Wolves of Eden

by Kevin McCarthy

  On & on he did rattle about the framing & exposure & composition & I did not understand all of Ridgeway’s words but I looked over at the dead elk with its guts reefed from inside it. The grass about the carcass was tramped down & red with blood the flies already skirmishing & for a moment all I could see was the carnage laid down upon the elk by the wolves. In truth the sight took my mind back to the War to bodies blown to very bits chewed by grape & canister dead men in the grass & mud with their guts like the elk’s strewn out as if they were ribbons tugged from a sweetheart’s hair. And all of it just a matter of Good Luck John or Bad Luck Jim. God snaps his fingers & the Devil snaps your neck. For a moment this was all I could think of & all I could see there in the meadow.

  Ridgeway did perhaps see my confusion. He said, “Look at it. Let your eyes see it the way they would see a picture without the smells of it without the sound or even the colours. Just look at it Michael.”

  And so I did & I begun to see the sun burning off the mist & the elk’s ribs appeared to me now like the ribbing of an accordion & I could see the flies’ wings flashing in the sunlight & the dew clinging to the grass like tiny diamonds in a queen’s cloak. I could near see what that Quaker boy was getting at even after what the wolves done to the elk I could see it & this made me proud & happy with myself.

  “And did you catch the picture Ridgeway?” says I hoping now that he did.

  “No. I did not have the time needed to expose it & there was too much movement. I thought maybe the wolves might sit still for me to get my picture.” He smiled at this joke.

  Tom spoke up then from where he stood with his kill. “Make my picture Ridgeway. Will you make it with my shot wolf will you? I never did have a picture made of me.” Tom’s words in English were muddy & I did repeat them to Ridgeway.

  “Why of course,” says Ridgeway. “Of course I will. I am sorry I never thought to ask before.”

  Across the clearing came some boys from the camp breathless & drawn to the meadow by the sound of Tom’s shot. I waved down at them. “All OK,” says my wave.

  “Tom shot a wolf,” I shouted across the meadow to them forgetting my fear of Indians for the moment. Or maybe I reckoned that if the shot did not bring them to us then my shouting would not.

  The boys relaxed & strolled up to us. It was Metzger Napoli Jackson Henrik the Swede & Corp. Phillips who plugged two Sioux on a passage from Laramie a few weeks after ours. My brother gave a smile to this mob & held up his wolf under the forelegs.

  “I shot this big f_____  of a wolf boys. Ridgeway is going to make a picture of it. Will you be in my picture will you boys?”

  Says Jackson to me, “What did he say Mick?”

  “He says Ridgeway will make his photograph with the wolf & would ye care to be in it?”

  All the boys perked up at the prospect. It was common enough in the War to have a tin type picture made but by chance none of us there took the time or paid the money or had the sweetheart or mother at home for to get one made. I tell you it made the boys happy now the notion of a photograph taken here in the wilds of the West in a meadow with flowers & lifting mist & a dead elk & a dead wolf & a fellow’s mates around him.

  Well Napoli brung out a comb from his tunic & all of us made use of it wiping down the tunics of our mates each man making like a mirror for another all of us getting shipshape & arguing should we sport kepis or bare heads & tipping canteen water into kerchiefs to wipe dirt from each other’s faces like mothers with their children before Mass.

  “You should comb your wolf Tom,” says Jackson.

  “He has a finer head of hair than you have,” says Tom back & when I repeated it the boys did laugh.

  “And a prettier face than yours by a long piece,” says Jackson & he could say it because Tom was very fond of him for Jackson was not afraid of my brother with his Rebel ball scoured mouth & his terrible rages. He did not fear Tom like some of the boys in the Company & so Tom took his rags in good sport.

  “Gentlemen,” says Ridgeway. “If you please.”

  He arranged us about Tom & his wolf making sure to get the morning light behind him as did be best. He told me things like this later for I did yearn back then to become perhaps a maker of pictures myself though I am ashamed to say it because there is not much in this world I am good at besides killing & all such dreams for the likes of me are folly in the end. But they were different days so there was no harm in it maybe.

  “Now boys you will need to hold yourselves still as statues while the picture forms.”

