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

The door was a little ajar. I pushed it and entered, calling out Sam’s name.

He was asleep on a narrow bed no better than the one I had occupied during the night. He wore a ragged shirt, and he had pulled an old overcoat around himself to serve as a blanket. His face was drawn and haggard even in repose. His hair was thinner than I remembered it, his beard unkempt and almost entirely white. His left arm was curled under him and pressed against his belly as if to shelter his missing hand.

There was a bottle on the floor beside him, and on the battered night-table a long-stemmed pipe, and a wooden box with a few crumbs of dried hemp flowers in it.

I sat on the bed beside him. “Sam,” I said. “Sam, wake up if you can hear me. It’s me—it’s Adam Hazzard.”

A few repetitions of this and he began to stir. He groaned, and turned on his back, and sighed, and opened one eye warily, as if he anticipated bad news. At last the light of sensibility seemed to penetrate all the way to his inward parts, and he struggled to sit up. “Adam?” he mumbled in a hoarse voice.

“Yes, Sam, it’s me.”

“Adam—oh! I thought for a moment we were back in Labrador—is that the sound of shelling ?”

“No, Sam. This is New York City , though not a very attractive neighborhood of it. The sound is just freight wagons out on the street.”

He stared at me afresh as comprehension dawned. “Adam! But I left you at Striver. You and Julian. The Basilisk carried me away…”

“It carried us away, too, Sam, a few weeks later, and after considerable tragedy and fuss.”

“I thought—”

“What?”

“The situation was hopeless. Striver was meant to be a slaughterhouse, and seemed to serve the purpose. I thought—”

“That we had been killed?”

“That you had been killed, yes, and that I had failed in my commission of protecting Julian.”

“Is that why you’re living in these circumstances? But we’re alive, Sam!—I’m alive, and Julian is alive. Have you looked at a newspaper lately?”

He shook his head. “Not for… weeks, I suppose. You mean to say Admiral Fairfield reinforced the divisions at Striver?”

“I mean to say that Deklan Comstock is no longer President! If you had poked your head out of this ugly den you might have seen the Army of the Laurentians marching to depose him!”

Sam, in his amazement, stood up suddenly, and then blushed, as he didn’t have his trousers on. He took a crumpled pair from the floor and buttoned himself into respectability with a shaking hand. “Damn me for my inattention!

Deklan Comstock deposed!

And have they installed a new President?”

“Yes, Sam, they have… but perhaps you had better sit down again before I tell you about it.”

I helped Sam dress himself, and comb his hair, and when he was relatively presentable I took him to a nearby tavern, where we ordered eggs and toast from the kitchen. It wasn’t gourmet fare—the butter was maggoty—but it was filling.

Sam admitted that he had been alone since his return to Manhattan. It wasn’t just his grief over Julian’s presumed death that had caused him to hide himself away; it was the loss of his left hand, or the sense of wholeness and manliness that went with it. He ate efficiently with his right hand but kept his left forearm immobile in his lap, and he was careful at all times not to show the stump. He kept his chin down and avoided the eyes of other customers. I didn’t mention his condition to him, or act as if I noticed it, and I thought by that strategy to distract him.

While he ate I shared the story of my adventures with Julian in Striver, and Julian’s unexpected ascension to the Presidency. Sam was greatly interested, and thanked me repeatedly for relieving his mind about Julian. “Not that the Presidency is any kind of safe haven, God knows. I’m glad you came to me, Adam, and I thank you for the meal, but you had better leave me alone after this. I don’t care to see people, as things stand. I’m not what I used to be. I’m of no value to Julian anymore. I’m a useless appendage.”

“The problem is more pressing than that, Sam. Deacon Hollingshead has been making trouble for Calyxa. She and Julian’s mother are both confined under guard, pending prosecution.”

Sam’s eyes, which until now had worn a moist, narcotized glaze, narrowed to a fine point. “Emily is in danger?”

“Potentially, yes—and Calyxa. It was Mrs. Comstock who asked me to find you.”

“Emily!” He spoke the word in a tormented voice. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”

“Understandably; but we can buy you a bath and a haircut as soon as you finish your breakfast.”

“I don’t mean that!”

“But it might be a good idea in any case. Mrs. Comstock is particular about the odors of things.”

“What I’m ashamed of, Adam, is nothing I can bathe away!”

He was talking about the stump of his arm, of course. “Emily Comstock doesn’t care about that, Sam.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t— I do. ” He lowered his voice, though the pain in it was impossible to disguise. “There was a time after I left Striver when I prayed for the infection to kill me.”

“That kind of prayer isn’t welcome in Heaven, and I’m not surprised it wasn’t answered.”

“I’m less than a whole man.”

“Did you feel that way about One-Leg Willy Bass, back when he was chasing us through the wilds of Athabaska? Seems to me you had considerable respect for him, though he lost more of his leg than you did of your arm.”

The comparison appeared to startle him. “Willy Bass was nobody’s cripple. But is that what you imagine I want, Adam—a career in the Reserves?”

“I don’t pretend to guess what you want as a career , but don’t you want to help Mrs. Comstock, when she needs you? That’s the issue right now.”

“Of course I want to help her! But what use is a drunken cripple?”

“None—so you must stop drinking, and you certainly must stop thinking of yourself as a cripple. Show me your injury.”

He bristled, and kept his arm below the table, and refused to speak.

“I worked alongside Dr. Linch at the field hospital in Striver,” I said. “I’ve seen amputations before, and worse things than amputations. You have always been a kind of second father to me, but it seems the role is reversed. Don’t be a child, Sam. Show me.”

His cheeks burned crimson, and for a long moment he sat stiff in his chair. I hoped he would not take offense and strike me with his good right hand, for he was still a powerful man despite his recent debauches. But he relented. Averting his eyes, he raised his arm until it was just visible above the rim of the table.

“Well, that’s nothing,” I said, though in fact it was an unsettling sight, the stump of his forearm terminating in an old bandage rusty with stains.

“It still weeps from time to time,” he whispered.

“We all do. Well, Sam, I suppose you have to decide which you value more—your wounded pride, or Emily Baines Comstock. If the former, go back to your hovel and drink yourself to death. If the latter, come to a barber with me, and have a bath, and let me change that bandage; and then we’ll get our women out of the trouble they’re in, or die trying.”

There was a risk in saying this. He might have walked away. But I had never known Sam to refuse a challenge, bluntly presented.

“I suppose a bath won’t kill me,” he muttered, though the look he gave me was vicious and ungrateful.

The town’s barbers and bath-houses had already begun to close for Christmas Eve, but we managed to find one of each still willing to serve us. We also visited a clothing shop, and exchanged Sam’s military rags for a more presentable civilian outfit. These purchases just about exhausted the pay I carried with me, and Sam had only pennies in his pockets.