Which was why the ball that struck Tom in the mouth came as such a living shock to the both of us casting our plans in disarray & sapping our savings in powders & curatives & whiskey & eggs & rent for a warm room in which Tom could recover once we mustered out. I say recover but more than the plans & saved wages & the power of clear speech that minie ball through my brother’s face took with it the mighty faith we had in the Army. It was a faith that if we served the Army proper & correct it would serve us the same right back.
How many times after all had we heaved ourselves over stone walls to advance on Johnny Reb the lot of us flinching white with terror but never for turning never stopping until we were upon him elbow deep in blood our ears ringing with the concussion of musket fire & whistling grape & the woeful cries of the fallen for their mammys? How many times I ask you?
But this one time when Tom took his wound & fell to the boot tramped grass of Tennessee we did stop. I tell you when that ball struck my brother he dropped down like a sack of spuds & well this time we did abandon that charge at Chickamauga & I stooped to heave poor Tom across my back big as he was & carry him to a running creek with my tunic sopped with the blood we shared as brothers. It was more ditch than any kind of coldwater stream back there behind our lines & I set down there with him washing out his wound with canteen water & whatever cornmash whiskey Tom had left in his reserve canteen after taking it some days before from the body of a dead Reb. I sat pouring them both water & mash whiskey through that hole in my brother’s face which is not a thing you would ever in your life imagine doing but the War was like that as you well know Sir.
Well Tom was unconscious to this world Thank God with his head beginning to swell up like a sweet melon & I tended to him like we later tended that sickly calf shunned by its mother.
But troubles are many in a poor man’s life & that day by the sluggish stream behind the lines at Chickamauga my tears did drop onto my brother’s face to run in with the dirty ditch water & whiskey. Truly I did not know I had so many tears in me & as I let them run we were come upon that day at the dirt water creek by a Provost Marshal’s gang & hauled up & shackled for deserting cowards.
Cowards! My hand trembles as I do write the word! I tell you as God Is My Witness we were no braver nor no more cowards than any other Bill marching under Uncle Sam’s banner but we stood as hearty uncomplaining & fierce boys when the fighting started & oft praised by NCOs & Officers alike we were for our willingness to do the wet & filthy work of the War. We could shoot but were no slouches either when there was no time for the manual of arms & the musket was turned & used as a club or with the bayonet as a fighting knife in a fellow’s hand. All in the Company did know us in short as good soldiers no better nor worse than any other & we took pride in this God Forgive Us for pride as we do well know comes riding in before the fall.
So when we were shackled by the Prov. Marshals & taken up with the other gang of cowards & shirkers & malingerers & deserters I was for the 1st time since setting foot in America or since taking on with the Army forced to speak up for the pair of us brothers. And it being the 1st & such a vital time for us it did not go well for I could not separate the Gaelic from the Bearla mixing Irish talk with English in the fear & misplaced shame of our predicament so that what came out of my mouth was a babble not likely to be understood by any man.
Now I did hear since that the Union did not shoot deserters but I also heard tell that we did & I have seen men with the cursed brand of D for Deserter burnt into their skin which in some ways may be worse than shooting. But the only thing I knew then at that moment was that we were chained up as cowards when we were no such thing! It fills me with rage to remember it now as I write!
But God’s Blessing was upon us that day & this is what I want to tell you Sir. For as we stood there with the other prisoners in the mud & my brother draped with his manacled hands over my shoulder his low pained bellows in my ears well God did send his emissary to us in the form of a brave & kindly Galway man a battlefield brevet Captain who was only yourself Sir who we were bound by fate’s rope to meet again here in this frozen waste of a Valley.
But that is later. Then we knew you only as the Galway Captain on a white charger standing some 18 hands high its white coat swabbed with streaks of red & at that charger’s tail was left only a charred stump that even in our distress was painful to look at as if it had been scorched from its rump in battle not at all docked in the proper manner. Well that horse stood there before us its hooves hopping in the dirt eyes bulging & rolling round in their sockets with the terror & hot thrill a good horse feels for battle. That beast was so vexed from the fighting that the Galway man had to hold tight to the reins while he looked upon us once over one shoulder & again over the other as the horse turned of its own will.
