Текст книги "Days Without End"

Автор книги: Sebastian Barry

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

CHAPTER NINE

BUT DEATH WERE COMING too for the sergeant. He laid up in the infirmary where John Cole thawed out in his time and you could go in and see him. At first he wouldn’t say much but little by little he seemed to want to say more. The hospital steward which was all we had for a doctor that time did his damnedest but there wasn’t much to be done asides from mopping up. All the tubes in his stomach were rotting and sometimes he had shit coming out of his mouth, like it had lost its sense of direction on the plains of the sergeant’s body. He was still the sergeant, you couldn’t just say anything to him, you had to tread carefully for fear of a savaging. Grizzled old bastard like him don’t go providing death-bed transformations. But at the end what he said to me was, he didn’t know what life was for. He just said that. He said it seemed very short looking back even though it had seemed long enough when he was getting through it. He said he had a brother in Detroit village but it was probably no earthly use writing to him because he couldn’t read. Actually this exchange of words took place one evening late in the fall when the last of the year’s heat was trying to hang on with failing fingers in the wind. The steward had just closed the window but nevertheless the breath of outside lingered on in the wooden room. The cold spaces of the yards between the buildings. The sergeant was now more bones than man. He looked like an old saint carved in a church but he still talked like the foul soul he was. I don’t mean that unkindly. He was a queer sort of a man alright. Mostly cruel and thoughtless but there was the seam of something else unnamed. I was just alone with him looking at his shrunken face in the half-light. The thin eyes glittering yet. His disease had blacked up his face. He spoke about Caught-His-Horse-First and how he hoped we’d get him eventually. I said we sure would keep a weather eye out. I was thinking maybe now our accounts were balanced but I didn’t say that. Then the sergeant seemed to go wandering in his mind a little back to the Detroit of his youth when his brother was beginning to come good in business and then he killed a man. Missed the noose by a mere shadow of words because there wasn’t witnesses. Fell into melancholy, was what the sergeant said. He seemed a different man talking about his brother. Said his mother was a hard old woman and his father were killed in 1813 fighting Injuns along the frontier of those times, Kentucky. Said his only regret was he married a woman that didn’t like him and that he never divorced the harridan and tried for a second Mrs Wellington. The sergeant! Well all this surprised me, let me tell you. But a dying man can just say what he likes. It don’t have to be true.

Then he dies. At least we don’t have to listen to his singing no more, says Lige Magan.

Also at this time Mrs Neale had took in the captured Indian bairns into her school. Turns out Caught-His-Horse-First’s daughter was called Winona which in the Sioux language means First-born Girl according to Mr Graham the interpreter. She might have been six or seven then but who could tell because their record keeping was about as good as my own crowd in Ireland.

Well I weren’t the only soul thinking maybe the books was balanced between the chief and the blessed army. The sergeant weren’t too long in his humble grave before Mr Graham received some sort of communication and we was told that Caught-His-Horse-First was wishing to give us a visit. The colonel and the major went into confab about it and it was decided to entertain this visit as maybe it might lead to better times between us and the tribes. Everything was awful stirred up and the colonel feared an out-and-out war on the plains, that’s what he said. And the major maybe had his mind back in the time when the chief had saved us on our hungry march and although he was putting the massacre into the mix he was also mindful of the work of the late sergeant in slaughtering the chief ’s wives and son. The major in his heart always strove for justice I do believe and as he had a properly low opinion of man in the main he could allow a great margin of leeway when it was indicated. Troopers theyselves often when about the world were given to sprees and drinking, and there was oftentimes violent upflares even in camp that resulted in more than bruises and uproar. But just as the drear Black Hills were said to be speckled with gold, he believed that man was likewise. Also he had the mighty civilising medicine of Mrs Neale, a woman who might have been a preacher had she not been cloven. The mixture of beauty and religion in her could make troopers faint with what can only be reckoned love. Maybe lust too.

If the sergeant had been still overground it’s not likely he would have stood for this occasion. But the sergeant were now tendering his name I should think with trembling hand at the Pearly Gates.

