Chapter Thirty-Three
End of the Line
I slowed The Cordwainer down to a walking pace as the Big City began to grow up around us. As the terrain became more urban, the lights of the freight yards and storehouses of the southern section of the city began to glitter all around us. Here, the semi-permanent shantytown of Hooverville lined the tracks on either side, almost overlapping them. The shantytown had stood on the banks of the railroad since the Northern Pacific trains had still run down the line, a transient community of the city's great swath of unemployables that never managed to really transition to anywhere else.
In amongst the makeshift, tin-roofed shacks, Mitty leapt down off the running board of the train. He landed awkwardly, stumbled, but managed to maintain his feet. I caught one last glimpse of him as I leaned out of the cockpit, vanishing into the darkness as the train steamed on. He pulled himself up straight and snapped off his best military salute. I held up a single hand in a silent goodbye, and then he was lost amongst the detritus. Gone.
I settled myself into the cockpit's small, uncomfortable seat, and turned up the potentiometer, steaming faster towards the lights of the Big City.
After everything, I would have to see off the last mile of The Cordwainer's journey on my own. Two hundred miles lay behind me. Boot Hill was little more than a distant memory. Fluky was gone, Mitty was free. I looked down at the dash of the cockpit to where Fluky had suction-cupped the googly-eyed Jesus, and for the first time I realized he was gone, too. If he'd fallen off in the crash, if a Polypig had taken a shine to him, if Fluky had reteived his small totem before he'd abandoned the train, I didn't know. It left me at the controls of our train, alone. No weapons, no money, no googly-eyed Jesus. Nothing to show for my pains.
The lights of the city were growing brighter in front of me.
The Northern Pacific rails terminated in the city at a Union Station of its own. Converted to a central trolley hub, I remembered it from my time at University as a dingy, depressing place, filled with bums and workaday commuters, waiting for various trolley routes. It was a hazy structure in my memory, something I could remember, but not quite totally picture in my mind. Its exact shape – if it sported a clock tower – I couldn't quite recall.
As The Cordwainer rounded its last bend and turned its nose north toward a well illuminated, epic Romanesque structure, sitting on the horizon where the tracks beneath me eventually converged, no feeling of familiarity welled up inside me – no instant hit of recognition. That was the Big City's Union Station? I didn't remember the old platforms being so... well lit. As The Cordwainer rolled closer, the rumbling of a distant crowd began to join the nearby hum of the train's turbine. I began to make out spotlights pointing up at the clock tower of the station, illuminating it against the night. Closer still, and I could make out the shape of a platform, raised up at the terminus of the tracks. A large banner hung above it. I couldn't yet make out what it said, but a tightness in my stomach made me shift in my seat. I kept the potentiometer open, keeping the train at perhaps an even thirty miles an hour. Off to the left and right I could see figures in the dark, attempting to run alongside the train. They sprinted for a few yards, as far as their legs could take them, until the trail left them behind, exhausted in the dust.
There was an explosion of sound and more spotlights lit up the night when I was perhaps two hundred yards out. I slacked back on the potentiometer as the spotlights swept down, shining directly into my face. I held out a hand to shield my eyes, but the red blotches were already dancing on my retinas. A band was playing, I could hear it, over the din of the cheering crowd.
Closer and closer I rolled the train, driving blind, until I was passing between the spotlights, into the station itself. For the first time I could see the welcome that had been waiting for me: A massive crowd, perhaps thousands, thronging to the left and the right of the rails, up on the platforms. At the end of the tracks, above the large metal bumpers built to stop trains from rendezvousing with the Pacific, a grand stage had been erected; like a political rally, with bunting and all the trimmings. The banner above the stage read: “Welcome Boot Hill Banditos”. A collection of well dressed, powerful-looking men stood on the stage applauding.
I cut out the potentiometer and let The Cordwainer coast. She slowed herself and bumped to a halt up against the bumper, her HTP tank clanking up against it like a bell.
The crowd came streaming down off the platforms, dropping down onto the tracks, cheering me. I pulled my head out of the cockpit and people were already climbing up onto the running boards, yelling congratulations. It was a mob scene, but a mob scene of good will. When I'd freed myself from the cockpit and down onto the running board, I was spontaneously scooped up by the crowd and carried on people's shoulders. Hands were being thrust up to me to shake, a continual series of pats on the back almost knocked me off my perch.
The crowd passed me from one pair of shoulders to another until I was up on the platform with the important-looking, powerful men. There was another series of handshaking with each and every dignitary. It was a blur of “well done” and “good show” all around. I turned and waved to the crowd, getting caught up in the festivities of it all. It was my first chance to really look around the old station – at the carnival the place had become.
