The Philosopher's Flight 1

APRIL 1917

Though he was a famously incompetent sigilrist, Benjamin Franklin included five practical glyphs that he had learned from the women of Philadelphia in an early edition of Poor Richard's Almanack, as well as a simple design for a message board. In less than an hour, a woman could build a Franklin sand table using a silver penny, pane of window glass, hammer, and broom handle. This was to prove vital to the Continental Army during the Revolution.

Victoria Ferris-Smythe, Empirical Philosophy: An American History, 1938

A LITTLE MORE THAN five decades after Mrs. Cadwallader ended the Civil War, I was eighteen years old and lived in Guille's Run, Montana, with my mother, Maj. Emmaline Weekes, who served as our county philosopher. In her official capacity, Ma responded to all manner of accidents and natural disasters. The rest of the time, she earned a decent living doing the kind of dull, ordinary sigilry that was in constant demand-short-haul passenger flights, koru glyphs for enlarging crops, simple smokecarving cures for asthma and pleurisy.

Much as I would have liked to help her in the field, Mother only rarely gave me the chance. I had the typical male lack of philosophical aptitude and so instead of going on emergency calls, I did the work of a philosopher's son: I kept the books, ordered supplies, cooked, and stood night watches.

On the night of April 6, 1917, I was engaged in the thrilling task of organizing handwritten invoices from the previous year when Mother stormed into the house at nine o'clock, dripping wet from the rain.

What kept you? I called.

Don't even start, Boober! she shouted. Those cattle were scattered clear across Teller's Nook. I must have put in four hundred miles trying to track down the last ones. Mr. Collins is going to be mad as hell when he gets the bill.

Mother ran a towel over her face and graying hair. She'd taken ten emergency calls over the previous fourteen hours-a very busy day-in the midst of terrible weather.

There's beef stew on the stove, I said.

Mother dished herself a bowl and collapsed in a chair. I'd eaten hours before.

You've heard the news, I expect? Mother said.

I had. After months of prodding, President Wilson had convinced Congress to declare war on the German Empire. So now America, too, would be part of the fighting that had racked Europe since 1914.

I'd decided I wanted to join up the second I heard. The army or the navy; one was as good as the other. A uniform, a chance to see the world while fighting next to the boys I'd grown up with, a real man's job.

But I knew Mother was going to be a problem. She'd spent three decades with the Rescue and Evacuation Department of the US Sigilry Corps, flying wounded and dying soldiers from the front lines back to the field hospitals. She'd done tours of duty in the Franco-Prussian Intervention, the war with Cuba, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Hawaiian Rebellion. As a result, she tended not to approve of America involving itself in other people's wars. She wasn't going to like the idea of me enlisting.

Is there any chance you could be called up? I asked, trying to position the conversation just so.

Never, Mother said. They'll mobilize a few of the younger reservists and move more active-duty women overseas. But they're not going to call a sixty-year-old lady, even if my name is still on the lists. It would be an embarrassment. No, what I'm worried about is when Wilson calls for a draft for the army.

And there was my chance.

I regretted it a little. If I'd had my pick of careers, I would have done as Mother had and served w