Four soldiers grab the professor, one for each limb. Not that he’s fighting them. The professor looks disappointed in the poor captain but he don’t struggle as they slip irons around his wrists and ankles.
“My dear captain, there has been a mistake. I freely confess to selling elixir to the troops. You have me there, fair and square. I further admit that what I call ‘elixir’ is really whiskey with a little flavoring of red clover cough syrup. But never would I betray my country. Not for a million in gold!”
The captain narrows his hawk eyes, looking crafty. “I believe you, sir. That you would not willingly betray your country. You have that air about you. But the truth is, your country is the Confederacy, and therefore you are a spy and a traitor and will pay the price.”
“That’s a lie! Bring me a Bible and I will swear upon it!”
The captain smiles and leans in, his sharp little chin not an inch from the professor’s yellow mustache. “I am not so easily persuaded. It is well known that men who swear lying oaths upon the Bible believe that God is on their side, and will protect them despite the lie. But God Almighty will not answer in this instance. We have you dead to rights, Mr. Crockett. You are well known in Virginia as a staunch advocate of the southern rebellion, and Union spy catchers have been on your trail for months.”
The professor looks puzzled. “Crockett? Who is this Crockett you refer to? My name is Fleabottom. You have mistaken me for another man!”
“That is your defense? Mistaken identity?”
“My defense is that I am innocent,” the professor protests. “What exactly is it that you think I have done?”
The captain stands back, readjusting his white leather gloves. “Do you deny that you have been making inquiries about the movement of troops?”
“Of course I deny it! An absurd idea. I’d never — oh, wait a moment! Oh, yes. That has to be it! I know what has happened, and why you have been deceived.” The professor is smiling now, looking much relieved. “It’s the boy! Over there, the small one cowering by the elm tree. Homer Figg by name. He’s much concerned with finding his older brother, who was sworn as a replacement troop, and may be underage.”
The captain turns and fixes me with his hungry, hawkish eyes. “Come here, boy!”
I shamble forward. The way he stares at me so hard and cold turns my stomach to water and makes my knees shaky.
“Is this true?” he demands. “Have you asked this man to help you find your brother?”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“And this man, who calls himself Professor Fleabottom, he has on your behalf made many inquiries that touch upon Union troop movements? Interviewed and interrogated soldiers and officers after getting them drunk? All to help you find your brother?”
“Yes, sir. He’s been very kind and helpful, sir.”
“Indeed,” says the captain, stroking his chin with the fingers of his white leather gloves. “No doubt he is kind when it suits him, that much I would not dispute.”
“So you understand that this is simply an unfortunate misunderstanding,” says the professor, holding out his wrists to be freed. “Such things readily occur in a time of war, captain. I assure you, there are no hard feelings on my part.”
The captain snorts, amused by the professor. “Very good of you, sir. No doubt, being a Virginian, you are a man of courage and honor. You will have need of both when they drag you to the gallows.”
“But, captain, surely you see that I was only trying to help the boy?”
The captain shrugs. “The boy was your excuse. The game is up, Mr. Crockett.” He jabs a finger at one of his men. “Sergeant! Produce the prisoner!”
The horses make way for another horse, a pony that has been kept behind and out of sight.
A man has been tied facedown across the back of the pony. He appears alive but barely conscious, and shows the marks of a terrible beating. Both eyes blackened and his whole face swole up like an overripe melon, but still I recognize the mysterious rider who came into camp that night and took a dispatch from the professor.
The poor man must hurt in every bone of his body, but he don’t make a sound.
Upon seeing the injured man, Professor Fleabottom heaves a sigh of defeat. His mustache droops and his shoulders sag, like somebody let the air out of him.
The captain says, “I see you do not deny your own brother, Mr. Levi Crockett, soon to be late of Richmond, Virginia. He was shadowed these past few months, as have you been, and was finally caught red-handed with your dispatch in his pack. The dispatch, describing Union positions in great detail, was written in your hand and seen to be delivered to your brother in the dead of night. On this there can be no dispute, and no excuse or clever lie will change that.”
