The Cordwainer

by Christopher Blankley

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Marmont

  We were giddy, on a battle high, as The Cordwainer rolled out of Johnson City. Perhaps from this elation, we let our guard fall a little. Outside of Johnson City, we soon found ourselves amongst the high pines. The grade was climbing steeply now as the land raised up into the mountains, and The Cordwainer began to strain heavily to pull its load. Even with the fuel value and the potentiometer fully open, the train was managing little more than a walking pace. A fact Fluky took full advantage of anytime he needed to pee, by leaping from the cockpit, doing his business in the bushes, and making it back in time to catch the passing caboose. Mitty and I, being less athletic, simply opened the rear doors of the caboose and peed out onto the tracks. But each to his own.

  It was late afternoon when the trees around us finally broke and we found ourselves amongst cultivated, terraced slopes either side of the Stephenson gauge tracks. It was obvious that the hillsides had been planted long after the end of the service on the Northern Pacific, as many of the bushes – vines perhaps – crisscrossed over the tracks. The Cordwainer unthinkingly pushed its way though, cutting a swath of destruction up the hillside.

  Grapes, I realized, pulling a bunch off the running board near the cockpit. The vines were grape vines. I tasted one and spat it out. Bitter. Mitty's map told us that we were no more than a mile or two from the town of Lode, the last settlement we'd encounter before the pass through the mountains. But the map gave the impression that Lode was a mining community. We had little reason to suspect that it would be anything other than a ghost town, like Johnson City.

  But acres upon acres of grape vines planted as far as the eye could see either side of The Cordwainer told us that Lode was potentially neither abandoned nor focused on mining.

  We caught glimpses of figures amongst the vines as evening began to set in. People out tending to their crops. Dark, Negro faces, most women, watched in horror as we tore our way through their vines. In all honesty, we were as shocked to see such faces as they were to see a peroxide fueled train suddenly steam its way through their pastoral calm.

  Black faces? It was perhaps the last thing I had expected to see in the mountains. Boot Hill may have been almost completely Caucasian, except for a few Oriental faces like Fluky, but the Big City was a far more cosmopolitan place. America, however, remained a tightly segregated place. To see colored people outside of an urban setting. In the mountains above Boot Hill. Tending to grapes. It was a shock.

  Of course there was the stereotype of the poor, rural Southern black field hand, but we were a thousand miles away from the cotton fields of Virginia. And none of the vine tenders I saw as we cut through the vineyard fit the stereotype I had in my head. They were all dressed in blue coveralls and boots, like my Worker B's back on Number Six. They watched us with open-mouthed befuddlement as The Cordwainer rolled by. Where exactly were we?

  If the sight of the vines and their colored vine tenders had come as a shock, it was nothing compared to the surprise that was coming next.

  The Cordwainer finally broke through the tangle of vines and crested a small rise. Down in a valley, directly in line with the Stephenson gauge tracks, where on the map it told us the town of Lode lay, was the loveliest little French village you could imagine. A cluster of old, stone buildings with shingle roofs were nestled into the trees beside a medieval church complete with steeple. A majestic white stone château sat on the hillside overlooking it all. In the cockpit, Mitty, at the controls, cut out the engines, bringing us to a halt. All three of us climbed up onto the top of the hoppers and stared at the sight in slack-jawed amazement.

  It was beautiful. Like a place out of a dream. The postcard setting for a postcard town. It couldn't be real, it just couldn't. But there it was, directly in the path of the Stephenson rails. If we'd been less taken aback, if it had been any normal sort of town, we'd have approached it with so much more care. But the whole place was like a dream. When the sound of a car motor rose up from the valley below, none of us reacted. It was only when it was too late that we realized that a car was driving out of that most perfect of sights and heading towards us.

  In our good fortune, it was not a black sedan. It was green, army style jeep, speeding towards us, loaded with men in brown uniforms. When we realized what it was, who was approaching, we attempted to get The Cordwainer once again underway, but it was too late. The jeep pulled up beside the train and unloaded off the back three men with rifles. They cocked their guns and pointed them up at us, yelling incoherently. I stood motionless on top of a hopper car, wisely not reaching for the automatic in my belt. To add to the confusion, all the soldiers seemed to be black too, like the vine tenders out in the fields.

  They yelled and manhandled Fluky, Mitty and myself off the train. We were pushed up against the hood of the jeep and searched. The three automatics we had taken from the Concession goons were found. It was then that I realized that the men in the jeep were not soldiers. They wore army pea coats, yes, and carried Garands, but their military clothes were mixed in with civilian attire. One of the men was wearing running shoes that I recognized as a style we made in Boot Hill.

