The Cordwainer

by Christopher Blankley

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Polypigs

  “But you're a-” I started and stopped. The woman had helped me to my feet with her strangely twisted, crooked left hand. She had introduced herself as Majorette, though if that was her name or some sort of rank, she didn't clarify.

  “A woman? A cripple?” she asked, indignantly.

  “No, no!” I scrambled. She laughed. “I just thought...”

  “What?”

  “That you were supposed to be bigamists...” It sounded silly the moment it came out of my mouth. Majorette, the large man and the young girl laughed.

  “What if we are? Only men can be bigamists?” Majorette offered her misshapen hand to Mitty and pulled him up to a standing position. She looked up into Mitty's bloodied nose, reached up and twisted on it to check the bone. Mitty screamed, but she seemed satisfied. “You'll live,” she said, giving Mitty a pat on his large stomach, directly at her eye level.

  “I-I-” I stammered again. I was slowly becoming aware of more people dropping down onto the tracks in the dark. Lots of people, shadowy figures with weapons coming closer.

  “This is my daughter, Rachael,” she indicated the young girl with the revolver in Fluky's ear. “And that's husband number three, Al,” she pointed at the large man standing menacingly with the club.

  “Number three?!” I exclaimed.

  “Six,” Majorette snapped off, unprompted.

  “Six?”

  “Husbands,” she reaching down and picked up one of the empty bottles of wine. She sniffed it and looked at the label. “Total. Before you feel obliged to ask. Though two are dead now.” She held up the wine bottle for me to see. “You boys stop in Marmont?”

  “Yes.” There were a dozen more standing amongst the wreckage of The Cordwainer now. Rough, scruffy-looking people, in many layers of clothes, rummaging through the wreckage like heavily armed hobos.

  “You meet Mitchell?”

  “Yes,” I replied in surprise.

  “He feed you?” she asked, with an edge in her voice.

  “Yes...”

  “Yes, he fed me too when I was there,” Majorette nodded, dropping the bottle.

  “Six?” I repeated. “You?”

  “Me,” Majorette replied, offended. “The cripple.”

  “No, no!” I tried to backpedal.

  “We make do,” she continued. “Not a lot of women, here about, you see?” She gestured at the other Polypigs, digging in the rubble. They were predominantly male.

  “No.”

  “You have to learn to adapt, living the way we do,” Majorette was looking around at the destruction littered across the tracks. “Now,” she began, slinging her carbine over her shoulder. Rachael took this as a cue and lowered the gun from Fluky's head. “What are we going to do about this?”

  “Do?” I parroted.

  “Yes, to get you boys back on the tracks.”

  “What?”

  “Get you boys rolling again. These boots are destined for the Big City, are they not?”

  “Well, yes, but...” I looked off into the darkness, at the million tons of dirt and rock I knew were blocking the tracks.

  “Well, don't let this little bump in the road stop you. You know what they say about spilled milk.”

  “You want to help us?” Fluky said, hand to his ear, a phantom gun still tickling it.

  “Of course.”

  “Well, folks in these hills are sure friendly,” Fluky quipped.

  “We were expecting you,” Rachael said, holstering her pistol. “We've been waiting. Thought they'd got you further down in the valley, but then we heard the machine gun, knew you were on your way. Didn't expect you to stop in Marmont for tea.”

  “But-” I started and stopped, then started again. “We're not running guns.”

  “No. Boots. I can see,” Majorette kicked a loose boot and sent it skipping down the tracks.

  “You want our boots?” I asked.

  “No!” she said, then paused, adding, “Well, perhaps some.”

  “Then I don't understand. Why were you waiting for us?”

  “We heard about you on the radio,” Rachael replied.

  “But we're not running guns,” I almost pleaded.

  “No,” Majorette smiled. “Something much better.”

  The Polypigs were already at work all around me. What I had at first taken to be opportunistic salvaging amongst the wreckage quickly turned out to be a concerted effort to clean up the debris of The Cordwainer. I looked around to see that boots were already being collected in a single location and a team of Polypigs seemed to be assessing the damage to the upturned train cars themselves. I watched on in confusion, still unclear to their motivations. Majorette excused herself for a moment to give orders to a few scrubby-looking young men, while Rachael herded Mitty, Fluky and myself to a spot by the tracks safely out from under foot.

