by Darryl Brock
In the morning Twain showed us plans for his automatic typesetter, a huge, cumbersome machine that I knew he would invest heavily in and as a result nearly ruin the family’s finances.
“This is the career for you, lad,” he told Tim. “Our factory will be set up within the year. Once the kinks are smoothed, it’ll sell faster than greased flapjacks. We’ll be on the lookout for young go-getters to pitch sales.”
“Those aren’t the pitches he has in mind,” I said. “Tim’s set on being a ballplayer.”
“Mercenaries!” Twain barked. “Not like in your day, Sam.” He ignored my warning look. “The league’s a done-up job.”
“You didn’t talk like this last time.”
“Boston’s walloped our boys four more times since then,” he said. “I’ve come to see that the sporting chance of the thing is used up. Last week they came in and cleaned us out again, 7-0.”
“Andy was here last week?” Tim said wistfully.
I explained that we were headed for Boston.
“In that case,” Twain said, “since you’re only here for the day, I’ve got a scheme for you. This afternoon’s the last chance for Professor Donaldson’s aerial show here at Barnum’s circus. I paid an emperor’s ransom to go up in his balloon, but I’ve got a deadline with Blish, my confounded publisher, and can’t get out of it. You two can go in my place.”
“Whoa, I don’t think—” I began.
“Could we?” Tim blurted.
We’d read plenty about this Donaldson in the papers. The man was a maniac, a former trapeze performer who’d made a name by dangling in tights beneath the basket of his balloon. Later he’d tried to pilot one of the primitive gasbags clear across the Atlantic, and recently he’d settled in with Barnum for an astronomical twenty thousand dollars a year—the amount, I supposed, he figured his life was worth.
“No way,” I said flatly.
“Aw, Sam!”
“Maybe we could all just walk down to Brown’s Lot,” Twain said soothingly, “where Barnum’s is set up. You could take in today’s Hippodrome show and at least say hello to the aeronaut.”
“Please?” Tim implored.
“Okay,” I agreed. “But only for the circus show—nothing else.”
GREAT ROMAN HIPPODROME!
THE POMP AND GLORY OF CAESAR’S ERA!
A THOUSAND YEARS ON DISPLAY IN THE CONGRESS
OF NATIONS!
200 GILT AND SILVER BESPRINKLED CHARIOTS!
1000 SUITS OF SOLID SILVER AND JEWELED ARMOR!
HERDS OF EQUINES AND ELEPHANTS!
DROVES OF DROMEDARIES AND BISONS!
LADIES’ LILLIPUTIAN PONY RACE!
And so on.
The pennant-topped tents stretched over ten acres. Tim stopped before a flamboyant billboard that proclaimed:
Whenever gas can be procured, PROF. W.H. DONALDSON,
whose CLOUD LAND VOYAGES have made him world
famous, will make a BALLOON ASCENSION in the air ship
P.T. BARNUM in the interest of the SCIENCE of AEROLOGY!
Twain asked Donaldson’s whereabouts and we were directed to a far corner of the lot.
“That’s him.” Twain pointed to a short, dapper man with curly black hair, a sunburnt face, and a mustache with waxed ends. He vaguely reminded me of Charlie Chaplin. With deft movements he was removing folds of heavy varnished fabric from a packing crate.
“Hi, Mark!” said Donaldson. “You’re a mite early. I’m about to connect to the city’s line; we’ll be inflated and ready to go after the first Hippodrome show.”
Twain explained the situation.
“Can I go?” Tim begged. “You don’t have to if you’re scared, Sam.”
The kid was playing dirty.
“It’s as safe as being on the river,” Twain offered.
Thanks a lot, I thought.
“Don’t be such a sour ass,” a gruff voice said behind me.
Annoyed, I spun around. Nobody was there.
“Give the lad his chance!” another voice said.
I turned and found only a grinning Twain, who hooked a thumb at Donaldson and said, “Ventriloquist.”
“At your service,” Donaldson said in his own voice, and extended his hand. “No harm intended.”
We watched him remove the rest of the balloon bag—the “aerostat,” he called it—and fit a gas hose to its neck. He tightened clamps at the top, opened a valve, and the varnished mass slowly began to fill.
