by Jeff Wheeler
“Boys being boys, I figured he would eventually trade his passion for dragons for something else, perhaps cricket or rowing. As a lawyer, I held out hope for Blackstone. In the autumn of 1830, though, when Cassaway was twelve, he spotted a notice in the Evening Post for an exhibition of paintings called ‘The Catskill Dragon,’ and he insisted I take him. I could not have realized as we set out that our attendance would mark the start of his celebrated career.
“As you could expect, I may have taken him, but he led the expedition. In sheet rubber boots fresh from England, he summoned a cab that took us to Bond Street, where we switched to the new omnibus. The cab would have gotten us to the Battery more quickly, but Cassaway had not taken the omnibus yet, and that situation was intolerable.
“You would have seen the man in the boy already when the driver ignored his hail and Cassaway grabbed one of the horse’s collars. He then argued, successfully, that the driver should halve our fare because his overcrowded carriage only afforded us each half a seat. As his initial investor, I appreciated my son’s economy, paid the driver, and pushed in behind him.
“During the rickety trip down Broadway, Cassaway told me the story he hoped was behind the exhibition:
“‘In 1753, west of Hurley, New York, which is west of Kingston, the Vanderberg clan lived high in what they still called the Blue Mountains. As they had since Hurley was known as Neiu Dorp, they trapped, hunted, and kept to themselves. On the 2nd of September, a trader stopped at their settlement and bought several pelts. On the 14th, returning from Albany, the trader stopped there again. This time he found the settlement destroyed. Most of the cottages and barns had been burned along with the surrounding trees. The rest had been ripped apart as if by a tornado. The stock was gone, except for the chickens, which didn’t know any better. And scattered around the settlement lay the largely devoured bodies of the Vanderbergs.
“‘The next day, having awoken in the woods, Gerd Vanderberg wandered into Hurley. She was ten, covered in blood, and the only survivor. The townsfolk pressed her about the massacre, but the girl recalled nothing of the eleven days between the trader’s visits, as if they had never happened.’
“Some in Hurley said the clan had turned on itself. Others blamed catamounts or the Esopus Indians, who’d burned Hurley a century earlier, even though both had become rare in the region. To Cassaway, and the collection of Knickerbocker mysteries where he had read the story, the cause was obvious: a dragon.
“If that were not enough to excite him about the exhibition, the painter was one Gerd Vanderberg.
“‘Could it be the same one?’ he said as we reached the Battery. ‘Has she retrieved her memories and depicted the terrible events, including an actual dragon?’ Cassaway told me that none had been sighted in the New World since Spanish clerics reported their being attacked by feathered wyrms in Mexico. Like his readers later, I found myself captivated, however extraordinary his facts.
“The gallery was in the basement of a disreputable building scorched by the Great Fire. Cassaway loved this. He felt nothing interesting ever happened in anything new, and he leaped down the stairs, howling with delight. A moment later, I found my son pacing the gallery, dismayed.
“The paintings depicted the Catskills’ ferocious landscape, and I would have judged them crude examples of the Hudson River School were they any less strange. I had traveled in that rain-soaked region, so I noticed the absence of moss on the artist’s boulders and tree trunks. Then I noted her meadows had no grass. Instead, bright flowers floated whimsically above rocky soil while berries danced about bushes with bare limbs. Indeed, no tree, even the evergreens, had leaves, except in the paintings set during autumn. In these, splotches of orange and red, yellow and brown swarmed naked branches, as if the leaves were appearing from thin air, not from their stems.
“Cassaway said, ‘Where’s the dragon?’
“I said, ‘Where’s the color green?’
“‘That’s the same question,’ the proprietor said, emerging from the back room. ‘Much of the world is not in what we see, sir, but in what we don’t.’
“Cassaway said, ‘I don’t understand.’
“The proprietor, an elderly man named Sam van Buren, explained. He was a painter himself, and he had gone to Hurley in June to find some picturesque vistas. Two of Gerd’s paintings were hanging in the inn, and when he admired them, the townsfolk quickly produced the rest for sale and told him about the Vanderbergs.
