Another polite letter from Patrick to Miss Dillon, full of inventive half-truths, gossip about Ireland that Patrick dredged up from hearing his parents talk, incidents that had occurred more than twenty years ago, assurances of his desire to join the army again before long (this zinger was directed straight at the Webbs, who would no doubt read and approve of the letter before handing it to Miss Dillon), a careful mention of the very kind violinist Simon Boudlin, who was teaching him to read music. Sealed and stamped, handed over to the man behind the post office counter at the Customs House and the long wait began again. Letters seemed to walk of their own accord down the road from San Antonio, to get lost, wander, camp out for a while beside some pleasant river, finally to amble unconcernedly into Galveston.

Then her reply came back. She wrote about the demands that army life made on a person and chances of promotion in case Patrick wished to make the military a career, news of Indian depredations in the north, a wagon accidentally driven off the Losoya Bridge. She wrote of things that were often funny, lively, and completely impersonal. A letter went back up the road from Patrick, full of bland, boring news of Galveston and the interminable gossip about imaginary Dillons. Simon wanted to tell her about the garden party (some of it), and the shack they had fixed up (no details about the latrine), about the pennywhistle fight (omit blood and hollering), and about the land he wanted near the Red River. About himself, his thoughts, the voices he heard singing in slow perfect harmony on the ships tied up in the harbor. How much he wanted to meet her. To put out his hand and touch her. He began to despair of ever writing to her directly, of learning the ways of her heart through these censored pages, or revealing his own, such as it was.

In the next letter he decided he would say Patrick was coming to San Antonio, but then he thought, Wait, wait. He wanted to be able to say he was a landowner, a horse owner, a man with two suits and a watch. He wondered if this would matter to her. He very much hoped it would not.

So the letter was about four men making do with household chores, the songs they played and in what key, the names of ships coming from all over the world to dock in Galveston, and speculations as to who might emigrate from Ballyroe this year. Safe enough. Painfully safe. It came to the month of November and still the yellow fever persisted. There had not been a hard freeze and mosquitoes hummed and bred in the rain pools.

They played at a wedding one early afternoon. It was a gathering of people who had returned to the island from inland after having been run out in Magruder’s forced evacuation in ’63. They came by boat and over the railroad bridge with their possessions much diminished and their tools in disrepair. Two of these people decided to get married despite the unsettled conditions of the times, in spite of their poverty. At the two-story wooden house on Twenty-seventh Street near St. Mary’s the dancing went on until late. The celebrants were regaled with whiskey and fish. It was a cold evening. The gulls flew over crying to one another like the lonesome thieves of the air that they were and the evening train from Houston came over the bridge under a thin moon with steam billowing from between its great driver wheels.

Simon laughed at a little girl trying to dance in front of their improvised bandstand as he bowed out the final notes of “Angelina Baker” and gave the one-two hard and sharp to signify the ending. At the edge of the stand the boy Patrick sat down suddenly. He carefully slid his two polished bones into his coat pocket and sat the bodhran in his lap. His head dropped forward until his forehead rested on the rim of the drum.

“I’ve taken a fever,” he said.

They got him home by half-carrying him. He kept saying he didn’t feel well but that he would be better in the morning. Simon was up and down with him the rest of the night, helping him to the outdoor latrine, then back again. Toward dawn Damon took over as clouds were building out on the Gulf.

He did not feel better in the morning. Doroteo quickly made up the fire with driftwood and heated water, held a cup to the boy’s mouth. The morning dragged on and they sat with the boy as the chills and then the fever struck him. It seemed some invisible devil had taken hold of the boy and would not let go.

“We should to take him to the Ursuline nuns,” said Doroteo. “They have the hospital there.”

“No,” said Patrick. “I’m good. I’ll get over it. It’s just the malaria that we had there from the fish.” He rolled back and forth on his cotton-sack bed. He was restless and in pain. “You go to the hospital to die. I am not going to die because of everything I already said.”

Doroteo leaned on the doorframe. He said, “He is not making right sense. It is not good.”

They pooled their money and Simon and Damon went to find a doctor. An Ursuline at the wooden house that served as their convent gave them the address of one of the city’s three doctors. It was a substantial house with verandas on both stories and sago palms in front. The doctor was not at home. Yellow fever was pacing up and down the streets and the back bayous of Galveston in long unseen steps, touching a child here and a strong man there and a sailor panting in his hammock belowdecks on a tied-up ship that was soon flying the yellow flag. Damon and Simon sat on the curb and spoke in short sentences. There was little to say. Finally, at sunset, the man arrived in an open carriage pulled by a thin horse.

He leaned out over the door. “Where?” he asked.

Simon stood up and pulled off his hat. “Back near Lost Bayou.”

The doctor was shrunken and weary inside his black suit. After a moment he said, “Who is it? You’re the band that come up after Los Palmitos, aren’t you? You’re the fiddler.”

“Yes, sir,” said Simon. He put his hat back on. Damon stood with his face stricken with anxiety and he did not seem to be able to change his expression. He turned the pennywhistle over and over in his hand. Simon gestured toward the Gulf. “We live back there. It’s our bodhran boy. The one with the bones.”

“Get in,” said the doctor.

Chapter Twelve

They crowded in and felt between themselves fleeting moments of hope that came and went as if they were passing them back and forth. They clattered along Broadway and then turned into Shacktown, into the leaning wooden single-story houses where women looked out over yard railings as they passed, saw it was the doctor, and shook their heads.

The doctor pulled up his tired horse in front of their shack when Simon said, “Here we are.”

“Yes, here we are in Mosquito Flats,” said the doctor. He got down and Doroteo ran out to take the hitching rein and lay it gently and carefully over the yard railing, and then Damon went inside for the bucket and hurried to the pump. He soon came back with water and stood outside holding the bucket for the horse to drink as if he could not bear to come inside and hear the words.

“Yellow fever,” said the doctor. “That’s what I think. He may get through this first phase and live. If it comes back a second time he may not. If it comes back a second time it is almost always fatal. Is he throwing up?” He kneeled down beside the boy.

The boy lay on the bed they had made for him on the floor. They had piled up their own beds one on top of the other for him. He was in the fever stage and so he had thrown off the blankets. The blankets were threadbare brown wool stamped CSA. His eyes were glittering.

“I throw up all the time,” said the boy. “On the sea, on land, in the street, at the governor’s ball in Harrisburg.”

“Open your mouth,” the doctor said, and Patrick opened his wide mouth and stuck out his tongue. Then he shut it. His yellow hair lay flat and wet.

“Take a look at that,” he said, “I bet you never seen anything like it.”

The doctor smiled and held the boy’s wrist to note the pulse rate, listened to his chest with a stethoscope, and then reached into his bag.

“What I have might do very little,” he said. “But this is laudanum, this is willow bark.” He set out a paper packet and a large bottle of liquid. “The willow bark is for fever, make a tea of it. The other is for pain. Give three spoonfuls of the laudanum. He may get a restful sleep.”

“Mama, it’s good you’re here,” the boy said, and then his hands grew restless together as if he had suddenly begun to count on his fingers.

They stood around with deep attention. Then they gathered their coins and Simon held them out.