I said this loudly enough to be heard by the cynical Parmentierists, who responded by giving me a cheer, perhaps not altogether ironical in intent; and they started up an impudent chorus of Piston, Loom, and Anvil, as Calyxa shot them a vindictive look that said, in essence, I told you so!
Unfortunately I was also overheard by the slack-jawed guard, Packard, who looked alarmed, and pulled back his key from the key-hole. “What’s this about?” he asked, and he persisted in his questioning until Lymon Pugh was forced to silence the poor man.* Sam retrieved the keys from Packard’s limp hand and opened the door, and said to all those it contained, “You might as well take the opportunity, you boys—there are only two guards in the outer office, and if you handle them fast they won’t have time to raise an alarm.”
The Parmentierists seemed impressed by this act of generosity on the part of an American soldier, and I hoped it would make their political views more nuanced in the future. They crowded out quickly, eager to overwhelm the remaining guards, and Calyxa came into my arms.
“Well, will you?” I asked, once we had breath enough to speak.
“Will I what?”
“Marry me!”
“I suppose I will,” she said, sounding surprised at her own answer.
My joy was unconquerable, though it ebbed as we passed the cage where Job and Utty Blake were confined.
Utty sat at the back of the cell, scowling and muttering. But Job, whom I had shot, came up to the bars, and rattled them as savagely as a gorilla, and spat out curses in the French language.
“I don’t guess we’ll set these two free,” Sam said, the keys still jingling in his hand.
“No,” said Calyxa, “please don’t—they’re murderers, bush runners, and spies for the Dutch when the money is good—they’ve already been convicted and sentenced to hang.”
She explained that in the melee between the Blake Brothers and the Parmentierists several shots had been fired, but only Job and Utty had struck targets. Job had killed a young Parmentierist, and Utty had gunned down a luckless bystander. Some Colonel or Major of the local garrison had promptly appointed himself a court and sentenced the pair to public hanging … perhaps not a wholly legal procedure even under the rules of military occupation; but no one, apart from the Blake Brothers, had taken exception to it.
Job had heard all about Calyxa’s dalliance with a soldier, and he had deduced by the events of this evening that I was that person, the one who had come within an inch of blowing out his brains. He directed more curses and not a little saliva at me, before turning his vulture’s gaze on Calyxa.
“Tu nous sers à rien, mais pire … tu nous déshonores! Dommage que tu sois pas mort dans l’utérus de ta mère!”
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“He says he regrets that I was ever born.”
I looked Job Blake hard in the eye. “We all have regrets in this life,” I said, philosophically. “Tell him I regret I didn’t aim lower.”
* Lymon, though not experienced in reading, endorsed my opinion that Mr. Easton was probably the greatest of our living authors. He could not imagine a better one, at any rate. It was a miracle that anyone wrote books at all, Lymon said, much less good ones; and he was impressed by Mr. Easton’s formidable knowledge of foreign places, historic battles, pirates, and such interesting subjects.
* Lymon had amused himself during his hospital confinement by making himself a Knocker—a very fine one, consisting of a lead egg in a hempcloth sack, just as he had once described to me—and it was this device he employed to relieve the guard of his senses.
9
The wedding was arranged to take place on the Saturday after Easter, by which time Sam, Julian, and I would be civilians again; and after the ceremony we would all board the train for New York City, and begin our lives afresh.
I won’t strain the reader’s attention by narrating every detail of our mustering-out. Suffice to say that we rejoined our Regiment and concluded our business there. Sam performed one duty enabled by his new rank, which was to rebuke Private Langers, whom he suspected of having acted as a spy for Major Lampret. Langers had survived the Saguenay Campaign, and was running his “Lucky Mug” business whenever a skirmish with the Dutch provided fresh corpses to loot. Sam waited until a crowd had gathered around Langers’s tent. Then he demanded to see the entire contents of the Lucky Mug, which he proceeded to inventory, demonstrating to the assembled soldiers that the numbers on the slips corresponded to the worthless trinkets, but never to the valuable goods. This revelation so incensed the Private’s customers than no further discipline on Sam’s part was necessary. I learned later that Langers survived his chastisement.
We signed ourselves out of the Army of the Laurentians and were given documents testifying to our discharge, along with something called a “recall number” which would summon us back to active duty in case of an emergency—but we gave that prospect scant thought. Sam, Julian, and I said goodbye to Lymon Pugh, who had re-enlisted, and vows of friendship were exchanged, and Lymon promised to write occasionally, now that he was able to do so. Then we rode a wagon to the City of Montreal, where Calyxa was waiting for me.
A few days remained before the wedding. Sam used the time to say goodbye to friends he had made among the Jews of Montreal, though they were not satisfied with his degree of orthodoxy. Sam was firmly a Jew, in his own estimate, and had been born such, but he never adopted the refined and intricate doctrines and habits that characterize that faith, such as not working on Saturday (a day the Jews had apparently mistaken for the Sabbath), or attending “shool” on a regular basis, or following every commandment of the Torah (which was some sort of cylindrical Bible, as Sam described it). “I was taken from those things too early,” he lamented to me, “and they don’t come naturally at my age. I never underwent a Bar-Mitz-Va. I don’t read or speak Hebrew. I’m lucky to have had a bris, come to that.”*
“Don’t the Jews of Montreal understand your limitations?”
“They do, but they’re impatient with my apostasy. Properly so, it may be.” He shook his head. “I’m not one thing or the other, Adam. There’s no suitable faith for people like me.”
I told him not to feel sad, and that he was not the only person daunted by the complexities of religion, even under the generous rule of the Dominion of Jesus Christ. For instance, there was no congregation of the Church of Signs in Montreal, which meant I couldn’t marry Calyxa in the faith of my father (had I wanted to—I confess I did not). We had settled on an interdenominational Dominion marriage, to be performed by the local Dominion man who licensed dioceses and collected tithes on behalf of Colorado Springs. We would at least be married in a church, albeit a nominally Catholic one. The church charged fees for its use by those who confess to other faiths, and the going rate was steep, and it used up much of the money I had saved toward the purchase of a typewriter; but Calyxa was worth it, I thought.
Julian had also made friends in Montreal, and he used the time before the wedding to take his leave of them. These were the Philosophers and Aesthetes who gathered at the coffee-shop called Dorothy’s. Julian had not introduced me to any of them, and they seemed exactly as loose-limbed and pallid as Lymon Pugh had described them, when I saw them from a distance; but I was no judge of Philosophers. At least they did not parade around with unpatriotic signs, or get themselves locked up in military prison.*
As for me, I spent my time with Calyxa. Part of this devotion was practical, since there were arrangements to be made and invitations to be delivered. But it was an indulgence, too; for we were at that stage of betrothal in which we craved each other’s company in all ways and at all hours. If we “anticipated our vows,” perhaps the reader can forgive us for our eagerness; and I’ll say no more on the subject, except to repeat that it was a very happy time for me.