The day appointed was cold, sere, and dark. The river before our fort looked dank and sad, what John Cole called the ‘hairless’ ground all about us worried by stray smears of ice and snow. A goodly number of buildings had sprung up outside the protection of the fort. There was a saddlery premises painted in a dying green, and the office of the Indian agent was stuck up beside the fort wall like a piece of poetry amid the plain story of everywhere else. Plasterers and carpenters had come up all the way from Galveston, Texas for some reason to fit out that little palace. As for our fort it were fairly falling down in places but the colonel kept it shipshape as funds would let him. The big gates with its old arch of lodgepole trees seemed to hark back to forgotten times. First thing we knew, our much depleted cavalry troop was ranged in front of the major’s quarters that is to say on the back end of the parade ground. We had our muskets primed but we was told to keep them slung on our sashes easy fashion. Boethius was told to set his two cannon behind the stable block to be brung up just in case but I do not believe the major for a moment thought this would be necessary. No, sir. Major believed he had read the soul of his man like an open book and could count on his interpretation of that fanciful bible. First thing was, the pickets on the wall above the gates called out their sighting of the Sioux horsemen, coming up slow and gentle in the distance and now stopping it would appear about half a mile off. Now Mr Graham was ordered to go out on horseback to them and see what was what and Mr Graham he mounts up and goes with two slightly trembling troopers through the opened gates. I noticed it was Starling Carlton held the gates for them and closed them tight behind them. On off they rode like chaps expecting Death sooner than Christmas. The far ground where the Sioux waited was just high enough for us to spot them there. There wasn’t a man wanted to have goed with Mr Graham and his escort. Mr Graham was a bald little man so he was hardly a threat to anyone. The two troopers with him were black-eyed Spanish-looking men from Texas that no one would miss if they was murdered. Or so I was thinking. I guess I was amusing myself in the tension. So then Mr Graham duly reaches the band of Sioux and he must be yapping, as John Cole calls it, and the yapping goes on for a while, and then Mr Graham comes back as stately as a little king and the look of relief on the face of the troopers was a priceless sight. The chief wants to come in alone, he says, as a proof of his good intentions, and talk to the major. I hear then some of the troopers laughing because they’re thinking maybe we can just shoot the desperado then. But they don’t know the major and maybe Caught-His-Horse-First knows the book of the major just as well as the major knows his. It’s the sort of arrangement stirs the heart rather. You got to admire a man that will ride forward from his armed comrades and come on to the gates of a whiteman’s fort. Starling Carlton has left the gates wide after admitting Mr Graham and we can all see the chief approaching. In the distance we especially note the exuberant beauty of his head-dress and his flowing clothing. He wears a metal breastplate made of whiteman’s alloy doubtless but you feel he wears it like a great jewel rather than as armour. Now he coming closer and I see something else. Given that it is dank winter and game is so scarce as to be only rumour I am hardly surprised to see his face gaunt and perished as the goddess of winter herself. His legs are only queer sticks about his pony and the animal itself is bone-struck and ill. Famine has come into the heart of this man. At the gates he dismounts neatly despite his lack of stirrups and hands over his gun and his knife to Starling Carlton. Then with one hand he smooths down his face and strides forward onto the bleak parade ground. A little flurry of snow has come from the river and a nasty wind snakes into the fort and makes a whine between the buildings. The major for his part goes forward also unarmed with Mr Graham who any blessed person can see is overborne with worry and dismay. His wretched little face is sweating like a cold wall. The chief sets out his stall and Mr Graham translates the lengthy speech. Seemingly what it all boils down to is the chief wants his daughter. Mrs Neale as it happens is standing in the porch of the school with all the faces of the Indian children ranged at the dark windows within like so many moons. The chief talks again in his highflown way and things are referred to like love and dignity