Captain Sexton – now I hear his name proper – is just as flamed up now as the major and he don’t like the major’s high tone not one bit. I come all the way out from Boston to help my corporal and speak for him and I ain’t on trial here. I never said you was, says the president. God damn it, says the major, that just what it feel like. And bangs his right hand on the table. The papers and the glasses jump. Who was this other man that went witness against you? says the president and Major said some damn German called Sarjohn. Oh, says the captain, I know that man, is it Henry Sarjohn you mean? Yes, says the major. Henry Sarjohn is lieutenant of scouts at Fort Leavenworth, he says, why, I think I will call him. So Captain Sexton pulls the plug on proceedings till Sarjohn can be called. Good holy Jesus.
If the president had called Beelzebub I couldn’t of been more alarmed. One man on God’s earth I didn’t want putting eyes on me was that Sarjohn. Why in the name of tarnation did he have to be in the damn fort? I guess he could of been a hundred miles away and still called. Tarnation. So I’m eating soup and shitting it out another few days. A man can have noble thoughts and they roosting there in his head like a row of birds but life sure don’t like to contemplate them sitting there. Life’s gonna shoot them birds. Then they have everyone back including the German. Henry Sarjohn is a lieutenant now by God and they say the scouts is mostly half-breeds around here with Irish fathers and Indian mothers. That’s suppose to be amusing but I just don’t find it so. Major Neale don’t attend which I am told is his right as a retired officer and then the president asks Sarjohn his side of the story and what the hell happened to Sowell. So the little German tells us what happened which was, he don’t know. They got up a case against Major Neale and the major was detained and then Sowell was found killed and then the case was thrown back by the court. That’s all he knowed about it. Then he looks at me as hard as a rook. He puts his head in real close. God damn it – I nearly spake aloud though I am forbid. For that man’s breath smells of things that are dead. And then he says, and that’s the man that killed Captain Carlton. Who? says the president, real surprised. Captain Starling Carlton, I seen it, says the German, and I been keeping an eye out this long time. I knew I’d know him when I seen him plain, and there he is. This weren’t good for the temperature of the court and it weren’t good for me. I am took back to the cells while they goes on talking I guess and then in a few days another charge is laid against me and this time it was of murder. The court believed me guilty of the charge. That’s what they said.
I guess I was. I don’t know how many loved Starling Carlton and even if it were only a few I was one of them. But he was lifting his hand against Winona. I don’t see any other way round that no matter how often I go back in my mind and look at it. Captain Rufus Sexton says the court has decided I was guilty and so I am to be laid in chains and took out when the time was right and shot for my crime. No one speaks for mitigation because who there could speak for it?
They was fearsome days then. I am allowed to write John Cole and tell him my news and he comes up from Tennessee but as a condemned man they ain’t of a mind to let him see me. I am sore sorry about that but at the same time since I carry John Cole inside I reckoned it must not be allowed to make no odds in the long run. I imagined him near me and I imagined I kissed his face. I imagined he said nice things to me and I imagined me saying back I thought he was the best man I ever knowed. I weren’t leaving the world without saying one more time I loved John Cole even if he weren’t there to hear it.
Bitterness eats the bitter. But if I was a murderer I’d a liked to kill that German. Just saying that because it’s true and accurate. He was doing his duty as he saw fit to do, some might say. I’d say he is a damn meddler and I will leave it at that. Who killed Captain Silas Sowell deceased, I wonder? No one knowed and my guess was no one ever will. As John Cole said, he had a point of view and that got to be honoured. You can’t go in and be slaughtering everyone like a passel of King Henrys. That ain’t the world as it was made to be.
Now the sentence was gave and the summer was sitting outside my window. A huge jewel of sunlight hangs high on the wall. And I remembered oftentimes riding through such heat with a longing in my heart just for what the days of life ahead might bring, nothing else. I did hear them every Friday bringing down men. I would be shot as the sun came up, ‘with musketry’, as they decree. There’d be a day without me and then a night and then forever more. Life wants you to go down and suffer far as I can see. You gotta dance around all that. A child must come out to dance and dance around all obstacles and dance in the end the creaky quadrille of age. But. I was trying to see how it all happened and how everything came to that point and I was trying to spot the moment I was maybe pushed from the true path but I couldn’t see nothing like that. What did I do truly? I saved Winona. There was comfort in that. If I could of saved her without putting a sabre into Starling’s face I would of.
I wrote to John and I wrote to the poet McSweny just to say farewell but a letter come back from our old comrade Mr Noone that the poet McSweny were R.I.P. and he was sorry to hear I would be also soon – he didn’t use just them words. John Cole wrote me a letter would tear the heart out of a hangman, and tucked in with it is one of them famous missives of Winona. She has put in a sprig of some wild flower. Copperplate writing. Magan’s Farm, Paris. June 3rd, 1872. Dear Thomas, we are sure missing you in Tennessee. If only the army will let you come back we will kill the fatted calf says Lige Magan. He has harrowed the near fields and he sure misses your touch with those rascal horses. In the meantime there is only time to say I love you as a consequence of John Cole is champing at the bit to get to town. I miss you real bad. My heart is sore. Your fond daughter, Winona.
I weren’t going on too bad till I got that.
I don’t know but most likely I was forty years of age. That’s early to go but plenty died in the war younger. I seen a lot of young men go. That ain’t the point so much until it’s you going. I know I got a number on the prison roster for men to be shot and sooner or later it go up. Well, the day creeps closer. A printed notice is nailed to the door. You wouldn’t believe the sweating caused by that. My heart is weighed down by pain and longing and it just ain’t no fit state for a Christian. Even the rat who flits along the wall feels sorry for you then. You ain’t worth nothing to yourself. You ain’t worth a Lindenmueller cent. My head floods with fear and my feet are icy. Then I’m howling. The jailer comes in. His name is Pleasant Hazelwood, I guess he’s a sergeant. Ain’t no real use caterwauling, he says. I’m rocking like a drunkard back and forth. Fear burns my belly like a nest of Mexican chillies. I’m shouting at him. Why ain’t there no God will help me? Ain’t no man neither, he says. I run against the wall like a blind rat. Like I might find a gap. Everything gone from me. I stand there with my breast heaving. No battle is worser than this. Sergeant Hazelwood stands in close and twists his hands about like two newborn pups and then grips my arm. I seen a thousand men just like you, he says, it just ain’t so bad as you think. Kind old bugger and him as ugly as a moose. Kind of a angel sent to me in the guise of a fat turnkey smelling of shit and onions. But it ain’t helping. Not truly. The devil’s franked my ticket and God ain’t in it. How can I make my peace with Him if He ain’t there? I plunge down again into violent misery like a rock thrown into a torrent.