Simon hated cities. He hated towns. As they trudged through the humid cold streets of Houston he thought of the property near the Red River and it gave him comfort. It was as if he already owned it and this incident was only a temporary setback. There would be a spring of clear water and around it great pecan trees, deer would bed down in the post-oak mottes at night. Wild horses would tread the smoking earth in dimly seen caravans, the breath of the great brown buffalo drifting white in the winter air.

They marched on through dark shadows of business establishments jammed up one against the other. Somewhere a dog howled. It was overcast and all the windows were beaded with the damp. Dark streets, unlit, unpaved. Every building with a veranda and every veranda with a cat staring.

Simon sang words he made up to the tune of “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”:

I dream of the Red River where some kind of flowers grow . . .

Damon pulled out his C whistle with the ribbon on it and played the melody. Ta dum ta dum-dum . . . and Doroteo sang a harmony.

“Should have stuck to your music, you dim-witted hill-jacks,” said the guard ahead of them.

They came to a confectioner’s shop. It was now the office of the provost marshal. The provost marshal was a fat man with a receding chin and Simon could see burnt-looking pale hairs on the backs of his hands as he wrote down their names and particulars by the light of a railroad lamp. Simon could tell he was some kind of an officer because he had bars on his shoulders, but he was Union and so Simon wasn’t sure what they meant. He stood the fiddle case on one end and kept a hand on it and turned to the others, who widened their eyes innocently; Doro gave a small shrug.

All around them candies glistened behind glass; taffies, ribbon candy, lozenges, lemon drops. Simon wondered where the candy man had gone. The man with the fuzzy yellow beard sat down on the floor with his legs straight out and a sullen expression. The provost marshal told him to get up and he did, reluctantly.

“Names,” said the provost marshal. He leveled his pencil at Simon. “You.”

“Simon Boudlin,” said Simon. He had claimed to be Simon Walters when he was conscripted, so it was safest to go back to his real name and hope he was not on paper anywhere. “I never started that fight and I never hit anybody.” He pulled up the neck of the white shirt against the cold and his reddish hair was curling outrageously in the wet atmosphere.

“Nevertheless, you’re charged with disorderly conduct unbecoming. Where is your pass?”

“What pass?”

“Pass to travel,” said the provost marshal. “Pass to keep breathing.”

“I don’t have one.” Simon spread one hand. “Nobody ever said I had to have one. What is it?”

“Never mind then, fiddler, where are your discharge papers?”

“Me?” Simon took on an alarmed expression. “Discharged from what?”

“The Confederate Army.”

“I was never in it.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Hiding.”

“Me too,” said Damon and Doroteo chimed in, “I also.” Damon groped in his pocket and came out with the D whistle.

“Then where did you get that vest?” he said to Simon.

Simon was about to become very angry. Why did he have to answer to somebody as to where he got his damn vest? So what if it was Confederate issue? “At the gettin’ place,” he said.

The fat officer stared resolutely at his papers; then said again, “Names.”

“Private George Farley,” said the soldier.

“Nepomuceno Policarpo Yturri y Contreras,” said Doro, and he spelled it for him, slowly, relentlessly.

“To hell with that,” said the officer. “Give me the short version.”

“Doroteo Navarro,” said Doro and then instantly regretted it.

“Angus Oppenheimer.” Damon blew out his whistle.

“Stop that.” The officer sat at the confectioner’s counter with papers in front of him and clearly felt that it was all getting out of hand and his detentions and arrests were unraveling at an alarming speed. He stared at Damon, who was running through the D scale. “Just stop it.”

Damon lowered his whistle. He said, “Are we under arrest?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” said the officer. “I will in a minute.”

Doroteo said, “There has to be a sheriff to do that. I know this.”

“Wrong. You’re under martial law. We’re the law.” The fat man kept on writing. “We’ll have military tribunals here before long and you are lucky they ain’t convened yet.”

