The Cordwainer

  Chapter Four

  Soliloquies and Snowmen

  Of course, you could always count on old Fluky.

  Descending back into Boot Hill down C, he swung us across the tracks to a small, well-kept bungalow in the middle of town. I didn't recognize the place and Fluky instructed both Mitty and me to stay in the truck as he hopped out and walked drunkenly up to the front door. After a quick knock, the door opened, and Fluky vanished inside. He was no more than five minutes; the door reopened and Fluky stepped out, Frau in one hand and the rest of a six pack in the other.

  “Who lives here?” I asked as Fluky passed the cartons of beer through the truck window. Mitty and I both grabbed a fresh brew and popped open the corners.

  “You'll see...” Fluky replied with a wide grin, leaning up against the door. “They're puttin' on their faces...”

  They? My curiosity didn't haunt me for long. Presently, the door opened and the plump pink shapes of the Anders Twins came skipping out of the house. I laughed out loud. The Anders Twins, Lisa and Bettie, still as round and cuddly as I remembered. They trotted up to the window of the truck, squealing and making a horrible noise. I inferred they were happy to see me and I was happy to see them. As Fluky swung open his door they piled in, peppering me with kisses.

  Everyone was talking at once. Mitty and Fluky for good measure. Hello, how are you, how have you been? One of the Anders Twins positioned herself on Mitty's lap and the other parked herself right on top of mine. Again, the seating arrangement was tradition. I wrapped an arm around the pink cashmere middle of my passenger – Lisa, I think, but it could have been Bettie – and reveled in the familiar comfort. A thousand times the Anders Twins had ridden with us as we'd cruised around town. They'd always been our most eager and reliable company, back in the day. And four years had dampened none of their excitement. Both of them were fussing on me, saying how grown-up I looked, admiring my new jacket. Fluky finished his beer and tossed away the carton, slipped in behind the wheel and started up the truck.

  Bettie – or was it Lisa? – had a fresh carton of McTavish. Suddenly, the funk of a mood that had been gripping me vanished. We laughed and passed the whiskey around and squeezed Anders Twins in various inappropriate places. Fluky brought the truck around a corner and parked in front of the old school. Boot High! We all yelled in unison, our alma mater. We piled out of the truck, and while the girls found a spot to sit, the boys attempted to play a rousing game of Flukyball.

  Flukyball, named after its inventor, was a sport that could only seriously be enjoyed when you were stinking drunk. It was played on a basketball court – namely the court behind Boot High – and combined elements of basketball, baseball, and probably some shit that Fluky just made up.

  It was played with a baseball bat and a number of tennis balls.

  A batter stood at half court, with a pitcher under a basket at each end. The batter fielded pitches from both pitchers alternately, attempting to hit the pitch back and through the basketball hoop. A basket counted as a home run; hitting the rim, a triple; the backboard, a double, and simply clearing the court, a single. Strikes were counted and, at least theoretically, score was kept. Of course, the math of the whole game was quickly lost in the chaos of remembering exactly which way the batter was meant to be facing, and balls being pitched at the back of the batter's head when he guessed wrong.

  It was an insanely frustrating game, made no simpler by the required level of intoxication. Matches inevitably had to be settled with a “lightning round”, which involved tossing the baseball bat up into the air and trying to thread it back through the basketball hoop without smashing yourself in the head.

  I never remember anyone ever actually winning a game of Flukyball, other than Fluky, and he always just changed the rules when he thought he might actually lose.

  But much fun was had by all. The girls laughed and yelled encouragement from the sidelines. By the time we were done, and Mitty had an apricot-sized welt on his forehead from the “lightning round”, we were all sweaty and beat. We collapsed on the bleachers by the girls and Fluky rolled us all another joint.

  Our evenings of marauding customarily, and obtusely, always ended in the walk-in freezer of Putter's Café.

  Perhaps, in the age of global overheating, it wasn't so obtuse. It was the only operating sub-zero cooling unit left in town, and in 1967 – the date of Boot Hill's last appreciable snowfall – Fluky, Mitty and I had stowed away the final snowman we were able to construct – perhaps the final snowman built in the continental United States.

