December 21, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
THERE IS A JUDAS HOLE IN THE HEAVY WOODEN DOOR. Peering through it, the cavalry officer can see the prisoner sleeping under a buffalo hide rug on a rough, grass-stuffed mattress, his forage cap pulled as low as it will go against the cold. The officer tries to summon the prisoner’s face from days past, from the war.
It is bitter winter and the cavalry officer can see his own breath, the dirt floor of the fort’s guardhouse frozen solid under his boots. In his hand is a hardbacked quartermaster’s accounts ledger belonging to the prisoner and in it is the prisoner’s story. The officer cannot be certain that this story is the truth but he feels it is a kind of truth, a strain of verity.
In his account, the prisoner has written that he and the officer have met once before but there is much about the war that the officer has forgotten, wishes to forget. He was drunk for much of it. Has been drunk since and is drunk again now.
A truth. There are as many truths as there are witnesses to a thing, the officer thinks. But it does not matter. Murder cannot matter. If it did, there would be little left to do in the world for men such as himself. Men such as the prisoner sleeping behind this door. For if God loves us and has put us here for a reason, then surely He means for us to do what we have found we do best? It does not matter.
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THE TRUE TESTAMENT & CONFESSIONS OF A SOLDIER IN THE 18TH INFANTRY IN THE REGULAR ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES AT FORT PHIL KEARNY IN THE MOUNTAIN DISTRICT
—December 18, 1866—YOU WILL WANT TO LAUGH WHEN I tell you it was a General who did give me the idea to write down an account of my days here in the far & forlorn West. It was a General you would hardly believe it but it is True As God.
At Ft. Caldwell in the Nebraska Territories it was & I labouring for Mrs. Carrington & while packing the madam’s things for transport I overheard the great General William T. Sherman himself tell Mrs. Carrington & the other officer wives that to venture so far West with their husbands in the service of the Army & not record their sentiments & observations would be pure criminal. “A crime on the historical record!” the General said & the ladies did all agree & swear blind to him they would keep account of the adventures to befall them.
Well there was I no better than an ox porting crates & bed frames as the ladies took their coffee & cakes with our beloved Uncle Billy Sherman but says I to myself that day, “Well why not you Michael?” Why do you not keep an account of your adventures & travails? Why not? You did soldier alongside boys who kept journals in the War & who did adorn them with fine drawn pictures & cartes de visits & all shades & colours of ribbons & stories cut from the papers so to record the events of battles they fought in.
One fellow I remember well he just wrote down the songs sung & stories told about the camp because he did not like to think too much on the fighting but all of them boys somehow made testament to a time in their lives when they were chucked into the roaring flames of history. So if they could do it well why not you Michael? I did wonder that day with the crates I carried for Mrs. Carrington dragging the arms near off me.
For though it is usually the Generals & Admirals who write down memories of their wars while Sailor Jack or Soldier Bill does the dying for them it does not state anywhere in the Articles of War that a plain fighting man such as myself cannot write down his own account of what such flames do look like from inside of history’s fire.
But did I take to writing when I heard the Great Sherman say this? Of course I did not no more than I would of done it in the War. Never once before this moment did I write a single thing about myself or my brother to spite thinking much of the notion that day at Ft. Caldwell in the Nebraskas. It is only now when I am not free at all but instead