So it was like this that you Sir over what must of been a terrible ringing in your ears did come to hear my protestations my gabble of Irish & English words mixed together in a pitiful testimony of innocence. And hearing this you did reef your white & blood stained charger to order & look down at us. In truth I once before heard you speaking in Irish Sir & this gave me pause & comfort & some pride at the time for I did not think there was any man from Ireland’s shores with the Gaelic tongue on him who was risen to officer rank at all though I never did imagine you would 1 day speak it to me Sir.
In English you did say to the Sgt. of the Provost Marshal’s mob, “Why have you taken up these men Sgt.? These 2 men?”
“Which 2?” says the Sgt. his words showing not the proper respect due an officer of the Great Union Army. But that Sgt’s. words & their freight of disrespect did not pass unnoticed by you Sir & Thank God for that.
“Which 2 Captain,” you did reply drawing your sabre & tapping the charger’s rump with it & yanking her reins for to turn & face the Sgt. And when you tapped that mare’s haunch it did be plain to see the blood drying in the runnels of your cutlass the long curved blade much nicked & scarred by use.
Well you may not remember it Sir but that Sgt. stared up at you for a moment before correcting himself & right then looking up into your eyes I felt you would take that scut of a Sgt’s. head from his shoulders with that sabre such is the way your eyes turned so fierce & dark. I reckon the Sgt. did see them turning too for he said sharpish, “Captain. Which 2 do you mean? These 2 Sir?” He pointed at my brother & myself.
“What do you have them up for?”
“Deserters Sir,” says that b______. “We found them here by the ditch this one sitting in his pal’s lap like sweethearts Sir. And I don’t even need to tell you that here is a long way from where the fighting is at.”
“That man is wounded Sgt.” You did point with your cutlass. “Any fool can see it.”
“Yes but—”
It was said (though I never knew the truth of it) that the P.M. gangs were given quotas of cowards to fill & fill them they must or they would be sent as lowly guards to one of the back line Union prisons packed with typhus & mutinous Confederate boys. So maybe that Sgt. was thinking of his quota & what his C.O. might say while my brother moaned in my ear & begun to feel dead heavy about my own shoulders. Says he, “With all respect Sir it don’t matter. Any found conscious or without mortal woundings behind our lines is a yellow deserter & we has orders to hook them up.”
I found my voice at this my English like a child’s then like the thick & unschooled Greenhorn that I was with a head full of useless Gaelic.
“I am no deserter no yellowbelly at all by f___ & nor is my brother but he is shot through the gob & didn’t I bring him back here to—”
I could not think of the right word. I said, “aira tubbartdo” which I now know means to tend or care for in English & were the words I was feeling in my heart but for which I had no English. In my desperation I did look up at you & change to Irish. “Sir we are no deserters but staunch Ohio fighting men. Only for the brother is shot through the mouth we came back here. He would of died. He might still God Forbid It but he would
of surely if I left him there on the field for the crows & worms & litter bearers who come in their wake.”
At this Tom unhooked his shackled hands from my shoulders & bent himself double at the waist the low groan coming from him now sounding for all the world like the wind in the rigging of the ship that brought us to these shores.
“Unshackle them Sgt. & be quick about it,” you did say then Sir while your blood streaked charger danced a turn & shrugged up her blackened stump of a tail & pissed a long heavy stream into the bubbling dirt.
But the Sgt. did not move & made like he was contemplating in the way of all soldiers the consequences to his own prospects should he obey one man’s order at the expense of another’s.
Finally he did say to his troop of 6 men in full earshot of Tom & myself but perhaps not yourself, “Unhitch these two lucky bucks & whatever we done here stays here So Help You God. If I hear tales told I will have your skin for stockings.”