  Actually, it was a snow woman, if you wanted to be technical. Dubbed Mrs. Frostynips by Fluky one drunken evening, she had as many curves as either of the Anders Twins. Back in High School, we made a point of visiting her each and every occasion we could, and the staff of Putter's tolerated our loitering in their freezer, perhaps because there was so little in there besides the snowman. For years, most everything Putter's served was made out of cans or dried goods. The only fresh produce Boot Hill ever saw came seasonally off the Palouse, by horse cart, and was sold illicitly in makeshift farmers' markets for hard cash. The rest of the year, everyone had to make do with whatever packaged meat and vegetables came off the Concession trains. Putter's, however, made an apple pie out of nothing but salted crackers that could fool you every time, if you didn't look too hard.

  It was there, in that freezer, that Mitty first outlined his plan: Mitty's Plan. I remember Mitty interrupting the general conversation, declaring:

  “It is in times such as these,” Mitty said forthrightly, drunkenly, blowing out a lungful of smoke, mixing it with the steam from his breath, “that bold action is required.”

  It was apropos to nothing. Everyone fell silent, unable to retie the lost threads of their conversations. I was cuddling up next to Lisa – or Bettie – trying to stay warm. Fluky was doing the same with Bettie – or Lisa. The McTavish was half gone and Fluky's joint had given us a case of the munchies. We had a couple pieces of that mock apple pie, stolen on our way through the kitchen, and I was wishing I'd stolen some coffee, too.

  “Agh,” Fluky exhaled in disgust, “not this goddamn chestnut.” He was obviously familiar with this particular tangent of Mitty's. “Three drinks and he starts thinkin' he's J.D. Rockefeller.”

  Mitty continued, ignoring Fluky, “We define our times, gentlemen, or our times define us. I say we are on the brink – the very brink – of disaster. Lady Fortune is a strumpet that must be courted; she does not acquiesce. To sit here is to be complicit in our own undoing. We have been led, I assert, down the primrose path, my friends, and now the day has arrived that the primroses shall prove themselves to have thorns!”

  Mitty returned his cigarette holder to his mouth and let his words sink in. The walk-in freezer was silent except for the compressor buzzing away.

  Fluky turned to the Anders Twin cuddled up in his arm and asked: “What'd he say?”

  “Primroses ain't got no thorns...” Lisa/Bettie said with a giggle.

  “What are you talking about, Mitty?” I asked, swallowing a mouthful of pie.

  “Ignore him,” Fluky interjected, not giving Mitty the opportunity to elaborate. “He's been pitchin' this same dumb-ass idea for goin' on six months now. Dumb-ass talk from a dummy...”

  “Funny, he don't talk like no dummy...” Bettie/Lisa commented.

  Mitty fumed, shooting daggers from his eyes. He continued, indignantly, pulling the cigarette holder from his mouth, letting his mustached upper lip quiver. “The Sword of Damocles swings precariously about our heads, my friends. The hour is late, there is but one question now to be asked – one question of paramount importance.”

  “Yeah,” Fluky laughed, “where are we gonna get more beer?”

  Mitty bristled: “No, no, no!” He thrust the cigarette holder back into his mouth and almost bit it in two. “Are we mice or are we men? Shall we grasp the future in our hands or fall back into the precipice.”

  “Preci-what?” F
luky laughed, taking a drink of the McTavish.

  “Big hole,” Bettie/Lisa cuddled up next to me answered.

  “Oh.” Fluky cocked an eyebrow. “How about you shuttin' your precipice, Mitty?”

  “Ah!” Mitty waved a hand.

  “Unless you got some wise-ass idea on how we's gonna rustle up some more beer...”

  “You say he makes noises like this often?” I said directly to Fluky. “He ever come to a point?”

  “Oh yeah, that's the whole nutso part of the deal. Y'all just wait...”