  With the three of us safely secured, and constantly covered by at least one gun barrel, the men from the jeep turned their attention to The Cordwainer.

  “What the hell is this thing?” one of the men said from the running board beside the cockpit. He was looking in at the controls.

  “Is it a truck or a train?” another commented, bending over, looking under the chassis. “It got wheels like a truck but it's running on the tracks...”

  “What inside of there?” yet another yelled up to the first. The man at the cockpit moved back and lifted the cover on the first hopper slightly.

  “Looks like boxes...”

  “Boxes of what?”

  The first man reached in and came out with a shoe box. He removed the lid, throwing it away, and pulled out a pair of work boots. “Boots?” he said in disbelief.

  “Boots?” the man covering us with his rifle turned around in disbelief, momentarily forgetting about his prisoners.

  “Boots,” The first one confirmed, throwing the pair of boots down for inspection.

  “Boots!” Mitty said happily, smiling. Our guard suddenly remembered us and brandished the gun at us.

  “That whole train is full of boots?” the guard asked Mitty down the length of the gun.

  “Yes, ten thousand pairs!” Mitty volunteered.

  “What the hell? What sort of crazy people are you?”

  “Oh, we're not crazy,” Mitty smiled, looking all the more crazy.

  “Then what the hell is that thing?” our guard gestured at The Cordwainer.

  “It's our train, it runs on hydrogen peroxide. Beanie here built it. Well, not exactly. His blew up, but his sister built us-”

  “I asked you 'what the hell is that thing'?” the guard interrupted, poking Mitty in the chest with his barrel.

  “It's very temperamental!” I replied, yelling up to the man on the running board, who had returned to the cockpit and was leaning in, fiddling with controls. At my warning, he ducked back out and dropped down off the running board. “As my friend said, it's just a train. We're on our way with a shipment of footwear, bound for the Big City. We're sorry for any damage we did to your vines back there, but they've grown up over the tracks. If we'd realized we'd be steaming through your fields...”

  “You're them...” The man sitting behind the wheel of the jeep spoke up. He'd been silent up until then, watching, holding an automatic in his right hand.

  “Yes, perhaps...” I replied. I was confused, but I thought it best not to contradict the men with the guns.

  “You're them, from on the radio...” he continued. “You have to be, from Boot Hill...”

  “Yes, that's us!” Mitty spoke up.

  “Oh my God...” he was happy, amused. “I can't believe it. Right here in Marmont.”

  “Sorry, where
?” I asked.

  “Marmont,” he said, pointing off towards the sleepy Gallic town with his handgun.

  “Oh, our map said this was Lode.”

  “Yes, maybe, once upon a time...” he replied, still obviously amused by our presence. Then he realize that our guard was still pointing a gun at us. “Hey, José, point that thing somewhere else. Do you realize who these guys are?”

  “Some crazy sons-of-bitches?” our guard replied, lowering his rifle.

  “These are the guys the radio was squawking on about, José! The big, bad desperados that shot their way out of Boot Hill, killing hundreds! Don't they just look like a gang of big, bad desperados to you, José?”

  Our guard smirked.

  “We- we haven't killed anyone...” I protested.

  “Oh, yes?” the driver of the jeep didn't seem surprised. “Well, that wasn't what the radio had to say. Said we should be on the lookout for the outlaws that shot up Boot Hill. Armed and dangerous, you're supposed to be. Can't say the three of you look all that dangerous, though, even if you are armed. The radio didn't say anything about a train full of boots, either. Said something about running guns for the Polypigs...”

  “We ain't got any guns!” Fluky exclaimed, almost perfectly timing his protests to the uncovering of the .38 revolvers in the caboose. “Well, none that we ain't carryin' for self defense only...”

  The driver behind the wheel of the jeep gave us all a wide, toothy grin.

  “You're injured,” he said, pointing at the bandage around my head. He put his gun away and reached down to turn on the ignition. “Get in,” he ordered as the engine turned over. He turned to the men with rifles, “You guys stay here and guard that... thing.”

  The man driving the jeep was named Mitchell. Young and sharp-eyed, dressed in an army jacket and pants, he drove Fluky, Mitty and myself at a high rate of speed back down the narrow country lane – back towards town. He chatted pleasantly as he piloted the jeep, giving the impression we were honored guests, not prisoners.

  In answer, when I queried if the town was actually Lode or Marmont, he replied, “There was a town here once, but I can't recall the name. Lode sounds as good a name as any. Mining town, when there was still mining to be done. This,” he pointed proudly towards the rapidly approaching town, “is Marmont.”

  “But,” I didn't know exactly how the phrase it. “It's a French...”

