addressed me. “Your melancholy past is not meant for the ears of the young.”
“No,” I said. My feet carried me from the room, my son glaring at me. “You are wrong.” He does not love me for he is German-proud, and believes that had time and history allowed for it, it could have been him as easily as another. He knows—and he is right. “No, it can be meant only for them. Only for them.”
II. I Have Been Found in History Books
We rode across the hillocks and vales of Missouri, hiding in uniforms of Yankee blue. Our scouts were out left flank and right flank, while Pitt Mackeson and me formed the point. The night had been long and arduous, the horses were lathered to the withers, and dust was caking mud to our jackets. There had been whiskey through the night, and our breaths blasphemed the scent of early-morning spring. Blossoms began a cautious bloom on dogwood trees, and grass broke beneath hooves to impart rich, green odor. The Sni-A-Bar flowed to the west, a slight creek more than a river, but a comfort to tongues dried gamy and horses hard rode. We were making our way down the slope toward it, through a copse of hickory trees full of housewife squirrels gossiping at our passing, when we saw a wagon halted near the stream.
There was a man holding a hat for his hitched team to drink from, a woman, a girl in red flannel, and a boy who was splashing about at the water’s edge, raising mud. The man’s voice boomed to scold the boy for this as he had yet to drink.
“Dutchman,” Mackeson said, then spit. “Goddamn lop-eared Saint Louis Dutchman.” Mackeson was American and had no use for foreigners, and little for me. He had eyes that were not set level in a bent face, so that he saw you top and bottom in one glance. I watched him close in gunplay, and kept him to my front.
“Let us bring Black John up,” I said.
I turned in my saddle and raised my right hand above me, waved a circle with it, then pointed ahead. Black John brought the boys up, he taking one column of blue to the right, Coleman Younger taking the other to the left.
The Dutchman heard the rumble of hooves but had no chance to escape us. We tightened our circle about the wagon, made certain the Dutchman was alone, then dismounted.
The family crusted around the Dutchman, not in fear, but to introduce themselves. Our uniforms were a relief to them, for they did not look closely at our mismatched trousers and our hats that had rebel locks trailing below them.
Most of the boys led their mounts to the stream, opened whiskey bottles, and generally tomfooled about near the water. Black John Ambrose, Mackeson, me, and a few others confronted the Dutchman. He offered his hand to Black John, whose stiff height, bristly black curls, and hard-set face made his leadership plain. Black John spit, as Americans are wont to do when confident of their might.
“Wilhelm Schnellenberger,” the Dutchman said, his hand finally dropping back to his side.
I spit, then pawed the gob with my boot.
“Dutchman,” Mackeson said. “Lop-eared Dutchman.”
“Are you secesh?” Black John asked, his voice ever so coaxing. “Are you southern man?”
“No, no, no,” the apple-headed Dutchman answered. His eyes wandered among us. He smiled. “No secesh. Union man.”
The woman, the girl, and the boy nodded in agreement, the boy beginning to study our uniforms. Some of the fellows were kicking a stick to and fro, trying to keep it in the air, whiskey to the winner. It was a poetry moment: water, whiskey, no danger, a friendly sun in the sky, larks and laughter.
“Stretch his neck,” Black John said. “And let’s be sharp about it.”
The woman had some American, and the Dutchman had enough anyway, for when she flung her arms about him wailing, he sunk to his knees. He was mumbling to his god, and I was thinking how his god must’ve missed the boat from Hamburg, for he was not near handy enough to be of use in this land.
“What’s he babblin’?” Mackeson goaded me.
“He is praying to Abe Lincoln,” I said.
Coleman Younger had a rope, but he would not lend it as it was new, so we used mine. Mackeson formed it into a noose with seven coils rather than thirteen for he had no inclination to bring bad luck onto himself. Thirteen is proper, though, and some things ought to be done right. I raised this issue.
“You do it then, Dutchy,” he said, tossing the seven-coiled rope to me. “Bad luck’ll not change your course, anyhow.”
As I worked to make the Dutchman’s end a proper one, he began to talk to me. The situation had sunk in on the family and they had become dull. The Dutchman wiggle-waggled in that alien tongue. I acted put- upon by having thus to illustrate my skill in oddball dialects, lest I be watched for signs of pride in my parents’ tongue.
“We care nothing for the war,” the Dutchman said. I fitted the noose with thirteen coils around his neck. “We are for Utah Territory. Utah. This is not a war in Utah, we learn.”
“This war is everywhere,” I said.
“I am no negro stealer. I am barrel maker.”
“You are Union.”
“I am for Utah Territory.”
Mackeson threw the rope over a cottonwood branch and tied it to the trunk. Some of the other boys hustled the Dutchman onto the seat of the wagon, startling the team and setting off screeches of metal on wood, mules, and women.
I stepped back from the wagon’s path, then turned to Black John.
“He says he is not a Union man,” I said. “He was codded by our costumes.”
“Sure he says that,” Mackeson said. “Dutchman don’t mean fool.”
“He does, does he?” Black John said. He was remounted and others were following suit. “Well, he should’ve hung by his convictions rather than live by the lie.” Black John nodded to Mackeson. “He’s a goddamn Dutchman anyhow, and I don’t much care.”
Mackeson slapped the mules on the rump and the Dutchman swung.
“One less Dutchman,” Coleman Younger said.
They all watched me, as they always did, when wrong-hearted Dutchmen were converted by us. I mounted my bay slowly, elaborately cool about the affair.
The woman was grieved beyond utterance, the little girl whimpered behind her. The boy walked beneath his father’s dancing boots, then made a move to loosen the rope about the cottonwood trunk. He was close to fourteen and still foreign to his toes.
I gave no warning but the cocking of my Navy Colt and booked the boy passage with his father. My face was profound, I hope, when I turned to Black John.
“Pups make hounds,” I said. “And there are hounds enough.”
Black John nodded, then solemnly said, “Jake Roedel, you are a rare Dutchman.”
Mackeson looked at me as if I were something hogs had vomited.
“Did you see that?” he asked. “Shot the boy in the back! Couldn’t shoot him face-to-face. Goddamn Dutchman! Why’d you shoot him from the back?”
“I am tender toward boys,” I said. “But I would put a ball in your face, Mackeson, should affairs so dictate.”
Black John then repeated himself on the sort of Dutchman I was, and we moved on to the silence of the family’s pain. I positioned myself so that Pitt Mackeson’s shoulder blades were ever visible to me.
Near dark, we shed our blue sheep’s clothing. We were to rendezvous with Captain Quantrill west of Lone Jack, just above Blue Cut.
Camp was pitched and pickets put out while there was yet light to the day. Letters were written to homefolks by those that could, and rents in clothing were mended. Several of the boys, ever playful and game for fun, began to boot a ball of leather about the campsite, whiskey, as always, the victor’s plunder.
I strolled about the camp whittling on a hickory branch that I had fated to be a water ladle. I