The source of the music was a large fiddle and banjo band, perhaps twenty or thirty members, playing away with all their hearts from the top of an old wagon pulled out to the end of one of the platforms. On another, a preacher had set up a pulpit, and was vigorously delivering a fire and brimstone sermon to a crowd that was gleefully ignoring him. A mob of people were jammed shoulder to shoulder between them, and between the walls of the station and our stage. Through the large archways into the concourse, more people could be seen attempting to catch a glimpse of the goings-on on the platform. It was quite a crowd, quite a turn-out.
From below me a familiar voice called out, catching my attention. I looked down and scanned the crowd to see my father in amongst the throng. He seemed terribly small, crushed between two policemen. He was waving at me, smiling. The policemen were attempting to make their way towards the stage, but not managing to gain much ground. When I held out a hand and attempted to reach out to my father, the crowd around him parted a little and he was able to push forward. Soon he was up on the stage next to me and I was shaking his hand warmly. He attempted to yell something salutatory over the noise, but I couldn't make out a word.
A microphone was handed up out of the crowd. One of the dignitaries took it and spoke into it. Nothing could be heard. Somewhere, someone turned something up and the white-bearded man spoke again. This time his voice boomed out over the crowd.
“Thank you! Thank you!” He said, waving a calming hand. “I know you will all join me in welcoming the Boot Hill Bandito here to Seattle!” he said, and then even with the amplification his voice was lost behind the roar of the crowd. When the applause finally abated, he was already speaking, “...fresh from his arduous journey, filled with many dangers, across treacherous and outlaw infested mountains, to bring here, to us, a shipment of much needed, much demanded supplies, straight from the Concession factory, there in Boot Hill, here to the Big City!”
The crowd roared again. I let it wash over me like a wave. Of everything I had expected to happen at the end of my journey, a party was low on the list. After Mulligan I'd had an inkling, but nothing like this. Police, the Army, I might have expected. I had hoped I might sneak into town undetected; but this... and my father standing beside me with his arm around me, with a bright smile on his face, enjoying the moment. It was hard to believe.
“...And it is my great honor to inform you all,” the white-bearded man was still speaking. “That the endeavors of this young man have not gone unnoticed. Scientists from the University are already meeting with the designer of this fabulous new engine, and are looking at the possibilities of using the technology you see here before you, to power Concession trains, on
standard routes! To help get this country moving again! To put an end to these interminable shortages that have so devastatingly gripped our nation!”
The crowd went wild again. Loud applause. The band struck up, gaily playing a tune.
Only I stood there in shocked silence.
What? I looked at my father. He was beaming at me, clapping along with the band. Suddenly, I realized what was happening – what the welcoming committee meant. This was no celebration of me – no congratulatory slap on the back for the success of The Cordwainer. The Concession – the Government – unable to bury us in the mountains, were co-opting what we had achieved, attempting to absorb our success. If you couldn't beat us, they were going to join us. Or have us join them. Now I realized why my father was there, why Sophie would be in the Big City, also.
The full weight of what was happening hit me. The whole thing was slipping out of my control. This party was a far worse welcome than police or National Guard would have been. A direct assault I could have handled. But to be co-opted.
Then I realized that I was the man of the hour. All those faces looking up to me in admiration. To see me and the train was the reason all these people had come out in the middle of the night, not to hear speeches from the Concession. The fight was far from over. I realized I still had an ace up my sleeve to play. I stepped forward, slipping out from under my father's arm and stepped up beside the white-bearded man, who later I'd learn was the Mayor of the Big City. I shook his hand, warmly, and he shook it back. And without giving him the chance to protest, I took the microphone from his hand.
“Thank you! Thank you!” I spoke into it. The crowd roared. I let them applaud as long as they liked, egging the crowd on. The Mayor next to me look slightly concerned, but smiled and slapped me on the shoulder. “Thank you to everyone who came out at this late hour to witness the final moments of my journey.” More applause. “Myself and my friends, we've brought boots to your town.” I paused as the crowd whooped and yelled. “But I implore you all, not to forget the circumstance that put us in this position – what institutions and what entities have caused the shortages that have so besieged us all...”
The Mayor next to me chuckled, slapped me one last time on the back, and attempted to reach for the microphone. I caught his hand in mine and continued speaking, “The Concession, ladies and gentlemen,” I went on, “are the enemy here. They attempted to stop The Cordwainer – our train – at every turn. Look at the train, ladies and gentlemen, look at the bullet holes-” I was interrupted as the Mayor tired to break away from my grip. We scuffled for a moment as he attempted to grab the microphone from me. I managed a few more monosyllables into the microphone before it was cut off at the source. The Mayor and I, however, continued to wrestle for it, until a number of the other dignitaries grabbed me by my arms and pulled me away.