  Pack animals emerged from the blackness, led by children of various ages. From the mules, ropes and pulleys started to be unloaded. Despite appearances, the Polypigs worked with an organized efficiency. They were prepared, ready for our arrival. Ready to tackle exactly the sort of mess we had suddenly found ourselves thrust into.

  As Majorette returned to speak with us, one of the hopper cars was already righted onto its wheels.

  “You knew we were coming?” I asked, after Majorette had barked an order to a teenage Polypig, leading a pack of mules.

  “Yes, we already said-”

  “And you knew they'd bomb the pass?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Oh, hell no!” Majorette laughed. “Not in my wildest imagination... but we knew, if they couldn't stop you further down the mountain, they'd stop you here. And for good. I was expecting troops, tanks, a gun fight... but that plane... You three have made someone, somewhere, very angry – very angry indeed.”

  “But your men, the mules...”

  “We came prepared to detour you. There's a trail. Wide, but not excessive. The state thugs won't be watching it. We hatched this little plan when we heard the warning go up over the radio. We were west, raiding the border towns when we heard it. It took us two days to rustle up the livestock and the equipment. But we didn't have to steal it. When word got around on the west side of the mountains – when word got around about what you were really up to. As Rachael said, your reputation precedes you. There's very little that could make Polypigs and Monogamists stop shooting at each other long enough to cooperate, but word of your impending arrival was enough to get that done. Folks in the towns west of the mountains actually gave these mules and these ropes to us. Can you believe that? So we could wait for you here, and detour you around the pass. That's the kind of fire you lit under folk on the other side of these mountains.”

  “All this? To help us?” Mitty asked, as another hopper car was righted.

  “All this to buy a pair of boots!” Majorette chuckled and slapped Mitty again in the gut. “But, of course, we were expecting real locomotives. We were expecting to have to haul your whole cargo all the way down off the mountain, but these tinker toys... what is that thing? A windup toy?” Majorette pointed at The Cordwainer's engine.

  “It runs on hydrogen peroxide,” I replied in shocked awe. “No carbon emissions...”

  “Well aren't you three just the sweetest little things?” Majorette said with sarcasm. “Saving the planet, too...” She stepped away to bark some orders at the group that was hooking the mules up to the engine, trying to right it. A team of eight mules had already been hooked up to a hopper car – its load of boots having been unloaded and loaded into sacks slung across the backs of a fleet of mules – and it was moving back along the tracks, away from the pass. The other two cars and the caboose were also being unloaded and hitched. The sheer number of hands working away at The Cordwainer... It was like a small swarm of dirty, ragged young children had descended out of the hills to pull the train back up onto its wheels and haul it off.

  Fluky, Mitty and I could do n
othing but watch.

  The engine of The Cordwainer turned out to be too heavy to lift off its side by the mules and horses the Polypigs had available. As the night rolled on, and more of The Cordwainer was moved back down the tracks, talk turned to removing the fuel tank from the engine so the chassis could be righted. When Fluky and I overhead this, we had to intervene. Despite the ruthless efficacy with which the Polypigs had gone to work, they obviously had no real concept of what they were attempting to take apart and put back together. We were quick to dissuade Majorette from disassembling the HTP fuel tank, considering the chance of an explosion. Fluky quickly showed how the turbine and generator might be unbolted safely from the chassis. This, the Polypigs did, after Fluky had correctly corked the input fuel line. Then the turbine and generator were soon hauled off, slung between the backs of four of the strongest of the pack animals.

  The Cordwainer's engine, with fuel tank still attached, was then righted – the tank by that point in the journey already almost two-thirds empty.

  With the last of The Cordwainer resurrected from where it had crashed, Majorette and Rachael led the three of us up off the tracks and up into the tree line, climbing steeply away from the blocked pass. Two hundred yards into the trees we met up with the sections of the train being hauled up a narrow dirt path by straining, unhappy mules.

  “There is no way we can ever thank you for this,” I said as we joined the wagon train climbing the mountainside along the thin trail.

  “Get your train to the Big City, with all your cargo, and it will be thanks enough,” Majorette replied.

  “I don't see-” I huffed. It was a steep climb. “I don't see how that helps you.”

  “You might say we're in the same line of business. Me and you.”

  “Boots?” Mitty asked.

  “Chaos.”

  “We're not-” I began and stopped myself. After everything the last few days, I thought better of trying to contradict anyone.

