Uncrashable Dakota (15 page)

“I’ve known her for a long time.”

Hollis thought for a moment. “That doesn’t really count as an answer.”

They turned sideways to follow Maggie down an aisle of crates packed with skinny chickens. Their smell reminded Hollis of the petting zoo on the leisure deck of the
Secret Wish
, where a llama had slurped oats from his hand and left his palm slimy and warm.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, HD. Just like there are things I don’t know about you. It’s not that big a deal.”

“You can ask me anything.” He paused. “Go ahead.” Met with silence, he thought about bringing up St. Theresa’s, then changed the subject. “Hey, look. Pigs.”

The aisle widened, and suddenly they were flanked by animals in big, sloppy pens. He’d never been around so many pigs—or even a single pig that he could recall—and he was surprised at the low, guttural noises they made. Ahead, Maggie stopped and turned.

“Not everybody was born with their heads in the clouds.”

“I was born in Richmond,” Hollis said.

“Me and Delia watched each other’s backs. You know what that’s like?”

Delia sighed. “C’mon, Maggie, lay off.”

But Maggie had that fiery gleam in her good eye that Hollis recognized from their first meeting. She stretched her arms out wide, and Hollis had a sudden memory of his father standing in the shipyard.

“So now that you’ve seen how it is,” Maggie said, “you don’t seem like you got much to say about it. Delia was wrong about you—you
are
just like all the rest.”

Delia winced. “Godsakes! Shut up.”

Maggie kept talking, but Hollis didn’t hear a word.
Delia was wrong about you
.… It dawned on him that it had been Delia’s idea to meet in steerage. “You set me up!” He pointed at her, finger trembling slightly in disbelief. “You planned this whole thing. You
knew
they were gonna ambush me down here.”

“I’m sorry, HD. She took it a bit too far—I only wanted you to see what it was like. I should have planned it better, but everything happened so fast.”

“A bit too
far
?” Hollis was yelling now—he couldn’t help it. “She almost cut my throat, Delia. My mother is still missing, and now, thanks to you, we’re running around down here”—his eyes flicked to one of the pens—“with the
pigs.”

Shink
went Maggie’s switchblade.

“Keep your voice down, or I’ll stick you like one,” Maggie said, pointing the knife casually toward the middle of his chest as if she were handing him a pencil.

“Put that away!” Delia said.

Maggie laughed and lowered the knife. “Relax, Cosgrove. I’m not gonna slice up your swanky friend. He don’t rate at all with me, one way or the other.”

“All I’m saying,” Hollis said to Delia, “is that you could’ve picked a better time to take me on a tour. We’re kind of in the middle of something important here, you know?”

Maggie gave Delia a look that was easy for Hollis to read:
I told you so.

Delia said, “Let’s just keep going.”

Maggie turned without another word and led them past the final row of pens and into a long, half-open shelter that ran along the edge of the hold. One side was propped up by vertical slats and boards, hastily nailed together. They passed through brief sections of darkness where the wall was complete on both sides, then a quick slice of steerage life returned, followed by another plunge into darkness. This happened again and again, as if someone were flicking a switch.

“This place was supposed to be divided up into sleeping quarters,” explained Delia as they followed Maggie through the half-finished tunnel. “But early on, they decided the carpenters would be put to better use elsewhere. Then I guess they just forgot to finish.”

“Who’s
they
?” Hollis asked, dreading the answer.

“Your dad, mostly.”

What did Delia expect him to say? That his dad wasn’t perfect? He knew that.

“Hey,” Delia said gently, “I said I was sorry, and I meant it, okay?”

“Fine.” Hollis felt itchy. “I’m sorry, too. Let’s just get to the wires.”

They walked through a few long seconds of darkness, and when the wall opened up again, Hollis had a direct line of sight into the candlelit interior of the sick bay. A woman was setting a table of overturned crates for a small boy whose shirt drooped from his skinny body like a wizard’s robe. At the center of the table rested a steaming bowl of lumpy stuff from the vats. An older girl stepped in front of the blanket flap, which had been clothespinned back. She met Hollis’s eyes for a moment, but didn’t seem to register his presence. With a practiced motion, she raised a wadded-up rag to her lips and muffled the wet sandpaper sounds of a coughing spell. Through the triangle of space defined by the girl’s bent, spindly arm, Hollis watched the woman deposit a spoonful of stew into the boy’s mouth. Then he kept moving, and the wall closed up.

