noose if his betters want it in there God Help Us.
(Well God has not done that as you will soon see.)
3
November 12, 1866—Dept. of the Platte HQ, Post of Omaha, Nebraska Territory
“HE DRUNK AGAIN, CORPORAL?”
“There’s no again in it when it comes to the captain.”
“He ain’t no captain, neither. There be only one pumpkin rind apiece on them shoulder straps there.” The young private points to the chair where the sleeping officer’s uniform tunic is hanging.
“Brevet captain. He was knocked back in rank like all the others when the war ended. He’s still a captain, though he’s no longer paid as one and doesn’t like being called it.”
“Like Custer don’t still like being called General?”
“You ever met Custer, Private Rawson?”
“No I have not.”
“Did you fill the bath?”
“I filled it. And there be soap. I found some soap.”
“There’s a medal for that. Warm but not too warm?”
“The soap or the bath?”
Corporal Daniel Kohn turns and stares at Private Rawson, searching for sarcasm but settling on stupidity because that is mostly what one encounters in the army.
“The bath, you dunderhead. The captain’s nerves don’t take to too hot water on waking. You’ll hear him roaring all over the goddamn post if that water’s too hot.”
“Well you check it then, Corp. It ain’t too hot for me, but how’s I supposed to know ‘just right’ for Captain Mucky Muck?” The young private looks down on the sleeping officer with distaste. It is a distaste his orderly, Corporal Kohn, often shares.
“Just grab an arm and aid me. By the time we wake him and get him stripped down, it should be all right.” Corporal Kohn leans over the officer. “And for God’s sake, don’t light a match. We’d all go up like I don’t know what.”
Private Rawson says, “Like a goddamn cotton barn.”
Kohn smiles. He had set more than one of those alight only recently. A year ago. More? It seems like yesterday.
He pats the captain’s cheek lightly at first. “Captain Molloy? Captain? You need to wake up, sir.”
The pats turn to slaps. A bar of sun flares through a gap in the canvas curtains and lights the officer’s face. His eyes squeeze shut in response.
“Captain, you need to rouse yourself. General Cooke’s summoned you, sir. You’ve got one hour.”
The officer’s eyelids flicker.
The private says, “He’s right and properly fucked. He be worse than General Cooke hisself.”
“He’s worse than most.”
Private Rawson says, with some relish, “You know Cooke can’t abide a tardy man. Can’t abide an early man neither. He be a crochety sonofabitch.”
“I know that.” Slap. “Captain, wake up.”
The officer’s eyes open, gluey lips part to speak. “I’ll have you shot . . .”
“I hope not, sir, but you’ll have to rouse yourself to do it.”
The officer rolls over and drags a blanket across his eyes. Sour sweat and whiskey fumes in the small barracks room. Don’t light a match. An empty jug on the small desk, another upturned on the floor. Belts and cavalry cutlass in a tangle in the corner.
Corporal Kohn takes up the officer’s tunic and inspects it, picks at something encrusted on the dark blue wool. Dry food. Puke? A damp rag will have to do, he thinks. Damp rag and a brush to the tunic and run the britches under a hot iron. Time for it? Have to be. Rawson can give the boots and belts a wipe. Drunk again? Drunk still. Two years of it nearly. Kohn knows the day and the hour when drunk sometimes became drunk all the time.
“Take an arm, Private. We don’t have all day. And then heelball his boots and belts as best you can. We can’t have him meeting the General looking like he’s been dragged ass backwards through a bush.”
WITH ONLY A SCARRED, paper-strewn desk between himself and the general, First Lieutenant Martin Molloy, 7th Cavalry, tries to keep himself from smiling. Poor, poor Cooke, he thinks. General Philip St. George Cooke. Bitter bastard. Bitterest bastard in the whole godforsaken army. The bitter root. You’d be bitter too if your son-in-law whipped you like a thieving housemaid in the war. And Cooke’s own son even, John Rogers, another rebel Sessioner who will not speak to his father. Poor man.
I am three sheets to the breeze still, God bless us, Molloy thinks. Coffee and brandy and a lukewarm bath. A shave and manhandled into uniform. What would I do without Daniel, my lovely, loyal Daniel Kohn? God bless and save his snipped prick. Court-martialled five times over, no doubt, but for