Henry & Fifth Ltd.

Sell to the classes- dine with the masses.  Sell to the masses- dine with the classes.  Levi’s sister Fanny and her husband David Stern moved to St. Louis, Missouri, while Levi went to live in Louisville, Kentucky, and sold his brothers’ supplies there.  Levi became an American citizen in January 1853.  Henry knew Jewish boys German boys black boys rich and poor boys.  Henry never did understand girls.  N. Thomas Thabo shook his head and smiled.  The old-time Union boss had come to make another offer you couldn’t refuse.  You wouldn’t refuse it either- most people didn’t.  Chaska and Thabo had recruited talented people from all over the world to work for either VonHot or Camp Schatzenputz and their jobs were their heritage.

They don’t need no doctor.  They had their own, the Schatz-Vonhot tribe had become like orthodox practitioners of an ancient religion by 1895 in that they tended to shun all others.  Like the Hasidim in Europe or the Hutterites in America- they keep to themselves.  The Gypsy and Roma girls taught Henry all he needed to know about love and romance.  Or so he thought.  They lived in the forest unseen by most until they traveled the roads.  Lord how Henry liked to talk about the girls in the old country… until he met the girls in the new country I suspect noted Thabo, but Henry was never the marrying kind.  Like old Jubal Early- he had other things to do at the time.  Henry missed out on being a daddy. Made him sad for life- with short temper and sharp tongue.

Chaska the Indian loved animals like African Thabo loved the river life… but Henry loved machines.  Henry giggled out loud when writing to Willie Daimler in Germany about motorcycles.  Their correspondence was often too long and technical to use the wireless and there were trade secrets.  Oath is oath- that is the Truth… but with sacred people, their yes or no simply means yes or no.  A partnership with them is worth more than anything on earth. From coffin to birth it stays the same.  A function that allows form is the name of the game.  Henry was always going on about their fit and finish like they were guns or ships.  Henry was born to serve the classes… Strauss taught Henry how to make the capital dance.   

Miss Pandora Blaskowitz… chuckles Uncle T… yeah we all called you Punta back in the day.  Here is the offer:  you learn to operate the Dart from Henry.  You know what we do by now:  we take the best parts in the world… and make the only ones in the world.  You can see what the people are wearing; pants.  Your factory girls will have access to the best textile designers and fabricators in the world.  Refuse the offer.  Go back to taking your chances in haute couture and nobody will blame you (Thabo grinned).  It’s hard to make fancy dresses for fancy ladies.  We’ll get Henry to fly the goddam Dart even if he’s blind as a bat and crazier than a beerhall rat.  Pandora smiled.  She’ll be a Jenny with yellow wings and take Henry back to the civil war. 

Daisy was right about the blue egg in the old country.  Rue egg.  Fest und snit.  Warehouse. 

channels of an incense-sea

Horses do not live as long as people do.  Twenty to thirty years at most so Pony was gone by 1885 while the Buoys were clanging at sea or on the river or something.  When we do not know how another species thinks- how do we know how another gender thinks- or any other division you please.  Each critter has their gender division according their nature like birds and bees.  Dogs are the same way.  We call them livestock.  Punta glanced at the windsock.  Her first flying lessons were like that.  Henry says he learned this from the Blessed Virgin herself.  Choice.  Dear sweet Mother of God. Would you have chosen your life.  Ponder all these joyful and sorrowful mysteries and such but fly your goddamn airplane.  Pitch roll and yaw… that is your universe… keep the sun at your back. Keep one eye on the instruments- the other on the ground.  Listen to your engine like you listen to the sails and the cries of those who go aloft- or in the wilderness.  The student pilot squirmed and squinted at the gaunt spruce switching its tail outside like a very annoyed cat. 

Once in a while Henry would fall into a creeping depression. He supposed it had much to do with the Gettysburg battle and its aftermath. After the war he had suffered constant nightmares causing him to lose sleep. The sleep deprivation opened fissures into his soul where the depression ejaculated from him, rather than into him, as one might think might be the case with such maladies. He had little trouble passing out due to the assistance of alcohol, but by one or two in the morning the nagging of comrades and screams of the enemy had begged him to pay attention to…early morning the wasted apparitions of bony bleeding and clutching fingers would again claw their way into the doorway… taking advantage of each crack… to expose and use his wretched soul. But this most recent depression was one that he could not seem to ignore. He craved sleep. He craved real, uninterrupted, revitalizing sleep. Reuniting with Pony (who was very happy to see him) they left Paducah with little notice and began to follow the Cumberland River toward Nashville and the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin of the Seven Sorrows.

