Wolves of Eden

by Kevin McCarthy

  “You be watchful of your tongue, Lieutenant,” Cooke says.

  “Yessir, though I feel I’d better serve the army in another regiment, General.”

  “The army will decide how you’ll best serve it. Is that clear to you?”

  “Yessir.”

  Molloy’s hand twitches in his lap and he must focus all his attention for a moment to quell it. Sweat sheens his brow and the Nebraska light stabs at his eyes through the window. He looks away and swallows back blossoming nausea. Serve the army. Best. Last night’s whiskey, this morning’s brandy and coffee, all of it smoldering ash now in his belly.

  Two loud raps on the door, like gunshots to Molloy, like the gallows’ trap clapping open beneath a man’s feet. He starts in his chair and his legs take to jigging. He tenses them and his hands resume their twitching instead. He clenches them together beneath the battered Hardee hat on his lap.

  “Coffee, General.” The private soldier who’d helped Kohn dress and bathe him enters with a tray. Rawson? Doesn’t matter, his name. The private sets the tray down on Cooke’s desk and hands a mug to Molloy.

  Careful, Jesus, don’t drop it. His hands shake as he takes the mug but it is only half-​full, to avoid any sloshing out of the coffee. And half of that is brandy, thank God. Thank Kohn. Molloy can smell it before it makes his mouth.

  Another sip and Molloy winks at the private while Cooke sugars his own mug, battered tin, a relic from his dragoon days. Bone china would work just as well for the man, Molloy thinks, the sweat cooling on his brow, the tremors stilling in his legs and hands with another sup. He smiles at his savior knowing it is Kohn’s work behind it all. I would be lost without him. Must be kinder to the man lest I lose him.

  “Thank you kindly, Private,” he says. “It’s fine coffee.”

  “My pleasure, Lieutenant.” The soldier turns to Cooke. “Will there be anything else, General?”

  Cooke blows on his coffee and waves the soldier away.

  Thank God in heaven, Molloy thinks. May he bless and save Daniel Kohn, my angel of mercy, in the wings, the shadows. My guardian angel.

  The coffee is warm but not too hot and the brandy is the only thing that burns.

  IN THE POST’S COOKHOUSE Corporal Kohn says to Private Rawson, “You’re certain he got the right mug?”

  “Course I’m certain he got the right one. That boy gots the shakes like he got the malaria fevers. But one sup of the good stuff and he calmed down like we done dosed him with laud’num. Now, stump up, Corp.”

  “No way to talk to a man above you in rank and station, Private Rawson,” Kohn says, grateful to the soldier despite something about the boy that rankles. Hardly any distance at all, Kohn knows, between a corporal and a private but some respect should be shown. It is as if the general contempt shown to Molloy has sifted down to him as his orderly. Or perhaps he himself does not command respect?

  The private smiles at him. “No rank or no station gon’ matter where you headed.”

  Kohn hands him a half-​dollar coin. He will repay himself later from Molloy’s purse, of which he is in charge. From his pay to his field reports to his letters home to Galway, Molloy has put it all in Kohn’s hands. Kohn is honored to be so trusted, and conscientious to a fault, but wonders would Molloy have made him his chargé d’affaires if he were a Catholic or Methodist. A Portugee or Swede. A Jew for your financial affairs, Molloy has said himself, in jest, yes, but half in jest, full in earnest, as the officer has also said more than once. Still, Kohn is more of a nursemaid of late than a banker or clerk and Molloy has stopped caring at all what becomes of his money or his affairs. Every morning Kohn fears what he will find when he knocks to wake him but he has stopped hiding Molloy’s Remington New Model, knowing the man has chosen a slower form of suicide.

  “Thank you kindly, Corp,” Rawson says, making to leave.

  “So where is it you think I’m going, Rawson?”

  “You and the sot. Why you think he in there with Ol’ Thunder now anyway? Only gettin’ his marchin’ orders.”

  “The Captain’s transfer—​”

  “Transfer?” Private Rawson barks with laughter. “Hell, you boys be transferred north before the Sioux Injuns give y’all permanent transfer west, minus y’all’s hair. Good luck and Godspeed, my friend.”

  Gooseflesh walks up Kohn’s back. Someone stepping on his grave. He says, “Go fuck yourself, Private.”

  Private Rawson drags his finger across his throat. “See you in hell, Corporal Kohn.”

  “FEELING BETTER, LIEUTENANT?”

