Wolves of Eden

by Kevin McCarthy

  “And if I were to come back in there behind your counter and have a look myself, I wouldn’t find them, or anything like them?”

  “Why, no, of course not. I am at a loss myself with the ledgers missing. I am out of pocket, Sergeant. The debts accrued by the soldiers on this post will not be honored because of it.”

  There is laughter from one of the tables and words spoken sotto voce.

  Kohn turns and walks over to the table, addressing a raw-​boned private. “What did you say?”

  The laughter stops and now the men stare at Kohn. The soldier says, “We didn’t say a thing, only that you must be the only Bill in the whole of the fort who wants to see them books found. There’s many a man happy they are gone and hope they stay there.”

  The private is Irish as are, no doubt, the men at the table with him. A cursed, wandering race, like my own, Kohn thinks. And I am cursed to wander the world alongside so many of them.

  “You’d do well to mind your own business, Private,” Kohn says.

  “And you’d do well to mind yours . . .”

  There is one empty chair at the table and Kohn pulls it out as if he will sit and join the men. Instead, he raises the chair over his head and swings it crashing down onto the table top, shattering beer mugs, gouging the table, sending the men scrambling away, falling from their own chairs. He brings the chair down onto the table four times, smashing it until it is kindling. The men at the other table rise.

  “Go on,” Kohn says to the raw-​boned private, holding one of the chair legs by his side. “Unsheath that knife. I want you to do it.”

  The private leaves his hand on the knife’s butt at his belt for a moment and then takes it away, raising the hand up in supplication. “There’s no need for that, now, Sergeant, is there? No need at all. I was only jesting. Just easy talk is all, no need for the Black Flag.”

  “Stow your ‘easy talk,’ you fucker. Is this how you speak to ranking men in this fort?”

  The men are staring at him but none answer. Kohn turns back to the sutler. “How much for the chair?”

  The sutler is too stunned to speak. Finally, “Four . . .” He cannot hold Kohn’s eyes. “Three dollars. Three.” He looks over to his customers. “It was a good chair.”

  Kohn takes out the money and lays it on the sutler’s counter. Loud enough for all in the store to hear, he says, “There is a reward for those books. Ten dollars, for whoever turns them up.”

  “It’ll be a dead man claiming them ten sheets,” one of the standing men mutters.

  “Maybe you’ll claim it then, pay off whatever it is you owe in Mr. Kinney’s books,” Kohn says.

  “Them books is ash I’d say.”

  Kohn turns to the sutler. “Make it fifteen dollars. More than a month’s wage for most of the men on post, Mr. Hapworth. Easy leaves for some Bill.”

  “Only thing easy round here is getting kilt, Sergeant,” the private says, stuffing his kepi onto his head and wiping the spilled beer from his tunic. “You’d do best to remember that.”

  Kohn takes a step closer to him. “Pull that knife and I’ll show you how easy.” When the man just smiles, Kohn says, “I thought so.” He turns and passes by the men, close enough to smell the beer soaking their tunics. The transition from the heated store to the icy December wind is breathtaking in the dying daylight.

  Later Kohn will curse his lapse, his temper. Now it feels good. He still has the chair leg in his hand as he crosses back to his quarters. He will burn it in the barracks stove. He has paid for it.

  20

  December 13, 1866—​Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory

  “IT’S MORE LIKE A WILD SESSIONER YOU’RE LOOKING each time I see you, Daniel. Your locks are truly rebellious. And I can bathe myself, for the love of God.”

  “Thank you, sir. I should have them barbered but I am in no mind to trust any man in this fort with a razor to my throat,” Kohn says, sponging Molloy’s back. He lifts the officer’s arm and washes his ribs, his underarms, his shoulders. “You smell something less than sweet, sir, but you are looking better. You’ll be back in the saddle before long.”

  “Please God you’re right, Daniel. I am feeling like a right and proper blue mass bummer, you out there unable to have a haircut for your troubles.”

  “You’ve been through it, sir, and need to rest. The sawbones says the leg is healing.” He dips the sponge into the warm and soapy water and continues to bathe the captain. “Time is the best doctor as my father always said, never wanting to pay for a doctor when time could be had at half the price.”

