guts with the greed of a land agent’s fattest daughter. And f___ the Sullivan boy them years back for the soft head of him & for dying under a blow that would not of felled my sweet mother God Be With Her & driving us brothers from Ireland & off into the terrible wide world. And most of all f____ Tom for the notion he had that no matter what the world did to him he would do to the world one worse.
Mad with pity for myself I was & for my plight. Well I could of kilt my brother stone dead there on the roadside but soon the feeling passed only for sadness to settle down in its place.
“We could take on again with the Army,” says Tom in Irish with his knife back in its scabbard & the calm come on him again like a storm gone past us. Says he, “A free ride West & some savings before we skedaddle by night & claim ourselves a farm of land as we did plan all along.”
Well I did want to scream at my brother then. The Army! The poxed & cursed Army? Has the pig f_____ Army not took enough off you to sate it? Have you not took enough off it to last 2 men 2 lives? But I did not holler all this & May God Forgive Me my restraint.
Instead I scinched my eyes tight closed for to staunch the tears of anger hoping fierce that when I opened them we might not be standing on a roadside tween cornfields in Ohio but somewhere else & better altogether.
“The Army Tom? Have you gone mad have you?” says I back to my brother.
“Sure there are worse things we might be getting on with the hard days that are in it,” says he. “I cannot abide no more farmers Michael. I might just gut one of them & then where would we be?”
He did smile as he said this & I thought Well isn’t it a fine thing you can laugh at what is not so much a joke at all?
“There must be something else for us if we think on it Tom,” says I.
“Thinking of work does not fill a man’s belly.”
My face went dark. I know it did because with Tom everything does be in deadly earnest until of a sudden it becomes a joke. You never know when & it makes life a trial with him betimes. Says I, “You do try a man’s patience Tom.”
“Poor Mickaleen. Hunger makes you like a vexed wife.”
“It is not hunger,” I said back to him. “It is you & your wild notions.”
“So will it be the Army then brother?” says he still smiling like the most ugly lunatic in the asylum.
“The f______ Army then G___ D____ you!” says I knowing I would say it & knowing I would regret the saying. But as you may be thinking Sir I did not know how much I would regret it.
So our decision was made just like that with little thought given to it. At least our bellies will be full I told myself more than once 100 times even! as we walked on down the road for Columbus where there was a depot where we could take on again with Uncle Sam. I tell you Sir there was no better fools than us fit for this very Army of fools.
The only thing that kept my feet going 1 foot in front of the other was knowing that the Army would surely send us West where we might with our saved wages once again aspire to buy a small farm of land. Or maybe we will just stake claim on a plot of some acres for it is said they are nearly giving land away there is so much of it west of the Mississippi & all of it in want of men to work it or beasts to graze it.
“And there is gold out West,” says I to myself the earth bulging up over the seams with it so goes the scuttlebutt in taverns from Boston to Baltimore. It is said all a fellow has to do is throw a spade at the dirt in Virginia City or Silver Creek & he will be riding the pig’s back his pockets bursting for the weight of gold & silver. Well every soul knows about saloon tales & I never did believe all of them but sure there it was in my