Your warhorse huffed & danced some as our manacles were removed & I waited for the chained snake of deserters to move off under the Prov. Marshal’s guard before thanking you Sir. But now it was like your mind was on another thing altogether.
I thanked you in English but to my surprise you answered me in your Galway Gaelic which is someways different to ours but the same in most ways & all ways in the heart of it as it is spoken. You spoke to me Sir as if remembering why you stopped for us in the 1st place as if there is some comfort in the old talk of Irish for you. I think you were then a good man a kind one with a kind word for any pitiful fighting soldier & maybe this is why you stopped for us.
“Get your brother to the Dressing Station & report back to your 1st Sgt. Tell him what happened & that I sent you.”
You did jig your mount’s reins as if to leave but turned her again & still in Irish said to me, “And you may not be so lucky next time. If one of you falls keep fighting. No one man brother or not is more precious to any soldier than the other men he fights beside & you would do well to remember it.”
I snapped a salute knowing you to be correct but yet entirely wrong & because you spoke to me in the Gaelic your reprimand was softer as if in the language we share there was an understanding of a brother’s plight run up alongside the truth of soldiering as you told it. I think now it is only in Irish that I could take both such notions together the softness along with the hard truth of a thing. English as I later learnt to speak it does run much harder at a thing & much more direct at what a fellow reckons is the truth so that betimes the meaning of a thing is lost to me beneath all that truth.
“Yes Sir,” said I & with nothing more to say as if saving the skins (the very souls!) of two men came as easy to you as the taking of them on the pitch of battle you did show me your charger’s arse its chardocked tail & trot off with your white mare’s shoes making a sucking sound in the blood soaked earth.
It was that sucking sound I recalled & your warning about the brotherly way of things when I watched you arrive here in this wintering place. I was one of the men who carried you into the hospital barracks from the cold on that Indian litter. You were 1/2 dead Sir & well wrapped up but even so I knew your face & something in my bones did tell me your coming would be the start of something for Tom & myself or the end of everything. I did not know which but I knew it would not be a good thing your coming to spite not knowing that night that you were sent to hang us. God Forgive Me I wish that I never again rested eyes upon you.
But there is no going back. You are here & you will have your account. It is because of that day at Chickamauga & the fair turn you did us on the bank of that dirt water creek that I will give it to you. You are owed the truth of things so I will try to give you this though it makes me heartsore & shameful to write it.
The guard is changing now outside my cell. I pray it is one of the Irish boys so that I will have a hot meal at least. I can hardly feel my hands to hold the pen & the ink is thick as strap molasses in the bottle. Forgive—
19
December 12, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
FOR TWO DAYS, KOHN HAS DONE NOTHING. HE HAS passed his time visiting Molloy and hoping to speak again with the surgeon but has been unable find a time when the man is not busy tending to wounded men. And the surgeon has not appeared anxious to speak with him. Molloy is improving, an orderly told him, but needs rest and is dosed heavily with laudanum. He is rarely conscious when Kohn visits.
Kohn has called on Rawson in his quarters, a barracks room behind the horse stables he shares with other visiting enlisted men, and is concerned that Rawson has little work to do each day besides tending to their mounts, the Virginia private’s idleness a danger to his safety and the personal goods and monies of other men. Kohn takes him for a saunter around the stockade walls and warns him off the thievery that has landed him on their mission.
“You don’t got to tell me, Corp . . . Sergeant Kohn. I be a reformed man. Reformed. Been to church on Sunday. I did not see you there.” Rawson smiles, his face all innocence.
Kohn stares at him until the smile dims and Rawson looks away. He thinks he may volunteer him for the woodtrain guard but, despite Rawson’s misdemeanors, Kohn does not wish to be responsible for his scalping. The woodcutting is done, Kohn has learned, in a forest six miles from the fort and the train of wagons that goes out in the morning—as he witnessed from the viewing platform with Colonel Carrington—and returns each evening is attacked almost daily. In the week since they arrived at the fort three men have been killed, another six wounded. Several more are missing and it is not thought they have deserted for the gold seams of Virginia City this late in the season.
