Uncrashable Dakota (4 page)

At the far edge of the factory grid, two spire-topped office buildings poked out above the smog.

“Eat them,” Hollis said to himself.

“Hmm?” His mother started, as if a switch had flicked her to life. “Are you hungry, Hollis?”

“No, I was just … never mind. Rob isn’t going to believe this when I tell him.”

“Suppose not,” his mother mumbled distractedly. She pressed her palms against the glass as if she were trying to urge the ship onward, faster and faster, with the strength of her bare hands.

THE HISTORY OF FLIGHT IN AMERICA

PART

ONE

ON THE DAY
he discovered the secret of flight, Hollis’s grandfather Samuel Dakota woke from yet another dream about food to find himself aching and soaked in sweat. He licked his dry lips and kept his eyes closed, trying to sink back into sleep to finish the strawberry-rhubarb pie his dream self had been enjoying. But in the distance, a trumpet bleated the call to march. The daily reality of war—stinking, humid, and dreary—snuffed out thoughts of flaky crust and gooey sweetness.

Samuel creaked up off the hard ground, his mind raging and boiling with curses against enemy Confederates, his fellow Union soldiers, this endless march through scorching Virginia countryside, Abe Lincoln, Jeff Davis, and most of all, the poisonous muck and stale hardtack that passed for food in the army. With furious resignation, he coiled his sleeping roll and rummaged in his knapsack for his itchy blue uniform shirt. Then, sliding his arms through the long sleeves, he managed to knock an uncorked whiskey bottle off the rock where he had set it the night before.

“Mighty fine work there, Dakota,” chided a pale, freckly soldier from the long column of men snaking wearily past. “Looks like you’re in for a thirsty march!” The soldier nudged the man next to him, who lit a droopy cigarette and chuckled, exhaling smoke.

Samuel stared dejectedly into the dirt as the last drops of his moonshine whiskey pooled between the gnarled roots of an ancient maple tree. He picked up the empty bottle. It wasn’t broken. He reckoned that maybe he could skim some whiskey from the top of the little pool, and it wouldn’t be too full of Virginia grit. He knelt and prepared to scoop, only to find that the whiskey had mixed with a sticky pile of sap that had been dripping from a knothole in the tree. Samuel’s heart sank as he watched the formation of a slimy amber sludge that looked about as appealing and thirst-quenching as the foam around a horse’s mouth. He set the bottle next to the puddle and sighed. It was time to finish packing and join his regiment, which would leave him behind in enemy country if he didn’t hurry. But then he noticed something peculiar: a black beetle about the size of his thumbnail had emerged from one of the maple tree’s huge, twisted roots. It was soon joined by several more, until the entire pool was ringed with beetles. Samuel peered in for a better look. The beetles were slurping the whiskey-drenched sap with tiny pincers that Samuel supposed were their ugly little mouths. Their stomach parts seemed to be inflating.

“Yick,” he said.

Then he gagged. A pungent stench that Samuel later described as “the rottenest egg rotting inside the rottenest onion on earth” wafted up from the thirsty beetles and into his nostrils. He jumped to his feet, coughing and sputtering, just in time to see the empty whiskey bottle float up past his face and clank hollowly against the underside of a branch.

He turned to see if any of his fellow soldiers were staring in disbelief, but the end of the blue column was headed away from camp. Samuel Dakota was alone. He looked up at the bottle, trapped in the branches. A single beetle—fat and round, full of sludgy whiskey-sap—was stuck in the center of its thick glass base. Samuel took a deep breath, pinched his nose shut, and stood on his tiptoes to study the insect.

No wings. The stinky little thing shouldn’t have been able to fly. But it had not only shot straight up into the branches of the tree, it had carried a big glass bottle with it. Maybe the whiskey-sap feast gave it a special brand of buoyant gas?

Samuel stepped back and thought about his situation. He didn’t know much about the customs and traditions of Southern people, and he knew less about the habits of Southern bugs. But he figured he was witnessing some kind of unusual spectacle nonetheless. He reached up and flicked the fat beetle away, catching the bottle as it fell. The smell was becoming unbearable.

Suddenly he felt a rumble beneath his feet. A massive root ripped itself up out of the ground, dripping whiskey-sap and shedding clumps of earth. All around him, the ancient roots of the maple tree were flinging themselves out of the dirt like angry tentacles. He scrambled back against his knapsack, scraping his elbow on the rock where the bottle had spent the night.

