It would be suicide to stop outright. The word is prominent in his thoughts lately. Suicide. Kohn has done the drying out with Molloy before. He knows the drill. A slow and steady readmittance to the slaughterhouse of sobriety, to the grim gauntlet of memory. Kohn is not without his own sorrows.
“Of course, sir. Rawson, get a cloth and basin from the mule, the lieutenant’s set of combs and razor. I will make a fire and heat the water, Captain. We’ll scrub up nicely, sir, and go a-visiting.”
He smiles and Molloy smiles feebly back at him.
“Lieutenant, for all that is holy, Kohn, I’ve told you a thousand times how to address me.”
Kohn’s persistence in calling him Captain annoys Molloy as it reminds him of the war, of a time he has done his bloody best to scour from his mind with whiskey. Still, good health to him, for he does bear up well under the cross, my Daniel. Never a finer man in the whole of the world’s armies, Molloy thinks. He holds your worthless life in his hands and holds it gently. As if it is worth preserving. Not like that thieving ape of an orderly in Italy. Have not thought of him in years. Took a ball in the neck on the last day of the siege of Ancona. With the Devil now, no doubt.
Molloy’s service in the Irish Brigade in defence of the Papal States, only six years earlier, seems ancient to him now. A lark for a lad on the lookout for adventure; blessed escape for the youngest son of Catholic landowners, for a boy with no hope for the priesthood, no prayer of adequate inheritance. Twenty-four years old and happy to see the back of benighted Ireland—God keep her from all harm—a foreign war in need of Catholic boys then a blessing to him.
From Ancona’s fall and parole d’honneur prisoner of the Piedmontese to the mud and blood of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. A terrible rending of a nation, a great rebellion in need of quelling, and the Union Army in need of professional soldiers, the priest from Washington had told him that fine spring day in Dublin after his release and return from Italy. Men with experience of war, of command, he’d said. And you do look the part, Capitano Molloy.
From capitano to lieutenant to captain to lieutenant in three different armies. Molloy had known he looked the part and had learned to play the part as well. He had succumbed to the American recruiting father’s flattery along with a number of other of Pius’s veterans, to bolster Union ranks in the early days of the war. His own mother had once told him he could never resist the lure of kind things said about him. You are as simple to see through as that pane of glass, my sweet Martin. He remembers his mother’s face. Not so simple now, my dear mother. Filthy with the muck of my sins, the pane cloudy and opaque. God bless and keep her. He has not written to her in months or has he? He cannot remember. Quell the thirst. Barley water and cherry juice for me now. Small beer. Why now? Don’t dwell on it, Molloy. There are those who depend on you.
“Sir.” Rawson hands Molloy a tin basin with an inch of warm water in its bottom. Not much but enough for a wash and a shave.
“Splendid, Rawson. Good man. And a drop from your canteen into mine, young sir, if you please.”
“Will I fetch another bottle from the mule, sir?” Rawson says. Molloy has given him the first draught of every bottle he has cracked since they left Fort Caldwell. He has been near as drunk as Lieutenant Molloy for much of the trip.
“You might as well,” Molloy says. “Take a draught yourself, give a sup to Kohn and Jonathan and the last bit for myself. This will be all for some days, I fear. The last supper . . .” Again his words tail off to nothing. But he smiles.
Jonathan sees terrible sadness in the smile. He thinks he might be better deserting the white soldiers. Or he could kill them and report back that they were killed by Sioux while he was scouting ahead. Then he could take work with other soldiers who would bring death to the Sioux and Cheyenne instead of hoping for death to come to them.
Ablutions complete, they mount and ride to meet the wagons which now