Simon calculated that the military convoy should have reached San Antonio long since. The colonel with Mrs. Webb, the daughter, and the lovely Doris Dillon in his ponderous wake, should have found a house. He asked around about the mail and the bar manager at the Hendley Hotel said it was moving now, between Houston and San Antonio, sometimes by freight convoys and sometimes by private courier. Might take a couple of weeks or so.

For a two-cent copper he bought some clean paper from Englehardt’s Print Shop on C Street, which was just gearing up to get back in business. For an additional twenty cents he bought a bottle of ink and a steel pen with two extra nibs. He noted that the owner also had pages of sheet music. He flipped through them and although he would not allow himself the luxury of buying any of them, he saw scores for the latest Stephen Foster, piano scores for bits and pieces of symphonies by long-dead composers. Some other time, he thought and laid the scores down again.

He sat at the rickety table with one clean sheet of paper and the pen. He had to get a letter to her somehow. To let her know he was alive, that he was thinking of her. He had no idea how to go about it. It was around five in the afternoon; a short while before they had heard the bells of St. Mary’s and Patrick and Doroteo had just come back from Mass. The window with the shutters faced west and the sun sent bars of light through them and onto the paper. He wiped off his sweaty hand on his pants.

“Don’t say you admire her from afar or any of that estuff,” said Doroteo. “What about you say if she wants news about Ireland? That you met somebody from Ireland.” Doroteo lifted a shinbone onto the table, sharpened his knife on a stone, and then set to work expertly peeling off flesh.

“Yes, but that’s a lie. She would find out after a while.” He pondered the empty sheet of paper in a long painful stare. He had lost a suspender button and so had taken them off, parted them at the cross behind and used one as a belt, tying it in a knot in front. He thought and hitched up his pants, moved both feet, thought again.

Doro said, “Well, think of something not a lie but not a love letter. Do not say ‘I love you passionately. I love you when I see you, al instante.’ Everybody says that.”

Simon tried to think of some neutral, ordinary reason for her to receive a letter. He was curious about Ireland and did she know any Alexanders there . . . no, that was no good. Alexanders were Scots. He thought, It can’t be from me. It has to be from somebody else with news of me. He peeled off his shirt and threw it in a corner. It was rank, really rank.

He swiveled around on the tar-bucket seat and said, “Now listen, Patrick, you’re Irish. You will write to Miss Dillon.”

“I can’t hardly read nor write.” The boy raised one hand in alarm. He had been marking out a checkers board on the floor and Damon was shaping the checker men with his penknife.

“You can now. I’ll write it for you.”

“No, me,” said Damon. “I can do the punctuation correctly and add some phrases.” He laid down his work. The rolling boom and wash of the incoming tide in the distance sounded very good. Doro sat before the fire and flipped the strips of meat from one side to the other.

Simon lifted both hands. “God, you’ll say stuff about falling towers and Death riding in on the tide or who knows what?”

“I will not,” said Damon. “Trust me.”

“I never was going to write her,” said Patrick.

“Sure you are. And it will have news of me. Think about it. The Webbs will let her have the letter if it’s just from a fellow Irisher and got news of the old country.”

Patrick thought about it. “Maybe. I guess. My people there in Pennsylvania, there’s a Dillon aunt. One of my mother’s sisters married a Dillon. He came over in ’48. Well, hell’s bells then, go ahead then, say it’s from me. Colonel Webb knows me, he knows I am too young to pay court to her. Just go ahead and lie.”

“Good!” cried Simon. “Tell me about your uncle, the man she married.”

“Well,” said the boy. “I’m thinking.” He thought. “You been to Pennsylvania?”

“Pittsburgh,” Simon said.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed our fair state.”

“I did. Now, your uncle.”

They all bent over the letter. Patrick supplied the details, Damon contributed the modestly elegant language and correct punctuation, and Simon wrote it out in his best hand. He sat in his sawed-off drawers in the midday heat with the Gulf wind peppering their shack with sand grains. He wiped his hand on his trousers again and poised the pen.

