Uncrashable Dakota

by Marino, Andy

  Hollis was faced with a decision that he had no time to ponder: lunge at the big man’s legs and try to catch him off balance or scramble through the dining room and out the servants’ door?

  Take him down.

  Already his body was obeying a more reasonable and insistent command, hurtling through the kitchenette, past a wooden block of razor-sharp steak knives, handles facing out.

  Go back and fight.

  The knives were behind him. He crashed through the door and out into the empty, undecorated hallway, where he did what his mother had told him to do.

  THE HISTORY OF FLIGHT IN AMERICA

  PART

  TWO

  UP ON THE ROOF of the White House, Samuel Dakota brushed himself off, took a long look at the gas lamps of Washington, and began poking around in the darkness until he stumbled against a wide chimney. He climbed over the top and wedged his back against the bricks, knees bent, feet pressed against the opposite side. Reassuring himself that there was little chance of falling into a roaring fire in the middle of summer, he eased into a halting descent, breathing slowly to silence the pounding of his heart. After scraping his way down the narrow shaft for a few torturous minutes, he began to wonder if the presidential bodyguards were instructed to shoot intruders on sight. Perhaps he should have formulated a better plan.

  When he reached the bottom, he paused, listening, just above the pool of light seeping in from the room. Empty and quiet, as far as he could tell. He put a hesitant foot down, expecting a pile of ash but finding smooth brick, and unwedged himself from the chimney. It smelled vaguely charred, but otherwise the fireplace was free of soot. Well, this is the White House, he thought. Of course it’s clean.

  He crawled out and was surprised—again—to find himself in a hallway rather than a room. Scowling portraits lined the walls. He smelled the rich, lingering odor of savory, slow-roasted meat, and his stomach gurgled and growled. It had been months since he’d eaten a decent meal. He placed his hand over his belly and willed it into silence.

  He wondered what President Lincoln was in the habit of doing after supper. With the war still raging, Samuel guessed the man would be in his study, poring over battlefield assessments and reports, absorbed in his work. He had always heard that Lincoln was a melancholy loner.

  Just ahead, the hallway split, forming a T-shaped corridor. To the right, the delicious smell of the presidential dinner seemed stronger. He guessed that the offices were separate from the living and dining rooms, so he took a left.

  Suddenly the strident, overlapping voices of two men drifted toward him. He froze for a second, then darted beneath a sofa that was not quite long enough to shelter his tall frame. Wedged once again in a narrow space, he hugged his knees as best he could and peered out between the polished maple legs as the two men strolled past.

  “I commend General Sherman’s single-mindedness,” one halting voice said. “His zeal is not the issue, Mr. Stanton.”

  The second voice, much fiercer: “Then what is your issue, sir?”

  “It has more to do with— Ah! These drafty halls strike again.”

  A stovepipe hat tumbled to the floor and rolled to a stop in front of the sofa, inches from Samuel’s face. He pressed himself back against the wall, but it was no use. He felt a sudden tense stillness in the air as the two men froze in surprise at the sight of a filthy vagabond stuffed beneath a sofa in the hallway of the White House.

  The fiercer voice spoke first.

  “Come out of there at once and identify yourself, soldier. And bear in mind that we are most inclined to have you shot for trespassing, so move slowly and carefully.”

  Samuel crawled out on his belly and picked up the fallen top hat. He struggled self-consciously to his feet and extended the hat to its owner, President Abraham Lincoln himself, who accepted it with a mystified smile.

  Samuel bowed his head. His mouth was suddenly very dry.

  “Well?” the other man asked. In nursery-rhyme contrast with the gaunt, lanky president, this man was short and fat, with spectacles pressed into his round face and a bushy gray beard covering his thick neck. He looked upon Samuel with revulsion. Samuel wished he had spent the afternoon taking a bath and scrubbing his uniform instead of sitting on a bench in the heat.

  “Shall we hear the explanation for your desertion and this unwelcome trespass, or shall we summon the guards?”

  Samuel thought of the unsmiling man at the front gate who had shooed him away at the end of a gun. If sent for, that man would certainly not hesitate to shoot him on principle.

