Days Without End: AN IRISH TIMES BEST IRISH BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

by Sebastian Barry

THE METHOD OF LAYING out a corpse in Missouri sure took the proverbial cake.

I am talking now about the finale of my first engagement in the business of war. 1851 it was most likely. Since the bloom was gone off me, I had volunteered aged seventeen in Missouri. If you had all your limbs they took you. If you were a one-eyed boy they might take you too even so. The only pay worse than the worst pay in America was army pay.

We were two wood-shavings of humanity in a rough world.

Next thing comes up in our view a spanking new building all fresh wood and even a last sparkle in the recently beaten nailheads. Saloon a sign said, no more nor less. And underneath, on a smaller sign hanging from a string, Clean boys wanted. Look, see, says John Cole, who didn’t have the great learning I had, but had a little none the less. Well, he says, by my mother’s loving heart, we do fulfil half of that requirement.

Every citizen knows that miners are all sorts of souls. They come into a country, I seen it a thousand times, and strip away all the beauty, and then there is black filth in the rivers and the trees just seem to wither back like affronted maids. They like rough food, rough whiskey, rough nights, and truth to tell, if you is a Indian girl, they will like you in all the wrong ways.

Other miners are teachers, professors in more civilised lands, fallen priests and bankrupt storeowners, men whose women have abandoned them as useless fixtures. Every brand and gradation of soul, as the crop measurer might say, and will say.

John was Joanna, myself was Thomasina. We danced and we danced. We whirled and we whirled. Matter of fact, end of all we were good dancers. We could waltz, slow and fast. No better boys was ever knowed in Daggsville I will venture. Or purtier. Or cleaner. We swirled about in our dresses and Mr Carmody the storeman’s wife, Mrs Carmody of course by name, being a seamstress, let out our outfits as the months went by. Maybe it is a mistake to feed vagrants, but mostly we grew upward instead of out. Maybe we were changing, but we were still the girls we had been in our customers’ eyes. They spoke well of us and men came in from miles around to view us and get their name on our little cardboard lists. ‘Why, miss, will you do me the honour of a dance?’ ‘Why, yes, sir, I have ten minutes left at quarter of twelve, if you care to fill that vacancy.’ ‘I will be most obliged.’ Two useless, dirt-risen boys never had such entertainment. We was asked our hands in marriage, we was offered carts and horses if we would consent to go into camp with such and such a fella, we was given gifts such as would not have embarrassed a desert Arab in Arabia, seeking his bride. But of course, we knew the story in our story. They knew it too, maybe, now I am considering it. They were free to offer themselves into the penitentiary of matrimony because they knew it was imaginary. It was all aspects of freedom, happiness, and joy.

Then you had the desert that wasn’t really a desert. Lots of bones of pilgrims’ cattle though, and now and then along the way, a piano thrown out from a wagon, or a cupboard, as the oxen weakened at their task. Drought was the worst thing there. It was a mighty queer thing to see a black piano in the half-true desert. Hey, John Cole, what in the name of tarnation that piano doing there in the dust? Must be looking for a saloon, he says.

My father was a butter exporter man in a small way sending butter in barrels out of Sligo port into England. All good things was sent there. Cows, beeves, pigs, sheep, goats, wheat, barley, English corn, beets, carrots, cabbages, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of existence. All that was left in Ireland was the potato for eating and when the potato was lost there was nothing left in old Ireland. She starved in her stocking feet. And she had no stockings. Rags.

The old ships started to bring ruined people to Canada, people that were so hungry they might eat each other in the holds. I am not saying I saw that. But I was thirteen or so and I knew in my heart and soul I had to flee. I crept onto one of those ships in the darkness. I am telling this best I can. It’s long ago, before America. I was among the destitute, the ruined and the starving for six weeks. Many went overboard, that’s how it was. The captain hisself he died of fever, when we reached Canada we were a ship without a steward. Into the fever sheds with us and that’s where hundreds died. I’m just writing all this down. The point is, we were nothing. No one wanted us. Canada was a-feared of us. We were a plague. We were only rats of people. Hunger takes away what you are. Everything we were was just nothing then. Talk, music, Sligo, stories, future, past, it was all turned to something very like the shit of animals. When I met John Cole that’s who I was, a human louse, even evil people shunned me and the good had no use for me. That’s where I started. Gives an idea of the victory meeting John Cole was. First time I felt like a human person again. And that’s enough of that, I say, I don’t want to say no more. Silence. I only say it because without saying I don’t think anything can be properly understood. How we were able to see slaughter without flinching. Because we were nothing ourselves, to begin with. We knew what to do with nothing, we were at home there.

The mind is a wild liar and I don’t trust much in it that I find there.

The sore backs of the long journey west seemed less to the fore of our minds. All that riding grinds down your backbone till I believe you gain for yourself a little store of bone dust in your buttocks. That’s what it felt like. Every rut, every slip of your horse is a jolt of pain.