The gaseous beetles were lifting the entire tree.

He glanced behind him again, up and down the trampled dirt path. His regiment had moved on.

The maple tree hung suspended three feet off the ground, attached to the earth by a single stubborn root, until a few more fat beetles popped it free. As he watched the ancient maple float up into the sky, borne on the backs of drunken, flatulent beetles, he thought of the strawberry-rhubarb pie.

Fate had suddenly given him the chance to rid himself of army life—and army
food
—forever.

With a plan still forming in his mind, Samuel grabbed the empty bottle, filled it with whiskey-sap, and placed it carefully inside his knapsack. Then he rummaged until he found a round tin of hardtack bread, which he happily dumped out. Using the empty tin, he scooped up about two dozen beetles that hadn’t yet slurped the sludge and weren’t capable of floating away. He stowed the tin next to the bottle, shouldered his pack, and headed north, in the opposite direction from his regiment.

*   *   *

SAMUEL TRAVELED
mostly at night, eating the rest of his meager army rations and then existing on a wild pig he was lucky enough to catch. As a deserter,
all
territory was enemy territory. He was fair game for both enemy soldiers and Union military justice.

After a week of this tense and lonely journey, during which every distant shout and muffled report of cannon fire sent him diving into the bushes for cover, Samuel reached the outskirts of Washington, D.C. He had long since stripped off his blue coat, and before he entered the city, he smeared mud on his blue pants. Looking like a filthy vagabond was better than facing a firing squad.

He made his way down Pennsylvania Avenue, ignoring his gnawing hunger, until he reached the iron fence that surrounded the White House. He sauntered up to the gate and cleared his throat. The guard eyed Samuel with a distaste usually reserved for lepers and rebel prisoners. He looked at the mud caked on Samuel’s shoes, pants, shirt, arms, neck, and face. He sniffed the ripe odor that hung in the air between them. Then he simply glared without saying a word.

Samuel smiled. His grand scheme was the one thing that had sustained him throughout the wanderings of the past week.

“Greetings. I’m here to show President Lincoln how to win the war in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost. So if you’ll kindly send word inside, or just let me through…”

The guard maintained his glare.

Samuel gave a friendly nod. “No doubt he’s a very busy man. I would also accept an audience with the secretary of war.”

Silence.

“The undersecretary of war.”

The guard spat on the ground between them.

Samuel’s smile faltered. “The assistant to the undersecretary? The press secretary?” He thought quickly. “Mrs. Lincoln, perhaps?”

The guard raised his revolver. Samuel put up his hands.

“I see. Well then, if you could kindly get word to Mr. Lincoln that I stopped by. Name’s Dakota, like the territory.”

The guard cocked the hammer. Samuel backed away.

“Once again, I’ve got the answer to the Confederate problem, and I only need a minute or two for a
very
convincing demonstration.” He nodded professionally, as if this encounter had been a civilized exchange of ideas. “Thank you for your time.”

Samuel carried himself proudly through the bustling crowd until he was out of the guard’s sight. Then he turned to look back at the fence that surrounded the White House. It wasn’t very high. A new plan formed in his mind. He gazed beyond the fence at the upper floor of the White House, then sat on a bench to wait until dark.

*   *   *

THE NEXT DAY,
page twelve of the
Washington Evening Star
carried the brief mention of a curious incident: several pedestrians on a street near the White House reported a disturbance in the air above their heads.

“Man-shaped,” insisted a sober insurance clerk. “Flailing and yelling.”

“Tumbling about the sky like a monstrous idiot bird who forgot how to fly,” his wife elaborated.

“Rebel spies,” warned an old gentlemen. “Assassins. A secret weapon catapulted into the White House.”

The Metropolitan Police officer who took their statements saw no reason to trouble the White House guards with such a bizarre story. Even the witnesses themselves reluctantly admitted that they had no proof. The thing in the air had somersaulted into the night sky and disappeared.

Years later, they would all claim to have been present at the very first Dakota flight.

4

“
YOU’RE LYING
through your low-born teeth,” Rob said as he and Hollis sauntered down the wide corridor that delivered passengers to the largest and most elegantly appointed staterooms. This part of the ship’s interior was pleasantly hushed, lined with thick Egyptian carpet and oak paneling to muffle the whooshing bass hum of the propellers.

