Days Without End

by Sebastian Barry

  Next day we feel some remorse about working Winona and John Cole brings her over to a Mr Chesebro and asks him could he take an Indian girl for his school if she be a half-caste and his own blood. The gentleman has a little stone school in a lane the back of Pearl Street. He says to John Cole that the town would not stand for that and so John Cole comes back with Winona and says he would like sometimes to kill just for the sake of making his point plainly. He never had no schooling himself of course. Maybe I was thinking myself a great scholar because I was a few years schooled up in Sligo. I guess I was thinking that. So, says John Cole, do you think you could teach her something that she ain’t learned off Mrs Neale? I said I don’t reckon so. There ain’t no Indian school hereabouts because the Indians were drove out years and years ago. Looks like the Chippewa were the big cheeses round here one time. Goddamn it, he says, how come there ain’t no place for Winona? Then he’s talking about this that night to the elegant Beulah McSweny and he says he’ll teach Winona. He says his nickname is the poet McSweny and he has wrote maybe three songs used in the minstrel shows. No, by God, is that right, says John Cole. Yes, he says, and I can school Winona three mornings a week because I only works evenings. That’s just the best, says John Cole, how did you get to be such a gent, Mr McSweny? My father was a free man, he said, on the Mississippi river. Ferrying every damn thing between the English and the Spanish. Where your father now? says John Cole. My father gone so long, says Beulah, there was a seventeen in the date when he was overground. God Almighty, says John Cole.

  Thus we inaugurate the best time in the little kingdom we have pitched up against the darkness. Seems to be a law that if we get a house it’s going to overlook the water. We got a riverside house of four rooms and we got a porch on the street side and it ain’t the best part of town and that’s where we fit like gloves. Like gloves. No one can best imagine the motley crowd that go to make a American town. First you got the have-nothing know-everything goddamn Irish God damn them who will live under leaky steps and count themselves in palaces. Then you got the half-breed Indians mixed with God knows what. Then you got the blacks, maybe they came up from Carolina or them places. Then you got the Chinese and the Spanish families. Where we are is where all these folks come home at night to roost when they’ve done working, mostly at the gypsum mines or doing for the Dutch the other side of town. Our landlord is the poet McSweny. After all he been saving his money for seventy-five years so he got a half dozen properties.

  But that ain’t the point. The point is we living like a family. John Cole know he was born in December or seems to remember that month and maybe I remember I was born in June and Winona says she was born during the Full Buck Moon. Anyhow we roll all that into one and on the first of May we have assigned our birthday for the three of us. We say Winona is nine years old and John Cole has settled on twenty-nine. So that must make me twenty-six. Something along those lines. Point is, whatever ages we be, we’re young. John Cole is the best-looking man in Christendom and this is his heyday. Winona is sure the prettiest little daughter ever man had. Goddamned beautiful black hair. Blue eyes like a mackerel’s blue back. Or a duck’s wing feathers. Sweet little face cool as a melon when you hold it in your hands and kiss her forehead. God knows what stories she seen and been part in. Savage murder for sure because we caused it. Walked through the carnage and the slaughter of her own. You could expect a child that has seen all that to wake in the night sweating and she does. Then John Cole is obliged to hold her trembling form against him and soothe her with lullabies. Well he only knows one and he does that over and over. He holds her softly and sings her the lullaby. Where he got that no man knows not even hisself. Like a stray bird from some distant country. Then he lies on her bed and she pushes in tight against him like you might imagine bear cubs do in the winter hide or maybe even wolves. Tight in, like John Cole was that bit of safety she is trying to reach. A harbour. Then her breathing slowly lengthens and then she is snoring a little. Time to come back to bed and in the darkness or the helpful dim of the candle he looks at me and nods his head. Got her sleeping, he says. You sure do, I say.

  Not much more than that needed to make men happy.