  Samuel cleared his raw throat and drew himself upright. He ignored the fierce little man and addressed the president directly.

  “My name is Samuel Dakota, and I request a brief audience with you, sir, in order to demonstrate a top-secret new method to achieve total victory over the rebel secessionists in a matter of months, if not weeks.”

  Lincoln’s smile remained. The other man tried to speak but instead began to cough.

  “Mr. Dakota,” the president said, “please allow me to introduce Edwin Stanton, my secretary of war, who seems a bit taken aback by your offer. As for me, I had assumed you were an assassin and am quite overjoyed to find that you are not.”

  Cheered and emboldened by the president’s oddly genteel manner, Samuel began to speak with greater confidence as Mr. Stanton looked on in disbelief.

  “What I can offer you,” Samuel said, “is the means to conquer the cities of the South—”

  Stanton interrupted, “General Sherman currently has that task well in hand, and may I remind you that you’re speaking with the president of the United States—”

  Samuel held up a finger for silence. Stanton sputtered.

  “As I was saying,” Samuel continued, “the means to conquer the cities of the South and demolish her armies, all the while keeping our soldiers completely out of harm’s way.”

  Lincoln replied, “I confess, I don’t see how you can demonstrate something so outlandishly large in scope and ambition to me inside these walls.”

  Samuel could have hugged the president. Quickly, with a pounding heart, he sat down on the sofa and removed the bottle of whiskey-sap and the tin of beetles from his knapsack.

  “May I please have your hat once again, Mr. President?”

  Stanton rolled his eyes. “This is ridiculous. We’re indulging the whims of a madman.”

  The president shrugged and removed his hat. “Perhaps.” He handed the hat to Samuel. It was worn and frayed; clearly the president’s favorite. Samuel took a deep breath, opened the bottle, and smeared the brim of the hat with amber sludge.

  The president winced. Mr. Stanton said, “He mocks you, sir.”

  Samuel, savoring the moment despite his fear, said, “In a moment, I promise you will forget all about the minimal damage to your hat.” From the tin he selected two beetles, which he placed along the brim.

  Almost instantly, they set about ravenously consuming the whiskey-sap. Within seconds, their pungent flatulence filled the air.

  Mr. Stanton pinched his nose. “And now he poisons us with this stench!”

  President Lincoln’s accommodating smile wrinkled into a sour grimace. He opened his mouth to speak, then widened his eyes in astonishment as the hat leaped into the air, banged against the ceiling, floated down the hall, and disappeared around the corner.

  “A parlor trick!” Stanton yelled, unclasping his nose. The president regarded Samuel warily, as if weighing the extent of the intruder’s madness.

  Working quickly, Samuel knelt on the carpet, smeared more whiskey-sap on the legs of the sofa, and released four beetles. The two men watched in disbelief as the sofa sprang effortlessly into the air without so much as a jolt of hesitation, crashed through the ceiling, and vanished into the night sky.

  The rest of the evening was spent on the roof of the White House, where Samuel Dakota, President Lincoln, and Secretary Stanton dragged five more sofas, two guest beds, an oak desk, and a grandfather cl
ock that had belonged to John Quincy Adams. One by one, Samuel sent them soaring over the hushed Washington streets.

  When they had exhausted their supply of furniture, the president turned to Samuel.

  “Mr. Dakota, this has truly been an extraordinary evening.”

  Secretary Stanton’s permanently weary, sunken eyes had achieved a new, childlike gleam. “We’ll destroy them from the air,” he said in wonderment. Then he stepped to the edge of the roof and mimed shooting a rifle down at the lawn below—“Pop! Pop! Pop!”—his imaginary bullets picking off imaginary rebel soldiers.

  The president stared grimly at his secretary of war. Samuel noted the shadow that passed across the president’s face before he blinked it away and said, “The question, Mr. Dakota, is how you would like to proceed.”

  Samuel grinned. “Well, Mr. President, if I may, I’d like to propose a deal.”

  7

  HOLLIS KNOCKED QUIETLY on Delia’s door with the tip of his fingernail, keeping an eye on the dormitory hall. To his surprise, it opened immediately. Delia was wearing the same dress as the day before, and her eyes were ringed with dark raccoon circles.

