In the Rogue Blood (16 page)

Working alongside their new comrades that afternoon they found it was as the young volunteers in Baton Rogue had said: there were men in this army whose English they could barely understand, men who spoke the language not at all and could understand none of it save basic military commands. The English spoken in the ranks was tangled in a dozen accents. The brogue of Eire was commonplace. The ranks abounded with Irishmen fled from the Famine and landed among a people who loathed them for immigrant Catholic rabble and posted signs on their establishment doors: “No dogs or Irish allowed.” In Boston and Philadelphia and Saint Louis, Catholic churches had been burned in riotous protest against the waves of papist potatoheads washing up on American shores. Only the army offered the newly arrived Irishman a ready place, as it did other foreigners as well—Germans mostly, some French, a few Swedes and Dutchmen, and men whose place of origin and native tongue would ever remain a mystery. Some of these immigrants knew only the soldier’s trade and would have come to the ranks in any case, but most had no trade at all and enlisted solely of economic need. Naturally their patriotism was held suspect and they were often found wanting by their native-born Protestant officers. And so naturally they suffered the greatest portion of punishments. And so naturally they were many of them embittered.

As they busily struck and rolled tents Jimmy Zane’s muttered curses about Kaufmann met with derision from his new platoon mates. “Shitfire,” a soldier from Kentucky said, “that warnt nary punishment. I knew a feller in the Second Infantry was made to sit astraddle a sawhorse with
his hands tied behind him and a twenty-pound weight hung on each foot. Made to sit like that for twelve hours. Said his balls and asshole ached for a month after. Said ever time he took a piss it stood him on his toes. Know what for he got punished thataway? Laughing. He laughed during roll call.”

Another told of punching a sergeant who’d kicked him for being slow to rise from his bunk one morning. As punishment he was fined six months’ pay and made to carry a thirty-pound iron ball everywhere he went for the next two months. “It was chained round me waist, it was, so I couldnt set the bloody thing down for a fucking minute except I sat on the ground and laid it beside me. It was a job to take a piss, I tell ye. Had to do it on me knees. End of the day me back was sore as a whore’s with the holding of it. It give me arms like Hercules and the back of an old man, it did. Hell, a knee in the walnuts is nothing to carrying that iron ball for two goddamn months.”

“You think that is fucking punish?” a soldier with a heavy Prussian accent asked him. “Look to here what happens for
I
hit a sergeant.” He stripped off his shirt and exposed a back crosshatched with pink ropy scars left of a flogging endured more than a year before. “This is twenty lash,” he said. “I seen some have forty. Fifty. I seen some die.”

“Why’d you hit him?” a young recruit asked.

The Prussian looked at him as a parent upon a slow-witted child. “Because he is deserving it is why.”

A private named O’Malley showed them his outsized thumb knuckles, the consequence of being hoisted to his tiptoes by his bound thumbs and let to hang that way for two hours with a gag in his mouth. “Most times they’ll do ye by the wrists and then it aint so bad,” he said. Someone asked what he’d done to get that punishment and he said he couldn’t quite remember. “I was bloody drunk at the time but I have a wee recollection of some son of a bitch calling me a damned Catholic cannibal.”

They heard too all about the “yoke,” an iron collar weighing eight pounds and fitted with three prongs, each a foot long. “After the first coupla hours it feels like your neckbone’s about broke,” said a soldier bearing a “T” brand under one eye. “And just try sleeping with one a them things round you neck.”

Commonplace was the buck and gag, whereby the malefactor was made to sit on the ground with his heels drawn up against his buttocks and his hands tied together around his knees and a stout stick positioned under his knees and over his arms and a gag placed snugly in his mouth.
One among them told of being bucked and gagged on the same long pole with three friends for an entire day and night in near-freezing weather. They were guilty of failing to return to camp at the end of an evening’s pass and then coming in drunk the next morning. “When they finally set us loose from that buck we couldn’t hardly stand up. I thought my back would be crooked the rest of my days. I thought my hands would hang to my knees forever. And sitting on that cold ground gave me a pile the size a your thumb, I aint lying.”