The breath of three hundred horses makes a curling twisting mist in the cold November air. Their warm bodies were steaming from their exertions. We were obliged to try and keep formation but the ancient redwoods didn’t care about that. They were parting us and cutting us as if they were moving themselves. You could have tethered fifty horses to the girth of some of them. The curious birds of America were calling among the trees and from the far heights dropped the myriad speckles of frost. Now and then something cracked in the forest like musket-fire. There wasn’t any sense the trees needed us there. They were about their own business certainly.

Then rain began to fall in an extravagant tantrum. High up in mountain country though we were, every little river became a huge muscled snake, and the water wanted to find out everything, the meaning of our sad roofs for instance, the meaning of our bunk beds beginning to take the character of little barks, the sure calculation that if it fell day and night no human man was going to get his uniform dry. We was wet to the ribs.

The flood came so quickly you couldn’t have laid a bet on it. You couldn’t a got the book open quick enough to mark the wager.

Our own horses were skeletons. They were getting water but little else. Horses need regular fodder, grass and such. My poor horse was showing his bones like they was metal levers sticking out. Watchorn had been a small plumpish man but he weren’t no more. You coulda used John Cole for a pencil if you coulda threaded some lead through him.

Now in these different districts, the sun came up that bit earlier, more eagerly, more like the baker putting fire into his bread-oven, in the small hours, so the women in the town would have bread bright early. Lord, that sun rose regular and sere, he didn’t care who saw him, naked and round and white. Then the rains came walking over the land, exciting the new grasses, thundering down, hammering like fearsome little bullets, making the shards and dusts of the earth dance a violent jig. Making the grass seeds drunk with ambition. Then the sun pouring in after the rain, and the wide endless prairie steaming, a vast and endless vista of white steam rising, and the flocks of birds wheeling and turning, a million birds to one cloud, we’d a needed a blunderbuss to harvest them, small black fleet wondrous birds.

The prairie is as quiet as a library. Just the tremendous grasses folding, unfolding, showing their dark underbellies, hiding them, showing. The little shucking sound of that. But most of the business was sky. Huge endless sky all the way to heaven most likely.

You could arrest sunlight for attempted murder out on the plains.

A man’s memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. Can’t do much about that. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards.

Just four or five hours later we begin to see a country whose beauty penetrates our bones. I say beauty and I mean beauty. Oftentimes in America you could go stark mad from the ugliness of things. Grass that goes for a thousand miles and never a hill to break it. I ain’t saying there ain’t beauty on the plains, well there is. But you ain’t long travelling on the plains when you begin to feel clear loco. You can rise up out of your saddle and sort of look down on yourself riding, it’s as if the stern and relentless monotony makes you die, come back to life, and die again. Your brain is molten in its bowl of bones and you just seeing atrocious wonders everywhere. The mosquitoes have your hide for supper and you are one hallucinating lunatic then. But now in the far distance we see a land begin to be suggested as if maybe a man was out there painting it with a huge brush. He is choosing a blue as bright as falling water for the hills and there is a green for the forests so green you think it might be used for to make ten million gems. Rivers burn through it with a enamelled blue. The huge fiery sun is working at burning off all this splendid colour and for ten thousand acres of the sky it is mighty successful. A stagger of black cliffs just nearby rise sheer and strange from the molten greens. Then a wide band of red striked across the sky and the red is the red of them trousers Zouave soldiers wear. Then a colossal band of the blue of bird eggs. God’s work! Silence so great ...

The Sioux men are hunkered down behind whatever will protect them but once we reach the limits of their village they rise up without hesitation and with bare breast charge against our approach. Each of us has one charge in his musket that must be preserved for a sure hit if there be ever such a thing in this kind of raggle-taggle battle. I see Caleb Booth in the corner of my eye fall in the Indian fusillade. Then they are pulling knives from their waists and hollering and there is a sort of mad joyous desperation in it that kindles a crazy fire in the heart. We are not lovers rushing to embrace but there is a sense of terrifying union none the less, as if courage yearns to join with courage.

We know cold brutal war and how it be waged there on the plains because we been waging it. There’s no soldier don’t have a queer little spot in his wretched heart for his enemy, that’s just a fact. Maybe only on account of him being alive in the same place and the same time and we are all just customers of the same three-card trickster.

We are tensed up like we should be shooting but there ain’t no reason. It’s just a solitary Indian with nothing to shoot back with. We may be black-hearted men when our turn comes but there is a seam in men called justice that nothing burns off complete.