  “I didn’t expect you so early.” Her voice was cracked and weary, struggling out through a bone-dry throat. “How’s your head?”

  “Fine.” He’d actually forgotten about his headache, and now he was nostalgic for yesterday, when that had been his biggest concern. “I have to come inside.”

  “Wait,” Delia protested, but he’d already brushed past her and shut the door.

  “Interesting choice of shoes, Dakota.”

  Rob Castor was stretched out on Delia’s bed, wearing his pinstripe suit. With his head propped against two pillows and a funny-book balanced on his thigh, Rob looked thoroughly at home.

  “You’re here,” Hollis said.

  “So are you.”

  “No, I mean you’re here. They didn’t get you.”

  With an exaggerated sigh, Rob closed the funny-book and sat up, swiveling so that his feet rested on the floor. His hair was matted against the side of his head.

  “Okay, you win. I’ll bite. Who didn’t get me, exactly? And also…” Rob pointed at Hollis’s shoes. Hollis looked down at the Italian loafers. Leather tassels dangled from the tongues like tiny brooms.

  “I stole them from a second-class sky-boot exchange on the way down. When I ran away from the stateroom, I was barefoot, so I had to grab the first pair of anything that fit.”

  The funny-book drifted up behind Rob’s head and floated toward the window, where a hesitant glow was just beginning to hint at the dawn.

  “Don’t get gunk all over that,” Rob said to Delia as she went after the airborne book. “Wait,” he said, turning to Hollis, “why were you running away?”

  Hollis told them the whole story in a feverish torrent. At several different points, they had to urge him to relax and take a breath, with Delia finally pressing him forcefully into her lone chair. That was fine with him. The loafers felt as if they should come with a warning: NOT TO BE WORN AS SHOES. When he got to the ambush of Steward Bailey, Rob’s face darkened and he got up to pace the tiny room. Delia sat on the bed while Hollis related the end.

  “She told me to run. I didn’t have a choice.”

  As Delia reached out to rest a hand upon his knee, Hollis knew he’d told a lie. He’d had a choice, and he’d opted to save his own skin rather than stand and fight. His mother always said that misfortune traveled in packs of threes. One more to go.

  Rob’s pacing slowed, then stopped as he drummed his fingers against the edge of the table. He was lost in thought, chewing on the inside of his cheek, contorting his face. Hollis recognized this kind of jumpy stillness from when they’d organized big games of Haunted Ship or Capture the Steerage Rat.

  “Binoculars,” Rob muttered. “Rope.” He ticked off each word with a finger. “Mustaches.”

  Hollis was too weary to remind his stepbrother that this was no game.

  “Whoever they are, Rob, they probably have your father, too. They made up that infirmary story.”

  “I realize that,” he said. “I’m thinking.” He turned to look at Hollis. “Question: why did you come here? Why not go straight to Captain Quincy or get Marius to round up some people or—”

  “Because the crew was in on it,” Delia said.

  “Or at least they were dressed like crewmen,” Hollis said. “But either way, how do I know who to trust?”

  Rob shook his head in wonder. “You think this goes all the way to the top?”

  It sounded as if he wanted Hollis to say yes, so they could play at being Pinkertons unraveling a grand conspiracy.

  “Rob,” Delia said. She gave Hollis’s knee a little squeeze.

  “All I know right now,” Hollis said, “is that this whole trip has been wrong from the start. I keep getting these little glimpses into stuff I’m not supposed to see.” He rubbed his face. “Like my dreams last night,” Hollis continued, running on fumes, slipping into a welcome delirium. “The airship was a castle. The moon was fake. My father told me to swear to something, I’m not sure what, and then when I woke up, they took my mother away. I feel like I should have known, somehow.”

  Delia moved her hand from his knee to her lap and began to fuss with her bracelet. “It’s not your fault, Hollis.” She was looking at him so deeply, it brought him back to how everyone had treated him in the wake of his father’s accident. As if it were a contest to pick out the most sympathetic and understanding person. He turned away and watched Rob’s aggressive thinking, fingertips playing at invisible typewriter keys. Over his shoulder, the sky had brightened. Golden rays sliced through the dorm room, illuminating dust. Suddenly Rob stopped moving. He was looking outside.