“You see now, new fish,” a soldier said to Jimmy Zane, “that wasn’t hardly
punishment
ye got from Kaufmann. The sarge just wanted your attention is all.”

They were on the move before daybreak in the rising dust of hundreds of wagons and draft animals and thousands of marching feet. The bands blared “Hail Columbia” and “Yankee Doodle” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The infantry sergeants sang cadence and Mexican muleteers cracked their whips and exhorted their teams in profane Spanish amid the rumble of hooves and clatter of wheels, the rattle of armament and harness rings. They followed the Nueces westward, away from the coastal marshlands and out to the firmer ground of the prairie and there made their turn south. Mexican sheepherders fifteen miles downcountry felt the ground quiver under their feet and spied the dust raised by the coming of the Yankee killing machine and made swift signs of the cross.

The first few days were clear and mild, the evenings pleasant. John saw his first armadillo and Lucas snatched it up by the tail and they marveled to discover that although its back was armor-plated its belly was softly furry. In exchange for a portion of it for himself a Mexican drover that evening dressed it and roasted it on a spit and basted it with a chile sauce and John and Lucas agreed it tasted somewhat like pork but was more savory. The army fed too on the wild cattle ranging in the brush and though its meat was found tough and stringy it was yet beef and the men were grateful for it. At night the line of campfires stretched for miles under a black-silk sky spangled with stars. The melodies of the regimental bands carried through the camps. The generals’ Negroes entertained with banjos and bones and dancing and singing. Especially popular was their rendition of “The Rose of Alabama.”

They learned now, John and Lucas, that there were women traveling with the supply train. Camp women they were called. They did some of the cooking and most of the laundering and all of the nursing and made themselves useful in sundry other ways. All of them had husbands in the ranks because regulations permitted only soldiers’ wives to accompany the entourage. According to Sergeant Willeford most of them were devoted wives willing to work for the army simply to be near their husbands. But some were outright whores as profit-minded as the enterprising soldiers they’d married strictly for the sake of business. When these soldiers went to visit their spouse at the supply train in the evenings they took with them several comrades eager to pay two dollars each for ten private minutes with the accommodating wife. “Most popular supply in camp, don’t you know?” said Willeford. According to him, Old Zack and his officers had known of this thriving enterprise the whole while it existed at Corpus Christi and saw no reason not to let it accompany the army to the Rio Grande. They approved of it on the principle that it was good for morale. “And they mean they own morale as much as anybody else’s,” Willeford said. “What I hear, the general’s always Rough and Ready to have a visit from Mrs. Borginnis in his tent.”

His reference was to Sarah Borginnis, wife to a sergeant of the Seventh Infantry and known throughout Taylor’s army as The Great Western because like the famous transatlantic steamship of that name she was a wonder to behold. She was said to be on her fourth husband and was renowned for her cavalier attitude toward conjugal fidelity. She was partial to soldiers and never hesitant to bestow her favors on any she took fancy to, and Willeford’s claim that Old Zack himself was one of her predilects was a favorite rumor of the Army of Occupation. Yet she never took money in exchange for her affections, and her legion of admirers would thrash any man who called her a prostitute. Not that she required any man’s protection. She stood over six feet tall and was reputedly strong as a mule. Just a few days previous and in front of a dozen witnesses she had punched a civilian wrangler unconscious for his loud complaint that her jackrabbit stew was so godawful it could be a Mexican secret weapon to poison every American in the ranks. The Great Western, it was said, had a damn fine sense of humor about everything except her cooking.