  After a few months of doing our damnedest for Mr Noone it just seems natural to be not always changing garb by the hour and there seems to be greater contentment in it for me to wear a simple-hued housedress and not be always dragging on the trews. Outside is one matter, in another. Winona never does say nothing about it. Never seems to see me only as what I am in my face. Whatever that be. I don’t know then and I don’t know now. But I am easier in the dress, that’s all I can say. Well I would almost attest I say funnier things or things that make my man John Cole laugh like a donkey. Winona makes her plain cooking and we sit the three of us in the dim light and in the summer we have the windows covered against the violent heat and in the winter likewise against the rats of cold that creep in anywhere you leave a finger’s width of a gap. At home Winona don’t sing minstrel songs but those other songs that carry her back to where she begun in the innocence of her youth. We are racked to think we don’t know who even her mother was or maybe it was a woman that we killed. God knows that feels like a colossal-sized crime betimes and if you was counting crimes on a abacus maybe it won’t be the only one we done against her. She could slit our throats in the night with justice, spray out our blood redly on the linen pillows. But she don’t do that. She sings and we listen and all three are returned to the prairie in our heads. She to her guiltless haunts and us to those moments when in truth we stood gazing out onto all that lonesome beauty.

  We alter and cut and stitch our act till it is ten jackets in a row rather than just the one. We learn to listen to the house and take our tack from the humours and rapids of particular nights. The stalls is cheap and oftentimes men come in three times a week and the great change to the houses is the women of the town are coming in too. Fine flamboyant lower-type girls and shopgirls and fishgirls and the girls that bag the gypsum. They’re looking to see this strange dame that is as womanly as a woman like them. They want to peer at it, scope out the mystery. I want to show them it. It makes for wild silences and queer plummeting moments. Where things pitch down into bright darkness. Where my stomach drops to my neat and gleaming shoes. Strange business in Grand Rapids and I never do learn the plus and minus of it. Only drawback is we are obliged to get me into civvies real quick instanter after a performance and I ain’t able now to leave by Mr McSweny’s door but John Cole got to take me out through the theatre saloon as two anonymous Joes and out along the alley with the heaps of bottles and spittoon slops. Pistol in his trouser belt snug as a squirrel. Because a few of them Johnnies fall in love with the shimmer and downright strangeness of the act. Guess they want to marry me. Or have me. Meanwhile John Cole says he loves me more than any man since the apes roamed. All the news in the Grand Rapids Courier is that a man was once an ape which John Cole says is no surprise to him considering.

  John Cole asides from declaring his love gets Winona to write to Lige Magan in Fort Laramie to see how he is getting on. She got a good hand now from Mr McSweny. Lige Magan writes back to say all is dandy with him and that Starling Carlton is also dandy. She off her own bat writes to Mrs Neale because she got warm memories there. The Post Office faithfully carries these flimsy items back and forth along the perilous trails. They don’t seem to lose one link. Mrs Neale writes to say she is missed at the fort and that the other students have been moved on to Cisco where they have found their niches in domestic service. There is a great furore building on the plains she says and Winona has done well to remove herself and asides from that she says the major believes there are other kinds of war brewing generally. I am wondering what she means by that and I write to the major direct to find out. He writes back and says he is hearing dire news from the east and what do I hear where I am and it’s only then I realise what’s gathering. Guess we were heads down in our own business, the act and just living and loving and such. Fierce
stuff fermenting all around right enough and new regiments being formed on every side to defend this that or the other. I never even heard the word Union till I read it in the Courier. Guess that was our lot because I guess we took our tune from Mr McSweny. Ain’t going to be any America unless we fight for it, he says. I ask him that night to fill me in. Suddenly I am all filled in and filled with fervour what’s more. That queer tenderness of heart that rises to fine words. He talks about slaves and the true and proper love of country and the call of Mr Lincoln. Now we’re dizzy with patriotic feeling and desire. John Cole sitting there wide-eyed.

  Soon the whole thing goes up and our audience is petering out. Guttering out like a used candle. The buggers is joining volunteer regiments. Flooding into barracks spirited up in fields. Scraps of great speeches in Washington reach our little district like the bits of things dropped by feeding birds. Mr McSweny allows that he is too old to fight. I’m just too old, he says, though everything still working, mind.

