7th are getting on. Unlike Molloy, he does not hate the newly founded regiment though he has no love for Custer or Davidson. He considers the sky, not wanting to set up the dog tents if the weather does not demand it. On the plains it is hard to tell from one minute to the next. The weather can move in fast, as it could at sea or over the Lake Erie of his youth. His breath comes out as steam. If the temperature drops further, Kohn thinks, anything falling from the sky will likely be snow. “I don’t think so, sir.”
“Well then . . .”
“A letter, sir?” Kohn says, beginning to dig out a fire pit, setting stones around it. It has been years since he has written any letters of his own. He would not write his father if his father was the last living man on earth. His mother died soon after he himself joined up in ’61. His brothers and sisters look upon him as a shame to the family and he feels only anger and envy when he thinks of them. He would dearly like someone, anyone, to whom to write a letter. There was a girl, once, a French Jewish girl in Cincinnati. He imagines she is married now.
“Who would I be writing, Kohn?”
“Your mother, sir. You haven’t written her in a long while. And that time only because I hounded you to it.”
“What would I tell her, Kohn?” Molloy asks, and there is something so sad about the way he says it that Kohn does not pursue the matter. Molloy pulls from his bottle like an orphaned lamb fed from a teat of India rubber.
“Rawson, gather buffalo chips and wood for the fire,” Kohn says. To hell with it. Molloy would drive a man to drink. And Kohn wonders: does sympathy have its limits? Does love?
“Right-o, Corp, and then we can make us some of these,” Rawson says, opening his haversack to Kohn and Molloy. Molloy does not rise but looks into the mouth of the pack with Kohn.
“God damn you, Rawson, did you steal those sonofabitching eggs from the pilgrims?” Kohn says, taking the haversack from him. He looks inside again and counts seven eggs.
“I did not, the man gave ’em to me. He was ’shamed he says, with the old fucker not sharing up their grub with us for chasin’ off them Injuns. He gave me the eggs in thanks.”
“I will put you in a hole, Rawson, you thieving scalawag bastard.”
“I did not steal them. Sir, you got to believe me.” He turns to Molloy.
Molloy smiles drunkenly at the two enlisted men. “I believe I would enjoy some eggs fried in bacon grease with my beans and pilot bread. I believe that, Rawson. Kohn, how many times did you liberate grub from civilians in the war?”
“Only in hungry times, sir. We have enough vittles by far to get us to where we’re going. There’s no need—”
“I’m assuming they’d poultry with them, Rawson. The pilgrims?” Molloy says. He has reached that place in his drunkenness where the world appears designed for his amusement alone and all others be damned.
“They did, sir. An almighty pile of laying hens in crates the back of that Murphy. They ain’t gonna miss no dozen eggs.”
“There’s only seven here, Rawson,” Kohn says.
“Some got broke, sir,” Rawson says to Molloy. Then, as if he has remembered, “And a man don’t miss what he gives away as a gift.”
“True as God’s word, Rawson,” Molloy says, and goes back to writing in his journal. His skin is pale and sweaty even in the chill air. “Fetch fuel for that fire, Rawson. And a blanket, Kohn. I could use a rug round my shoulders while I await my eggs.”
Kohn fetches the blankets from Molloy’s bedroll, noting that the captain is cold even under the heavy weight of his buffalo coat. “That boy’s a thief, sir.”
“We are all the most frightful thieves, every one of us, Kohn. God forgive us.”
Kohn does not know or care what Molloy means. The officer has moved from the world as a source of amusement to the world as a pit of vipers, a dark and fatal place where no love or kindness lives. Kohn does not need whiskey to feel the world is such a place but he resists the idea. Someone has to.
8
NEW NAMES FOR US
“NAMES,” SAYS I TO MY BROTHER AS WE STEPPED TENDER headed & gut scorched from our skite through the cursed