“Leonard, actually.”
“Well, good, Lenny. That’ll make things easier. But I won’t forget that you’re a professor emeritus.”
Normally, Leonard would have been irritated at anyone calling him Lenny—no one ever had—but coming from Julio, after Leonard had ascertained that the middle-aged driver wasn’t using the name as an insult, it sounded all right.
As the climb over Loveland Pass approached, Julio was leading a discussion on the decline of nations. Leonard was continually surprised at how well informed and literate the truck driver was.
“But I don’t think the United Kingdom chose decline,” Leonard was saying, trying hard not to slip into his lecturing-prof tone of voice. “After World War Two, it was just an inevitable outcome of Britain having bankrupted itself fighting the war… that and the people’s innate refusal to return to the prewar class system after five years of sharing hardships and scarcity.”
“So they fired Winston Churchill without so much as a thank-you-sir and chose socialism,” said Julio, shifting down several gears as the huge truck followed the convoy off I-70 before the blocked Eisenhower Tunnel and up the narrower, twisting Highway 6 rising toward the night sky.
“Well, yes,” said Leonard. He was a little anxious at the prospect of a discussion of “socialism” with a working man. All those working fellows he’d known, the few he’d known, found the word and concept toxic, sometimes reacting to it in violent ways.
“But the British Empire would have been finished no matter who they’d kept as prime minister or what system they’d adopted,” said Leonard, raising his voice slightly so he would be heard over the rising roar of the truck’s engine. “The scarcities would have been as real after the war, socialism or not.”
“Maybe,” said Julio Romano with a smile. “But remember what Churchill said.”
“What’s that?” asked Leonard. The first sharp turns were approaching and he grasped the padded armrest to his right more firmly.
“ ‘Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery,’ ” cited Julio. “I agree with old Winnie that once a society has declared that the sharing of misery is a virtue, then there’s going to be a lot of scarcity and misery in that culture’s future to share. Certainly you and I have lived through that change of outlook, Lenny.”
“Yes,” said Leonard. The red taillights of the trucks ahead of them kept swerving and disappearing with the sharp curves of Loveland Pass, as if the trucks were hurtling over the edge and out of sight down into the abyss. Leonard could see by their own truck’s headlights that the road was patched and broken and the guardrails to the side were largely missing or collapsed. There was nothing but Julio’s attention to his driving to keep them from hurtling through the gaps to a fiery death below. “Yes,” he said again, trying to regain the thread of the conversation, “but choosing a more… ah… communitarian approach to the rationing of scarcity and the social amelioration of misery does not necessarily mean that a culture has chosen decline.”
“But have you ever known a modern culture that chose socialism—the enforced redistribution of wealth of the sort we saw about twenty-five years ago, Lenny—that didn’t inevitably have to embrace decline? Decline as a world power? Decline in its people’s productivity and morale?” said Julio, shifting down three more gears and grappling the wheel hard right and then hard left again as the narrow road rose sharply and twisted even more sharply.
“Perhaps not,” said Leonard. He was eager not to force an argument on this section of highway, no matter how jovial and relaxed Julio sounded.
With his free hand, Leonard grasped the hard dashboard. Amazingly, snowfields were appearing in the starlight and moonlight on either side of the narrow highway. It was only September! Leonard had forgotten how early snow could come to the high country of Colorado.
“Lenny, you’re the professor. Wasn’t it Tocqueville who said—‘Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word—equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude’? I think it was de Tocqueville. I still read him on long hauls when Perdita’s driving and I can’t sleep.”
“Yes, I think it was Tocqueville,” managed Leonard. They were approaching the summit. Their convoy was taking up every inch of the damaged, pavement-heaving, narrow road. If a vehicle came the other way, headed west, Leonard could imagine all twenty-three trucks of their convoy hurtling over the edge. Above them, something looking like a row of giant white posts or skinny headstones ran north and south along the Continental Divide. It took a minute for Leonard to realize that these were the mostly abandoned wind turbines from the short-lived “Green” era. It was a spectral sight in the night.
“Lenny, I’m sure you can remember the year—maybe the exact day, perhaps—when the majority of American citizens were no longer paying taxes on April fifteenth but were still voting in entitlements for themselves. The tipping point, as it were.”
“I can’t say I do remember, Julio,” said Leonard.
“The election year of two thousand eight we were almost there. The election year of twenty-twelve we were there. And in twenty-sixteen we were beyond that tipping point and have never gone back,” said Julio as the truck growled in its lowest gear to reach the summit of the pass.
“Does this relate to something?” asked Leonard. He’d met a few men like Julio Romano—autodidacts who thought of themselves as intellectuals. The type always had an amazing memory and had read their translations of Plato, Thucydides, Dante, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche. What they didn’t know was that their counterparts in academia—the real intellectuals—had read these authors in the original Greek, Latin, Italian, and German. Leonard’s opinion of autodidacts was that most of the poor devils had a fool for a student and a poseur for a teacher.
They were passing between the Continental Divide wind turbines now, all inactive, and Leonard realized that the things were taller than he’d thought—each easily four hundred feet high. The scarred white pillars sliced the starry sky into cold sections.
“You know, Julio,” he said to change the topic, “there’s an odd thing about your and Perdita’s first names. And your last name as well. Julio Romano was…”
“A sculptor from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale,” said the driver, his broad grin glowing whitely in the dash lights. “The only artist of his day that Shakespeare ever cited by name. I know. Act Five, a celebratory dinner is supposed to be held in the presence of a lifelike statue of Hermione, Leontes’ dead wife—‘ a piece many years in doing and now newly perform’d by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly is he her ape.’ Weird, huh, Lenny?”
“But an anachronism in Shakespeare’s day,” Leonard couldn’t stop himself from pointing out. The old academic could allow one anachronism to pass without challenge, but not two in one night. “The Julio Romano was a reference to Giulio Romano, an Italian artist from the early and midsixteenth century. But why Shakespeare would have cited Romano as a great artist—and a sculptor—is a mystery. I don’t believe he was even a sculptor.”
They were crossing the broad, snow-covered plateau of the summit. The headlights of trucks ahead of them illuminated a battered but still-standing sign—SUMMIT, 3,655 m., 11,190 ft. Julio shifted gears as the truck prepared for an even more tortuous descent on the eastern side of the Continental Divide. Behind them, the idle wind turbines receded like so many white columns holding up the dome of the brilliant night sky.