Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (30 page)

He said, more gently, "It must be wonderful to feel that way about a woman."

"It is; though it has its distressing aspects. I know one day you'll meet a suitable woman, and feel about her as I do about Calyxa."

I think he appreciated this kindness on my part, for he looked away, and smiled to himself. "I suppose anything is possible," he said.

What was not possible was for us to converse much longer, for the hour of lamps-out was approaching, and the nurses had rallied and were preparing to descend on us in force. I told Julian he needed his sleep. "You must sleep as well, Adam," he said, "though it might be hard to keep from worrying all night long. Sleep confidently—that's an order."

"An order from a fellow Private?"

"But I'm not a Private anymore—didn't Sam tell you? Both Sam and I were given promotions while we were unconscious."

I expect it was an attempt on the part of the Staff to induce them to re-enlist, or else a result of the terrible casualties the Army of the Laurentians had suffered during the Saguenay Expedition; but, for what ever reason, Sam was now officially a Col o nel; and Julian was a Captain—Captain Commongold—just as Theodore Dornwood had predicted.

I stood up and essayed a salute, but Julian waved it off: "Don't, Adam—I need a friend far more than I need a subordinate. And we'll all be out of the Army soon, and on an even footing once again."

I supposed that was true, in the sense he intended it; but in another sense we would never be "even" again—if we ever had been—for, what ever else we were, we were no longer boys. We had survived a War; and we were Men.

Sam and Lymon returned in the morning with their scouting report.

The good news was that Calyxa was being held in a military prison, not a civilian jail. That was a boon because the rules applying to military prisons were more flexible than civil law—she hadn't been convicted of anything, and was serving no fixed term, but was being held "on suspicion," which meant that it required only an official adjudgment to have her released.

"What was her crime?" I asked.

"She was hauled in," Sam said, "as part of a gang of troublemakers who call themselves
Parmentierists,
 after some Europeanphilosopher, when they were marching down the street with signs reading all soldiers out of montreal and such slogans as that."

"Surely it's not illegal to carry a sign, even under military occupation."

"It wasn't the sign- carry ing that got them arrested. The mob she was with ran into a pair of backwoods ruffians who had some grievance against them, and gunfire was exchanged. She was found to be carry ing a small pistol, which she had fired."

The backwoodsmen, I suspected, were none other than Job and Utty Blake, her murderous siblings; but Sam couldn't confirm it, since he had confined his inquiries to Calyxa's par tic u lar circumstances. "Will they let her out, then?"

"Not without orders from headquarters ... which is a problem, since the leadership of the Army of the Laurentians is in a state of flux, and trivial matters are being ignored. It could be months before the situation returns to normal."

"Months!"

"Obviously we need to retrieve her sooner than that. But it might take delicate maneuvering, and perhaps some forgivable chicanery. May I suggest a plan?"

He did so—and it was an admirable plan, which I will describe in its enactment—but it required that we function as a group, and some question remained about Julian's health and fitness. The nurses refused to discharge him, but they couldn't physically prevent him from leaving ... which is what he did, standing up, a little shakily, and demanding his uniform, which was presently delivered to him. He was pale and perilously thin, but seemed to improve as soon as we stepped into the sunshine. The season was young yet, with Easter still a week in the future, but Montreal was pleasantly warm under a cloudless, breezy sky. We proceeded to a tavern, where we rented a room to store our possessions; and we waited there while Lymon Pugh went off to seek Theodore Dornwood once again.

It wasn't Dornwood we needed but the use of his typewriter. Mr. Dornwood had been reluctant to allow it, Lymon said on his return; but Lymon had cited urgent necessity, and flexed his enormous arm muscles in a conspicuous fashion, until the journalist relented.

"It was lucky I caught him when I did," Lymon said. "He was packing up.

Says he's been called back to Manhattan by his newspaper. Another hour and he'd have been gone by train."

"But you got what we needed from him?" asked Sam.

"Here it is."

Lymon Pugh unfolded a piece of paper, and placed it on the table before us.

"This isn't exactly the text I requested," Sam said.

