by Tatjana Soli
Josiah didn’t bother to move his feet from her sweeping.
“When you’re done,” he said to her, “bring me a bottle of your master’s whiskey.” He no longer felt the need for pretense.
Eliza stood upright, shoulders stiff with dislike, her dustpan filled with the general’s precious china.
“Liquor is not served in this house,” she said.
Anne had a hand on each side of the window frame, and Libbie worried she might plunge herself straight through the glass. The girl was fixated on the scout camp in the distance where a few of the Arikara were cooking dinner outside.
Josiah now moved so close to Libbie that she was again immersed in his unwashed, ferine smell.
“They took her when she was a maiden of fifteen.”
He moved even closer, and Libbie’s heart beat wildly. He only slightly lowered his voice.
“She was violated over and over. Ruined. She even bore a few bastards.”
The blood rushed to Libbie’s face and she perspired heavily despite the chill room. She could not believe this man was whispering such obscenities in her ear.
“Her life is worthless. Better if she had died out there. But now … I’m not a wealthy man to take care of her needs.”
Anne whirled away from the window and looked at Libbie as if for the first time.
“My children!”
Libbie had been wrong about the girl. Her face was filled with a surfeit of emotion, her eyes a kaleidoscope of excruciating feeling, a molten sorrow.
“Will you get General Custer to rescue my Solace? My Thomas?”
“Does the general know about your children?”
“Never mind that,” Josiah said.
Anne now rushed at Libbie and went down on her knees, wrapping her arms around Libbie’s legs so tightly it almost unbalanced her.
“I beg you. I want nothing except to have my children returned.”
Libbie trembled. She patted the girl’s head, the hair stiff from being long unwashed. She had never imagined such maternal anxiety in one so removed from the influences of civilization.
“Go wait outside,” Josiah said, his voice low and threatening.
Libbie would not want to be under such a man’s thumb.
The girl slipped out of the room without a word, grateful at the release.
“Damaged beyond return. No one will marry her. Reparations will be all she has to sustain her in this world.”
“I hope that isn’t true.”
“As her relative I’m under obligation to do my best for her. I would hate to think of her ending in a home for the indigent. Or an asylum for the hysteric.”
Libbie shook her head and moved away from him. She could not breathe. Out the window the girl was moving briskly toward the scout camp.
“I will certainly let the general know of your visit,” she said, and walked him to the door.
Sensing a dismissal, his expression became even more dour.
They walked outside, a cool wind blowing, and saw Anne across the distance, sitting crossed-legged by the campfire. She was speaking to one of the Arikara. In her lap was a small boy of three, one of the scout’s children. Libbie did not know the child’s name.
It was strange to see a white woman in a housedress squatting down by the fire as natural as could be, but the girl was more relaxed and animated than she had been the whole time inside with them. The scouts stood around, bemused. Libbie bet that the girl was trying to finagle information as to her tribe’s whereabouts.
When Josiah signaled to Anne to come to the horses, she feigned not to see him. He stalked over the field toward her, his steps stiff, his hands balled into fists. Libbie, feeling protective toward the girl, ran after him.
“She can stay a while longer if it pleases her,” Libbie offered.
Josiah shook his head. “She will come now with me. Where she belongs. She needs to be in the bosom of her family to be right.”
The girl watched his progress toward her and let go of the child, readying herself in a crouch, the fire between them the only barrier.
“I cannot tell you the trial she’s been. Quite demented,” he spat out.
Libbie was sure the same could be said from the girl’s side.
When Josiah ordered her to come, Anne shook her head.
Libbie did not understand the import of what was happening but sensed it was dire.
He lunged at the girl, but she easily dodged him, to the laughter of the scouts.
Libbie was stricken, feeling the animal terror inside the girl, not wanting him to catch her.
“Reverend Josiah!”
Now he leaped over the fire, singeing a pant leg, and caught at the girl’s dress, tearing the hem. She twisted away from him, picking up a sharp stick of kindling, and thrust it in his thigh. He stopped, purple-faced, and looked down as blood saturated the cloth of his pants.
