The Veteran (36 page)

“No next of kin?”

“Sir?”

“Who should we contact in the event of ... anything happening to you?”

“No-one, sir. No-one to tell.”

“I see. Date of birth?”

“Fifty-two. End of December, I think.”

“So you would be nearly twenty-five years old?”

“Yessir.”

“Right. Social Security number?”

Craig stared. The professor sighed.

“My, you do seem to have slipped through the net. Very well. Sign here.”

He turned the form around, pushed it across the desk and offered the pen. Craig took it. He could not read the words ‘signature of applicant’ but the space was clear enough. He stooped and made his mark. The professor retrieved the paper and stared in disbelief.

“My dear boy, my dear, dear boy ...”

He turned the paper so Charlie could see it. She looked at the inky cross in the space.

“Charlie, as an educator I think you have a small extra task this summer.”

She flashed her wide grin.

“Yes, Major, I think I do.”

She was thirty-five years old, had been married once, not well, and had never had babies. She thought the young man from the wilderness was like a boy-child, naive, innocent, vulnerable. He would need her protection.

“Right,” said Professor Ingles, “Ben, go and get yourself settled in, if you are not already, and join us all at the trestle tables for the evening meal.”

It was good food, the scout thought, and plenty of it. It came on enamelled tin plates. He ate with the help of his bowie knife, a spoon and a wad of bread. There were several half-hidden grins around the table, but he missed them.

The young men he shared the bunkhouse with were friendly. They all seemed to be from towns and cities he had not heard of and presumed to be back east. But it had been a tiring day, and there was no light save candles to read by, so these were quickly blown out and they fell asleep.

Ben Craig had never been taught to be curious about his fellow man but he noticed the young men around him were strange in many ways. They purported to be scouts, horse-breakers and trappers, but seemed to know very little about their skills. But he recalled the raw recruits led by Custer and how little they too had known of horses, guns and the Indians of the Great Plains. He supposed nothing much had changed in the year he had lived with the Cheyenne or alone.

There were to be two weeks of settling in and rehearsals in the schedule before the visitor parties began to arrive, and this time was dedicated to getting the fort in perfect order, practising routines and lectures by Major Ingles, mainly held in the open air.

Craig knew none of this and prepared to go out hunting again. He was crossing the parade ground, heading for the main gate which stood wide open each day, when a young wrangler called Brad hailed him.

“What you got there, Ben?”

He pointed to the sheepskin sheath hanging forward of Craig’s left knee in front of the saddle.

“Rifle,” said Craig.

“Can I see? I’m way into guns.”

Craig eased his Sharps out of the sheath and handed it down. Brad was ecstatic.

“Wow, that is a beauty. A real antique. What is it?”

“Sharps fifty-two.”

“That’s incredible. I didn’t know they made replicas of this.”

Brad sighted the rifle on the bell in the frame above the main gate. It was the bell that would be rung with vigour if any hostiles were spotted or their presence reported, and would warn outside working parties to hurry back. Then he pulled the trigger.

He was about to say ‘Bang’ but the Sharps did it for him.

Then he was knocked back by the recoil. If the heavy bullet had hit the bell square on, it would have shattered it. Instead it hit at an angle and screamed off into space. But the bell still emitted a clang that stopped all activity in the fort. The professor came tumbling out of his office.

“What on earth was that?” he called, then saw Brad sitting on the ground clutching the heavy rifle. “Brad, what do you think you’re doing?”

Brad clambered to his feet and explained. Ingles looked sorrowfully at Craig.

“Ben, maybe I forgot to tell you, but there is a no-firearm rule on this base. I’ll have to lock this up in the armoury.”

“No guns. Major?”

“No guns. At least not real ones.”

“But what about the Sioux?”

“The Sioux? So far as I know they are on the reservations in North and South Dakota.”

“But Major, they might come back.”

Then the professor saw the humour. He gave an indulgent beam.

