The Cry of the Wind

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  In time, he promised the books, scanning their worn and gilt-edged titles. I shall return to you in time.

  The footsteps reached the door, and in stepped the oblate Doctor Erasmus Granville, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his waistcoat and his nose raised as if the pleasantest air was somewhere above his head. His balding pate, despite the dark strands of thin hair pasted across it, gleamed in the crisp light, and his eyes looked like sweaty beads behind his round-lensed spectacles. He glanced at Custer and bent in a stiff, slight bow before addressing Douglas.

  “And how is the patient this morning, Douglas?”

  “He tells me he’s fine, Doctor Granville. You can ask him yourself, sir.”

  “Yes, of course...very good, then.”

  Libbie entered after the doctor, chatting with Jacob Greene, Secretary of War and an old family friend. Upon seeing her husband by the fire, Libbie broke off her conversation and came over to him. She was dressed in a lovely wool wrapper of pale blue merino, trimmed at the lapels, waist, and cuffs in royal blue velvet. A surrah of bright yellow silk formed the bodice and front of the skirt, gathered at waist and high collar.

  Blue and Gold, Custer remarked to himself. My Little Dear loves the old cavalry colors.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, noticing his attention and plucking at the puffed upper sleeves. She knelt at his side and kissed his cheek, wreathing him in her scent of orange blossoms. “I know, it’s a bit brighter than my usual gowns, but Autie—” She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “—I’m just so glad that I don’t have to wear widow’s weeds.” She ran her hand across his cheek, and he felt years melt away at her touch. “How do you feel this morning?”

  His face writhed as he tried to exert control. His walrus moustache hid most of his lips’ contortions, but it did not conceal the struggle entirely. Libbie waited, wanting an answer from him, and not from anyone else. His wife’s sweet respect drove him to continue through his disablement.

  “Mmenh,” he said.

  “Better?” she interpreted, and he winked in affirmation, the only action he could take with regularity and precision. “That’s wonderful, dear. Did you hear that, Dr. Granville? He says he’s feeling better.”

  Granville took a breath large enough to fill an opera house. “I expected nothing less,” he informed them all. “The patient will continue to heal from his wounds and build back his former strength. You need not fear, Mrs. Custer, any relapse into coma; our patient is well beyond that risk. But after thorough examination, it is quite apparent that his abridged faculties of speech, his partial paralysis, and the palsy that afflicts the right side especially, were not caused by the original trauma, but by a stroke brought on, in all probability, by an embolus resulting from the extensive wounds to the neck and chest.”

  “What is to be done?” Jacob asked from his seat in one of the chairs. “Surely some sort of treatment?”

  Granville pursed his lips and shook his jowls slowly. “It is impossible to say, Mr. Secretary, with any hope of accuracy. The nature of each of these cases is so different. Given ample time, some patients recover almost completely while others...well....” He humphed. “Yes, well, considering the patient’s age and the extent of his deficit, it is not impossible to hope for recovery, but it is not a likely outcome.”

  You dolt! Custer thought to himself. I’m right here! He wanted to shout it to the rafters. Don’t talk about me as if I cannot hear you!

  “But, Doctor,” Libbie said, hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Is there nothing we can do?”

  “I’m afraid it’s genuinely up to the patient. Recovery of any kind from a stroke of this severity requires great determination and discipline. It would take many months—perhaps years—before ground could be gained, if at all.”

  Jacob sat back in his chair, one hand on his plump belly and a faraway look in his eyes. Libbie, standing close by Custer’s chair, stared at the doctor. Neither seemed to remember that Custer was even in the room with them.

  “Years?” Libbie breathed.

  Granville closed his eyes and nodded sagely. “Indeed, Madam. Years. Maintaining the patient’s morale through such a period is a difficult undertaking, but one that must be ventured. He might otherwise be apt to brood upon—”

  Custer stomped on the floor with his good leg. The others turned and stared at him wide-eyed. Granville’s mouth was frozen in mid-pontification. Custer glanced at Douglas, then at the doctor, and then at the door. Douglas came forward and took Granville by the elbow.

  “This way, Doctor Granville. I’ll take you to your carriage.”

