by John Boyne
For now he continued to scout with General Custer, and learned from him too as their friendship grew stronger, but with the civil war having ended and a new war having begun – that between the United States government and the Indian tribes fighting to maintain their land – he could sense that time was drawing to a close for him there and that new challenges were approaching. It didn’t take long for him to see where the new dawn for the American west was coming from and, ironically, it related to something that Louisa herself had remarked upon towards the end of their time together at the Golden Rule.
The railroads.
Chapter Five
Rome, London, Tokyo
The Kansas–Pacific railroad was the most important of all the new railway systems being built to aid mass transportation and to help settle the outer reaches of the union. Much of the work was being undertaken by the Chinese immigrant population who worked long hours in dangerous conditions for less pay than their white colleagues. When my great-grandfather left the army for a time in 1868 to return to scouting, it was as an employee of the Kansas–Pacific railroads, and he was accompanied by his old friend David Yountam. At first their work entailed mapping the land through which the tracks would eventually pass but after a time, as the work came closer towards the state line and there were increasing numbers of railroad employees to feed – almost twelve hundred in total – he turned his hand once again to buffalo hunting, earning large amounts of money for his ability to capture and kill more than his quota of fresh meat every day. Privy to the increasingly expansionist plans of the railroads, Yountam and Bill soon decided to resign their commissions in the army outright and aim instead to exploit the potential of the west’s industrialisation while they still could.
‘How much cash do you have now anyway?’ asked Yountam one evening as they sat in the Fresh Morning Hotel near Fort Harker, nursing hangovers from too much whisky the night before and rubbing their eyes through lack of sleep, for the hotel was a popular whorehouse and they had taken advantage of its charms. ‘You’ve saved a lot, right?’
‘About fifteen hundred dollars,’ replied Bill, proud of his nest-egg. This was a substantial amount of money at the time and had been amassed due to his success as a buffalo hunter and also his thriftiness, for there was little on offer in the places he visited that could cause him to spend any of his savings. Whisky and women, necessities of life rather than frivolous entertainments, were two of the only luxuries he afforded himself at the time.
‘Fifteen hundred dollars,’ said Yountam with glee, wishing he still had both his arms so he could rub his hands together greedily. ‘And I’ve got almost a thousand myself. So that makes …’ He looked up at the ceiling and squinted, his schooling not being what it might have been.
‘It makes nearly twenty-five hundred dollars, David,’ said Bill with a smile. ‘I suppose it can’t have been easy for you learning to count on your fingers. Maybe you should use your toes as well or you’ll always get stuck.’
‘I was twelve years old when I lost my arm,’ Yountam pointed out defensively. ‘As you well know, Bill. Mathematics and I have never been good friends. But as you say, that’s twenty-five hundred dollars. A lot of money if you know how to use it right.’
‘I’ve got my share of the Golden Rule too,’ added Bill, remembering the hotel he had left behind for Louisa to run almost a year earlier.
‘Is that still making money for you? I thought when I rescued you from that domestic hell hole that it seemed like a dead place.’
‘It was,’ replied Bill sadly. ‘I don’t own it any longer though. It’s been sold to a prospector from … California, I believe.’ In the time since he had left Kansas, the plans and promises he had made his young wife had fallen through. The railroads still hadn’t arrived anywhere near their business, so the hotel was never full, but Louisa had found herself unable to run it without her husband anyway, particularly as her pregnancy had advanced, and had returned to her mother’s home in St Louis instead, selling the hotel for twelve hundred dollars and forwarding a portion of it to Bill at the fort as a full and final payment.
‘How much did you get?’ asked Yountam. ‘Eight hundred? A thousand.’
‘One hundred and fifty,’ said Bill reluctantly.
‘One hundred and fifty? Where’s the fairness there?’
‘It’s all I asked for,’ said Bill, wishing he did not have to discuss the matter. ‘There’s a child on the way. Louisa will need all the money she can get.’ In truth, it had been Louisa’s decision to send her estranged husband only a fraction of the proceeds from the sale of the Golden Rule. She had written to him at that time, condemning him for leaving their enterprise and their marriage but, the times being what they were, had informed him that she would follow him whenever he gave her the word but that it was up to him to do so; she would not come if she was not invited, baby or not. So far, he had declined to reply. He felt some guilt about his actions but his brief experience of domesticity had convinced him that it was not the life he wanted.
‘Well still, that’s nearly twenty-seven hundred dollars,’ said Yountam, managing to add the figures together this time without as much difficulty. ‘We’re rich.’
‘We’re not married, David,’ my great-grandfather pointed out.
‘No, but we could be business partners. I’ve been thinking about these railroads. You don’t want to go on working on them for ever, do you?’
‘It’s honest work. I enjoy it. I don’t see why we can’t go—’
Yountam leaned forward to interrupt him, careful to make sure that no one else was listening. ‘These railroads …’ he said. ‘They’re opening up the state. People are going to start travelling through here soon. The government are going to start settling people here. You know how it works. You’ve been doing this long enough.’
‘Sure,’ said Bill. ‘I know they will but so what?’
