The Cordwainer

by Christopher Blankley

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Right and Wrong

  I went back to the fire and curled up under my dirty blanket, falling almost instantly back to sleep. When I awoke, Fluky and Mitty were up making breakfast. At my first stirring they came jumping to my side.

  “How do you feel, old man?” Mitty asked, looking down at me.

  “You were out all day yesterday,” Fluky added. He lifted the bandage on my forehead and examined the wound. “Don't worry, ain't nothing broken. Bullet must of hit the caboose then nicked you in the head. Sure knocked ya stupid, though.”

  I tried to sit up, but my head was spinning.

  “Easy,” Mitty held me down. “Don't rush it.”

  “It's all right, I was up last night,” I said groggily.

  “Yeah, sure, just lay still.”

  “But I-” My head was throbbing.

  I stayed horizontal for another five minutes, then Fluky helped me up to a sitting position, and force fed me a cup of coffee. It tasted as bitter and vile as it had in the middle of the night, but I choked it down and it revived me enough to let me climb to my feet.

  Fluky and Mitty filled me in on the events – or lack of them – of the day I missed. They had pushed on out of Shadrach and encountered no one. They had decided to rest for the night on the hill, fearing a derailment if they continued in the dark. I asked if they had passed the cowboy or his cattle crossing the plain, but they both looked at me like I was talking nonsense. They hadn't seen a soul, man nor beast. I let it lie at that.

  After eating a quick breakfast, we prepared to get underway once again. We were terribly exposed on that hillside, though a long distance from any road, but my injuries weren't so terrible that I couldn't be jostled about a bit. As we were packing up the camp, I was struck with the idea that I should have offered a pair of boots to the cowboy last night. I distinctly remember loading over a hundred pair of Boot Hill's finest, sturdiest riding boots. I could have kicked myself for not thinking of it while the cowboy had been here. Still, perhaps if I left a pair behind at the campsite, he might make his way back up here again that night and find the boots waiting.

  For some reason I felt like I owed him something for his words of encouragement last night. While Fluky and Mitty were busying themselves loading up the caboose, I climbed up the side of the last hopper car in line and opened its hatch. I started fishing around for the oversized cardboard boxes that contained the style of cowboy boots that I was thinking of, when I uncovered a large hemp sack buried amongst the shoes. I gave it a tug and it seemed heavy. I didn't remember loading anything into the freight cars in sacks. I undid the tie and took a look inside.

  I tossed the heavy sack down beside the smoldering fire. Fluky was packing up the billy cans. He jumped as the large sack thudded down next to him.

  “What the hell?” he said looking down at the bag. Then he realized what it was. “Oh, I-”

  “I can't believe it!” I began, throwing up my hands. “After all our work, after all the effort? And you do this?” I pointed accusingly at the sack.

  “Now, just a second...” Fluky raised to his feet, making calming motions.

  “When did you come up with this plan? Right from the beginning?” I yelled. “Did you ever give any thought to Mitty's Plan? Or was it always – right from the get-go – about this?”

  “No, no, it ain't like that,” Fluky stammered. “This was just sort of a last minute thing. When I went to get them guns, I sorta suggested to the fellas what we had planned. They had a real good idea.”

  “A good idea?” My brain felt like it was about to burst.

  “We can double our profits here, Beanie. Think about it...” He kicked the sack with the toe of his boot. “This here one little sack, we can turn 'round and make more off than that there whole train load of boots.”

  “Profit?” Mitty was returning to the campfire. His ear pricked up at the mention of profit. “What can double our profits?” he asked.

  “Fluky,” I said without ceremony. “And his sack full of weed.” I pointed at the bag in question at Fluky's feet.

  “Weed? What?” Mitty looked confused.

  “Now, folks are aching for this stuff in the Big City just as much as they're aching for boots,” Fluky rationalized. But I'd stopped listening. I was walking off over the brow of the hill in disgust. I found a spot just out of sight from The Cordwainer and dropped down onto the ground.