“Helium’s ideal but too costly, and P.T.’s a cheapskate,” Donaldson said. “Hydrogen’s the lightest and gives 70 percent more lift than this common illuminating gas. But then more ballast is required, and it’s also very combustible.” Seeing my expression, he added, “Don’t worry, she’s safe as anything made today.”
Exactly the problem.
“Day after tomorrow I’ll be soaring hundreds of miles over Lake Michigan.” He smiled. “Maybe you’d rather the boy went on that trip.”
“Wow, Sam!”
“Not really.”
“Today’s a promotion, so we’ll stay below a thousand feet.” He noted the mild breeze with an approving smile. “Conditions couldn’t be better.”
Tim took a stance directly before me, hands on hips.
The breeze gusted and Donaldson’s roustabouts grabbed the anchor lines. “Cinch those!” he ordered. Then, to us, “I need more ballast. You and the boy would be perfect.”
“C’mon, Sam!” said Tim.
“Look, your mother wouldn’t—”
“She isn’t here,” he interrupted, and turned to Donaldson. “I’ll go. Can we get somebody else?”
“Without a doubt.” Donaldson smiled again. “Somebody who’ll pay handsomely for the privilege.”
Twain’s chuckle added to my irritation. I was in a tough place. I didn’t like heights in the best of times; even commercial jetliners made me nervous. But if I pulled rank on Tim, he’d see me as just one more adult to avoid. On the other hand, if he went up without me and something happened, what could I say to Cait?
“Just straight up and then straight down, right?”
“A bit more.” Donaldson seemed to be trying to hide his amusement. “But basically so.”
“Hurray, Sam!”
Music sounded in the distance and we saw columns of musicians in bright uniforms moving toward the entrance.
“Enjoy the show,” Donaldson told us. “Come out a little ahead of the crowd, and we’ll lift off then.”
I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to this.
The wild animal acts were Tim’s favorite. He also enjoyed the frantic equine races around the big oval track, and “Sports of Ancient Greece and Rome,” but his attention flagged during “A Chinese Ballet Divertissement.” However, when aerial performers began flying above us, his eyes remained riveted on one Mlle. D’Atalie, a curvy little thing. Nobody remotely like her was to be seen in O’Neill City.
We left halfway through the Grande Finale. The balloon, with P.T. Barnum now visible on it in huge blue letters, tugged at its ropes. The breeze was kicking up stronger now. So were my nerves.
“Fifty thousand cubic foot capacity!” Donaldson’s voice boomed out over a growing throng. “Can make aerial voyages of four hundred miles with ease!” He gestured to us. “These are today’s intrepid voyagers.”
Not a happy adjective choice.
Donaldson steadied a small ladder for us as we climbed into the basket. I didn’t like the sensation of it swaying under my feet. “Whatever you do, don’t pull on that.” He pointed to a control line from the bag that was painted bright red. “It releases the ripping panel.”
“Right,” Tim said smartly while I nodded.
As if we had a clue.
The rim of the basket, properly called the “gondola” or “car,” held a grappling iron, a map board, and several primitive instruments that Donaldson identified for us: a barometer that registered altitude; and a statoscope that indicated rates of ascent or descent. He
told us that in earlier years aeronauts tossed out bits of paper to see if they were rising or falling.
“They couldn’t tell?” I said incredulously.
“Not so easy in the clouds,” he replied. “Or at night.”
“Doesn’t the movement tell you?”
He smiled. “Wait and see.”
A wave-like ripple traveled leisurely over the fabric.
“Is this inflated enough?” I demanded.
“Around three miles up,” Donaldson said, “gas doubles in volume. At five to six miles it triples.”
“We’re going up six miles?” Tim asked eagerly.
“Not at all,” Donaldson said. “My point is merely that gas expands in thinner air. Inflate the aerostat to capacity now and gas would be forced out of the neck”—he pointed to a tapered, trunk-like appendage overhead—“directly down upon us.”
“And if you close off the neck?” Tim said.
“The aerostat explodes.” Donaldson spread his hands casually to indicate a massive outburst.
