One evening in the summer me and John Cole was sitting out on the porch watching the shadows lengthen on things. Lige was asleep on his chair. Those crazy whippoorwills giving over and over the same little song. Winona working in the kitchen on Briscoe’s accounts. Queer how you sitting there and before you see them you know someone’s coming. Way over along the river track then they appear, about a dozen men riding. The new dark buffets them and yet over to the westward a huge trembling sun still burns herself out in the ashen sky. Pale colour of a bird’s egg marks the upper heavens. You gotta give the world credit for beauty. The riders ride forward steady. Just coming along like they knowed the road. Soon enough we see they’re army. The jackets that once we weared ourselves and the rifles stuck in their scabbarding. Looks like two officers and a bunch of boys. Well goddamn if that don’t look like Corporal Poulson in the distance. That’s what I say to John Cole. Lige Magan stirs in his slumbers and comes awake. He don’t say nothing. We got rifles as usual lying along the porch but not that no one would see them. A colour sergeant and two corporals don’t fret much to see army. On they come. Then John Cole standing just as you might on account you wanting to greet. Leans against the porch support just easy and dandy. Pulls at his hat. It’s hot and his chest been sweating into his shirt. Just hoping then I’m shaved and trimmed as good as I need. Run a finger over my cheek to check. Anyhow the dark has reached our porch and sits in in bundles with us. Whippoorwills drop silent. Far off a summer thunder rolls along the hills. It’s not a storm will reach us I reckon. Too far away. Got to stop my hand from greeting Poulson because in this guise I don’t know him. Then that tack-tacketing of hooves and approach of horses never quiet. Don’t know the other fellas unless one or two but faintly. Can’t recall.
Evening, says Corporal Poulson to John and Lige. Ma’am, he says, and lifts his hat to me. What’s your business, Corporal? says Lige, as friendly as a Quaker. We’re on deserter business, says Poulson. Rode down from St Louis. This here Sergeant Magan, this here Mrs Cole, says John Cole, and I was Corporal Cole, I believe in your own regiment, that right? You just the men we looking for, says Poulson, just the men. It’s our melancholy task to seek for Corporal Thomas McNulty, deserter. And we was told he might be here ’longside you. I knew that man and he were a good man but fact is he left before his time. And you know the penalty. So, I’m thinking, this ain’t about Starling Carlton. Goddamn major never signed my papers afore he were arrested. So, have ye seen him here or no? Maybe he out working or the like? God knows we don’t want to combobulate ye. But we’re duty bound. We got a list of nigh-on thirty men ducked out. The colonel wants it cleared. How can we fight our wars otherwise? You can’t, says John Cole. I’ll bring you to your man. So John Cole gives me a start saying that. Is he about to give me up? Yank up my skirts and show my balls? John Cole goes down the steps and Corporal Poulson dismounts. I thank you kindly for your help, he says. It ain’t nothing, says John Cole. Should I be ready with my gun? says Poulson. No, no, says John Cole, he’s quiet enough. So then he leads them through the sheds and round the back he brings them to the little boneyard. Stops at one grave with its blanket of summer-withered grass. Nods his head to Poulson. There he lies, he says. Who that? says Poulson. Corporal McNulty as you was saying. That him lying there? says Poulson. I guess it is, says John. How were he killed? We was jumped by bandits. These other beds is where three of them abide. Thomas killed all three. Protecting his home. That sure sounds like the boy I knowed, says Poulson, a decent man. That’s sad, he says, and saves us a grisly job, God knows. It do, says John Cole, it do. You ain’t marked the grave? says Poulson. Well, we know who lies there, I guess. I guess you do, says Poulson.
Then Winona come out and has missed the whole thing being buried in Briscoe’s sums. She got a big shocked face when she see’d them. But the meekness of the troopers calms her fears. That night they bed down in the barn and by morning they are gone.
That were quick thinking, John, says Lige. I’d a drawed out the guns and tried that way.
So now Thomas McNulty was dead official-wise as far as we can see. He lived a short life of forty years and now he was gone to his rest. That was our thinking on the matter. I was strangely sad for I was pondering on his wrestling with wars and the fights of general life. I was thinking of his hard origins in Ireland and how he came to be an American and of everything put against him that he pushed aside. How he had protected Winona and loved John Cole. How he strived to be a faithful friend to all who knew him. One tiny soul among the millions. I was lying side by side with John Cole that night in the bed thinking about myself like I was dead and here’s a new person altogether. John Cole musta been in the same frame of mind because he says we got to get the monumental mason in Paris to write a stone: R.I.P. T. McNulty. And set it up back of the barn. Just to be sure.
It was time to give General Lee her freedom. I let her go the next morning because it was summer and summer was a good time for her to try her fortune in the trees. She flew off straight from the wickiup she had lived in. Went like a blurry arrow for the woods. Couldn’t be a free bird fast enough. The healed wing carried her good.
Guess there must be an address called Fool’s Paradise. On that exact spot in Tennessee. A few days later the letter carrier brings a letter from Paris. We see at the bottom that it’s from Corporal Poulson. I read it through and bring it in to John Cole who is cleaning out the boiler in the barn for to go again next year with the tobacco. He got most of the soot on himself and he’s coal-black. His hands is worser than a scuttle so he tells me read the damn letter. I am cold now in the blasting heat of the day that moils about even in the dark barn. So I reads him the letter. First worse thing is it’s got my name on it. Corporal Thomas McNulty. Dear Corporal McNulty, it says. Well you must oblige me by allowing that you must think me Henry M. Poulson the biggest fool in Christendom if you think I did not see plain with my eyes that that bearded lady was yourself. Well I carried my boys away since I did see also with my eyes those rifles racked along the porch and by God if your friend Mr Magan does not look like a shooter. I saw you fight brave and well and you have a long association in the army of these states and as you may know I fought for the Union even though I was a Southern boy and I know you also set your life in the balances of liberty and evil. It was not my intention therefore to make outlaws of your friends as you would be if you were to fire upon lawful officers. I ask you therefore and I might also say I beg you to put on your britches like a man and come into town where we are waiting to pluck you. By reason that you have things to answer as I believe you will allow. I am, sir, your most humble and obed’t servant, Henry Poulson, corporal.
He writes a good letter, says John Cole. What the hell we going to do? Guess I’ll just go in and do what he saying, I say. What? No. You ain’t, says John Cole. This is something I got to sort out, I say. They ain’t coming after me for poor Starling. I can ask Major Neale to come speak for me. I was on a short commission and he was going to strike my papers but they took him. He’s cleared now so he’ll speak for me. It’s just a misunderstanding. They’ll see. Hang you high more like, says John Cole. They shoot deserters mostly, I say. Yellowlegs shoot, bluecoats hang, says John Cole. Either way, you ain’t going. But I ain’t making no outlaw outa Winona, I say. If I stay, Poulson comes. That stops his talk. We could go on the run, he says, the three of us. No, sir, we could not, I say. That be just the same thing. You a father, John Cole. Then he’s shaking his black head. The soot drifts down like a black snow. What you saying, you going to leave now and leave us here without you? he says. I ain’t got no choice. A man can ask for an officer to speak for him. I bet seven silver dollars the major will do it. Well, he says, I got to clean out this boiler. I know, I says. So then I’m pulling away from the darkness of the barn to step into the burning air. You’d swear God had a boiler going somewhere. The light grips my face like a octopus. I feel like I am a dead man right enough. I ain’t got no faith in that gone-crazy major. Then I hear John Cole’s voice behind me. You get back here as quick as you can, Thomas. We got a lot of work to do and can’t do it light of hands. I know, I say, I’ll be back soon. You goddamn better be, he says.