  “Yes, yes . . . ​enough of your Dutch wisdom, Kohn.” Molloy swallows and looks away. “A bloody buggering bum of a mollygrubbing malingerer I am, with you whipping yourself with the work on your lonesome. You should stand down from your inquiries, Daniel. Nothing good will come of them. And you are dripping water on my bloody mattress, you damned fool.”

  Kohn ignores this and roughly washes under the captain’s left arm. “A transfer from the 7th, sir, for both of us, is the good that will come of them.” Kohn has almost convinced himself that, with a transfer, Molloy will contain his drinking, will wish less for death. A new start. New memories to replace the old ones that plague him. He hopes more than thinks this may happen because he is not certain what he will do if Molloy does not recover, does not cease his slow suicide. He does not allow himself to think about it. He loves no one else on this earth but Molloy and yet much of the time he cannot abide the man. He has only the army and for him, Molloy is the army. He is not certain whether it is the army or Molloy he loves and hates so. Dos hartz makht fun mentsh a nar. It is his mother’s voice this time. The heart makes a fool of men. He has a flashing image of standing in a tin tub as a small boy while she bathed him, his brothers waiting their turn but their mother smiling at him, taking her time.

  As if to mock sentiments Kohn can hardly admit to himself, Molloy says, lowering his voice, “Would you not have a dram on your person, Daniel, for an old warhorse recovering?”

  “I most certainly goddamn do not, sir.” It is his father’s voice he hears now. A fool goes to the bath and forgets to wash his face.

  “There is no need to curse your betters, Daniel. It is unbecoming a man of your rank and breeding.” Molloy sulks but only for a moment. Not as long as Kohn would have imagined and he takes hope in this.

  He says, “My betters? You may go and jump, sir, if you think I will aid in your debauch. I need you to speak to the Irish when you are well if we are to discover anything about who killed the sutler and his wife. The fort is full of them and none of them has a mind to bleat to a soreass Jew.”

  “The Irish . . .” Molloy says. “A filthy, treacherous race of men, the women fit only for the milking shed or brothel. Round heels have the women of Ireland. Keep that in mind, Daniel, when time comes to choose a wife.”

  “I will, sir.” He tosses the sponge into the bucket, dries his hands on a towel and holds out a freshly laundered undershirt for the captain.

  “Tell us then, what have you learned on your travels, Daniel?”

  Kohn helps Molloy into the shirt, followed by a wool sweater and two pairs of socks. He lifts the captain’s legs, one of them locked in thick plaster, from where they rest on the floor back into the bed and covers them with a fresh laundered sheet, several blankets and a heavy buffalo rug. He makes to tie a woollen scarf around Molloy’s neck but his captain shoos him away and does it himself. The hospital barracks is warm relative to the common soldiers’ barracks, having three wood stoves for heat and a raised floor of planed boards, but the building was hastily constructed and drafts of icy wind find their way through gaps in the planked walls and windows. Kohn can see his breath if he looks carefully.

  “Nothing of note, sir. But that every soul on post assumes that it was other than Indians who killed Mr. Kinney and his wife and not one seems to think they did not have it coming. Some of the men I’ve spoken to appear to be delighted by their demise.”
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br />   “Death freeing them from debt, no doubt,” Molloy says, nodding, smiling as if he too sees the joy a murder can bring. “Give us a cheroot, Daniel, good man.”

  “Yessir. Though they would not be exempt the debt, in fact, since they have signed their names to the monies owed the sutler, whoever that may be, and as such any serving sutler has the right to stop their pay up to five dollars a month until it is paid. You know yourself there are men who are never fully clear of a sutler’s debt and owe money on their discharge. Of course they might be considered free of their debts if the sutler’s account books cannot be found, which according to the new sutler, they cannot.”

  Molloy smiles again. “As a Jew, you look first for the account books, Daniel. I would have expected nothing less.”

  Kohn smiles back at him. “I thought that if I could have a peek at them, I might find the man or men with the call to blot out their debts with blood.”

  “That is a fine, poetic way of putting it. A man of the book, you are, Daniel. But not every action is motivated by money. Some are driven by temperament. You of all people should know that.”