and war. Indians always talk like Romans for sure. The major answers again and it looks to me like he is inclined to give him the girl. There must be a bargain brewing and it ain’t nothing to the troopers either way. They got to see how thin the chief is, he don’t look much like a fighting man anyhow. It’s all kinda sad, I am thinking. I reckon it’s sad. We know cold brutal war and how it be waged there on the plains because we been waging it. There’s no soldier don’t have a queer little spot in his wretched heart for his enemy, that’s just a fact. Maybe only on account of him being alive in the same place and the same time and we are all just customers of the same three-card trickster. Well, who knows the truth of it all. The major turns his head and calls to his wife and tells her to let the little girl out of the schoolhouse. Mrs Neale bangs her hands on her legs but she clumps back and does what he bids pronto. The little girl comes out like a piece of brown fire and darts across the compound and stops beside the chief. He is very quiet and stoops to her and then lifts her up onto his right hip. Major Neale concludes the meeting as they say, and starts to come back towards us and the chief and his burden starts to go the other way. Starling Carlton he’s standing there with the musket and the knife like the Negro doorman at the old saloon in Daggsville. The snow storm is just a thing of threadbare veils, we can see everything. We are tensed up like we should be shooting but there ain’t no reason. It’s just a solitary Indian with nothing to shoot back with. We may be black-hearted men when our turn comes but there is a seam in men called justice that nothing burns off complete. Caught-His-Horse-First goes back to Starling Carlton and Starling Carlton says something to him. Of course the chief ain’t got no idea what he is saying so Starling repeats it louder. He is saying something like, that a better gun than mine, maybe you could give it to me. What the hell is he saying, says John Cole. Says the chief got a better gun, I say. What the hell, says John Cole. Then Starling seems to calm down a little and the major sets out towards them maybe to settle the matter but he stops when he sees Starling hand over the gun. The chief takes it in his left hand and rests it up along his upper arm because he got no choice with the girl in the way of his other hand. Then just in that instant Starling Carlton unsheaths the old Indian knife and runs at the chief. There’s no force on earth could withstand Starling Carlton running at you because he’s the weight of a buffalo calf. By Jesus he just drives the knife into the chief ’s side. The little girl screams and falls from her father. The gun just seems to go off then and Starling Carlton is hopping around and roaring because the bullet has struck his foot. He will limp on that foot for the rest of his born days, I reckoned. With the knife still wagging in its wound like a Mexican bull in the bullring the chief gathers his daughter back up and throws her and himself onto his pony, and dragging the animal’s head around, kicks like the devil and rides away in a frantic gallop. You can see the pony is as surprised as we are. A couple of troopers think to fire after him but I guess the chief ain’t in the business of being hit so easy and anyhow the troopers are firing through the gap of the gates. Starling Carlton is hollering out for them to stop. He already got a bullet in the foot, ain’t that enough? In the distance you can see the Sioux braves churning about on their horses like so much butter. Then our sharpshooter Lige Magan runs up the parade ground and up the nearest ladder and onto the wall and draws a slow bead on the galloping Sioux. The major is shouting for Lige to desist but maybe suddenly Lige don’t speak English. You know in your heart he has no chance to hit nothing. Then the strange thing happens. Caught-His-Horse-First seems to stop in mid gallop and turns his pony half-beam to our sight. Something’s been hit alright but it ain’t the chief or the pony. Mrs Neale screams and starts to run out towards the gates and the major goes sideways at her to catch her waist and detain her dash. It’s as if all time stops and the storm is stilled and nothing will go forward. Forever more the major’s wife will be caught in her run and the chief will turn his horse side on and look back at us holding the dead body of his child. Forever more Starling Carlton will keep hollering like a fool in pain and Mrs Neale be wailing and forever more the black clouds of evening will be stilled in the firmament and God yet again retreat from us.

