The Son

Chapter Forty-nine. Eli McCullough, 1864

At the beginning of the year there was a shakeup and most of the RMN men were sent east. They tried shipping me to the Frontier Regiment, but I didn’t feel like riding against the Comanches and I didn’t like McCord, either, and so as punishment I was sent to the Indian Territories. Most whites didn’t want to work with Indians — they were considered only a step above Negroes — but I suspected it would be high living and I was right.

Of the five civilized tribes, two — the Creeks and Seminoles — had sided with the Union. The other three — the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw — were fighting for the Confederacy. There was a brigade of Cherokee under their own general, Stand Watie, and a Choctaw brigade under Tandy Walker. I was given the temporary rank of colonel and put in charge of a battalion of ragged Cherokees. They’d signed enlistment papers the same as whites, but they didn’t believe in boots or uniforms, or remembering their orders, or fighting when they were outnumbered. They believed in eating well and staying in one piece, which made them just about useless, as far as the army was concerned.

By then, we were getting most of our equipment from Union supply trains. We wanted Union-made pistols, which had steel frames instead of brass, and we wanted their repeating rifles, Henrys and Spencers, though we were happy with their Enfields as well. We wanted their wool pants and blankets, their field glasses, their saddles and tack, their horses and ammunition, tinned beef, coffee and salt, quinine, factory-made shirts, their writing paper and sewing needles.

Our only orders were to disrupt the enemy’s rear, which meant riding into Kansas or Missouri, burning barns or bridges or just stealing chickens. Eventually, when our bellies were as empty as bankers’ hearts and there was nothing left to plunder from the locals, we would go south to resupply.

IT WAS A familiar way of living and I did not mind it one bit, sleeping outside and roaming where I wanted, and I did not mind being with the Indians, either, who, civilized or not, lived closer to the natural ways than most whites. But in summer I got a few days’ leave and decided to head back to Austin.

I was heating the axles the whole way but when I came across the hill and saw the judge’s house, I reined up short. I wasn’t sure why I’d come home. I could remember sitting on a horse in my Comanche gear, shooting arrows for the reporters; in the backyard there were hackberries thirty feet tall that I remembered as seedlings. I suddenly felt old, and I nearly turned around and rode north again, but Madeline was standing in the doorway of the guesthouse, so I got off and fixed my horse to the snubbing post and went to her.

She was holding Everett. He was nine months old, or it might have been eight, or eleven.

“Daddy’s back,” she said.

He looked like he might cry and she looked like another person — she’d aged ten years since the war started. She’d had no trouble getting back her old figure, and looking at the dark circles under her eyes and her skin that bruised at the lightest touch, I knew I’d made a mistake for the ages.

We went inside and she put my hands on her chest and then I was in a fierce rutting mood. But once we made it to the bed, I could tell she wasn’t.

Still she wanted me to do it anyway but right before we started she said, “Put it there instead,” and raised her legs a little higher. “I don’t want my milk to get thick.

“Does that feel good?”

I nodded.

“As good as…”

“Sure,” I mumbled.

“It feels good to me, too. It also hurts, though.”

I took it out. She rolled over and examined me.

“I thought it would be filthy.” She looked closer. “It does smell.”

“I better wash I guess.”

“I thought you would like it,” she said. “Did you?”

“Sure,” I said.

The Negroes had kept some water hot so I walked over to the main house and took a bath. When I came back she was dressed again.

“Is it the baby?” I said.

“Probably.”

I looked around the cottage. It was small and dark. I told myself that I loved them.

“I feel a little far away from you, maybe.”

“I’m right here,” I said.

“You’re gone and then every few months you’re back for a few days and we do it and then you’re gone again. I feel like a cow.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Not the way I look. I mean you come home and leave and that’s all there is to it.”

I started to say something but she interrupted. “My father could get you something here. I know he told you that. I see officers around town all the time and there must be men on the coast who see their families all the time as well.”

“That wouldn’t be fair.”

“To the army or to me? To a bunch of men you’ve known a year, or to me? You like to pretend it’s not a choice but it is, Eli.”

“Why are you mad?” I said. “I just got here.”

“I’m trying not to be.”

Everett was glaring at me. “I made you,” I said.

“That’s just his normal face,” she told me.

THAT AFTERNOON, AFTER we’d been to see the judge and his wife, we were back in bed. Madeline had stolen a bottle of sunflower oil from the kitchen.

“You don’t want another Everett,” I said. “Or a little sister for him?”

“I do,” she said. “One day I really do, just not by myself.”

She looked at me and took my hand in both of hers and kissed it. She was a beautiful woman. I reminded myself she was plenty strong.

“Do you ever think about what my life is like here?”

“I imagine it’s hard,” I said, though I didn’t.

“It is hard. I’m stuck in this house with a little animal who can’t even talk to me. Sometimes I wake up and think today will be the day that I forget how to speak.”

“Isn’t it nice to have the baby, though?”

“Of course it is,” she said. “But not any nicer for me than it is for you. When he’s crying I sometimes want to leave him in his crib and run as far away as possible.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Sorry. I’m tired of playing the long-suffering wife. I thought it suited me and now it doesn’t. I will do all the work of raising your son but if you think I am going to be silent about it you have another think coming.”

“Can’t the niggers look after him?”

“My mother keeps them busy enough,” she said.

“You know when I’m not here I’m either sleeping in the rain or living off wormy biscuits. Or people are shooting at me.”

“I feel like your mistress,” she said. “So don’t pretend it is nothing but misery, because I know you, Eli, and I know you wouldn’t be doing it if it were.”

Then we were both quiet. She looked like she was going to cry. “I don’t want this to be your last memory of me.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen.”

“And please stop saying that.”

“All right,” I said.

“At first I thought there was another woman up there. Now I wish that’s all it was.”