Damon and Doro found work loading hides and hefting wheelbarrows of rubble. They took any work available to earn their keep. Simon came back to the flatboat and fell down on his bedding without even bothering to wash. Damon and Doro returned exhausted and silent. They barely made enough to feed themselves. They were out of coffee but did not buy more; any extra coins went to a cobbler to keep their shoes together, for squares of canvas to cover their heads against the rain in the walk to town, and for lucifer matches and candles.

Two weeks passed; they watched Christmas come and go, and Doro went to find a Catholic church to go to confession and attend midnight Mass. They said “Happy New Year” to one another in glum voices and passed around a bottle of cheap Barbados rum. Guns were fired all over the city, people shooting up the chimney as was the custom. Simon took up the Dance revolver to stand on the prow and join in, firing off three rounds to thin cries of celebration from the other two, while 1866 rolled in like a freight train full of bad luck and poverty.

Mail was moving better going east, and so Simon wrote the old man, his guardian, who was called Walking David, a long letter full of jokes, a sketch of himself fishing from the flatboat prow, assurances of his good health, the words to “The Lost Child,” and his love. Somebody would read it to him. The place where people got their mail from inland Texas was at MacHinney’s Freight Office. He stopped in almost every other day, with coal dust masking his face and his nails black with it.

On a chill, humid day the clerk handed Simon an envelope with a knowing smile. “Well, son, finally,” he said.

Dear Mr. Boudlin;

I find myself with pen in hand but without words to describe the sorrow I feel over the passing of my young relative and friend Patrick O’Hehir. I write in deepest gratitude that he had with him friends at the last to offer him aid and comfort and to see that he was attended by a priest who could offer extreme unction for the good of his soul, which is now in Heaven as God is merciful and good to those who have served their Country in its need. I shall write the priest at Ballyroe to forward the news to the Dillons there and acknowledge your condescension in writing to his parents in Allentown Pinnsilvania (I do not know how to spell it) to inform them as to his passing and to his burial place and also the other Dillons of Pinnsilvania, namely Brandon Casey Dillon and in Tralee itself Peter O’Dougal Dillon, if indeed Uncle Peter is returned from the shipyards in Scotland. My mother and father will be sad to learn that another Dillon is gone to the Beyond when I write them next post to Galveston to be carried by ship to our unfortunate country over the sea. Ever will the blessed sisters of St. Ursula be in my prayers. Were you to find the opportunity to deliver the medallion of Our Lady that Patrick wished me to have I would be most moved by his thinking of me under such dire circumstances.

Simon noted his own black fingermarks on the paper and so laid it carefully on his bedding and tried to scrub away the grime in bayou water, came back, and took up the letter again.

I remain quite well and find much joy in my young charge and indeed the lovely gardens of San Antonio. From time to time we make excursions into the countryside to see the great cypresses and it seems to me a land of faerie both beautiful and dangerous in which I wish I could live instead of this loud and busy town. At least I am allowed to go to Mass, where the walls keep out the city for an hour. I practice pieces on the neighbor’s pianoforte, which is an upright, and it and I make noises out of tune but joyful. Please believe me most grateful for the effort and selfless care you have expended on a young friend here in these unsettled conditions as we all find our way to a new era of peace and prosperity. I remain yours truly, Doris Dillon

He sat at the stern of the flatboat and read it over three times. The letter bothered him deeply with its hints at poor treatment.

She had invented brilliantly, however. Patrick was not her relative. Peter Dillon was not her uncle. Texas was not finding its way to a new era of peace and prosperity. He regretted the lie about the medallion. He would either have to buy one or confess.

Anyway, she managed to convey something of herself; the town life was not one she loved, and what was a bit ominous was “At least I am allowed to go to Mass.” What, was she held in chains in a root cellar? Fed on turnip rinds? And that slithering reptile who backhanded her at the dinner, in front of everybody. Simon bit his lower lip and fumed. A running anxiety made him get up and walk out into the small breeze that moved his shirt upon his body and he watched a boat come down the bayou with a pair of oars clawing at its surface. He pulled on the tattered old shell jacket.

But she had written to him; she had written of herself, her thoughts. “In which I could live instead of this loud and busy town.” And then he wondered how she could have been impressed with him as her last sight of Simon Boudlin was a dusty ragged person standing by the side of the road in a desert with a fiddle in his hands.

He held the letter tightly, as if it might be taken away by some random happening; the yellow fever or a stray bullet or a fight in a saloon or a runaway horse. Some accident, some flood.

He sat out on deck until late and looked overhead, hoping for stars. There was no place to go and be alone; houses were spotted everywhere here at the edge of a city of eighty thousand people and the men in the wagon yard up on the bank were loud and contentious with one another. If he were to practice his fiddle, to try to perfect “La Savane,” they would all come to the edge of the brown bayou and cry out to him their favorite songs, they would yell, “Hey, there’s a fellow playing a fiddle down here!” and he would not have as moment’s peace. On the other hand, he was not of a mind to go walking up the edge of the bayou to get away from everybody, since he might be carried off by a giant snake, be bitten by a water moccasin, or eaten by an alligator. So late in the dark he leaned on the gunnel with the letter in his hand and listened to the bayou, its faint, sinister sounds, thinking of the music in his mind.

Then he heard somebody singing in a low, clear baritone:

Motherless children have a hard time when their mother is dead

Motherless children have a hard time

All that weepin’ all that cryin’ . . .

It was like a gift dropped into his hand by a stranger. He followed the eccentric journey of the melody, its difficult changes, the flats and sharps, how the singer returned to the beginning note, and Simon knew he would have never found his way back there. It was a riddle as well as a deep mourning, and Simon was acquainted with both of these things, and so in the chill night, winter on the bayou, it was as if only he and the unknown singer lived in the same universe for the brief time that the song was sent out into the dark.

Chapter Fourteen

The hardtack and fish and salt pork were not enough for them to stay ahead of the demands on their strength and by the second week they were very hungry. So was the alligator slicing through the water, a long rippling V in its wake. It was watching them.

Doroteo dragged a string of fish out of the water—four catfish, one of them over five pounds by the feel of him. He strung the rest by the gills and dropped them back in the water to keep them alive and fresh. Damon sat on a box with his hat down over his nose against a drizzle, eating ship’s biscuit, waiting for Doroteo to boil the fish. They would draw out bits with their knives as soon as the fish were done.

Damon looked across the bayou. He lifted his chin.

“Yonder,” he said.

There was a moment of silence as Simon and Doro searched the water.

“What is that?” said Simon.

“It’s a log,” said Doroteo. Then after a pause, “No. It comes against the current.”

“It’s a Goddamned alligator,” said Damon. The creature slid closer with a slight weaving of its long head back and forth. Damon jumped to his feet. “It wants your fish, Doro, just give it the fish!”

“Be damned if I will,” said the Tejano. “These are my fish. Hombre, look at it. I never seen an alligator before.” He threw the catfish he had in his hand into a bucket, picked up a coil of rope, and began to build a loop, first tying a hondo and feeding the other end through, then tossing out a coil to test the weight of the rope. He bounced on his toes, overhanding the lasso, calling out, “Hey, hey!”

Simon watched it with a sort of doomed fascination and wiped his knife on his pants leg in slow strokes. The alligator turned toward them in a seething wave. By some means it lifted its entire front third out of the muddy water and slammed down on the string of fish that hung in the water. It looked as if it were about to come aboard and Damon flung down his biscuit and actually screamed.