The banjo player said, “Not me. But I just come to give you a dollar out of my pay from the dinner. You got a long hard road ahead of you.”

Simon said, “That is damn kind of you.” He took the silver piece and lifted his hat. But the drummer boy, who said his name was Patrick, declared he was coming along with Simon; so did Damon and so did the Tejano guitar player.

“I ain’t ready to go home yet,” said the boy. “I aim to have some adventures here before long.” He was carrying his bodhran in one hand, his rucksack on his back, and the pair of bones in one pocket. He rattled his thumb down the bodhran’s head. “I got my discharge and my pass and I aim to see some of this old world before I go back.” He did a quick reel step.

“The Federals gave you your discharge just like that?” said Damon. He gazed down at the boy. He had traded his top hat for a Hardee hat with a frayed brim and it shadowed his face.

“Said I never should have been in in the first place.” The boy had ears like a carriage with its doors open, big Union-issue boots, a short nose, and a wide slot of a mouth. He kept on dancing as if the percussion of his boots on the road were more than enough, tune or no tune. “That I was a mere child. Glad to get shet of me.”

“I cannot go,” said the Zouave. “Ze banjo man cannot go and me eye-zer. I must return to my regiment zere in Bagdad across the rivaire. But, please, take zis my dollaire as well for you good leading us last night et also you idees about ze shirts, very esmart, et alors, adieu mon vieux et bonne chance.”

So they said farewell to the banjo man and the Zouave. The two of them turned back toward the fort and Simon, Damon, the Tejano, and the boy started out for the Gulf of Mexico one foot after another in the searing heat. They carried with them their meager possessions, their blanket rolls over their shoulders, convinced that in Galveston were saloons and hotels, all in need of musicians, all filled with various sorts of people with money in their pockets. Simon would earn good hard silver there and eventually show up in San Antonio dressed to the nines with land of his own and he would sweep off his hat: Miss Dillon, I hope you remember me.

They said their names: Damon Lessing, Doroteo Navarro, Patrick O’Hehir, and Simon Boudlin. They stopped to shake hands all around and then went on.

“I knew Walters wasn’t your real name,” said Damon. “I have a keen intuition in that regard.” They marched forward down the hot and sandy road.

Simon said, “Very well, then, does your intuition tell you how we can get to Galveston?”

“Of course,” said Damon. “By water. Walking up the coast all the way to Galveston is for madmen and jackrabbits. We need a boat.”

“Yes, but I’m still waiting for a more specific idea,” said Simon. They trudged on. “As to how to get a boat.”

“We steal a boat from the Yankees there on the island. I know the place well. I worked the coastal ships for a year. The Yankees got me in New Orleans. Conscript labor. So I got away from them. Get away from one, grabbed by the other. The Confederates got me after I escaped the Yankees.”

This was more than Simon had heard the dark man say about himself since he had first met him in the regimental band tent. “How do we get across to the island?” The heat of the day increased; the south Texas brush country around them was dense with the ganglia of creosote bush and acacia, all starred with thorns.

“They are ferrying stuff over to the mainland now that they got Fort Brown,” said Damon. “Stores from Brazos de Santiago. Their endless cornucopia of food. We could hide on some boat tonight, one going over. We don’t want them to see us crossing over. Then when we steal a boat, they won’t figure out who did it. That substantial enough for you?”

“It is. I still have your revolver. It’s in two pieces in my rucksack.”

“Keep it, son. I don’t want to get caught with it.”

“All right then.”

Simon lifted the rucksack higher on his square, bony shoulders. They came upon various sorts of people traveling back and forth between Brazos de Santiago Island and Fort Brown; provisions and equipment carried in the freight wagons, empty wagons going back for more, Yankee infantry on their way to the fort and people who seemed to have no particular identity or purpose in life slogging along like automatons in the heat. Men without uniforms or wearing parts of uniforms and men clad entirely in rags, who were most likely Confederates.

When they came to the shore Simon glimpsed a long stretch of perfectly white sand and beyond that the white foam of the surf. They did not pause to enjoy the scenery but hid themselves among the dunes in the palmetto and salt grass. They were deadened by the heat. Simon pressed into the shade of a palmetto and undid his vest and shirt, flung his arms out. One inch beyond the shade and the sand was too hot to lay your hand on. By late afternoon they were nearly comatose. Boats and men and supplies were arriving, the boats bouncing on the gentle rollers while men in small lighters carried stuff ashore in a variety of packets and barrels. Others waded in carrying bundles on their heads.

The sun sank into the west, into the great unknown inland stretches of Texas, throwing out long shadows, flooding the coast with dark. Then a wind came up. They all made small hushed noises of relief. Simon crawled to the rim of the dune and parted the sea-grape and grass stems to look out upon the Gulf of Mexico; at a long white band of surf and a blue sea horizon without end. The breakers rolled in according to some great unknown accounting or a score past comprehension and every wave top glittered with red.

Simon had seen many mezzotints of shipwrecked sailors on rafts amid the mighty billows being tossed upon the stormy main, and he had imagined ocean waves as perpetually cone-shaped. It seemed to him the waves would then arrive at a given shore as a collection of triangles. Then they would fall flat on their faces, dissolve, and their place would be taken by yet another rush of water, et cetera. Spiky. He had imagined waves as spiky water. But what he saw were long rolling terraces of blue water that rose and fell into sparkling foam in hushing sounds, over and over. They had no end. He could have watched forever.

He had found his girl, the war was over, he had not gotten killed, and now he was before the great gulf itself. He felt cautiously happy; he felt that life was going to be all right. It was all going to work out for him. Maybe. He laid his hands on his rucksack and the fiddle case. It was going to work out; dreams of the good life in someplace far and secreted from the chaotic world, its wars and imperatives, and it struck him that to live near this body of water would be the right place. Fish. Sea winds. The unrolling surf. He clasped a sea-grape vine in his sand-crusted hand and thought, Maybe somewhere near here, Galveston maybe, where the ships from England come in now the blockade is off. A thought-picture of her walking beside him in this air laundered bright with salt wind, new strings in his fiddle case, Colonel Webb’s foul designs foiled, and out on the ocean, a ship flying a flag with two sharps; mountain music.

When the Dipper stood overhead, so immense, so distant and brilliant, they waded into the surf and slipped aboard a big forty-foot lugger. Simon shoved his gear over the gunnel and then in the noise of breakers and men shouting at one another, he slid over on the rise of a wave. The others were over as well. They hid among pallets and empty barrels. Simon pulled a piece of canvas over himself. It was a stroke of good luck that, in the dark, an officer came and ordered the crew to sail immediately for Brazos de Santiago. They were way behind schedule, the officer shouted. Listen, even now you can hear the wagons coming down the road from Fort Brown to take on freight.

So in the black night the crew clambered aboard the empty lugger, raised sail, and hauled up the gaff rig. In this dark confusion Simon and the others were not noticed. They rocked across the two miles of salt water to the docks at Brazos de Santiago Island. The watch lights on the docks seemed to float on the water; first as dim sparks and then as warm yellow light throwing deep shadows between the warehouses. Simon and the others managed to slip overboard and crawl ashore in the surf without being seen. Simon carried the fiddle case on top of his head, squashing his Kentucky hat. When he reached the shore, he kneeled for a moment with the white waves breaking around his thighs, distrustful, trying to make out where they were going. The Tejano grabbed him by the collar and whispered to him to get up and run.