  “Shame it aint a dead Injin instead of an old wolf,” says Jackson & we all laughed though you could say the Indians had the last laugh at Jackson in the end.

  “No smiling gentlemen please,” says Ridgeway.

  So we held the pose still & silent & unsmiling for our friend the picture maker Ridgeway Glover & in our stillness it came to me how queer it was the 7 of us boys from all the ends of the Earth standing there together holding stony faces like statues of marble you might see in a church but instead in a meadow of grass & yellow & purple flowers where maybe no white man ever stood before. How queer it is I reckoned that day as the morning sun burnt off the mist & warmed our bones no sound but that of birds singing & fizzing flies at the carcass & buzzing bees at the wild flowers & a strange kind of Quaker boy hiding his head beneath a drape with his hand held out on the camera’s eye to let the light inside the camera box to catch it there.

  And as soon as I felt this well my heart did shift & things of a sudden turned queer & dreadful & fear came upon me & fierce terrible loneliness seized my heart. It was like the dead wolf had my heart in his teeth & I wonder now can you see this fear in my eyes in the picture though I did my mighty best not to show it then.

  After some minutes the picture was done & later back at the Ft. when he cured it Ridgeway gave us each one for ourselves on paper card which made us all very happy even me with my strange heart.

  Our journey back from Ft. Smith for all our prickling rifles & skittish mounts did pass quietly but there was happenings galore here in the Valley in the week we were away. Red Cloud’s boys made a start attacking the woodtrain on its way to & fro Piney Island running the mules & killing two A Company boys & a civilian timberman whose body never was found God Rest Them All.

  Tom skinned his wolf of course & was of a mind to give it to his sweetheart whore as a gift but she did not want it & instead he took lend of 2 dollars from me & put that with 1$ & 80¢ he won at Faro for to buy her a dress of calico with flowers on it much like them in that meadow where he shot his wolf.

  In the end Tom stuck that wolf pelt to the inside of the door to our barracks with shoeing nails. All the boys loved it & would touch its head for luck when they went out for back then we thought ourselves true & proper beasts much like that wolf with his yellow eyes & dagger teeth but this was only foolishness & there is no fool like a soldier I tell you.

  32

  OUR 1ST VISIT TO THE HOG RANCH

  UPON OUR RETURN FROM ESCORTING THE PAYMASTER to Ft. Smith my brother was fair flaming to see his girl but because of our duties & details & such it was a long day & night before Tom finally got down to the hog ranch to meet her & that night was the 1st time Ridgeway came with us to Sutler Kinney’s rough shebeen. God Forgive Us for bringing him he never should of come but there was no keeping us Bills from the place because where there is whores so the soldiers will go once they have a spare hour & greenbacks to burn.

  You see Sir we were paid our wages before leaving on the escort to Ft. Smith & because of the short pay at Laramie the month previous we all had for once fair salad in our pockets. Some of this I did bank away with the Paymaster as Tom & I agreed while the rest I kept.

  Of course my brother had his wages spent already. It was owed in Faro debt & such & Tom does not bank his cut of our savings at all except for what is put aside by Uncle Sam as discharge payment. In his own defence he will claim that he has his girl to be spending money on now & he may never even
live to see the day after tomorrow let alone next year so it is only right that we drink now & be merry. It was not long before he run up a fine whack of debt to the Sutler for whiskey & time passed with his sweetheart.

  When we all heard about the attack on the woodtrain & the dead A Company boys it did not seem so wild Tom’s way of thinking. And though this kind of thinking would never buy us a single head of cattle or a plot of land if we did live through this War God Willing well I did of course decide to join Tom & the boys on their skite. For prudent planning is 1 thing while a fierce thirst from the trail is another.

  So we gussied ourselves up to go & as we did Ridgeway came in asked could he accompany us to which I did feel some reservation but I consented for I did not want to be the one to say No! after he took our picture so kindly in the meadow with the wolf. I did try to talk him out of coming but by Carrington’s orders it was in truth soldiers who were not permitted to venture outside the now finished stockade after darkness while Ridgeway was the only man among us who could freely attend the hog ranch off post without fear of sanction.

