The Best Alternate History Stories Of The Twentieth Century Part 17

A middleaged man-at least he looked middleaged to my youthful eye-regarded me speculatively over the head of the drunk. "Pretty well cleaned yuh out, huh, boy?"

I nodded-and then was sorry for the motion.

"Reward of virtue. a.s.suming you was virtuous, which I a.s.sume. Come to the same end as me, stinking drunk. Only I still got my shirt. Couldn't hock it no matter how thirsty I got."

I groaned.

"Where yuh from, boy? What rural-see, sober now-precincts miss you?"

"Wappinger Falls, near Poughkeepsie. My name's Hodge Backmaker."

"Well now, that's friendly of you, Hodge. Me, I'm George Pondible. Periodic. Just tapering off."

I hadn't an idea what Pondible was talking about. Trying to understand made my head worse.

"Took everything, I suppose? Haven't a nickel left to help a hangover?"

"My head," I mumbled, quite superfluously.

He staggered to his feet. "Best thing-souse it in the river. Take more to fix mine."

"But... can I go through the streets like this?"

"Right," he said. "Quite right."

He stooped down and put one hand beneath the drunk. With the other he removed the jacket, a maneuver betraying practice, for it elicited no protest from the victim. He then performed the still more delicate operation of depriving him of his shirt and shoes, tossing them all to me. They were a loathsome collection of rags not fit to clean a manure-spreader. The jacket was torn and greasy, the pockets hanging like the ears of a dog; the shirt was a filthy tatter, the shoes shapeless fragments of leather with great gapes in the soles.

"It's stealing," I protested.

"Right. Put them on and let's get out of here."

The short walk to the river was through streets lacking the glamour of those of the day before. The tenements were smokestreaked, marked with steps between the parting bricks where mortar had fallen out; great hunks of wall were kept in place only by the support of equally crazy ones ab.u.t.ting. The wretched rags I wore were better suited to this neighborhood than Pondible's though his would have marked him tramp and vagrant in Wappinger Falls.

The Hudson too was soiled, with an oily sc.u.m and debris, so that I hesitated even to dip the purloined shirt, much less my aching head. But urged on by Pondible I climbed down the slimy stones between two docks and pushing the flotsam aside, ducked myself in the unappetizing water.

The sun was hot and the shirt dried on my back as we walked away from the river, the jacket over my arm. Yesterday I had entertained vague plans of presenting myself at Columbia College, begging to exchange work of any kind for tuition. In my present state this was manifestly impossible; for a moment I wished I had waded farther into the Hudson and drowned.

"Fixes your head," said Pondible with more a.s.surance than accuracy. "Now for mine."

Now that my mind was clearer my despair grew by the minute. Admitting my plans had been impractical and tenuous, they were yet plans of a kind, something in which I could put-or force-my hopes. Now they were gone, literally knocked out of existence and I had nothing to look forward to, nothing on which to exert my energies and dreams. To go back to Wappinger Falls was out of the question, not simply to dodge the bitterness of admitting defeat so quickly, but because I knew myself to be completely useless to my parents. Yet I had nothing to expect in the city except starvation or a life of petty crime.

Pondible guided me into a saloon, a dark place, gaslit even this early, with a steam piano tinkling away the popular tune "Mormon Girl":

There's a girl in the State of Deseret Whom I love and I'm trying to for-get.

Forget her for tired feet's sake Don't wanna walk miles to Great Salt Lake.

They ever build that railroad toooo the ocean I'd return my darling Mormon girl's devotion.

But the tracks stop short in Ioway...

I couldn't remember the last line.

"Shot," Pondible ordered the bartender, "and b.u.t.termilk for my chum."

The bartender kept on polishing the wood in front of him with a wet, dirty rag. "Got any jack?"

"Pay you tomorrow, friend."

The bartender's uninterrupted industry said clearly, then drink tomorrow.

"Listen," argued Pondible, "I'm tapering off. You know me. I've spent plenty of money here."

The bartender shrugged. "Why don't you indent?"

Pondible looked shocked. "At my age? What would a company pay for a wornout old carca.s.s? A hundred dollars maybe. Then a release in a couple of years with a med holdback so I'd have to report every week somewhere. No friend, I've come though this long a free man (in a manner of speaking) and I'll stick it out. Let's have that shot; you can see for yourself I'm tapering off. You'll get your jack tomorrow."

