The Year the Cloud Fell

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  Men ran across the yard from the barracks. They assembled near the barn with a great deal of cursing and clattering of equipment. Custer brushed at his mustaches and beard with a gloved hand as they rode toward the ranks. His eye glanced toward where George stood with Elisha, but he did not acknowledge his son. The clenched fist in George’s stomach, rather than relenting at his father’s arrival, only gripped him the more.

  Colonel McCormack, commander of the remote outpost, stepped before the small detachment. He saluted his commander-in-chief and was rewarded with a tip of the presidential hat.

  Custer dismounted, followed by the generals who did the same although with less agility. The statesmen all debarked. A few soldiers were dispatched to stable the horses and unhitch the teams. The guests moved to the empty chairs. They milled about, chatting with one another, but did not settle into the chairs provided them. McCormack stepped to the table, pulled a sheaf of paper from his coat pocket, and cleared his throat.

  George heard Elisha groan. “Please,” the young lieutenant said. “No speeches.”

  McCormack was pre-empted, however, when Custer walked up and shook the Colonel’s hand, engaging him in friendly exchange.

  “God bless the president,” Elisha said. George hid a smile.

  At forty-three years of age, George’s father made an imposing figure. With a confidence borne of two decades of command, he walked slowly towards the dirigible as he conversed with the officers and senators.

  “My lord, but it’s big,” George heard his father say as they strolled closer. “Bigger than I’d imagined.”

  George and Elisha raised hands to salute as the president and their colonel drew near. The colonel touched his brim, releasing them. The president squinted.

  “Tell me again why these savages won’t just shoot you down and feed you to their lizards?”

  “Sir,” George replied. “We will be too high for them to do any damage.”

  “I see.” Custer was obviously unconvinced. He turned to the colonel. “And they’ve flown it successfully?”

  McCormack straightened. “Absolutely, Mr. President. Several times, sir, and each time better than the last.”

  “So, they haven’t crashed the thing in what? Four months?”

  “Five, Mr. President.” McCormack smiled with pride. George winced. He knew his father. While the colonel beamed at having exceeded the president’s estimate, George knew that the question had been designed to point out the fact that there had been even a single crash.

  “Colonel McCormack, let me put it thusly. Four months, five months, a year; it makes no difference. Anything less than perfection is sub-standard. Is that clear?”

  The colonel’s ruddy cheeks paled and blushed at the same time. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  George stepped forward. “Sir, I was in command of the ship when we ran into trouble. The fault for the mishap is mine.”

  The tall, lean Custer looked down at his son with the look of stern regard that George and his sisters had come to call “The Official Glare.” It usually preceded what his father considered a bon mot of common sense.

  “The fault may be yours, Captain, but the responsibility is still the Colonel’s.”

  “Yes, sir,” George replied and stepped back.

  “Mr. President,” McCormack said, having regained his composure. “If you and the other gentlemen care to join me, we can review the plans for the dirigible and for its mission while the men prepare for its departure.”

  The president smiled and nodded, once more the Spirit of Geniality. The colonel led the way.

  Elisha humphed. “How are you, Son? Good to see you, Son. You’re looking well, Son.”

  “That will do, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m sorry sir. It just seemed that a little ‘hello’ wouldn’t have done the old man in.”

  “I said, that will do.” George took a deep breath. “Remember that he is here as the president, not as my father.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s not a family reunion.”

  “No, sir.”

  “It’s an historic military operation.”

  “As you say, sir.”

  George ground his teeth, not sure what infuriated him the more, Elisha’s studied deference or his father’s complete lack of parental warmth.

  “Ah,” George bristled. “To Hell with you both. Sergeant Tack!”

  The men wrestled the dirigible to its mooring spire. George and Elisha—along with Private Lescault who would act as their fireman—climbed up the ladder to the pilot car to begin their check and re-check of every operational aspect of the huge machine. Elisha and Lescault concentrated on the boiler and engine apparatus. George climbed up into the belly of the beast to inspect the superstructure from within.

