Days Without End

by Sebastian Barry

  He don’t even say hello and he goes to the gap between the sheds and barn and starts shooting there. I’m wiping blood out of my eyes and the world is a ringing bell but I drag myself along and stand at his big back and peer out and see Tennyson standing straight up on the porch with his rifle ranged and firing out across the fields at figures running for the scrubby copses. Rosalee standing with a box of bullets and Tennyson only pausing to reload his Spencer. Then firing like a veritable trooper and also Starling firing and maybe Tennyson thinks it’s me. One foe man nearly made it to the house but he’s splayed in death and another further back has fallen and is just a black brushstroke on the frost. The rain that fell has frozen on the earth and that’s the tale it told. Then curious peace descends and the firing echoes in your brain and it’s like we taste the moments ticking by for Death but Death retreats. I yearn to know what’s happened in the house and why is John Cole not took his share of firing on the porch? Why our old galooting friend’s sprung up might be another question. My ear is spouting blood and the bell of time is queerly tolling and maybe then down I fall. Before I fall completely Starling stoops and drags me up and hoiks me against his shoulder. Goddamn Irish, he says, never could abide them.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ME AND STARLING go back round by the barn because we don’t want Tennyson killing us for good measure. So we come up the back of the house. Inside we got Lige Magan kneeling to John Cole. First I think he’s dead but he just had his eyes closed the moment I come in. Then he opens them and sees Starling. Jesus, he says, what you doing here, Sarge? He just appeared like a angel, I says. If that’s a angel I ain’t going to heaven, says Lige Magan. Where in the name you sprung from, Starling? Lige says. There’s a pour of blood coming out of John Cole’s thigh. How he got a bullet in a thigh beats me. Must of shot him through a chink in the log wall. Jesus, John Cole, I say, you hurt bad? I see Winona over against the kitchen wall. She’s pale as a summer sky. Now Rosalee comes back in and Tennyson must be keeping a weather eye open still on the porch because he don’t follow her. I rummage around in the wound with the horseshoe pliers to get that bullet and then Starling and Lige sit on John Cole and I give the wound a poke with the smoky poker and there’s a smell of John Cole burning. He lets out a roar wouldn’t shame a donkey. Holy merciful God, he says. I hope those killer boys don’t come back, Lige says. They ain’t coming back because we killed too many, says Rosalee. I think we got the most of them, says Tennyson, just come in. I shot Tach Petrie anyhow, he says. You did good, says Lige.

  An hour later we’re just looking at the coffee Rosalee’s prepared. No one drinks. Well, Starling, says Lige, what the hell brings you here? Starling ain’t a man for a slow story. He tells it. I here on different business, he says. I weren’t here to save you sorry boys. I is surprised you living such reckless lives with murdering thieves and such creeping up. Now, Starling, what this other business? Well, I’ll tell you, he says. Then he tells us. Caught-His-Horse-First has took Mrs Neale and her two girls. Then he were seen over in Crow country. That a mighty big country but the major and two hundred men ride for days. Not a trace of the Sioux. Next day come into the fort a German trader with a message from Caught-His-Horse-First. Says he killed the woman and the child with black hair. He wants his sister’s child and he’ll give the other white child in barter. Then, he says, he will make another treaty and then there will be peace on the plains. Starling says the major’s face look like someone painted him with whitewash. Never saw a human person so white and strange. And who’s his goddamn sister’s child, Lige Magan asks. That that Injun kid there, Starling says. So, says Starling, the major wants to know where to find her and I says I know, she’s with John Cole and Thomas McNulty in Tennessee. Well, go down to Tennessee and ask them to bring her back, the major says – please God they will. John Cole’s groaning on the bed. It’s the worse idea I ever heard! he cries. Goddamn it. Then Starling Carlton is shouting things and John Cole shouting back. Something in my stomach lurches. Then Winona steps in close to him, touches his hand on the ragged sheet. I got to go back, she says. John Cole’s staring at her then and don’t say nothing. I guess he feels the force of some strange justice in her words. He’s white as a apple core. I ain’t letting you, he says. Mrs Neale was kind and good, she says. I owe her. You’re a good girl, Winona, he says, God knows, but you ain’t going back. No, but I got to, she says. Well, you ain’t.