  Molloy sips his brandy-​coffee and nods. Cooke knows the count, of course he does. He most probably has three parts cognac or Kentucky corn mash in his own brew. And sure what harm?

  “Yessir, General.”

  Cooke observes Molloy for a long moment, as if reconsidering something. For good or ill.

  “Fort Phil Kearny,” Cooke says, picking a half-​smoked cheroot from a clay bowl on his desk.

  “I don’t know it, sir. Forts seem to be sprouting up all over. Like . . .” He had it. Gone now. Weeds? Don’t think the old boy would like that one. Mum’s the word. Shtum, like Kohn says. German, the word. Yiddish? Both perhaps.

  “Yes, well, it’s in the Dakota Territory, Mountain District. My district, Lieutenant.”

  Cooke waits and Molloy nods obligingly, imagining he knows what is coming. Ponies. New forts want horseflesh. The general sees in me a fine drover and desires that I bring a string of them to some forlorn fort of barked logs and mud floors. And what did you expect, Molloy?

  Cooke says, “There’s been some foul business there. Foul.”

  Not this. “Sir?”

  “In my fort, my district, Lieutenant Molloy.”

  An edge around the words, Cooke’s Virginia coming out in them. Glowering through cheroot smoke as if Molloy were the foul business itself. Despite the brandy, Molloy swallows and sits straighter in his chair.

  “What sort of foul business, sir?”

  Cooke shakes his head and flicks half an inch of ash in the direction of the clay bowl. “McCulloch. Hugh McCulloch.”

  Something familiar in the name. “I don’t believe I’ve met him, sir.”

  “Secretary of the Treasury, Molloy. A Republican from Indiana and great friend to all the high and mighty in Washington. Particular friend to President Johnson himself and Lincoln before him.”

  “Now I am certain I don’t know him, sir.” McCulloch, the man who replaced Fessenden. He’d read about it somewhere.

  Cooke cracks a smile. “No, I don’t imagine you do, Lieutenant. But you’re going to be working for him.”

  Molloy tries to link a string of cavalry mounts to the Secretary of the Treasury. Cannot. He sips the dregs of his brandy-​coffee. End this meeting soon, he thinks. Agree to anything to get out.

  “How is that, sir?”

  “His brother-​in-​law—​McCulloch’s wife’s own dear brother—​has the sutler’s concession at Fort Phil Kearny. Had. He had the contract there until two weeks ago when he got himself cut to ribbons along with his wife and an assistant. Nasty, brutish business, Lieutenant, more so when you are in-​law to the Secretary of the Treasury who is a fine friend to President Johnson and a finer friend to our very own Secretary of War, whence comes this order.”

  “Sounds dreadful, sir.”

  “I have the Secretary of War in my ear, Lieutenant. As he no doubt has the Secretary of the Treasury in his and the Secretary of the Treasury has his wife in his own. Justice, they seek, Molloy, I don’t need to tell you, for what has befallen the good sutler.”

  Cooke’s face shows what he thinks of such a notion. Justice? For a sutler? Was it in even God’s power to conceive of such a thing?

  Molloy stays silent.

  Cooke says, “I telegraphed the man and told him that word from the fort was that Indians did for all three of them but he, apparently, has had it from somebody—​and God knows how word got from there to Washington so damn fast�
��​but he has had word that it was not, in fact, Indians at all.”

  “Indians, sir,” Molloy says, gazing down into his cup and finding it empty. He wishes he had a cheroot of his own.

  “Now I do not know, nor give a sweet shit, if it was Indians or soldiers or the goddamn whirling dervishes of Ottoman Turkey who killed him, but some sonofabitch’s neck is going into the noose for it in order that the Secretary of War will cease to breathe down mine. Do you see where this train is headed, Lieutenant?”

  Sober, Molloy assumes he would have seen it by now. “A neck for the noose, sir?”

  “Boots on the gallows. The Secretary wants them and you will bring them to me, Lieutenant.”

  “I don’t see how—​“

  “Or moccasins, Molloy. I do not care a nickel fuck, but someone pays for the murder of the Secretary’s wife’s brother, cad and bastard though he was reputed to be. You’ll move out tomorrow. Bring your orderly and speak to the quartermaster about mules and supply. My orders are here. Show them to whomever you need to show them. Any questions, Lieutenant?” Cooke slides a flat oilskin pouch across the desk to Molloy.