  “Then let him finish,” I said. I was at the state where I was neither feeling any pain nor the cold of the walk-in freezer. “I want to hear what he's got to say.”

  “Thank you,” Mitty said gratefully, giving me a slight nod.

  “Can I eat the rest of that pie?” Bettie/Lisa asked me. I shushed her, and handed her the plate.

  There was silence. Mitty looked confused.

  “Precipice,” I nudged.

  “Ah yes,” Mitty recovered, “The Sword of Damocles.”

  “Just git to the meat of it!” Fluky interrupted. “Shit, I swear, ya like a constipated mule.”

  “If you'll permit me.”

  “Sure.”

  “The Sword of Damocles...” Mitty started again, stridently.

  “...He wantsta haul a load of fuckin' boots over the mountains and sell 'em in the Big City.” Fluky again interrupted, stealing away all of Mitty's thunder.

  “Damn your eyes!” Mitty exclaimed as the freezer filled with the sound of laughter.

  And that, right there, was Mitty's Grand Plan. Simultaneously the most brilliant and stupidest thing I'd ever heard. It was arguably Mitty's only real contribution to The Cordwainer – the Plan – but it was genius. It took an idiot like Mitty to be such a genius. No genius in his right mind would have suggested anything so absurd. It was monumentally ridiculous. He might as well have suggested we go to the moon and eat blue cheese, as realistic as the idea was. The Concession had a government-assured monopoly on freight hauling – that was why it was called the Concession – and by extension, just about everything else in the country.

  But Mitty had piqued my curiosity.

  “I'm sorry,” I asked, choking back the laughter. “How exactly are we supposed to do that?”

  “He don't know,” Fluky laughed, taking a drink. “Tartarhead.”

  As we all laughed – Fluky, myself and the Anders Twins – Mitty visibly shrank. To us, it all sounded like a joke, but it was obvious that Mitty had meant his speech all with due gravity. He looked injured.

  “Horse and cart? Balloon? Rocket to the moon?” I chuckled.

  “The-the mysteries of locomotion...” Mitty stuttered out, a lump in his throat. “...have been solved for over a century...” He suddenly found something about his cigarette and its holder that required his attention. He looked up from it and scanned, beady-eyed, between the faces mocking him.

  “Ya ever hear of carbon rationin', dummy?” Fluky said, pulling himself up to his feet. “Come on, I'm gettin' cold.”

  “No, no!” I waved Fluky back to his perch. I wasn't quite ready to let this go. “Mitty's got a good idea.” He did, but I was still making fun of him. “Tell us, Mitty, tell us: How would we get a freight load of boots over the mountains? To sell in the Big City?”

  “There are trains...” Mitty puffed at his Jefferson.

  “Yeah, Concession trains,” I corrected.

  “Or perhaps that miraculous invention called the automobile...” Mitty added.

  And to that I could only snicker.

  “Ah, forget it!” Mitty threw up a dismissive hand. “Forget I uttered a word! To expect any curiosity – any vision – from philistines...” Mitty pulled a spent cigarette from its holder and snubbed it out on a block of ice. He reached into his pocket for a replacement and in attempting to knock a new cigarette from the pack, he upset the whole bundle, sending cigarettes spilling over the floor of the freezer.

  It was sad.

  Suddenly, I was hit with a pang of remorse. I bolted up and quickly helped Mitty scoop up his errant smokes. We were being cruel – picking on Mitty for being Mitty. Picking on the dummy. What was so stupid about his idea, after all? All he'd suggested was that we take advantage of an obvious market imbalance for our own profit. It was the simplest of simple ideas, the very core of commerce. All right, Mitty hadn't even begun to think the idea through. That wasn't his style. There were mitigating factors – the impending heat death of the whole planet, chief among them – but it was no reason for us to laugh at him. Mitty was just being Mitty.

  “It's not a crazy idea,” I reassured Mitty, without sarcasm as I handed back a fist full of cigarettes.

  “Yeah, it is...” Fluky corrected, still huddled up with his Anders Twin.