  “Yes,” Granville said. “Thank you.” He bowed to the others. “Mrs. Custer, Mr. Secretary. And Mr. President, it’s good to see you doing so well so soon. If you need anything...”

  Custer glared and Douglas touched the doctor’s elbow.

  “Doctor, this way, if you please?”

  When the door closed behind the retreating Granville, Libbie turned to her husband.

  “Forgive me, Armstrong,” she said, using his middle name as she often did when distressed. “Please, the doctor simply caught me unawares. I had no idea things were still so serious.”

  “Me, too, Autie.” Jacob looked like a kicked pup, his eyes pleading for mercy. “It’s a shock. All I could think is what this means for your Administration if you’re unable to fulfill your duties for an extended period.”

  “Jacob!” Libbie said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it seems crass, but we’ve got to think about it.”

  Custer twisted his mouth around the words. “Eereye.”

  Libbie softened. “Yes,” she said. “I know he’s right.” She sighed and straightened her shoulders. “Very well, so it’s to be a longer recovery than we’d expected. We’ll just have to work all the harder, and trust a little to the old Custer luck.” She smiled down at him and he felt better at her resolve.

  How much I love you, he said to her silently. How much you have defined me. Sweet girl. My sweet girl. I’m sorry things have worked out this way. I’d planned a different future for us.

  She held his hand and looked into his face, tenderness and love in her expression. He could tell that she was wondering what he was thinking, and he wished that he could only tell her.

  “Shall I bring in the girls?” she asked. “They would like to see you.”

  He jerked his head to the side. “Ayer,” he said.

  “All right, Autie. Maybe this afternoon?”

  He winked and she patted his hand.

  The door opened and in scuttled the small frailness of Samuel Prendergast, Custer’s former attaché and personal secretary. Samuel was dressed, as was his habit, in a black suit and waistcoat, and a white shirt with high starched collar. Pinned to his lapel was a satin cord that looped up to his pince-nez spectacles. His fringe of feathery gray hair was ruffled, and his slender, ink-stained fingers barely contained the sheets of paper he clutched to his breast. He leaned back against the library door to close it and his gaze darted from one face to the next with nervous anxiety.

  “You won’t believe it,” he said, nearly breathless.

  “Good lord, man,” Jacob said, standing. “You look like you could use a drink.”

  To Custer’s surprise, Samuel nodded, accepting the offer. Libbie glanced at her husband. If Samuel was given to taking alcohol in midday, something was definitely up.

  As Jacob poured a splash of bourbon into a thimble glass, Samuel went to a brocade-upholstered chair and sat on its plush edge. He took the small glass and tossed back its contents like an old hand, and gripped the glass as he grimaced at the taste. Slowly, he released a deep breath.

  “It’s about the man who shot you, Mr. President. Higgins and Campbell just came in. They questioned a young woman who says she was in the company of the man. She directed them to some leaders of the steel and railroad unions and they...I can hardly believe it...”

  “Speak on,” Jacob said.

  Samuel pressed
forward. “One of these union leaders implicated Señor Silveira, the Ambassador from New Spain.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “Oh,” Libbie breathed. “But that would mean...”

  “It is distressing,” Samuel said.

  “Distressing?” Jacob blurted. “The delegate from a foreign power tries to assassinate our President and you call it distressing?”

  “Oh, but they said that he didn’t intend to kill the President,” Samuel said. “It was young George he was after.”

  “George, Jr.?” Libbie clenched Custer’s hand. “But why? The ambassador was the one who brought George here in the first place. After all that, why would he want him dead?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Custer. And neither does anyone else. Higgins and Campbell just made their report to Vice President Morton, and they frankly said that none of the people they questioned can be trusted. Everyone has a motive to lie and point the finger at someone else. We will probably never know what really happened, or why.”

  “But Levi,” Libbie said. “What does Levi intend to do about this information?”

  Samuel shrugged and put the thimble glass down on the side table. “Without stronger proof, the Vice President’s actions are limited. He is considering now what he will do.”

