The Cordwainer Read online

  Chapter Three

  The Battle of Izpegi Pass

  One more McTavish turned into three, then a couple of Fraus followed that, just to keep the edge. Soon, all three of us were sitting at Mitty's table of war, laughing as Fluky recounted the events that led up to the loss of his virginity in the stockroom of Putter's Café.

  Mitty had the Battle of Izpegi Pass spread out on the table before us. A particular favorite of his. The battle, like that at Thermopylae millennia before, appealed to war buffs like Mitty, who saw war mostly as a struggle between good and evil, and the continent-wide duel between Patton and Rommel as a chess game played between two titans.

  At Izpegi Pass, nine hundred U.S. Marines, only three weeks shy of the D-day landings on the beaches of Asturias, held a pass against two full SS Panza Divisions attempting a counterattack. They were, to a man, completely annihilated, and Rommel knocked much of the momentum out of Patton's Basque Offensive; but the sheer heroics and personal bravery of the U.S. Marines...

  Mitty also had a special interest in the Iberian Campaign, and the Basque Offensive in particular. His father, who'd skipped out on Mitty's mom when Mitty had still been very young, had left little behind other than a framed display of his war medals hung in the entry hall of the house. With no other memory of his father, Mitty had become obsessed with those medals. And the War.

  Two of the medals were Purple Hearts, two more were campaign medals from Italy and Spain. The final one, however, Mitty came to learn, was a Bronze Star given to his father during the Basque Campaign. It took Mitty many months and countless letters to the Department of Defense during his teenage years to find out the full provenance of his father's Bronze Star; and in the end it had turned out that Mitty's father had verifiability been quite a hero, saving the lives of many of his comrades in battle.

  Of course, even a real-life, genuine hero was never going to be good enough for Mitty's imagination. He had soon concocted for himself an elaborate tale of how his father had really been the only surviving U.S. combatant at the Battle of Izpegi Pass; but through some bureaucratic incompetence and a lack of political connections, his father had been denied his rightful Congressional Medal of Honor and had had to settle for the Bronze Star, in an unrelated battle, in recompense.

  Well into high school Mitty had still been telling this story. But slowly, as Mitty aged, his need to repeat this tall tale had diminished. I suspect, as he came to accept his father's absence, his need to manufacture heroics for his father had waned. Mitty's obsession, however, with Patton and the War never did. I can fondly recall many a long hour spent with Mitty poring over maps of the European Theater, expertly tracking the many movements of Patton's Third Army and the counter thrusts of Rommel's Nazi Panzas.

  With Fluky's story finished, and the last of the McTavish carton gone, Fluky began to meticulously roll marijuana in white cigarette paper from the supply he always kept in a tobacco pouch in his hip pocket. Mitty and I watched silently as the master worked his magic.

  The weed was from Fluky's own private stock, a share of the harvest he brought monthly into town off the Palouse. As one of the few people in town whose profession allotted him a diesel ration, Fluky was well positioned to operate as something of an illicit cargo company, moving products back and forth for people who, for whatever reason, were uncomfortable using the official Concession services.

  Of course, this mainly meant drugs. Despite America's almost total shift in the last twenty years over to hemp as a cheap, rugged, hardy textile, its smaller, more intoxicating cousin still remained an illegal substance. Pot was big business, as the farmers growing hemp could easily hide an acre or two of the illicit substance in the vast fields of the hardier hemp grown for market.

  Distribution, however – as with everything else – was always a problem.

  If Fluky had been the type to hold his supplier's feet to the fire, he could have easily become quite a wealthy man, simply exploiting his possession of a diesel ration card. But for Fluky, the weed had never simply been about the money. To him, pot was sacred – used in some sort of religious rite. Seriously. What religion Fluky was exactly was hard to say. He was rather closemouthed about the whole affair, but it was some sort of Shinto, Rastafarian, Santeria, Tent Revival kind of Christianity. All of it very secret and strange and closely linked to the forced repatriations of the Japanese Americans back to Japan.