‘Kansas is mostly open territory still. We could use that money to buy a stake of land and set up a town of our own. What do you say? We buy the land, we build houses and stores. Once it’s established and the railways are coming through we’re bound to have people coming there. And when it’s ours, we can sell people the lots for them to build their businesses on. What do you say? I seen it done out in Brent Lake Falls near Missouri not so long ago. A fellow I knew there made ten thousand dollars in one year. What would you say to that kind of money?’
Bill opened his eyes wide and whistled as he thought of it. ‘It’s a big plan,’ he admitted. ‘It would take some work.’
‘That’s the beauty of it,’ said Yountam, enthusiastic now for he had been practising this speech for some time. ‘All we need to do is set up a couple of stores and saloons, and maybe open a hotel of our own, then we offer the business lots free of charge to whoever wants them. We provide the buildings, they provide the businesses. Pretty soon, we’ve got a thriving town and we’re taking all the money from the entertainment on offer.’
‘That could work,’ admitted Bill. ‘Maybe. But I don’t want to be a hotelier again. I saw enough of that at the Golden Rule. I’m not meant for jobs like that.’
‘You might not be but I am,’ said Yountam. ‘I can’t ride the prairies for ever. Don’t even want to, truth be told. I’m not like you, Bill, I want to settle down. I’m not looking for adventure so much now as a place to rest my head at night. Especially now, with Clara expecting.’ Clara was Yountam’s wife, also recently pregnant, but to whom he was much more devoted than my great-grandfather had ever been to Louisa, though such devotion did not keep him out of the whorehouses. ‘You wouldn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to do. Just put half the money up front, then take half the profits when they start to roll in. That’s it. That’s all you’ve got to do. What do you say? Are you in?’
Bill thought about it but it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. ‘You’ll have to show me where you’re thinking of,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to say yes for sure till I take a look at i
t.’ Although he was far from being a pragmatist, my great-grandfather was not about to throw away all the money he had in the world on a scheme which could fail by the following week. He had too many plans for his own future to let that happen.
‘I’ll take you there tomorrow morning,’ replied Yountam with a satisfied smile. ‘Early morning. First thing. You’ll see it at its best.’ He had already had ideas about where they should settle their town and had done a little scouting himself in recent times before presenting the idea to Bill and the following day they rode a couple of miles north to a point where there was just vast, open spaces and climbed down to take a look around. ‘What do you think?’ he said, stretching his one arm out wide to indicate the emptiness of the area.
‘Here?’ said Bill, already regretting the fact that so much free and open space had inevitably – either by them or others – to be covered with houses and businesses. Someday, he imagined, there would be no prairie ground to travel across at all and it was people like him and Yountam who would be blamed for the loss.
‘Right here. It’s perfect. The railroad’s going to be going along about half a mile from here so that’s close enough to build a station there and for people to be able to walk into the town from it.’
‘It looks good,’ said Bill after a pause, worried that they were committing themselves to the project too quickly. ‘You’re sure the railroad’s coming through here though? ’Cos if it doesn’t we’re in trouble and you know that.’
‘It’ll be here within a year,’ said Yountam with conviction. ‘You’ve seen the plans. You know where they’re headed. They’re aiming for Sheridan, that’s the final stop on the line. And you can’t get to Sheridan without going through here first, unless you want to go up all the way up to Canada, cross over to the Nebraska Territory, and down through Utah before coming in from the other side. Of course that would add another two years or so to your journey so it don’t seem likely.’
‘Funny,’ said Bill in a dry voice, breathing in the scent of the prairie dust as if it could magically inform him as to whether a town belonged there or not.
‘Six months from now you’re going to see those Chinese pouring through here laying the tracks,’ continued Yountam. ‘I’m telling you, Bill, this time next year the trains will be passing through and we, my friend, will be kings of all we survey. We have to be quick, that’s all. Because if we don’t buy it soon, then someone else is going to. You can be damn sure of that.’
Bill nodded and walked slowly around the area, imagining where the town could stand, where the saloon would be, where his own house could be erected, what job he could do when it was built. He was warm on the idea and Yountam could tell that he needed only a little more gentle prodding and the deal would be firmly struck.
‘I’ve spoken to George Jacobs,’ Yountam said, referring to the government official at Fort Marker who was nominally in charge of the settlement of a hundred-mile radius, although most of the plans were made within the centralised government by Abraham Lincoln’s appointees. ‘He says that we can have it all for thirteen hundred. Now that’s a bargain if ever I heard of one.’
‘Thirteen hundred?’ said Bill, surprised. ‘That’s not bad. That’s a good price.’
‘It’s a damn good price is what it is. We buy the town for that. Spend another six hundred constructing the buildings: Another three or four hundred stocking the stores and the saloon as we’re going to be owning them, then let the businessmen come in and set up whatever they will. A hardware store maybe. A blacksmith’s. Anything at all, don’t make no difference long as it’s profitable. We keep a percentage of whatever they earn, of course,’ he added. ‘For all the work we’ve put in. That’ll be in the contracts.’
‘You think people will agree to that kind of deal?’
