Simon the Fiddler

by Paulette Jiles

Trust in God, her mother said, but never dance in a small boat.

the steamboat whistles as they came down from the Monongahela and Pittsburgh seemed to tell a story of a great nation and a great people with adventure and the look of distance in their eyes, and now it was somehow soiled with the stench of the dead. MacFarland was dead. Lincoln was dead. Neighbors had shot one another dead. It was not the same country.