When my sentinels is set up that night I pull away alone to a little copsewood. Alone there a while. Moonlight pouring down through the scrubby oaks as if a thousand dresses. I am thinking man is something of a wolf but also ain’t he something stranger too. I am thinking of Winona and about all her travails. I couldn’t say who in that while I was myself. Sligo seem a long long time ago and only another brush of darkness. The light is John Cole and all the copiousness of his kindness. Can’t get that drummer boy out of my inner eye. He’s stuck in there like a floating thing. I guess he should a got more from living than he did. Brave lad out of Missouri and cheery and not expecting nothing. His head rolling about a lonesome meadow in Virginia. Bright eyes and now they put him in a hole. By God it wouldn’t even be good enough to weep for him. How we going to count all the souls to be lost in this war? I am shaking like a last dry leaf on a branch in winter. Rattling. I don’t guess I have met two hundred souls in my time and knew their names. Souls ain’t like a great river and then when death comes the souls pouring over the waterfall and into the bottom land below. Souls ain’t like that but this war is asking for them to be. Do we got so many souls to be given? How can that be? I am asking the gap between the oaks these questions. Got to go now in a minute and relieve No. 2 post. Relief, halt! Arms-port! Relief, support-arms! Forward-march!
It is so silent you could swear the moon is listening. The owls are listening and the wolves. I took off my forage cap and scratch my lousy head. The wolves will come down after a few days from the mountains when we are gone and start to dig through the stones we’ve piled up. Nothing more surer than that. That’s why the Indians put their dead on poles. We put them in the dirt because we believe it to be respecting. Talking about Jesus but Jesus never knew nothing about this land. That’s how foolish we are. Because it just ain’t so. The great world lights like a poor lamp because the snow begin to come down into the clearing. Dimly illumined over in the east corner is a huge black bear. Guess he just have been there the whole time, nosing about for grubs and roots. I hadn’t even heard him. Maybe he too was respecting the queer silence. He saw me now and swung his heavy head in a slow arc towards me to get a better view. He was considering me. His eyes looked clever and calm and he sized me up for a long time. Then he swung his whole body as if hanging from ropes and went crashing away into the forest.
The snowfall grows heavier and I am wending my way back to camp. Giving the secret response of the night to the sentry. Nosing along E Avenue between the tents. The colonels and the majors and such are in the big officers’ wickiup. The shroud of canvas glowing dimly. Indeed they have real lamps burning within. The officers are sitting in silhouette and their backs are turned blackly to the opening. The picket standing mute outside in the new issue of snow. I can hear their low voices. Talking of family or war I cannot tell. The night has plunged into proper darkness and the pitch core at the centre of everything is in command. The whippoorwill calling over the tents of the sleeping men. Short note, long note. The whippoorwill will call forever over these snowy meadows. But the tents are temporary.
We’re moved up towards the river and are bound to establish winter quarters. Guess no man knows who hasn’t endured it the wretched boredom of those times. You’d rather risk a battering of canisters and grapeshot. Alright or nearly. Me and John Cole is mighty amused when evenings of blackface is put together for amusement. It’s knowed we’ve worked the halls but here we sing together as two boys and give an Uncle Tom or Old Kentucky Home and leave it there. Union boys in blackface maybe strange. Kentucky got both toes in the war so we have to tread softly there. Dan FitzGerald goes innocent into a dress one night and though he’s blackface he sings an Irish Colleen song and by God but the proclivities of a dozen men’s aroused. Starling Carlton says he wants to marry her. We leave that there too. Otherwise can’t get your damn feet warm and since there ain’t a scrap of news getting in the world could of ended and the last trump sounded for all we know. Messengers come pushing through only when the cold lifts its hand. Cases of fever plague the men and some of them go clear off their heads. Even the bad whisky runs out and if the supply wagons ain’t made it you is going to be eating your boots. Paymaster never comes neither and you’re wondering are you still a living man or has Death converted you till you be now a shivering ghost. When spring comes the ground is still hard and yet we are turned to digging out long rifle pits and redans for the guns. Seems this part of the river hides a ford under the present flood. When it shortly reappears we will be tasked to guard it I guess. Starling Carlton says he’s glad he’s a sergeant now and don’t have to dig. Says he wonders why he ever came east and sure misses Fort Laramie and killing Injuns. Don’t you wish to help the black man, sir? says Dan FitzGerald. What you now saying? says Starling. Help the black man get his freedom and keep the Union, sir? says Dan. What’s this about niggers, says Starling Carlton, I ain’t doing nothing for niggers. He looking clear bemused. Don’t you know why you fighting? says Lige Magan, by God, I don’t believe you do. I know, says Starling Carlton. In the tone of a man who don’t. Why you fighting then? says Lige. Why, because the major asked me, says Starling, as if this were the clearest fact in Christendom. Why the hell you fighting?
Here come back the warblers and the goddamn butterflies and now also the high-up officers who just the damn same as the warblers went off at that first hint of snow. Can’t expect toffs to sit in camp like cabbages. Colonel Neale he tried to get west before the most awful of the snows but he only got as far as Missouri he says. Worried now about the twins and Mrs Neale. Gets some reports of trouble over yonder but expects the army will handle it. The war has thinned out troops in the west and citizen militias took their place somewhat. He don’t like citizen militias, Colonel Neale. Confederate militias the worst, roaming about and shooting ducks in barrels. He says wherever a gap opens you’ll find trashy men to fill it. General news seeps into camp. The war is widening everywhere. But the clock of the day turns just the same. Bugle and barked order. The big supply wagons dragged by oxen hove into camp. Well we was nearly eating bullets. Got a little boneyard full of the winter’s haul. Fr Giovanni likes his brandy but he always does the honours. The bugler with his frozen lips sticking to the mouthpiece. Raw with little wounds he don’t have time to give to healing.