“After the massacre, they told van Buren, Gerd had seen the world in an increasingly fanciful light. ‘Everything floats until it falls,’ she would say, and, ‘Corn’s a flame without a candle.’ At some point, the girl had been encouraged to paint as a mental coolant, which exposed her native talent—and that not only couldn’t she see the color green, objects that were green did not exist for her.
“Van Buren said that whatever killed her family must have scared the green right out of her, and what surpasses the fearful greenness of a dragon? To him, Gerd’s landscapes were more sublime than those by trained artists because hers revealed the dragon in the visible creation by making that awful work of God invisible.
“A beautiful notion, I thought, but Cassaway, who had to see everything, would have none of it.
“‘It’s a cheat!’ he said. ‘A dirty cheat. There are dragons out there, and I’ll find them. I’ll bring them back. I’ll show them to the world.’
“Which, as you know, he did. The St. Louis Blue. A Mountain Silver. The Pacific Worm. All and more were considered fabulous before he installed them here in the Central Park Zoo.
Cassaway loved this place. He would not have traded it for anything. Nor would I. Before he left for the Vanderberg settlement last March, he asked me whether I regretted taking him to van Buren’s exhibition because it had inspired him to face so much danger. I said no. His passion for dragons might cost him his life, but it also gave him a life worth living.
“Instead I regret that he could not give us the memorial he wanted most—an occupant for that empty enclosure at the end.
“It has been assumed that on his last expedition, the Catskill Green must have seen Cassaway before he saw it. Me, I believe my son is still out there, he is still on the hunt, and one day he will return from the mountains to laugh at the prematurity of this plaque and to display his longest-sought quarry. That day cannot come soon enough. My world is colorless without him.”
* * *
A.P. to Zenger File
September the 11th, 1863
Private. Not for Distribution.
Cassaway Zenger began his first book, “One must set down the facts, however extraordinary.” One must also set down his debts, I think, and his lies to keep them straight.
Cassaway’s father, Wykoff, lives in a neat white house in Hamilton Square on the east side of Manhattan. Not wanting to leave my card at his home, I waited for him this afternoon at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 66th Street, which he would likely pass while returning from the dedication of Cassaway’s plaque.
I had my copy of The St. Louis Blue with its engraving of his father, but I knew Zenger instantly from seeing the boy in the man. Cassaway walked with that same rolling confidence. His eyes penetrated as deeply. And no one was beneath his courtesy, although grief constricted the smile Zenger offered every passing lady. He’d make a fine detective, I thought.
His walking straight to me and asking my business confirmed my opinion—and my fear that two years spent behind a desk in Washington and rebel lines in Virginia had blunted my street craft. I should have hidden his son’s book in my pocket.
To allay his suspicion that I was a grasping fanatic, I introduced myself as Maj. E.J. Allen and said I’d had the honor of accompanying Cassaway to the Vanderberg settlement in March. This only made Zenger more wary, because his son had told him, according to my instructions, that he was going to the Catskills alone in order to avoid making a spectacle of the expedition. When I said I had news about his son, however, hope ove
rruled his fears, and Zenger invited me to his home.
In his library he served a fine Scotch whisky in recognition of my brogue and his loss, then I told him the expedition had not been Cassaway’s idea. It had been Lincoln’s.
The president, I said, had reasoned that Antietam would not be the last battle fought on Union soil and he’d need greater weapons than a general who either wouldn’t fight or, having fought, wouldn’t pursue. What he required was a dragon, so last February I’d summoned Cassaway to a secret meeting at the White House.
Zenger was proud of his son for saying he’d never use the zoo’s creatures as monstrous machines. The president agreed with Cassaway, though. “They’re just exotic pets,” Lincoln said. He preferred a wild dragon, “a storm to flood the field with terror and drown the rebels in flames.” The Catskill Green, if found, could be brought to Otsego Lake and barged down the Susquehanna into central Pennsylvania, where the war would likely come (and did in July). Cassaway continued to refuse to help until Lincoln showed him the pictures from Antietam that Brady hadn’t exhibited, the ones I’d confiscated because they depict soldiers burned and devoured. “The rebels have a dragon,” Cassaway said, and promptly pledged his aid. “Fire with fire,” he added.