“Of course, they might come back. But not this summer, I think. And until they do, this goes behind a chain in the armoury.”

The fourth day was a Sunday and the staff all attended morning service in the chapel. There was no chaplain, so Major Ingles officiated. In mid-service he moved to the lectern and prepared to read the lesson. The big Bible was opened at the appropriate page with a marker.

“Our lesson today comes from the Book of Isaiah, chapter eleven, starting at verse six. Here the prophet deals with the time when God’s peace shall come upon our earth.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the falling together. And a little child shall lead them.

“And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion ...” At this point he turned the page, but two of the ricepaper sheets had stuck together and he stopped, as the text made no sense. As he wrestled with his confusion a young voice spoke from the middle of the third row in front of him.

“And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

There was silence as the congregation stared openmouthed at the figure in the stained buckskin suit with the eagle feather dangling from the back of his head. John Ingles discovered the remainder of the passage.

“Yes, precisely. Here endeth the first lesson.”

“I really do not understand that young man,” he said to Charlie in his office after lunch. “He cannot read or write but can recite passages from the Bible that he learned as a child. Is he weird or am I?”

“Don’t worry, I think I have figured it out,” she said. “He really was born to a couple who chose to live in isolation in the wilderness. When they died he really was adopted, unofficially and probably illegally, by a single man, much older, and raised as the old man’s son. So he really does have no formal education. But he has a huge knowledge of three things: the Bible that his mother taught him, the ways of the last remaining wilderness and the history of the Old West.”

“Where did he get that from?”

“The old man, presumably. After all, if a man died at age, say, eighty, only three years ago, he would have been born before the end of the last century. Things were pretty basic around here back then. He must have told the boy what he recalled or was himself told about the frontier days by survivors.”

“So why does the young man play the role so well? Could he be dangerous?”

“No,” said Charlie, “none of that. He is just fantasizing. He believes he has a right to trap and hunt at will, like they used to in the old days.”

“Role-playing?”

“Yes, but then, aren’t we all?”

The professor roared with laughter and slapped his thighs.

“Of course, that is what we’re all doing. He just does it brilliantly well.”

She rose.

“Because he believes in it. The best actor of them all. You leave him to me. I’ll see he comes to no harm. Incidentally, two of the girls are already making sheep’s eyes at him.”

In the bunkhouse Ben Craig still found it odd that his companions, when they undressed for the night, stripped right down to brief shorts made of cotton, while he preferred to sleep in the usual ankle-length white underwear. After a week this led to a problem and some of the young men spoke to Charlie.

She found Craig after log-hauling detail, swinging a long-handled axe as he reduced the cords of pine to splits for the kitchen range.

“Ben, could I ask you something?”

“Sure, ma’am.”

“And call me Charlie.”

“All right, Charlie, ma’am.”

“Ben, do you ever bathe?”

“Bathe?”

“Uh-huh. Strip right down and wash the body, all of it, not just the hands and face?”

“Why sure, ma’am. Regular.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear, Ben. When did you last do that?”

He thought. Old Donaldson had taught him that regular bathing was necessary, but in creeks of melted snow there was no need to become addicted.

“Why, as recently as last month.”

“That’s what I suspected. Do you think you could do that again? Now?”

Ten minutes later she found him leading Rosebud, fully saddled, out of the stable.

“Where are you going, Ben?”

“To bathe, Charlie, ma’am. Like you said.”

“But where?”

“In the creek. Where else?”

Every day he had wandered out into the long-grassed prairie to perform the usual bodily functions. He washed face, arms and hands in the horse-trough. His teeth were kept white by an hour with the splay-ended willow twig, but he could do that as he rode.

“Tether the horse and come with me.”

She led him to the armoury, unlocked it with a key on her belt and took him inside. Beyond the racks of chained Springfields was the back wall. Here she found a pressure-operated release in a knothole and swung open the hidden door. There was a further room equipped with basins and bathtubs.