“All I was doing,” said the off-duty soldier, “was looking to deliver a letter to Simon Boudlin. A fiddler, they said. Him.”

“Letter,” said Simon. His head snapped up. “A letter? Give it to me.” He put out his hand.

The provost marshal got up and quickly shoved his way in between Simon and the soldier. He said, “Give it here.”

Damon grabbed Simon’s arm and said, “Don’t.”

“That’s mine,” said Simon. He tried to wrest his arm away from Damon and keep hold of his fiddle case with the other. “It’s either from Miss Doris Dillon or David Alexander. See here, it is from Miss Dillon. You cannot open a lady’s mail. You cannot.”

The fat officer took the letter and regarded it in the light of the oil lamp while in the mild winter air his breath clouded the lamp glass. “Well,” he said. “It’s from Miss Doris Dillon. How do I know you are Simon Boudlin?”

Simon stood stiff and furious, barely able to contain himself. “Come with me back to our flatboat and I will show you an envelope with the return address on it from that same Miss Dillon, and my name is on it.”

The off-duty soldier said, “Sir, I got a description of him from a freighter in San Antonio when we were leaving out for Houston and he asked me to deliver this letter to a fiddler of that name with reddish hair, short, size six and three quarters hat.”

Simon whipped off his hat and held it out. There in the inner band was his hat size. There was a hot, high flush along his cheekbones.

“Well,” said the provost marshal. “I suppose.”

He was one of those people who, if he had something you wanted, would try to hang on to it until the trumpets blew for the Last Judgment. He dithered and in an increasing rage Simon saw him clutching the letter between his two damp fat hands.

The man with the yellow beard cried out, “Well, now I’ve seen everything. I have seen it all. A Yankee opening a lady’s mail in a candy store. This beats all. This is the sick and bitter end of it.” He sat down on the floor again and his head flopped back against the wall. “Might as well go to sleep.”

The provost marshal let them go but he had written down their names on some kind of register. Their real names. Their real descriptions. Only Damon had escaped. The musicians and the soldier were released. The man with the yellow beard was taken away to the city jail. He was charged with seditious conduct for yelling about “The Bonnie Blue Flag.” Testimony of the soldier.

April 11th, 1866, San Antonio

Dear Simon if I may call you so,

You must not write to me any longer. Colonel Webb has forbidden me any letters except those direct from Ireland, he says it is quite enough that we have communicated over Patrick’s death and now that is all settled and so any more from you breaks his rule that I may not enter into what he calls “deceptions” and “sneaking about” and more that I am reluctant to tell you here. I am sending this by a soldier through Mercedes, who works for the Webbs and is a friend to me. Mercedes Bethancourt took it to a freighter who delivered your last, and the freighter will give it to a soldier so there is no chance of the colonel finding out. Now I may write you the truth, this is an unhappy house. I volunteer to go with Mercedes to oversee the laundry done in the great blue San Antonio river spring called the Blue Hole merely to get away and be where the Good God intended me to be, that is in the world beyond cities, and all the noise of city life here, for I was raised in a green land and the sea never far from us.

Colonel Webb never speaks but what is blame and anger out of his mouth, to me and Josephina and his poor wife, always an unkind disparaging word. You would not know that the army came near to making a trial of Colonel Webb, what they call a courts-martial, for the attack he made at Los Palmitos, as it was unnecessary and he did it for mere glory, as he had never been in combat before and the war had ended and he wanted a decoration for bravery before all was disbanded and thus he threw away the lives of good men. I tell you this because I may never see you again.

Simon, I am sorry to tell you my troubles and indeed to have any troubles to tell, God means us to be happy. He does indeed. He means us to be happy and to sing and He gave us each musical note that lives in all the songs struck clean in our hearts. Stay well and God keep you safe from bandits and Comanches and the fevers, I do not know if I will ever see you. If you do not hear from me again it is not because I do not wish to write but because I cannot, please accept the dearest wishes and lasting regards of Doris Mary Dillon.