I couldn’t remember the last line.
“Shot,” Pondible ordered the bartender, “and buttermilk for my chum.”
The bartender kept on polishing the wood in front of him with a wet, dirty rag. “Got any jack?”
“Pay you tomorrow, friend.”
The bartender’s uninterrupted industry said clearly, then drink tomorrow.
“Listen,” argued Pondible, “I’m tapering off. You know me. I’ve spent plenty of money here.”
The bartender shrugged. “Why don’t you indent?”
Pondible looked shocked. “At my age? What would a company pay for a wornout old carcass? A hundred dollars maybe. Then a release in a couple of years with a med holdback so I’d have to report every week somewhere. No friend, I’ve come though this long a free man (in a manner of speaking) and I’ll stick it out. Let’s have that shot; you can see for yourself I’m tapering off. You’ll get your jack tomorrow.”
I could see the bartender was weakening; each refusal was less surly and at last, to my astonishment, he set out a glass and bottle for Pondible and an earthenware mug of buttermilk for me. To my astonishment, I say, for credit was rarely extended on either large or small scale. The Inflation, though 60 years in the past, had left indelible impressions; people paid cash or did without. Debt was disgraceful; the notion things could be paid for while, or even after, they were being used was as unthinkable as was the idea of circulation of paper money instead of silver or gold.
I drank my buttermilk slowly, gratefully aware Pondible had ordered the most filling and sustaining liquid in the saloon. For all his unprepossessing appearance and peculiar moral notions, it was evident my new acquaintance had a rude wisdom as well as a rude kindliness.
He swallowed his whiskey in an instant and called upon the bartender for a quart pot of small beer which he now sipped, turning to me and drawing out, not unskillfully, the story not only of my life, but of my hopes, and the despondency I now knew at their shattering.
“Well,” he said at last, “you can always take the advice our friend here offered me and indent. A young healthy lad like you could get yourself $1,000 or $1,200—”
“Yes. And be a slave the rest of my life.”
Pondible wiped specks of froth from his beard with the back of his hand. “Oh, indenting ain’t slavery—it’s better. And worse. For one thing the company that buys you won’t hold you after you aren’t worth your keep. They cancel your indenture without a cent in payment. Of course they’ll take a med holdback so as to get a dollar or two for your corpse, but that’s a long time away for you.”
“Yes. A long time away. So I wouldn’t be a slave for life; just 30 or 40 years. Till I wasn’t any good to anyone, including myself.”
He seemed to be enjoying himself as he drank his beer. “You’re a gloomy gus, Hodge. Tain’t as bad as that. Indenting’s pretty strictly regulated. That’s the idea, anyway. You can’t be made to work over 60 hours a week—ten hours a day. With $1,000 or $1,200 you could get all the education you want in your spare time and then turn your learning to account by making enough money to buy yourself free.”
I tried to think about it dispassionately, though goodness knows I’d been over the ground often enough. It was true that the amount, a not inconceivable one for a boy willing to indenture himself, would see me comfortably through college. But Pondible’s notion that I could turn my “learning to account” I knew to be a fantasy despite its currency. Perhaps in the Confederate States or the German Union knowledge was rewarded with wealth, or at least a comfortable living, but any study I pursued—I knew my own “impracticality” well enough by now—was bound to yield few material benefits in the poor, exploited, backward United States, which existed as a nation at all only on the sufferance and unresolved rivalries of the great powers. I would be lucky to struggle through school and eke out some kind of living as a freeman; I could never hope to earn enough to buy back my indenture on what was left of my time after subtracting 60 hours a week.
Pondible listened as I explained all this, nodding and sipping alternately. “Well then,” he said, “there’s the gangs.”
I looked my horror.
He laughed. “Forget your country rearing. If you leave the parsons’ sermons out of it there’s no difference joining the gangs than joining the army—if we had one—or the Confederate Legion. Most of the gangsters never even get shot at. They all live high, high as anybody in the 26 states, and every once in a while there’s a dividend that’s more than a workingman earns in a lifetime.”
I began to be sure my benefactor was a gangster. And yet… if this were so why had he wheedled credit from the barkeep? Was it simply an elaborate blind to recruit me? It seemed hardly worth it. “A fat dividend maybe. Or a rope.”
“Most of the gangsters die of old age. Or competition. Ain’t one been hung I can think of in the last five years. But I can see you’ve no stomach for it. Tell me, Hodge—you a Whig or Populist?”
The sudden change of subject bewildered me. “Why… Populist, I guess. Anyway I don’t think much of the Whigs’ ‘Property, Protection, Permanent Population.’ The anxiety to build up a prosperous employing class artificially ever since the original industrialists were wiped out by the reparations and inflation is one of the things which has kept the country so poor. The rest is nonsense; they’ve never attempted to try protection when they were in power for the very good reason that the Confederacy and the German Union won’t allow any small nation to put up a tariff wall against their exports. As for ‘permanent population,’ it’s unaffected by elections. Those who can’t make a living will continue to emigrate to more prosperous countries where they can—”
My voice trailed off. Pondible cocked an eyebrow over his beer mug, put it down and chewed on a soggy corner of his mustache, still regarding me quizzically.
“I don’t feel like leaving the United States,” I muttered defensively.
“You heard of the Grand Army?” he asked with apparent irrelevance.
“Who hasn’t? Not much difference between them and the regular gangs.”
“I dunno, Hodge. Seems to me they got much the same ideas you have. They’re Populists. They don’t like the United States being a fifth-rate country; they’re against indenting; they think prosperity’s got to come from the poor upward, not from the rich downward. Maybe they get a little rough with Whigs or Confederate agents once in a while, but you can’t make bacon out of a live hog.”
Was it the thought of Grandfather Backmaker that made me ask, “And do they want to give Negroes equality?”
He drew back sharply. “Touch of the tarbrush in you, boy? No, I can see you ain’t. You just don’t understand. We might have won that war if it hadn’t been for the Abolitionists. They’re better off among their own. Better leave those ideas alone, Hodge; there’s enough to be done for our own. Chase the foreigners out; teach their agents a lesson; build up the country again.”
“Are you trying to recruit me for the Grand Army?”
Pondible finished his beer. “No. I want to get you somewheres to sleep, three meals a day, and that education you’re so anxious for. Come along.”