“Listen,” I said so only she could hear me, “if nothing happens, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m hallucinating. I don’t have a history of hallucinating.” The others in back watched out the windows, the light from the streets crossing their faces. Ursula had curved the bill of her hat so severely that it shadowed her eyes.
When we left the lights of the city behind, went miles on a single lane and turned off the country highway, we parked at the entrance of a Civil War park, the iron gate flanked by two stone columns.
We abandoned the shuttle at the entrance, stepped over the gate. Van Raye and Ruth stopped, and I realized they were clipping their ping-pong balls to the bills of their caps, the ping-pong balls that Dubourg had glued to the clothespins.
Van Raye said, “Place the ball over your eyes like this. We won’t need lights. No phones please. Think about your night vision.”
“What is this?” I said to Dubourg. He shrugged.
We did as told and began following a trail. It was awkward having the white orb hanging on the bill of my cap. Even with my cane, the terrain twisted at my ankles. It was too dark to see our breaths, but in a minute, the woods and the dirt below the ball became clearer. I saw individual roots and stones, stepped on the wooden erosion steps perpendicular across the trail. The ping-pong ball seemed to emit some kind of glow, but that wasn’t it. The ball kept your focus; out of the sides of my eyes everything was bright. Focus on the ball and everything in your peripheral vision was clear and bright.
“This is amazing, Charles,” Dubourg said.
We went up until the woods gave way to the open space of a field, the stars a brilliant bowl, the Milky Way bisecting it.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Dubourg said. “I thank God for this.”
“Do it in a hurry,” Ruth said. “The station will rise from east-southeast. That direction. We’ve got to set up.”
A meadow was bathed in starlight, scattered with brush. Some kind of primitive fencing zigzagged toward a mountain that blocked out a quarter of the sky, and I smelled a campfire and cooking grease.
“Here are tables,” Ursula said. Dubourg clicked on his cell phone. Van Raye said, “You’re killing my vision!”
Dubourg’s light caught the table and showed a shocking scene of a mini disaster of a recent meal — plates with chicken bones on them, and a pot of congealed liquid, and that was when a voice yelled out of the darkness, “Hark, who goes there!”
“Sentry!” someone from the other direction called, and there was movement at my feet and voices.
“Sentry, sir! A-LARM!”
“Good God,” Van Raye said.
Dark shapes rose from the ground around us. The one nearest hauled his blanket shawl-like over shoulders.
“I am Dubourg Dunbar. Who is there?”
“Christ, shut up, old ass, it’s cold,” mumbled what I thought was a log at my feet. “Get down!” the voice said.
The six of us stood among acres of sleeping humans, maybe some encampment of desperate people, down on their luck, but then I saw one with a rifle. Someone let out a fart and there was no laughing.
Dubourg aimed his fading phone to reveal a shocking scene of scraggily faces and beards at our feet, men trying to remain under blankets, their eyes squinting at the light. “Who’s there with a lantern?” one said.
The yelling voice said, “Eighteenth corps, third division. Dodge’s regulars. Identify yourself!”
“Oh hell,” a standing man said, “a civilian is here.” He cupped his hands around his mouth to yell, “Lieutenant, let the lines know there are Beauregarders.”
The lieutenant with a Civil War cavalry hat shouted over the field, “BEAU-RE-GARD! BEAUREGARD!” He turned in another direction. “For God’s sake, BEAUREGARD!”
Someone down the line picked up the alarm and repeated it, “BEAUREGARD!” Shapes grumbled under blankets. More voices in the dark: “Oh, for shit’s sake. What is happening?”
The interior of a tent lit and shadows moved on the canvas.
“They’re reenactors,” Ursula said.
“‘Living historians,’” a voice from the ground said and added, “ma’am.”
A man came out of the tent holding up a lantern; I saw blue military pants and a nightshirt and a sleeping cap. He stepped over his men and came at us with an entourage following, hands on the swords at their belts, very cold Civil War actors in unbuttoned tunics.
“Jesus Christ, what are you civilians doing here?” the man in charge said.
“We were searching for dark skies,” Van Raye said.
The man held the lantern up. I recognized him, had that flash that he was someone I didn’t like. He was the muttonchopped security man, Albert, from the hotel, but he said, squinting, “I’m Major General Joseph P. Rosenblach of the Army of the Potomac. Who are you?” He held the lantern closer, and when he saw me, he seemed to snap out of it. “Sanghavi? What the hell? Professor Van Raye?”
Elizabeth had her head turned slightly so she could see him around the ping-pong ball, her muffler pulled over her mouth, unrecognizable.
The general looked back at his men, then said to me, “The park closes at sundown. Douse that light! This is a battleground.”
The two men in his escort wore blue uniforms with gold buttons, and I recognized them as former employees of the hotel too — bellhops.
“We apologize, General Rosenblach,” Dubourg said. “We’re out here looking for satellites.”
“Satellites?” He turned from Dubourg to Van Raye and said, “You do understand that this is a mindset, don’t you? Do you know how rare it is to have an actual new goddamn moon on the night before the battle? You do understand — a mindset? What we are doing is important.”
“I’m sure it is,” Van Raye said.
“Yes, it is. If we are as accurate as possible. . it’s real, you understand? I mean I can smell you all. You smell like the twenty-first century. My God. What is on your hat?”
All six of us had the ping-pong balls on our bills.
Albert straightened, became this General Rosenblach again, and a command voice came from the back of his throat, “My men are tired, hungry, and cold. There is a confederate encampment beyond that branch. Douse all the lights. I’ll have you escorted to safety immediately.”
He turned with his lantern and whispered to two soldiers. I heard my name—“Sanghavi. . ”—and then he looked back at us and fanned his hand as if to make the smell go away, and his men came and indicated which way to march. There was the sound of metal on metal as they put their bayonets on their rifles but Charles led the way, veering off toward a hill to the north and the escorts said nothing.
CHAPTER 37
Charles led us up a trail to the plateau of an empty parking lot with historic markers too dark to read. Our small band encamped above the battlefield in a picnic area. Below was the waiting battlefield with hundreds of tiny red specks of campfires warming reenactors who were too far away to see. Ruth and Ursula opened the box of the satellite dish, me holding the flashlight on my phone. They adjusted the three flat legs until the bubble level was centered, holding their breaths whenever fine adjustments were called for. When it was ready and aimed at the eastern sky, Van Raye, Dubourg, Ursula, and I sat on a crosstie fence watching the valley bellow, hearing Ruth clicking on a laptop as she sat in lotus, stomach beneath her coat. Elizabeth sat on a picnic table, the two reenactors beside her as if we needed guarding.