Wonderful, I thought.
“We’ll weigh off now.” He motioned to the roustabouts, who began freeing the anchor ropes, then he emptied sand from one of the ballast bags until we rose slightly. “That ought to do it. Forty-four pounds. Light wind. We’ll have a nice easy lift.”
A gust tilted us sideways as we began to rise. I braced a foot on the gondola wall and clutched at ropes leading to the suspension hoop.
“Stay seated,” Donaldson said calmly.
Tim let out a “Whee!” as we straightened and rose faster. I closed my eyes, which was worse, then tried peering cautiously over the side. Barnum’s giant tents were shrinking. The surrounding grid of streets and houses began to resemble a planner’s model.
“How do you steer it?” Tim asked.
“You can try swaying or leaning,” Donaldson joked. “But in truth, we go where the wind carries us. It’s the joy of ballooning.”
“Look, you said this was an ascension, nothing more.” I looked nervously over the side as far as I dared. “Where are the ropes for pulling us down?”
Donaldson pointed to thick coils of Manila hemp lying on the gondola’s perimeter. “This guide line is three hundred feet long and weighs 150 pounds. Anything more and we’d go nowhere. Mr. Clemens didn’t pay simply to stay anchored above the ground. You want actual flight, don’t you?” Ignoring my head-shaking, he said, “The simple truth is that we’d be more wind-tossed if we were anchored. This way, we sail easily.”
Thousands have done this and survived, I told myself. But was it true for 1875? “Okay, how do we get back?”
“Leave it to me.” He waved a hand grandly. “Isn’t this majestic? It’s so still that we could light a candle and it wouldn’t be extinguished.”
He was right. There was no detectable wind, no rush of air. The resulting hush did carry a sort of majesty. I heard a dog bark down below, then saw ant-sized people waving and hallooing to us, their shouts rising clearly. I could even hear the muted rumble of a cart’s iron wheels.
“Very little up here to obstruct sound.” Donaldson leaned back and said in a rhapsodic tone, “At night it’s splendid to gaze at the moon to the music of rivers and streams below.”
Rustlings of fabric and creakings of wicker grew louder. “Jesus,” I breathed as currents suddenly swept us in spirals, the gondola lurching and swaying.
“We rise faster as the air thins,” Donaldson explained, leaning over the opposite side, working calmly at the coils of the guide rope as if we weren’t being buffeted. “And winds are often stronger.”
“What happens if we just keep climbing?” Tim looked a shade paler.
“Several aeronauts did that in ’62.” Donaldson might have been describing a science project. “Ascended upwards of thirty thousand feet and came down an interesting shade of blue.”
“Dead?” Tim’s eyes were wide.
“Oh, decidedly.” Donaldson laughed. “In the higher regions you soon asphyxiate from lack of oxygen.” He fed the heavy rope over the side, and soon the spiraling and lurching eased. “We won’t be ascending much now.” He tugged on a line and we drifted downward some fifty feet.
“What’d you do?” Tim asked.
“Opened the clapper,” Donaldson said. “Released gas up on top. With less gas volume, the air pushes us down.”
I looked behind us and could barely make out Hartford’s distant spires. “How do we get back to Barnum’s?”
“My men will fetch us.” Donaldson let out the last of the rope and gave the gas-valve line another tug. We settled to about three hundred feet, and there we stayed, the guide rope slowing and steadying us. “Better?”
“Much,” I said.
As we sailed along, he told us of landing in a field he thought vacant and barely escaping the horns of a pissed-off bull; of being pursued by angry farm women into whose apple butter makings he’d accidentally dumped ballast sand; of presiding over a wedding in his gondola above fifty thousand people gathered at Barnum’s Hippodrome.
He looked at me. “Are you married, Mr. Fowler?”
I checked myself before saying “divorced.” Tim didn’t need to know about that.
“An aerial nuptial,” Donaldson said, “would be something to tell your children about.”
“I’ll consider it.”
Tim asked if he could steer. Ignoring my objections, Donaldson let him take the controls. Tim promptly let out too much gas and we began sinking. He overcorrected by pouring out too much ballast. We shot up again. Donaldson took over, handling the valve rope adroitly; between it and the heavy trailing rope we stayed on an even keel.