"Dornwood wouldn't consent to type it—I had to pick it out myself. And I couldn't remember quite everything, at least not the way you said it."

The message as printed said:

HEADquaRTERS ARMy of the LORENSHENS
tO THE ARMY JAIL MONTReALL
PleASE RELEASE to the BARER OF this NOTE one PRISONER of the naME OF Calixa BLAKE
Bein a Female Person of Athletic Build Curly blacK Hair & ThiCK ANKELS
BY ORder of Colonel SAM SAmSON, signed.

"Is it all right?" Lymon asked anxiously. "I wrote 'Col o nel' as you wanted me to, Sam, though the spelling seems irregular to me. That machine is a menace, Adam, I don't know why you crave it so—it took me most of an hour to peck out the letters on it. Writers must suffer as badly as beef-boners, if they're attached to such a device all day."

"The spelling's not important," said Sam. "The night guards at the prison are almost certainly illiterate. The printed letters are what will impress them, along with my rank, or so I hope." In order to further impress them Sam had purchased a bottle of blue ink, which he spilled onto a cloth napkin; then he took a Comstock dollar from his pocket and pressed the side of it bearing the image of Julian's uncle into the ink, and used the coin on the paper as a sort of stamp or imprimatur, which indeed looked very official, and would have fooled me if I had been less schooled in reading.

After that it was only a matter of waiting. We ordered meals of cut pork and kidney beans all around, to brace us for the evening, and to advance the cause of Julian's improving health. Those of us who drank spirits took beer or wine. I took plain water, as usual, though I added a small amount of red wine to the cup at Sam's insistence, to discourage any microscopic disease germs flourishing therein (for the cholera had not spared Montreal). It was a medicinal, hygienic precaution; and it did not make me drunk, or even count as a sin, as far as I could see, though perhaps the angels account it differently.

We waited until well after sunset, and then until the evening crowds had abandoned the streets and all but the overnight torches had been extinguished.

Then we left the tavern and walked as a group to the prison where Calyxa was unjustly confined.

The prison was a building with thick, ancient stone walls. It had been divided into a habitation for the guards and staff, on the top floor, and cells for the inmates, on the ground floor and in a basement below. Perhaps the building had served a civic purpose at one time; but the Army of the Laurentians had made the building their own, and draped it with military banners, and posted guards at the rusty iron doors. Our sole advantage, Sam said, would be in our confident bearing. We had to present ourselves as men assigned a necessary but unexciting duty; so we were not to speak furtively, or cast around ner vous glances, but to play the role "to the hilt." Col o nel Sam led the way, of course, his bar of command freshly sewn to the shoulder-strap of his overcoat (useful now that the day's heat had evaporated), while "Captain Commongold" acted as his adjutant, and Lymon and I as ordinary soldiers.

The guards at the door glanced at Sam's insignia of rank, and briefly at our counterfeit note, before allowing us inside. We came into a kind of anteroom, where a sleepy- looking officer of the guard regarded us from behind a desk.

He was surprised to have visitors at this late hour, and his expression wasn't welcoming. "You have some business to conduct?" he asked.

Sam nodded regally and presented him with the certificate Lymon Pugh had printed on the typewriter of Mr. Dornwood.

The guard looked it over. He was a skinny man not much older than myself, aspiring to a beard. He gave the note back to Sam and said, "I have misplaced my eyeglasses, Colonel—best if you read it to me."

Sam did so.

"This is an irregular hour for a prisoner transfer," the guard said.

"I don't care that it's regular or irregular," said Sam. "I'm here to do a job, and if you have to wake your commanding officer before I can do it, then wake him, please, and do it promptly."

"I don't know as that's necessary ... as long as you'll sign for the prisoner."

"Of course I'll sign for her! Where is she?"

The head man did not bestir himself, but called one of his underlings from door duty. "Packard, show these men to the cellar. Take the keys."

We followed Packard down a set of stairs into a dimly-lit and stinking arrangement of iron-barred cells—a man-made Hell, I might even say, except that it was rather more cold than warm at the moment. I looked around this awful place for any sign of Calyxa, but what I saw was something much worse: the unhappy faces of Job and Utty Blake.