THE HISTORY OF FLIGHT IN AMERICA

PART

FOUR

THE SECOND NOTE
from Hezekiah Castor arrived two weeks after the first. This time, the message was a crude drawing of a burning sky-canoe. In the middle of the canoe, spiky flames engulfed a charred stick figure waving his arms and screaming in agony. Beneath the ship were the letters
H.C.

Samuel sat dumbly at his desk, gaping at the drawing. He had a brief, horrible vision of the Dakota compound in flames, his men rushing from their barracks in shirtsleeves to fling buckets of water at the inferno as it engulfed the—

“Mr. Dakota, sir!”

Samuel placed the bottle and the note into a drawer and slid it closed. “Come in!”

One of his assistants cracked open the door. The tip of a long nose poked inside. “General Grant’s asking for you, sir.”

Samuel sighed. “Thank you.”

The nose withdrew.

Samuel strode across the low-cut grass of the testing ground toward a small white tent. General Ulysses S. Grant had arrived this morning to field-test the new flying weapons against Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general whose army was camped a few miles away at the edge of the Shenandoah Valley. Through the half-open barn door of the main hangar, Samuel could see his chief builder performing final inspections on the eighteen sky-canoes they’d managed to churn out in frantic anticipation of Grant’s arrival. Each canoe was fully steerable, thanks to Pembroke’s billowy sailcloth oars that locked in place on either side like oversized lawn-tennis rackets.

Samuel had spent much of the past week aloft, paddling through patches of dead air to find the gusty space where he could lock the oars and let the sails harness the wind. At first he’d been hesitant to ride the stronger currents, but after a few more test flights, he began to crave the sudden stomach-flipping glide when the ship dropped from stillness into a powerful airstream. He began to imagine that he could actually
see
the currents winding through the empty skies, like shimmering paths to new worlds. Samuel Dakota lost himself in these happy moments. He even managed to forget that the true purpose of his joyful experiment was to make Lincoln’s Northern war machine all but unstoppable. General Grant’s arrival was an abrupt reminder, like waking from a delicious strawberry-rhubarb dream to find himself once again camped out in the mud.

He stood at attention just outside the flap of the tent, waiting for his invitation from the general, who was sitting with his two aides at a small table strewn with maps and a bottle of bourbon. When one of the aides cleared his throat and said, “General, Mr. Dakota for you,” Grant looked up and waved his hand dismissively at Samuel’s upright military posture.

“At ease, beetle man. I don’t much care for formality.” Grant paused to sip from his glass. “Make yourself at home.”

Samuel stepped inside. Grant flicked his wrist idly in the direction of the tent flap.

“Give us a moment, gentlemen.”

The two aides left without a word. Samuel sat down at the table.

Grant cleared his throat and spit in the grass next to his chair. “I understand you have the magic moonshine distilleries here, Dakota.”

“That’s right, sir. If you like, I can have a sample brought over for you.” He noted the dark hollows around Grant’s eyes, as if they’d been shaded with charcoal. The general was clearly exhausted, or drunk, or both. Even his beard looked droopy and tired.

“I drink bourbon,” Grant said, and for a long time, neither man said anything. Eventually, Grant drained his glass and refilled it, and with a startled grunt filled an empty glass and slid it across the table to Samuel.

“Where are my manners? There you go.”

“Thank you, sir.” Samuel took a tentative sip, wishing desperately to be alone in the sky.

“What do you think of all this…” Grant made a circle with his forefinger over the topmost map, a mess of squiggles and jagged lines pockmarked with blue and gray dots. “All this … war?”

“Well.” Samuel considered for a moment. “I suppose I want it to end as soon as possible.” General Grant raised an eyebrow. “With a victory for the forces of emancipation and reunification, of course,” he added hastily.

“As do I, Dakota. As do I. But have you given any thought to what an ending
means
?”

“I’m sorry, sir—I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“What will you do after the war?”