“It’s harder than it looks,” Tim admitted.
The wind grew stronger as the afternoon waned.
“Time to land.” Donaldson peered downward. “We’re on our track. The crew will have no trouble finding us, even if we overshoot our field.”
“Overshoot?” I echoed.
He pointed to the ballast bags. “Pour slowly and evenly if I call for it.” He opened the gas valve and we tilted down toward a patch of open ground that looked considerably un-fieldlike and more like a series of rocky outcroppings. It seemed to me that the wind was carrying us too fast. A man dodged between the outcroppings in pursuit of the ground rope. He grabbed it but was knocked flat, dragged, and lost his grip. Now there was no doubt we were going too fast—and straight toward a row of tall trees.
Donaldson calmly freed the guide rope from the gondola. It serpentined to the ground and we rose so abruptly that my stomach sank toward my shoes. Whistling blithely, Donaldson eyed the approaching trees. It seemed that we might just clear their spiny tips. Then a downdraft gripped us. “Pour,” he said calmly. “Steady on,” he added when I nearly emptied my bag in one thrust.
It didn’t seem to make much difference. We slid down toward the trees. “Another bag!” Donaldson didn’t sound quite so chipper. Seeing Tim’s face going pale, I cursed myself for getting us into this madness.
“There’s a narrow spot where we can set down just past the trees,” Donaldson said. “But we don’t want to be carried farther.” He pointed to the two remaining ballast bags. “The instant I say so, heave them down. There’s no room for misjudgment.”
We nodded tensely.
“Otherwise,” he went on with a trace of his usual sang-froid, “we may spend the night aloft after all.”
Very funny. I knew we were about to crash and die.
A lot of things happened at once. The trees—towering dark poplars—rose up at us and suddenly we were not above them but among them. “Heave!” Donaldson yelled. Our adrenaline pumping, we flung the twenty-two pound bags into space as if they were baseballs. A branch whacked the gondola and brought a grunt from Donaldson. We seemed to shoot straight up the face of a giant tree. Tipped at a radical slant, I looked down and saw that somehow we’d leap-frogged the tree row and were directly over a clearing.
“That’s our spot, boys!” Donaldson pulle
d hard to release gas. We began to sink, but too slowly without the sandbags. He knotted a line to the grappling hook and threw it overboard. It didn’t seem to have any effect. “On impact,” he commanded, grabbing the red line he’d warned us not to pull on, “try to roll forward and clear of the gondola.”
On impact, I thought. In a damn tree?
“Sam …” Tim was shaking with fear.
I put my arm around him. “We’ll make it,” I said, doubting it.
Donaldson yanked the red line. The earth rushed up. I said a prayer and tried to concentrate on rolling forward. Fat chance. The gondola tilted back at the last second, and we sprawled on our butts as the wicker hit with a jolting thud, bounced, went airborne briefly, hit again and slid along the ground. Tim and I spilled out ignominiously, head over ass. I came to a stop against a boulder and saw Donaldson still gripping the suspension hoop with both hands, then with a nimble move come vaulting over the basket to land on his feet beside me.
“Well done, gentlemen.” He stepped clear of the bag as it sagged over us. “The ripping panel’s a marvel, don’t you agree?”
We crawled out from under the fabric, our clothes covered with dirt and burrs.
“That’s your idea of a landing?” I demanded.
“Every set-down is a controlled accident,” he said, grinning. “Adds zest to the adventure.”
Zest, my ass. I walked over to the nearest tree and peed, a nervous reaction—it always used to happen before boxing matches—and became aware of Tim standing beside me, doing likewise.
“I thought we were done for,” he said huskily.
“Me too.” I buttoned my pants, aware that I was feeling a sort of high. Nothing better than good old solid ground. “Damn good to be alive isn’t it?”
His response surprised me. “Andy will want me to stay with him, won’t he?”
“Sure.” Fine time to be wondering that, I thought. “I imagine he’ll be tickled.”
Tim nodded, as if wanting to believe it, and said he hoped that would be the case.
