It’s more in sorrow than in anger that I take off my dress and put on the clothes of man. I smooth out the dress and brush it down a while and then hang it in the old pine chest that Lige Magan’s mother owned. It still got her farm dresses in it. Rough old things she wore in her time. I guess Lige looks in there and then his mother lives again a moment. Times when he was little clinging to those hems. Well I must report that the tears fall fully. I ain’t indifferent. I ain’t a stone. I’m sobbing like a fool and then Winona comes into the square of the door. She’s standing there like a painting of a princess. I know she’s going to do proudly in her world. The fierce light that was in the yard has crossed into the parlour and now tries to leak into the bedroom. It gives her slight form a soft white glow. Winona. Child of my heart. That’s how it was. I was wretched ruined now. Got to go into town, I say. You want me to run you in? she says. No, that’s fine. I’s going to take the bay horse. I might have to take the stage to Memphis later. You can fetch the horse in the morning. I’ll tie her at the dry-goods store. Sure thing, she says. What you doing in Memphis? Going to purchase tickets for the opera John Cole likes. That’s a brave plan, she says, laughing, that’s a brave plan. You be good now, girl, I say. I guess I will, she says.
So I ride into town. That little bay horse goes on nicely. She got the best walk of any horse I ever owned. Just clipping along with a tack-tack-tack on the dry earth. Sweet life. I was sore in love with all my labouring in Tennessee. Liked well that life. Up with the cockcrow, bed with the dark. Going along like that could never end. And when ending it would be felt to be just. You had your term. All that stint of daily life we sometimes spit on like it was something waste. But it all there is and in it is enough. I do believe so. John Cole, John Cole, Handsome John Cole. Winona. Old good-man Lige. Tennyson and Rosalee. This lithesome bay. Home. Our riches. All I owned. Enough.
On I ride. Nice day for a hanging, as folks say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
POULSON AIN’T A bad fellow. But something alters when there’s a bunch of men and one of them is in chains. I guess that’s true. They got a converted ambulance in Paris town and we’re set to ride up to St Louis in that and then entrain in a army caboose to Kansas City. All gonna take a few days and at the start I seem to be jesting with the other boys but then them chains confer a bit of silence on me I guess. Poulson says I’m to be tried at Fort Leavenworth. I ask him if Major Neale know anything about it and he says he hisself don’t know but because of my good service they’ll surely look for mitigations. I dearly hope so. Just in that moment I believe I might have the luck and suddenly I got a thought that I might be heading back down to Tennessee. If you ain’t ever felt a feeling like that I can’t describe to you how it’s just like your head was a melon full of sugar and water. I ask him can he send a letter and he says he don’t see why he can’t. Says they’ll likely call the major anyway seeing as how he was my commanding officer when the crime took place. Alleged crime anyhows, he says. Desertion. What’s the penalty for that if guilty? I says. I guess they shoot you mostly, he says. In the caboose the fellas is mostly playing cards and making jokes and they’re just trying to make each other laugh and guffaw like all soldiers do and the train is making haste to Kansas City.
When we get to Fort Leavenworth I ain’t feeling so optimistic as the fella said. The wrist chains have eaten into my flesh and the leg chains are trying to catch up with the wrist chains. I’m thinking it would a been better to make a run for it with John Cole and Winona. I was brave starting out but I ain’t so brave just now. My body is tired and Poulson and the lads is just eager to check in their saddles and gear and have a carouse I guess. They deserve it. It was a long trek and they ain’t done nothing wrong. Poulson says he gets thirty dollars for the capture. Fair enough. He gets me signed in too like a bit of extra gear and then I’m sitting in my new quarters like a new-bought dog and I feel like howling. But I don’t. Ain’t no future in howling. I’m wondering can I write to John Cole and get him to come straight up with Lige and bust me out of here. It’s a giant fort and the place is milling with troopers and other sorts and what look like raw recruits and all the biblical multitude of hangers-on. I’m going up for trial in a couple weeks they tell me and till then I can eat the duck soup and be quiet. God damn it. They call me Corporal which in the circumstances has an ominous ring to it. Little man that turns the keys says I’ll be alright but I guess he says that to all the glum-looking boys.
I don’t know nothing that’s going on since I’m tucked away like a bale of tobacco in the dry-house. So when the big day she comes I’m just mighty relieved to see Major Neale sitting in the room when I’m shunted down to be tried. They got a big long shiny table and a few officers looking pretty at ease and Major Neale is shooting the breeze with a captain when I come in. Turns out to be the ‘president’ of the court martial. Guess I’m someone called Corporal T. McNulty, Troop B, 2nd Cavalry. That’s who they say I am anyhow. I just don’t mention Thomasina in that moment. The charges is read and now I must allow the officers tuck in their legs somewhat because until then they was tending to keep them stuck out in front. The papers make a nestling sound and something in the room gets smaller. I guess it might be me. Desertion. And then they describe what they think it is I done and then they ask what the plea is and another man says Not Guilty. Then Major Neale speaks for me and he’s explaining about the temporary service he hooked me up in due to his daughter being rescued through means of my kindness. Something along those lines. Then he’s bumping up against his own arrest and he mentions Captain Sowell in a hard sorta voice and he’s asked about Captain Sowell and there’s a very queer stirring in the room. Like someone dropped ink in a glass of water. The major says he don’t know nothing about Captain Sowell only that he died. But he makes an effort then to haul the enormous train engine back on the track and says it was on account of all that what was happening to him that he was obliged to neglect the papers that would of discharged Corporal McNulty in the usual way. He said Corporal McNulty at great peril to his own self helped him in a time of urgent need and went a long way in a down payment of hope against his despair at that time. Then I see how much worse the major’s skin has gotten. It’s red as a crab’s foot. Not because he’s embarrassed but because he ain’t well is my suspicion. So then the president of the court he asks if there’s another witness could add something to this story and the major says he don’t know. So then the major brings it all a bit further in the wrong direction and says with an angry voice that it was Captain Sowell accused him with another witness of cruelty in his campaign against the Sioux that took and killed his own dear wife and one of his daughters and took his other daughter Angel captive. When he says this his face is now purple so it must be not only sickness.