A History of the Future (29 page)

I couldn’t stand upright on the hull, it was too unsteady, but I got up on my knees and waved my arms and screamed and hollered and the boat seemed to get bigger and come closer. As it did, I could see it was a large boat with more than one sail. It turned out to be, in fact, the most magnificent sailing boat I ever saw, what they call a topsail schooner. She was well over a hundred feet with the hull painted forest green to just above the waterline and red from there below. She had both a cabin and a pilothouse, three masts, mostly gaff-rigged sails, and three square topsails on the forward mast. I kept waving and hollering, even as she closed on me, and I could hear men hollering on deck. They reefed the three mainsails and turned into the wind maybe a hundred yards from me. I untied the rope from my ankle that had kept me tethered to the
Kerry McKinney
in the storm. I said a quiet good-bye to the boat that now seemed so tiny compared to the behemoth before me and dove into the lake and swam to the ship. The name on her bow was
The Great Northern
. Crewmen threw lifelines with buoys toward me, but I didn’t even see them until I reached the hull, where they dropped a boarding stairway down along the side. The water was so cold that my head throbbed as I struggled up the stairs. Crewmen in blue uniforms met me on deck, wrapped me in a wool blanket, and trundled me down a companionway to a stateroom.

They gave me towels and blue coveralls and fresh underwear and left me alone. I dried off and got dressed in their clothes. There was a built-in bunk in the corner and I was just about to go collapse on it when someone knocked on the door. Before I could answer, a crewman in a white tunic came in with a tray that he puts down on the table. He takes these silver half-globe covers off the plates, like I imagine the royalty of old used to be served. The crewman leaves. I shuffle over and sit down. The shivering is coming only in spurts now. There’s a plate with three over-easy eggs, bacon, ham, some really fancy wheat rolls, butter, cherry jam, a bowl of oatmeal, a little pitcher of cream, a little sugar bowl, a big glass of milk. I dig in. I wolf down the oatmeal in about eleven seconds. It’s warm and delicious, and when it’s gone I swish the rest of the cream from the pitcher in the bowl and dump more sugar in it. I demolish the eggs and meat after that, and then I crawl off into the bed. I haven’t slept under sheets in almost two months. The luxury is beyond belief.

The next thing I know someone is knocking on the door again. I say, “Come in,” and it’s the crewman, the same steward. He says to come with him. I’m confused, like who are these people? Have they been looking for me and Evan for what happened back in New York State? I get out of bed and peek out the porthole. The sun is low on the horizon, about the same as when they pulled me out of the water, but I don’t know what direction it is—east, west?

“What time of day is it?” I ask.

“Evening. You’re called to dinner.”

“Did you find my friend out there?”

“Your friend?”

“There were two of us on that boat,” I say. “He got washed overboard in the storm.”

“You’re the only one we pulled out of the water,” he says.

“He could still be out there somewhere. Can they look for him?”

“We’ve been under sail all day long. We’re far away from where we came across you in the morning. Twenty leagues or more.”

My heart fell into my stomach. I just stood there staring into the floor.

“Come with me. I’ll show you to dinner,” he says.

I’m so stupefied I just do what he tells me to do. He leads me down a long passageway to another part of the ship, to a dining room, or cabin I guess you’d say, very fancy, with dark wood wainscoting and nautical paintings, luxurious furniture for a boat. The table is a lot bigger than the one in the room I slept in. It’s set for two. There are chunky candles in little glass vessels and some oil lamps in gimbals on the wall, a sideboard with squashed-down nautical decanters on it so they won’t topple over in rough water. The steward pulls out a chair for me. Before I can ask him who else is coming, he leaves the cabin. I sit down. I’m there alone for quite a while. There’s a tablecloth, ironed napkins, a bread basket and butter. I start eating these wonderful chewy rolls and I can’t stop. Plus, I’m nervous wondering who I’m waiting for. I end up eating all of them. Finally, there’s a knock and without me saying come in a woman enters.

That was the first time I laid eyes on Ms. Valerie Estridge of the U.S. government, or what was left of it. She was tall and slim, around forty years old, I thought—at least that was my first impression. Her face had a sculptural quality, clear planes and angles, that was austere at first. Her hair was a silvery-gold helmet with bangs that framed her face as if it were a portrait of a face. She wore a plain tan skirt, a white blouse with a frilly front that buttoned to the throat, and a dark blue jacket, all factory-made stuff, like what a person might wear to work in a company office of the old times. She stood at the door examining me, I thought, with a kind of mysterious smile that you were never sure signified actual amusement or just her mouth in its natural relaxed state. It was what she showed people in the political world that was her realm of action, like the grin of a shark who prowls the coral reefs among fishes of all sizes and colors.