Craig had seen hot tubs before, during his two years at Fort Ellis, but they had been made of wooden staves. These were of enamelled iron. He knew tubs had to be filled by relays of buckets of hot water from the kitchen range, but Charlie turned a strange knob at one end and steaming water flowed out.

“Ben, I’m going to come back in two minutes and I want to find all your clothes, except the buckskin, which needs dry-cleaning, outside the door.

“Then I want you to get in with the brush and soap and scrub yourself. All over. Then I want you to take this and wash your hair with it.”

She handed him a flask with a green liquid that smelled of pine buds.

“Finally I want you to dress again from any underclothes and shirts you find in those shelves over there. When you are done, come back out. OK?”

He did as he was bid. He had never been in a hot bath before and found that it was pleasant, though he had trouble finding out how the faucets operated and nearly flooded the floor. When he had done, and shampooed his hair, the water was a dull grey. He found the plug at the bottom and watched it drain away.

He selected cotton shorts, a white tee shirt, and a warm plaid shirt from the racks in the corner, dressed, braided the eagle feather back into his hair and came out. She was waiting for him. In the sun was a chair. She carried scissors and a comb.

“I’m not an expert, but this will be better than nothing,” she said. “Sit down.”

She trimmed his chestnut hair, leaving only the long strand with the feather untouched.

“That’s better,” she said when she was done. “And you smell just fine.”

She put the chair back in the armoury and locked it. Expecting warm thanks, she found the scout looking solemn, even miserable.

“Charlie, ma’am, would you walk with me?”

“Sure, Ben. Something on your mind?”

Secretly she was delighted at the chance. She might now begin to understand this enigmatic and strange product of the wilderness. They walked out through the gate and he led the way across the prairie towards the creek. He was silent, lost in thought. She forced back her desire to interrupt. It was a mile to the creek and they walked for twenty minutes.

The prairie smelt of hay-ready grass and several times the young man raised his gaze to the Pryor Range, towering in the south.

“It’s nice to be out on the range, looking at the mountains,” she said.

“It’s my home,” he said and lapsed into silence.

When they reached the creek he sat down at the water’s edge and she gathered the folds of her full cotton dress about her and sat facing him.

“What is it, Ben?”

“Can I ask you something, ma’am?”

“Charlie. Yes, of course you can.”

“You wouldn’t tell me no lies?”

“No lies, Ben. Just the truth.”

“What year is it?” She was shocked.

She had hoped for something revelatory, something about his relationship with the other young people in the group. She stared into the wide, deep blue eyes and wondered ... she was ten years his senior but ...

“Why, it’s 1977, Ben.”

If she had expected a non-committal nod, it was not what she got. The young man leaned his head between his knees, covered his face with his hands. His shoulders under the buckskin began to shake.

She had only once seen a grown man cry. It was beside an auto wreck on the highway from Bozeman to Billings. She rocked forward onto her knees and placed her hands on his shoulders.

“What is it, Ben? What’s the matter with this year?”

Ben Craig had felt fear before. Facing the grizzly, on the slope above the Little Bighorn, but nothing like this awful terror.

“I was born,” he said at length, “in the year 1852.”

She was not surprised. She knew there had been a problem. She wrapped her arms round him and held him to her bosom, stroking the back of his head.

She was a modern young woman, a girl of her time. She had read all about these things. Half the youth of the West was attracted by the East’s mystic philosophies. She knew all about the theory of reincarnation, or at any rate the belief in it. She had read of some people’s sense of deja-vu, a conviction that they had existed before, long ago.

This was a problem, the phenomenon of delusion, that had been tackled, was even then being tackled, by the science of psychiatry. There was help, counselling, therapy.

“It’s all right, Ben,” she murmured as she rocked him like a child. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be OK. If you believe that, it’s fine. Spend the summer with us here at the fort and we’ll live as they lived a hundred years ago. In the fall you can come back to Bozeman with me and I’ll find people to help. You’re going to be all right, Ben. Trust me.”