  Molloy sets his mug on the general’s desk and takes up his orders. I may wake up and have dreamt all this, he thinks. Delirium tremens. The Bust Head horrors. “May I ask why I’ve been chosen for this, General?” The words feel dense and slow in his mouth but the general does not seem to notice. Or does.

  Cooke smiles. “Custer has no use for you and I’ve got no one else I care to spare for such a task. And you happen to be here, Lieutenant.” He crushes out his cheroot and turns to a file of papers on his desk.

  Where this train was heading all along, he thinks. No good end to such a task and I am the perfect fit for it. And Kohn. Poor Kohn. I’ll cut him loose. “What if . . .” Molloy hears himself asking. “What if it was Indians, sir? What if—​”

  “A neck for the noose, Lieutenant, and you can pick your regiment for transfer.”

  Careful. Be careful, Molloy thinks, what you wish for. A drink now.

  “I will need . . .” he hears himself saying. “I will need Kohn promoted to sergeant, sir. He deserves it and this job for you will require it.” Molloy does not know how but he feels it important in some way. Sergeant’s pay and the respect to go with it.

  Cooke says, “Give me the orders.”

  Molloy hands them back and Cooke opens the flat pouch, removes the paper from within and scribbles two lines across its bottom.

  “WILL I BEGIN PACKING, Captain?” Kohn asks.

  Molloy gazes vacantly across the wide street that functions as a parade ground here at the Post of Omaha. The flagpole at the center of the ground must be a hundred feet high, the tallest thing in the Territory. The vast flag requires a stronger breeze to make it snap out proud over the plains and for now it hangs a flaccid tangle of stars and stripes.

  “Lieutenant, Kohn, for the love of God.”

  “I haven’t been promoted yet, sir.”

  “I keep you as my orderly under sufferance, Kohn. I don’t keep you for your wit. And you have been promoted. As far as sergeant. As far as you’ll go in this army I’m afraid.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Did you not hear me, Sergeant Kohn? You’ve been promoted. On Cooke’s orders.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Kohn looks at Molloy and decides he does not believe him.

  “You are an ungrateful lout of a Cleveland Jew corner boy, Kohn, with no manners or grace about you.”

  “I will talk to the quartermaster for supplies, sir.”

  “Have you a cigar, Kohn? I find myself in need of the goddess tobacco’s balm.”

  Kohn takes from inside his tunic one of the small cigars the captain likes, knowing that when Molloy begins to speak like a poorly written stage play he is nigh fully drunk and unreachable. It is as if he has let another man into his head to do the talking for him. Nothing of the captain’s self in it. The drink talking. Molloy often says to him, Don’t mind me, Kohn, ’tis the drink talking. The shores of Ireland in his words more than usual when he says it, presenting another voice to the world, this one some cap-​tipping Galway peasant. Neither voice the captain’s own, the one Kohn respects and admires and rarely hears anymore. He strikes a match, cups it and lights Molloy’s cigar.

  “I’ll make for the quartermaster. And we could use another man with us, sir.”

  “May the strength of three men be in our journey.”

  “Yessir.”

  Molloy turns to Kohn. Life bustles about them in the cool autumn air, the headquarters post in Omaha much more a part of the town than most in the army, built within the town itself so that soldiers and civilians mingle and go about their business taking little notice of each other. A platoon marching drill. Wagons. Suited bankers blustering on the capitol house steps. A rasping saw somewhere, the syncopated rapping of hammers on nails. Nails for the coffin-​maker.

  Molloy always thinks this when he hears hammering, sawing, though America rings with the sounds of construction, of carpentry. Always building something in this country, destroying one thing and raising up another. Homesteads, hotels, banks. Coffins. Filled my share of them, God forgive me. He always thinks this too.

  “And what, pray tell, Daniel, have you heard of our journey? What scuttlebutt have you gathered? More than I have, no doubt.” The cigar smoke is dry and bitter in his mouth.

  “We’re for the Dakotas, sir. North to some new fort. The country crawling with Injuns, sir.”

  “Injuns . . .”

  “Yessir.”

  “Spoken like an old Indian fighter. A buffalo hunter. Have you ever killed an Injun, Dan? You’ve butchered whole dozens of men, Kohn, but ever an Injun?”

  Kohn’s face reddens. “I’ll see the quartermaster, sir. And then I’ll see to the mounts and packing.”

  “Pack enough to get us there, Kohn, but don’t fret about returning.”

