twin was not as present to him anymore, he retained his sensitivity to what passed below the surface of daily life, and his time on the medicine-show wagon had made him a wiser judge of character than he would otherwise have been. It was this skill that allowed him to see the possibilities presented by the timely emergence of the figure of H. S. Brookmire-what his mother would have called a “spishus” arrival.
But desperation is both the mother and the father of invention and, for better or for worse, Lloyd saw no way around trusting in the man’s assistance. Not if his dream was to be realized. What had Mother Tongue said? His intention was to travel right far.
CHAPTER 3. On Glory’s Fragile Wings
HANSEL SNOWDEN BROOKMIRE HAILED FROM THE EASTERN MILL town of Manchester, and offered Lloyd two crucial benefits: he was eager to make a name for himself and, while not especially clever himself, he knew what cleverness smelled like. Just twenty-five at the time, he was in St. Louis visiting his older sister, Rudalena Cosgrove, who had come into significant assets following the death of her much older husband, Jarvis-a fortune large enough for Rudalena’s father to excuse his only son from his managerial duties at their New Hampshire textile mill and dispatch the fledgling to Missouri to provide guidance and ballast in the dispensation and investment of the widow’s capital.
Brookmire thus arrived in the river city with both a mandate and a line of credit commensurate with his ambition, and not an idea in his head of what to do next. He did, however, think he knew a good thing when he saw one, and two weeks into his stay the best or at least the most surprising thing he had seen was little Lloyd’s flying toys and the fascination they induced.
The meeting, or rather collision, occurred as the important meetings in life often do, seemingly by chance, following Lloyd’s return from the Field of Endeavor, scuffed and bruised from his first serious fall and smarting with worry that, now that his researches and his test work had moved beyond the model stage, he was sure to be seen and that word would get out and some vicious circle would close around him. Brookmire, who had witnessed the child in action down on the riverbank, took the force of the Market Street meeting as an omen. Not having noticed the boy’s banged-up state prior to impact, he at first believed himself to be the cause of the injuries. Lloyd quickly ascertained that if the man were an agent of conspiracy, then he was not one to worry about, and so let Brookmire buy him a treat from a chocolate shop. A fateful discussion ensued.
Lloyd needed a backer. Brookmire needed an investment. Along with canals and railroads, the nation was being laced with telegraph wires as fast as men could string them. New inventions were being introduced at dizzying speed. When the easterner learned what Lloyd had in mind for the next phase of his career, he was openmouthed. But intrigued in spite of himself. A notional, confidential agreement was reached later that afternoon in a laneway beside a pharmacy, the streaked windows full of foot powder and bottles of witch hazel, which reminded Lloyd of Schelling.
Brookmire was the sole other person who knew of Lloyd’s audacious project. No doubt he must have had his share of misgivings. But as the only son of a domineering father he had experienced how detrimental external meddling can be. He had seen for himself examples of Lloyd’s perspicacity and his ability to work a crowd, and the idea of investing in new technology thrilled him. If there were risks-and the sum total of his investment strategy was the greater the risk, the greater the return-he had the funds to cover them. Besides, he argued, “The boy is taking the real risk.”
And the risks were great. Accounts of kite fighting can be found in the Sanskrit religious writings of the
Brookmire could do little or nothing about minimizing the physical risks of flight, but he worked minor miracles when it came to the problems of money and privacy. Without question, he purchased (as Lloyd requested) lumber, wire, fishing nets, ropes, cable, bellows, baskets, sailcloth, and muslin. He arranged for the use of a large high- ceilinged warehouse suitable for the boy’s very specific needs, and he secured the services of a rust-blooming steam barge owned by a burned-face roughneck named Lucky Cahill, who had earned his nickname by virtue of having survived two furnace explosions caused by his driving his boats too hard.
Brookmire had no idea what Lloyd meant when he jabbered on about “cambered airfoils,” but he kept the boy’s belly stoked with ham hocks and grits, corn Johnny and green tomato sauce. He knew how to grease a palm-and how to find the sort of people who did not ask awkward questions when he did. The talk around town was all about Texas becoming a state and an impending war with Mexico, but Lloyd did not pay it any mind. For four sweltering weeks he battled on in a delirious state of detachment and absorption, all his talents and attention channeled with manic verve into the silkworm-and-catgut task he had set himself.
His father had not returned, he suspected that his mother had at last succumbed to the advances of the laudanum-addled doctor she mopped up after, and his old friend Mulrooney had been laid low with a fever picked up in the pestilential marshes where he had insisted on camping, following the clan’s bout of dysentery. All hope of reaching Texas, or some shining tomorrow that would restore the health and happiness of his family, hung in the balance of his great design, Lloyd felt. But every day brought new engineering conundrums. Altitude, balance, directional control. Discovery, failure, damage. Repair, breakthrough, breakdown. Then a tantalizing hint of success, only to be confronted with some horrendous new challenge.
His plan divided into three stages. First, the manufacture of a small but potent balloon that would serve to lift a man-size kite. Sufficient initial propulsion and additional lift would be provided by the forward momentum of the barge to which it would remain attached. Once equilibrium at maximum altitude had been achieved, the kite platform would be cut loose for a brief moment of spectacular display. Then the third stage of the project would be deployed-a fixed wing glider. This would be the all-important steerable component in the mix.
It was a complex affair, but broken down into sections he felt he could get his mind around. A balloon he had already manufactured; it was just a matter of scale. The problem lay in producing sufficient hydrogen, a painstaking process involving exposing iron filings to acid. But a balloon of itself lacked the requisite novelty to provoke “bewonderment.” The people of St. Louis had seen balloons before. So the second element was demanded. In his mind, Lloyd saw a diaphanous skeletal structure that would create a theatrical focal point and a sense of awe, and here again he felt confident. His work with kites had proved tremendously successful. (While it is considered an accomplishment for a kite to fly at angles of up to 70 degrees, he had achieved efficiency close to 110 degrees, moving to the kind of tetrahedral design that Alexander Graham Bell would later introduce-and then beyond.)
It was the peculiar hierograms of the Martian diplomats that gave him the critical idea. Using woven strands of cane and millinery wire, he pieced together an enclosed scaffold in the most exact shape of their repeating tornado icon that he could, then he set it loose in a whirlwind of dust in one of the city’s weed lots. The woven spiral, which in his concentration and excitement he had forgotten to secure, rose so fast that he could barely watch it. He made a larger model, and this time remembered to keep a lead attached. Because Lloyd had integrated panels made of umbrella cloth and handkerchiefs, the structure was able to support a terrified young pig that he pinched to a height of almost a hundred feet. More work, he had no doubt, would produce a still stronger and more effective model, and once the physics were right he knew that it would be a simple matter to enhance the dramatic grandeur through the use of color, reflective materials, and improvised noisemakers. “I am going to build an enormous kite in the shape of the Ambassadors’ favorite symbol,” he said to himself.
The most difficult part was the critical third element-a working glider. For hours he labored, hallucinating a storm of theoretical insects and birds. Ever shifting between the strength of structure and the responsiveness of form, his designs evolved with a life of their own, as step by heartbreaking misstep he taught himself about flight.
He introduced a slight reflex curve at the trailing edge of the wings. Into the body of the glider he fabricated a rudder and an elevator rigged through a universal joint. Then he fitted a moving weight to adjust the center of gravity and improved stability by setting the wings at a dihedral angle. He rose and fell and swung on ropes. Every frantic hour brought a crash and then a jet of hope… some radiant insight… some fresh despair.