I could see the bartender was weakening; each refusal was less surly and at last, to my astonishment, he set out a gla.s.s and bottle for Pondible and an earthenware mug of b.u.t.termilk for me. To my astonishment, I say, for credit was rarely extended on either large or small scale. The Inflation, though 60 years in the past, had left indelible impressions; people paid cash or did without. Debt was disgraceful; the notion things could be paid for while, or even after, they were being used was as unthinkable as was the idea of circulation of paper money instead of silver or gold.

I drank my b.u.t.termilk slowly, gratefully aware Pondible had ordered the most filling and sustaining liquid in the saloon. For all his unprepossessing appearance and peculiar moral notions, it was evident my new acquaintance had a rude wisdom as well as a rude kindliness.

He swallowed his whiskey in an instant and called upon the bartender for a quart pot of small beer which he now sipped, turning to me and drawing out, not unskillfully, the story not only of my life, but of my hopes, and the despondency I now knew at their shattering.

"Well," he said at last, "you can always take the advice our friend here offered me and indent. A young healthy lad like you could get yourself $1,000 or $1,200-"

"Yes. And be a slave the rest of my life."

Pondible wiped specks of froth from his beard with the back of his hand. "Oh, indenting ain't slavery-it's better. And worse. For one thing the company that buys you won't hold you after you aren't worth your keep. They cancel your indenture without a cent in payment. Of course they'll take a med holdback so as to get a dollar or two for your corpse, but that's a long time away for you."

"Yes. A long time away. So I wouldn't be a slave for life; just 30 or 40 years. Till I wasn't any good to anyone, including myself."

He seemed to be enjoying himself as he drank his beer. "You're a gloomy gus, Hodge. Tain't as bad as that. Indenting's pretty strictly regulated. That's the idea, anyway. You can't be made to work over 60 hours a week-ten hours a day. With $1,000 or $1,200 you could get all the education you want in your spare time and then turn your learning to account by making enough money to buy yourself free."

I tried to think about it dispa.s.sionately, though goodness knows I'd been over the ground often enough. It was true that the amount, a not inconceivable one for a boy willing to indenture himself, would see me comfortably through college. But Pondible's notion that I could turn my "learning to account" I knew to be a fantasy despite its currency. Perhaps in the Confederate States or the German Union knowledge was rewarded with wealth, or at least a comfortable living, but any study I pursued-I knew my own "impracticality" well enough by now-was bound to yield few material benefits in the poor, exploited, backward United States, which existed as a nation at all only on the sufferance and unresolved rivalries of the great powers. I would be lucky to struggle through school and eke out some kind of living as a freeman; I could never hope to earn enough to buy back my indenture on what was left of my time after subtracting 60 hours a week.

Pondible listened as I explained all this, nodding and sipping alternately. "Well then," he said, "there's the gangs."

I looked my horror.

He laughed. "Forget your country rearing. If you leave the parsons' sermons out of it there's no difference joining the gangs than joining the army-if we had one-or the Confederate Legion. Most of the gangsters never even get shot at. They all live high, high as anybody in the 26 states, and every once in a while there's a dividend that's more than a workingman earns in a lifetime."

I began to be sure my benefactor was a gangster. And yet... if this were so why had he wheedled credit from the barkeep? Was it simply an elaborate blind to recruit me? It seemed hardly worth it. "A fat dividend maybe. Or a rope."

"Most of the gangsters die of old age. Or compet.i.tion. Ain't one been hung I can think of in the last five years. But I can see you've no stomach for it. Tell me, Hodge-you a Whig or Populist?"

The sudden change of subject bewildered me. "Why... Populist, I guess. Anyway I don't think much of the Whigs' 'Property, Protection, Permanent Population.' The anxiety to build up a prosperous employing cla.s.s artificially ever since the original industrialists were wiped out by the reparations and inflation is one of the things which has kept the country so poor. The rest is nonsense; they've never attempted to try protection when they were in power for the very good reason that the Confederacy and the German Union won't allow any small nation to put up a tariff wall against their exports. As for 'permanent population,' it's unaffected by elections. Those who can't make a living will continue to emigrate to more prosperous countries where they can-"

My voice trailed off. Pondible c.o.c.ked an eyebrow over his beer mug, put it down and chewed on a soggy corner of his mustache, still regarding me quizzically.

"I don't feel like leaving the United States," I muttered defensively.

"You heard of the Grand Army?" he asked with apparent irrelevance.

"Who hasn't? Not much difference between them and the regular gangs."

"I dunno, Hodge. Seems to me they got much the same ideas you have. They're Populists. They don't like the United States being a fifth-rate country; they're against indenting; they think prosperity's got to come from the poor upward, not from the rich downward. Maybe they get a little rough with Whigs or Confederate agents once in a while, but you can't make bacon out of a live hog."