  “If you succeed in this quest of yours,” Rachael spoke up. She was walking behind us all. “If you actually deliver your product to market, it will be quite the finger in the eye to the Concession. That three yokels with no resources can do what the Concession can't...”

  “You're fightin' the Concession?” Fluky asked. “I thought you were fightin' the government?”

  “They're one in the same,” Rachael replied. “The line where one stops and the other begins is nonexistent. Kick one and the other rubs its ass in pain.”

  “We're not like you,” I said.

  “No,” Rachael agreed.

  “We're not rebels.”

  “No.”

  “I voted last November,” I said, as if that explained it all.

  “Well, good for you...” Rachael chuckled in the dark behind me. I turned to look at her, incredulous, but Majorette threaded one of her twisted hands under my arm and led me on.

  “Don't mind her,” Majorette began, leaning in to whisper comfortingly. She patted my arm. “You make her nervous.”

  “She makes me nervous,” Fluky said, look back over his shoulder.

  “We don't get many chances to interact with what you'd call 'normal' folk. We're very insular up here, you understand.”

  “We weren't trying to start any trouble,” I said. The climb was starting to flatten out. A hopper car up ahead was jammed on some rocks. Voices were yelling in the dark and mules were whinnying as they strained against their harnesses. “We're very grateful for your help, but we can't claim to be sympathetic to your cause.”

  “But your actions say otherwise,” Rachael answered. We paused as the Polypigs scrambled around the hopper car, putting beams under the stuck tire and prying it over the rock. Then suddenly – explosively – everything was moving again.

  “All we wanted to do was sell some boots in the Big City. If anything, if we have any gripes at all, it's against the Concession.”

  “You really still see a distinction between the Concession and the State, don't you?”

  “Shouldn't I?”

  Majorette still had a hold of my arm and pulled me closer to speak up into my ear, “Who do you think we're rebelling against, dear?”

  “Well... the government,” I replied.

  “No,” she shook her head like a disappointed teacher. “Government we like – governments we elect. Rebels rebel against the State.”

  “What, like Utah?” Fluky asked, breathing heavy from the climb.

  “No. The State, dear. Big 'S'. That which rules, but is not answerable to the people. The top down system of control that extends from, but does not include, the Executive Branch at the point, to your local mail carrier at the base. The State, dears. The monstrosity that we fool ourselves we control, but in reality controls us. That is who we're fighting against.”

  “And that's not the government?”

  “No,” Majorette said firmly. “That the distinction between the two has been lost is the great tragedy of progressivism. To legitimize the vast expansion of the state, to authorize the million tiny tweaks and controls placed on civil society, the State has consumed the legitimacy of democratic government. You voted for it, and therefore you have given your approval to be governed by the State, they argue. But no one votes to elect the State. It is eternal, outliving governments and administrations. We vote, in a democracy, for a government, which we assume oversees the State. But the days when elected officials had the power to control the agents of the State has long since passed by. The tail now wags the dog. The State controls the government and persists it. It's the enemy.”

  We had reached the summit of the narrow trail. The Polypigs were stopping here, in the dark, to rest the animals. There wasn't a man nor beast within ear shot that wasn't huffing with exhaustion. It was a clear night and the stars were twinkling in the sky above us. Our breath was misting in the air in front of our faces. Majorette found a grassy spot by the edge of the trail and dropped her bent body down onto it. I didn't need to wait for an invitation to rest. I sat down next to her as Fluky and Mitty collapsed next to us on the grass. Only Rachael remained standing, seemingly untaxed. She was watching the trail in both directions furtively, as if expecting company.

  “And the Concession is part of this State?” I blew out a cloud of steam. “I though it was a private company. Amalgamated Holdings...”

  “Oh, it's a for-profit company all right. With a board of directors and shareholders and a balance sheet – no State agency. But the Concession and its ilk are, nevertheless, fully vested appendages of the Beast. The State, you see, is a parasitic entity, dependent on the rest of civil society for succor. It can produce nothing, you understand, but consumes a great deal. It is wholly dependent on other entities for its survival, but it hamstrings the entities at every turn with the costs and trouble of carrying the State on their backs. For these companies to ever hope to thrive under this almost unbearable weight, they're forced to demand protections. They argue that they can't carry the State and the burden of a competitive marketplace. And rightly so.

