Wherever I went now during my searches for work, everybody, black and white, seemed to be talking about the war, how the Southern states just kept leaving and the Confederates were eventually going to invade Pennsylvania, how there would soon be no more slavery and how, they said at the barber, they’d put us all in bond if Richmond was not defeated. There were appreciably more white men in uniforms in the streets. Sometimes the white people even seemed to treat us a little better than usual, sometimes, as I found in Independence Park or on the streetcars, worse. Once I was shoved off after paying, another time a rider, decrying the fact that there was a war going on at all, spat a brown stream of tobacco juice in my direction. The summer came and then was nearly gone, I all the while doing my occasional cook prep jobs, because there weren’t that many special events or parties, hoarding every penny, just waiting for the Academy lectures to start again. Mostly I walked the avenues looking, for jobs, for something, anything, from one end of the city to the other, checking in at the Gas Works and the Arsenal, the railway stations and the hospitals, but nobody wanted to sign me on because they already had workers or weren’t hiring us or because I was still too young.
One hot August Sunday evening I met up with Horatio near Washington Square. We were just ambling and sharing a cigar and, as if an invisible fuze exploded in my head, I said, “I’m going to go work with Mr. Robins’ friend,” and he said, “Who?” and I said, “’Member, at the last Academy talk, about the air balloons?” and he said, “How you even recollect that?” and he laced his arm around my shoulders and took the cigar from my lips and rolled it in his and said, “Colored can’t fight in this war, specially not no 16-year-old,” and I said, “I heard them talking at the barber about it, they asking the president to allow colored volunteers and troops,” and he traced something on the back of my neck and said, “Well, you ain’t even grown enough to muck out stables yet,” and I pushed him away and said, “I’m telling you, I’m going to go work for Mr. Robins’ friend, I still got his carte de visite,” and I thought about showing it to Horatio, since I had been walking around with it in my pocket for weeks, but instead I said, “I’m even going to go to Washington if I have to,” and he yanked me back to him, pushing the cigar in my mouth and said, “You can be a admay li’l ignay, Edray, know that?” then “What that white man name again?” and I say, “Mr. Edward Linde,” and he asked, “Ain’t he related to that man reason you got fired?” and I said, “Maybe”—though from the card I knew they shared the same address—“but the old man was throwing that party and he ain’t know who was supposed to be there, Dameron got rid of me cause I never showed up and ruined them clothes, plus my latenesses, even though I only ever missed one other party and was late just a handful of times.” Horatio paused, observing me, then said, “He give you your job back come September, can’t nobody stay angry at you long,” and I said, “Nobody cept Rosaline, though I don’t care,” and Horatio winked at me and said, “We both know why.” But I didn’t. Instead of asking what he meant I said, “Well, I’m going to go work with Mr. Edward Linde, and that Professor Lowe,” and Horatio laughed and hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe and I wrestled him off me and punched him in his chest, he chasing me, still laughing, all the way up Locust.
The next morning I woke early, scrubbed myself completely, and put on my nicest shirt and trousers. As soon as Mama and Jonathan had left the house I headed up Broad to Mr. Linde’s near Rittenhouse. I tried not to get all sweaty but it was hot as a griddle outside, and I was nearly soaked through when I reached the front door, so I patted myself down with the handkerchief Dandy had given me, my souvenir of our last adventure. The house sat back from the street behind a stone wall, broken by a black wrought iron gate with the letters AVL, in a circle, in its center. I let myself in since it was not locked, and walked down a brick path through a garden full of flowers and statues. Using the gold-plated knocker I rapped gently. A man with gray hair in a blue livery suit opened the door, looked at me then behind me, curiously, and said, “You got a delivery for Mr. and Mrs. Linde?” and I answered, “I am here to speak to Mr. Edward Linde.” At this the man scrunched up his face, shook his head and said, “Boy, come again?” and I repeated, “I am here to speak to Mr. Edward Linde, Sir, the scientist.” The man stared at me, then said, “Wait here,” and I remained there, half-watching coaches passing, small groups of elegantly dressed people heading toward the square, wagons making deliveries. The man returned to the door and hissed, “Go out the front and come around the alley, I’ll meet you at the gate near the stable.” He was still looking like he couldn’t believe I was there, but I obeyed his instructions, walked all the way around the wall till I found the alley, where he was waiting for me at another black gate, this one locked. I could see through it that the rear garden was even bigger than the one in front and the house, which was three stories, was immense too.
“What you want with Mr. Edward Linde, ‘the scientist’?”
“I work at the Academy—” and before I finished he cut me off.
“If you got a message for him from them tell it or hand me the paper. I’ll pass it on to him.”
“No, Sir,” I say, “I ain’t — didn’t — finish. I work at the Academy and I met Mr. Linde there, and he told me he going to work with Professor Lowe, who also a scientist working with balloons, and—” Shaking his large head, the silvery tufts rising like wings from the bluish-brown crown, he waved for me to stop.
“I’ll go get Miss Katherine, this all too queer. Stay right there.” I stood for a while, stepping out of the way when two white men dragged a dray, loaded with several crates, alongside me, and like magic the man returned to unlock the gate and let them carry the crates in, though he repeated to me, “Right there.” When the deliverymen left, paying me no attention, the older man returned with a tall young white woman. He said to me slowly and formally, “This Miss Katharine Linde, Mr. Edward sister. You can tell her what you want through the gate. Shall I wait here, Miss?” She shook him off and he went back into the house, though I figured he and probably everybody else in there was watching us closely. The young woman looked mostly like Mr. Edward, but in female form, with long, chestnut hair that she wore up in a comb.
“What is your name… how can I help you…?”
“Theodore King, Ma’am,” I said. “I work at the Academy on Saturdays at they lectures and I met Mr. Edward at the last one, by Professor Thaddeus Lowe, the balloon specialist, and Mr. Edward, who Mr. Robins say—”
“Excuse me, did you say Peter Robins?” She almost blushed as she asked this, so I momentarily looked away. She opened a fan and sat on a small stone bench near the gate.