“That was the war Tom when Mr. President Lincoln himself deemed it fine & proper to do it May God Keep Him.” I too was speaking in English now.
Tom was silent at this & I did not like his silence. In the guttering lamplight my brother’s busted visage was not visible to me but there is no cloaking in gloaming or fancy whiskers the hollows in my brother’s heart or in his head. I do oft think that minie ball left inside of Tom some of its leaden venom. It is better betimes he stays in the shadows because it can put the fear of God on a man to see this come out on his face.
Says I, “Look brother. I will bring the crockery up & ask the man will he change his thinking on our calf & let us sell it as it was given to us freely like you say. If he will not then I will have our wages & we will be for the road.”
In truth I had no mind to ask the farmer Harris again for the calf. It was done enough already & there is no finding sense in a man’s mind when greed sets in there like mortar. But I would take our wages & move us on because I did not trust my brother not to let his spleen get the better of him. It would be no good for that farmer & no good for us if it did.
Still Tom stayed quiet with the calf nussing his palm. My brother’s other hand rested on the hilt of the D Bar Bowie he once took from the body of some poor dead Johnny Reb & then carried all through the war instead of swopping it as we mostly did with things we took from Sesesh prisoners or bodies. It is true I can think of nothing that knife will not carve or open but I wish Tom did not carry it at all anymore. It has too much death on it.
Says I, “Did you hear what I said Tom?”
Tom stroked & petted that calf for a long moment before he spoke. “That b_____ of a farmer is in luck I have you for a brother or he would by now have the life leaking out of him.”
I could of cried I tell you.
Instead I said to him, “They would hunt us down like dogs & hang us by our necks Tom. And what a sorry way to go up that would be after living through what we have lived.”
“Lived? Go away with you Michael & your lived.”
“You go away yourself Tom for we did not come all the way here to America to be strung up when we could of arranged that back home in Ireland handy enough.”
I did want to say it was wrong to kill a man over a calf freely given or not. I did want to remind Tom what killing that poor Sullivan boy back at home meant for us once. (I will confess this to you Sir for it surely does not matter now. Tom struck down a dirty Sullivan brother with his stick on the road from Killorglin Fair. He did not mean to strike him dead it was only their faction agin ours them waiting for us in ambush. It could of easily been one of us dead & even Father Walsh when I confessed my part in it did give me absolution.)
But still I wanted right then to ask Tom what killing a man ever won for us up to now but lonely exile & a hard labouring life here in America with one eye forever cast back over our shoulders on past sins? All this was brimmed up in me to say to my brother there in the dusking barn but I did not.
I instead told him, “Look Tom I will walk over & see the man again about the calf & if he will not shift—”
Tom looked over at me & you would of not liked to see his face then it almost scared me his own brother.
I made to continue. “If he will not shift his mind then we are for the road this evening & may Harris be f_____. But it is not murder trouble we need now Tom & you know it.”
Tom said nothing back to me & I did leave him there in the dark with the calf.