Two in the Field (23 page)

The work with Linc was back-breaking. Weak after my sickness, I barely made it through the first day, and on the second was so stiff I could barely hobble around. But then it began to get better. I felt myself healing in body and spirit as I worked in the clean prairie air, surrounded by plains that stretched to the horizons. My muscles hardened to the task of wielding a two-man saw, though I doubted I’d ever match Linc, whose endurance seemed limitless. He told me that we’d impressed John O’Neill with all the timber we’d brought in. That was gratifying to hear, since I’d worried that Cait might use her influence with O’Neill to get me banished from the colony.

We worked mostly in silence. On the rare occasions when Linc initiated conversation, it usually concerned baby Lily. He absolutely doted on her. Each night he’d pester me to go and get her, then spend an hour holding her and telling her Lakota words and chucking her little chin and making her giggle. I tried to get him to deal with Kaija himself, but he insisted that I be his intermediary.

So I was surprised when he said one day that she’d asked him to build something. “Wants me to make her a sweat lodge,” he complained. “Must’ve gotten the notion from Lily. Calls it a sow-na.”

“Saunas are part of Finnish culture,” I told him, thinking it interesting that she’d asked Linc, not one of the flock of young Irishmen showing strong interest in her.

“She won’t let Lily come over unless I do it.” He looked miserable. By now it was clear to both of us that Kaija no longer regarded her role as temporary; she was Lily’s mother.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t I help?”

“I was hopin’ for that.”

We began digging into the low embankment beside her lean-to.
Every night we worked an hour or two by lantern light. After we’d hollowed out a square in the earth, we pegged together a framework to support our roof. The side and rear walls were sod; the front was rough planks into which we set a hinged door. Inside, following Kaija’s specific directions, we fashioned a
kiuas
, or rounded stone-topped fireplace, and planed planks very smooth for a
lauteet
, or high bench, and more for a floor. It took several weeks to finish it all.

“Where’s the chimney go?” I asked.

Kaija looked shocked. “No use for chimney.”

We watched her fire it up the first time, heating the stones and leaving the door open slightly for the smoke to escape. A slow process. Hours later she proclaimed the temperature hot enough, and set to wiping soot from the floor and bench. Finally she and Lily entered the hut and pulled the door shut. We heard a sharp
sssssss
as she sprinkled water on the white-hot fireplace to generate steam. As we moved away we heard her singing happily.

“I think we could cut that sauna’s heat-up time—”

“Sow-na,” he corrected.

“—with a chimney and damper,” I said. “Then there wouldn’t be all that soot to clean up.”

“She wants the soot,” he countered. “It makes the sow-na smell good and also protects the walls from winter mold.”

I glanced at him. “You and Kaija have been having a seminar on the subject?”

He clammed up.

Later, ruddy and refreshed, Kaija appeared at our soddy and announced that it was our turn. I wasn’t too eager and Linc seemed even less so, but when she played her baby-visitation trump card, Linc gave me a sidelong look and I knew that he’d caved.

“Naked,” she told us. “No clothes in sauna. Use
vihta
—” she handed me a bundle of cottonwood twigs that had been softened in water—“to make skin feel good.” She made a slapping motion toward her neck and back and told us that Finns preferred birchwood but this was all she could find. I deduced that we were supposed to whip ourselves with the bundles. She mimed splashing water on the rocks. “Be sure to make lots of
löyly …
steam.”

Linc waited for her to leave, then told me that he would go in alone first to undress. Wondering at this unexpected modesty, I waited and then entered to find him on the near end of the bench with a blanket covering most of him. Was it something about whites? I wondered. The evasive behavior toward Kaija, now this. Did he have race issues? Intimacy issues? Either of which would be understandable, given what happened to his family. Still, for an army sergeant, he was acting damn prudish.

“Open the door wider,” I said, short minutes later, enveloped in
löyly
. “She’s trying to kill us.”

Linc widened the door aperture.

Before long I felt my body relaxing. I still held the flaying twigs. “We gonna try this?”

“Not by a goddamn sight.”

The quiet vehemence of was startling. I glanced over to find him staring at me. He didn’t look friendly.

“What is it?” I said. “What the hell’s the matter?”

“No man’s gonna whip me.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked like he was about to say something, then just shook his head and pointed at the twigs.

“But they’re only—” I stopped short as he dropped the blanket and turned slowly to reveal slavery’s legacy. In the dim light
from the glowing stones I saw a nightmare of raised welts the thickness of fingers, a chainwork of scars from his shoulders to buttocks.

I tossed the
vihta
outside.

He didn’t hide himself from me from then on—but neither of us ever mentioned those scars.

When we’d had enough we ran down to the Elkhorn and splashed in. Skin tingling, muscles soothed, we floated on our backs and stared up at a blazing yellow nearly-full moon.

Linc let out a contented sound, then said, “I could get used to this.”

Several times I’d been introduced to John O’Neill, and we’d exchanged a cursory handshake. The General faced too many pressing issues to give me more attention than an occasional passing nod on Sundays, the only time Linc and I were around in daylight hours.

So I was surprised one Sunday morning to find myself summoned to his quarters in Grand Central, where I waited nervously. Was I going to be kicked out?

When he appeared he greeted me with a smile and said that he’d met my “family.” I nodded uncertainly. Was that all he knew about me? Hadn’t Cait said anything? Or Tim? Or Linc?

Seeming preoccupied, he said he looked forward to spending more time with everybody once the colony was firmly established. He looked much older than I remembered from the furtive glance I’d had of him at Cait’s boardinghouse in the past. The disappointments and the months in prison after his abortive Canadian assaults had taken their toll. Still, I thought, he looked better in civvies than in that silly green Fenian uniform weighed down with epaulets and braid and assorted Irish icons.

