His shop was a cellar, rank with the smell of tannin and glue, but he had some very nice boots on display. “Can you fit my friend?” Calyxa asked.
“Anything for you,” Emil said slowly, “you know that, but surely—”
“He needs something supple and sturdy on his feet. He lost his boots doing me a favor.”
“Don’t his army masters give him boots? Tu es folle d’amener un soldat américain ici!”
“Il m’a sauvé la vie. On peut lui faire confiance. En plus, il n’est pas très intelligent. S’il te plaît, ne le tue pas — fais-le pour moi!”
This exchange, whatever it meant, mollified Emil a little, and he agreed to measure my feet, and when he had done that he searched among his stock of pre-made boots, and showed me a fine pair of deerskins, calf-high and golden-brown. I was sure I couldn’t afford them.
“This has to do with your savage brothers,” Emil said to Calyxa. “I heard about what happened at the tavern last night.”
Calyxa became more attentive. “What do you know about Job and Utty?”
“Job was badly creased by a bullet. He lost a lot of blood, but his skull wasn’t cracked, and the story I heard is that he’ll survive it. Utty threatened to shoot a few people just for show, but Job’s wound distracted him. They left the tavern for the charity clinic—I expect Job’s still there, unless he had the grace to die during the night. That’s all I know, except that the military police took notice, and they’re holding a warrant on both men.”
Calyxa smiled as if this were welcome news, and I suppose it was; but sooner or later, it seemed to me, the Blake brothers would be back, angrier than ever, and I was afraid for her.
The boots were expensive even at Emil’s grudging discount. I was reluctant to spend the money—I was saving for a typewriter—but I didn’t want to appear tight in front of Calyxa, and I did need boots; so I paid the proprietor his ransom.
And I was not sorry. Even to my injured feet the deerhide boots felt like an upholstered corner of Heaven. I had never owned boots that fit me so neatly. The men of my company would be envious, I thought, and they would mock my vanity, and call me dainty; but I decided I would endure all that without complaint, for the boots comforted my feet and reminded me of Calyxa.
She and I walked a little farther, but the day was passing quickly, and I couldn’t stay away from camp much longer. We parted at the great iron bridge. Calyxa asked whether I might be back next weekend, and I promised I would try to see her, if the military situation allowed, and that I would think of her constantly in the meantime.
“I hope you do come back.”
“I will,” I vowed.
“Don’t forget to bring your pistol,” she said; then she kissed me and kissed me again.
7
I kept my promise, and returned many times to the City of Montreal that summer, and became better acquainted with Calyxa and with the city in which she lived. I won’t weary the reader with a description of all our encounters (some were too intimate to record, in any case), but I will say that we were not further troubled by the Blake Brothers—not that season, anyhow.
Camp life was easy for a time. My feet healed quickly, thanks to light work and those supple deerhide boots. The Dutch sallies became less frequent, and the only fighting for a while (locally, I mean) was between our scouting parties and a few enemy pickets. Contradictory rumors continued to emerge from the Saguenay campaign, however: a great victory—a great defeat—many Mitteleuropans killed—scores of Americans sent to early graves—but none of that could be confirmed, due to the slow pace of communications and the unwillingness of high staff to share intelligence with soldiers of the line. But around Thanksgiving we had a substantial hint that things had not gone well. A new regiment of draftees and recruits—soft, naive lease-boys, as I now saw them, mostly drawn from the estates and freehold farms of Maine and Vermont—arrived in camp. They were quickly trained in the business of garrisoning Montreal City and maintaining its defenses, which freed up those of us with battle experience for that most dreaded of military maneuvers: a Winter Campaign.
“Galligasken would never have approved of this,” Sam said when our regimental orders were finally cut. “The orders must have come down from the Executive Palace itself. This smells of Deklan Comstock’s meddling and impatience. The news of some defeat nettled him, so he ordered all his forces into a strategically absurd retaliation—I’d bet money on it.”
But there was no arguing with orders. We packed our ditty-bags and slung our Pittsburgh rifles, a whole division of us, and we were carted to the docks and loaded into steam-driven boats for the journey down the St. Lawrence to the Saguenay. There wasn’t time to say goodbye to Calyxa, so I wrote a hasty letter, and posted it from the quayside, telling her I would be away at the front for an undisclosed time, and that I loved her and thought of her constantly, and that I hoped the Blake Brothers wouldn’t hunt her down and kill her while I was gone.
* * *
The boats on which we rode burned wood rather than coal, and their smudge hung over the river and followed us in the wind, a poignant, earthy smell.
I had never been out on a boat before. The River Pine back in Williams Ford was too swift and shallow for navigation. I had seen boats, of course, especially since our arrival in Montreal , and they had fascinated me with their elephantine grace and their negotiations with the unpredictable and oft-stormy St. Lawrence. Consequently I spent much time at the rail of this little vessel as it traveled, experiencing what Julian called the “Relativistic Illusion” that the boat itself was stationary, and that it was the land around it that had gone into motion, writhing to the west like a snake with a war in its tail.
We had been issued woolen coats to protect us from the weather, but the day was fine and sunny, though autumn had the countryside in its final grip. We approached and passed the great fortifications at Quebec City , and followed the North Channel beyond Ile d’Orleans, where the river grew much wider and began to carry the tang of salt. The foliage along the north bank was umber and scarlet where it had not already abandoned itself to the wind. Denuded branches cast skeletal silhouettes against a dusty blue sky, and crows swept the forest-top in wheeling masses. Autumn is the only season with a hook in the human heart, Julian had once said (or quoted). This fanciful figure of speech ran through my mind right then— the only season with a hook in the heart —and because it was autumn, and because the land was vast and empty, and the air was chill and smelled of woodsmoke, the poetic words seemed to make sense, and were apt.
About then Julian came to stand beside me at the rail, while the other soldiers milled about on deck or went below to try their luck at mess. “Last night I dreamed I was on a ship,” he said, the long light falling on his face as the wind tousled the hair that flowed out beneath his cap.
“A ship like this one?”
“A better one, Adam. A three-masted schooner, like the ones that sail up the Narrows to Manhattan. When I was a child my mother used to take me to the foot of Forty-second Street to see those ships. I liked the idea that the ships came from faraway places—the Mediterranean Republics , or Nippon, or Ecuador , as it might be—and I liked to pretend some spirit of those places still clung to them—I convinced myself I could smell it, a whiff of spice above the stink of creosote and rotting fish.”
“Those must be very fine ships,” I said.
“But in my dream the ship was leaving New York Harbor, not arriving. She had just caught the wind in her sails—‘took the bone in her teeth,’ as sailors say; and she was passing under the old Verrazano Bridge. I knew I was being carried away somewhere… not to a safe place, exactly, but to a different place than I was accustomed to, where I might change into someone else.” He smiled sheepishly, though there was a haunted look in his eye. “I don’t suppose that makes sense.”