  “It ain't! Mitty's right: The solution to the shortages is so obvious, it's staring us all in the face. We have boots, the Big City needs them. It's hardly rocket science...”

  Okay, perhaps I was overcompensating out of pity, but you couldn't really argue with the facts. Now, the details...

  “Uh, yeah...” Fluky scratched the stubble on his chin. “I think ya missed a little somethin' in the middle there...”

  “Well, of course. But Mitty's right about that, too. What the hell has any of us ever done about it?”

  “Done about it? What the hell you talkin' about?”

  “Effort. What has any of us actually tried?” Fluky and Mitty looked at me with open mouths. I was surprised by my forthrightness, too. “I mean, apart from sitting around and bitching, and expecting solutions from some abstract, remote bureaucrat we can conveniently blame for all our troubles and never have to accuse face-to-face.” Now the weed and the whiskey were talking, but I could feel something moving inside of me. “Why can't we be bothered to get up off our asses? Seriously. Mitty's right, the answers to our problems aren't hard. Hard to implement, perhaps, but not hard to understand. Shit, doesn't Kennedy say this is supposed to be a Nation of Big Ideas? Well, what ideas have any of us had lately? Sitting around and bitching, drinking ourselves stupid, expecting answers...”

  My diatribe was met with silent stares. Fluky lifted the McTavish carton and Mitty took a puff off his Jefferson. Nobody spoke... Until the Anders Twin, tucked in nuzzled up to my chest, started to giggle.

  “You're funny...” she laughed. Her sister joined in. Soon Fluky and Mitty were chuckling along too. Now everyone was laughing at me.

  “Hehe, shee-it. What that school do to you?” Fluky laughed, taking another drink.

  “Yes, indeed...” Mitty agreed. He had visibly relaxed, now that he was no longer the target of the social ridicule. “Very queer...”

  “Hey!” I playfully acted hurt, scooping up a handful of frost off the stacked boxes of fish sticks I was using as a pillow, and tossing it like a snowball at Mitty. I hit him, accidentally, square in the face, knocking the cigarette from his mouth. He responded with a deep belly laugh and an attempt to throw handfuls of frost back at me, unsuccessfully. We were both soon up on our feet and wrestling like children.

  By the time the two of us had collapsed to the icy floor, and Fluky was done cackling like a wild hyena, we were both thoroughly soaked to the skin and my jacket sported a new tear at the right shoulder.

  “Shit, you guys are crazy...” Fluky laughed.

  I tried to pull myself up off the ground, but Mitty grabbed me and pulled me down, pulling himself up in my place. When he was back on his feet, I swung a foot and kicked him hard in the rump, then quickly scrambled away and back to my seat on the pile of fish sticks.

  “The profit margin, however, if the task could be done...” Mitty said, suddenly serious again, digging around in the frost and coming back up with his cigarette holder.

  “Oh yeah, the money...” I had to agree, looking at the damage to my coat. “Anyone who could get a load of boots across those mountains, free and clear of the Concession... Well, one crate alone.
... A pair of new boots on the black market in the Big City can go for as much as $100. How many pairs in a crate? Fluky? A thousand?”

  “Hell, that's a hundred grand!” Fluky said, after a few seconds of doing the mental math. He had suddenly found a new interest in the whole conversation. “Shit, we should just put wheels on one of them crates and roll it,” he laughed.

  “Them's some pretty steep mountains,” I laughed too.

  “And full of Polypigs!” an Anders Twins added. The two of them had escaped from the scuffle to the relative safety of Fluky's arms.

  “Yeah, Pillypogs!” the other Anders Twin chimed in. “Melanie, at the Concession Store, a friend of her cousin's, she's living in Shadrach, and she says them Pillypogs have been raiding all the way down – all the way down to Shadrach – out of the mountains. Except the government don't want to let anyone know, 'cause it'll cause a panic and all. But they burned some homesteads to the ground, killing all the folks – women and children too. It's horrible, them Polypigs, that the government can't do nothing about them...”

