Days Without End (Days Without End #1) - Sebastian Barry Page 0,13
them with his spade, that was just a little patch he had kept behind our house, it wasn’t like he was a true farmer. The frost was still on the ground everywhere and the temperature had started to freeze the little river that wound past the camp, making it I suppose a good choice for a stopping place. The grasses were sere and indifferent really, scratching the horizon of the sky with their sharp stems. That sky was clear and high and the lightest blue. We were four hours digging out the trenches. The troopers were singing as they worked, dirty-worded songs we all knew. We were sweating like window-glass in the winter. The major drove us on in his strange way, sort of cold, indifferent, like the grasses. He was set to do something and he was doing it. In the town he had asked the padre to come out but the townsmen vetoed that. After the hours of digging we were sent then to fetch across the bodies and we brought the bodies of the women and the children to the pit and after that we went to the burnt-out lodge and fetched in among the debris and the black dirt and got whatever we could of the bones of the braves, heads and such. Threw them in. You might have had a worried look when you saw how gently some of the men threw. Others throwing like they was throwing nothing of particular importance. But the gentle ones throwing gently. John Cole for instance. As for talk there were only the usual repartee that means nothing but somehow saves the heart and the day. It became clear to me that many of the squaws and the children had got out of the copsewood, because you could see still the trampling effect of their rushing off on the underwood. I found myself hoping many of the bucks had got away too but maybe I was asking for trouble thinking that. It was such a beautiful spot and the work was so lousy. You couldn’t help almost a more human thought. Nature asks you to go back a little and forget things. Gets under your hardened nature like a burrowing creature. When all the bodies were in, we covered over the pits with the soil we had left, like we were putting pastry tops on two enormous pies. It was wretched. Then we stood and took our hats off at the major’s behest and he spoke his few words. God bless these people, he said, and though we was doing our work as we were bound and ordered, may God forgive us. Amen, we said.
It was dark and we had hours of riding before us and we were not disappointed to mount up and head back.
Next day we were risen early at the fort and we washed off all our dirt at the water butts and put on our finery for the feast. That was, our usual uniforms brushed down best we could, and Bailey the barberman cut as many of the hairs as he could and shaved as many of the faces as he could too. There was a big line of men in their vests, waiting. The hair was bagged up in a linen sack and burned because of the nits carousing there. Then we were nigh ready, and rode with what grace and style we could muster back into town. It is a fine thing to see three hundred men riding, and we all felt the fineness in it, I suppose we did. Some of us had drunk our livers clean in half, though we were young enough still. I weren’t even eighteen. Lower backs ground away by the hard saddles. Pain everywhere on waking. But the little grandeur of the line of riders affected us too. We were about the people’s business, we had done something for the people. Something like that. Puts a fire into your belly somehow. Sense of rightness. Not justice exactly. Fulfilling the wishes of the majority, something along those lines, I don’t know. That’s how it was with us. I guess it’s long ago now. Seems to sit right up in front of my eyes just now though.
Major let Watchorn and Pearl out for the festivities, he seemed to think that was the right thing to do. He said he would tend to them later. Where were they going to run? Wasn’t nothing around us only nothing.