  Then the major writes again and asks will we join his new regiment that he is raising in Boston where he hails from. Says he is leaving Mrs Neale and the girls in Fort Laramie for safety and heading east hisself and if we present ourselves in a week’s time he will induct us. Now he signs hisself Colonel which is a mighty big handle and I guess that’s what he is now but John Cole says we’ll still call him the major for convenience. The poet McSweny undertakes to keep Winona in bibs and biscuits and we give him some dollars we have kept aside. We lock up our goods in big boxes like coffins, my dresses and John Cole’s stage finery, and all, and we kiss Winona and set off. Surely, says John Cole, we’ll be back soon. If you don’t come back I will set off to find you, says Winona. John Cole laughs and then he cries. He holds Winona and kisses her forehead. Mr McSweny shakes my hand and says not to worry only don’t be gone too long on account of my great age. I says I have noted that. And off we go.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SPRING COMES INTO Massachusetts with her famous flame. God’s breath warming the winter out of things. That means something to a thousand boys heaped into camp at a spot called Long Island outside the old city of Boston. Except the endless yards of rain as thick as cloth that falls on us. Battering the tents. But we got new business with the world and our very hearts are filling with the work. That’s how it seems as we set out upon our war.

  Mostly muskets and only a few of them Spencer carbines that so put anger into Starling Carlton when he saw it at Caught-His-Horse-First’s side. Pistols and a few of them famed revolvers. LeMats and Colts. Swords and sabres. Bayonets. That’s what we got to bring against the Rebels. New kinda bullets we ain’t seen to shoot Indians with. Not round like the old ones, but the shape of a arched door into a church. The major in his present guise of colonel takes in a whole ocean of Irish out of the Boston reeks. Stevedores and shovel men and hauliers and rascals and big-mouths and small mousy lads. Whatever’s going because we got to swell into a huge army, that’s the main task. Me and John Cole is corporals for the stint because we’re actual soldiers that done soldiering. Major brought in Starling Carlton too and he’s a sergeant and Lige Magan. And Lige Magan because he getting older now is made colour sergeant and will carry the flag. Must be fifty years old is Lige. Everyone else is just privates, volunteers and loyal men and chancers. There’s a thousand faces and the ones we know best will be in D Company. We sign up for the three years and everyone believes this war will take no more or we ain’t Christians at all. Most of the privates sign for ninety days. Want to do their duty and then go home proud men. We’re drilled up and down our scraggy parade ground and the sergeants try and teach the new boys how to load their muskets but by God they ain’t a quick study. Lucky if they get one in ten balls out. Sheridan, Dignam, O’Reilly, Brady, McBrien, Lysaght, a line of Irish names as long as the Missouri river. A few of the boys been in Massachusetts militias right enough so they ain’t so useless. But God Almighty. Maybe Mr Lincoln better start worrying, says John Cole, looking on bemused as all dickens. Making a hash of simple drills, says Starling Carlton. He come in the day before all bluster and friendship and he hugs John Cole and I swear he nearly kissing him for the joy of the reunion. Sweating like a damp wall. Lige Magan shakes our hands and says it sure is a how-do-you-do this new war and how have you been, boys? We say we been good. How’s that Injun girl? says Starling. Oh, she’s good enough, I say. The major he’s as busy as Jesus at a wedding but he come over anyhow and smiles on us in his way and says Mrs Neale sends her compliments to her old soldiers. That has us laughing. Starling Carlton thinks it’s a bigger joke than it is and can’t stop guffawing face-up into the clouds. Major takes no offence whatsoever and Starling Carlton don’t mean to give none. He’s looking around now blinking and knocking the sweat off his old forage cap. You’ll do your best, boys, I know, says the major. Yes, sir, says Lige. God damn it, I guess we will, says Starling Carlton. I know you will, says the major, in his nice colonel’s uniform. You follow your captain, now, boys, he says. Captain Wilson he means, a quiet red-haired Irish. Then there’s Lieutenant Shaughnessy and Lieutenant Brown. Seems like decent Dublin men enough. Sergeant Magan. Two corporals, me and John. Stew then of Kerrymen and other western seaboard starving types. Fellas with faces like old black bog-oak. And the younger ones all smiles and frowns, listening. Eyes and noses and mouths of all descriptions. Mothers’ sons. Seen already the death of their world and now asking pardon of the Fates so that they can fight for a new one. All the faces. Captain Wilson gives a fine speech just the day we setting out for Washington and I still can see all those faces staring up at him on his saddle-box. God damn it, you could weep at the memory if you had a mind. We only ask, says the captain, that you keep the Union in your heart and by that star steer your course. Your country desires of you something beyond any man’s capacities. It wants your courage and your strength and your devotion and all it might have to give in return is Death. Maybe he got it out of a manual. Talks like a Roman, says Starling Carlton, looking dazed as a damsel. But somehow it hurt us into an understanding. Soldiers fight mostly for dollars which in that case were thirteen. It weren’t like that then. We could of eaten the head off our enemies just then and spat out the hair. Nice Wicklow man with a musical Yankee voice.