  The whole thing decided the next morning when Winona and Starling Carlton gone. She’s took a horse from the field. Must have left in the small hours. John Cole can’t shift so I get another horse from Lige and set off after. Can’t be but six hours ahead. I’ll catch them. I ride like a devil for a bit but then can’t risk winding my horse. It’s deep December and this ain’t no season for a trip to Wyoming – that what they calling that country nowdays. Three days later I come up into Nebraska. Guess I’m seeing the signs here and there, hoofprints in the thin snow, or think I do, but it could be anyone. I asked every farmer I passed in Missouri did they see a fat man travelling with a squaw? Starling’s pushing on hard for sure. After four days I know I ain’t going to catch him and it irks me now when night falls, but I got to sleep too. Only human nature. I got to kill what I can on the way but it mostly birds and jackrabbits and at least I got dried beef. One afternoon way off in the distance I see a vast low pancake of smoke rising off what seems to be a visitation of blackness. It’s a herd of buffalo that strangely lifts my heart. Must be in their thousands but too far south for me to try my good fortune. The big Platte river sits somewhere north of me and I know there was an Irishman for every buffalo digging out the railroad in these late years. They say the Pawnee in ferocious temper all round here and I am nearly afraid to strike my lucifers to make a fire but in the night the glass falls to the positions of death. I hope Starling finds water and food if only for Winona’s sake. Then it’s a blizzard comes. A woeful blizzard with wind so sharp it would shave off your beard. All I can see is the moon of my compass. The blizzard blows five days and when it stops I ain’t no wiser. Surprised to see scattered farms and houses in western Nebraska where once there was only the strange sea of grass. Onto the big trail now but no one runs oxen this late in the year. If they even come this way now. The new railroad rolls on into eternity but the rails as silent as the rocks. The land all silver white and the sky high and loathsome dark. Ain’t a soul to see. Snow lies two feet deep and the poor horse don’t like it. I come through a little patch of graves where Irish and Chinee buried. Just a little scrap of ground with a wooden fence in all that winter-hampered silence. That night there’s a great jamboree of lightning and noise that makes the far hills stand out black as burnt bread and then I got to hobble my horse and hunker against a rock. Thunder so loud it frights the dreams out of my head. Memories flying out. Just wanting Winona. Something about the major’s loss gnaws at my heart. But I’m wanting Winona.

  When I get to the fort at last I am inclined to feel some relief. The picket lets me pass without a word. I go straight to the major’s office without even searching for Starling. I got to go where the decisions is made. That’s how it is. I go in and I see the major. His face is thin and white. He don’t look like the man I knew. He comes straight over from his table and takes my right hand in his. He don’t even speak. In the creases of his sere face there is what looks like redness painted. It just don’t look right. He looks like he swallowed a live rattlesnake and it’s biting him from the inside. Striking again and again and he don’t flinch. He says something about his gratitude. He says it’s all set for tomorrow and messages been sent. If I want a ninety-day signing he can give it and rescind it when it’s done. I can’t find the damn words to tell him why I came. He must think I came up with Starling. On his table is a daguerreotype of Mrs Neale that was likely taken about the time he married her. Maybe old Titian Finch hisself it was who took it. He catches me looking at it. In his eyes I see a glimmer of his old self. He says something about Angel his daughter and th
en I say I can’t credit that Mrs Neale is gone. Mrs Neale is gone right enough, he says, and Hephzibah too. That’s it, he says, you are quite right. That Captain Carlton was going to fetch you was the only thing that kept me breathing. Please God tomorrow we’ll have Angel back. We’ve put a drummer boy’s uniform on Winona, he says, to show what we think of her. I just can’t find the words that John Cole would need me to find. I’m staring back at him and then I am saluting and going out. The return to the fort bathes me in past times. Strange shadows and voices eddy back. Troopers that once I knew and the horrible singing and bitter character of Sergeant Wellington. Every life has its days of happiness despite the ugly Fates. I seen plenty men pass in my mind from something admirable to something you don’t care about. But not that whittled major. That’s what I’m thinking I guess. That straightforward man that never could bear injustice.