“No friends or family allowed on the bridge,” Rob continued, repeating the rule that Hollis’s father had established and that they both knew by heart. “Not even for a little peek.”

“Late birthday present,” Hollis said. “Sky Captain Quincy didn’t seem too happy, though.”

He decided not to mention the phone call. Ever since he’d changed out of his wilted suit in favor of crisp new slacks and a button-down shirt, he felt lighter and more carefree, and he wasn’t keen to ruin a bout of good feelings with some trivial bit of anxiety that wasn’t any of his business. Even his cumbersome schoolbooks were hardly an irritation, carried in a new leather satchel slung across his shoulder, along with the odds and ends that Delia had requested on their last day aboard the
Secret Wish.

“Old Quincy doesn’t know
how
to be happy,” Rob said. “It’s all that whale meat he grew up eating. It thickens the blood.”

“What does that have to do with being happy?”

“Practically everything, Dakota. So if I assume you’re telling me the truth, then you got to see the stabilizer?”

“Big time. And the ship’s wheel. It’s fake.”

“Good lord,” Rob said, eyes wide in mock horror. “You mean there’s no way to steer this monstrosity?”

As they passed room 12B, the door swung open. Out popped a little boy struggling to balance a formidable stack of textbooks, followed by his older sister. The Reynolds siblings—Arthur and Annabel—were the grandchildren of a Dakota board member who’d been steadily increasing his company shares since Hollis’s father was a teenager. Hollis was supposed to treat them with the utmost courtesy.

Without skipping a step, Rob slid the two books he’d been carrying against his hip onto Arthur’s pile.

“Hey!” The boy teetered dangerously.

“Give my regards to the Pea,” Rob said as he sprinted down the hall, shirttail flapping. Annabel turned her eyes accusingly to Hollis. This wasn’t the plan—they were still too close to their own stateroom, where the risk of running into a family steward was high. They had agreed to wait until they’d moved farther aft, past the first-class smoking lounge, before making their move.

“Really, Hollis,” Annabel said, pulling the two books from her little brother’s collection and steadying the boy with a gentle hand on his head. She regarded the lurid covers with disapproval. “These aren’t even for school.”

Hollis took Rob’s books—
Air Pirates!
and
All-True Pinkerton Files
—with a twinge of embarrassment that caught him by surprise. “They’re not mine,” he mumbled, stuffing them in his satchel.

“Why don’t you offer to help Arthur with his books until we get to class,” Annabel suggested slowly, as if English wasn’t his strong suit.

Arthur peered up at Hollis, eager eyes magnified by thick glasses.

“Maybe next time, Arthur.”

Annabel shook her head. “You used to be decent.” She turned to lead her brother away, and Hollis was gone, careening around corners and bounding down stairs, chasing Rob deep into the belly of the airship.

*   *   *

DELIA COSGROVE
was apprenticed to Big Benny Owens, Dakota Aeronautics’ chief beetle keeper. Beetle keeping took a long time to learn because it was such a precise skill: one mistake, and the
Wendell Dakota
could tilt dangerously in the air, even flip over. Release too many beetles at once, and the ship could share the infamous fate of Hollis’s grandfather, although it was hard to imagine a ship as big as a city vanishing somewhere high above the charted sky.

Delia bunked in her own room in the keepers’ dormitory, a warren of low-ceilinged cabins squashed between the third-class deck and the lift chambers. Aspects of a working airship that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else were deposited here. Searching for the dormitory, a visitor might happen upon the steel siding of an auxiliary freshwater tank or the empty closet labeled
DEAD LETTER DEPARTMENT
. The passageways were dim, the sounds perpetually distant and hard to place. Reverberations seemed to come from within, bodily shiftings and inner clanks echoing from impossible corridors. There was no ornamentation. This was an eerie place on any ship, but on the
Wendell Dakota
, it had the added distinction of feeling endless. How long since they’d passed the cramped third-class bedrooms and smoky cafeterias already filled with men in their shirtsleeves? As they moved along, encountering no one, Hollis felt unmoored from the laws that governed hallways and footsteps. It was as if he’d been relocated onto another ship entirely—perhaps the
Lucy Dakota
. By the time they reached Delia’s door, their conversation had long since evaporated into irregular gulps of air.