  Libbie knelt at Custer’s side. Custer looked at her face, her dark hair curling across her wide brow. She stared at nothing, trying to deal with facts and realities from which he’d always tried to shelter her but which now were here, in the room. Long ago, the violence of war had left its first mark on his mind, but now, after twenty-eight years of wedded peace and partnership, not only had it marked his body, it had also succeeded in worming its insidious way through to touch Libbie. All of the battles and all of the campaigns and all of the raids and skirmishes and ambushes in which he’d played a part; he had been able to keep all of them where they had ended, out on the field. The “Custer luck,” as she had named it, had always brought him home, sound and hale, until now, when at last, war had walked up and struck him down on his very doorstep.

  He looked at the hand that held his own. Libbie had tiny hands, delicate and dimpled, and she stroked his fingers with an absent-minded affection, love without conscious thought. As she and Samuel and Jacob discussed the ramifications of Morton’s ejection of the New Spanish ambassador, as he heard his wife ask questions in his stead, he saw a gulf open between them. His infirmity had changed her role from wife to caretaker, and he could not keep the tears from welling up in the corners of his eyes.

  I do not want a mother, he said to her. I want my wife. I want my partner. I want my love, and my dear sweet girl back.

  His right hand did not want to move when he told it to. His left arm was weakened by the wound to his chest. His right leg would not bear his weight. The right side of his face felt like a taper in the sun, slowly melting, drooping.

  But the doctor, for all his pomposity, had said that recovery was not impossible. Perhaps the old Custer luck had done its work. Else, his wife’s bright colors of blue and gold might very well have been the black of a widow’s weeds.

  With deliberate slowness, he reached his left hand inside his coat. It shook, but he clenched his teeth and made it do what he wanted it to do. Inside, he felt the pocket, and the small square of soft cotton within. He withdrew the handkerchief and, holding it in a trembling hand, dabbed at his eyes, and wiped his running nose.

  Libbie turned at his movement, concern knitting her brow.

  He wanted to say something to her that would express the depth of his emotion and love for her. He wanted to give her hope and smooth the worry from her lovely face. Such words, however, were beyond his ability to speak.

  Anything that isn’t impossible can be done, he told her in his silence. It’ll be as it was when I was on campaign, when we were separated by miles of wilderness. I’ll write to you, every day, and work on coming home to you as quickly as I can.

  And so, he began his first letter, committing to memory the words he promised himself he would one day recite, when he had bridged the canyon that separated them:

  My Dearest Sunbeam....

  Chapter 3

  Thursday, February 13, A.D. 1890

  Embassy of New Spain

  Washington, District of Columbia

  Alejandro stared at the unfinished letter on his desk. The afternoon sunlight glinted off the brass base of an unlit lamp, throwing a warm splash of light across the salutation:

  To his Lordship, Emilio Serrano-Ruiz,

  Viceroy of New Spain,

  San Francisco, Alta California.

  It was the third such letter he had composed in the last month, not including similar letters he had sent to his brother-in-law Roberto, the Governor of Cuba, asking him to speak to the viceroy on his behalf. None had been answered, though he knew that all of them had been received.

  He sighed and ran a hand through his silvered hair. His tenure as ambassador from New Spain to the United States had been less than exemplary. It had begun with trouble: with the scandal of his predecessor’s death in a New York brothel. From there, it had gone from bad to worse, with his own ship going aground on the coast of Indian-controlled territory, with his rescue and return to New Spain at the hands of the savage inhabitants, and with his ambitious attempt to form an alliance between New Spain and the native tribes in hopes of gaining a foothold in the disputed territory.

  Alejandro sighed. Even with all that, he could have saved the situation; but he had let it go a step too far. He had let his desire for personal vengeance take him beyond the scope of his office, and had let his hatred for Custer—once a junior officer now President who, during the War for the Tejano Coast, had brought defeat down upon Alejandro’s regiment and cost him his position at the viceregal court, a generalship in the military, and his future in Spanish society. Alejandro had let his hatred for that man push him into acts that may have cost him everything, and the silence from San Francisco was ominous.

  Still, he reasoned, though a watched pot never boils, neither does an unheated one.