“Lincoln speaks highly of you,” he said, “and I trust his judgment beyond any other man’s.”

I breathed easier. This didn’t sound like banishment.

“Are you aware that he won the Congressional Medal of Honor?”

“Linc did?” I wondered if the old man had drifted into fantasies.

“Typical of him not to mention it.” O’Neill described an engagement near Nashville in which Linc’s regiment had been ambushed by rebel cavalry and his lieutenant shot down before he could order retreat. They tried to fall back but were disorganized and under heavy fire. As the rebs closed around his lieutenant, Linc ran forward, knocked one of the rebs from his horse, jumped into the saddle, and pulled the lieutenant up with him. He was hit by a minié ball. Then another. Yet he managed to fight his way free on the overburdened mount and lead all the men to safety.

“My God.”

“It’s terrible that he lost his family,” O’Neill said, looking at me for acknowledgement that I knew about it. “Lincoln’s a lonely man and I’m glad that he’s elected to be here with us.”

I seemed to be included in “us.”

“Do you know who I am?” I said cautiously. “I mean, from before?

He smiled faintly. “The ballist who caused us such a fuss in Cincinnati.”

“Yes,” I said. “So much fuss that McDermott and O’Donovan each tried to kill me.”

“The Fenian Order did not sanction such things,” he said with a frown, “although in truth I was aware that Fearghus resented you and considered you an informer.”

“Doesn’t it worry you that I’m here, then?”

“I’ve cut my ties with the old leadership. They broke too many sacred promises.” He gave me a probing look. “I’d naturally be concerned about your presence here, Mr. Fowler, if Lincoln hadn’t spoken up for you—and if young Tim hadn’t come to me singing your virtues practically the instant I returned.”

Well, all right!

“And if Caitlin hadn’t told me what you said about Colm.”

My body temperature seemed to drop five degrees. Jesus, she’d
told
him?

He leaned forward, his manner suddenly inquisitorial. “You believe that my nephew’s spirit has helped you?”

Here I go, I thought, into my Shirley Maclaine gambit. “I believe that, yes.” I looked him in the eye. “I also believe he wants me to take care of Cait.”

There was a silent interval while he chewed on that. I noted the liver spots and sun damage on his face, the crinkle lines beside his eyes. He’d spent huge parts of his adult life staring out at battlefields, fighting first for the Union and then for his country of birth. I found myself respecting him, wanting his approval.

“My understanding is that you have some further interest in Caitlin,” he said with a hint of wryness, “beyond the work of a spirit.”

“I love her,” I told him flatly. “I’m here to win her back for myself—not for Colm.”

I expected him to bring up Tip McKee about then, but instead he said mildly, “I’m not one to meddle in Caitlin’s affairs. She’s a proud one who goes her own way. But I will say that Fearghus was never the man to her that Colm was.”

No, he never was, especially since Fearghus murdered Colm in part to get his chance at Cait
. I didn’t say it, of course. No point in trashing the myth of Colm’s heroic death.

O’Neill then surprised me with a conversational leap. “I am presently in need of a man with your talents,” he said. “Have you heard of the Dyson Party?”

I nodded. An aggregation of prospectors had been captured and forcibly escorted from the Black Hills by several companies of cavalry. Dyson’s group had been rousted before, so this time the troops torched their supplies. We’d heard they were headed our way, still boiling mad.

“They’ve challenged us to a ball match,” O’Neill said. “Although they have gold enough to pay to re-provision themselves, they prefer to wager. Our goods against their gold dust. I thought it would be good for the colony’s morale to meet their challenge. I’d already earmarked some of the store’s earnings for a Fourth of July celebration. The ball contest would be a perfect topper for the day. Will you train the men and captain our nine?”

I stared at him, trying to calculate the pitfalls.

“It won’t be a skilled affair,” he went on hurriedly. “Not like your Cincinnati professionals. However, Tip and a few others are versed in the game. We gave Custer’s troopers a match last year when they came through on their scientific expedition. In several innings we made a score.”

That didn’t sound promising.

“Others have arrived since then,” he continued. “Lincoln is worth any three ballists you could want.”

The Fourth was only a week away. It didn’t seem that I had much choice. “I’ll do what I can,” I told him. “When should I hold practices?”

“Before work commences each day,” he said. “At dawn.”

Of course. Dawn.

“Why didn’t you tell me you got the Congressional Medal?”
Linc glanced up, his dark features beaded with sweat. We were taking a break from operating a sod-busting plow outside the planted fields. Since we’d gotten so far ahead in supplying the colony’s timber needs, O’Neill had asked us to leave off our operation until after the Fourth. I suspected his real reason was to allow more time to prepare for the big game.

“Why would I tell you that?” Linc said.

“ ’Cause we’re friends and that medal’s a big deal,” I said. “The biggest of all!”

He wiped his face on his sleeve and reached for a water jug. “You spill out everything ’bout your life to me?” he said gruffly. “Is that how it is?”

He had a point. “Well, maybe not everything.”

“That medal helped make me a problem nigger in some people’s minds—and in the end it got burnt up, along with everything else.” His voice was hard and controlled, and I wished I hadn’t started this. “It’s in the past now, and I don’t think about it. ‘Sides, that wasn’t the biggest ‘deal,’ as you call it, for me during the war.”

“What was?”

“Readin’,” he said. “The regimental chaplain taught those of us who were hungry to learn our letters. He used to say, ‘What good is it to be free if you’re ignorant?’ ” Linc took a pull from the jug and passed it to me, then looked out with satisfaction at the furrows we’d turned up. “Out on the high-grass prairie,” he said, “it’d take five ox teams or more to break through roots and get down to the soil.”

End of personal history.

“This is choice country, Sam,” he said. “I’m real close to gettin’ my share of it.”