  Get Fluky drunk or high and he'd start in on some apocalyptic-inspired, secret society, cult-like crap about revolution, judgment day, and the government being held accountable for the wartime internment of the Japanese and the subsequent nuclear carpet bombing of his homeland. It was all pretty crazy shit. Hungover the next day, Fluky would always play it off as just some sort of big joke he was playing on the rest of us – seeing how far he could take it. But the crazy talk, every time, varied so little in its content, that it started to become familiar simply through repetition. What Fluky really believed, I couldn't say, and he was disinclined to discuss any of it sober.

  With the joint made, we lit it up and passed it around, smoking it down to the end. All three of us were soon well and truly blasted; on three quarters of a bottle of Scotch, some wicked chronic, and a miscellaneous number of beers.

  Of course, this meant it was time to load back up in the wrecking truck and share our inebriation with the rest of the town. It was a tradition, just like back in high school, cruising around town, looking for girls and trouble.

  We made our way out of Mitty's sun porch, around through the yard of garbage, and back into the cab a Fluky's truck.

  With an angry growl, the old diesel coughed to life. Fluky reversed back out onto the road, kicking up dirt and sand, and pointed us down the hill towards Pottersville.

  We were all talking at once, laughing and carrying on snippets of various conversations. We were catching up with old friends, reminiscing about past excursions in our current state of mind, discussing politics and the past election. Fluky pulled out, accelerating too hard, and followed a winding path down C Street, swerving from lane to lane.

  Perhaps nowadays we'd have thought twice about letting Fluky drive in his condition. But back then, when there were so few other operating vehicles on the road... Pedestrians, perhaps, should have been a concern, but we were heading down the hill towards Pottersville, and no one ever bothered to visit Pottersville anymore. No one lived there – hadn't since the Concession put the mega-gauge rails in, thirty years before, and the whole town had upped and moved to build Boot Hill.

  As kids, the three of us had entertained ourselves by taking Fluky's dad's .30-30 down into Pottersville and plinking out the windows of old Victorian mansions that lined the streets of the silent ghost town. But that was back in the day when things like cartridges for hunting rifles hadn't been an obscene luxury. Back when the Concession Department Store still had things on its shelves to sell.

  But now everything was scarce; from clothes to hardware to the essentials of everyday life – everything except, paradoxically, McTavish and Frau Brau and other liquor. Somehow, the Concession was always able to keep the shelves stocked with booze. Perhaps, once a month, you might have to eat a meal without salt because the store shelves were bare of it, but never did you have to skimp on that stiff drink before and after. Never.

  Of course, the shortages, and Boot Hill's complementary surpluses, were the genesis of the whole idea of The Cordwainer. As we drove down C into the town of Pottersville proper, I was explaining to the others how the shortages were being felt back in the Big City.

  “...I swear, honest to God, three fucking hours people were standing in line. And you know what? In the end it all turned out to just be a rumor. The Concession Store on Pine hadn't gotten any new shipment that day. Not of boots, not of anything. The Manager had just been too chicken shit to tell anyone. He just let them all stand out there on the sidewalk, lining up. Paper says he feared a riot if people found out the rumor wasn't true... He was concerne
d for people's safety...”

  I laughed, Mitty laughed, and Fluky found my story to be almost irresistibly hysterical. The truck listed suddenly towards the sidewalk as he doubled over in hysterics at the wheel. Without thinking, I reached over and pulled the wheel back towards the center of the road, saving us from disaster but upsetting the Frau I was holding in my other hand, spilling it over the lapel of my new coat.

  “That right there! That's some funny shit!” Fluky said, regaining his composure and hold of the truck's steering wheel at the same time. It was pretty funny. The idea of people lining up for a pair of boots. In Boot Hill it was the one thing, apart from McTavish, there was always plenty of. Hundreds of thousands of pairs. Freight containers lined the roads out of town towards The Shop just full of boots rotting away in the heat. No one in Boot Hill ever went short of a pair of boots. There was no need to. Yours wear out – yours get a little dirty – just pop open a cargo container and help yourself. Every size, every shape, every style under the sun.