  “Bordeaux, to be exact.” he agreed with a chuckle, yelling over the noise of the engine. “You see, back in the War, after D-day, when Patton was pushing into France from Spain, the Nazis took a page from the Russian play book, started a scorched earth policy. As they retreated and the Americans advanced, they burned all the crops, poisoned the water. Did this all the way across the Bordeaux region. Seeded the vineyards with radium. Nothing can grow there again for two thousand years. Destroyed the French wine industry. Whole region of France was completely depopulated after the War. Nothing but ghost towns.”

  The jeep pulled off the dirt of the twisting country lane and onto Marmont's cobbled streets. The town was bustling with people, turning to glance at the Jeep as it sped down the street. Two things were instantly obvious as we rode through town: Everyone in Marmont was black, and everyone is Marmont carried a gun. The whole place had an air of a military camp, crossed with a sleepy, industrious rural community. Even the women, in peasant skirts and blouses, carried guns in holsters on their hips.

  “So there's this General, Molloy. He's with Patton during the big push into Paris, and afterward sees the destruction the Nazis left behind. Later on he's Interior Secretary during Kennedy's first term. Reads in a report that the eastern slopes of these mountains are prime wine-growing country. Perfect combination of rain and sun. Totally unexploited. Rare opportunity. Remembers all those forgotten Bordeaux villages back in France, just sitting idle, and gets the hair to break one down, brick by brick, and ship it over here to America.”

  “You're joking,” I said as the jeep skidded to a halt in front of a Tabac near the center of the town. Mitchell threw on the parking brake and cut out the engine.

  He kept talking as he climbed out of the vehicle, “No, no joke! Completely serious. Government is going to jump-start a wine industry in the Northwest. Tap into an under-serviced market. Bring Bordeaux to the U.S. So they reassemble the whole town here in the mountains. Buildings, churches, châteaus and all.”

  We climbed out of the jeep after Mitchell and followed him through the front door of the Tabac. Inside, there were two men leaning at the counter, wearing berets, talking to a very attractive dark-skinned woman behind the counter.

  “Amélie,” Mitchell said as he stepped through the door, a tiny bell chiming our presence. The girl behind the counter turned to look and then did a double-take at the sight of Fluky, Mitty and myself walking into the store. She audibly gasped. “I have a patient for you.”

  The two men in berets, with submachine guns propped up against the counter, eyed us suspiciously from head to toe. There was a tense moment of silence, as no one reacted. Mitchell sensed the tension and gestured towards a small metal bistro table off in a back corner of the shop.

  We all crossed the store and sat down at the table. The two men at the counter tracked us closely. Mitchell waved the girl over and she came around the counter cautiously. There was a swift, hushed exchange of words and the girl turned on her heels, and then she scurried back behind her counter.

  “You'll have to forgive the reception,” Mitchell began, loud enough to be heard by the two men at the counter. “You see, Marmont has something of a siege mentality, surrounded as we are. Anyone with your complexion is automatically treated as a threat.”

  “We didn't mean to...” I began, drying my sweaty palm on my pants. “We're not...”

  “No, no,” Mitchell smiled. “I understand. But as for the rest...” he nodded his head towards the counter. The two men standing there took the hint and turned away from us, lighting up cigarettes and leaning back up against the counter.

  “Why is-” I began, but was interrupted as the girl returned to our table. She was carrying a tray with a first-aid kit, a bottle of wine – a real glass bottle, not a carton – and four short, squat glasses. She put the tray down on the table and picked up the first-aid kit as Mitchell reached for the bottle of wine. As the girl began to remove the bandages from my forehead, Mitchell took out a pocket knife, folded out a corkscrew and pulled the cork from the bottle. He poured wine into the four glasses and passed them around.

  Mitchell drank deeply, quickly finishing off his glass, and reached for the bottle to pour another. “Our local offering,” he said, filling his glass. He looked at the label. “Last year's. Quite excellent. Please, give it a try.” He gestured towards the glasses in front of us.

  I reached for mine as the young girl opened the first-aid kit and began to doctor my head. The wine was excellent. Dry, but full bodied. I couldn't remember the last time I'd tasted anything like it – had a glass of wine at all, for that matter. Mitty and Fluky tentatively tasted theirs. Their reaction was more subdued. Neither of them had ever really been wine people.

  I was starting to let my guard down as the wine warmed my belly. Mitchell was watching our expressions for hints of approval. I smiled, trying to indicate my pleasure, when Mitty interrupted, blurting out, “Why is everyone in this town colored?”

  The girl's hand slipped and painfully jabbed at my bruise. I yelped in pain. The two men at the bar again turned around to regard us with suspicion. Fluky visibly flinched.