Bishop Miles, the church founder, was buried under the altar soon after he died some five years prior. The church’s architect was a German fellow not unlike Henry and George. It was difficult settling Catholics into Tennessee and Bishop Miles worked against many odds to do it. It was a blessing that he died when he did… avoiding any knowledge of secession and war. After a satisfying supper Henry agreed to stay with the Leitner’s where he and Pony spent a comfortable night and slept without any interference from their past. On the next bright and cooler day in late August, Henry and Pony resumed their travel southeasterly toward Daisy and the farm. Henry should arrive in plenty of time to help with planting more autumn greens. This time when he met up with Daisy he would be accompanied by a newer attitude that had been planted inside of him during a dream inside a church. Without changing any other aspect of his being, Henry had learned and welcomed the processing of a grace in acceptance, and admittedly Henry felt it to be a most divine acquisition.

All pilots are superstitious whether from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance. They say it is a false conception of causation.  Sailors have always been superstitious.  The sailor can be at sea for months… pilots are only in the sky for minutes- and nobody gets stuck up there.  That’s why sailors lie and pilots deny.  Look at that twitchy wind.  Clear air turbulence. The wind cat already told Punta the sky was going to be rough.  Only on the ground kid.  Above the hills and trees it might be worse- unless you use the current like all good river pilots do. Banks or shoals- bridges or tolls- they engage because they think they are better than you because they are.  Never have the moon at your back unless you want to give them a good scare.  Transmitters or transformers… transgender is where things change state- like from water to ice- or steam.  Pemberton red cola. 

This is not a dream.  

get cool boy

Don’t get hot ‘Cause man, you’ve got Some high times ahead

The US Civil War was a pre-emptive counter-revolution.  Think about that for a minute.  What revolution- why the industrial revolution of course- that happened over 100 years earlier in Scotland.  Then there was all this jackadoodle about central vs local government and other ideological stuffing to plump up any revolution when the rulers are seriously fucking up or they blame the rulers (and their priests) for things beyond anyone’s control.  That’s how the war got started.  I wish you would stop talking about the war.  Hell any war.  Fighting means killing, but war means business, and it’s a dangerous and evil business- but profitable if you know where to look.  We look for signs in the sky.  Someday the Dart will look like an 800 ft torpedo instead of the elegant vessel she is.  This old Henry belongs in a forest with trees and old rivers.

How Sherman missed the plantation in 1864 was a gift from God itself. Normally it’s a negative sort of exclamation to say missed by a mile, in Daisy’s situation it was a miracle. They could actually hear the horses and the louder of the commands being issued down the road that led to Griffin. As they stashed and buried valuables and tried to secure hiding places for each other, Daisy and her crew spent days holding their breath at any new sound, anticipating the arrival of scouts at any moment who may have been dispatched to investigate the surroundings of the route the ruthless general had undertaken for the Union Army. Finally, they simply sat on the porch with cellar cooled tea, and waited. They had never sparked attention. It was with Henry at an eatery. I remember, she thought. In Beaufort. We were on the road, traveling.

Breeze it, buzz it Easy does it Turn off the juice, boy

We have created a species that is superior to us in every way that counts.  Punta nodded.  You got any kids Henry.  Sure.  Had to leave them all behind when I jumped.  Yes we heard.  About the Shoshone woman.  Her name means Little Horse.  Cold nights alone on the Nebraska prairie wrapped tighter than a Cuban cigar in my buffalo robe for weeks and wake with her behind me on the same night at waxing moon.  Daylight she was gone and Pony was there.  Very similar markings.  Same horse probably.  Most likely the same woman too…because I saw horse and woman together.  Changelings- I believe.  Do you think the original people here sat around eating grass with their thumbs up their ass while we invented Christianity- nein. They had other technology. 