What breaks the spell is Boethius running round from the back alleyway to see did he miss his cue.

Major seems to decide to let the question of what the hell Starling Carlton was doing lie and he acknowledges next morning on parade that nothing much good could of come of that plan anyhow. He sees that now, too late. Snow falling like bread of heaven that won’t feed no Israelite. Maybe the major is feeling that old days are dying and new days are coming. Lige says he was only trying to get a shot in for Caleb Booth and he didn’t mean to kill no girl. Everyone understood that. Major seems intent on leaving it then. But that don’t stop John Cole asking Starling Carlton a few nights after in barracks what in hell he was doing. Starling Carlton is a friend so he must feel obliged to answer. He says when he seen that the chief ’s gun was one of them new Spencer carbeens he just got a choler in his head like a storm. He was sudden mad as a brushfire. He couldn’t see how he had to tote his goddamn musket in his goddamn sash and this Indian go about the place with gun royalty. That’s what he said, gun royalty. And so on. So, why’d you go stabbing him, says John Cole. Weren’t it obvious. Goddamn it, didn’t John Cole see the chief raise his carbeen to him? Goddamn, did he not shoot him with it? What you saying? Ain’t it a fact, Handsome John Cole, that you got Indian in you somewhere? I guess you feeling sorrow for your own kind, goddamn it. Then John Cole is confused for a moment and so am I. I can’t remember if the shot came before the stabbing or after. I am trying to get back to the vision of it in my head. I reckon it was after but my mind’s not so sure. Oh Jesus. Then John Cole is looking like Starling Carlton stabbed him too and then Starling Carlton comes over close and says, look see, I ain’t angry with you, John Cole, don’t you be angry with me. Alright, says John Cole, and only myself can see his eyes are damp. John Cole will cry if you do right by him. Then Starling Carlton puts him in a kind of bear hug. I’m thinking, I bet John Cole can smell the stink of that man now. It don’t last long but it happens. Then I guess we think we can be going on from there as usual.

CHAPTER TEN

NEXT PART OF MY STORY happens about two years later. Only thing that happens meantime out of the general going on of things is one of the Indian whipper-snappers takes a shine to me and as she learns her English from Mrs Neale I begin to learn about her. Her history as it was contained in her own language I guess she starts to discard out of her head because all her talk is of Mrs Neale and how things be with her in the fort. I guess she must be a cousin of the late Winona and as I can’t get my tongue around her Sioux name despite being the only few words I am obliged to acquire I beg mercy of her and ask if I can call her Winona. She don’t seem to mind. There’s a lot of giving of names in that old world of her people so maybe it seems natural to her that I give her another. Starling Carlton got angry and said I shouldn’t be friending vermin, that’s what he said. He was trembling as he spoke, his chins vibrating like the breast of a bird. He says Irish was bad enough and far as he’s concerned you can take all the Africans and put them into a great feed for hogs but he says Indians is the worst, according to Gunter. I can’t tell if he’s serious because his face don’t move when he says all that. John Cole says that Starling Carlton ain’t all there no more. Probably end up in Old Blockley, meaning, the famous lunatic asylum. I say Winona is only eight and she ain’t vermin, not a bit. Starling Carlton kept referring to this matter for half a year and then he shut up about it.

But Handsome John Cole weren’t right in his body and it was decided by the major that he should not take up another signing when his present time was done and he should release himself from the army. As John Cole and me had signed up together for the same term of service I would be free to leave with him. A passel of two soldiers, he calls us, and smiles his pleasing smile. We’ll get our pay and some dollars for the journey east and keep our hats, our trews, our shirts, and our linen pantaloons. Major said the best thing was to get out and then if a cure was found to come back in. He said we was excellent dragoons and ought to be in the army. But he couldn’t feed a man through illness time and again, regulations and sense forbid.

Now through all this while he’s talking John Cole is looking at him with ghostly face. Don’t think John Cole can imagine the world without the army suddenly. Feels like he is being cast out of paradise, he says. Won’t ever find a berth so good from Dan to Beersheba, he says. Major says he knows this well and it pains him to have to bring the news. Colonel thinks so well of him especially in the matter of engagements where he was obliged to fight.

I go over to Mrs Neale and ask for Winona as a apprentice servant and Mrs Neale says she’d be ready for that alright. Girls go out to be put in work around nine, she says, and Winona speaks well and has most of her letters. She got numbers too. I taught her all the plain cooking I know myself. She’s quite the dab hand with a bain-marie. You like white sauce, don’t you? she says. We are talking in the dark front parlour of her quarters and Mrs Neale knows me well enough but even so she squares to me and asks me the hard question. I don’t think any other woman in creation except her would ask it but she does which was a measure of her. I ain’t going to be easy in my mind, she says, unless I ask you. Men do think they can take a Injun maid for their own solace and I ain’t about to countenance that so you better speak truthfully now, Trooper McNulty, that you only want this girl for a servant. Why, I says, in the whole history of the world you can take my word that that is a yes. I will protect her like my own child. And how you so sure? she says. Well, I just am sure, I says. If I hear otherwise I will send men to punish you, she says. And I feel again that fierce strange heat off her like someone was burning logs in her bodice.