  “They need to send the Army!” her sister agreed. “Remember Willy? Will Palmer from History Class? Eleventh grade? He joined up right out of school. He was back home on leave last month and he says all them army fellas do is just sit around, polish boots and peel potatoes. Well, I can't see why they can't put them soldiers to good use and clean out them Polypigs. Goddamn disgrace, if you ask me.”

  “Too true,” Mitty agreed.

  “I don't know...” Fluky drawled, looking between the two Anders Twins sitting beside him, cuddling up to him against the cold. He reached back and put an arm around each one. “Them Mormons might just have the right idea... Two wives? Sounds to me like it might have, you know, some advantages...”

  The Twins recoiled in disgust, scooping up freezer frost and shoving it into Fluky's face. There was a playful tussle, then all of them were on their feet, chasing around the freezer, slipping and sliding. Mitty and I joined in.

  From the outside, someone opened the door to the freezer, perhaps to complain about the noise, but they were trampled underfoot as our chase spilled into Putter's kitchen. More circles around the kitchen equipment, then we were running through the tables of the restaurant itself. It was late enough that the place was mostly closed, but we charged like bulls in a china shop, upsetting tables and knocking over chairs.

  Then we were out the front doors with someone behind us screaming unintelligibly. We piled into Fluky's truck and it fired to life. We were suddenly moving with Mitty still only halfway in through the door. We almost completely lost him as Fluky threw the truck around a curve. Both sisters pulled on his arms and the mass of Mitty landed on top of us all. Fluky accelerated then braked hard, sending us all rolling forward into the dash in a pile, the googly-eyed Jesus bobbling, watching on.

  The truck came to a halt. Everyone was talking, laughing, and complaining about their pain. When I finally pulled myself up out of the footwell, I became aware of the flashing of the lights and the roar of the passing train. Fluky had stopped at the mega-rail crossing as a behemoth rumbled itself by, pulling an almost infinite line of rail cars behind it.

  The train vanished away left and right to both horizons. The locomotive, belching out its black coal smoke, had already passed and vanished into the night. In the other direction, in the dark, the caboose could have been as much as five miles away – the behemoth trains could be that long – rail car after rail car after rail car.

  The train meant that a whole shipment of boots was actually leaving Boot Hill. Acres of them, by the ton. Some town, somewhere, would be getting a delivery of boots in the morning. Maybe a few. Where, I could only guess, but in my mind's eye I could imagine people already beginning to line up.

  It made me chuckle to think of all the housewives and old-age pensioners, awoken in the dead of night by some sort of psychic premonition that tomorrow, finally, the stores would have something to sell. They'd dress in the darkness and make their way, zombie-like, to the locked doors of their Concession Stores. There they'd wait, lined up patiently with their other sixth-sensed compatriots. They'd wait silently, hawk-eyed, watching, like predators, for the first stirring of life behind the Concession Stores' doors. They'd have no idea what was for sale, just a feeling, but they could smell the blood in the water. Whatever it was, they would buy it. Whatever the price, they'd pay. Boots today, maybe. Tomorrow, perhaps bacon or children's winter hats. It didn't matter. They were circling – circling, ready to feed.

  The train rattled along as I watched it hypnotically through the cracked windscreen of the truck. Minutes passed as I was lost in my little fantasy. When I returned to reality I looked back and realized that I'd become something of a third wheel: Mitty, to my right, was making out with one Anders twin, and Fluky, to my left, was making out with the other. I felt, suddenly, very alone.

  I returned my attention to the passing train. Rail car after rail car flashed by. All those boots...

  If there was only some way, any way, to get around the Concession and over those mountains. A man could be rich. Very rich. Arbitrage, I remember it being called in school in economics class; though it was spoken of in the pejorative, equated to profiteering. But with the shortages becoming so dire, as Mitty had said, wasn't it all our responsibilities to help out in any way we could?

  I mean, to sell a product to people willing to buy it, for a reasonable price and at reasonable profit? What, by all that was holy, could possibly be wrong with that?

  Plenty, I would come to learn, once Fluky, Mitty and I really got serious about implementing Mitty's Plan.