  But Mitchell let out a deep belly laugh. The tension was broken. The two men at the counter saw Mitchell's reaction and let out strained chuckles themselves. The girl apologized and returned to dressing my head wound.

  “So, this Molloy character,” Mitchell continued, “hauls this whole Bordeaux town across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, and drops it right here, in the middle of some of the finest New World wine country you could possibly imagine. He spare
s no expense. He searches the world for exactly the right type of grapes to grow given the climate. Mix of Cabernet and Merlot and Syrah. The perfect mix for the perfect claret. Only one thing missing from his grand plan: The people to occupy his village. He couldn't box up the Frenchies and ship them along with the stone. No, not with the government footing the bill. He'd have to populate this new town with American vintners. 'Cause, ain't a whole hell of a lot of them sitting around, unemployed. Not even with a brand new, state-of-the-art, wine-making operation in the offering. But that doesn't deter old Molloy.

  “Now, this is about the time the Supreme Court hands down Brown vs. Board of Education, about twenty years ago, telling the government they got to end segregation – separate but equal. There's a big push in the Administration behind this, to mainstream the Negro community – the old white, Southern power bloc being their number one political enemy. Molloy figures, if he's got to train up a whole new generation of American vintners, why not train up a whole new generation of black American vintners?”

  I looked at Mitchell with a mix of shock and surprise. I looked over at the two men at the counter and up at the beautiful young girl tending to my forehead. If I hadn't seen it for myself I wouldn't have believed it.

  “Only the best and brightest, you understand, with agricultural experience. Talent held down by white oppression. Packed us up and moved us all out to this part of the country, it having no great history of acrimony between the races – the West.”

  “Then what's with all the guns?” Fluky asked, finishing off the last of his wine. Mitchell picked up the bottle and again refilled all our glasses.

  “In the beginning,” he said, tasting his wine, “Things were peaceful. But then we had the army here, keeping order. A whole platoon. Buffalo soldiers, sure, but regular army. A few years pass, however, and the Administration starts to balk at the expense. The budget is getting tighter. They pull out the Negro platoon. Of course, everyone and his uncle Ed thinks this means it's open season on Marmont. All this time, the government has been funding and supplying us. We got stuff that the rest of the nation has been having to do without. Gas, diesel. We look like a big, round, juicy peach to all the locals. One they just have to come in and pluck. But that Negro platoon, before leaving, sort of forgot to pack up a lot of their equipment. You know how wasteful the army can be. But it's nice of them to leave behind a few extra guns and trucks so we're able to still defend ourselves. Well, the locals quickly learned that Marmont was no easy mark – we were ready to protect what they had.”

  The girl was finished dressing my head. She closed up the first-aid kit and took it with her back behind the counter.

  “And the government didn't intervene?” I asked.

  “Intervene?” Mitchell laughed. “Once we showed that we could defend ourselves – were willing to fight – they sent more guns. And food and clothes and what have you.”

  The girl returned with another tray. This one with a loaf of bread and a small plate of butter. Real butter! Not margarine! She put the tray down in the center of the table and took the empty wine bottle and tray away. Mitchell reached forward and pulled off a chunk of the bread and buttered it. Seeing our lascivious stares, he pushed the bread and butter towards us. Fluky, Mitty and I quickly scrambled to help ourselves.

  Mitchell went on, “See, no one in the Administration wanted to see Marmont fail. It was the shining jewel in their domestic policy – showing their material commitment to their policies. The success of their progressive agenda. That they couldn't afford to protect us, as the years when on, greatly upset them, but when we proved we could protect ourselves, they were more than happy to give us what they could.”

  “That's amazing,” I said, halfway between rapture and disbelief. “This - this is all amazing.” I whirled a hand around my head, gesturing to everything.

  “It is,” Mitchell agreed. “We've had to fight hard to protect it. As the shortages have worsened, as things have became more dire in the outside world, the attacks have become more concerted. Early on, they came in ones or twos, thinking we'd make easy pickings, but lately... with the Polypigs...”

  “And the government just kept supplyin' you?” Fluky asked. “All these years? When other folks are going short on the bare essentials?”

  “They found us useful,” Mitchell stately plainly.

  “Now this is mighty nice,” Fluky said, holding up his glass. “But it ain't that nice.”

  Mitchell looked at us across the bistro table, sizing us up. For a moment, I though Fluky had managed to finally insult him; but instead, he jumped to his feet and said, “Come on,” waving for us to follow. We stood up, tentatively, looking at each other in confusion. We followed Mitchell back out into the street under the watchful eyes of the two men at the counter, and back into the jeep. Mitchell fired up the engine and we were again rocketing through the narrow cobble streets of Marmont, climbing up the hill toward the château.