When we got to Missouri a letter catches up to John Cole to say his father is dead but he don’t know what to do with such news as there ain’t a farm or nothing to claim on it. I guess he just thinks his father is dead and there’s an end to it. He says he would sure like to have seen him before he died and he is surprised to learn that his father died in Pennsylvania and he don’t even know who is sending the letter, it don’t say. It’s more than ten years since he seen him and it weren’t a fond goodbye then either. And who was your mother? I say, surprised at myself I never asked that before. I never remember a mother, says John Cole, though he looked like he would’ve liked to remember one. How old was your father, I says. Well, I don’t know, he says, I must be twenty-five or nearly. Maybe he was forty-five, fifty maybe.

It’s not like we got no money so we rent a house in Lemay along the river just a few miles outside St Louis. Curious to relate John Cole feels as fit as a hare and wonders if it weren’t the damn water at Laramie was poisoning him. John Cole says he’s cooking a plan and writes to our old friend of fond Daggsville days Mr Noone. That letter swirls around the country like his own letter bearing news of his father and it’s a month and more before he gets an answer. We know from Mr Noone’s faithful saint’s day letters that he has left Daggsville when too much civilisation come into it. But we can’t remember for the damnable life of us where he said he was going. Turns out Mr Noone he has a new place up in Grand Rapids running minstrel shows and he says he just might have work for Thomas McNulty if he ain’t lost his pretty looks fighting. That night as we lie chest to chest in the old doss and Winona purring in sleep in the next room we feel the lure of the unknown future distil into our bones.

Guess you ain’t lost your looks anyhows, says John Cole, staring at them in the half-light. Look pretty good to me.

You reckon? I says.

I like the way you look anyhows, he says, and kisses me.

It’s still new to be in a house and not slipping about the barracks like ghosts. It’s naught to Winona to see two men in a bed considering you might see that in any posthouse or boarding house when beds is scarce. I don’t even know how many beds she seen as such, she slept on the floor at Laramie. She got her own little bed now. She never even seen a town before and she likes to walk with us down to the river and take the ferry over to the store. Plain cooking just as promised is at her command and she speaks quite good and I don’t know why but she don’t get too many insults on the road from the cruder sort. Maybe we look like we’d box such a person and we would. John Cole must be six foot three so you don’t rile him in a casual way. I’m a little man right enough but maybe the best dagger is a short one sometimes. I always wear my Colt conspicuous on my trouser belt. I guess Winona don’t have too much to do and I bought her three dresses in St Louis as we came through so she has a wardrobe to her name. Nice flouncy pink dress is my favourite. I guess I like dresses just as much as she does. The girls in the shop put her underthings together without me looking because they said to look away, and we got her shoes and all too. There’s a Negro washerwoman nearby does the washing weekly. She’ll even starch. She says the Negro prayer house in St Louis used to be burned regular but she don’t hear it was burned recently. Got Winona’s straight black hair cut nice and bought her combs and a brush, she brushes it all the time at her vanity mirror. Winona. She don’t got a family name that anyone can pronounce so we ask her does she like Cole or McNulty and she says Cole sounds better, and maybe it does.

So when we go and buy train tickets for the new line to Grand Rapids, we give her name as Winona Cole. Seems natural as spitting in a spittoon.