  Then happy to be freed from camp we march down to Washington in a noisy blue river of four regiments and are mustered in and inspected by the lofty toffs who are but black specks in the distance and we can’t hear a blessed word of speeches. Most like the same old nonsense, says Starling Carlton but any fool can tell he’s proud anyhow. The whole goddamn seething army is ranked about there and the field guns shone into an ecstasy of sparkling glory not to mention the men spruced up and shaved as best they can manage. Twenty thousand souls ain’t a sparse party. Just ain’t.

  Nice boy called Dan FitzGerald falls in with us in a card-playing capacity so it’s very like old times at Laramie except we’re bivouacked under slightly shifted stars and it’s a city of blue-coated gents all around. We got wives churning uniforms in the wash-churns and we got great boys for singing and even our drummer boy McCarthy who is only eleven years of age is a card. Name sounds like an Irish but he a black boy from Missouri. Missouri don’t know if it’s Rebel or Union so Mc-Carthy he leaves while they decide. There’s big tall men in the next row of tents that are gunners in charge of mortars. You never seen such wide thick arms on men or wide thick barrels on guns. Look like cannon that been eating nothing but molasses for a year. Swole up like a giant’s pecker. They say they’ll be needed under the walls of Richmond but Starling Carlton says there ain’t no walls. So we don’t know what that rumour means. Our company is mostly Kerrymen and FitzGerald he comes from Bundorragha which he says is a filthy poor part of Mayo. I ain’t met many Irish who will talk about those dark matters but he does easy enough. He has a tin whistle does other kinds of talking. He says his family was killed in the hunger and then he walked to Kenmare over the mountains and he was only ten and then over to Quebec like the res
t of us and by a miracle he didn’t take the fever just like me. I asked him did he see anyone eat another in the ship’s hold and he says he didn’t see that but he seen worse. He says when they opened the hatches in Quebec they drew out the long nails and the light came into the hold for the first time in four weeks. All they had gotten on the journey was water. Suddenly in the new light he seen the corpses floating everywhere in the bilge-water and then the dying and then everyone to the last a skeleton. That’s why no one will talk because it’s not a subject. It makes your heart ache. We shake our heads and deal the cards. No one is talking for a while. Goddamn corpses. That’s because we were thought worthless. Nothing people. I guess that’s what it was. That thinking just burns through your brain for a while. Nothing but scum. Now we’ve girt our loins with weapons and we’ll try and win the day.

  There are hard fights sometimes in the camp already but it ain’t with the yellowlegs. Some of those native-born soldiers fear the goddamn Irish since in a bad mood they might knock you down and stomp on your head till they feel better but you won’t. Irish boys all stuffed with anger. Bursting into flame. Who knows. As corporal I am trying to bluster them into peacefulness. Ain’t easy. I can throw them into clink if they don’t come off the boil. They carry a grudge like hunting dogs carry the bird so I got to be fair as Solomon. But then an Irish might be the gentlest man in Christendom too. Dan FitzGerald he would feed you his arm if you was hungry. Captain Wilson he only come out from his home place last year. Says the place still going to hell by the highroad. But he is a tip-top character. He was a major in the Wicklow Regiment of Militia. It seems like his people must be swells but he ain’t high-handed and the company is content with him. Looks like if he says to do something we might do it. Starling Carlton says the trouble with the Irish sodger, the trouble with him is he thinks when he is bid to go do a thing. He turns it over in his mind. He gapes at his officer to see if the order pleases or don’t. That ain’t a good trait in a soldier. Every Irish thinks he be in the right and he will kill the whole world to make a proof. Starling Carlton says the Irish is just ravening dogs. Then he clasps my hand and laughs. Goddamn Starling Carlton, fat as a grizzly bear. He’s a sergeant so I can’t punch him as I would wish.