Philipp Meyer - The Son

I shrugged.

“And these men! Look at how fat they are, and how good their horses, when we are starving and our horses starving as well. And the ammunition they carry…”

“It’s always been like this,” I said. “We were always the underdog.”

“We are done fighting,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“That is a poor decision.”

“Your government will not even exist a year from now, Eli. You are five white men…”

“Now three.”

“Three. I am sorry for your loss of two men, but when this war is over, you three will be able to do whatever you like. But I will be stuck on the reservation, along with my family, paying the price for supporting the wrong side. As will all my men. Who, when they are finished burying their brothers, will likely come to the conclusion that the best action is to kill the three of you. Both because you led us to this gun, which you did not bother to tell us about, and also because when whites steal something, it is no problem — whites can steal from each other — but if Indians steal something it is another matter. Do you understand? Indians who steal gold will not be forgiven.” He shrugged. “And yet we need this gold.”

I didn’t say anything.

“This was a great battle, Eli. The last we will ever win. After this there will be only losing. And I think that if I were you, I would get off this mountain as soon as possible.”

“You’re their chief,” I said.

“Unlike your people, we are democratic. Each man is free. My word is simply advice, not law.” He patted my shoulder. “I am telling you this because you are the best white man I have ever known. The thought of you living gives me great pleasure.”

“Me too,” I said, but he ignored me.

“It will be best if you ride all day and all night, at least for the first few days.”

I turned to go. He had loaded sacks of the gold into a rawhide parfleche. “Magic will not touch you, Eli. I saw it from the first time I met you. But of course that is also a curse.” He handed me the bag.

“WHAT DO YOU think,” said Busque. Rummaging in the moonlight, he and Showalter had each found a clean Union uniform, which was not hard to do as most of the bluecoats had died in their underwear. They packed the uniforms into their saddlebags.

“We’re going to California,” said Showalter.

“I’ll report you as killed in action.”

“Asshole,” said Busque, “the action is over. Those bluecoat motherfuckers all had Henrys and Spencers and that fucking automatic gun. Not to mention those Yankee boots they were all wearing. I would have killed any one of them just for those boots.”

“And this fucking gold,” said Showalter. “Our guys are getting paid in scrip that’ll be worthless by the time the peaches come in.”

“I’m a colonel,” I said.

“Eli, very shortly we will have lost the greatest war in history; in fact it is possible we have lost it already, and that the news has not reached us yet. I don’t plan on being put in a Union prison camp, or shot by the Home Guard between now and then, or, even worse, dying in the final battle for a house of bullshit.”

I didn’t say anything.

“If you go back to Austin you’ll be shot for desertion. And the war will end anyway, whether you’re alive or dead. Come out west and send for your family.”

“I can’t.”

“You think we lived this long because of what great soldiers we are? Is that what you think?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’re a real sonofabitch,” he said. “I always wondered about you.”

“Girls,” said Showalter, “you think these prairie niggers are gonna let us into any of that gold?”

THERE WERE OVER two hundred Union dead, mostly in their underwear. Usually the time after a fight felt like after a deer hunt, but now I began to get a terrible feeling.

Twenty-eight Cherokees had been killed outright and at sunrise, fourteen of the wounded would be shot by their friends. We buried Shaw and Fisk, whose faces were staved in. I thought of Fisk’s children, and the children of all the other men, they were all somebody’s darling.

From the supply wagons I loaded up on salt pork and cartridges for my Henry rifle. Flying Jacket allowed Busque and Showalter a bag of yellow dust apiece. They were happy and I decided not to tell them what I’d been given earlier.

His men wouldn’t look at us. They all thought we’d known about the gun and the three of us trotted off down the mountain, leaving the Cherokees with the gold and all the Federals’ weapons, ammunition, and horses. Just off the road was a dead man in his long underwear, and farther off the road, at the edge of the stream, was a second one.

I could not shake the feeling I’d stepped over some line over which I would never return, but maybe I’d crossed it years earlier, or maybe it had never existed. There was nothing you could take that did not belong to some other person. Whatever strings that held me had been cut.

“Stop fretting,” Showalter said. “As soon as the sun comes up and they see all their loot, they’ll want to take it and run. They’ll forget we exist!” He grinned at me.

“You’re probably right,” I said.

Busque stayed far ahead. He hadn’t looked at me since the burial.

AT THE BASE of the mountain, when we reached a long stretch of rock, I split off on my own, promising to see them in California when the war ended. It was the end of the RMN. I said a few words to distract from what was showing on my face.

We heard the shots as the Cherokees finished their wounded. I watched Busque and Showalter disappear to the west and then I pried the shoes off my horse and looped around the base of the mountain, staying under cover, changing direction every time I crossed a stream or patch of rock. I guessed Busque and Showalter wouldn’t be careful about their tracks. I hoped the Indians wouldn’t find them, but I knew better, the people around me did not live long, the Cherokees would catch the others, but not me, I was as sure of that as anything.

A MONTH LATER I got to Austin. The war had been over since spring.

She was a slut or a dyke or a whore. A man trapped in a woman’s body; look up her skirt and you’ll see a cock. A liar, a schemer, a cold heart with a cunt to match, ridden hard and put up wet, Though she shouldn’t take it personally. No one meant anything by it.

To be a man meant not living by any rules at all. You could say one thing in church and another at the bar and somehow both were true. You could be a good husband and father and Christian and bed every secretary, waitress, and prostitute that caught your eye. They all had their winks and nods, code for I fucked that cheerleader or nanny or Pan Am stewardess, that maid or riding instructor. Meanwhile, the slightest hint she was anything but a virgin (excepting the three children), would get her banned for life, a scarlet letter.

Not that she was complaining, but it had never stopped being strange that what was praised in men — the need to be good at everything, to be someone important — would be considered a character flaw in her. This had not been the case when Hank was alive. Perhaps they thought her ambition came from him, perhaps they did not mind a woman if she was under the control of a man.

But why did she care? Most men bored her, people bored her; she’d spent fifteen years watching Hank’s mind grow and change and constantly being surprised. She was not going to give up her freedom for anything less. In the first few years after Hank’s death, she’d slept with only a handful of men and of all of them the only one she’d fallen for was married, and as far as the others, her feelings had faded, or turned off abruptly; they were not Hank, could not be Hank. Most nights, if she had the energy, she reached for her massager and fell asleep.