(Here Julian called his listeners into a closer circle, so that his impersonation of Deklan Comstock’s shrill voice and petulant manner would not be overheard by passing officers. Sam was not present, or else he would have put a stop to the proceedings. Sam had already warned Julian against displays of Atheism or Sedition; but Julian saw no reason why his induction into the military should interfere with those interesting hobbies.) Deklan had been competent enough as a figurehead General, but he proved to be a jealous and suspicious President. He was especially jealous of his younger brother Bryce, whom he saw as a potential rival, and it was partly to put Bryce in harm’s way that Deklan conjured up the Isthmian War. [See Mr. Easton’s Against the Brazilians.]
An American warship, the Maude, had exploded while passing out of the Panama Canal―probably due to a faulty boiler; but Deklan Comstock declared it an act of sabotage and blamed the canal’s Brazilian custodians. He wanted the Canal in American hands; and after a keenly-managed campaign the Army of the Californias―under the command of Bryce Comstock―gave it to him.
Panama should have been a fine gem in Deklan’s diadem. But the younger Bryce had frustrated his brother’s dark hopes simply by surviving, and aroused further jealousy by the much-discussed brilliance of his military career.
The Western armies could not march all the way to New York for their celebrations. Bryce was called back to that city alone, ostensibly to have the Order of Merit bestowed upon him. But no sooner had Bryce Comstock left the train than he was surrounded by Eastern soldiers and taken up on charges of treason.
(I will not weary the reader with a description of that “trumped-up” charge, as Julian called it, or the fratricidal logic that transformed a victorious officer into an enemy of the Nation. Suffice to say that the trophy to be placed around the neck of Bryce Comstock went from Gold to Hemp, and that his true reward was a place at the throne of a Ruler more majestic than the reigning Commander in Chief.) And so matters had stood, Julian told his eager listeners, for the last decade―a stalemate in Labrador, a victory on the Isthmus of Panama, and Deklan Comstock growing ever more brooding and self-absorbed in the marbled corridors of the Presidential Palace. At least until last year. America’s acquisition of the Canal had alarmed the Mitteleuropan powers, who were forced to depend ever more heavily on the Northwest Passage for their trade into the Pacific, and they feared American dominance there. So they had fortified their remaining American possessions, enhanced their military and naval forces, and soon enough launched a massive counterattack against the Army of the Laurentians.
“This is the war we are to fight?” asked Lymon Pugh, whose attention had been strained by Julian’s narrative.
“That’s exactly the war we are to fight, and it isn’t going well for us. The Dutch are arrayed in force, we’ve already lost the railroad to Schefferville, and both Quebec City and Montreal are threatened by the enemy. The Army of the Laurentians took heavy casualties last summer, which is why the draft was doubled up.”
“Sounds like we have the short end of the stick, then,” another soldier remarked.
“Perhaps not,” said Julian, for he was not a defeatist, or a friend of the Dutch. “The enemy are well-provisioned, but their supply lines stretch all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, and our Navy is making things hot for Dutch shipping. Their army is of a fixed number, while ours is growing. And,” Julian added, grinning broadly, “we’re Americans, and they are not, which makes all the difference.”
There followed a cheer for the Union, and much chest-thumping, and the crowd of draftees went off bragging about how they would rout the enemy, and show the Dutch what American soldiers were truly made of. It was Lymon Pugh, lingering behind, who asked, “How do you know all these things, Julian Commongold? Are you some kind of scholar? You talk like one.”
Julian deflected the question with a shrug. “I’m from New York City―I read the newspapers.”
This put Lymon Pugh’s mind back on the subject of reading, and literacy in general, and he grew thoughtful as we broke for mess.
Of course Julian’s tutorials on the state of the war did not escape the attention of the camp’s ranking officers for long. Word spread, and (according to Sam, who kept his ear to the ground) the Dominion men on the staff were unhappy with Julian for his editorializing, and wanted him to receive a reprimand. But the camp’s military commander vetoed that idea, for Julian was a promising soldier, and his blunt talk had braced the men more effectively than a dozen fire-breathing Sunday sermons.
Sam was not bound by such scruples, and chastised Julian roundly for his loose talk―reminding him that in the long run notoriety might be as dangerous as combat―but Julian paid little attention.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” Sam said to me after one of these confrontations. “It’s the Comstock in him.”
“He’ll make a fine soldier, then,” I said.
“Or a famous corpse,” said Sam.
* * *
We were scheduled to be shipped east for the spring campaign; but before then, on another Sunday afternoon, Lymon Pugh approached me once again on the subject of reading and writing.
“Thought perhaps I could learn all about it,” he said sheepishly. “Unless I left it too late. What about that, Adam Hazzard? Is it something only children can learn?”
“No,” I said, for I considered myself, in this community, a sort of Evangelist of Literacy. My writing skills had been mooted about, and many of the men came to me to help them read or compose letters. “Anyone can learn it at any time. It’s not especially difficult.”
“Could I learn, then?”
“I expect you could.”
“And will you teach me?”
I was feeling magnanimous―the day was bright, the air had a delicate warmth, and a general languor had descended over the camp (along with the swampy smell of the thawing prairie and an unfortunate breeze from the latrines). I reclined on my cot with my boots off and my toes exposed to the air. Lymon Pugh sat on the cot adjoining, where he greased his rifle in a distracted way, his scarred hands moving almost of their own volition. A charitable act did not seem out of order. “But I can’t do it in one lesson, mind. We’ll have to begin from first principles.”
“I expect we’ll have plenty of time, if neither of us is killed in the war. You can give it to me piecemeal, Adam.”
“In that case we’ll begin with the letters of the Alphabet. The Alphabet is a collection of all the letters there are, and once you learn them no unexpected letters will come along to confuse you.”
“How many of these letters are there?”
“Twenty-six altogether.”
He looked crestfallen. “That’s a large number.”
“It only seems so. Here, I’ll write them out for you, and you can keep this paper and study it.” I took a page from my notebook and copied down all the letters in their large and small incarnations, thus: Aa―Bb―Cc―(etc.) “Seems like you’re wrong on the count,” Lymon Pugh observed when I had finished. “That’s at least fifty, I estimate.”
“No, only twenty-six, but each one comes in a greater or lesser variety, the larger being called a capital letter.”
He studied the page uncomprehendingly. “Maybe we should call this off… it don’t seem like anything I could ever commit to memory.”
“You underestimate yourself. Suppose, while you were wandering east from the Willamette Valley, you came upon a village with just twenty-six people in it, and decided to stay there. You’d learn the names of the whole tribe soon enough, wouldn’t you? And many other things about them.”