  He dipped his pen into the inkwell, tapped away the excess, and returned to his letter’s closing paragraph.

  In conclusion, my Lord Viceroy, and as I have iterated in my prior letters on the subject, it is clear that this proposed alliance between the Spanish crown and the native tribes of the American plains still has much to offer. I say again that we should not, in my estimation, abandon the prospects that we have discovered there, despite the recent difficulties. Please advise me at your earliest convenience. As always, I await your instructions.

  He signed the letter, blotted it, folded it in thirds, and folded the ends into the middle. Then he struck a match. It flared with a hissing smoke that blued in the slanting light of late afternoon and filled the air with the taste of metal. He touched the flame to the wick of a candle, and picked up his stick of red sealing wax. The wax smoothed and grew shiny in the heat, and he twirled it to keep it from dripping. When it was ready, he stubbed the liquefied end onto the seam of the letter, leaving a heavy dollop of bubbling wax behind. Then he pressed the face of his signet ring into the wax, cooling it, and embossing into it the arms of his family crest. When he let go, the wax held the letter closed at all seams and would have to be cracked before the contents could be read. He turned the letter over, addressed it to the Viceroy, and was about to put the letter in an envelope when there was a knock at his office door.

  “Enter,” he said.

  The heavy door opened and Enrique came in, bearing a large stack of letters.

  “Excellency, the afternoon post has arrived.”

  “Bring it here.”

  During the few months that Alejandro had held the office of ambassador, Enrique had acted as his assistant. A quiet man without family standing or stature, he was an unimpressive forty-year-old who had long ago reached the peak of his ability in the diplomatic service of his country. Alejandro had elevated him to this post, sure that while Enrique migh
t not excel in the position, he was incapable of bringing any discredit to the office he served. Alejandro smirked inwardly at the thought, knowing that his concern for the dignity of Spain would have been better spent governing his own actions than worrying about the conduct of his mediocre assistant.

  Enrique put the letters down in the sunlight that bathed the desktop. At once, Alejandro noticed that most of them were returned letters, written in his own hand. He smoothed his moustache as he pulled a few out of the pile. A note of thanks to the senator from Maine. A letter of condolence to a congressman from Penn’s Sylvania. A group of dinner invitations sent to the Secretary of the Interior, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the archbishop of the New York diocese. All returned, all marked “Refused,” or “Return to Sender” in a peremptory hand.

  Alejandro felt his blood begin to boil at these snubs. His nostrils flared in a building rage, but he clamped down on it, not wanting to shatter his dignity before his subordinate.

  “Thank you, Enrique,” he said. “You may go.”

  “Excellency,” his assistant said with trepidation. “This came, as well.” In his hand was a leather pouch, the shield of New Spain imprinted in gold on its side, and heavy wax seals binding the twining cords that closed it. A diplomatic pouch from the viceregal throne.

  Alejandro stood and took the pouch without a word. Enrique, aware of his employer’s simmering anger, bowed and left. The tall bronze-and-wood door closed with a firm thunk.

  Through the pouch’s leather, he could feel the crisp lines of a letter. A thick one. Since he did not expect a long letter of chatty familiarity from his viceroy, he surmised instead that it was an official decree of some ilk. No, he corrected himself. Not of “some ilk.” It was a rebuke, a reprimand, or worse.

  He tossed the pouch on his desk and turned his back on it. Unwilling to face the letter, he began to walk slowly around the room, enjoying with conscious study the Old World, pre-Carlist touches of heavy bronze and timbered wood, the chambered moldings of the high ceiling, the sharp click of his heels on the stone flooring. He smiled at the brightness of sun on polished wood, relished the desert scent that rose from the thick, Moroccan carpet, and calmed his nerves with the silken feel of his fingers across the back of a leather-clad chair. On the walls, he could spy, in their frames of ornate, gilded gesso, scenes of his younger years—the beaches of San Diego, the broken lands of the Tejano Coast, and the forested heights of the Sierra. Above the hearth was a painting, hung there only a few months prior, of his family’s estate above the vineyards in the Sonoma highlands, and below the mantle hung the sword of his command—his last command—along the Tejano coast.