  But to the roadside of the highway was as far as most boots in Boot Hill ever made it. In other towns – in the rest of America – a new pair of boots was akin to something like gold. Better than gold, truth be told, since you couldn't put gold on your feet.

  I suppose, in those other towns, they were making something else. Brassieres, perhaps, and no one there ever went short for one of those. Shipping container after shipping container filled with brassieres there, stretching off into the horizon. But in Boot Hill, it was boots. And shoes and sneakers and waders and galoshes. And pumps and wingtips and loafers and flip-flops and cowboy boots and moccasins. All waiting on the Concession Behemoths, waiting for space on the next available train.

  But the next train never seemed to come – space never seemed to open up. What few boots actually left Boot Hill were little more than a drop in the ocean to the size of the need in the thousands of cities, in the hundreds of regions of America where boots were going scarce. And it was a similar story with everything else: Food, clothes, hardware, household goods. The shortages were nationwide. There were too few trains and too few freight cars to ever seriously put a dent in the demand for everything and anything people were running short on. And the Concession, as owners of America's last operating railroad, was to whom everyone pointed the finger – both depended on and blamed.

  “You'd think footwear, of all things, would fall under the aegis of the emergency powers,” Mitty remarked, his arms thrust out against the truck's dash, bolt solid, hoping to brace himself against the crash Fluky's driving always guaranteed. “I mean, a good pair of boots is no luxury.” Mitty was referring to the emergency executive order that President Kennedy had signed after his re-election last year, authorizing a relaxation of locomotive carbon caps, hoping to combat the chronic shortages.

  “Boots are way down on the list,” I replied, “when folks are still short on food.”

  Fluky suddenly made a hard turn to the left as if to avoid something invisible in the road and I came crashing across the cab into Mitty, this time completely losing hold of my beer. The rear wheels broke free and the truck came spinning around. We skidded and twisted and for a second, I thought the truck was going to roll. But we skipped to a halt on the sandy cobblestones of Pottersville's Main Street, pointing back up the road in the direction we had come.

  “Here we are!” Fluky announced, pulling hard on the handbrake. He opened his door and promptly collapsed out into a heap on the road. Mitty was more cautious, stepping out of the truck like a sailor truly grateful for his return to terra firma. He stooped over the second he stepped free of the vehicle and I thought he was about to barf. But after a moment of contemplation, he caught his second wind and pulled himself back up to his full six feet. He re-lit the Jefferson that had never left his mouth and took a puff.

  “Always an adventure, riding with you, Fluky,” Mitty said, fidgeting with his cigarette holder.

  “Did I hit somethin'?” Fluky asked, still laying in a lump in the middle of the road.

  “No, no,” Mitty assured, strolling off down a broken, weed-covered sidewalk. “But there by the grace of God...”

  The sun was just beginning to set.

  We were a block from the old Union Station that dominated the center of Pottersville and we stumbled our way there from the spot where the wrecking truck had come to rest. The Station's grand, Romanesque arched facade had always been a favorite target of ours, with its intricate patterns of stained glass smashing gratifyingly when winged by a bullet. We were weaponless this trip, however, and had to satisfy ourselves with throwing stones.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” Fluky yelled, throwing a rock that hit nothing but air. Mitty and Fluky were drinking the last two Frau's from the back of the truck, but I'd come up empty-handed. “You ready for work on Monday, Beans?” he asked.

  I threw a rock but lost sight of it in the shadows of the setting sun: “Hell, yeah,” I answered. “Four years of nothing and finally I get to see a paycheck.”

  “Certainly!” Mitty punctuated, tossing a rock.

  “What'd you say you got a degree in?” Fluky threw another rock; this time it hit something large and fragile. “Hell, yeah! What'd you say you studied? Mechanical Engineerin'?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you're goin' to work at a boot factory?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lot of need for Mechanical Engineers makin' boots?”

  “I doubt it...” I tossed a rock and heard something break.

  “Can't you find a real job?” Fluky was picking up a big rock, one that required both hands, and threw it. It traveled all of two feet. “I mean, usin' your degree?”

