
big
before.
He
was
afraid
even
to
let
the
hotel
out
of
his
sight.

He
might
have
been
a
lot
more
anxious
if
he
had
known
of
the
controversy
that
swirled
at
that
moment
around
the
Signal
Corps,
and
of
the
scandal
that
triggered
it,
a
scandal
whose
shock
waves
would
roll
forward
like
a
storm
swell
to
shape
the
events
of
Saturday,
September
8,
1900.

But
that
night
the
only
thing
swirling
seemed
to
be
the
mosquitoes
clouding
the
gas
lamps
on
the
street
below.

THE
CRIME
ITSELF
could
have
happened
in
any
bureau
of
the
government,
the
juxtaposition
of
money
and
men
always
a
chancy
thing.
That
it
happened
within
the
Signal
Corps,
however,
gave
it
an
incendiary
power
beyond
expectation.
It
had
the
effect
of
undamming
a
reservoir
of
complaint.

The
corps
had
grown
accustomed
to
controversy
ever
since
Congress
designated
it
the
mother
agency
for
the
nation's
first
weather
service.
"Meteorology
has
ever
been
an
apple
of
contention,"
wrote
Joseph
Henry,
the
first
director
of
the
Smithsonian,
"as
if
the
violent
commotions
of
the
atmosphere
induced
a
sympathetic
effect
on
the
minds
of
those
who
have
attempted
to
study
them."
Some
critics
argued
men
should
not
try
to
predict
the
weather,
because
it
was
God's
province;
others
that
men
could
not
predict
the
weather,
because
men
were
incompetent.
Mark
Twain,
merciless
as
always,
parodied
the
government's
efforts:
"Probable
northeast
to
southwest
winds,
varying
to
the
southward
and
westward
and
eastward,
and
points
between,
high
and
low
barometer
swapping
around
from
place
to
place,
probably
areas
of
rain,
snow,
hail,
and
drought,
succeeded
or
preceded
by
earthquakes,
with
thunder
and
lightning."

But
this
new
controversy
was
different.
In
1881,
police
arrested
Capt.
Henry
W.
Howgate,
chief
financial
manager
of
the
Signal
Corps,
for
embezzling
nearly
a
quarter
million
dollars,
this
in
an
age
when
dinner
at
a
nice
restaurant
cost
thirty-five
cents.
He
was
arrested,
convicted,
and
jailed.
In
the
spring
of
1882
prison
authorities
allowed
Howgate
to
go
home
under
guard
to
see
his
daughter,
who
was
then
visiting
from
Vas-sar.
He
escaped
and
was
still
at
large
when
Isaac
arrived
in
Washington.

For
the
weather
service's
critics,
the
Howgate
scandal
was
the
last
straw.
Secretary
of
War
Robert
T.
Lincoln
launched
an
investigation
of
the
Signal
Corps
with
particular
emphasis
on
the
service.
He
found
it
had
few
financial
controls,
a
very
limited
pool
of
experienced
forecasters,
and
a
training
academy
—
Fort
Myer
—
that
spent
a
lot
more
time
putting
men
through
cavalry
drills
than
teaching
them
to
forecast
the
weather.
General
of
the
Army
P.
H.
Sheridan,
around
whom
the
aura
of
Civil
War
heroism
still
glowed
bright,
declared
Fort
Myer
a
waste
of
money.
The
all-important
Chicago
Board
of
Trade
filed
a
formal
petition
with
Congress
demanding
reform.
Complaints
also
rose
from
within
the
Signal
Corps
itself,
where
some
veteran
military
officers,
among
them
a
Major
H.
H.
C.
Dunwoody,
opposed
a
push
by
General
Hazen
to
conduct
primary
research
into
the
causes
and
character
of
weather.
Dunwoody
objected
in
particular
to
Hazen's
hiring
of
civilian
scientists
like
Cleveland
Abbe,
easily
the
most
prominent
practicing
meteorologist
of
the
nineteenth
century.
The
assault
got
personal
when
a
Pennsylvania
congressman
accused
General
Hazen
of
cowardice
in
the
Battle
of
Shiloh.

There
were
many
things
you
could
be
in
the
new
America,
but
a
coward
was
not
one
of
them.

AN
ARMY
SURGEON
examined
Isaac.
He
saw
a
lean
young
man
of
middle
height
with
angular
features,
lively
dark
eyes,
and
an
expression
of
sobriety
that
made
you
want
to
tell
him
some
awful
joke
just
to
see
if
he
could
laugh.
The
surgeon
had
seen
many
boys
like
this,
but
under
very
different
circumstances,
and
he
wanted
to
tell
this
boy
not
to
be
so
frightened,
that
his
next
stop
was
Fort
Myer,
not
Bloody
Run.
Like
most
boys
from
the
country,
Isaac's
face
was
sun-torched
to
a
point
about
three-quarters
up
his
forehead
where
his
skin
turned
trout-belly
pale.
The
boy
had
good
hands.
Strong,
weathered,
nicked.
Enterprising
hands.
The
doctor
pronounced
him
fit.

Isaac
and
three
other
new
men
climbed
into
a
wagon
led
by
two
strong
horses
and
driven
by
a
man
in
uniform.
The
wagon
took
them
west
through
a
neighborhood
the
driver
called
Georgetown,
where
three-
and
four-story
brick
houses
stood
jammed
side
by
side.
The
wagon
turned
south
and
clattered
across
the
Georgetown
Bridge
into
Virginia,
where
it
continued
to
climb
until
it
reached
Arlington
Heights.
Even
in
the
steam
of
that
hot
afternoon,
the
view
was
stunning.
To
the
east
was
the
great
dome
of
the
Capitol
gleaming
in
the
heat.
A
mile
or
so
closer
was
the
Willard
Hotel
and
the
tuft
of
forest
that
masked
the
president's
mansion.
A
great
stone
tower
dominated
the
landscape.
It
rose
hundreds
of
feet
into
the
sky
and
dwarfed
every
other
building
in
sight.
The
tower
was
not
yet
finished.
But
how
much
higher
could
it
possibly
go?
Nearer
at
hand,
Isaac
caught
flashes
of
the
Arlington
mansion
of
Robert
E.
Lee
and
the
great
cemetery
now
aborning
on
its
grounds.

The
first
soldier
to
greet
Isaac
was
1st
Sgt.
Mike
Mahaney,
a
gruff
Civil
War
veteran
who
showed
Isaac
to
an
oblong
room
with
one
window,
running
water,
two
double
desks,
and
four
beds.
The
fort's
commander,
Capt.
Dick
Strong,
his
natural
seriousness
amplified
by
his
heavy
beard,
welcomed
the
new
men
and
gave
them
his
stock
charge:
"You
will
cheerfully
obey
all
orders
without
question
and
refrain
from
saying
anything
either
commendatory
or
condemnatory."