Libbie let out a scream, and now the scouts realized the fun was up, and they easily caught the girl between them, pinning her arms against her like a bird’s banded wings so that she was helpless.
Josiah walked up to her, saying something Libbie could not make out. As if possessed, the girl pitched forward with all her might, even though Arikaras held each arm, and bit his cheek as if it were a ripe apple. More blood, and Libbie was quite sure she would faint.
She could have nothing to do with the girl as much as she sympathized with her plight. The poor child had indeed gone mad.
Josiah smiled as he touched his cheek, blood trickling down his chin and onto his shirt. He now seemed more composed, even pleased at the outcome, as if vindicated. He slapped Anne so hard across her face her whole head was jerked back.
“Sir!” Libbie yelled. “I will not stand for this!”
These were the wages of the brutal life many lived on the frontier, a reality from which Libbie deliberately kept herself aloof. Something terrible, irreparable, had been done to the child. Libbie only wished she knew who was to blame but assumed it went back to a whole line of men who had wronged the girl, possibly up to and even including her Autie in his neglect.
After they left, Libbie never spoke of the girl. When Autie finally did return, she told him nothing of the visit.
* * *
THE DAY OF HOMECOMING ARRIVED. The men rode in, tanned and bearded from their long summer outdoors. Faded and patched uniforms, boots worn out at the toes, even the overloaded wagons looked spent.
Overcome, Libbie hid inside behind the door, her happiness so intense it was akin to pain. Her heart was like to explode. When she heard the band start a tolerable “Garry Owen,” she could contain herself no longer. She ran outside crying and in front of all hugged Autie. Tom stood behind, patiently waiting his turn for a sisterly hug. The men set up a great cheer. Reunions made a moment of unalloyed joy for all there. After the unsettling feeling of the captive’s visit, Libbie was trebly grateful for the life they had together.
The wagons bristled with elk horns strapped to their exterior, giving them the appearance of a strange breed of beetle. Autie would have a magnificent chandelier constructed from a number of them to illuminate their parties and dances in the great room. He gave away the surplus horns as presents. The wagon beds groaned under loads of specimens from scientific investigations as well as the gold exploration. Crowded together were mineral specimens of mica, quartz; petrified specimens of marine shells and wood; pressed flowers; snake rattles; skins of numerous animals; and a menagerie of live animals. Tom had collected an assortment of snakes, which he kept in boxes. The academic nature of the “souvenirs,” rather than the usual gruesome ones of war, pleased her.
As she had doubted the veracity of the brothers’ story, they produced artifacts of the “beau” skeleton found at the cave entrance. Her eyes went wide to see a brass button engraved with the initials of her long-lost admirer although it most certainly did not belong to him.
After all had been unloaded, a lone keg was brought off Autie’s personal wagon. It cont
ained the most heavenly water from a mountain stream. Libbie had Eliza go fetch glasses. After the water was poured, she held hers up to the sunlight, marveling at its clarity as much as its taste. Clear water was only a memory during those years at the fort. It was amazing how deprivation made that first taste gloriously memorable for decades afterward. They had become so habituated to the murky, sediment-filled kind from the muddy Missouri they hardly knew what to make of such a luxury and doled it out in their finest glasses as if it were champagne.
NEW YORK CITY, WINTER 1876
They had gone on leave to the States in late autumn. Although Custer savored his trips alone to New York City, it was worth much to watch Libbie take delight in the civilization long denied her. They dined at Delmonico’s. He took her to clever dinner parties where as usual he was expected to sing for his supper with Indian tales, although these had lost the sheen of the novel for him years ago. At thirty-six, he was not a young pup anymore. The wealthy and important flattered him as extravagantly as ever, but he began to suspect it was because it cost them so little.
For the first time he took careful inventory of the houses, better furnished than any he could provide for Libbie. Too, he noticed the fineness of the men’s suits, the stylish French cuts of the women’s silk dresses compared with Libbie’s homespun frocks, although in his biased opinion she still outshone them by her natural beauty unadorned. Although she was too tactful to ever admit thinking this, he felt a deep dissatisfaction in their station.