“Straight as a rail, Rawson, or I will have your head. I will have you riding guard on that goddamn woodtrain every single day until Red Cloud cuts your hair if I hear you’ve so much as looked at another Bill’s purse.”
“I hear you, Sergeant. I’ve a mind to keep my hair on, pretty as it is.”
So Kohn plays cards with the men he bunks with, unassigned or winter-stranded NCOs like himself. Some of these are fine company, and some a burden, the army guaranteeing only close quarters. Kohn visits the sutler’s store for tobacco and beer, examining the new proprietor each time, hoping to catch him alone and have a word but unconcerned that he cannot. Molloy will be up and about soon, and will know better how to proceed. Or will know better how not to.
In a fit of boredom Kohn buys whiskey from a timberman in the fort who has brought enough for the winter and sells it at extortionate prices. He drinks some, and then some more, passing two days this way but finds the whiskey makes him weary and sad and prone to thinking of times past; of Cleveland, of his father, his mother, his brothers and sisters he will never see again, the shul he will never again visit, the wife he will never have, the bolts of cloth he will never cut and the suits of clothes he will never sew. He joined the army to escape these things. He joined the army so he would not have to think or to remember. Drink and idleness do not suit him. He pours his last pint of whiskey into the snow and walks again to the sutler’s store.
There are a few men at the tables in the store drinking beer, as is allowed on most Western posts. On some posts whiskey and rum are sold during certain hours but Kohn has heard that Carrington is a dry commander and has forbidden it. Had he allowed it, perhaps Kinney would not have established his tavern off-post but that is vaser unter’n brik. He hears his mother’s voice in the Yiddish and his heart stumbles. A woodstove warms the store and Kohn begins to sweat under his coat.
The men at the tables look at him and then back to their weeks-old newspapers. Kohn knocks on the counter and waits as the new sutler enters from a back room. The sutler’s store, Kohn notes, is a far grander building than any other on the post, having a duckboard floor and wall boards planed and painted. It is a rarity in that it has more than one room and doors in place of blankets between them. There is a glass window beside the front door and the late afternoon light is weak through it. Lan
terns hang from beams high enough that a man must have to stand on a ladder to light them.
“How can I help you?” the young sutler says.
Kohn has heard that he is the son of the sutler at Fort C. S. Smith and arrived some weeks earlier to take over the concession on the death of Mr. Kinney. Wracked with grief, no doubt, the new sutler. Hapworth is his name, and it is newly painted in fine lettering on a sign outside the front door. His father was a judge in Pennsylvania until he decided to tap his Republican cronies for a far more lucrative concern selling overpriced beer and tobacco, clove candies and woollen socks to soldiers stranded out West.
“Do you know who I am?” Kohn asks.
The sutler frowns and desultory conversations cease.
“I . . . should I? I don’t know, no . . .”
“I’m here with Lieutenant Molloy, 7th Cavalry, who is laid up in Company Q and we are sent here to investigate the death of your predecessor, Mr. Kinney. Did you know that?”
“No, I did not.” Hapworth is in his twenties, and blushes under Kohn’s gaze.
“I have General Cooke’s orders and Colonel Carrington’s sanction to investigate Mr. and Mrs. Kinney’s deaths. Do you understand me, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then I will need to see Mr. Kinney’s account ledgers for this store.”
“His account ledgers?”
“Yes, get them for me please. I will wait here.”
The sutler smiles and Kohn takes it to be nervousness rather than spite. The sutler says, “But, well, I can’t because they were not here when I arrived. I packed his personal properties to ship back East myself and they were not among them. I would like to have seen them myself for there are many men owing for goods purchased who may not now be held to account but I could not—”
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