  The beam from his candle-lamp pushed up through the humid gloom. The danger of an open flame in a lighter-than-air craft had been greatly limited when George replaced the German count’s design for hydrogen with American-supplied helium. Still, though, George took great care with the lamp. The internal bags were flammable, as was the fabric skin.

  The ladder led up to the catwalk that ran the length of the aircraft like a spine. Gas-filled bags pressed up against the dirigible’s internal skeleton of steel and priceless aluminum, holding the whole of it aloft. Sunlight struggled in through the fabrics of skin and balloons. It shot through the needle holes of the outer seams, filling the interior with odd linear constellations.

  George paced slowly down the catwalk. The walkway rang like an ill-forged bell. His gaze sought evidence of a wrinkled bag or stretched seam. His fingers plucked the cables, searching for the string out of tune. He checked the water levels on the ballast tanks that lay underneath the catwalk. The air smelled of dust and grease and sooty welds, and now and again the whole structure would grumble and turn on its mooring pin as the wind settled into a new quarter.

  Inwardly, he kept coming back to the spot rubbed raw by Elisha’s words of reproof against his father. “The General,” as his father was often called—though had only risen to the permanent rank of colonel—had always been a complicated man and one not well-suited to fatherhood. George was of the definite opinion that he confused his father nearly as much as his father returned the favor. The situation was different with regards to Maria and Lydia. Upon one’s daughters it was not unmanly to dote. With a boy, however, his father’s parental instincts quarreled with codes of military and social conduct.

  The clang of his boots on the catwalk reminded him of a day long ago when he had caught a glimpse behind the tough façade.

  In his memory, a hammer rang on an anvil as the smith put the proper curl into a horse’s shoe. George stood as a young boy in the smithy of an Osage outpost. The General stood next to him and explained the workings of bellow and forge to his son. George, still blinking in the sudden shade after the hard light of the Ozark summer, took a step closer to see better the breathing, fiery beast that inhabited the farthest darkness of the shop. Smoke, heat, and the volcanic smell of hot metal filled the air.

  From his left came a sound. He turned. The horse’s foot caught him in the chest and sent him through the air to crash against the wall amid tools and bar iron. The pain was sharp. The fear that washed over him was cold. His heart labored and his skin was too tight. Then his father was there—The General. Tears built in the boy’s eyes as the realization of what had happened took shape. His father grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him up and down. The smith stood behind him, iron glowing in his tongs.

  “Is he all right, sir?” the big man asked.

  George’s father swallowed and blinked. Then he untied the kerchief from around his neck and gave it to George. His father stood and held out his hand.

  “He’s all right,” Custer said.

  George took the extended hand and was pulled upright. He sniffed and wiped at his face with the kerchief. Blood from his nose stained the blue cloth black.

  “It takes more than a horse’s kick
to keep a Custer man down, eh, Junior?”

  With a nod, George gave the only acceptable answer to such a question. Slowly, he accompanied his father back into the glare of the Missouri coast.

  The hatch to the pilot car clanged open, bringing George back to the present. “Are you ready for a steering test?” Elisha called.

  “Go ahead,” George called from the rear. “Left side first. Then right.”

  “Your left?” Elisha said. “Or my left?”

  “Aw, Hell,” George said beneath his breath. The Army, in a prideful attempt to purge from this project any possible connection with the Navy, had decreed that all terms such as “port” and “starboard” were not under any circumstances to be used. As a result, George had lost count of the times he and Elisha had had this self-same conversation.

  “You know what I mean,” George bellowed in mock exasperation.

  “Aye-aye…I mean, Yes, sir!” his lieutenant said.

  The long drive chains began to rattle as the boiler built up steam. George checked the connections down the length of the interior. Then he opened one of the observation doors in the dirigible’s side and peered forward at the wide-bladed propeller turning slowly on its shaft. Behind, rudder and stabilizer panels moved through their range and back to a neutral position. George scuttled over to check the action of the opposite side. Everything was working as expected.