  Says I to him, “You may not like it Ridgeway. The dolls are terrible rough & the whiskey is worse.”

  “Well if you boys would prefer I not go with you I shall take no offence Michael.”

  It took me a moment to work out Ridgeway’s meaning. You did oft need a pause to reckon up what that Quaker boy meant when he spoke. Says I when I got it, “Of course you will be very welcome Ridgeway. The more the merrier as goes the saying. But it is a lowly place for low born men Sir.”

  “All men are born the same in the eyes of the Lord Michael. And you perhaps forget that I passed some time with the Army during the War making photographs. Rough whiskey is well known to me Sir,” says the Quaker boy making me smile by calling me Sir even if it was only a way of calling attention to my using it to him.

  Says Tom with his hair wet & run through with his comb him smelling all of soap his boots gleaming with saddle soap, “Well come if you are coming boys. Daly does be on the livestock gate wicket for another while but we cannot be sure of silence from the next guard detailed.”

  Says Addy Metzger our little Dutchy pal, “What did he say Mick?”

  “He says you are a short & ugly f_____ of a German hornblower Metzy & you may buy the first jug,” I said because spirits were high.

  “Ugly?” says Metzger turning to Tom. “You cannot call another man ugly when you can near take your dinner from either side of your face yah?”

  I was a small bit fearful of such talk but Tom only smiled & shook his head at Metzy for he is very fond of that small fellow. And Addy served as a bugler in the war as well & if you lived through such a thing as that well you earned the right to call a fellow veteran Bill ugly.

  And so we passed out of the stockade with Daly on gate guard turning a blind eye to us & we made our way down to Sutler Kinney’s hog ranch.

  Once there I soon forgot my worries & Tom did forget his & little Addy Metzger his own Dutch German worries which maybe are more worrisome than ours because he has a wife & child back home in Ohio. To my surprise Ridgeway did not appear affronted by what he came upon in that shebeen conversing freely with the whores & even with the dark muleskinner who did so exercise my brother. I tell you Sir that Quaker supped his whiskey & stood his shout of it like the rest of us & maybe he even bought more of it than we did because he was such a generous sort. I am not certain Quakers be even allowed to take drink but Ridgeway drank his same as the rest of us & to spite what a man might think he did not succumb to its effects but merely smiled more than usual.

  But of the lot of us it was Tom smiling most of all for he had his girl on his knee & did be pouring for her fine drafts of trade whiskey which she mixed with strap molasses & boiled water from a jug for the night had some chill in it though we did not feel it for long. And soon Tom began to sing which was the 1st time in a very long time. In truth I could not remember him doing it since his wounding & it was hard to understand the words of the song he sung but he could carry the tune. His voice was low & sweet & the sweetness of the tune came not from the song’s words but from the low & hollow places in Tom’s body where music does reside. It is in his heart maybe & before long Metzy set to bending the strings of a warped fiddle from behind the bar that some Bill paid out in lieu of coin for a poke. For Addie Metzger though a bugle boy could turn his hand to any instrument of music you could find for him.

  Well I sang the chorus & told Ridgeway the words in Irish so he could sing it with us. It was the song Trasna Da Tonta which does of course mean Across The Waves & I tell you Sir before Tom sung the last note there were tears in my eyes & in Addy’s as well though he could not know what the lyric meant. But anyone with a soul in his breast could understand the lamentation of the tune & Addy did carve it out lovely with that warped fiddle. It was a canted 1/2 tuned fiddle to accompany my brother’s canted mouth & maybe Addy was thinking of his long lost Bremen or Berlin or wherever he hailed from I do forget. And maybe Ridgeway was pining on a girl he left behind in Pennsylvania or for his mother or his Mayo nurse as I was thinking of home & my mother as that song would have you do.

  Well we did then drink & sing the night away & danced now & again with the whores & for those hours a fellow might of got to thinking there was nothing on the Earth that could touch him wrongly or bring sadness upon him unless it was a song sung to bring sweet sadness on you of the kind that in drink feels like happiness at the same time. My brother’s darling whore fell asleep in his lap & such was his feelings for the girl he did not even seek to poke her but was happy for her to sit & sip Redeye with him & listen to his muddled songs. We did take the best hours of the night & grip them in both fists I tell you.

