Impeachment Doodah

Thinking about a Christmas Story  

Den fly along like a rail-road car—Doo-dah! doo-dah!
Runnin’ a race wid a shootin’ star—Oh! doo-dah-day! –Stephen Foster

Henry sat comfortably in the dining car and watched the Virginia winter roll by outside.  The war had been over for a long time.  Yankee officer offered a cigar.  Henry could see war still smoking tracks everywhere.  But Henry’s engine was pulling good.  Macht der Baron money.  Working on der railroad.  Alles gut, alles gut.  Ja ja chuffed the engine approaching Lynchburg.  Henry Flagler Heinz steamship future whee!  Whee the whistle blow whatchoo know Wasatch ewe know think of a story you can tell Jubal Early.  Poor old man alone on der Weihnachten.  Jubal does not mind.  American Ebenezer Scrooge.  Stories are all he has now, and he has plenty.  

Henry told the Yankee officer the engine was his new Heidelberg design.  Vacuum brakes and noiseless airbox manifold.  We are developing seamless boilers that can take the pressure.  If not here, then we will make them in Germany.  Kaiserreich is born like a star in the east.  Tredegar was trying the same technique on the guns.  Our Heidelberg design is applicable to steamships as well.  And the Yankee officer excused himself.  If such a Heidelberg design actually existed, Henry sure-as-shit would not describe it in such detail to one of Pierpont’s office boys.  Young amateurs.  Jubal will want to take care of business first.  Then- the stories.   

Jubal’s stories were like a gold mine.  Henry knew about gold mines.  Or an entrance to Hell.  Like old Jubal himself.  Jubal hated Carl like poison, but never understood his XI Corps boys anyway.  Henry felt himself getting old and sad.  Escaping the revolution, Henry took to the Ohio because he could not take to the Rhine.  So long ago.  Cards and women.  Fights were avoidable.  It was Carl who asked Henry to shoot that man.  Henry was born a hunter.  The Baron sent him to hunt.  The trick was knowing what the Baron desired and why.  Tears come remembering Kit man mighty Prussian uniform with beautiful Solongin bei der Tannenbaum.   Germania.

The battle was beginning to take shape, and Carl was being General again… telling Henry he must again decide.  The battle, sir?  I think not.  I am a civilian, sir, and a foreign one at that.  And unless you intend to take me prisoner.  Carl.  I have a fine room at yonder hotel.  Which is now being swarmed by General Early’s wolves, du dummkopf.  Nhaaarwuck said a bullet.  Carl dust no more of Henry that July, 1863.  And they never talked about that again until Chattanooga.  Jubal cackled like a jaybird.  Both had business elsewhere… and soon.  That might make Jubal laugh.  Rainy Christmas eve in Lynchburg, and Mozart had the phaeton Bahnhof-ready.    

The stocky black dwarf spoke only German.  Henry declined the reins of the phaeton.  What gives, Henny?  Don’t have a story for Jubal yet, Wolfen.  You know how he hates to be bored.  Plenty legal business papers, boss.  You know how he loves money.  Henry and Mozart laughed together.  Such a mean old man.  But he cries easy these days too don’t he.  Even a bad old man can only stand so much heartbreak brother.  Still got some his boys and girls left.  But he don’t see it.  His nation gone.  Loved that more than anything.  I know.  He gotta let it go.  Not the three king star.  Our new German Kingdom is a sunup… from his beat-up sundown day.     

King Jesus in a land of poets and thinkers.  The East is Red.