Nimrod was waiting for me out in the hallway. I relayed everything to him and he told me I had to be here in two days, at 7 o’clock in morning sharp, that’s when he was heading down to the camp to bring the messages and other information. I assured him I would be there. I beat the fastest path I could back up to the shack where Dandy and I were staying, dallying only at the market at Mt. Vernon Square to get some water, and buy a few provisions like bread ends, potatoes, and a cabbage to give to the people we were lodging with. That night as Dandy and me were lying on the cot we shared, trying to stay warm as the cool September air enfolded us, I told him my news and he told me Anthony Smith had a special opportunity in Baltimore. He urged me to be as careful as possible, first chance I get write Jonathan a letter he could read to the rest of the family, always guard my watch and money, don’t spend a penny I didn’t have to, and above all don’t tell these people here the date I was fixing to leave. Finished with his litany he reminded me about all the fun we had had together, including the train ride down. Before I fell off to sleep I hugged him tight as if I might never see him again. When I woke up, Dandy and all his belongings were gone.
I spent the day just walking around 7th Street, peering in the shop windows, my head down and my ears perked, listening to every conversation I could hear. Half the time in Philadelphia it hadn’t felt at all like there was war, but here talk of it was constantly passing people’s lips. Outside the market I even overheard one man saying to another brother that a federal general had set all the slaves free in Missouri. I make sure to stay circumspect as I eavesdropped, not walk too fast since things were slower down here, not waste a single penny except to get a drink of water, and avoid all trouble with white people. Finally as evening was falling I left the Northern Liberty Market and returned to the shack. I told them I wasn’t feeling so good and went into the little area where me and Dandy were staying and quietly gathered all my things. My pocket watch handy, I took little naps till I glanced down and saw it read 5:35. I rose, silent as a shadow, everybody else was still slumbering, washed up best I could and used what passed for an outhouse, grabbed everything of mine, including a new, well-fitting coat that someone had folded up and placed in my bag. I left some coins on the table for them, then rushed off to meet Nimrod.
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. The 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. The 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.”
From 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.