John got his first look at her one night when she came to the Fifth Infantry camp to deliver a fresh load of laundry and was greeted with rousing cheers. She was darkhaired and alluringly configured with a narrow waist between rounded hips and ample bosom and her mouth was
wide and sensual and quick to pucker in a kissing gesture in response to the soldiers’ hallos. Her face might have been pretty but for a dark scar across her chin and another that traversed her right brow in a thin white line to the corner of her eye and held the lid slightly closed. The muscles of her forearms stood like cords under the rolled sleeves of her shirt and her hands were large and rough-knuckled. She accepted a fresh pipe of tobacco from one of the soldiers and John stood leaning against a wagon several yards removed and watched her smoke and banter with the group of riflemen. At one point she caught him looking at her and smiled and winked and he felt himself flush and turned away. He heard her laughter and cursed himself for a damn fool and looked her way again but she was now taking leave of her admirers, waving and saying so long. Then she caught his stare and winked again and was gone.

They moved steadily downcountry on the Camino del Arroyo Colorado. The land had gone flatter still, softer of sand. The trees were fewer and the chaparral thicker. The sun was relentless. Each passing day Lucas Malone glared at the barren countryside and cursed the name of every man in Tennessee who’d told him of Texas’s fertile wonder. They pressed through a sandstorm that blew without pause for most of a day. Their eyes were raw and their lips cracked and the backs of their necks sunburned and peeling. Tempers got short and raw. Fistfights broke out round the night fires and the scrappers were bucked and gagged till dawn. They went more than two days without coming on water and their barrels were near exhausted when they at last arrived at a muddy creek and replenished themselves. They slew dozens of rattlesnakes every day. They were stung in the night by spiders and scorpions. A man bitten by a tarantula went into a spastic delirium and had to be tied with ropes and put in a wagon until he at last regained his senses. Their fingers and lips were stung swollen by the tiny spines of the prickly pear’s sweet red fruit. There was much muttered cursing in the ranks about the meanness of the country.

They were six days from the Rio Grande the next time he saw her. He was sitting in a fireside poker game with four other men of the company, including a tall copperhaired one they called Jack who was winning the biggest hands. John was a dollar ahead when the Borginnis woman showed up with another delivery of laundry and again stayed to chat awhile with some of the men over a pipe. He was watching her and did not hear the call for cards. The fellow called Jack was dealing, and in irritation he leaned over and lightly rapped John on the head with his
knuckles and said loudly, “Wake up, boy! You’ll not be finding any cards in yonder teats now, will ye?’

The Borginnis woman looked their way and laughed and John felt a surge of furious embarrassment. He abruptly kicked the dealer in the chest with the heel of his foot and toppled him backward. Both of them jumped to their feet and stripped off their shirts and squared off. A loose and raucous ring of spectators immediately formed about them, some in the crowd brandishing flaming chunks of firewood to better illuminate the fight. Bets were called and taken and still more soldiers were running over from neighboring camps as the first punches flew.

Jack the dealer was muscular and lithe as a gymnast, fast and bigfisted. In his fury John swung wildly, missing with roundhouses, and then suddenly saw stars and went sprawling. The surrounding crowd whirled about him like a firelit carousel and he heard cheering and exhortations and tasted blood. He scrambled dizzily to his feet and the dealer came at him again, shoulders hunched and fists pumping, smacking into his arms and shoulders and forehead, driving him back into the crowd that parted for them, closed around them, followed after them yelling for blood.

The dealer was a smooth and practiced pugilist and was carrying his hands lower now, so confident was he. He jabbed to the eyes, hooked to the ribs, crossed to the head. The punches struck sparks in John’s head and he backpedaled and counterpunched awkwardly as he tried to clear his vision. Some in the crowd exhorted, “Hit him, new fish! Hit him, goddamnit!” But the cheers were chiefly for the dealer and somebody hollered, “Don’t be toying with the lad, Jack! Put him down and be done with it!” The crowd laughed and Jack the dealer grinned widely and landed a quick left-right to John’s head.

Now came the Borginnis voice clearly and loud—”Handsome Jack darlin! I’ll be treating the winner to a fine time, I will!”—and the crowd cheered its approval. Handsome Jack’s eyes flicked sidelong in the direction of her voice, and in that instant John hit him a solid right to the neck and a left to the jaw that staggered him. And then the two were toe-to-toe and slugging with both fists and blood flew off their mouths and eyes and the onlookers were raging for them to kill each other.