The Mayor took up the microphone, straightened his jacket, and attempted to speak, hearing nothing over the speakers. He leaned over the edge of the stage and yelled to have the microphone turned back on. It subsequently was, and he started to speak to the crowd again, but the mood of the gathered mob had already changed. My job was done. There was no more applauding or spontaneous eruptions of song, just low murmuring in the crowd.
The two policemen who'd escorted my father up onto the stage now appeared and escorted me and my father back down off it. We were bustled out of the station and into a police car before the Mayor had finished speaking to the crowd. But it was already obvious that the crowd had turned against him. The Cordwainer sitting in the station in front of him, fully in view for everyone to see, was more than enough of a counterpoint to the promises the Mayor was attempting to make to the people.
A train full of boots versus a Mayor full of hot air... The boots were going to win every time.
From the train station, we were whisked to a nearby hotel, to a fifth-floor room overlooking the station. Little was said to my father or me, in the car or when we reached the hotel, and food and drink were brought up from the kitchens. But the pair of policemen that remained outside in the corridor, behind the hotel room's firmly locked door, indicated that we were not exactly honored guests. My father and I ate sandwiches and drank coffee in silence.
Outside the window, down at the old Union Station, the festival was still raging. I could still faintly hear the music, but the speeches had ceased.
It was morning before the locked door to our room opened up again. I caught a few hours sleep, tired down to my bones. When I awoke, the party across the street, down at the station, was still rolling on. It had spilled out into the square that faced onto the station; thousands were milling in the streets. Nothing exactly was happening, but the people were still there. As if waiting for something.
The morning consisted of a steady stream of men in suits asking questions. The whereabouts of Fluky and Mitty were a high priority for all of them. I was glad that I could say, with all honesty, that I had no idea where either of them were. The various men who came to interrogate me – obviously middle-management types, low-hanging bureaucrats, with titles like Deputy Comptroller for the Northwest Region – seemed particularly keen to wheedle out of me exactly what had become of the money I had earned selling boots along the rails down the west face of the mountains. They seemed to have a pretty good idea exactly how much I should have had on hand, arriving in the Big City. Perhaps they'd gotten to that banker in Galt. It wouldn't have surprised me. The absence of the money was a great source of consternation for them; and as the morning rolled by, the long stream of servile flatterers became more and more pointed in their questioning.
I had nothing to tell them. I truthfully stated that Fluky and Mitty had divided up the money and departed the train before we'd reached the city. But that answer satisfied no one. I wasn't aware of it at the time, and it was many years later when I finally came to comprehend the exact reasoning behind their obsession with the money: It was all that the powers-that-be – all the Concession or the government – had to pin on me.
Below in the station, that night before, after my father and I had been removed from the stage and the Mayor had been booed off, various members of the crowd had taken up the microphone and had something of a town meeting. The arrival of The Cordwainer had stirred up a groundswell of dissatisfaction amongst those who'd turned out to see my arrival. The Mayor's speech, and our subsequent fisticuffs, hadn't sat well with the crowd. They had resolved themselves to remain at the station until I was returned and was able to finished my remarks, apropos the arrival of the train and the related shortages.
The Concession, and their government handlers, had shifted into serious damage control. They'd managed to put an emergency block on the morning papers, which would have reported The Cordwainer's arrival and the resulting demonstration – it had been easy enough, the Concession being the newspaper publisher and only distributor. But the evening papers would not be so easy to skip. A whole day without papers, and rumors would begin to circulate. The Concession realized that they needed to control the spin on the story, get their version out officially in the paper; and this instigated the steady stream of sycophantic middle-management types parading through my hotel room. They needed dirt on me, something to smear me with. And half a million in ill begotten profits, they figured, could just about do it.
Without the cash, without the mercenary, profiteering angle, they had nothing. The thefts – the boots, the peroxide, the parts – it was all nothing that would play well in print. Before, they'd tried to portray The Cordwainer as outlaws and it had backfired on them, playing out with a whole Robin Hood angle. All they had now was that we were dirty, rotten capitalists. And without the capital, that was going to be hard to prove.
By the evening, our handlers had left my father and me alone. We ate dinner in the room, behind the door still guarded by policemen, and watched evening fall outside the windows. The crowds in the square and the station had grown. Word of mouth had called people out and it seemed, from five stories up
, that the protests had started in earnest. At dusk, the microphone of the stage cracked to life again, booming around the station and out into the streets beyond. I couldn't make out exactly what anyone was saying, but the speeches sounded sufficiently inflammatory.
Slowly and quietly, police were gathering to encircle the station.