We get to Grand Rapids by way of Kalamazoo and put up for the night at Sweet’s Hotel and in the morning our old friend Mr Titus Noone come in to view us. The whole way on the spitting puffing cranking train Winona was sat upright and sleepless as if she were in the belly of a demon and was soon to die. The folding and unfolding picture-maps of the beauties and terrors of America outside the window was as nothing to her. Old lakes like seas, old woods as dark as childhood fears, and sudden towns all swank and mud. Mr Noone he still ain’t so old we find. He is as dapper as a mackerel. His black coat shines with strangeness because it is made of the furs of black bears, his bluebird-blue cravat flashes also with birdy life, his cufflinks has been fished out of rivers in Australia he tells us, dark emeralds like poked-out eyes. His barber has shaved his face-hair so that it is all straight lines, black patches, and immaculateness. His skin is made of the aftermaths of smiles. Most likely Titus Noone has come into his heyday. John Cole looks at him and looks at me and laughs with that laughter that denotes delight and relief. Mr Noone gazes on us and claps his gloved hands like the feller who does the three-card trick but he ain’t no trickster and he laughs too. I guess we remember what he done for us in Daggsville and he remembers maybe that we did not let him down. Things like that sure is a basis for ongoing business. Fagged though she be by the long journey just the day before Winona still has the heart to join in. No exaggeration to say she got a laugh like a freshet in a summer meadow. When he first come into the hotel room Mr Noone had bowed to her and took her hand and shook it gently and said how do. I do well, she said, in her best Boston English learned off Mrs Neale. Just a moment of something that didn’t mean nothing. It gave me heart to see. Things that give you heart are rare enough, better note them in your head when you find them and not forget. This is John’s daughter, I say, without thinking much on it, and never having had that thought before exactly in words I knew about. John Cole didn’t talk against that. He beamed. Well, says Titus Noone, I guess her mother was a beauty, and he bowed his head as if to intimate sorrow at her possible passing, and he ain’t going to ask about that unless we say something more. So we leave it there like the last note of a ballad.

A little maid as black as a whetstone brings in tea and whisky. As if we was a creature with one head our eight eyes alight on the tea-pot and the cups on the tray and break out into laughter again. God knows why. I guess we’re giddy. Mr Noone says he got a big enterprise going in a fine hall on Grab Corners. Nicest bunch of blackface minstrels between Timbuctoo and Kalamazoo. Well, he says, they’re all pretty straight-up except one, his big knock-down star called Sojourner Wrathall. He does all the wenches, he says. Riotous goddamn genius. Cunt of the first water, no pun intended. What do you boys intend to do up here, he says? Well, says John Cole, a little abashed, we was just up here to talk to you. Of course you were, of course you were, he says. See, says John Cole, I had this thought come into my head last year. We was in this Indian camp up near Fort Laramie and there was these Sioux men dressed as women and the effect was very strange, some of them was so good-looking, and it made your knees a bit soft to see them. And I been thinking all this while that since Thomas ain’t no girl no more we could put him into women’s dresses and see what effect that had, I was just thinking you know it might have just the same effect as I was feeling there on the prairies. Well, says Titus, he could do himself up minstrel fashion and play the wench parts? He could well, says John Cole, but I been nursing this thought, I guess like a preacher nurses a vision of revelation, you know, of Thomas in his dress, and being as ladylike as a lady, only more so, everything done just so, and aiming for beauty, you know, and he is a beauty, ain’t he! So, says John Cole, after a break for laughter, I was thinking it might bear a try-out up here, in your hall, since you know us, and know we ain’t no fools. And is he going to sing, or dance, or what? says Mr Noone, leaning in now with great interest, all his showman’s antennae waving like a big desert ant. I thought, says John Cole, maybe he could be in little plays, maybe, or come on as a handsome young man, go behind a screen, and have some dancing from others and such, and then come back out as an out-and-out killer beauty, and just see what the audience thought of that. Or, she could be in her boudoir or such, completing her corsage, and maybe I come in as her beau and we have talking then, or singing – well, I can’t sing, so – you know? Okay, and what will this little lady be doing, he says, nodding at Winona. I don’t know, says John Cole. I never thought of having her. Could be the child part, says Titus Noone, does she sing? You sing? says John Cole, not knowing one way or the other. I can sing, says Winona. What can you sing? says Titus Noone. I can sing ‘Rosalie, the Prairie Flower’, she says, Mrs Neale taught me. That a dead child song, says Titus Noone, nodding his approval. We can black up Winona, he says, and she can be the maid, and sing goddamn ‘Rosalie, the Prairie Flower’. Bring the house down. Meanwhile, Thomas in the dress, and you the beau, and swanking round, and Thomas ladylike and lovely just like you intimate, why, yes, why, yes, I think it might go. If it go, I pay you twenty-five dollars a week, for the three of you. How does that sit? That sits just as pretty as a robin in a bush, says John Cole. Well, says Titus, I have high hopes. I remember so well how much the miners took to you both when you was girls. Let’s drink to it, goddamn. And we do, we drink to it.