  I laughed. “Sure, sure...”

  “Surely somewhere, someone is designing new locomotives,” Mitty chimed in, throwing a rock. “Or automobiles... Still...”

  I paused. In the twilight the two of them kept throwing projectiles. I picked up a big rock and really gave it a toss. It hit something, maybe stone, but no breaking glass.

  “There were thirteen thousand people in my graduating class,” I said with an edge to my voice. “I graduated number four thousand six hundred and twelve.” I picked up Fluky's beer from where he'd put it down and drank the rest of it. “Ain't no engineering jobs for number four thousand six hundred and twelve.” I squashed the carton and tossed it after our stones. “Numbers one, two, maybe three... But number four thousand? Hell, number ten ain't even got a chance in hell.”

  “My...” Was all Mitty could say. Fluky said nothing.

  Fact is, if Dad hadn't pulled some stings – if he hadn't had the inside track and knew who was retiring and when – the Foreman's job at The Shop wouldn't have been waiting home for me, either. In those days, it wasn't like you could just go and apply for a job. To get work you had to know somebody who knew somebody. That was why I was back in Boot Hill. Even with a degree and all the education in the world, all that mattered was who I knew and what jobs they knew about. A Class A chit was all well and good, but if my dad hadn't been twenty years' Foreman at The Shop, I'd have been worse off than Mitty with his Class F.

  “Hey, shithead, that was my beer,” Fluky said when he turned around and found his beer gone.

  “Is there any more?” I asked. We both looked at Mitty. He was drinking the last of his.

  “Empty, I'm afraid,” he said, tossing the waxy carton idly back over his shoulder.

  “Shit, we're out of beer,” Fluky said with a serious tone, as if it was the most intractable problem he'd faced all day.

  “Have you sobered up enough to drive us back to town?” I asked.

  “Hell, no!” Fluky said with pride. “But when the fuck did that ever stop me?”

  I couldn't help but laugh. Fluky turned and started off back towards the truck. Mitty and I fell in step behind him.

  But it was already dusk. That meant the Concession Store would be closed. We'd be buying no more alcohol that night – not retail.

  In the half l
ight of the setting sun I paused in my step, letting Fluky and Mitty walk on. I took a moment to look around me, at the rough stonework of the Richardsonian-style storefronts that lined Pottersville's old Main Street. They were boarded up now, facades sandblasted by the scrub, but the signs of the various stores were still partially legible. Dry Goods, Hardware, Butchers, Grocers. Auto parts and an appliance dealership. Two appliance dealerships, no less, kitty-corner to each other where Main crossed 13th. The inefficiency of it all tickled me. In Boot Hill we just had the one Concession Store, with departments for all those goods. When they had anything to sell. What town could stand the wastefulness of two places, on the same street, where you could buy a refrigerator?

  Still, seven-thirty in the evening, back in the heyday of Pottersville, you could have probably still bought a carton of whiskey. Bottle. Glass bottle; it came in glass bottles back then. And if one store had felt the need to close at dusk, perhaps another store would have stayed open later, just to get the business. Maybe people in Pottersville had liked to buy refrigerators after dark...

  Yeah, the inefficiency of it all really tickled me.

  Back at the wrecking truck I let Mitty be piggy in the middle for a change and made him straddle the drive shaft with his long, chubby legs. Fluky fired the monster to life and ground through the gears trying to find first.

  Eventually, we were on our way, climbing slowly back up the slope of C Street. I leaned out the window of the truck and watched the abandoned Victorian homes roll by, contemplative as the booze and the weed began to wear off.

  At the crest of the hill, as we passed Mitty's home, I was granted once again a few seconds of the sweeping view I'd observed earlier. All of Boot Hill was laid out there before me, this time in darkness – twinkling lights stretching out to the horizon. Again, the same revelation dawned on me: One town, one company. Owner of the hearts and minds of everyone who lived in Boot Hill. And Monday morning it'd own me, too.

  Man, I needed another drink.