Turns out Mr Noone he has a new place up in Grand Rapids running minstrel shows and he says he just might have work for Thomas McNulty if he ain’t lost his pretty looks fighting. That night as we lie chest to chest in the old doss and Winona purring in sleep in the next room we feel the lure of the unknown future distil into our bones. Guess you ain’t lost your looks anyhows, says John Cole, staring at them in the half-light. Look pretty good to me. You reckon? I says. I like the way you look anyhows, he says, and kisses me.

We’re holding hands then like lovers who have just met or how we imagine lovers might be in the unknown realm where lovers act as lovers without concealment.

Something strange has happened, the hall has fallen into silence. Silence more speaking than any sound. I guess they don’t know what they are seeing. I guess it is true that they are seeing a lovely woman. Soft-breasted woman, like something off a picture of such dames. Now there rampages through me a thrill such as might be got otherwise only from opium. I might be one of the footlights, with a burning wick for a heart. I don’t utter a blessed word. Winona trips about as if putting a boudoir to rights. John Cole all spit and polish approaches from the far side of the stage and we hear the men draw in their breath like a sea tide drawing back on the shingle of a beach. He approaches and approaches. They know I am a man because they have read it on the bill. But I am suspecting that every one of them would like to touch me and now John Cole is their ambassador of kisses.

The heldin breath of the audience is not let out again. Half a minute passes. It is unlikely any of them could of holded their breath like this underwater. They have found new size in their lungs. Down down we go under them waters of desire. Every last man, young and old, wants John Cole to touch my face, hold my narrow shoulders, put his mouth against my lips. Handsome John Cole, my beau. Our love in plain sight.

The crowd beyond the curtains now are clapping, hooting, stamping. There is a craziness in it all that betokens a kind of delicious freedom. Notions are cast off. If only for a moment. They seen a flickering picture of beauty. All day they’ve laboured in the beds of gypsum crystals, hacking and gathering. Their fingernails are a queer white from the work. Their backs are sore and they must troop out again in the morning. But for a minute they loved a woman that ain’t a real woman but that ain’t the point. There was love in Mr Titus Noone’s hall for a crazy foggy moment. There were love imperishable for a rushing moment.

Thus we inaugurate the best time in the little kingdom we have pitched up against the darkness.

Winona is sure the prettiest little daughter ever man had. Goddamned beautiful black hair. Blue eyes like a mackerel’s blue back. Or a duck’s wing feathers. Sweet little face cool as a melon when you hold it in your hands and kiss her forehead. God knows what stories she seen and been part in. Savage murder for sure because we caused it. Walked through the carnage and the slaughter of her own. You could expect a child that has seen all that to wake in the night sweating and she does. Then John Cole is obliged to hold her trembling form against him and soothe her with lullabies. Well he only knows one and he does that over and over. He holds her softly and sings her the lullaby. Where he got that no man knows not even hisself. Like a stray bird from some distant country. Then he lies on her bed and she pushes in tight against him like you might imagine bear cubs do in the winter hide or maybe even wolves. Tight in, like John Cole was that bit of safety she is trying to reach. A harbour. Then her breathing slowly lengthens and then she is snoring a little. Time to come back to bed and in the darkness or the helpful dim of the candle he looks at me and nods his head. Got her sleeping, he says. You sure do, I say. Not much more than that needed to make men happy.

At home Winona don’t sing minstrel songs but those other songs that carry her back to where she begun in the innocence of her youth. We are racked to think we don’t know who even her mother was or maybe it was a woman that we killed. God knows that feels like a colossal-sized crime betimes and if you was counting crimes on a abacus maybe it won’t be the only one we done against her. She could slit our throats in the night with justice, spray out our blood redly on the linen pillows. But she don’t do that. She sings and we listen and all three are returned to the prairie in our heads. She to her guiltless haunts and us to those moments when in truth we stood gazing out onto all that lonesome beauty.

We sign up for the three years and everyone believes this war will take no more or we ain’t Christians at all. Most of the privates sign for ninety days. Want to do their duty and then go home proud men. We’re drilled up and down our scraggy parade ground and the sergeants try and teach the new boys how to load their muskets but by God they ain’t a quick study. Lucky if they get one in ten balls out. Sheridan, Dignam, O’Reilly, Brady, McBrien, Lysaght, a line of Irish names as long as the Missouri river. A few of the boys been in Massachusetts militias right enough so they ain’t so useless. But God Almighty. Maybe Mr Lincoln better start worrying, says John Cole, looking on bemused as all dickens.

You’ll do your best, boys, I know, says the major. Yes, sir, says Lige. God damn it, I guess we will, says Starling Carlton. I know you will, says the major, in his nice colonel’s uniform. You follow your captain, now, boys, he says. Captain Wilson he means, a quiet red-haired Irish. Then there’s Lieutenant Shaughnessy and Lieutenant Brown. Seems like decent Dublin men enough. Sergeant Magan. Two corporals, me and John. Stew then of Kerrymen and other western seaboard starving types. Fellas with faces like old black bog-oak. And the younger ones all smiles and frowns, listening. Eyes and noses and mouths of all descriptions. Mothers’ sons. Seen already the death of their world and now asking pardon of the Fates so that they can fight for a new one.

