Chapter Thirty-One
Fluky Bows Out
The Cordwainer was coming together, west of the rock slide, once again straddling the tracks of the old Northern Pacific Railroad.
It was beginning to look very much like its old road-worn, bullet-ridden, well-used self as the hopper cars were slowly refilled with their cargo. Fluky had the engine reassembled, bolted down, but managed to “Protocol Ohm's Law” himself and six Polypigs attempting to power up the traction motors. No one was seriously injured, but there was much grumbling and complaining from everyone involved. It took Fluky most of the rest of the day, with limited tools, to track down the short to the motor of the rear-most car. He simply cut the HT leads leading to the bad motor. With it being a downward descent from there on out, he figured we could reach the Big City with just the two remaining motors.
Darkness descended upon us before The Cordwainer was ready on the tracks. We tinkered away, late into the evening, realigning this and that. Before midnight, we joined the Polypigs at their campfire and attempted to get some rest before daybreak.
The Polypigs were slumbering in clusters on the hard ground, each wife with her various husbands sleeping around her. With their work complete, they had all helped themselves to a shiny new pair of boots from our hoppers – the best hemp walking shoes Boot Hill had to offer – and they all slept with them on their feet, their guns tucked up inside their bedrolls. We didn't begrudge them their prize. For the price of fifty or sixty pairs of boots, The Cordwainer had been picked up from where it had derailed, carried around the blocked pass and reassembled on the other side.
In all honesty, I was still a little fuzzy as to the Polypigs true motivations. I doubted I'd ever completely understand their actions. Everything Majorette had said about a common cause, the State/Concession duality, hardly explained the level of dedication the Polypigs had shown in getting The Cordwainer running on tracks once again. Perhaps what Mitchell had said about our journey inspiring others was turning out to be prophetic. Perhaps the odyssey of The Cordwainer had taken on a meaning greater than just the profits that Fluky, Mitty and I hoped to make.
Whatever their reasons, I was keenly aware of how much in the debt of the Polypigs we really were. Part of me hoped we really would strike a disruptive blow to those the Polypigs considered enemies by bringing our cargo of boots to the Big City. Even if I didn't share their cause, it would be close to the only way to pay in full the debt we owed to them. But I seriously doubted our little enterprise amounted to that much – could create such serious waves – regardless of the value assigned to it by others.
With the first light of dawn, The Cordwainer had a full head of steam and we were on our way once again. We only made it a few yards before derailing a hopper car. The crossbars were understandably misaligned. With the help of a few mules and Fluky's innovative jacks, we had the train quickly on the tracks again.
Our next attempt to continue our journey got us a quarter mile down the tracks before derailing again. This time we were on our own. We lifted The Cordwainer back onto the track and got her underway again, but a number of the crossbars were horribly twisted from the accident. Fluky adjusted everything, spending some time under the chassis of each car until he was satisfied with his calibrations, but there was little else we could do but cross our fingers and hope the train didn't derail at a critical moment – like during the approach to the next machine gun nest the army inevitability had positioned in front of us on the tracks. The last thing we needed to do was make ourselves a sitting duck for a thirty-caliber machine gun.
Along with helping themselves to some boots, the Polypigs had also confiscated all our guns – the Thompson, the automatics we'd taken from the Concession goons, and the old Smith & Wesson thirty-eights. We expressed concern to Majorette about the next machine gun emplacement, that we'd potentially need to defend ourselves, but she assured us we had no need for concern. Three miles down the slope of the mountain we caught sight of what she had been alluding to: The sandbagged emplacement, smoldering quietly in the morning air. Three scruffy Polypigs, holding rifles, were picking through the debris. They looked up as we rounded the bend, raising their hands in a friendly salute. We waved back as the train steamed past, the body of a soldier laying dead just off to the side of the tracks.
That was the last I was ever to see of the Polypigs – perhaps the last anyone ever saw. By Christmas of that year, the government had declared victory in their campaign against the Polypigs, pulling the army back out of the mountains. It pains me to think that Majorette and the others, after everything they had done for us, might have met with such an ignominious end. But whether there was any truth to the government's claims, I could never verify. And by that Christmas, the troops the government had fighting in those mountains were beginning to sorely be needed elsewhere.
The Cordwainer steamed into the town of Taggart late that afternoon, to a hero's welcome. A large crowd – perhaps the whole town – was waiting beside the tracks. It was a scene that would be repeated time and again in each of the small communities that we passed through, descending down the west side of the mountains: A line of poor, hardworking men and women waiting, ready with cold hard cash in hand, looking to do business, grateful for our presence.
In Taggart, we started selling boots at $100 a pair, quickly selling six hundred in twenty minutes. It almost turned into a mob scene, the crowd rushing on The Cordwainer as we started to unload stock. It was a quick, cheap lesson in pricing our product correctly, for the safety of our customers as well as ourselves. $100 was well below market, though the same pair of boots could be bought in the town's Concession Store for $2.25, if they could be bought at all.