  Next business is to find Winona and find out how she fares. Two weeks with Starling Carlton would wear out St Paul. I’m so hungry I could eat the head of John the Baptist but first I go searching. Starling is captain of A Company and that’s where I find her. She’s sitting by the stove in her new attire and by God for a second I think she’s a boy right enough. She got her shining black hair stuffed into her forage cap. But up she springs and rushes over to me. The most affectionate drummer boy in the history of the army. How that Starling treat you? I says. He never spoke the whole way, she says. He never said a word? Only gived me orders, where to sit, to lie. Goddamn strange and blighted soul, I said. Then Starling hisself clumps in making the wooden floor bounce. He stops to gauge what I’m about and he draws out his revolver. You step back from her, he says, or I shoot you now, you filthy Judas. Holy Christ, Carlton, I says, hold your horses. I ain’t gainsaying you.

  It’s with strange and darksome tread that I go over to the requisition depot and draw my corporal’s uniform. I dress right there among the shelves and the quartermaster’s clerk does his best as always to fit such a wren-sized man and he gives me my belt and accoutrements and I keep my own shoes. Ain’t going to suffer in a pair of army brogues. The armoury issues a rifle and a gun. And as I’m tying my shirt and tucking in my balls I don’t know what gets into me. The years fall away and it’s like the first day in barracks with John Cole. St Louis a thousand years in the past. And in my mind’s eye too I see him lying in bed in Tennessee with the hole in his thigh. I see him just a ragged gossoon the first moment I met him under a hedge in Missouri. I am dizzy with visions of John Cole. I wonder am I betraying this man most dear to me. Maybe I am, maybe I am. But I’m also praying for things I don’t even have names for and that sit in the dark of my mind unknown.

  That German trader’s been busy as a dung-fly. He’s going to lead us to the meeting place. Don’t know where the dollars are in it for him but he’s a little cross man with no hair and a foreign-looking hat. I’m told he got shares in the new railroad town of Laramie a hundred miles to the south but I don’t credit that. He’s donned a white striped suit that wasn’t washed since the Flood receded. Someone says his name is Henry Sarjohn which don’t sound very German to me. Mr Sarjohn likes his tobacco anyhow and chews it in a big wet froth in his mouth. When he talk to the major he keeps turning his head and spitting. We’re going to be two days riding and we ain’t bringing cannon that I can see. There’s five regiments full-brimmed with men in the fort because fear of the Sioux has made inroads on government hearts. They went into another treaty in ’68 but the railroad beginning to bust out the land. I could fancy riding with five thousand. But only two companies are allowed by Caught-His-Horse-First for this fandango. That’s two hundred soldiers and his band is said to have growed to three hundred. Doesn’t bother the major. He’s going to get his daughter. Maybe he thinks if he don’t it don’t matter how many soldiers in the field. He’ll be happy to die. He got that look to him. Desperate and gathered. Like a man on a high bridge thinking to jump. You’d nearly be a-feared of him. Starling Carlton is mounted on a big grey horse and it’s the coldest day yet in the year and of course he’s sweating. Pouring down into his collar and it hangs on his eyebrows in tiny icicles. He surely is the most unnatural bugger in Christendom. We ride at the back of the companies and Winona’s tucked in close to us. You sure, I say, you sure? I can run us out of here easy, just give me the signal. I sure, she says, and gives me her smile. Goddamn it, I say. Didn’t they give you a drum with that uniform? I say. No, they didn’t, she says. She’s laughing then. I ain’t laughing, I ain’t laughing. If I still got a heart it’s breaking.

  Trying to figure out this plan. We going to give Winona to her uncle and then take back Angel Neale. What happens to Winona after? They think she’s going to don Sioux skirts and speak Sioux again? Not sure folks are thinking about Winona. I know they are not. Starling Carlton just loves his blessed major and will effect all in his power to succour him. Of course he will. Major the fairest man I ever met but he been filleted out with the knife of grief. Men I knew well in former days still in the company and it’s so strange to be clad in blue again. Little Sarjohn he rides out ahead and bobs about on his mule like he know what he’s doing. Those familiar hills now dressed in the lace and shawls of winter. Even in distress the land seems to solace you. Guess the black truth is it crosses through our hearts.