  Kohn blushes and heat rises to his face. The book has always been a problem for him, as a boy and a man, the Hebrew letters never standing still long enough for him when it was his turn to read them at Krius ha toire. Even now words still jumble and rearrange themselves on a page if he is tired or lacking in concentration. He has noted in the past how much longer it takes for him to read an account in a newspaper compared to other reading men and he does not think he has ever handed over a message or drafted a bill of larder without it being blighted with misplaced letters and ill-​spelled words. No man of any goddamn book, that is for certain, Danny boy. He does not say this and Molloy has no idea of it.

  Instead, Kohn gives Molloy what he has been fishing for. “Certainly, sir, the pleasure a man takes in rash action can be its own motivation. And before you ask, I have been somewhat rash, sir. I yesterday destroyed a chair that had not wronged a single soul. Poor chair.”

  “You didn’t kill anyone, so? I am disappointed to hear it.” Molloy smiles. Kohn’s furies have ever been a source of delight for him though it is a long time since he has properly relished anything.

  Kohn is aware of this and pleased that he has amused Molloy, if only for a moment, with his recklessness. “No sir, I have made valiant efforts to restrain myself, though I have met more than one who could use killing.”

  “There is a hardly a day goes by in this life that we don’t, Daniel. If only we could oblige them. Have you offered a reward for the return of the ledgers? You have said there are more Irish here on post than bedbugs in a whore’s mattress. And where there are Pats and Micks in abundance, there are chuck-​a-​luck debts to be paid and bark juice to be bought. The prospect of windfall will turn the account books up if they are not yet ash and scrap.”

  Kohn laughs. “I’ve offered fifteen of your hard-​earned greenbacks for their return. We shall see what happens.”

  “And have the brass hats been welcoming, Daniel?”

  “As if we’ve brought the cholera with us in a bucket. Colonel Carrington thinks we are here as spies sent by General Cooke, with our investigations as mere bluff for the purposes of reporting back just what kind of a no-​count show he is commanding here. He has given me . . . ​given us freedom of the camp of sorts but he is no help otherwise and insists I bring anything I find to his attention. At the same time he doesn’t appear to have any interest in encouraging anyone in the camp to speak to me, including his wife. So welcoming, no. We are the least of his worries with his men dying or deserting by the day, but we are a worry to him nonetheless.”

  “His wife?” Molloy lights his cheroot, filling the air with aromatic smoke. He begins to cough then, a heavy, liquid hack that tells of corruption of the lung, of cold journeys and possible pleurisy. It is the most common sound in every bivouac, camp or fort Kohn has ever set foot in and he is not unduly concerned by it.

  When Molloy has finished coughing, Kohn says, “I was told I might want to speak to a serving girl working for the colonel’s good wife. An Indian who used to work for Sutler Kinney.”

  “As?”

  “She is a pretty girl, despite her injuries, so you can imagine yourself, sir.”

  “The colonel’s wife with a whore for a serving maid? She would not have her, surely, if she knew.”

  Kohn shrugs. “I don’t know, sir. The Carrington woman seems a kind soul, a Christian woman.” He thinks of a phrase Molloy often uses himself. “There are no flies on her, as you would say. I reckon she knows well what the girl did for Kinney. But she is good to her, you can see that and she did not let me speak to her so there is no point I can see in pursuing it. She said something about ‘being held to account for how we treat others,’ whatever she meant by it.”

  Molloy smokes his cheroot and says nothing for some time. Then, “Sometimes the best work is done by doing nothing, Daniel. I was often told this by my schoolmasters.”

  “I can only imagine, sir.”

  “I will be fit soon enough to aid you. Hale and hearty as ever I was. Until then do nothing else. There is nothing to be gained from our finding out what everyone here already knows. The man and his wife are not, by your account, sorely missed and not worth losing blood for. Mind yourself, Daniel. I’ll have no one to wash my arse for me if you ship a knife in the guts for the sake of a man and his missus already homesteading with the devil.”

  “The prospect of washing your arse again, sir, is call enough to keep looking into things. A knife in the guts might just be preferable.”

