I trained my attention on Mr. Edward, who had gone so far up and grown so quiet I imagined he either was thinking or calculating. After a stretch of silence I grew nervous, and considered calling out, “Sir, everything well, Mr. Edward?” especially when out of the corner of my eye I could see Mr. La Mountain and Mr. Wise watching me, and when Professor Lowe and Mr. Steiner returned, they began glaring at them. The professor broke off his conversation with Mr. Steiner and said to no one in particular, as he stroked his thick mustache and studied his own notebook, “Linde should be brimming with observations.” He called out, “Everything well, Linde?” to which Mr. Edward cried back, “Optimal, Professor, summum visum,” then “I am beginning my descent!” Professor Lowe turned to find me still by his side, which startled him, and ordered me to not let go of the telegraph cable and retreat a little, while my boss slowly and carefully returned to the earth.
During a lull that afternoon, as most of the men played an impromptu game of baseball or listened to one of the naval bands, I went to fetch the mail, tobacco, stationery, and a newspaper. Along with the letters from Mr. Edward’s family there was one I could see from Jonathan, care of Mr. Edward, for me. As I trod along the edge of the canal I passed the letter from palm to palm, eager to tear it open but afraid to, almost so excited to read it I nearly dropped it into the murky water. It wasn’t until I reached the open expanse of one of the squares near Virginia Avenue that I grasped I had walked right past the Capitol, nestled serenely on its promontory, without even noticing. At the South Market, just blocks from the Navy Yard, I paused and squatted under a linden tree at the stalls’ edge, making sure I stashed Mr. Edward’s correspondence away so I didn’t lose it. With the greatest care I opened my letter, which I read, first aloud, then with my eyes several times, lingering on the large, slanted script:
Phil. Penna. SEPT 1861
to Theodore,
I write for Mama myself Lucius Zenobia+Zephira and all the Family when I says we MISS YOU something terrible and hopes you taken care given what we hear about the War. Follow His Word in everything BROTHER. I speak to Mr. Dameron and he say he’ll take you back so please think abt it. Red do a good Job for Mr. Linde son and we hold you in our HEART AND MIND always.
God bless+protect you big bro. Jonathan
At the very bottom of the letter I noticed something scrawled around a cross but at first I couldn’t decipher it. The longer I looked, the clearer it became, and I grinned when I figured it out: ra†io.
I sat there for some time thinking about the letter, about Mama and Jonathan, about my siblings and in-laws, my nieces and nephews, about my boy Hora†io, Ray-Ray, about my city and my home and how even though I hated scaling fish or shucking oysters, even if I liked it less than all of this, a lot less than all this, wringing a chicken’s neck was nowhere near terrifying as huddling at the rear of a fort or riding in a wagon while gunfire raged nearby, and for a second I began musing about the possibility of returning back north and how and when I might do so, what exactly I would tell Mr. Edward, maybe I could head back with him when he quit the Corps because he had shared with me one evening a week ago, out of frustration, when he thought he would never get to take to the air, that he was planning on further training in order to become a professor himself, especially if President Lincoln didn’t get around to awarding him and the rest of them official military commissions, and, he added out of nowhere, he was going to marry Mr. Peter Robins’ sister Alexandra. Soon as I recalled that I checked the time: I had been far too long in my reverie, so I ran the few blocks back to camp.
Mr. Edward was standing all by himself near the tents, waiting for me, his hands behind his back, spectacles on the tip of nose. He said, peeve coloring his timbre, “Boy, where in stars’ name have you been?” I told him that there were military officers holding up everything all along Pennsylvania, checking papers and such, and he replied, with obvious vexation, “Well, there are Confederates and their sympathizers all around us so you should take care not to dally in the city.” He looked in the direction of the water, which lay beyond the rows of buildings and boats. “They were looking for you to join Ulysses in a buck dance to entertain them but I told them you wouldn’t be doing so.” I could hear a banjo and clapping in the distance, so I said, “Yes, Sir, thank you, here is your mail, can I get you anything?” He raised his right hand, which was wrapped in a gauze, forming a tan mitt, and returning to his usual tone with me he said that he had burnt himself with the soldering iron. “Oh, Mr. Edward, Sir, I’m sorry.” I asked him if he had hurt himself badly but he assured me that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, but he would especially need my help now.
He had me sit down beside him, open and read his passel of letters. While his mother wrote about the family, her friends and garden and parties, the return of the fall social season, his father wrote to let him know his account was full, and to be careful and brave, and use “the sabre” of his great mind. His eldest brother Albert penned long paragraphs about his wife and children, his clubs and the insurance business. The middle brother, Frederick, spoke about his position at the brokerage in New York. His sister Katharine included clippings from the regular and society newspapers, and mentioned running into Mr. Bache, who urged that “Neddy” pay him a visit at the Coast Survey offices which sat just blocks from here. Most of his friends, after perfunctory comments about the “War” and the Corps, nattered on about the same things, themselves, clubs, businesses, marriages, trips, purchases, though Mr. Peter Robins punctuated his letter, nested in a copy of a new novel by Charles Dickens, with the question of whether Mr. Edward was ready to end his “experiment,” and “liberate your Liberian.” I studied Mr. Edward’s face as I read the line, but it appeared not to provoke any response at all.
When we had concluded the letters I asked to be dismissed, but he had me read the headlines of the Washington Daily Intelligencer—a paper he claimed to detest but read only because timely copies of the Philadelphia Enquirer were hard to find — which I did as swiftly as I could. I raced through auctions, politics at the local and national level, the war in western Virginia, which he made me pause on; the demoralization of the poorer classes in Norfolk and Richmond, debates on the war in Europe, articles on Utah and California, announcements for theater dramas and farces. I did not utter but winced when I came across the request, with a $50 reward, for the return of “Hansom,” a “small-statured Negro boy of sixteen years, light copper colored,” to his owner living southeast of some town called “Bladensburg.” After that I opened his tin of sardines and he let me have half the can, so I made sure to save some for Ulysses, then I packed his pipe with tobacco and lit it so he could smoke it, while he talked about the balloon and how he had been re-calibrating the altimeter, how he intended to go up at the end of the week with Professor Lowe, how someone had broken up a fight with… but I was halfway to Lombard Street in my head, paying attention only when I heard him say, “Thank you, Theodore, you’re dismissed.”