His tactic was to adopt an attitude of swagger. He wore his most threadbare uniform, his most worn-out boots, his military ulster for overcoat as badge of authenticity. He would play the part of hero, Indian fighter, he need not dress the dandy. High society lapped it up. He was as unreal to them as a character out of a vaudeville show. He rented rooms far above his means on Fifth Avenue because he believed their workaday hardship merited it. Libbie would soon enough return to their clapboard home at Fort Lincoln, and he would again be making the hard ground his bed. He would not admit it to the old lady, but he had accumulated gambling debts and had speculated on a mining concern with borrowed money. The interest rates charged him were usurious. Anxiety now ate at him.
As they strolled a fashionable street of women’s stores, Libbie’s glance stopped on a beautiful baby-seal muffler, the kind all the women wore that season. He marched in and purchased it, not asking the price, knowing that buying it would mean having to go home earlier. Her delicate hands, though, would be as stylishly toasty as those of the highest society lady.
He could not put his finger on it—the season was as spectacular as any previous one—but his enjoyment was forced, his gaiety strained. It was akin to alcohol on one unused to it. The first few times the effect was divine, but that initial euphoria was not to be repeated, no matter how much one imbibed later. All drunks could attest this truth. In his experience only battle never diminished in its power to intoxicate.
Custer had been waiting for something to happen in his life that was too long in coming, a victory impressive enough to take care of his whole extended family. He was their rock, not only for Libbie and Tom, but the rest of the Custers, too. At the least he needed to be named field commander for the next, possibly last, Sioux campaign.
Even when Tom joined them in the city it did little to lift his mood. His brother, too, had gone through a rough patch. His fiancée, Lulie, had passed away finally from the consumption that had plagued her for years. Custer had considered the relationship fanciful at best. Lulie was a delicate flower who never strayed far from Jersey City. For his part, there had never been a shadow of possibility that Tom would resign his commission. The interesting question was why his brother bothered with the charade of an engagement at all. Why not find someone suitable?
Tom had fallen into his usual vices when away from Libbie’s influence, but now he showed new confidence after the Rain-in-the-Face capture. The Indian warrior had been heard bragging of the killing of two soldiers during the Yellowstone campaign. Tom had laid a trap and captured him at a trading post. At last he was coming into his own. Perhaps Tom was ready to spread his wings.
That winter Custer ran into an old friend from West Point, a man who he once had considered a rival. Grosnor had left the service years ago to pursue business interests, but the new life had been difficult for him. Custer was surprised by how he had aged, his body gone soft down to the potbelly. How he longed, he claimed, for the simple choices of the battlefield. Bravery or cowardice, victory or defeat, life or death. Civilian life by comparison was murky, unfathomable. Grosnor’s eyes moistened, and he wiped at his lips. He whispered into Custer’s face, his breath heavy with whiskey.
—This life is a slow death. How I envy that you stayed.
As the season wore on, Custer realized he was not at his best in the city. He was a man of the country, he belonged to the empty spaces where he had spent the greater part of his life. He understood Grosnor only too well.
Nightly he woke up with dreams of the men who had died fighting either for or against him. They had grown to a large, unwieldy crowd, an assorted group of men in uniform, Indians, women and children, horses, dogs, buffalo, antelope, deer, bears, birds without count. They crowded the hallways and jostled one another in the empty midnight street below. They clamored for his presence, but he knew better than to give it. One night it got so bad he woke up Libbie, and she asked him why he was pointing out the window.
How had it come to pass that a man could feel more at ease in the wilderness than in civilization? But so it was for him. He understood hardship, had even come close to understanding death, at least in terms of the battlefield. Still, if a soldier fought bravely there was honor in that. What he didn’t understand, what he couldn’t tell Libbie, was the sickening disorientation he felt in the cities.