  I couldn't believe it. My head was throbbing. I felt like I was going to be sick. I'd just got shot in the head. That I could take, when I'd thought I'd got shot defending my cargo – my shipment of boots. But now... I'd got shot smuggling drugs. I lay back in the grass and let the nausea subside. The sky above me was spinning very slowly clockwise.

  Was I making too much of my discovery? It wasn't like I objected to the use of the stuff. I liked to partake myself, and it was the height of insanity that pot was illegal. But something about hauling drugs... It wasn't like we were hauling legal cargo anyway. The boots, we'd stolen, and The Cordwainer itself existed in direct opposition to the state-assured freight monopoly that was the Concession's. But drugs...

  Was I no better than Sophie? Did Mitty's Plan have to contain an altruistic component to make it acceptable to me? Had I been rationalizing the whole thing, excusing the profits I was potentially going to make because – looking at the big picture – we would be helping people in the end? Putting shoes on feet that would have otherwise remained unshod?

  Was I just an insane hypocrite?

  You could understand the point of view of Fluky and his weed-dealing friends. What was wrong – any more than anything else – with selling a product to people who wanted to buy it? If people wanted to smoke weed, who were we not to provide it for them? And the profit-to-weight ratio of the product... If a train was already crossing the mountains, why not throw in a bag? I took Fluky at his word that it could be worth as much as the whole train load of boots combined. Double our profits. It just made business sense.

  But the cowboy, last night beside the fire, he'd been right too. Legal or illegal, it didn't matter, it was up to each and every one of us to determine our own right and wrong. Maybe I saw the boots as honest and weed as not. Maybe that didn't make a lick of sense to anyone, even me. Maybe it was hard for me to draw the line where legitimate commerce turned into exploitation. But I knew, sure as shit, that I was drawing the line here.

  I wasn't out there, in the middle of nowhere, running a rocket fuel powered train across mountains for anyone's good but my own. I knew it – I had known that fact from the very beginning. I'd undertaken the execution of Mitty's Plan and the construction of The Cordwainer with no more noble goal in mind that my own enrichment. But I hadn't undertaken the whole enterprise to smuggle drugs.

  It'd be so easy to use the cowboy's speech to justify anything that I wanted. If only I could decide right and wrong for myself, then what was there to stop me from deciding that anything and everything I decided to do was right? It'd be so easy to take that road. Or, inversely, that everything anyone else wanted to do that I didn't was wrong. Did I secretly fear other people's condemnation? Was I masking a social conscience behind all the talk of freedom and liberty?

  Was I just screwing myself into the ground, turning around and around on the issue?

  I pulled myself up to my feet and returned to the campfire.

  Fluky and Mitty were sitting beside the fire, the last of the supplies packed up.

  “The sack goes in the fire or you go on without me,” I said and let it hang there in the cool morning air.

  Mitty look up across his cigarette and Fluky opened his mouth to protest, “But-”

  “Drugs were never part of it,” I said. “That you felt you didn't need to tell the rest of us...”

  “But, come on,” Fluky made a sound, like a whining child. “That's cash money right there. It ain't like you're so hellfire moral about it? You smoke-”

  “I said it was never a p
art of it,” I interrupted. “If you'd thought it was a good idea, we could have discussed it from the very beginning. Then any of us who'd had a problem with it could have bowed out. But this way? No,” I shook my head. It throbbed. “In the fire, or I'm walking back to Boot Hill.”

  Fluky looked at Mitty. Mitty's eyes were wide, he could tell I was deadly serious. Fluky was looking between the two of us. I could almost see him calculating his chances, with just Mitty for help. The mental math wasn't playing out for him, and slowly his shoulders began to sink.

  “Shit,” he said, grabbing the sack with both hands and lifting with all his might. He held it out, his arms fully extended and dropped it onto the smoldering fire. “Can we at least wait here till it all burns up?” he asked. “You know, breathin' deeply...”

  I didn't answer. I was walking towards The Cordwainer, lifting a bag of supplies up onto my shoulder. Mitty fell in behind, holding a mass of the bundled blankets.

  We let Fluky mourn his loss as The Cordwainer built up a head of steam.