I told Zenger that five soldiers—actually, my agents—went with us to the settlement, the center of many disappearances and possible dragon sightings over the past two centuries. The region’s more settled now, many of the mountains scarred where timber was felled or bluestone quarried, but the Vanderbergs’ mountain remains savage, full of shadows and queer sounds. Tumbled stone walls surround the settlement, crumbling chimneys watch over it, and, strangely, no trees grow there. A hunter’s trail runs through it from Hurley.
While one of my agents, Blass, scouted farther up the trail, Cassaway stood on a stump and oriented himself with the help of a map he’d drawn in his little green notebook. Having already found nothing in the potential lairs nearby, he’d marked a few spots from which a dragon might have flown, provided the Green had wings. A moment later, my agent screamed.
We found him in an abandoned well, which Blass had found by leaving the path to relieve himself in the brush. Fortunately, the shaft had collapsed, and he was only twenty feet down with a sharp pain in his foot. We hauled Blass up with a rope and discovered a dragon’s fang had been driven through his boot.
Cassaway suspected that the creature had gotten stuck in the shaft, perhaps by a belly full of Vanderbergs, and died. He wanted the remains, which were packed with dirt, so we lowered him to inspect them. In his excitement, he failed to notice that Blass’s fall had largely dislodged the body. Under Cassaway’s weight it broke free. The rope was jerked from our grasp, and the shaft, unsupported by the clot, did collapse, and Cassaway disappeared into the earth. Every effort we made to recover him failed.
Zenger nodded and poured us both another dram. “Cassaway died doing what he loved,” he said. We reflected silently, then Zenger smiled and related several wonderful stories his son had not included in his books or lectures. I hope I’m so well eulogized.
When Zenger showed me to the door, I confessed that I had had no authority to speak with him, given our mission’s secrecy; nevertheless, I owed it to Cassaway to tell him what had happened. Zenger said, “You honor me, sir, and him. Thank you.”
Would he have thanked me knowing how I’d lied to him, just as I had to Lincoln?
Blass didn’t fall into the well. He was dragged. From the trail, we saw a pale, hairless arm reach up through the loam behind him. An impossibly long hand with even longer claws grabbed his ankles, squeezed them together, and yanked Blass waist-deep into the ground. Cassaway dived at the scrabbling man as another claw rose to clutch the agent’s pack. Cassaway caught one of Blass’s wrists, but the claws tore him away, and Blass was swallowed by a maelstrom of collapsing leaves.
“Those were no dragon’s claws,” Cassaway said. “They were more like a girl’s made monstrous.”
He crawled to the now-exposed shaft, stuck his head in, and said he heard the agent screaming. He called for rope to lower him.
I said I’d go; the agent was my man. Cassaway said, “Yes, but I led him here.”
He descended with a lantern and his dirk. We unspooled all two hundred feet of our rope. The lantern became a spark. Cassaway yelled, “I see the bottom.” Then the rope jerked and stretched. Cassaway yelled. We started reeling in, but the rope snapped. The lantern went out. My calls went unanswered.
We drew up the rope. It had been slashed.
What rope we had left wouldn’t have reached bottom, so we spent the day with our rifles leveled at the hole. I’d have sent a man to Hurley for more rope, but that could’ve compromised our mission. Others would’ve come back to help, news would have spread, and my being there with Cassaway might have signaled to the rebels we wanted a dragon for the war. These frogs may have given the nation a president, but they also feed the Copperheads.
Near dusk, my courage snapped. We walked to the village of Hurley, unwilling to spend a night on the mountain.
Around the inn by lamplight, the villagers hawked dragon gimcracks, shoddy copies of Cassaway’s books, and cards reproducing Vanderberg’s paintings. I asked the ancient book dealer whether the creature had been spotted recently, and a slattern sprawled miraculous on the porch called me a fool. “The stories,” she slurred, “were meant to lure us Reubens to Hurley and get us to buy their goods.” There was nothing on that mountain. She didn’t think there’d even been a massacre, certainly no Gerd Vanderberg. I’d have questioned her further, but sharp looks from the villagers and a blow from the book dealer’s stick sent her staggering away.
I saw what I saw, though, dragon or not, and if the war hadn’t intervened, I’d have already torn the mountain asunder to find it. I will in time. I owe Cassaway that as well, having doctored Brady’s photos to lure him there.