Was it the thought of Grandfather Backmaker that made me ask, "And do they want to give Negroes equality?"

He drew back sharply. "Touch of the tarbrush in you, boy? No, I can see you ain't. You just don't understand. We might have won that war if it hadn't been for the Abolitionists. They're better off among their own. Better leave those ideas alone, Hodge; there's enough to be done for our own. Chase the foreigners out; teach their agents a lesson; build up the country again."

"Are you trying to recruit me for the Grand Army?"

Pondible finished his beer. "No. I want to get you somewheres to sleep, three meals a day, and that education you're so anxious for. Come along."

III.

He took me to a bookseller's and stationery store on Astor Place with a printshop in the bas.e.m.e.nt and the man to whom he introduced me was the owner, Roger Tyss. I spent almost six years there, and when I left neither the store nor its contents nor Tyss himself seemed to have changed or aged. I know books were sold and others bought to take their places on the shelves or be piled towerwise on the floor; I helped cart in many rolls of sulphide paper and bottles of printers' ink, and delivered many bundles of damp pamphlets, broadsides, letterheads and envelopes. Inked ribbons for typewriting machines, penpoints, ledgers and daybooks; rulers, paperclips, legal forms and cubes of indiarubber came and went. Yet the identical disorder, the same dogeared volumes, the indistinguishable stock, the unaltered cases of type remained fixed for six years, all covered by the same film of dust which responded to vigorous sweeping only by rising into the air, filling it with the sneezes of the sweeper or any customers happening to be present and immediately settling back on the precise spots.

Roger Tyss grew six years older and I can only charge it to the heedless eye of youth that I discerned no signs of that aging or that I was never able to guess his years to my satisfaction. Like Pondible and-as I learned-so many members of the Grand Army, he wore a beard. His was closely trimmed, wiry and grizzled. Above the beard and across his forehead were many fine lines which always held some of the grime of the store or printing press. One did not dwell long on either beard or wrinkles, however; what held you were his eyes: large, dark, fierce and compa.s.sionate. Anyone might have dismissed him at first glance as simply an undersized, stoopshouldered, slovenly printer had one not been fixed by those compelling eyes.

For six years that store was home and school, and Roger Tyss was employer, teacher and father to me. I was not indentured to him, nor did he pay me any wages. Our agreement-if so simple and unilateral a statement can be called an agreement-was made ten minutes after he met me for the first time.

"Hodgins," he said, staring piercingly up at me (he never then nor later condescended to the familiar "Hodge" nor did I ever address or even think of him but as Mr. Tyss), "I'll feed you and lodge you, teach you to set type and give you the run of the books. I'll pay you no money; you can steal from me if you have the conscience. You can learn as much here in four months as in a college in four years-or you can learn nothing. I'll expect you to do the work I think needs doing; any time you don't like it you're free to go."

He was my father and teacher, but he was never my friend. Rather he was my adversary. I respected him and the longer I knew him the deeper became my respect, but it was an ambivalent feeling and attached only to his zealotry. I detested his ideas, his philosophy and some of his actions; and this detestation grew until I was no longer able to live near him. But I am getting ahead of my story.

Tyss knew books, not only as a bookman knows them-binding, size, edition, value-but as a scholar. He seemed to have read enormously and on every conceivable subject, many of them quite useless in practical application. As a printer he followed the same pattern; he was not concerned solely with setting up a neat page; he wrote much on his own account: poetry, essays, manifestoes, composing directly from the font, running off a proof which he read and immediately destroyed before pieing the type.

I slept on a mattress kept under one of the counters during the day; Tyss had a couch, hardly more luxurious, downstairs by the flatbed press. Each morning before it was time to open, Tyss sent me across town on the horse-cars to the Washington Market to buy six pounds of beef-twelve on Sat.u.r.days, for the market, unlike the bookstore, was closed Sundays. It was always the same cut, heart of ox or cow, dressed by the butcher in thin strips. Several times, after I had been with him long enough to tire of the fare, but not long enough to realize the obstinacy of his nature, I begged him to let me subst.i.tute pork or mutton, or at least some other part of the beef, like brains or tripe which were even cheaper. But he always answered, "The heart, Hodgins; purchase the heart. It is the vital food."

While I was on my errand he would buy three loaves of yesterday's bread, still tolerably fresh; when I returned he took a long two-p.r.o.nged fork, our only utensil, for the establishment was innocent of other cutlery or dishes, and spearing a strip of heart held it over the gas flame until it was sooted and toasted rather than broiled. We tore the loaves with our fingers and with a hunk of bread in one hand and a piece of meat in the other we each ate a pound of beef and half a loaf of bread for breakfast, dinner, and supper.