They carefully laid Quantrill in the wagon, not for his comfort but simply for careful transportation back to Louisville and Palmer’s inspection. He died there in the military hospital on June 6th, 1865.  Henry missed General Sherman’s Louisville speech on his visit that July 4th and went and reintroduced himself as the brother of the lovely lady that dined together with him at the war’s beginning in Beaufort. Daisy would not have approved. Sherman had no way of knowing that Henry, with only two hired killers, had been responsible for cleaning out virtually all of the Kentucky guerrilla gangs in less than two month’s time. He made sure to make use of the saber and packed his lucrative earnings with his belongings and made his way west to Pony. Then, he headed back south to Georgia.

Henry took a stick from his pocket and gave it to Punta.  Picked up this stick during the battle and carried it ever since and loved it and talked to it too when I was alone because it reminded me of my XI Corps boys and all that we did that day.  Even though it’s just a piece of wood.  Never yell theatre in a crowded fire.  When I look down at the battle now I can’t see myself- I’m not there.  And that gives one a strange cold kind of scare.  You will feel it too very soon.  Beware.  Well thanks- I guess.  The gender war is the last stage in the class struggle we must endure first- like the rocks and snags on shore.  Maybe that stick will remind you of all the war stores I told you and I won’t have to waste my breath.  As soon as you try to win- we all lose.

Theatre in a crowded fire thought the new pilot.  One day Henry might tell her that stick fell into his pocket outside the Pancake bar about an hour ago.  Lord of hosts. She saw the elephant.

But not like a yo-yo schoolboy

Worth Fighting Four

Two of the pilots walked in.  Bush pilots probably but regulars at Pancake Lake because they didn’t pay for their beer and it sat untouched while the old pilot and the young dude had their heads close together like they do when they don’t want nobody to hear.  They had long lost the heads on their beers but they waved the nosy bartender away because they were not interested in suds today.  You’re gonna tell me that same war story again eh.  Ja.  A trooper out alone with a big cavalry horse and saddle would lose both and his scalp too.  By morning horse was gone but I still had the saddle.  At dusk this Shoshone woman rode out of the gloaming on the horse with no saddle and a little horse following.  I tried to throw the saddle over the little horse- it stepped away and Shoshone woman laughed.  Saddle on ground again.  Shoshone Woman laugh again.  Little horse has no bridle and Shoshone laugh herself hard off big cavalry horse.  It was a target of opportunity and I spent the winter of 1858 with her People.  That was almost fifty years ago pop.  You saying it’s a ghost horse.  That’s what I’m saying.  Punta took the time to drink it all in.  Then she gathered up the nerve to tell Henry:  I think there’s another portal old man.  Well there’s more. Listen.

By the seventh hour of fighting on the third day, the Union strongholds had been taken given up and retaken 6 and 7 times over. Custer had come in from the south and cut off valuable reinforcements needed by the Confederates. Lee had one last strategy to take Meade’s advantage that failed when Meade anticipated the play. Just when Meade had begun to understand Lee’s battle plan, he began a serious motion toward retreat. Chaska was manic in his fighting. He could not seem to stop. He was attacking without threat of being attacked: all alone. Finally coming to his senses and surveying the dead all around him, he was thankful that the Spirits had favored him with continued life. The carnage around him was beyond his comprehension. This breed of men were the worst of living creatures. His people only killed out of necessity and no one had yet been able to explain to him any need for this kind of killing. He was ashamed of his part in it. He vowed to use the remainder of his life to make the Spirits proud. He went off in search of Henry in order to say goodbye.

Henry put on his specs and read an interview published in the New York Herald on October 15, 1911 Tesla says, “The flying machine of the future — my flying machine — will be heavier than air, but it will not be an aeroplane. It will have no wings. It will be substantial, solid, stable. My flying machine will have neither wings nor propellers. You might see it on the ground and you would never guess that it was a flying machine. Yet it will be able to move at will through the air in any direction with perfect safety, higher speeds than have yet been reached, regardless of weather.  It can remain absolutely stationary in the air, even in a wind, for a great length of time. Its lifting power will not depend upon any such delicate devices as the bird has to employ but upon positive mechanical action. My airship will have neither gas bag nor wings nor propellers. It is the child of my dreams, the product of years of intense and painful toil and research. I am not going to talk about it any further. But whatever my airship may be, here at least is an engine that will do things that no other engine ever has done, and that is something tangible.” The young flyer nodded. We had a six-year lead before T spilled the beans.