“Well, hopefully Dakota Aeronautics will expand…” Samuel thought off the top of his head. “Maybe into, I don’t know, commercial transportation.” It was a good idea. The war had already displaced millions of people. The postwar travel industry could be a gold mine. Proud of himself for thinking of a new business plan on the spot, Samuel smiled. Grant drained his glass once again and let it slam down upon the table. His next words came out thick and muffled.

“And then there’s the question of my own
what’s next
, which I’m having to ponder much sooner than I expected, thanks to you and kindly old Mr. Gatling over here.” He jerked his thumb at what seemed to be a blanket tossed over a large telescope.

“I’m sorry,” Samuel said. “Mr.
Gatling
?”

“Yep,” Grant said sharply. “Brought down Gatling and fifty of his brothers to arm your flying machines. You did build fifty, yes?”

“Er … we got very close.”

Without leaving his chair, Grant whisked away the blanket.

The telescope was a gun with a barrel the size of a small artillery piece mounted on an axis between two wheels. It looked like a miniature cannon. Samuel had heard of Mr. Gatling’s fearsome spinning crank gun, but had never seen one up close. He imagined a terrified Confederate soldier crouched in a ditch, staring up in disbelief as rapid-fire death rained down from a fleet of flying canoes. For a paralyzing second, Samuel felt the imaginary soldier’s fear as if it were his own.

What have I done?

The answer, he knew, was that he had changed the world, and there would be no going back and canceling what he had created. He had made good on his promise to President Lincoln and created a weapon to destroy the Confederacy. He should have been deeply satisfied. But now, sitting next to the huge gun in the pungent haze of General Grant’s bourbon breath, his achievement seemed cruel and sad.

Grant read the look on his face.

“What did you think we were planning to do once we were up in your air boats, Dakota? Pelt the rebels with pebbles?”

The general fell into a sort of halfhearted laughing fit. Samuel stared at his glass and suddenly felt very ill.

“The attack begins tomorrow morning at 0500 hours,” Grant said. “That should give you enough time to choose your flagship and perform final inspections. And may I suggest quoting some mighty-sounding hogwash in your speech to the pilots before the launch?” He nodded in the direction of his aides, who were waiting outside the tent. “They can find you some Tennyson or something.”

“
Speech.
” Samuel sounded out the word as if he were learning it for the first time. “To the pilots?” He looked stupidly at Grant, then all at once he understood. He shook his head, finding his voice. “With all due respect, General Grant—”

“Save it, Dakota; my mind’s made up. They tell me you spend most of your time in the sky. Who better to lead the attack?”

Samuel swallowed the lump forming in his throat. He thought quickly. “Someone with command experience. An officer. I’m just a civilian.”

“You haven’t been discharged from your duty as a soldier.”

Samuel was incredulous. “My duty? I’m … I was just a private. I slept in the mud.”

“Congratulations,” Grant said with a grim smile. “You’ve just been promoted.”

“To what?”

Grant ran a finger along the ragged corner of a map and thought for a moment. Then he stood up and assumed a formal pose with his chest puffed out. Samuel noticed for the first time that the general was wearing a long sword attached to his belt.

“Gentlemen!” he called to his aides, who hurried back inside the tent. “I’m pleased to introduce the commander of the Union Air Cavalry, Sky Captain Samuel Dakota.”

15

“
THIS SHOULD DO YOU
just fine,” Maggie said as she slid a piece of loose wood away from a rough-hewn hole in the wall.

“Thanks,” Delia said, rummaging in her bag and handing over the Cosgrove Immobilizer, which Maggie hefted expertly, sighting down the barrel with her good eye.
This girl has fired guns before
, Hollis thought. Maggie nodded good-bye at Delia and turned to make her way back down the half tunnel.

“Been a pleasure, Maggie,” Hollis called after her.

“Piss up a rope,” she called back before disappearing around the corner.

“Here.” Delia handed Hollis a handkerchief. “You still got…”

Hollis wiped flakes of dry, crusty blood away from his lips. He pictured the back of Rob Castor’s head climbing up onto the catwalk, getting smaller and smaller, disappearing from his life forever. He felt like he was driving people away simply because he was born a Dakota.