Tyss expected me to work but he was not a hard nor inconsiderate master. In 193844, when the country was being ground deeper into colonialism by the Confederate States and the German Union, there were few employers so lenient. I read much, practically when I pleased, and he encouraged me; even going to the length, when a particular book was not to be found in his considerable stock, of letting me get it from one of his compet.i.tors, to be written up against his account.

Nor was he too scrupulous about the time I took on his errands; if I spent some of it with a girl-and there were many girls in New York who didn't look too unkindly on a tall youth even though he still carried some of the rustic air of Wappinger Falls-he never mentioned that a walk of half a mile had taken me a couple of hours.

It was true he kept rigidly to his original promise never to pay me wages but he often handed me coins for pocket money-evidently satisfied I wasn't stealing-and he replaced my makeshift wardrobe with worn but decent clothing.

He hadn't exaggerated the possibilities of the books which now surrounded me. His brief warning, "-or you can learn nothing," was lost on me. I suppose someone of different temperament might have been surfeited with paper and print; I can only say I wasn't. I nibbled, tasted, gobbled books. After the store was shut I hooked a student lamp to the nearest gas jet by means of a long tube, and lying on my pallet, with a dozen volumes handy, I read till I was no longer able to keep my eyes open or understand the words. Often I woke in the morning to find the light still burning and my fingers holding the pages open.

It seemed to me Tyss must have read everything, mastered every subject, acquired all languages; even now I believe his knowledge to have been incredibly wide. When he came upon me with an open book he would glance at the running t.i.tle over my shoulder and begin talking, either of the particular work or its topic. What he had to say often gave me an insight I would otherwise have missed, and turned me to other writers, other aspects. He respected no authority simply because it was acclaimed or established; he prodded me to examine every statement, every hypothesis no matter how commonly accepted.

Early in my employment I was attracted to a large framed parchment he kept hanging over his typecase. It was simply but beautifully printed; I knew without being told that he had set it himself:

THE BODY OF.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

PRINTER.

LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK.

STRIPPED OF ITS LETTERING AND GILDING.

LIES HERE FOOD FOR WORMS.

BUT THE WORK SHALL NOT BE LOST.

FOR IT WILL, AS HE BELIEVED,.

COME FORTH AGAIN.

IN A NEW AND BETTER EDITION.

REVISED & CORRRECTED.

BY THE AUTHOR.

When he caught me admiring it Tyss laughed. "Elegant, isn't it, Hodgins? But a lie, a perverse and probably hypocritical lie. There is no Author; the book of life is simply a mess of pied type-a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There is no plan, no synopsis to be filled in with pious hopes or hypocritical actions. There is nothing but a vast emptiness in the universe."

I had been reading an obscure Irish theologian-a Protestant curate of some forsaken parish, so ill-esteemed that he had been forced to publish his sermons himself-named George B. Shaw, and I had been impressed by his forceful style if not his philosophy. I quoted him to Tyss, perhaps as much to show erudition as to counter his argument.

"Nonsense," said my employer, "I've seen the good parson's book, and it's a waste of good ink and paper. Man does not think; he only thinks he thinks. An automaton, he responds to external stimuli; he cannot order his thought."

"You mean then that there is no free will-not even a marginal minimum of choice?"

"Exactly. The whole thing is an illusion. We do what we do because someone else has done what he did; he did it because still another someone did what he did. Every action is the rigid result of another action."

"But there must have been a beginning," I objected. "And if there was a beginning, choice existed if only for that split second. And if choice exists once it can exist again."

"You have the makings of a metaphysician, Hodgins," he said contemptuously, for metaphysics was one of the most despised words in his vocabulary. "The objection is childish. Answering you and the Reverend Shaw on your own level, I could say that time is an illusion and that all events occur simultaneously. Or if I grant its existence I can ask, What makes you think time is a simple straight line running flatly through eternity? Why do you a.s.sume that time isn't curved? Can you conceive of its end? Can you really a.s.sume its beginning? Of course not-then why aren't both the same? The serpent with its tail in its mouth?"

"You mean we not only play a prepared script but repeat the identical lines over and over and over for infinity? There's no heaven in your cosmos, only an unimaginable, never ending h.e.l.l."

He shrugged his shoulders. "That you should spout emotional theology at me is part of what you call the script, Hodgins. You didn't select the words nor speak them voluntarily. They were called into existence by what I said, which in turn was mere response to what went before."

Weakly I was forced back to a more elementary attack. "You don't act in accordance with your own conviction."