Russ Franklin - Cosmic Hotel

We looked like a gang in some heist movie all wearing identical hats, Dubourg walking in the parking garage with his black valise in his hand, Ruth with the black laptop case, and Van Raye carrying the nylon bag with the satellite receiver inside. We were on a grand mission to get software to send a message to a distant civilization, but as I walked through the parking deck, I was thinking, What kind of car is Charles driving? Then I saw the old Jaguar.

“A Jaguar?” I asked. “ That’s your car? ”

He’d always said that a Jaguar was a shitty automobile that people bought only because they were expensive. I think he was actually applying it as a metaphor to a Baltimore private school Elizabeth had enrolled me in at the time.

“We’ll not be comfortable in that,” Elizabeth said and turned on her boot heels to see the plum-colored shuttle van parked along the far wall, its windows stained by time.

Dubourg mapped the Civil War campground on his phone, as Elizabeth drove, the heater in the shuttle on full blast.

“When was the last time I saw you driving?” I said to her, smiling.

The bill of her cap was straight, her hair falling out the back. She kept her eyes on the dark road ahead, hands at eleven and one. “Are you asking me a question? You don’t expect me to remember, do you? It was probably in Nashville.” Even in her insulated coat, she looked small in the seat with the seatbelt rising above her and going into the wall.

“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.”