“Levi, I am sorry,” the professor calls out, a catch in his great, booming voice.
The captain nods, satisfied. “The traitor’s noose will soon be upon your necks. Make peace with your Maker, Mr. Crockett, and prepare to go to a better place.”
“Murderers!” Mini screams, flinging a pot at the captain. “Killers!”
The pot lands harmlessly at the captain’s feet. His eyes gleam like black pebbles at the bottom of a cold stream, and he seems very pleased with himself. “Arrest them all!” he commands. “The tattooed harridan, the draft-dodging jugglers — and don’t forget the boy!”
Before he gets to “boy” I’m up the tree and into the basket beneath the swaying balloon, fast as any squirrel and twice as scared.
Far below, at the base of the elm, a couple of the soldiers laugh and argue about who will climb the tree to claim me.
“Why he ain’t much bigger than a pint of spit!” someone cackles, and they all laugh so hard they have to hold their bellies.
They never notice Tally’s kitchen knife is missing, so the laugh is on them when I cut the anchor rope and make my escape in a giant silk balloon, made for the Union Army.
The last thing I hear before the wind carries me away is Mr. Bobbins screaming for his Tilda.
UNTIL THAT FATEFUL BALLOON ride, the highest I ever been was to the peak of Squint’s hay barn. I was five or six years old and somehow got it in mind to see the world, or maybe to catch one of the pigeons that hopped along the ridge. Truth is, I don’t recall exactly what was in my head at the time, all I remember is Harold in the yard below, pleading for me to come down, and how it amused me to hear him begging.
It was a mean thing, wanting to scare my big brother, who had always been so kind to me. But it felt good, too, like I enjoyed testing how much he loved me. Eventually I came down on my own, none the worse for wear, and Harold swore if I ever did such a thing again — climb that rickety old roof like a monkey — he’d kill me with his own hands, but I knew he didn’t mean it, and that made me feel good, too.
I mention this because I scampered into that balloon with nothing in my head but the desire to get away, and no idea what it meant to cut the anchor line. I wasn’t thinking about how you get down again, that’s for sure.
Without the weight of the anchor the balloon shoots straight up into the sky, rising so fast it leaves my stomach back there in the elm tree. It’s like being on a rocket without the sparkles. By the time I dare to peek over the side of the basket, the ground is already falling away. Professor Fleabottom and the others are no bigger than tiny little ants and getting smaller fast.
I’m heading up to Heaven with no way back.
All of a sudden the wind howls like a shrieking bird, making the balloon sway violently. The basket thrashes up, down, and sideways. One second I’m screaming into the wind, directly under the balloon, the next I’m looking straight down at the ground, clinging to the basket with all my fingers and every last toe.
I hang on for dear life — a giant balloon named Tilda wants to cough me out like a fur ball from a sick cat!
About the time my heart is fixing to stop, the basket swings back under the balloon and holds steady, more or less. Gives me a chance to catch my breath in the thin
air, and to realize that not all the shivering comes from being afraid — the closer you get to Heaven, the colder it gets.
With things settled down for the time being, I search around the bottom of the basket, looking for something useful. The kitchen knife has fallen away, but lashed to the framework of the basket is a canteen of water and a packet of hardtack biscuits. Not that I’m hungry — you need a stomach to be hungry, and mine got left behind.
After a while, a hundred years or so, I find the courage to peek over the side.
Big mistake. This high up you can’t see people or animals, and the cornfields look like ragged green patches on a big old quilt. Train tracks are like stitches in the ground, mending the world together. Beyond the forests and the fields and villages that look like toys, and the snaky silver rivers glinting in the sun, the great curved edge of the earth blends into the sky.
That’s where Heaven and earth must meet, in a haze of blue mist at the far end of the world.
I FLY FOR HOURS IT SEEMS, and going west we chase the sun, the great balloon and I, as if to make the day last longer. You get used to anything, I suppose, even flying high above the earth, and after a while it comes to feel natural. Almost like I belong in the air, floating higher than birds can fly.