But now a guard detail with fixed bayonets came running to break the crowd apart. The officer in charge was one Captain Johns who swatted at the combatants with his saber to separate them and he gashed Handsome Jack’s head and sliced open John’s cheek to the bone and they let off punching each other and turned on him. Captain Johns blanched and
backed away and commanded, “Stand fast, Riley, damn your eyes!”

But Handsome Jack Riley came on with blood streaming from his hair and John saw murder in his face. The captain slashed at Riley and cut his fending hand and then fumbled for the pistol in his belt but John lunged and seized his arm and grabbed away the gun as Riley wrested the saber from him and the disarmed captain staggered backward and fell. Riley stepped toward him with the saber poised to run him through but just then a trio of guards with brandished bayonets rushed between him and the fallen officer. The sergeant-at-arms ordered them to drop the weapons or die where they stood. John let the pistol drop but Riley seemed to debate the order for a moment before breaking the blade over his knee and contemptuously tossing the pieces aside.

They spent the night gagged and bucked to the same pole on a flatwagon placed in the very center of the encampment where they would be on full display to everyone at reveille. At the moment the camp was asleep but for the guards walking their posts and the tall shadowy figure that now approached the flatwagon and was halted by a guard who stepped out of the shadows nearby. The figure leaned in to the guard and their silhouetted faces seemed to meld together for a moment and John heard an unintelligible whisper and the guard hissed, “All
right
, dammit! But only for a minute. And stay low!” He walked off into the farther shadows and the other figure climbed up on the flatbed and crouched before them and they saw it was The Great Western. They could not see her eyes in the shadow of her hatbrim but her grin was wide and white in the light of the quarter moon.

“I known you for a hellion, Handsome Jack Riley,” she whispered, putting a hand to his face, “and I’ve loved you for your bold ways. But now”—and she turned to John—”who is this other fearless rascal here, I want to know?” He flinched when her fingers touched the wound on his cheek that yet seeped blood through the surgeon’s stitches. She dabbed at the blood beads with the hem of her skirt and kissed the cut and said, “You’ll carry this scar to the grave, you will,” and then gently kissed him on the upper lip just above his gag. She mopped at Riley’s bleeding scalp and kissed him too and stroked his face with one hand and John’s with the other. “You two aint scared of neither Saint Peter nor Old Nick, are ye? Look at ye! Look at them
eyes
on ye both!”

Her breath had quickened and now her fingers left their faces and John felt her hand between his legs and he was instantly engorged. She grinned hugely at him and then at Riley. “You two rascals! You’ll go to hell itself
with a hard-on, won’t ye?” She fumbled with his trouser buttons and released his erection and then attended to Riley for a moment and then she had a hand on them both and was grinning from one to the other and she hadn’t stroked him a dozen times before John grunted into his gag and gushed hotly over her hand. She giggled like a girl and leaned to him and kissed his upper lip and then a moment later Riley groaned in his release and she kissed him too. She dried her hands on her dress and rebuttoned their trousers. Then she gently touched their faces again and whispered, “You
two!
” And then she was gone.

For a minute they sat unmoving. John thought he might have imagined the whole thing. He thought he might be addled from Riley’s punches or the sword gash on his face. Now Riley made a snuffling sound and John turned and saw Handsome Jack staring at him with bright wet eyes and for a moment he thought Riley might be strangling on his gag, or was perhaps crying. And then he knew it was neither. Handsome Jack Riley was laughing. Laughing into his gag. John tried to say, “You’re a crazy son of a bitch” but it came out sounding like “Ooo-
ayhee
-un-ick” and Riley snuffled more loudly still and the tears spilled down his face. And then John too was snuffling with laughter and feeling his eyes fill hotly and having trouble breathing around the gag for the mucus flooding his nose, and they were both like that, laughing into their gags and weeping with mirth until their bellies ached and their eyes were burning and they thought they would choke to death on their laughter.