Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson Page B
Book: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
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Authors: Robert Charles Wilson
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polite minimum; but I was tempted to curiosity now and then. I had never seen such folks as these. There were a dozen indentured men from a cruelly-managed California Estate, for instance, who spoke the Spanish language, and wore tattoos in the shape of weeping roses on their arms. There were cattle-herders and shepherds who were evasive about their origins.
There were manual laborers aiming for work in the East, and many single sullen men who growled insults when spoken to, or confined their sociability to the card games that sprang up as soon as the train left Bad Jump.
There was at least one well-spoken and literate man aboard. His name was Langers, and he described himself as a "colporteur," that is, a salesman of religious tracts. As soon as the train was in motion Langers opened the large sample case he carried and began to offer his wares at what he called "discount prices." At first I was astonished that he would bother attempting such sales, since the great majority of the passengers was almost certainly illiterate.But on closer examination his pamphlets proved to be little more than picture-books got up to resemble sacred literature. 13 These were offensive, and I put a distance between myself and the colporteur; but he did a brisk trade among the laborers and refugees, whose appetite for religious instruction seemed nearly insatiable.
Many of the men had been wage-workers, and during the afternoon we were treated to massed choruses of Piston, Loom, and Anvil, the pop u lar an-them of the industrial laborer. This was the first time I had heard the chorus of that song:
By Piston, Loom, and Anvil, boys,
We clothe and arm the nation,
And sweat all day for a pauper's pay,
And half a soldier's ration
(though I have heard it many times since), and it struck me as awkwardly rhymed and, in its later verses, seditious. I asked Julian about the bellicosity of the song, and he explained that the ongoing War in Labrador had engendered new industries that employed mechanics and wage-laborers in large number.
The complaints of that emerging class had lately become vocal; and these discontents, Julian said, might eventually transform the traditional rural economy of Estate and Indenture.
I was feeling homesick, however, and I didn't much relish the company of militant mechanics anxious to overturn the existing order. Williams Ford, for all its inequities, had been a less raucous place than Bad Jump or the Phantom Car, and I wished I had not been forced to leave it.
That feeling deepened as the afternoon passed into evening.Passengers lined up to take a hot meal from the bubbling pot atop the stove, while the Travel Agent doled out rations from the whiskey barrel 14 to anyone who could pay. I sat at the rear of the car sipping snowmelt water from a canteen and nursing my unhappiness.
After a time Julian came to sit with me.
Much of his Eupatridian softness had been worked out of him over the last few days, and he was beginning to grow the sparse beard that would eventually become his trademark. His hands and face were dirty—shockingly so, given his fondness for bathing. He had endured all the same trials I had lately endured; and yet he was able to smile and ask what it was that had got the worse of me.
"Do you have to ask?" I waved my hand at the raucous passengers, the smoky stove, the grim Travel Agent, and the noisome hole in the floor that served as a privy. "We're in a terrible place, among terrible men."
"Temporary companions," Julian said carelessly, "all bound for a better life." 15
"It wouldn't be so bad if they would conduct themselves like Christians."
"Perhaps it would or perhaps it wouldn't. My father served among men just like these, and led them into battle, where their manners mattered less than their courage. And that's a quality not apportioned by one's station in life—it exists or not, to the same proportion, among all men, regardless of origin. In Panama my father's life was often enough
There were manual laborers aiming for work in the East, and many single sullen men who growled insults when spoken to, or confined their sociability to the card games that sprang up as soon as the train left Bad Jump.
There was at least one well-spoken and literate man aboard. His name was Langers, and he described himself as a "colporteur," that is, a salesman of religious tracts. As soon as the train was in motion Langers opened the large sample case he carried and began to offer his wares at what he called "discount prices." At first I was astonished that he would bother attempting such sales, since the great majority of the passengers was almost certainly illiterate.But on closer examination his pamphlets proved to be little more than picture-books got up to resemble sacred literature. 13 These were offensive, and I put a distance between myself and the colporteur; but he did a brisk trade among the laborers and refugees, whose appetite for religious instruction seemed nearly insatiable.
Many of the men had been wage-workers, and during the afternoon we were treated to massed choruses of Piston, Loom, and Anvil, the pop u lar an-them of the industrial laborer. This was the first time I had heard the chorus of that song:
By Piston, Loom, and Anvil, boys,
We clothe and arm the nation,
And sweat all day for a pauper's pay,
And half a soldier's ration
(though I have heard it many times since), and it struck me as awkwardly rhymed and, in its later verses, seditious. I asked Julian about the bellicosity of the song, and he explained that the ongoing War in Labrador had engendered new industries that employed mechanics and wage-laborers in large number.
The complaints of that emerging class had lately become vocal; and these discontents, Julian said, might eventually transform the traditional rural economy of Estate and Indenture.
I was feeling homesick, however, and I didn't much relish the company of militant mechanics anxious to overturn the existing order. Williams Ford, for all its inequities, had been a less raucous place than Bad Jump or the Phantom Car, and I wished I had not been forced to leave it.
That feeling deepened as the afternoon passed into evening.Passengers lined up to take a hot meal from the bubbling pot atop the stove, while the Travel Agent doled out rations from the whiskey barrel 14 to anyone who could pay. I sat at the rear of the car sipping snowmelt water from a canteen and nursing my unhappiness.
After a time Julian came to sit with me.
Much of his Eupatridian softness had been worked out of him over the last few days, and he was beginning to grow the sparse beard that would eventually become his trademark. His hands and face were dirty—shockingly so, given his fondness for bathing. He had endured all the same trials I had lately endured; and yet he was able to smile and ask what it was that had got the worse of me.
"Do you have to ask?" I waved my hand at the raucous passengers, the smoky stove, the grim Travel Agent, and the noisome hole in the floor that served as a privy. "We're in a terrible place, among terrible men."
"Temporary companions," Julian said carelessly, "all bound for a better life." 15
"It wouldn't be so bad if they would conduct themselves like Christians."
"Perhaps it would or perhaps it wouldn't. My father served among men just like these, and led them into battle, where their manners mattered less than their courage. And that's a quality not apportioned by one's station in life—it exists or not, to the same proportion, among all men, regardless of origin. In Panama my father's life was often enough
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