  “Yessir.”

  Another man inside the captain’s head and that man a son of a bitch, Kohn thinks; a meaner, simpler man able to look at the memories inside his head that Molloy himself cannot.

  Molloy lets smoke leak from the corner of his mouth. Hammers. Nails. The rasping saw. A sergeant’s parade ground bellow as meaningless as the singing of birds.

  “And Daniel?”

  “Sir?”

  The distant popping of muskets at the target range outside the town. Springfields. Molloy knows the sound better than his own mother’s voice and Kohn too notes the musketry and recalls that it has been some time since he has fired a gun or swung a cutlass. Molloy is not overly fond of drilling his men.

  “Libations. We’ll be needing libations for the journey. The road is no place for a dry mouth.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  COOKE’S ADJUTANT, Lieutenant Colonel Pearse, says to Kohn, “Take Rawson. And take care of your timepiece. And your purse. Hell, your goddamn back teeth. He’s been up for theft God knows how many times and it won’t be long before the men suspect that he’s been at it again. I’ve got a report stating the same right here on my desk. And he owes a king’s ransom in card debt. There’s not a man here in Omaha he hasn’t borrowed from and forgotten to pay. I’d give him the brig and the boot but Cooke won’t see a ‘fellow Virginian so abused.’ Those are his words, not mine. The general is fond of the boy, God knows why, but the damn fool will end up with his throat cut if I don’t get shot of him somehow.”

  Kohn could have guessed as much about Rawson. Of all the men on post. There is some justice in it, he thinks. “Begging your pardon, sir, but is there no one else?”

  “Take Rawson and be happy to have him. He’s not a murderer or a violator of women so far as I am aware, or no more so than any common soldier. And you can have one of Captain North’s Pawnee scouts. You will have to pay him yourselves, but if you submit the paperwork on your return, I’ll sign off on it and you’ll get the cost back. The one called Jonathan is in from Caldwell. I just saw him yesterday and he appeare
d sober. He’s a good man to have with you. Count yourself lucky.”

  Kohn did not feel lucky but he did relish the prospect of telling Rawson to load his musket and pack his haversack. See you in hell, Corporal? You will be seeing me before that, Private.

  4

  THE THING THAT MAY OF STARTED US ON THE PATH WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES NOW

  THERE IS NO 1 SINGLE SPARK THAT SETS ALIGHT A TERRIBLE thing to come in a man’s life. Truly how could you point to 1 thing in a life & say it was this that caused what was to happen later? For once you decided on such a thing you would soon see another that came before it & another that led onwards from that until you came to the 1st time your mother ever set her eyes upon your father. It is that far back you could reckon a bad thing started.

  But like meat tween my teeth there is a thing that sticks in my mind as what may of started us on the path to where we find ourselves now. You might say it was the War but my mind lands on a different thing altogether.

  I tell you Sir it was a calf that set us on our way strange as it may sound to you a pitiful thing shunned by a 1st calving heifer with no sense at all.

  A beast born to die that sonofabitch Chillicoth farmer called that calf before he left Tom & myself try our best to save it. And save it? We pure resurrected it before that farmer went welsh on his word & robbed that beast back from us when it came up good & fat with our tending.

  On our mother’s grave Sir I swear we brothers were given that 1/2 stillborn calf fair is fair because that farmer Harris had no knowledge nor notion how to coddle or coax it back to life or how to ruse another heifer to give it first milk. Perhaps it was because his wife & daughters were away that summer with his wife’s sister or perhaps because that rummy son of his could not of reared slugs on a plate of lettuce. I do not know the reason why but he gave that animal to us brothers the way a rich man gives the rotten cut of offal from his table to the poor man & then he took it back & this I think was enough spark to catch a flame to everything I will now tell you on these pages.

  For I do recall Tom at the end of a day’s labouring standing up from the crate he sat upon in 1/2 darkness in our digs there among the beasts on the Harris stake in Chillicoth where we took a job of work as farmhands. I tell you Sir I see it now in my mind like it was only yesterday my brother moving over the fresh hay & packed earth to where the calf was held & the calf seeing my brother shifting in his stall & gazing up at Tom with his big round calf’s eyes brown as poured coffee. That innocent thing I tell you its eyes shone with love for Tom in a way that my brother’s eyes no longer shone for anything since he took that minie ball in the mouth in Tennessee. (Well except for one person you will soon see.)