  “The State, more than happy to preserve that status quo, provides these protections. And this is the birth of the Concession and its ilk. Not entirely part of the ever-expanding State – enough to still remain productive – but wholly dependent on the protections of the State for its survival. The two live in symbiosis – the State and its Corporatist extremities.”

  “And that's how the Concession can call out the Army Air Corp, to swat a fly with a three-hundred-pound bomb,” Rachael added.

  “Yes,” Majorette went on. “The State might be completely incapable of the production of any useful goods or service, but it has one dimension that no other social entity can deliver: A monopoly on violence. In fact, it is often argued that the State is defined as nothing more than that. The only institution in civilized society with the power to righteously act with violence, through its military and its police. Much of civil society's purpose is to maintain this monopoly. Laws are created, police patrol, cou
rts are brought to order, all with the purpose of severely punishing those who'd challenge the State in this arena.”

  “Like you Polypigs.”

  “Like the Polypigs,” Majorette agreed.

  The moon was high in the sky and the last sections of The Cordwainer were making their way over the summit. The turbine and generator, slung between their mules, came by our small, grassy spot and started on down again without resting. The Cordwainer's engine with its tank of HTP came up behind, a dozen mules hee-hawing as their drivers whipped them on. For a moment, I feared that it wouldn't make the last push over the summit; but one last great exertion of will, and the whole engine car was over the hump and moving down the west side of the mountain. Polypigs leapt and stumbled forward to slow its descent – the great weight they had lifted up the hill, now becoming a great weight they had to lower down.

  “I still don't see how a train full of boots is at all helpful to you,” I asked, watching The Cordwainer's engine descend into the darkness.

  “It's all a question of sovereignty.” Majorette climbed to her feet, helping me to mine. The hopper cars were starting again down the hill, along the narrow trail. They'd been waiting for the engine to pass, I realized. Its weight they understandably didn't want coming down the trail behind them.

  “Sovereignty?” Of everything I was expecting her to say, that perhaps was the last thing.

  “Yes, who has it. Genuinely. Naturally. Self evidently, perhaps. Tell me, by what power does a king rule?”

  “By the grace of God,” Mitty answered.

  “And our Government?”

  “By the consent of the people,” Mitty said again.

  “And is one source of authority more valid that the other?”

  “Of course, the consent of the people-”

  “-Is merely a woolly abstraction, like power being a gift from God. Can you rightly say that 'the people' consent to anything? Is it not correct to say that each individual, within 'the people', consents individually to the legitimacy of a democratic government? That each man and woman, in their own heart, decided – perhaps not consciously – to accept the authority of an elected government? To not resist, to not rebel, to go along as ordered by the powers-that-be?”

  “I guess...” I shrugged, watching my feet in the dark. The trail was now falling away as fast as it had risen east of the mountains. It was tricky going in the moonlight, finding a footing. If the cars of The Cordwainer had not proceeded us and dug deep ruts, it might have been a hard descent.

  “And is this not really the source of a government's authority? The individual? Isn't this the reason for our Bill of Rights? The realization that power stems not from the people, but the individual, and this individual has powers and rights above and beyond those of the collective whole?

  “This is sovereignty. Authority, we can concede, but sovereignty is the source from which all authority originates, which cannot be relinquished or transfered. If sovereignty sits within the individual, not within God or 'the people' or any other abstract entity, then is not the individual the arbiter of society?”

  “The source of right and wrong,” I said, mostly to myself.

  “Exactly!” Majorette happily agreed. “But when God, or 'the people' or the State is risen up in importance above this sovereignty, then the individual must be suppressed, less it finds its feet and exercises its natural rights. To keep the individual down, the State monopolizes away whole swaths of society, which otherwise would be dominated by the will of the individual. Violence, predominantly. But here – in America in 1973 – commerce very much as well.

  “You might not think you're a revolutionary, dear, but your actions, as pure or as selfish as they might be, have butted up against and challenged one of the State's strongest monopolies. To challenge one monopoly is to challenge them all, and that is why the State has reacted to your enterprise with such surprising violence. You have performed an act of violence against it, and it is retaliating.

  “So, perhaps now you can understand why we say our causes are alike – why the State sees us as common enemies. Perhaps we attack the State with violence and you attack the State with boots, but neither assault can they tolerate and still hope to maintain their iron grip on society. By helping you across these mountains we help ourselves, open up a second front in our rebellion against the State. You might disapprove of being treated so, but you must come to understand that we are compatriots fighting in a common cause, albeit by different means.”