  “Hey,” he said, “I think something’s wrong.”

  “Oh, now you do?” Hollis glared at Rob. His stepbrother always had to be the one to figure things out in front of Delia. “Were you listening to a word I just said? We have to…”

  What did they have to do, exactly? Tell someone powerful but unconnected to the crew, a first-class lawyer or doctor? Appeal to the second- and third-class passengers for help? Or was he just being paranoid, and he really should have gone to find Captain Quincy or another high-ranking officer?

  “I know—just get over here.” Rob beckoned, peering outside. They joined him at the window. The dawn had given way to a wispy morning, and the ship’s forward progress was measured by the clouds drifting past.

  “Tell me what you see,” Rob said.

  The view put Hollis in a trance. He felt like he could push open the window and dive out into fluffy white softness, buoyed along on a pillow of air.

  “What are we looking for?” Delia asked.

  Then the clouds parted unexpectedly, exposing a patch of earth below, and Hollis felt a little shiver of understanding.

  “We’re not over the ocean,” he said, pointing at the horizon. “That’s New York City over there.” Just before the clouds gathered to block the view, Delia and Hollis crowded the window to peer at the office towers of Manhattan, toy blocks in the distance.

  “Right,” Rob said. “We shouldn’t be able to see it. Which means sometime in the night, we turned. We’re flying due south.” He looked at Hollis. “Does that make any kind of sense?”

  “Okay,” Hollis said, not wanting to give Rob the satisfaction of discovery. “So we’re not following the flight plan exactly, but—”

  Rob snorted. “We seem to have completely ignored it.”

  The Wendell Dakota should have been headed east over New York, before flying straight across the Atlantic to the sky-dock in Southampton, on England’s southern coast. Captains filed their flight plans weeks in advance and obeyed them with strict precision. Hollis was certain that Quincy was not the type of man to test the uncrashability of the Wendell Dakota by violating a sacred flight plan.

  “Maybe there’s a good explanation,” Hollis said.

  Rob snorted again.
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br />   Hollis sensed they had reached the moment when a true leader would step up to propose a sensible course of action. He looked down at his tasseled shoes and tried to think.

  “Here.” Delia handed Hollis a thick leather-bound book, at least a thousand pages long. He studied the embossed lettering on the cover.

  “A dictionary?”

  “The room across the hall is empty,” she said. “Go open it in there.”

  Hollis hesitated, imagining some ingeniously accordioned homemade critter springing forth from the pages, making him shriek as Delia and Rob doubled over in laughter.

  “I’m not falling for this again. And now’s really not the time.”

  “It’s not that,” Delia said. “Trust me.”

  Hollis didn’t, but he retreated to the empty room anyway and sat on the bed with the book in his lap. He felt trapped in a highly suggestible state—happy to let Delia and Rob move him around, seat him in chairs, give him little tasks. This only made him more ashamed: there was no room at the top of Dakota Aeronautics for someone who lacked initiative in critical situations. Hollis had recently come to realize that thinking about thinking only led deeper into anxiety and hand-wringing. And yet he often found himself powerless to break the habit.

  Slowly, he lifted the dictionary’s cover to reveal a meticulously razored-out hollow the size of a large brick. It contained the telegraph key, two coils of wire, the battery, and two curious metal rods separated by a tiny gap. Carefully soldered wires snaked through the hollow, connecting each instrument in a circuit except for the telegraph sounder—a spool connected to a weighted lever—alone in the corner.

  “Um…,” Hollis said, examining the unfamiliar machine up close. It looked like a bomb. Maybe Rob was right: maybe Delia was an anarchist.

  Suddenly, the sounder began to click. Hollis almost flung the book onto the floor in surprise. From the other room, a series of loud, crispy sparks matched the clicks from the sounder bolted to his machine. He looked through the open door across the hall, where Delia was clicking the telegraph key on an identical contraption in her lap.