Society had a stench. Although the stakes were less than in battle (no one died of a snub), the loss was more insidious. People, wealthy people especially—Astors, Vanderbilts—ate at table with him, hungering for his entertainment. He was their trained pet, his act to bring them in contact with the real. He was a war hero. He had killed men. The rich, old men thrilled at that. The scantily clad women clamored for stories of Indians lusting for white women, the bloodier the depredations, the better. No one who had experienced the reality would consider it entertainment fodder.
He refused to trade on the deaths of his men so made up tall tales instead. He understood he was there to play a part. He, not those on the stage, was the consummate actor. Yet his part in history was ending, and he needed to reinvent himself. The sum total of all the dinners ended up in not enough opportunities to quit the army. Frankly he did not much have the stomach for quitting it either. Sitting in those drawing rooms, he felt as much a curiosity as the Indians themselves.
If he could have chosen his talent and vocation other than soldiering, he might have chosen to be an actor. Always when they visited the States, the first order of business was to get tickets to any available plays. Other than the battlefield the theater was the one place he felt himself totally present. Those big, clear-cut choices Grosnor lamented not finding in everyday life were skillfully laid bare in a play.
Years before, he had become good friends with the actor Lawrence Barrett, and that winter Lawrence played Cassius in Julius Caesar. Custer sat on the edge of his seat for every performance, sometimes going backstage to sit with his friend while he waited to be called back on. It was very much like waiting out the lulls of a battle. The old lady counted and claimed he sat through forty performances that winter. It was as thrilling in its way as battle, the knowing of the outcome in advance in no way diminishing the excitement. This play in particular seemed torn from Custer’s life, it rolled around in his head during the day much as it must have for Barrett before each night’s performance. It seemed to be speaking directly to him, but he knew this was the trick of all great art—it spoke to all men and addressed each one at a time, in the solitude of his own mind and hea
rt.
He smiled as he walked down the street to lunch, changing the words he knew by heart.
Danger knows full well
That Custer is more dangerous than he.
* * *
NO ONE EVER LISTENED to a story except to find a clue to his own fate within its progress. When they left to go back to Fort Lincoln in late winter rather than waiting for spring, their friends asked why they had to depart so soon. Jaws dropped when Custer announced that they had simply run out of money. It was somehow in bad taste in society to mention the truth. None offered to part with theirs to lengthen their stay.
He did not despair, as he felt he had firm prospects. Literary men had praised his articles, and there was talk of money to be had on the lecture circuit that fall. Who would have thought it possible to earn one’s living by the pen of all things? If the summer campaign delivered his grand victory perhaps he could aim higher than a scribbler.
* * *
THAT SPRING BEGAN with the winter’s unraveling. Events occurred whose full import would not make themselves known until the fateful summer. He passed through those months with the play’s counsel still in his ears. Like in a play, the various strands began tightening: two thieves accused of stealing grain from the army shared imprisonment, and in the case of one, chains, with Rain-in-the-Face, the warrior accused of the murders during the Yellowstone expedition. One spring night that April, they escaped. Once safe, they sawed off the shackles binding them and separated.
Another version of the story was that the two grain thieves had arranged the escape and paid off the guards to effect it. Worried that Rain-in-the-Face might sound the alarm, they invited him to join. Since the escapees were not pursued, nor the guard on duty punished for dereliction, Custer feared that the latter was the likely truth.
Tom raged that his glorious capture should come to naught. In actuality Rain-in-the-Face was still only accused, although he had been heard bragging of the murders on the reservation and had confessed before officers. According to the Indian, the two men—one a veterinarian, the other a sutler—were unarmed when attacked. Rain had first shot the old man, who did not die immediately but fell off his horse a short ride away. Quickly Rain went to him and smashed his skull with a stone mallet, then shot his body with arrows for coup. The younger man sat shaking in the bushes, making clear signs of surrender and peace, going as far as handing over his hat as a gift. Disgusted by such cowardice, Rain shot him with a gun, then finished with arrows. Neither man was scalped for the simple reason that one was bald, the other wore closely cropped hair, a fact of which the white listeners took careful note.
