As he played, Simon watched Mrs. Webb and the colonel shake hands with other officers, all of them bowing to Mrs. Webb and the little girl and the young woman with the shining black hair, now safely out reach of the colonel’s furtive hand. She lifted her head to the musicians, to Simon as his bow flashed and leaped in the long javelins of light that came through the overhead palm-leaf thatching. She watched him play with that same expression of a deep listening.
He brought the tune to its end. There was some applause but after all they were supposed to be background music, this was not a concert. Nevertheless, Simon laid his bow alongside his leg, held his fiddle across his body at the correct angle, and bowed to her. To her, her alone, the black-haired girl with the blue sea-cloud eyes down on the Gulf of Mexico at the end of a terrible war.
Simon saw the women do a sketchy curtsey at the toast—“To the ladies!”—and then they were escorted out. He saw the last flick of her brown-and-black-striped skirt as she disappeared out the door. Wondered where they were staying.
“Fiddler.”
“Yes!” he said in a loud, startled voice and then, ‘Mississippi Sawyer,’ D,” gave the opening notes with a double-shuffle and off they went into that reel and then another. Simon could hear the boy picking up low and high notes on the bodhran and then on other fast songs he made the bones clatter in triple clicks and the joy the boy took in it made Simon and the others smile over their instruments. Then Damon and his D whistle on “Blarney Pilgrim,” which was a jig. They did “Eighth of January” to give the black banjo player a chance to show off.
Then the sun had set and the Rio Grande Valley began to cool down, the enormous Gulf sent forth sunset clouds in magenta and gold, and the lamps on all the tables were lit.
It was time to be mellow and sentimental. The officers didn’t know they were being managed. They never did. If any of them recognized their own shirts on the backs of the band members they were silent about it.
“Lorena” was a good start. Then “Rye Whiskey,” slowly, so theatrically mournful the officers leaned back in their chairs and laughed, clapping one another on the shoulder. As agreed, the musicians left off their instruments and sang a verse a capella like a funeral lament over the tree that might fall on a person, who would live ’til he died. Simon could hear Damon’s steady bass in harmony and was relieved to know the man knew what he was about. Then “Home Sweet Home,” at which everybody joined in except those who were unable to sing because they had choked up. Simon could see several men with their heads bowed; another dashed at his eyes with his coat sleeve. Good. Simon would have preferred outright sobbing but that would do.
When they came to the end, men began to stand up and shake hands in preparation for leaving. The Confederate and Union officers toasted one another and made edged jokes that could get lethal if carried too far. Finally, Webb lifted his glass and bid them all good night.
The other players looked at Simon.
“Go on,” said the banjo player. “Go now.”
“All right,” he said, and walked down from the stage, past the tipped-over glasses and remains of beefsteaks on plates.
“Sir,” he said. “Could you arrange for our pay?” He stood resolutely in front of Webb, unmoving.
“Pay?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a long silence, a sort of standoff as Webb waited for Simon to explain himself, but Simon remained stubbornly silent. He held his bow in one hand and his fiddle by the neck as if it were a turkey. Somebody dropped a dish in the kitchen.
“Pay,” said Colonel Webb. “Well, I don’t know.” He raised his head to look at the stage, where the rest of them stood in their very civilian white shirts, holding their instruments and looking at him. The lamps were being blown out one by one. “I see,” he said. “Well, what you need to do is take up a collection.” His faultlessly clean hands drifted about his coat front.
“Yes, sir, that seems like a good solution.” Simon turned on his heel and cried out in a loud voice, “Very well boys, the colonel says we are to take up a collection!”
“You do it!” shouted the banjo man.
“All right, I will!”
Instantly they all put down their instruments and smiled expectantly at the officers. Simon took up a soup tureen, wiped it out with somebody’s napkin, and held it out to Webb.
“You could encourage the others, sir,” he said. You despicable hound.
Webb snorted. “Fiddlers. Always greedy. Avaricious. Take it and get the hell out.” He dropped in a half-dollar silver piece. “Get yourself home to whatever hole you live in.”
Simon did not reply but turned to walk among the officers both in blue and gray with the soup tureen held out and even went out, where others stood talking in groups and did the same. They came up with $17 in coins, and Simon shared it out back in the storage room.
“Not a bad haul.” Simon pocketed his coins and his anger. He wondered where the girl was, if she was safe. It was deep into the night and so she must be asleep somewhere, and he would have thought more about this but hunger overtook him. “Where’s supper?”
“Here,” said the color sergeant, and led them into the kitchen. “Sit down. Y’all are hungry, I know.” He held out an invitational hand.
Damon and the Tejano and Simon got their supper from the cooks and ate sitting at one of the long tables in the mess hall like rats arriving in the dark. Roast beef, potatoes, light bread, corn pudding, a jelly made from agarita berries. Not a crumb or a rind remained when they were done. Damon and Simon exchanged glances.
“Where do they get all this food?” said Damon in a low voice.
“If I knew I’d be there,” said the Tejano guitar player.
Back in the storage room, Simon snatched up shirts where they lay on barrels and hemp bags. He changed his own and counted; one, two, three, four. He stood in front of Damon with his hand out. “Give me that shirt,” he said. “I’m going to take them back to the dog robber.” Damon folded it neatly and handed it to him.
“I’ll do it,” said the banjo man. He stripped off his own white shirt and held it wadded in one hand and looked around for his uniform blouse. “I know him.”
Simon opened his mouth, paused, always that hesitation in his speech. Then he said, “But I want to. I need some information from him.”
“Ah,” said the banjo man. “Persistent aren’t you?” He shook his head and smiled. “You have taken a direct hit, my man.”
The dog robber had left word with his orderly sergeant about the shirts and had himself gone to bed. Apparently, it was the orderly sergeant who did the books and had to account for money and shirts and pounds of salt. Simon found his way through the hot dark, threading among the adobe buildings, cookfires going out in clouds of ash as cooks doused them with dishwater while the stars floated up out of the sea. The staff sergeant was with Webb’s 62nd U.S. Colored Troops, who all had white officers. They had taken over a long barracks made of adobe and roofed with canvas. The sergeant had his own room at one end.
Simon fetched up in his trim, quick walk at the sergeant’s doorway. The man sat with an oil lamp preparing his evening report. He raised his head. He was blond and spare, with half-moon eyeglasses.