I’m like, “Sorry, I ate all the rolls.”

She closes the door behind her. I can hear the latch click, like I’m stuck in a trap with her.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get more,” she says, and steps up to her seat at the table.

I notice she’s wearing some flowery scent. It wafts my way.

“Whose boat are we on?” I ask.

“I like to think of it as mine,” she says, “but it’s the U.S. Navy’s.”

I’m like, “There’s still a navy?”

She just smiles. The steward comes in with a cart. More goodies. Ms. Estridge sits down. The steward uncovers our plates. There’s a hunk of fish, creamed potatoes, and fresh asparagus on the plate, quite big portions.

“Do you like fish?”

“Pretty well.”

“We get a lot of it right from the lake,” she says. “They’re coming back nicely.”

“That’s a plus,” I say.

“Would you bring us some more rolls, Terry?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the steward says and leaves us alone.

“Dig in, Daniel,” she says.

I’m bamboozled. Since I came aboard, nobody has asked my name. I watch her pour herself some red stuff from a pitcher.

“Want some?” she asks.

“What is it?”

“Michigan red,” she says. “It’s not bad.”

I’m like, “You know my name.”

She pours me some of the wine, though I didn’t ask for any.

“I do,” she says. “We stopped in Buffalo to provision.”

I’m like, “This is making me kind of nervous, ma’am.”

“Don’t be,” she goes. But I’m still on edge. I can picture Mr. Farnum lying on the floor of his office in Lockport with blood all over the place. I watch her eat for a while. She has a good appetite. She eats deliberately and gracefully, like somebody brought up well. She’s an imposing presence, actually quite pretty for a forty-year-old.

“What did you find out in Buffalo?” I ask.

“Your name,” she says. “And that you shot a man on the Erie Canal.”

“And you’re serving me a fine dinner and all? How come I’m not in the whaddayacallit.”

“The brig.”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t have one on board. We’d have to lock you in a storeroom. I don’t think we’ll do that. The truth is, you saved us a lot of trouble.”

I try to absorb that.

“If I may explain, ma’am, we were about to be sold into slavery by an unscrupulous boatman. What they called an indenture, for twenty-five dollars each.”

“Exactly,” she says. “Go ahead, eat.”

I’m quite hungry, actually, so I do. It’s walleye, with a perfect crispy crust on it in a puddle of butter sauce. Delicious.

“I assume your companion was on that little boat with you.”

“You know about him too?”

“Of course.”

“He got washed overboard. I couldn’t save him.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“What else do you know about us?”

“That you left Buffalo together on that scow just ahead of the regulators.”

“I knew they were coming after us.”

“Yes, they were.”

We ate silently for a while. The tension was driving me crazy.

“Well, am I under arrest or what?”

She put down her knife and fork. “We’re against these practices,” she says, “selling people into indentures. It’s barbaric and un-American. Criminal, really. We intend to stop it. But we have limited enforcement capabilities these days. You were within your rights to resist.”

“Does that mean I’m free to get off this boat when it lands somewhere?” I ask.

“Where would you go?” she asks.

“Where are you landing next?”

She just grins her shark grin.

“Are you toying with me, ma’am?” I say.

“No,” she says. “You’re a kind of gift from the sea, so to speak. I think you might be useful to us, Daniel.”

“In what way?”

“In the Service,” she says.

“What service is that?”

“You’ll see.”

I can tell she won’t elaborate.

“Who are you exactly?” I finally ask straight up. “And where are we going?”

She tells me she works for the government, but she’s not a military officer. She’s returning from an inspection of the Great Lakes ports to the new capital that the government is setting up in a place called Huron City, Michigan. They’re going to change the name to New Columbia. They have moved their people, she says, from St. Paul, Minnesota, which was unsuitable. The future of the nation lies with the Great Lakes, she says, America’s freshwater Mediterranean Sea at the center of the continent. I’m burning to know more about what is going on, but she grills me about our part of the country. She says the government has a very “poor presence” back east.

“It has no presence, ma’am,” I tell her. “Same for the state and county governments. We’re totally on our own.”

She asks about the town, about my family. I tell her how Mom and Genna met with the epidemics, and how you used to work for the computer industry and switched to being a carpenter, and all, and how things are kind of slowly grinding downhill for us back home.

“But it’s a very beautiful corner of the country, Washington County, New York,” I tell her, “and from what I’ve seen traveling west it’s not much worse off than any place we passed along the way.”

“Why did you leave home?”she asks.

“To see the country for myself,” I tell her. “I’m of the age where I remember quite a bit about the old times when I was a young child, but most of what I’ve lived is the new times. I know what we lost. I wanted to see what happened to it all.”

“Fair enough,” she says.