At last he couldn’t stand waiting any longer and in the wind-shadow of some unnamed bush with the noise of the patient Gulf before him, he pulled out his knife and slit the folded envelope.

Before he read the first sentence he made himself think about it. For the last hour he had actually been thinking that it would be a letter to him. But it could not possibly be a letter to Simon Boudlin, because she was writing in answer to Patrick. Mrs. Webb or that detestable Colonel Webb would have read it and approved of it. Whatever she had to say had to be disguised and filtered through those two conditions.

August the 10th, The Alamo Garrison

San Antonio, Texas

Dear Patrick O’Hehir,

I received your letter of July the 15th with much interest and so I write to thank you for sending me what news you had of those from Tralee and Ballyroe as it brings a great deal of comfort to hear of occurrences in Ireland. I am writing this letter with apologies for my poor hand at the pen.

He bent over the paper. The gray light glared on it, and close at hand the Gulf rolled in with long flat waves; the tide was going out.

It delights me to hear that you are with a respectable music troupe and are able to play in the best establishments. Patrick, I hope you are able to see some part of this wild Texas and its delightful yet strange open country as we have none of this like it in our Ireland, it left me amazed as we traveled to this town and I was much taken with the sight of deer and horses running free as if it were the beginning of the world.

He read this over several times. She was not a creature of display and stratagems, the natural world delighted her! She was not avid for social events and the endless striving of towns! He came to this conclusion on the strength of that one sentence. He scattered mental exclamation marks throughout his own thoughts! He blew sand from the glittering pages.

Please give my greetings to the Dillon family as indeed I am related to Brandon Casey Dillon, for he is the first cousin of my father and married an Aherne from Waterford. If you hear from them please do convey the news to me as we shall be here in San Antonio for more than two years, for that is the colonel’s tour of duty. Forgive my long delay in replying as there was so much to be done upon arrival and the colonel does not approve of my writing many letters. It was a matter of several months altogether what with getting his approval with the weather quare warm and mail not moving.

I include here in a separate page the news from my parents if that would be of interest. As for myself I am very happy and my little charge Josephina is a dear delight to me. To him who writes for you please convey my plentiful thanks. Remember our good Irish airs such as I heard played there after the battle, a scene to wring the heart. Let us say our thanks to God and His Angels that this war is over and in hope that no more dreadful occurrences come upon this country. If you were to be in San Antonio I am sure that the colonel will remember you and would welcome a visit, for you played your drum most bravely, and so I remain respectfully yours in friendship,

Miss Doris Dillon

c/o Mrs. Franklin Webb

In Garrison at the Alamo

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

On the separate page were the doings and mishaps of the little town of Ballyroe, with twins born to the Ahernes, milk prices, who had emigrated, who decided not to at the last moment, who fell in the shuck in her good dress, the roads between Bally and Tralee claggy with mud, and the milkman’s cart all banjacked and lacking his best wheel.

Desperate and irrational thoughts came to him: to leave now for San Antonio on foot. Join the Union Army and hope to be sent to the Alamo garrison. Rob a Western Union telegraph office and buy a new pair of boots, trousers, and a sack coat and show up under her balcony, if she had a balcony, playing “The Minstrel Boy.”

But behind these wild imaginings was a certain saving caution. Maybe she was not the person he seemed to see on first acquaintance. She could be a person who was self-seeking or vain or silly or an unstoppable talker who would make his life hell whether she needed help or no.

And what are you then, Simon?

Not worth a crying dime at the present moment. A bastard out of Kentucky with no way to make a living but playing in cheap dives and at the occasional garden party. All he had to his name was a good fiddle and a decent hat, neither of which would overwhelm a young lady of any standing.

And a Dance and Brothers revolver. He had forgotten the revolver.

Simon held the letter in both hands and looked down at the clean grain of it, the good paper, her clear-cut handwriting. The sun splintered off the outgoing tide and half-blinded him, and he was suspended between these two different worlds, the windy Gulf and on this paper her voice, as real as anything. She had a pretty hand of writing. He smiled as he read it. She had written, “To him who writes for you please convey my plentiful thanks” and “free as the beginning of the world.”

He lay back against the rise of the sand dune and made himself remember the times before the war, to think his way back into it. Before he left Kentucky. He used to laugh a lot; he and Stand MacFarland. They went for days back in the heavy woods toward Stiles Crossing to hunt and sit up by a fire and talk half the night. The old man allowed him to take his good Pennsylvania rifle, fourteen pounds and forty-four inches in the barrel. MacFarland could imitate people; he used to make Simon laugh until he was paralytic. He told stories about his grandfather and the Shawnee wars and they were always somehow funny. It was different then. The air was different and the long remote crying of 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.

It occurred to him that he rarely laughed anymore. Maybe laughter would come back, but it was a dark sun that had come over the country and a plague of crows. But here in his hands was a lifting of the heart when he came upon this delicate handwriting and the hope of making her love him despite his poverty and an unmarried mother and a father disappeared into Louisiana, despite it all. Simon sat up, folded the letter carefully, and got to his feet. When he walked back into the house he said, “I’ll read it to you, Patrick. She sends greetings, and thanks to me.”

Patrick looked up into his face and said, “Another time, Simon. It’s yours for now. Another time.”

Chapter Eleven

He had now saved fifty dollars.

It was near the waterfront one afternoon after a late night at the Jamaica that he saw an advertisement: land for sale. It was a new sign, painted on a board on the front of a wooden structure. The door was difficult to open. Simon shoved hard and it gave way and he nearly fell inside.

“Yes?” A man looked up. “Did you bring the corn pudding?”

“No,” said Simon. He ran his hand through his gnarled hair to make it lie flat and tucked a packet of new strings into his pants pocket. “I’m not from the cook shop. I’ve come to see about buying land.”

“I see.” The man wore a derby hat and a shirt with an open band collar. His beard was streaked with white. He looked at Simon carefully. “Well, we all have our little fantasies.”

“Yes, sir, that’s probably true.” A small hesitation like an indrawn breath. “But maybe you could start me out here, and tell me what land is for sale. And how you go about paying for it, and who you pay.” Simon pulled up a rickety chair without being asked and sat down. “And how you go about all the legal stuff to buy it.”

The man nodded. He poised one hand flat over the desk and slammed it down in an attempt to kill a fly. He missed.

“You? Buy land?”

“I’m just asking.” Simon looked around at the stacks of documents and leather-bound legal tomes. And then, “Why not?”

The man tipped his head from one side to the other. “I should be frank with you. Disasters abound everywhere. I no longer sell land, it seems. I sell hurricanes and war and military occupation and Indian attacks. I am a vendor of droughts and tornadoes. Which do you prefer?”

Simon had his entire life stretching ahead of him and to be making plans to order it all ahead of time, as it were, especially since he was only a musician, seemed foolish. But he did it anyway, with a brief shrug and the hope that the man had nothing else in particular to do today.