* * *
Hurley Village, N.Y.
Friday, March 20th, 1863
My Dearest Brother Broos,
I’m sorry I haven’t written for a week, and please forgive my shaky hand. I’m in a bad state, and now I have little time. I think they’re going to take me up the mountain soon.
I’m not sorry for speaking to that Reuben. I know I should have kept my mouth shut. I know we need the Reubens. If it’s not one of them, it has to be one of us. Old Sam’s told me that more times than I deserve. It shouldn’t be anyone, though, and when I saw that Reuben outside the Bridge House asking about the dragon, I couldn’t stop myself, even with Old Sam right there listening. He ran me off, and now through my window I can see him coming down the street to speak with Moe.
It won’t be like when I took you up. Moe was so proud of you. When she tossed you in the air, you looked like an angel in your whites. When she helped me into my greens, she nearly hugged me. She held my hands before slipping on the gloves, and she smiled a bit while putting on the hood. I still felt like a fat bean. I wish I’d been as tiny as Moe and Groot were at that age. I spent half the walk worried I’d burst and humiliate Moe. I wonder if I’ll get whites or have to wear this filthy dress. If I do, I doubt Moe will help me put them on.
She’ll say, I bet you’d like to change places with a Reuben now, Muil. And when I break down and say yes, she’ll call me a willful fool and say nothing can be done about it. She’ll be happy, too. Moe doesn’t like Old Sam gulling the Reubens to go up any more than I do, but that’s because she believes it must be one of us that’s taken.
She fears Old Sam’s broken the bargain already. Some days, Moe says the savages are coming and they’ll burn Hurley again. Other days, she says the Redcoats won’t spare us this time, and they’ll burn Hurley the way they did Kingston. I tell her there aren’t any Esopus left in the county, and the British are decades gone too, so on those days she says it’s the southern traitors that’ll sneak through Pennsylvania and burn us in our sleep.
So I can’t count on her defending me to Old Sam, nor could I
defend myself. He wouldn’t let me blame the drink. Or my willfulness. Or Mr. Zenger for telling me the last time he passed through that, yes, the truth must out, however extraordinary. It was all of those things, though, Broos. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had the strength to say a word. And now I’m sure they’ll take me up the mountain for it. Old Sam is speaking low and steady to Moe downstairs. That’s never a hopeful thing.
I expect he’ll tell Moe that he’ll take me up, then she’ll say, No, Sanne’s my daughter; I let her stray, so I will. Decrepit as Moe is, she’s been itching to put on her greens again. She keeps them folded and fresh in the cedar chest. She’d never pass up a chance to show our neighbors how things used to be done. Once the Reubens started going up, they forgot their roles and what it meant for one of us to be taken.
She’ll march me over the bridge to join them at the apple tree where Taylor was lately hanged as a spy. I don’t imagine she’ll lift my hood and kiss me the way you did, and our neighbors won’t wrap themselves around us. They’ll be relieved. No one will thank me, and they’ll put me out of mind afterward.
I’m scared already, Broos. I wish you were here. I’ve never seen anyone be as brave as you. You didn’t hold my hand when I took you up. You let me hold yours. All the way, you sang your little songs. In een groen-groen-groen-groen knollen-knollen-land, daar zaten twee haasjes. Near the top, you said, “Don’t worry, Sanne. Everything will be glorious, then everyone will be safe.” I nearly cried. I would now if Old Sam and Moe wouldn’t hear me.
When we get to the old house, Moe will prop me on the stump where you sat, then wait for me to disappoint her the way I have my whole life. I hope I do. I hope my taking is quick and boring and inglorious, and I hope she comes off the mountain feeling empty and frustrated, not because I’m being taken, but because of what she said after you were.
I came off the mountain and rushed into the circle of our neighbors. I wanted to scream at everyone. I wanted to call them monsters. Then Moe stepped toward me. She seemed clothed in the sun from all the lanterns, and she held out her arms. I flew to her. I couldn’t help it. I squeezed her, smelled her, and laughed louder than I ever had. I said, “I know what living’s like now, Moe. Thank you for choosing me.”