Going back to my people, Henry. Yeah, well we’re going south. All the way to Georgia. Here. I have some civilian duds for you. I see nothing civil about them. You took them from the dead. Been done before. We’re blending with our surroundings. You’re going to see Miss Daisy. With a mission. Just need to help get her staffed and running again if needed. Then headed back toward Kentucky to get paid. You’re coming with us. No. Going back west. Yeah. Well fine. Help me look for Thabo first. Some of our side is burying soldiers. He’s sure to be in some detail forced to the task. Chaska squatted and looked at his horse’s hooves. Then he got up, cocked his head. Sure. Where the clothes. But you won’t see me after we find Thabo. We say our goodbyes right now. Henry dug into his packs and pulled out a farmer’s shirt pants and neck scarf. Keeping another pair of grey socks he gave Chaska his white ones.  He handed them to Chaska and left his hand out to shake with him. Chaska wasn’t interested. Eight hours later they found Thabo. He was digging… and crying.

They approached him slowly hoping to give him time to collect himself. He acknowledged them with a nod and kept digging… joined in song with his work crew and kept digging and crying. Henry turned to Chaska and they both shuffled around in the dirt. Thabo hadn’t left the job at hand. What do we do now. Not sure. Going over to that barn. Maybe get to feed my horse- get water- get out of here. Jawohl… raus mit du- go. I’ll sit under that tree where the extra shovels are. Wait for them to get done. Chaska laughed out loud… pointed and waved at the hundreds of corpses surrounding them. In that event guess I’ll find you here years from now if I ever come this far again. He walked his horse toward the barn not looking back. I came for you- Thabo. We’re going ahh… away for a few weeks. I have clothes for you. From the dead (Thabo looked at him in disgust and sniffled). What is it with you two. YES. From the dead. I’m not a fucking tailor. And we need them more than they do now. Both Chaska and Thabo looked toward the sky… looking for some kind of absolution.

Where we supposed to go. Georgia. Then back up to Kentucky to get paid and possibly out of service the right way. Guess this war is finally over. Thabo stopped crying. His emotions reverted to pre-war fear. Without whining he stated his position firmly and directly staring Henry down with steady eye contact. I ain’t never crossing that border into the south again Henry. Get that through that Hessian head of yours. S’ugly as ‘tis right now I’m a free man. An’ I’m taking good care o’ who and where I am to stay that way. Means just a few miles south o’ here is the end o’ the world for me. When Chaska caught on he almost smiled at Henry. Where do you think you’ll cross the river. I was thinking St. Louis again. Maybe tuck my hair up under a hat again and have a couple of steins with Kimm before I head to the plains. Maybe Thabo could travel with me. Not good for neither of us misfits to travel alone too far. We’ll swing past Merrimac ‘fore I have those beers. See if he can’t get his job back or mend fences for others. He gently patted Thabo on his back.

Thabo nodded but could not muster a smile. He was being summoned back to dig. When do we leave Chaska. Right now. I’ll take your spot you take Pony to that church over there and change. Chaska can find you a horse in the barn corral. Just tie Pony back to the tree here until Chaska gets back. I’ll see you two again sometime. He turned his back on the two and joined the Negro diggers. After about an hour he choked back tears. He never sang. That’s how the story was told to Punta ever since she was a child.  It changes you… after using the saber… not to fight- but to butcher.  Grandfather Chaska has always been crazy and Uncle Thabo aka. N. Thomas Thabo always makes offers you can’t refuse.  We needed an electrical generator, and what we got was a time machine.  When the generators were evolving into their transformer phase the machines started responding to Henry’s horse… and later old man Henry. 

He got his flying machine… but wanted no part in a time machine.  The past is- what it is- he says… and you can’t stop what’s coming.  If we can’t change the future we can at least see where it is. To the three old scouts and their new pilot… it was an offer they could not refuse.