The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories Read Free

in smaller letters, “Also: Reason.” It shows a basic lack of understanding. As far as we can tell, our Confederacy is on the verge of collapse. What’s so unreasonable about wanting to give some of it back?
    November and December pass without improvement around Battery Marshall, the focused attention of our war effort shifting from one losing front to another, and enthusiasm regarding our new weapon seems to have tapered from the top down. In the absence of any clear directive, our dives become endurance tests. How deep can we go? How fast can we pump air back into the ballast tanks? We turn tight circles underwater. We set the Hunley down on the harbor floor and practice shallow breathing. We dive and surface, acquainting ourselves with immersion. We memorize instrument placement. Attached to the outer hull is extra ballast, iron platelets i-bolted through the floor, which, in case of an emergency, can be unscrewed and dropped. We practice locating them in the dark.
    Lieutenant Dixon studies tidal charts. Given that we are hand-powered, whenever we are scheduled to engage the blockade we will need to leave on the ebb tide and return with the flood. We will need the cover of darkness.
    “Darkness, darkness, darkness,” Frank has taken to saying before Lieutenant Dixon blows out the candle.
    “Light, light, light,” we say back, once the candle’s extinguished. We’re fond of the reversal.
    There are moments of panic. Episodes of self-doubt that buffet our overall sub-marine elation. We’ve come to know our time underwater as a dampened and foggy silence punctuated by flashes of distress so immediately visceral it takes us days to stop shaking. During one dive, Lieutenant Dixon forgets to light the candle before setting the diving planes, and accidentally floods the ballast tanks before the rear hatch is fully sealed, taking on enough water that if he hadn’t immediately realized his mistake we would’ve certainly sunk. Another dive, we reverse into a pylon and break the flywheel that houses our propeller. While depth testing, Augustus succumbs to a brief hysteria, and in our rush to surface we almost roll to port. “Pardon that,” he says, shaking. He’d almost kicked a hole in the hull. “Pardoned,” Frank says.
    At the dock we heave ourselves out of the hatch and stretch out flat on our backs, letting the unreality of what we’ve just done sink in. The men puttering around Battery Marshall shake their heads and keep a distance that signals discomfort. We give them hard looks in return. They’ve taken to calling us Pickett’s Charge, only without the charge. They place bets on the time it will take us to sink ourselves. The odds are on less than a week. We resent the implication. Frank reminds them that the odds haven’t changed for the last six weeks running. “So?” one of them says back.
    “Whatever happened to patriotism?” Augustus says. “Don’t they know war heroes when they see them?”
    “Apparently not,” Carleton, watching the latest bombardment of Charleston, replies.
    One day, following up an idea we had the night before, Augustus rigs a dummy spar and we knock it into the hull of the Indian Chief . We’re pulled from the water for a week for having a detrimental effect on morale. “So it wasn’t the best way to illustrate our potential,” Frank says. “But morale? Half of me wishes it’d been a live load.”
    “Half of you?” someone says back.
    Frank and James disappear in a reverie of letter writing. Lieutenant Dixon takes a leave of absence to visit his fiancée. Carleton and I spend the week sitting near the water, throwing pebbles at floating sticks. When Augustus comes back, he tells us our comrades in arms have a new name for the Hunley: the peripatetic coffin.
    I tell him I like the sound of it. Augustus shrugs. “Incapacitation is as incapacitation does,” he says.
    “For our parade,” Carleton calls over his shoulder to Lieutenant Joosten, who’s running an