  Starling Carlton leads my old company and I got my corporal work to do. There’s a strange yellow-faced fella called Captain Sowell who leads Company A. Looks like his cheeks were shaved from wood and he got Dundrearies just like Trooper Watchorn years ago. Man’s got a thorn bush each side of his nose you’d say. Starling Carlton ain’t inclined to speak to me so I don’t ask him nothing. I doubt if he trusts me but I ain’t planning nothing but to keep Winona safe. Now she’s ordered up beside the major who’s mounted on his fine black mare. When you see a horse like that you know you been riding a sorry nag all through Nebraska and Wyoming. Her coat gleams in the silvery glamour of the snow-light. It’s a long time since I rode with the major and all the old medicine of loyalty floods into my heart. Suddenly I feel sorely four or five sorrows. The loss of old comrades in times past. The dead in battles. The murder of Mrs Neale, a gentle woman. Somewhere in the back of all that are other matters. The shady ghosts of my family long gone by in Sligo. Sligo. A word I hardly even sounded in private thought in a decade of years. The filthied dress of my mother floats behind my eyes. My sister’s pinafore ruined by Death. The thin cold faces. My father lengthwise like a smear of yellow butter. A stain. His tall black hat as crushed as a squeezebox. Sometimes you know you ain’t a clever man. But likewise sometimes the fog of usual thoughts clears off in a sudden breeze of sense and you see things clear a moment like a clearing country. We blunder through and call it wisdom but it ain’t. They say we be Christians and suchlike but we ain’t. They say we are creatures raised by God above the animals but any man that has lived knows that’s damned lies. We are going forth that day to call Caught-His-Horse-First a murderer in silent judgement. But it was us killed his wife and his child. The first Winona. And many more that were kin to him. Our own Winona was wrested from these plains. We took her like she were our natural daughter. But she ain’t. What is she now? Plucked all two ways and there she is dressed as a drummer boy in the cavalry of the United States and easily laughing. She pleased to her soul to be answering the hurt of the major because the major’s wife once showed her kindness. Winona, the queen of this o’erwhelming country. God damn it but a corporal best not weep. And John Cole lying in our bed at home and wondering what I’m doing. Ain’t I treasoned him and gone back on my true word? The world ain’t all just grasping and doing. It’s thinking too. But I ain’t possessing the brain to think it all clear. A snowfall made mostly of dark gaps and wind starts to fall on my black folly. The companies ride on with a German jackanapes in front. But no man such a jackanapes as me.

  Caught-His-Horse-First don’t straight off show his face. His boys are waiting at the back of a deep glen. Trees on slopes so steep you wonder how could
they manage there. Dark evergreens rushing up towards the sky as if a kinda fixed fire. A cold crowd of silver birches at the base like maidens at a wedding. The Sioux seem changed to me. Ain’t got no feathers in their get-ups and their hair looks cut by barbers. They got every strange scrap of whiteman’s clothes you ever saw for sale. Rags mostly. Here and there the breastplates made of thin steel wire. These Sioux haven’t helped us in the war and no one favours them much now. These recent dealings ain’t put a polish on nothing. But the major sitting up straight in his saddle, peering about like he might see his daughter somewhere. A strange atmosphere over us, Indian and soldier. Like a performance about to begin in Mr Noone’s hall. Soldiers glancing quickly at each other and no one likes the glistening and plentiful arms the Indians bear. Daggers and pistols too. There’s a kinda look to them like we being met by tramps. No-good people. Their fathers owned everything here and we was never heard of. Now a hundred thousand Irish roam this land and Chinese fleeing from their cruel emperors and Dutch and Germans and boys born east. Poured in across the trails like a herd without an end. Every face before us look like it were slapped. Slapped and slapped again. Dark faces squinting out from under cheap hats. Beggars really. Ruined men. That’s what I am thinking. Then up from the copsewood yonder rides Caught-His-Horse-First. I ain’t seen him for many years. He got his war bonnet on and all his clothes is good. Musta made a special effort for the day. His face looks proud and cross as Jesus in the Temple. Riding a fine and lovely stallion and no bother to keep it reined. Looks like Sarjohn speaks the Sioux. Talking for a bit. Major just sits his horse now seeming placid and still like he was inspecting troops on the parade ground. I can only see the back of his head. His uniform too is brushed and good. His hatbrim’s been furled nice by his subaltern. Probably slept on his uniform last night to crease it. Even when the line of Indians shivers back and opens a little gap and the major’s child is led through the major doesn’t stir. It’s a nest of wasps and he ain’t going to kick it.