Nice boy called Dan FitzGerald falls in with us in a card-playing capacity so it’s very like old times at Laramie except we’re bivouacked under slightly shifted stars and it’s a city of blue-coated gents all around. We got wives churning uniforms in the wash-churns and we got great boys for singing and even our drummer boy McCarthy who is only eleven years of age is a card. Name sounds like an Irish but he a black boy from Missouri. Missouri don’t know if it’s Rebel or Union so McCarthy he leaves while they decide.

And then we are stomping down into that two-faced country, it’s north Virginia, we don’t know where allegiances may lie. Could be death to find out. Got to say Virginia appeals. Great mountains stand to the west and old forests there are not thinking about us, not for a minute.

A good heart carries across fences.

How we going to count all the souls to be lost in this war? I am shaking like a last dry leaf on a branch in winter. Rattling. I don’t guess I have met two hundred souls in my time and knew their names. Souls ain’t like a great river and then when death comes the souls pouring over the waterfall and into the bottom land below. Souls ain’t like that but this war is asking for them to be. Do we got so many souls to be given? How can that be?

The wolves will come down after a few days from the mountains when we are gone and start to dig through the stones we’ve piled up. Nothing more surer than that. That’s why the Indians put their dead on poles. We put them in the dirt because we believe it to be respecting. Talking about Jesus but Jesus never knew nothing about this land. That’s how foolish we are.

Starling won’t be half of what he is without Lige, we know. I guess folk become joined at the hip over time. Can’t have a thought about Starling without Lige being in it like a squirrel in a tree.

Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don’t care about that. World is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long drear stretches where nothing going on but chicory drinking and whiskey and cards. No requirement for nothing else tucked in there. We’re strange people, soldiers stuck out in wars. We ain’t saying no laws in Washington. We ain’t walking on yon great lawns. Storms kill us, and battles, and the earth closes over and no one need say a word and I don’t believe we mind. Happy to breathe because we seen terror and horror and then for a while they ain’t in dominion. Bibles weren’t wrote for us nor any books. We ain’t maybe what people do call human since we ain’t partaking of that bread of heaven. But if God was trying to make an excuse for us He might point at that strange love between us. Like when you fumbling about in the darkness and you light a lamp and the light come up and rescue things. Objects in a room and the face of the man who seem a dug-up treasure to you. John Cole. Seems a food. Bread of earth. The lamplight touching his eyes and another light answering.

We wrote a little missive to Lige Magan before we shipped out telling him to look out for us and got back a sad letter itemising the death of his pa. He was took off his farm by the Rebs and hanged for a bluecoat and all his pigs slaughtered. Didn’t even requisition the pigs. Guess they wouldn’t eat Federal pork. Goddamn fools and murderers. His pa had freed his slaves and had put them to sharecropping so they wouldn’t starve. Rebs said this were treason to the Confederacy. That’s right.

We taste in our mouths the terror of this place like it were bread of a kind.

God help us but I don’t reckon He does that day.

What crazy war is this? What world we making? We don’t know. I guess whatever world it is is ending. We come to the end time and here it is. Just like the goddamn Bible says, says John Cole.

There’s a half-blind preacher in a temple called Bartram House and I don my best dress and me and John Cole go there and we tie the knot. Rev. Hindle he says the lovely words and John Cole kiss the bride and then it’s done and who to know. Maybe you could read it in their holy book, John Cole and Thomasina McNulty wed this day of our Lord Dec. 7th 1866. In the euphoria of war’s end we reckon a craziness is desired. God don’t mind we know because that day of deep winter is clement, clear and bright.

Out between the towns among the December frosted woods and the cold farms Winona sometimes sings a song the poet McSweny taught her while we was away. It’s a useful song because it’s as long as ten miles hoofing it. There ain’t a person alive could tell you what the song means. The song she sung was ‘The Famous Flower of Serving Men’. But she sings it as good as a linnet. I guess if anyone’s a loss to Titus Noone it’s her. Such a sweet clear note she keeps in her breast. Pours out like something valuable and sparse into the old soul of the year. Makes you see the country with better eyes. The distant country melting into the sky and the crumbs of human farms scattered over the deserted commons. The road just a threadbare ravelled sleeve between these usual sights. Like three thundering buffalo ran through long ago and that was all the people of Indiana craved for a path.

Everything bad gets shot at in America, says John Cole, and everything good too. Much-lamented Mr Lincoln the goddamn proof.

We been through many slaughters, John Cole and me. But I am as peaceful and easy now as I ever been. Fear flies off and my box of thoughts feels light.

There are days when no sound is heard. When veins of long light to the solemn earth descend.