  The belly of the aircraft began to fill with sound as the rotors picked up speed. The chatter of the chains grew into a smooth, deep-throated roar.

  He checked the propellers again. The blades were now a whirling circle of translucence and the wind that they created made him squint. He shut the doors and made his way back to the pilot car.

  “No problems,” he said as he released his grip on the ladder. “It all looks good. How are things up here?”

  Elisha finished his check of the instrumentation. “Looks fine.” He turned toward the door to the engine car. “Lescault!” he shouted. “How is the engine behaving?”

  “Good as gold, sir,” came the reply. “Good as gold.”

  “We’re ready, Captain.”

  George stood at the car window and looked down. The sergeants of the outpost again gathered the men into ranks near the mooring spire. The officers and senators emerged from the front door of the colonel’s house and began to make their way across the boot-high grass.

  “They’re coming to see us off,” he said.

  “Well, sir, you’d best get down there.”

  “Don’t want to disappoint, do I?”

  Elisha smiled and George was glad they’d been able to melt some of the frostiness that their earlier words had created. He pushed open the car door and dogged it so it would not swing freely. Then he grabbed the railings along the jamb and swung himself out and onto the wooden rungs of the rope ladder. It was not a long descent—perhaps twenty-five feet—but it was precarious. He didn’t want to slip and fall into the mud at the feet of the dignitaries. He took a little longer than usual and stepped to the ground just as the guests arrived from across the yard.

  At a bark from Tack, the ranks snapped to and stood tall. George gave salute once more to his colonel. “The United States Army Aircraft Abraham Lincoln is ready for active duty, sir!”

  McCormack stepped forward and cleared his throat. George, fighting the urge to look up to the pilot car, stayed at attention. There was no rescue for them this time. Even his father would not be so rude as to step on this moment of commander’s prerogative. McCormack faced the assembly.

  “Today,” he began, “is a day on which history shall be made. Today, the Union once again sets forth to claim the territories that are rightfully hers. For over one hundred years….”

  The breeze freshened and the dirigible groaned on its mooring, echoing George’s opinions. McCormack droned onward.

  In time, it was done, and the colonel invited the president to address the troops. Custer stepped up beside the colonel. He stood straight, proud, supremely confident.

  “I would like to extend my thanks to the commander, the officers, and the fine men of this outpost. What you have achieved, what you have created, is nothing less than remarkable.” The senators applauded these words and the generals followed suit. “And to the men who will drive this amazing machine, remember that as you pass over and into the untamed lands of our great nation, our prayers go with you. Good luck, and Godspeed.”

  Again the guests applauded. Custer turned and walked over to George with a smile.

  “Get a good look at them, Son. Find out where they are and how many they are so we can know where and how hard to hit them. The Frontier is too big for us to run around looking for them. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The look in his father’s eye softened a bit. “And be careful, Son,” he said, extending his hand. “Your mother worries so.”

  And you do not, George thought. But when he clasped his father’s hand, he felt the thinness of the bones within it. His father’s cheeks were gaunt beneath eyes of cornflower-blue, and his long hair was nearer to white than blond. The office and the Union’s reconstruction after two terrible wars had taken its toll on the Savior of the Battle of Kansa Bay.

  “Tell her not to worry,” George said. “I just wish we’d had a few minutes to talk.”

  “Plenty of time for that. After the mission. I’ll have the band play ‘Garry Owen’ when you ride back into camp.”

  George nodded, stepped back, and saluted a final time. Custer returned it with a wink, and George turned and grabbed the ladder. Climbing up, he smelled the salt on the southwesterly breeze. Elisha reached out from the car and helped him inside. They pulled the ladder up and latched the door closed.

  From the yard below, Tack’s bellow echoed through the yard as he ordered the men to clear out of the way. George made sure the guests had all moved to safety before he opened the first ballast tank. Water streamed out from either side of the aircraft’s midsection in a manner that was vaguely obscene.