  “Of course, up here, there's no Concession train service. We have to truck everything in and out,” Mitchell said as he drove. “With the price of diesel, that's prohibitively expensive. We try and be as self-sufficient as possible – keeping livestock, fabricating most of our own equipment – but we can't provide completely for our own needs. There's no land here to farm, to grow grain... If the Administration was to ever pull its support for Marmont, the wolves would set upon this town without mercy. We'd be a ghost town in a week.”

  We had arrived in the courtyard of the château. Mitchell parked the jeep abruptly and leapt free of it on the gravel of the courtyard. He crunched off across the gravel, still speaking, assuming our attention. We followed him across the courtyard and down through a basement entrance. The warmth of the day gave way to a cool, dry stone cellar, dominated by massive casks, ten feet each in diameter.

  “Luckily, there is a lot of demand for the product we produce,” Mitchell said, his voice echoing around the basement. “Without it, the nation would be in a much tougher position than it currently finds itself – and times are pretty bad. Everyone looks to the government to assure the supply and availability of our product. If it ever vanished from store shelves... well, it'd be all out war. That's why the Administration is so keen on keeping Marmont armed and supplied. Without us, the whole country could collapse into anarchy. It's a matter of national security to keep Marmont fully operational – a matter of maintaining domestic tranquility.”

  “Really?” I replied, as we moved quickly through the cellar of casks. “But I've never even heard of your wine before...”

  “Of course not,” Mitchell said as we reached a door at the far end of the cellar. He reached down to turn the handle, but paused before turning it. He finished his thought, “Nobody wants to drink colored wine.”

  He swung the door open and we stepped through, into a section of the cellar at least as large as the one we were departing. I was instantly hit by the pungent aroma, a smell both instantly overpowering and yet somehow familiar. Beyond the door, the cellar was dominated by giant vats of bubbling liquid and large contraptions of copper tubing. It instantly reminded me of The Shop – the dying vats where hemp was bleached of its natural hue. I was no expert in wine production, but nothing in this room looked like it was used in making wine.

  “The wine is mostly for our consumption,” Mitchell said, as Fluky, Mitty and myself looked up at the vast maze of copper and glass. “And occasionally some power brokers – those in the know. This here is the reason for Marmont's existence, the grease that keeps the wheels of America turning.”

  I breathed in again, the heady aroma, and the realization came washing over me, “McTavish,” I said.

  “I take it you're familiar with the product.”

  “This is where they make McTavish?!” Fluky said with glee, like a child finding Santa Claus's Workshop.

  “For the western seaboard,” Mitchell confirmed. “There's a dozen other distilleries dotted around the country, all making a product sold behind the
label 'McTavish' from various sugar sources – corn, barley, fruit. Perhaps I'm biased, but I think we, by far, make the best-tasting version. Grapes add a subtle undertone to the whiskey.”

  “I've died and gone to heaven...” Fluky said solemnly.

  Mitchell ushered us out, back into the wine cask section of the cellar, closing the door behind us.

  He started off again, back across the cellar floor, back along the path we had followed to the door. “Of course, making large quantities of cheap liquor was never the intent. Marmont, from the beginning, was supposed to be a model community. A template for further experiments of its type. But the expense of our upkeep always required that we produce something... tangible. More than a few hundred cases of wine a season.

  “The irony of it all, of course, isn't lost on anyone,” Mitchell said as we came out of the cellar back into the courtyard. We walked across the gravel towards the jeep, where he paused before he climbed back into it. “To have all of this – for the government to have gone to such outrageous expense – for the mere production of cheap booze to keep the population docile... To be taught the fine craft of wine making, only to waste our talents on mass production of slop...”

  Mitchell climbed back into the jeep and we loaded up beside him. He fishtailed the jeep around in the loose stone of the courtyard and exploded out back onto the streets of Marmont, driving wildly. He drove with complete abandon but significant skill, never missing a turn or coming near a pedestrian. I gripped the dash of the jeep tightly as we sped over the cobbles of the beautiful town. I was reminded of the many journeys I'd taken in Fluky's wrecking truck between Boot Hill and Pottersville, but Fluky was an amateur behind the wheel compared to Mitchell.

  He followed the tight streets until we came to the square that faced onto the large, gothic church whose spire I'd seen from The Cordwainer. The square was fronted on its three other sides by numerous small, welcoming cafés. To one of these, Mitchell drove his jeep, parking at a curb beside its empty outdoor tables. It was, perhaps, too early for dinner, but Mitchell took a table out in the sun.