boys and the nigger stared on me, and I held the letter up and waved it like a battle flag. “Boys, this is a wonderful big country.”
BOOK TWO
Equality of reward is out of the question.
—PIERCE EGAN
7
I WAS BORN ON a cold dark wave, pitched high to be dropped low, somewhere between Hamburg and Baltimore. The tale was often told to me. I squalled belowdecks and bounced on the ocean, a hungry new thing sprung on the world, far at sea.
Missouri was the promised land for Germans. Newspapers in the Old World printed glowing accounts of it and a rush of immigrants headed for the cheap land, thick-wooded rolling hills and good water of the state. My father was a vintner and my mother a vintner’s wife. It was that simple.
My first memory is of steamboats hooting by on the Big Muddy. Picnics were made of their passing, Americans and immigrants alike gathering on river bluffs to watch them churn upriver or down.
As that springtime of war baked into a hot dangerous summer, these thoughts came often to me. The days were filled with strife and hurting and long rides. We galloped up on Federal convoys at Blue Cut and Quick City. In both instances they fought back a little. It was brave of them. None was spared.
By night my thoughts roamed when possible.
Asa Chiles often came to mind. Jack Bull’s father was a tall man, with hair the shade of iron, and a firm chin. His mouth was small and tight, but it could stretch into a smile that was wide enough. My father worked for him in the vineyards, as Asa Chiles’s Winzer, for Asa had a dream of great wines being made in Missouri. The plantation was mainly concerned with hemp growing, but a good chunk of it was set aside for grape experiments.
In late July Josiah Perry went to visit his family in Cass County. We received word that he was killed soon thereafter, murdered by a Unionist named Arthur Baines who lived in that area. It made us all sad, and angry, so we went to the funeral, seventy-five riders strong by now, for new men were driven to us in the bush every day.
A few of the townspeople were glad to see us and the Perry family seemed proud of the high regard we showed for Josiah. We were shot in the neck with much good whiskey, but even that did not make me fond of the town. There was a pinched look to the whole of it, and pinched well and good it had been. That whole half of Missouri was being pinched and put to waste by Jayhawkers, Federals and militia. There were so many of them that we could be but a wrong nail in their boots, painful to walk on but not crippling.
We did what we could for our people.
After a sweet-sung funeral we found Arthur Baines at his home. The nearby presence of Federals gave him too much confidence. We pulled him into the yard as his family wailed.
“Josiah Perry was a traitor and a thief,” Baines cried. He had some sand in him. “You are all traitors and thieves, too!”
A ball took effect in his chest, then, and he insulted us no more.
That was one harmful scene I was glad to be a part of. Josiah Perry, bless his clean white soul, had been a fine comrade, and retribution is necessary to keep any balance.
In the years gone by Jack Bull had had a brother named Stoddard, but he drank a cup of bad milk and died at one. It was a tragedy to the family, and no new brother could be borne by Missus Chiles.
My father had a cabin not two hundred yards from the main house. There was no more than one season in age between Jack Bull and me. Missus Chiles came of the Bulls from Frankfort, Kentucky, and had a delicate spirit. After the burial of Stoddard she brooded for weeks, then began to stroll down the dirt rut to our cabin in the afternoons. My parents spoke almost no English, which was still more English than they wanted to speak, but Missus Chiles made her wishes plain. Me. She wanted to bounce me around, on her knees, on the dirt and high in the air, demonstrating a wide range of robust affection, then soothe me with gurgles and sweets. It was a routine that won me over, and her as well. Soon I was