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

It was quickly obvious to me why this volume had not received the Stamp of Approval, and I moved to replace it on the shelf, but not before Calyxa, returning from the kitchen with a cup of tea in each hand, saw me handling it. “Do you read, Adam Hazzard?” She seemed surprised.

“I do—as often as I can.”

“Really! Have you read Parmentier?”

I confessed I hadn’t had the pleasure. Political Philosophy was not a subject I had pursued, I told her.

“Too bad. Parmentier is ruthless on Aristocracy. All my friends read him. Who do you read, then?”

“I admire the work of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton.”

“I don’t know the name.”

“He’s a novelist. Perhaps I can introduce you to his work sometime.”

“Perhaps,” Calyxa said, and we sat down on the sofa. She took a sip of tea, and seemed more or less at ease, considering that she had just seen her homicidal brother shot in the head, and had spent the evening leaping about the rooftops of Montreal. Then she put down her cup and said, “Look at your feet—you’re bleeding all over the carpet.”

I apologized.

“It’s not the carpet I’m concerned about! Here, lie back and put your feet on this towel.”

I did so, and she fetched a medicine for me—an ointment that smelled of alcohol and camphor, and burned on application, but soon began to feel soothing. She examined my feet closely, then wrapped them in a linty bandage. “And you left your boots behind,” she said.

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t wise. Army-issue boots. Job will recognize them for what they are. He’ll know I was with an American soldier, and it won’t improve his temper.”

Shooting his brother in the head had probably angered him right up to the hilt, I thought, and the boots wouldn’t add much of a fillip to it; but I took Calyxa’s concern seriously. “I’m sorry to say this, Calyxa, and I don’t mean to insult your family, but I begin to wish I had shot both of them.”

“I wish you had, too, but the opportunity failed to present itself. Your poor feet! We’ll fix them up a little more, come morning, and replace your boots with something better before you have to march back to your regiment.”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead, and the prospect was daunting, but she didn’t dwell on it. “Adam Hazzard, I thank you for all you’ve done for me today. I was afraid of your motives at first, but Evangelica was right—you’re just as simple as you look. I want to reward you,” and here she put her arm around my shoulder, and drew my head closer to hers, and kissed me lightly on the cheek, “and I want to reward you in the best possible way, but it’s not practical right at the moment—”

My skin still tingled where her lips had been. “You don’t need to explain! I would never question your virtue, or make any claim on it, just because I helped you fend off your brothers!” (And I readjusted my Chinese robe to disguise any testimony to the contrary on the part of my masculine nature.) “It isn’t that. I do want to thank you, Adam. It would be my pleasure, as well as yours. Do you understand me? But the time is not propitious. ”

“Of course it isn’t, with the gunplay and all.”

“What I mean is—”

“It’s enough that I can sit and talk with you. I wanted your friendship, and now I have it—that’s my reward.”

“ J’ai mes règles, espèce de bouseaux ignorant!

” she said, a little impatiently, and I took this to be another testimonial to her gratitude to me, which was irrepressible. I expected nothing from her, but I hinted that a second kiss would not be unwelcome… and she gave me that, and I returned it, and I was as happy as I had ever been, despite all the rooftop calisthenics and bloody violence. Such is Love in a time of War.

I slept on the sofa, and she woke me in the morning. She examined my feet again, and said the injuries inflicted by the sharp tiles of the Montreal roofs were not as bad as they might have been, and she re-wrapped the bandages, and added a layer of leather, one for each foot, to function as soles, and more bandages, so that I could walk out of doors without re-injuring myself. “That ought to get you where we’re going,” she said.

She wanted to replace my boots with something better than bandages, and she wanted to find out what the ultimate outcome of the events at the tavern had been. She said she knew a place where both those needs might be addressed.

She put on a large sun-hat, to conceal her face if she crossed paths with a Blake brother, and I took her arm, and we stepped out into the sunny morning.

Last night’s tempest had washed the air clean, and the ferocious wind had been domesticated into a pleasant breeze. If not for the danger, and the pain in my feet, our stroll would have been entirely enjoyable. But it was brief, and it ended at the door of a basement shop on a street I didn’t recognize. The shop, a tannery and bootery, was closed—by law, because it was Sunday. Nevertheless Calyxa knocked loudly. “I know the owner,” she said.

The owner turned out to be a bearded and irritable man who would not have been out of place at the table she had occupied in the tavern last night, except that his attention to his clothing was more particular. He looked at Calyxa curiously, and at me with an undisguised mixture of loathing and distaste. “Let us in, Emil, I don’t want to dawdle here,” she said; and he waved us inside reluctantly.

His shop was a cellar, rank with the smell of tannin and glue, but he had some very nice boots on display. “Can you fit my friend?” Calyxa asked.

“Anything for you,” Emil said slowly, “you know that, but surely—”

“He needs something supple and sturdy on his feet. He lost his boots doing me a favor.”

“Don’t his army masters give him boots? Tu es folle d’amener un soldat américain ici! ”

“ Il m’a sauvé la vie. On peut lui faire confiance. En plus, il n’est pas très intelligent. S’il te plaît, ne le tue pas — fais-le pour moi! ”

This exchange, whatever it meant, mollified Emil a little, and he agreed to measure my feet, and when he had done that he searched among his stock of pre-made boots, and showed me a fine pair of deerskins, calf-high and golden-brown. I was sure I couldn’t afford them.

“This has to do with your savage brothers,” Emil said to Calyxa. “I heard about what happened at the tavern last night.”

Calyxa became more attentive. “What do you know about Job and Utty?”

“Job was badly creased by a bullet. He lost a lot of blood, but his skull wasn’t cracked, and the story I heard is that he’ll survive it. Utty threatened to shoot a few people just for show, but Job’s wound distracted him. They left the tavern for the charity clinic—I expect Job’s still there, unless he had the grace to die during the night. That’s all I know, except that the military police took notice, and they’re holding a warrant on both men.”

Calyxa smiled as if this were welcome news, and I suppose it was; but sooner or later, it seemed to me, the Blake brothers would be back, angrier than ever, and I was afraid for her.

The boots were expensive even at Emil’s grudging discount. I was reluctant to spend the money—I was saving for a typewriter—but I didn’t want to appear tight in front of Calyxa, and I did need boots; so I paid the proprietor his ransom.

And I was not sorry. Even to my injured feet the deerhide boots felt like an upholstered corner of Heaven. I had never owned boots that fit me so neatly. The men of my company would be envious, I thought, and they would mock my vanity, and call me dainty; but I decided I would endure all that without complaint, for the boots comforted my feet and reminded me of Calyxa.