The two villains jointly occupied a single cell. Our passage had waked them up, and they gazed at us with sleepy suspicion. I did not doubt they were the Blake brothers, though I had only seen one of them before, and then only the top of his head. That one was Job; and if he recognized me by the dim light of the guard's lantern he showed no sign of it.

Both brothers possessed the family signature, which was a crown of bushy, curly hair; but Job's incarnation of it had been altered by my prior encounter with him. At the top of his forehead a wide swatch of hair was gone, replaced by a conspicuously scarred and wrinkled divot where my pistol shot had creased his skull. I cannot say I took pride in the sight of the wound I had inflicted on this terrible man ... but it didn't entirely displease me.

I was careful to betray no reaction, however, for it would have been awkward had he known me. We proceeded on to a much larger cell, as big as a room, in which several people had been confined together—the "Parmentierists," of whom Calyxa was one. She sprang to her feet at the sight of me; but I made a cautioning gesture, and she spoke not a word.

"That's her there," the guard said, pointing.

"Let her out, then," Sam demanded.

Packard fumbled with a ring of keys by the dim glow of the lantern.

While he was doing that Calyxa stepped forward and stood where she could whisper to me without being overheard.

"What do you want, Adam?" she asked with unexpected coolness.

"What do I want! Didn't you get my letter?"

The other inmates—I recognized some of them from her circle of friends at the Thirsty Boot—were frankly curious about this midnight visit; but they kept their distance from us, once Calyxa had given them a fierce glare.

"Yes," she said. "I got it and read it. You said you want to marry me."

I did, of course, but I hadn't thought to discuss it so baldly, or through the bars of a prison cell. "I want to marry you above all other Earthly things," I said. "If you consent to be my wife, Calyxa, the world won't hold a happier specimen of a man. Once you're free of this place—"

"But if I
don't
 consent?"

"Don't consent!" That bewildered me. "Well—that's your decision—all I can do, Calyxa, is ask."

"I won't consent to any such arrangement until I know the details of it.

There's a suspicion of you among my friends, who aren't inclined to trust a soldier of any breed or nationality."

"What am I suspected of?"

"Bargaining my freedom in exchange for my betrothal."

"I don't understand!"

"I can't make it any plainer. Am I free to go, whether I marry you or not?

Or am I to rot in this prison unless I consent?"

I was astonished that she could suspect me of such blackmail, and I put it down to the bad influence of her po liti cal companions. At least, I thought, the expression on her face was more hopeful than despairing. I said, "I love you, Calyxa Blake, and I won't let you linger here an hour longer even if you despise me with all the passion in your body. To see you set free is all I care about right now—we can discuss the rest of it another time."

I said this loudly enough to be heard by the cynical Parmentierists, who responded by giving me a cheer, perhaps not altogether ironical in intent; and they started up an impudent chorus of
Piston, Loom, and Anvil,
 as Calyxa shot them a vindictive look that said, in essence,
I told you so!

Unfortunately I was also overheard by the slack-jawed guard, Packard, who looked alarmed, and pulled back his key from the key-hole.
"What's this about?" he asked, and he persisted in his questioning until Lymon Pugh was forced to silence the poor man.
⁴⁴
Sam retrieved the keys from Packard's limp hand and opened the door, and said to all those it contained, "You might as well take the opportunity, you boys—there are only two guards in the outer office, and if you handle them fast they won't have time to raise an alarm."

The Parmentierists seemed impressed by this act of generosity on the part of an American soldier, and I hoped it would make their po liti cal views more nuanced in the future. They crowded out quickly, eager to overwhelm the remaining guards, and Calyxa came into my arms.

"Well, will you?" I asked, once we had breath enough to speak.

"Will I what?"

"Marry me!"

"I suppose I will," she said, sounding surprised at her own answer.

My joy was unconquerable, though it ebbed as we passed the cage where Job and Utty Blake were confined.

Utty sat at the back of the cell, scowling and muttering. But Job, whom I had shot, came up to the bars, and rattled them as savagely as a gorilla, and spat out curses in the French language.