‘Don’t see why not. They did over in Brent Lake Falls, Fellows there were near as dammit to millionaires come the following spring. But they were entitled to that money. People like them and us, we’re ideas men, that’s what. We deserve to be made rich.’
He stopped talking and waited for a moment, wondering whether he should make a final push but just as he was about to open his mouth to speak again, Bill stamped on the ground, looked up, spat in his hand and held it out to his friend to seal the deal. ‘Partners?’ he said, a wide, nervous smile crossing his face.
‘Partners,’ said Yountam.
My great-grandfather had a restless spirit and it’s a trait that I’ve always admired in him. That and his unwillingness ever to admit defeat. He took each adversity as if it was no more than a minor setback and was always ready to pick himself up and begin again. He pushed further and further west across America, as if he was the very personification of the land-settling programme, and always seemed to be one step ahead of the progress of the union. Where he went, America followed. It was something I kept in mind as I continued to live in Japan, and found myself feeling more isolated and lonely as time passed. Isaac always said that the only place that Bill felt ill at ease was in familiar surroundings; it was that trait that set him apart from other men. I envied him this quality and wished that that particular gene of the Cody family had been passed down to me.
Adam grew weary of Japan after a few months and decided to move on to Australia where, he believed, life could be a lot less difficult and a lot more fun. He wanted me to come with him and I was tempted by his talk of a few months making our way down the Gold Coast, learning to surf, working on our tans, meeting people who could understand what we were saying, but in the end I declined. I had not yet had my fill of this exotic country and although I felt uncomfortable and alone there, I was determined to stay until I could feel that I had somehow become a part of it. And so we separated, agreeing to meet again in London when we were next there.
Watching him as his bus drove out of Tokyo station, however, I felt an urge to run after it and climb aboard, but resisted. Although I felt incredibly alone as I made my way back to my hostel, I determined that I would make the most of whatever adventures lay ahead of me. Nevertheless, despite my determination, I felt a great weight within me for days, tension and fear blending perfectly to make both my mood and my courage flag.
I left the city myself a few days later and travelled westwards towards Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, which initially seemed almost as crowded and busy as Tokyo had upon my first arrival there. However it was not quite as intimidating now as my Japanese had naturally improved and I was able to read most of the street signs and make my way to a hostel without too much difficulty. I hoped to earn some money by finding employment as a teacher of English with one of the many schools which my guidebook told me were located within the city. I took a room at the Higashiyama Hostel in East Kyoto, not far from the university, hoping that someone there would be able to help me in my search for employment. It was cheap and spartan but I wasn’t looking for luxuries as I spent little time there anyway, mixing my search for work with sightseeing around the city.
On my third day in Kyoto, I discovered the Korakuen School, named after the famous gardens founded by Ikeda Tsunamasa, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Western Honshu, and climbed the narrow, spiral staircase to its offices with high hopes. I remember thinking how the steps were incredibly narrow and wondering how many accidents had taken place as people ran down them. The paint was chipping away at the side and I hoped that the school had not been closed down in the year or so since my guidebook had been published. Although I had been assured by student agencies in London before I left that positions as language teachers were numerous and available to any who wanted them, I was beginning to despair of finding work and did not want to be forced to leave Kyoto, as the drain on my finances of finding another city, accommodation and employment could bring me close to the edge. However, this was not to be the case for it was at the Korakuen that I not only found a job which could keep me for my time there, but also discovered my destiny.
I tapped on the glass-fronted door and, recei
ving no answer, pushed it open gingerly; an ill-mannered young man frowned at me from behind a desk as I stepped inside as if I was the last person in the world he wanted to have to talk to, despite the fact that we had never met before. He wore glasses and pushed them up his nose a little as he looked me up and down with disdain. I glanced down myself, worried that a great stain had appeared on my shirt or jeans without my noticing it, but all appeared in order. Granted, I was not dressed for a formal interview, but then I was merely making inquiries there, and not hoping for a full-time position with the Japanese treasury.
‘Hai,’ he barked at me. ‘Nani?’ As ever, I hoped my meagre grasp of the language would suffice and I knew enough to recognise a ‘hello’ and ‘what do you want?’ without much difficulty. It was generally considered rude not to at least attempt Japanese first and so I stepped up to his desk, flashed him a benign smile, and did my best, hoping he would quickly save me by reverting to English.
‘Hai. Watashi no namae wa William Cody desu.’ Hello. My name is William Cody. He stared at me blankly and offered no response. I racked my brain for an appropriate follow up. ‘Gakusei desu,’ I added. I’m a teacher.
I had hardly uttered the phrase when a stream of sentences came pouring from his mouth at rapid-fire speed. His hands gesticulated furiously in the air and his eyes narrowed until I thought he might jump up and hit me. I gestured with my hands for him to stop as I took a step backwards and used two phrases which had become extremely familiar to me, for I had used them perhaps more than any other sentences since my arrival in Japan. ‘Motto yukkuri hanashite kuremasen ka, nihongo wa hanashimasen.’ Could you speak slowly please, I don’t speak Japanese well.
