The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 36: The History Professor

Dr. Parsons enjoyed a warm cognac in his hand and a cold breeze on his face. He had raised the lounge car window so he could smell the smoke and the steam. Dr. Parsons appreciated that the Marylander still ran on steam. Most of the railroads were converting to diesel-electric; the new futuristic streamliners were all the rage. Their improved fuel efficiency and reduced operating costs meant that steam was a dying technology. Soon it would be trampled under the march of progress.

Dr. Parsons was not a great admirer of the march of progress. He recognized and applauded those leaps of technology that had made a genuine impact on the human condition: fire, agriculture, the wheel, literature, gunpowder, the steam engine, electricity, penicillin...each of these had improved human society and reduced suffering to one degree or another.

But the incremental changes -- those improvements in technology that did little more than improve profit margins or convenience -- Dr. Parsons didn't much care for those. He was, after all, a former history professor, and so perhaps he could be forgiven for his nostalgic admiration of doomed technologies. "Stop living in the past," he often told people, enjoying the irony of the statement every time.

Or, perhaps, he simply preferred steam. Steam engines were smoky and smelly, but he'd grown up with the smell of coal smoke, and had acquired a taste for it. Steam was loud, but there was a rhythmic cadence to it that sounded, to Dr. Parson's ear, at least, more like music than the scream and whine of diesel-electric. Steam engines were heavier. But that weight absorbed the bumps in the track which translated to a smoother ride.

So whenever Dr. Parsons took the five hour rail trip from D.C. to New York, he made a conscious effort to enjoy what he believed was one of the last great steam trains. He watched through the window as the big engine, chuffing away, travelled a mile a minute and left the cars on the neighboring highway falling behind.

It helped that no one could disturb him on the train. There were no phones. The lounge car had a radio but it was respectfully turned off. Dr. Parsons felt momentarily suspended in time. He had plenty of work to do: intelligence briefs and dispatches to review, operations to authorize, proposals to revise. But they could wait. It was three days to Thanksgiving and he was on his way back to the city of his birth where he was anxious to see the only relative he truly loved: Elizabeth, his nine-year old niece.

She was performing in her first Thanksgiving school play and had spent the previous evening on the phone with him begging him to come see it. He couldn't disappoint her and so he took the time off. It was Thanksgiving, after all, and he felt that he deserved a break.

He wasn't the only one in America to feel that way.

The United States had been at war for almost a year. Patriotism and excitement gripped the nation, which had led to a historic boom in productivity. Americans no longer worked merely for a paycheck; now they worked to win the war. They worked to help protect those brothers and sons and husbands and nephews who had put on the uniform and so had put their lives in danger. They worked extra hours with the hope that those extra hours might somehow save American lives.

But even still a year in, America's military was not yet fully committed. Apart from the shock of the loss of the Philippines, and the bitter fighting on Guadalcanal, America hadn't yet felt the true anguish of war. There was a trickle of letters from the war office, isolated telegrams of despair. But the men lost in the Philippines had been professional soldiers, not fresh new recruits, and the marines fighting on Guadalcanal were all volunteers. The dreaded letters informing families of the death of a beloved love one, a young victim of the draft, had not yet begun to come in force.

And so Thanksgiving was still a holiday celebrated with optimism; it was still a holiday celebrated not just with thanks, but also with hope. Yet there was anxiety, too, anxiety that next year, perhaps, the family table might have a few empty chairs. Families everywhere had decided that work could wait. So this year was extra important. As a result, the train was loaded with passengers who, like Dr. Parsons, were headed home for a long holiday.