waldopaper

Ice under Strawberry Moon

Black Horse Tavern:  Marsh Creek, 1863  

They came with barbarian yells and smoking pistols, in such a desperate dash.  Osh-Tisch (Finds Them and Kills Them) was a Crow bade.  Henry met such fellows before on the Great Plains.  Neither changelings nor scouts, they were flankers.  Not crow or killers but part of an army.  Where the hunt changes to slaughter, they were ahead of it. Yet there were kindred spirits among them.  Henry remembered. After the battle, there was all kinds of religious ballyhoo because they realized war was serious business.  Meeting god was a real possibility and you want to hedge your bets.  We still had two years to go… and had no idea. Some of us got it- the idea that is.  The idea is survival of the luckiest.  Forest witches, shaman and fakes came to the Agawa region to seek their fortune.   Others came to learn how to tell their fortune. 

Chaska could spot the good ones.  That’s who showed up at Marsh Creek back in ’63 about a week before the biggest clusterfuck of the whole war. Thabo could tell you that it had shit to do with black folks or slavery.  It was all about property rats… stooges and scoundrels who would derail the union train- Thabo was an escape artist who had worked on the railroad all his life.  Now Tom, please don’t snatch they heads off.  Heh heh.

Daisy and Albert headed out to the White Horse Tavern. Daisy wanted to walk and Albert consented because of her good natured mood. She had not mentioned Henry since calling him unmentionable, and Albert had adhered to her request. It had been a long walk and areas they had walked through had sometimes seemed threatening. There were many derelicts along the way, but most had been internalizing their thoughts and actions. That majority seemed more content with themselves than those who might be watching them. He thought hard as she stared at him with a cunning look as though thinking his reaction to be somewhat of a game. As he weighed the past weeks and days since they’d been staying in Greenwich Village, it occurred to him that she probably hadn’t called him by name since she’d been in Bellevue.

The realization then settled upon him that Daisy had been so ill that she had convinced herself to have been with Henry this entire time. Had Henry stood in front of him, he would have threatened Henry’s very life…

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