  It was the cuckoo clock that ended it driving out the sweetness of the songs & the whiskey that cuckoo popping out its hole to announce that our time paid for was up & it was the hour when the darkness starts to fade into morning & the fire is ash & all the songs are sung. This is the same in every tavern the whole world over & all of us sat there in silence finishing our whiskey the joy going sour inside of us. My eyes tipped closed for a minute or I do not know for how long.

  Breaking the silence Kinney the Sutler piped up saying, “Pay your bill boys or buy another bottle but you cannot sleep here.”

  The cuckoo lashed again from his hole 4 more times like a bullwhip to the evening’s end. The Sutler’s demands & the whores stirring on our laps & the stink of sweat & soiled clothes & rancid perfume did further remind us the night was finished & that we were no better but probably worse than stinking whores ourselves. Says Kinney, “Pay up now & go. Those last jugs need to be paid for.”

  Kinney when he spoke cast a look to his muleskinner as if to make sure he was ready to collect what was owed & when I saw this such a hatred arose in my breast for that cuckoo clock & then for that man Kinney the Sutler. There was something about him that I cannot explain to you.

  Oh that muleskinner may of been a bad article a rough centurion & whore beater but probably no worse than Tom or myself & likely in his life did kill far fewer men than us. But that Sutler well you got to feeling there was infection in his heart put there by the Devil though he likely never kilt a man at all. And I tell you as God Is My Witness his wife did be worse but this I will tell you more of later Sir for you must hear it.

  But God Forgive Me as I shooed the fat whore from my lap with the night’s cold settling down where she no longer was the notion came to me that the Sutler wanted killing. It comes to me now that this was much the same as Tom once believed the Chillicoth farmer Harris needed it for taking back our calf. I thought it the way I might think about brewing coffee like it was a simple task that wanted doing. But I am sure it was the whiskey doing the thinking for me & I am ashamed to write it now because of what happened later but I will stand by it. There was something spoilt about that man & the world is a better place without him in it.

  Says I standing up, “We will pay you when we are good &
ready & not 1 moment before. What way is this to mind your custom you grasping b______?”

  Well Addy Metz did tweak at the fiddle all his attention upon it as if of a sudden we did not be at table with him in that lowly log cabin of a hog ranch. For he did not like ill words or bad feelings between men. He was a happy sort who would sooner pay a bill not owed than fall out with another fellow.

  Tom stood up with me then & he was not steady on his feet but he took now his girl by the hand & made toward the back of the room where a low doorway was cut into the logs & hung with a sheet. Behind that sheet was the whores’ beds in another room of logs that braced the dug out earth. Its roof was also covered with rough boards & a thatching of reeds & branches & moss turf with no window at all in it & only an iron stove for warmth with an ill fitting flue & guttering oil lamps for light. I tell you it was like a cave in there for them poor girls to take their custom.

  “Your time is up Bill,” says the Sutler to Tom. “You paid for 3 hours of time with Sarah. You did not choose to poke her in that time. That was your choice but you aint poking her now.”

  Says I with anger in my voice, “How much did we spend here tonight the lot of us that you can talk to my brother like that?”

  I tell you I did hate that b______  though I could not tell you why for there is many the greedy guts round the world & I do not hate all of them but I did f_____  hate him God Forgive Me & I do get sometimes roused & angry of a sudden with drink on me.

  Ridgeway stood now & put his hand on my arm. “Leave it go,” says he & I am ashamed to write that I shrugged off his hand & pointed my finger at the proprietor of that mean establishment. “How dare you take his coin & then forbid him what he paid for?”

  “He paid for 3 hours & 3 hours is up.” The Sutler looked again to his skinner & the skinner stood up from his stool. He did not put his hand on his blade because if he did I do not know what I might of done but in the end it was the cutnose girl to bring peace to us all for she did whisper something in Tom’s ear something in English maybe or something in her Indian tongue perhaps but Tom took its meaning & let go her hand saying his piece back to her. I never did ask what he said but she gave Tom a small tired whore’s smile & he gave a smile back to her.