Robert Wilson - Julian Comstock - A Story of 22-nd Century America

Then the obligation of actually composing his thoughts fell upon him, and he stomped about for a few minutes, muttering to himself.

“Just say what you’d say if your mother was here in front of you,” I suggested.

“That’s no help―if she was here, I wouldn’t need to write a letter.”

“Well, then, make any beginning you want. You might start with Dear Mother, for example.”

He liked that idea, and repeated the phrase several times, and I made a show of writing it on a fresh page in my notebook, and he looked at the marks with admiration. Then he frowned again. “No, it’s no good. A letter won’t work. My mother can’t read, any more than I can.”

“Well, in that case… do you know anyone who can read? A cousin, a friend of the family?”

“No. Except the man who runs the company store.

He can read―I’ve seen him lettering signs―and he was always friendly enough when we came in.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Mr. Harking.”

“Then we can ask him to carry the message to your mother on your behalf. I’ll cross out Dear Mother , and write in Dear Mr. Harking ―”

“No, sir!” Lymon Pugh exclaimed.

“What?”

“That would be an impertinence, if not something worse! I never called him ‘dear’ in my life, and I don’t propose to begin now!”

“It’s just a salutation.”

“Call it whatever you want―maybe that’s how they do things in Athabaska―but in the Valley a man don’t call the grocer ‘dear’―it’s not suitable!”

“Look,” I said, “this project is poorly thought-out. Why don’t you consider what you want Mr. Harking to say to your mother on your behalf―sleep on the question―and in the morning we’ll start again: how about that?”

“I hate to postpone it,” he said, “but―well, it feels like the train’s stopping anyhow. Are we in New York already, do you suppose, or is it just another watering hole?”

Neither, as it turned out. The Travel Agents stood up briskly and hoisted their rifles. They shouted the train awake, and when the passengers were all standing and blinking the foremost of the two men called out, “You two! Crack that door.”

Lymon Pugh and I unbolted the long door and slid it open. What we saw outside was no coaling station. Instead we faced a crowd of uniformed soldiers, and beyond them a sea of tents, and an open space in which men marched to orders, counting cadences.

“A soldier camp!” Lymon Pugh exclaimed.

The Travel Agent directed us to climb down from the Phantom Car, and the other passengers followed behind. I waited with the milling crowd in the sunlight until I could sidle closer to Sam and Julian.

“Are we caught?” I whispered.

“Not caught,” Sam said in disgust, “just sold. The Trust took our money and sold us to recruiters, a double sale. I should have guessed something was up when the ticket-seller at Bad Jump inquired so closely about your ages. I was foolish,” he said bitterly, “and now we’re in the infantry, or will be soon enough, and bound for Labrador by summer.”

I wanted to question him more closely, but a man in sergeant’s stripes formed us up into two lines and marched us off to be deloused.

Here begins that portion of the narrative with which my readers may already be somewhat familiar, that is, the passage of Julian Comstock into the person of Julian Conqueror; but that transformation, and its consequences, have been so often misrepresented that even a scholar of Recent History may be surprised by the story as I saw and experienced it―and by my part in it, for that matter.

Certainly Julian was no Conqueror as we arrived at the mustering camp, though he soon enough ceased to be a Comstock.

“Give a false name,” Sam told Julian when, as a part of a line of sullen men from the Phantom Car, we approached a tent in which Army physicians waited to examine us and Army clerks stood ready to enter us into the rolls. “Do that, and we’ll be safe from the inquiries of your uncle―if not ‘safe’ in any other sense of the word.”

“What name should I give?”

Sam shrugged. “Anything that appeals to you. ‘Smith’ is a popular choice.” (Though I couldn’t picture Julian as a Smith, a Jones, a Wilson, or any of those penny-a-bushel names: they didn’t just suit him, somehow.) I asked Sam if it would be all right for me to continue as Adam Hazzard, and Sam said he supposed so, much to my relief. My family name may not have been aristocratic, but my father would have been ashamed if I had altered it.

But before we were set down on paper we had to be evaluated by the medical faculty: two bald men whose stained cotton smocks might once have been white, who listened to our hearts, and thumped our backs, and generally made quick work of their observations―though they did turn away seven men. [ One of the men was clearly tubercular, while two others showed evidence of active Pox about their wrists and throats. Five more were turned back simply because they had lost a great number of teeth, or their teeth were too loose in the jaw to be useful. A toothless man could not bite or chew Army hardtack, and such men had been known to starve to death on a long march. ]

I don’t know what happened to the rejected men. I believe they were put back aboard the Phantom Car, perhaps to be abandoned at some switching station along the main line, and probably robbed in the process.

Sam himself was the object of considerable scrutiny because of his age. He told the examining physician he was thirty-two; but we were required to disrobe, and Sam’s body betrayed the lie in its wrinkled and leathery flesh. But he was also strong, and lean, and sound of breath; and after only a little discussion the doctors gave him their approval. Julian and I were ushered through more quickly.

Then we were made to line up beside a trench into which we dropped our familiar clothing, retaining only a few possessions in satchels or “ditty-bags” provided by the Quartermaster, while a scrawny recruit doused our naked bodies with yellow powder from a bucket―an insecticide, intended to kill lice, fleas, and other vermin.

The dust was noxious, and it coated our hair, our skin, our throats, and our lungs. It burned our eyes so badly that we were soon weeping as helplessly as infants, and we coughed and gagged like consumptive patients in the final stages of that disorder. We were nearly murdered by it, in other words; and I suppose even the lice among us must have been badly inconvenienced, though at the end of a week they had rallied and staged a come-back.

As soon as we had recovered our breath we were lined up in front of a Company Clerk, who marked our names on a list of inductees. Sam gave his name as Sam Samson, which drew a skeptical look. I registered as Adam Hazzard, and pronounced my name proudly despite the fact that I was shivering, and clad mainly in a coating of insecticidal dust. Then Julian stepped up. He was still dizzy under the influence of the yellow powder, and when asked his name he began, “Julian, Julian Com―” at which point Sam delivered a kick to his shins. “ Commongold, ” Julian finished, adding a little cough.

It was a striking pseudonym, I thought, and entirely appropriate: Julian Commongold, gilded in lice powder and abandoned among the common folk; but a noble name for all that, rich with dignity. “It suits you,” I whispered.

“Little else does, today,” he whispered back.