As The Cordwainer steamed on for the next town of Rearden, we bumped the price up to $150. This had the desired affect of making the eager mob of customers waiting for us in the center of town a little more leery of our product. There was some grumbling about highway robbery. That was a good indication we were hitting the sweet spot: High enough to sting, but low enough that we still were doing a brisk business.
We sold over a thousand pairs in Rearden. We had our first attempt at a wholesale purchase. The Manager of the local Concession Store somehow appeared with $10,000 in hand, looking for two thousand pairs. We turned this offer down, despite the tempting sight of the bag full of cash. We hadn't come all that way, suffered through so many hardships, to sell off our going concern. We sold directly to customers with money in the pocket – two or three pairs of boots at a time.
While in Rearden, while Mitty and I were sitting on the tailgate of the caboose, collecting money and checking boots for style and size, Fluky was back in the hoppers pulling stock down for the customers. While we were frantically doing business, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Fluky had stepped away from the hoppers and was talking with a man beside the train. The man was tall and young and of some Oriental heritage. He was conferring with Fluky, quietly but seriously. At the time, I gave the sight no mind, but the same conversation was repeated again in the next town we stopped in, and then the next. The third time, the young man was joined by two older, well-dressed men.
After Rearden, we stopped in the orchard town of San Anconia, where we did just as brisk a business as we had come to expect. The day was winding on, and we sold a little over eight hundred pairs of shoes before dusk was completely upon us. We pulled out of town in the twilight, stopping The Cordwainer amongst the apple trees for the night, and counted our money. Inconceivably, we had over $300,000 all loose and flapping around in the caboose. $300,000! In tens and twenties and fives. More money than I'd ever seen in my life – more money that my tiny, pea brain had ever considered to even exist. And we had just emptied a single hopper; two more were almost untouched. We filled three large hemp sacks to the top and still had notes fluttering around loose in the caboose.
We sat in the moonlit night, each with our share of the loot in a sack in front of us, and ate some cheese
and bread we still had left over from our trading in Marmont.
We were rich.
We could stop right there, leave The Cordwainer in that orchard, and have enough money to last each of us twenty years.
We were still fifty miles from the Big City, steaming through the hinterlands – small, poor farming communities. The mega-gauge Concession behemoths didn't service Taggart, Rearden or San Anconia; they took their goods to market by horse and cart. And we'd still made over a third of a million dollars.
The nearer to the City we came, the wealthier the communities would become. Perhaps tomorrow, $150 for a pair of boots would get us mobbed again. We'd have to raise the price to $200, $300... whatever the market could bear.
And there was still the Big City ahead of us.
The next morning, we rose before dawn and steamed into the town of Galt, just after breakfast. Sure enough, we set our price at $200 and still did a raging businesses. There was a rumor in the crowd, however, that the National Guard had been called out in the next town down the tracks, Wyatt, where a crowd of customers had formed late yesterday, expecting the late arrival of The Cordwainer. As the night rolled on and there was no sign of our appearance, they'd started to riot, smashing the windows of the town's Concession Store, and looting its contents. We'd be steaming right into the middle of this tense situation if we departed Galt, people told us. Best to stay where we were and sell our shoes there.
It was here in Galt that Fluky had his clandestine conversation with that same young man and the two older, Japanese-looking men. While Mitty and I were collecting money, he stepped aside and talked to the three men beside an old, rusty Buick. The conversation was brief and they had quickly come to some form of agreement. They shook hands and Fluky returned to The Cordwainer, while the other three men climbed into the rusty Buick and drove off.
We took the advice of the crowd and spent the rest of the day in Galt. There was no shortage of customers. When we began to run dry of townsfolk to sell to, a slow trickle of out-of-town customers began to appear. They came on horseback and by the wagon load. People from the surrounding territory were converging on Galt, cash in hand.
By evening, foot traffic from Wyatt started to show up with more news about the events in that town. Sure enough, the Mayor had declared a state of emergency after the looting of the Concession Store, and the National Guard was patrolling the streets. When word arrived that The Cordwainer was in Galt, much of the town of Wyatt up and walked the twelve miles between the two communities.
We'd be doing no business in Wyatt, we realized, but we'd need to pass through there, and Hammond and Mulligan, before we'd even have the remotest chance of steaming on to the Big City. We could stay in Galt, it seemed, and let the whole state west of the mountains make its way to us, and sell off our stock just as well, but it seemed as something of an anti-climax. We'd set out to deliver a cargo of boots to the Big City for sale, and that was what we still intended to do. National Guard or not.
But just to be safe, we spent the night in the Galt's town square, talking turns on watch.