  21

  COL. CARRINGTON’S OVERLAND TRAVELLING CIRCUS & HOW TOM MET HIS SWEETHEART

  ALL THAT I PUT DOWN ABOUT HOW YOURSELF & myself once met Sir well that is not important. Your coming was the reason I began to put words to these pages but they are not the reason I continue. I feel now that I am seeing the course of things for myself for the 1st time & by writing it down the twists & turns of how I got from there to here in this icy Guardhouse become clear to me. And so while I did commit to this testament because of you I continue it for to explain to myself how I was brought to this impasse this woeful site of sadness & confinement & guilt. But perhaps it is not the guilt that you imagine.

  Anyway it is Tom’s girl who I will write about now for she is one cause of all this surely. That cutnose whore well she does be a key in the lock to this sorry tale. For our story is likely no different from the stories of a hundred other Irish Greenhorn veteran soldier boys up til when my brother met her. As I did write before Sir if we were not made horse soldiers well then the brother may of never met her but be ever careful what you wish for in this life as the saying goes.

  Of course Tom likely would of seen her or even poked her as that b_____ of a Sutler kept only so many hogs on his ranch & it was the only place for 1000 miles around this fort for a lonely Bill to sojourn of a payday but there is no telling he would of picked her over the other 4 girls. Sure was not one of them a fine fat doll with hair as thick as molasses & most of her teeth in the bargain? She labours for herself now from a tee pee just beyond the stockade with no pimp to take a cut of her earnings & fair wind to her for there be far too many bosses in the world for it to be a fair one. There does be 1 less now I am not sorry to say if I am put to it God Forgive Me.

  So Tom may of come to know the cutnose girl or even to like her perchance for it is not rare in this world that a soldier grows fond of a whore & not at all rare that they might marry. But it is not likely in the case of my brother that he might of fell so hard for her if we stayed run of the mill foot soldiers when we set out for the Powder River country from Ft. Caldwell in Nebraska we 2 brothers among the multitudes in what the men came to call Carrington’s Overland Travelling Circus.

  And God In Heaven what an A Number 1 Circus it was with 2 battalions the 2nd & 3rd nearly 1000 men most of them Sunday Soldiers or fresh fish we did call them though 1/2 again of these would be poste
d elsewhere along the way & not serve here at Phil K at all. We were maybe 200 of us mounted on horseback with 200 or more wagons & Army ambulances carrying every tool seed barrel or box under the sun & all the civilians the wives & children too of the officers & long-​serving NCOs. We even brung with us a broke down saw mill with its boiler in more than one wagon & a grass cutting machine of the like I never seen before & there was the contract timber men & their tools & oxen & drivers & sawyers. There was more than 200 civilians as well as near 500 head of cattle & their tenders if you can imagine for it feels fierce strange that less than a year ago we had all that beef while now we are set to starve for the winter but that is the nature of this forsaken place. The Sioux & Cheyanne have fed mightily on them cattle.

  But it was a powerful procession that left Caldwell that day to come up here & build a Ft. going by the name of Phil Kearny after Philip Kearny a fine Irishman I am sure who was killed in the War at Chantilly though it does be something of an insult to his memory to name this cursed place after him. A powerful parade of man & beast all the same it was setting off to tunes from the 25 man regimental band that Carrington did insist on having with him the band being so instrumental (Begging your pardon!) in fighting Indians. Though they can play I will give them that & many of them are grand fellows & welcome company round a fire of an evening. 1 or 2 of them are even fighting men would you believe it?

  Tom & myself were horse soldiers by then as I said before. As such we rode rear guard in the main eating the dust of 1000 men wagons & cattle but what of it? It was riding not marching at least & the odd time when someone somewhere did spy an Indian or did think he spied one we were sent forward to ride guard on the herd or the wagons in front of them & that was fine.

  On the day Tom laid eyes upon his girl we were ordered forward riding at a slow walk at either wheel of a wagon loaded with crates & croaker sacks & clanking bottles & bumping barrels. But more inticing to us was to ride behind the next wagon back which was loaded to the rail with Indian & 1/2 breed women. They were goods of a different sort you might say though it is sad to say it.