Looking out over the world, it feels like I’m more than a runaway orphan boy, like I’m bigger than Homer Figg from Pine Swamp, Maine. Like I’ve somehow become everybody that ever lived, and we’re all of us watching over the earth like a mother hen watching over her egg.
Which is a pretty crazy way to think. How could I be everybody that ever lived when I’m just one small person? Must be the thin air putting wild thoughts in my head, or fumes from the great balloon. Speaking of the balloon, it keeps changing shape, very gently. Shaped by the wind, I suppose, but it almost looks like it’s breathing. Little ripples move along the surface like waves in a silk pond, and if you stare hard enough there’s a face in the balloon just like there’s a face in the moon or clouds. A face that keeps changing and growing the longer you look. A face that’s trying to tell me something important.
Tilda is talking to me, only I can’t hear the words.
Then I realize that what looks like a smiling mouth in the balloon face is really a tear in the silk.
A tear in the silk that’s flapping as the gas escapes.
I been staring at the balloon so long, daydreaming about faces and clouds and such, that I forgot to look down. And when I do, peering fearfully over the edge of the basket, the ground is coming up fast.
We’re falling from the sky like a bird with a broken wing.
AS WE DROP CLOSER TO the ground everything speeds up. It’s like the earth is turning faster, whipping great trees at the basket and barely missing. Then we’re flying over rocky fields, Tilda and me, fields where men on horseback chase one another, firing guns and waving swords. Suddenly the ground explodes under the horses, and man and beast vanish in a flash of blood-stained lightning.
We’re being swept over a battlefield, and what I thought was thunder and lightning is artillery shells blowing the world to pieces.
Right about then the rip in the silk catches fire and the fabric starts to melt. I scramble over the side of the basket, clinging with my fingers, deciding when to jump. All I catch is a glimpse of green water, but with the balloon dissolving into red-hot flames, making up my mind is no longer an option. I must let go and take my chances.
I drop through the air like a screaming stone, plunging feet first into a scummy green frog pond.
When you’re falling from a hundred feet or more, and the sky is on fire, even scummy water is better than solid ground. At least the fall don’t kill me. Trouble is, I can’t find the surface. Can’t tell which way is up because my fists are full of mud, like I been clawing at the bottom, and my legs are caught in a tangle of lily pad roots that want to tug me down.
I’m trying to breathe the warm, slimy water — if frogs can do it, why not me? — when something grabs hold of my hair and yanks me up into the sunlight.
Can’t see right off, because I’m coughing so hard, but after a few minutes of having the water shook out of me, I realize I been saved by a scrawny little man in a gray uniform. He’s missing his front teeth and his tongue keeps sliding over the gap as he shakes me. Then he hands me over to a bunch of men in gray uniforms, that have been refreshing their horses at the edge of the pond.
Cavalry, from the look. They talk funny, kind of slow and lilting, but I can understand them well enough.
“Little critter fell out of the sky, did he?”
“Yes, suh, like he’d been shot from a cannon.”
“Weren’t no cannon, suh! He come by way of surveillance balloon. That’s what’s left of it, burning in those trees over yonder.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes, suh!”
“Must be a Yankee spy, getting a fix on our position.”
“Suh, he ain’t but a boy!”
Another, more powerful voice cuts through the argument. “What have we here? Report!”
Rough hands pass me along to where a beautifully uniformed man sits on horseback, hands folded over the pommel. Looks like he lives in the saddle and likes it there. He wears an elegant cape and a rakish hat decorated with a long plumed feather. A fancy sword hangs from his waist.
“Yankee boy fell out of a balloon, General Jeb, suh!”
The dashing young general leans down from the saddle to study me. Makes a show of tugging at his thick, full beard. “Hmmm. Might be a boy,” he drawls, a twinkle in his eyes. “And might be he’s a midget spy, dressed to look like a boy. I wouldn’t put it past them clever Yankees to fool us with midgets and what not.”
“Yes, suh!”
The men are grinning, as if they know their general likes to make jokes.