  “Thar she blows!” shouted one of the men from the yard. Tack yelled for silence. George pushed the lever shut, a mischievous smile on his lips.

  There was no immediate sense of movement. Elisha raised an eyebrow. “More?” he asked. George shook his head.

  “Wait.”

  Then, like a lumbering sea beast lifting itself off the shingled strand, a ripple moved through the craft as the nose began to slide up the spire.

  “Forward thrust, one eighth,” George said and Elisha turned the throttle lever to match the command. The pitch of the propellers changed and the blades bit the air. The craft shuddered once more and then slipped up and off the spire without another sound.

  A cheer went up from the men below as the dirigible cleared its mooring. It floated upward. Inside, without any sense that it was they who were in motion, George felt the brief initial disorientation of balloon flight; the fleeting sense that it was the world that was dropping away and not the reverse. As the tip of the spire drifted below them, George gave the command for half speed. Elisha complied and George’s brief vertigo disappeared under the craft’s slow but perceptible acceleration.

  He steered them to the north-northwest. “Give us some elevation, Lieutenant. Ten degrees.”

  Elisha manned the crank that controlled the pitch of the craft. As he turned the winch, cables ran up into the body and moved the counterweight that ran underneath the catwalk. The counterweight moved aft, and the nose of the craft lifted up into the sky.

  George checked the bubbles in the attitude meters. “That’s good,” he said.

  Now safely underway and climbing, he went to the open window. Below and behind them, the outpost was shrinking to a small square of mud and sedge amid the greater green of springtime. The men still in the yard were like lead soldiers, a tableau of wonderment watching the most unlikely aircraft lift itself gracefully toward the clouds. George took off his cap. He waved out the window and the soldiers came to life, waving back. Behind
the men in blue, he saw the dark figures of the statesmen. He saw the man with the long pale hair. He wanted the man to wave, too, but he knew he would not.

  George squelched his own irrational annoyance and turned back to the task of guiding their course. The boiler let off a puff of excess pressure as they rose. “Tamp it down a bit, Private.”

  “Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Lescault growled in answer. Elisha laughed, pointing at George’s scowl of consternation.

  “And after you worked so hard to make this an Army mission.”

  “I can see now that there’s no point in continuing the struggle,” George sighed. “All right. I admit it. It’s a ship. Airship. Vessel. Whatever you like. Port. Starboard. Bow, and aft. It’s a ship!”

  “Huzzah!” shouted Elisha and Lescault together.

  “I’ll deny I said it, though,” George laughed. “And no one will ever believe the likes of you two.”

  They reached altitude and headed along the northeastern limit of the Gulf of Narváez. Shoals of fish flashed and spun in the warm, shallow waters below. Small, leather-winged cliff dragons sailed from the rocky breakwaters and dove for their silver-sided prey. George looked ahead. He and his small crew were flying toward a land full of things found nowhere else in the world: huge buffalo, giant lizards, and the American Indian.

  On paper, the western border of the United States was a thousand miles distant, somewhere along the spine of a mountain range that only a handful of white men had ever seen. In reality, it was formed on the northwest by the Red and Santee Rivers that limited the Michigan and Dakota Territories. In the south it was made by the Sand Hills and the coast of Kansa Territory along the Gulf of Narváez, that body of water that stretched up from the Gulf of Columbia into the heart of the North American continent. As the three men traveled north from Fort Whitley, they entered lands that had been purchased from the King of France two generations past, but which had never been explored, much less settled by their owners.

  Long snakelike necks lifted out of the water as huge behemoths watched the passage of George’s craft. The dirigible flew over long stretches of swamps and fens. The air smelled of salt and mud until they came to the dense forests of the Kansa coast. For miles the greenery of towering ferns hid the ground from their view, and George and Elisha could only see the sudden flights of birds that flashed in colors of pink and blue as the flocks took to the air.