The kindly waitress who had brought my father and me all our meals sneaked in a carton of McTavish with our evening coffee. She had given me a knowing wink when she'd brought the tray in, covered by the cloth. For a second I'd panicked, fearing it was going to be a handgun, but I was infinitely relieved to raise the cloth and find only the whiskey. My father and I poured coffee cups full of the bitter, sour brown liquid and toasted each other's health. The McTavish still tasted vile, but I couldn't drink it without a slight smile on my face, thinking back to Mitchell and the Château Marmont.
“Andy, Andy...” my father shook his head after his third cup. He'd been handling the whole affair, our arrest, quite well up until then. “Why did you have to do this?”
I was silent, drinking my whiskey.
“Now we're...” He pointed at the locked door. “They'll never...”
“It seemed like a good idea back home. Once we were in the hills, though, it got complicated,” I replied moodily.
“But, you could have gotten yourself killed,” he emphasized. “And for what?”
“Money,” I said flatly.
“What money? They've been asking you all day about the money. Was there any money?”
I didn't reply. I looked at my father over the rim of my cup. He shook his head, as if to retract the question, “Just a stupid risk for nothing.”
“You've always told stories about the War,” I said. “Of you and Mr. Salmon, in France, liberating Paris. That was a risk. You couldn't have been any older than me back then.”
“Yes, son,” my father said, condescendingly. “But that was the War.”
“And that makes a difference?” I reacted angrily. “That somehow makes it okay? That the government said you could? Are those the only adventures we're allowed? The only risks we can take? Those that are duly authorized and approved by the State?” I finished off the last of my scotch, standing up and crossing to the window, pointing. “I did a good thing here, Dad. Look how those people have reacted. We've shaken things up, made people realize their discontent with the status quo. Wasn't that worth the risk?”
“Son, there could be a riot!” my father protested.
“Yes, and isn't it about time? Things are broken, Dad, and people are sick and tired of waiting around for a fix. What's wrong with all of us fixing things for ourselves? Huh? Why do we have to wait for the sanctioned solution? If the solution is within the grasp of each and every one of us? Why can't we take it?”
“Son-” he began, but was interrupted as the loudspeakers outside cut out. It had been droning on all evening with speaker after speaker, but now it fell suddenly silent. I looked down from my fifth-story perch to see that the spotlights that had been illuminating the Union Station clock tower were also dark. The power had been cut. Momentarily, the lights in the hotel room died out, too. I watched as the crowd in the square in front of the station churned restlessly. They could feel it as well as I could: The sudden change in the air. “What's happening?” my father asked, joining me at the window.
“I think the protest has outstayed its welcome.”
I could see in the gloom, mounted policemen moving down the side streets. Long, thin spear-length batons, like whips, in their hands.
Behind us, I heard the lock in the door turn. But the door didn't open. A beam of a flashlight momentarily appeared at the foot of the door, but then vanished.
I crossed the room and tried the handle. The door opened. I looked cautiously out into the dark corridor though a crack in the door. The corridor was empty of policemen, guarding either side of the door. There was no one. I though of our kindly, sympathetic waitress, looking down at the key in the lock. I opened the door fully to let myself out.
“Where are you going?” my father asked, grabbing at my arm.
“Anywhere but here,” I replied truthfully.
“Son, no!”
I pulled my arm free. My father didn't make another attempt to stop me.
“What are you going to do?” he asked as I moved quickly across the corridor and tried a nearby door to a stairwell. It was dark in there too, but it appeared to be empty.
“With no job opportunities, and a history of criminal behavior?” I said, trying to answer the question for myself, too. “Perhaps I'll go into politics?”
“Andrew, wait,” my father appealed, still standing in the doorway to our hotel room, afraid to step out in the dark corridor.
“Goodbye, Dad,” I said, stepping towards the stairwell door. But I paused, suddenly thinking of Barry's watch around my wrist. I slipped it off, looked at the time through the broken crystal and handed it to my father. He said nothing. There was nothing to say.
I turned and pushed through the stairwell door, letting it swing closed behind me. The stairs were engulfed in blackness. My hand found the railing and I was moving down; circling and circling.
I'd find a fire exit at ground level, out into some back alley, and then I'd be free on the streets. There'd be no cops, I knew; they'd all be busy advancing on the station – advancing on the station and the protesters and The Cordwainer and that last hopper car full of boots. I'd be five miles away, in an after-hours bar I knew near the campus of the University, before anyone returned to the hotel to check on me. They'd find only my father. I would be free.
But I had no plans of hiding. No, not from the Concession, or the government, if they wanted to find me. I'd make my whereabouts well known. What was happening across the street, what was happening in that station, was the direct result of my actions. I would have to take responsibility.
For good or ill, I would have to let the world judge me for what I had done. What I had started. Started in a makeshift train, powered by rocket fuel, piloted across the mountains and through many dangers by three losers from Boot Hill.
I was proud to say that was what I had done, and I was responsible.
The Cordwainer Page 33