“What’s your name, midget man?” the general demands. “I’ve miles to ride and haven’t the time or stomach for any more tomfoolery. Tell me your name!”
“H-h-homer Figg. And I ain’t no midget!”
“Yankee for sure. Take him to the bull pit!”
TURNS OUT A BULL PIT IS where prisoners get confined, and in this case the pit is a stall in an old barn that’s been temporarily requisitioned by the Confederate forces who stand guard outside — requisitioned being another word for “stole,” which is what armies do when they need things.
All of which is explained to me by a bright young fellow named Jonathan Griswold, who says he is correspondent for the Valley Spirit, a newspaper in Chambersburg.
“I should be in the office, setting type,” he explains, “but our fine little city has lately been overrun by invading rebels. They requisitioned all of the bread and grain, and every spare saddle, and all the horseshoes, and nails for the horseshoes, and looked about ready to requisition the printing press and me. Seemed a good opportunity to venture out and see the war!”
Mr. Jonathan Griswold has a mousey brown mustache, a pair of reading spectacles hanging from a ribbon around his skinny neck, and a whole cavalry of ideas and opinions at his command.
He says, “I rode out from a little town called Gettysburg, expecting to find the Union Army, and was intercepted by Stuart’s raiders, who have no particular affection for Yankee newspapermen. I take it you were seized by the same fellows?”
“The man had a feather in his hat.”
“Jeb Stuart himself!” the newspaperman says, sounding impressed. “They say he can ride circles around the Union Army, and will report back to Robert E. Lee before the main battle starts.”
“He called me a midget!” I complain, still incensed. “A midget and a spy!”
The newspaperman chuckles. “Did he now? They’ve taken away my notebook but I must remember that. ‘A midget and a spy.’ That’s an improvement on tales about girls who disguise themselves as soldiers, and dogs who save their masters. I can see you are no midget, sir. But if, as they tell me, you arrived by surveillance balloon, then surely you really are a spy o
f sorts? And too young for hanging, lucky for you.”
Outside the stall the Confederate guards are acting ever so casual, smoking their pipes and complaining about the rations, but I can tell they’re keeping keen ears for our conversation. So I decide to tell the newspaperman all about traveling with Professor Fleabottom, and that he’s really a rebel patriot arrested by the Union Army, and how I escaped in a stolen balloon.
“Said his true name is Crockett, Reginald Robert Crockett,” I say as my tale concludes. “He’s got a brother, Levi, they beat up something awful.”
“Crockett you say!” the newspaperman exclaims. “That’s a famous name in the South. Was your medicine showman related to Davy Crockett, that died at the Alamo?”
“Must have been,” I say, working up some enthusiasm for the idea. “In fact, I’m sure he is. I once saw him kill a mountain lion with his bare hands. Must be the Crockett blood.”
“A mountain lion. Extraordinary! Bare hands, you say?”
“Course it was an old lion, missing most of its teeth. Escaped from a circus.”
“And you were employed by Mr. Crockett, also known as Professor Fleabottom?”
“You might say so,” I say grandly. “I was the star of the show.”
“Star of the show? In what capacity?”
“I played the Amazing, um, the Amazing Wolf Boy. Raised by wolves and so on.”
The newspaperman is nodding feverishly, as if anxious to write it down, if only he had pen and paper. The Confederate guards lean closer, hanging on my every word, just as I planned.
“Course I wasn’t really raised by wolves,” I confide. “I’m a Figg. You probably heard of the Figgs. We’re the richest family north of Boston. Figgs own most of the timber, a railroad, a good portion of the mines, and a fleet of schooners. Plus too many farms and factories to bother mentioning. Why we even own slaves,” I add, eyeing the guards. “Dozens of ’em. Hundreds, probably, if you took the trouble to count. We Figgs favor slavery. My father, when he was governor, he wrote a law saying every man must own a slave. Owning slaves is what makes America great, everybody knows that. Everybody but that fool Lincoln. My father says if Lincoln was to take away our slaves he’d chop old Abe down like Washington chopped down the cherry tree.”