We had sold nearly fifteen hundred pairs of boots that day – some people buying a dozen pairs at a time – almost doubling our take to $600,000. The bank manager of the local Federal Savings and Loan, seeing the sheer value of cash on hand, had come to us around dinner time and strongly suggested we deposit our profits in his bank. He'd cook the books, he said, to hide the identity of the depositors. We'd turned down his offer, but he had, for the price of ten pairs of boots, exchanged our fives, tens and twenties for hundred dollar bills – an almost unheard-of, magic artifact to us. This allowed our profits to fit comfortably in a single sack, which was unnerving in itself. We were totally without weapons and surrounded on all sides by eager customers. Perhaps far too eager, if Wyatt was any gauge.
I took first watch and spent most of the evening dealing with a steady stream of customers. One or two at a time they came up to buy boots until two in the morning. At two, I woke Mitty and went to sleep myself. I slept the sleep of the dead, in the caboose, wrapped in Mitty's dirty blankets. Sometime in the night Mitty woke Fluky to relieve him, laying down next to me and falling fast asleep.
I was awoken in the morning by the first of the new day's customers, rapping on the side of The Cordwainer. There was already over a dozen people waiting patiently for our store to open, standing in the town square of Galt. Someone had brought coffee and handed Mitty and me a cup. I looked around bleary-eyed, wondering why Fluky wasn't handling the morning rush.
That was when I realized he was gone.
He'd left in the night, taking an even third of the money we'd made. At first, I thought we'd been robbed and Fluky kidnapped, but the reality of the situation sank in when I saw the other $400,000 dollars sitting untouched in the hemp sack under the seat of the caboose.
Fluky was gone. It made no sense. I looked around the town square, hoping something about it would give me a clue to why Fluky would vanish in the middle of the night. Of course, there was nothing. No large sign, explaining the significance of the rusty, old Buick. No rusty, old Buick itself keeping an eye on us. It was simply gone, with Fluky along with it. I was mystified. Mortified. I felt betrayed.
Fluky... Fluky, of all people. If Mitty had wandered off in the night, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. I'd have been concerned for his safety, but I wouldn't have felt betrayed. No, Mitty's allegiances had always been ephemeral – his attention easily taken. But Fluky... The Cordwainer was his more than anyone's. He'd worked so hard to build it.
The whole plan to sell boots in the Big City might have been Mitty's idea, but if the whole enterprise had failed, he wouldn't have lost any sleep. It was just another harebrained scheme in a hare brain that was chock full of them.
The engine, to actually be functional, had needed to be something other than my design. In the end, I had contributed very little to the construction of The Cordwainer. Apart from the realization that I wasn't smart enough to attempt to do the thing I was attempting, I had made a very small contribution. It really wasn't my train any more than it was Mitty's. The engine was Sophie's design, but she'd rejected it out of hand as something evil and contemptuous.
That left only Fluky. It was his sweat and blood and tears that hand gone into the construction of the whole thing. More than anyone else, he deserved to reap the full harvest of its reward. But here he was, gone. Vanished with his share of the profits. His fair share, admittedly, but a drop in the bucket to what we might realize once we'd reached the Big City. Why would he abandon it all so close to our victory? Bow out when we were so close to to understanding the full value of the cargo we were hauling, like Mitchell had predicted?
For the first time in my life, I began to think that Fluky might be a coward. Despite a lifetime of knowing different – despite a week of being shot at and kidnapped and rammed and bombed – I wondered if the prospect of steaming The Cordwainer through a gauntlet of National Guard troops had rattled Fluky. It was nonsense, of course, that Fluky could be scared off. Nothing in life had even put a fright in the Fluky, but I was angry and injured and looking for answers.
Fine, if Fluky wanted to chicken out and hide away instead of seeing the things he started through to the end... Fine. I wouldn't begrudge him that. It simply meant more profits for me and Mitty.
If I'd known the truth, if Fluky had stopped to explain it, perhaps I would have sympathized with his actions. But he'd always been so secretive about his religion – its connection to the plight of the repatriated Japanese. If I'd only known – no, I would never have understood. Perhaps that's why Fluky left as he did, in the night, in an old, rusty Buick driven by two older, Japanese men, with $200,000 in hundred dollar bills in a hemp sack under his arm.
Mitty took it harder than me. I think Fluky and I were as close to family as Mitty had ever had– as near to parents as anyone had been to him. For Fluky to let out like that... well, Mitty had never known his father, but I think the
pain of his absence was alleviated some by Fluky's foulmouthed, belittling abuse. When the full weight of Fluky's absence started to dawn on Mitty, he excused himself and climbed up in the cockpit of the Cordwainer's engine for most the rest of the day.
I was too busy to think about it. Most of the rest of the town of Wyatt showed up that morning, eager to buy what we were selling. I bumped the price up to $250, and still sold four hundred pairs of shoes on my own. Word with the Wyatt townsfolk, however, was that the National Guard had been ordered to let The Cordwainer through. We were not to stop and trade at any more towns on the way – not Hammond or Mulligan or in the suburbs of the Big City – but no one was to waylay us on our journey into the heart of the Big City.
What would happen to us there, no one knew, but the implications were obvious.
We'd be dealt with, appropriately, in the Big City.