September 15, 1865

General Delivery, Galveston, Texas

Dear Miss Dillon; I entertain hopes that you might remember me, I am the snare drummer that was with Colonel Webb’s unit in the regimental band. I shall always recall your kindness to me at Brazos de Santiago.

“That’s S-A-N-T-I-A-G-O,” said Doroteo.

“How would the boy know how to spell it?” said Damon. “He don’t know it from a hole in the ground. Misspell it.”

“Damon?” said Simon.

“All right, all right.”

I take the liberty of sending you this missive as one immigrant to another as a means of conveying to you news of our country there across the sea.

“I never came across the sea,” said the boy. “My mother and father did, that’s a bald-faced lie.”

“Who’s to know?” Simon blew dust and sand from the paper and dipped the pen in the inkwell again with great care. “So just hush up.”

It is said you came from Ireland directly and because my family also is from Ireland then I thought I would send you what News I have of that unfortunate Country as you might be homesick for News of it, as we Irish must help one another as best we can. I am doing well with the help of the very kind fiddler named Simon Boudlin, who played at the dinner at Fort Brown, and also have the friendship of Doroteo Navarro, guitarist, and Damon Lessing, flautist, so I am not alone in this world.

Now, my mother’s sister married a Dillon and he came over some (“be vague,” said Damon) years ago from Kerry and settled in Pennsylvania in Allentown, where I am from, and he is doing very well working on the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad. His name is Brandon Casey Dillon. He came over on the Jeannie Johnston. He might be a relative of yours. Also that the family of Peter O’Dougal Dillon in the village of Ballyroe has gone over to Scotland to work in the Shipyards there, I don’t know which ones, but all say this is Excellent. I know that the priest of Ballyroe sends Letters directly to all of us in that part of Pennsylvania and he kindly includes news of the people of Tralee and all of County Kerry as best he can to be read aloud and indeed his Letters are sent from place to place and all delight in them.

This is to give you good cheer and greetings and news of the old Country and indeed I am hoping you are well with this excellent family with whom you are so fortunately situated. This is being written for me by a Friend who writes a good Hand and swears he will write down exactly what I say in all respects, to whom I am quite grateful, since I have joined with him in a small scratch band in Galveston, where we play in various refined places and we are doing well, he is the Fiddler named Simon Boudlin and he plays “Death and the Sinner” so that it brings tears to the eyes.

Simon laid the pen down and read what he had written. “Ahhh, I don’t know.” He ran both hands through his curling hair. “Is that too obvious?”

“Dealer’s choice,” said Damon.

“Well, then leave it.” Simon looked around and realized they had eaten all the fried beef while he wrote.

And so I come to the close of my Letter to you and hope this has helped to bring you news of the old Country and if I hear of more news I will send it on, for my parents receive news regularly and I meet many Irish here and there. I remain yours truly in deepest respect, Patrick Matthew O’Hehir

“Not ‘scratch band,’” Damon said. “‘String ensemble’ appeals to the ear.”

“She’s not going to believe that Patrick plays in any ensemble,” said Simon.

“But ‘scratch band’ sounds like musical chickens.”

“It’s my letter,” said Simon. “My name is mentioned in it.”

“It’s mine, indeed,” said the boy. “Is it not?”

Simon made motions of tearing at his hair. “I’ll put ‘musical group’ or somebody gets thrown out the window.”

When it was done, he blew on the ink until it was dry and then folded the letter carefully as he had been taught. He pressed down the crease with the hilt of his knife, tucked in the ends, and wrote what he thought might be her address.

Miss Doris Dillon

In care of Colonel Franklin Webb 62nd USCT

U. S. Army Garrison at the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas

After that they walked to the seashore, happy with their small conspiracy, then farther down the beach, where some sabal palms grew in a mop-headed cluster, surrounded by sea grape and buckthorn, and with a quick glance around to see if there were any people nearby, stripped naked. They ran shouting into the surf. It lifted them in its blood-warm surging and foam and dropped them and lifted them again. They paid for it with sunburns and salty hair, but when the wind blew on their wet bodies it was so cool it gave them the unusual and startling feeling of shivering.