him. He knows me. The one man in the world. Knows my ways, knows why, thank God. So, coffee and brandy, thank Daniel. And when the coffee and brandy burn off? God help me, torment surely. Terrible things to be seen behind the eyes. Nothing to smile about. Hell to pay if I sober up before we’re done here. Set your face straight to bitter Cooke, Molloy tells himself. Mighty, bearded, bitter Cooke. Molloy winks at Kohn, who is standing at parade rest in front of the office door, but Kohn is inscrutable.
“Is there something you find amusing, Lieutenant Molloy?”
Lieutenant and not Brevet Captain or Captain, as is the customary address for those promoted during the war and then demoted at its end. He must have seen me smile. Don’t, for the love of all that’s holy, smile in the good general’s presence. Though why not, by God? All of this a dusty rag, a soiled ruse, Molloy thinks. Every day passed above ground.
“No sir, not at all.”
General Cooke shifts his gaze to Molloy’s orderly. “Kohn . . . ”
“Yessir,” Corporal Kohn says.
“I knew Spiegel in the war. A good officer, Spiegel. He was a Jew.”
“Yessir.”
“Blown to bits at Snaggy Point. Didn’t find much of him. Did you know the man?”
“No sir, I was 5th Cavalry, sir.”
“With Custer?”
“Yessir. With Captain Molloy under Custer on 2nd Division staff in Texas and now in the 7th at Fort Riley, sir.”
Cooke’s mouth folds in on itself. “Custer. You’re dismissed, Corporal.”
Molloy stares at Cooke as Kohn leaves. Cooke was quick to spot Kohn for a Jew, he thinks. Everybody’s on the lookout for them now, the occupied South supposedly infested with leeching bankers and postwar profiteers. Molloy had never met a single Jew man among the many leeches he met while on occupation duty in Shreveport or Austin though he’d met many who were as Christian as Christ himself. What matter is Kohn’s race to Cooke? Didn’t profit much from the war himself, the good general. Or Kohn. Poor Kohn got nothing but scars and horses shot out from under him from the war. And me, God love him. He got me.
Molloy keeps his face blank. I’d kill a priest for a drink, he thinks, pondering his chances in present company. Known to take a drop himself, Cooke. You’d know it to look at him. Molloy’s eyes drift to the ticking clock on the wall, roman numbers reading 10:20. His hope dies with the time. Not even a frontier posted general drinks at 10:20 of a November morning. Not as a rule. Molloy lets his eyes wander to the window at Cooke’s back. A large cottonwood tree with its sparse scatter of wet yellow leaves glinting in the sun. Autumn dying into winter. Jesus in heaven, where does a bloody year get to?
Cooke is speaking.
“Sir?”
“I said Custer must not like you much. I’ve never known a first lieutenant, a company first, exiled as you’ve been with only a string of ponies for an excuse to be rid of him.”
Exiled? The pot and the kettle, my dear General, Molloy thinks and again tries to keep from smiling. He hears himself say, “He has good reason not to like me, sir, as I most definitely do not like him. I have requested . . .” He clears his throat. “I have requested—”
“I understand Custer’s shunned the bottle. And ungentlemanly language.” Molloy hears mockery in Cooke’s words, though whether it is for himself or for Custer he does not know or care. Numb.
He hears himself continue, “I have requested a transfer out of the 7th several times, sir.”
“The regiment is larger than the men in it, Lieutenant.”
“And only as strong as the men who lead it, General.” He feels safe enough speaking this way because he knows, without having considered it before, what Cooke thinks of Custer, the blond-locked peacock: the youngest general in army history. A glorious, bold, battlefield brevet promotion—like Molloy and so many others—now back to colonel in peacetime though still called “General” Custer in the papers back East. Meanwhile, Cooke had found himself riding a recruiting desk for much of the war and now tasked with running the North Platte or Mountain District or whatever they are calling it these days while the papers talk high political office for George Armstrong Custer. No one talks at all of St. George Cooke. Not after the whipping he took in the war. Molloy knows in his bones Cooke despises Custer on his reputation alone.