#chapter eighteen

For the next two weeks on their journey westward, their days comprised much of the same as the first, each new bend and mile of the river extracted every bit of expertise on the Captain’s part, while Rosey waited below and busied herself as best she could. Both toiled those fifteen hour days away in anticipation of the thirty minutes, more or less, that they had with each other at the end of it all. Often too weary to do much more than talk and pet in the close quarters of their inner room, those were quiet nights and sweet mornings, seasoned with a bit of heartache when business or sleep took them under. But they were the bright spot in each other's day and the little domesticity that they established was sweet indeed, and easily acclimated to by such individuals who had never had anything steady to compare it to. A groove was soon worn in routine, him coming down after a long shift, paying his regards to old Beans before calling in on Cal and Charlie and, finally, making his way to her.

Interspersed in the few times when they docked early to fill coal, Elvis often found himself pulled away to discuss something with the General aboard, who despite his reputation and Captain Presley‘s own inclination towards disliking of Sherman, had proved to be a civil barbarian and a rather engaging taskmaster. If Elvis could not admire General Sherman’s rumpled form or his gravelly speech, he could give him credit for being remarkably proficient at his job. Something Elvis himself wished he had more discipline to mimic, especially as the days grew routine and his exhaustion with the mundane stress of it all only built by the end of two weeks.

It was not uncommon for Captain Presley to hand the wheel to Jerry partway through the day, if he found them in a straight away with a decent current and plenty of visibility, telling his second made of a desperate need to fetch glasses, or a book, or else to change a neck cloth, any reason for dashing down below to visit *her*.

Eventually Jerry begged him to stop inventing reasons and to go taste his woman with a clean conscience. This only encouraged such coping behavior and soon Jerry found himself at the wheel upwards of five times a day while the captain dashed below to drink his tonic from between Rosey’s chafed thighs. She’d tug at his neckclothe to bring him closer and it would burn his throat like a noose and he’d groan as the blood pumped in his head like a drum and the sweet trickle of her sweetness flooded the dam of his lips.

As early as the second morning aboard, Captain Presley told her he had bought her gifts in St. Louis to keep her occupied on the voyage. Exactly at the same time Rosey had presented her own gift, a beautiful book for him, wrapped in parchment. It had been Verne’s latest scientific novelty piece and he whooped in excitement at the prospect of not having to wait ages to return East of the river and purchase it.

In turn he’d given her the paints and canvases he had bought, having racked his brain in the bookstore for some trivial hobbies she no doubt never had the chance to explore. If he could’ve brought her an instrument down into the hold he would have done so. As it was, there was no harm if she painted the entire little closet they now lived in a myriad of colors. Anything to occupy her frazzled ambitions. Which meant he made a concession and allowed Mr. Clemens to spend his afternoons there with her, or sometimes in her cubby office by the boilers, where Elvis somewhat alarmedly suspected they concocted ghost stories and fairytales that often cast himself as the protagonist.

Mr. Clemens was handsome for a man of sixty, altogether too spry for his shock of gray hairs and charming in a way that Elvis hoped to be after thirty more summers. Under Clemen’s artistic turtledge, Rosey’s paintings morphed from rudimentary sketches of bumble bees and cotton to something altogether more poignant and luxurious, intimate little scenes of book reading and dining in restaurants she’d never been to.

Soon the paintings had faces and what were once pale blobs soon had noses and hair and eyes and lips that looked strangely like Elvis’ own. At this rate he would be staring back at a portrait of himself on the ceiling by the time they got to where they were headed, but anything was better than Rosey growing bored. Or growing too close to Aida.

“She’s remarkable, Presley.” Mr. Clemens took the liberty of saying to him one evening after a day spent steering as usual, “Quite remarkable, but then, I trust you know that.”

Captain Presley who could not think of a single other companion who could have made this journey even moderately bearable, did know it, and to an extent he did not take offense at being told but like a proud father beamed under the shared opinion of his choice of lover.

And it was with the same fervor he found himself sullenly suspicious of men he would have considered harmless companions or easy pickings oniy months ago. He startled at the harmless appearance of men brushing their horses in the hold and went to such lengths as to make Rosey not so much as step out with Cal until he’d done a bit of reconnaissance first. The word was out on board already that Rosetta was indeed a woman but with the innate self preservation that prevents men from petting panthers, Rosetta had been given little trouble by the calvary. Aida, likewise, although Elvis suspected she was given little trouble for much silver and he didn’t bother asking more, so long as the linens were cleaned and the food chopped, her business was her own and distracted the men from the little treasure he kept tucked away beside his books and knickknacks like a carven figurine of his hopes and dreams.

Rosey, Rosey, he would go quite mad if anything happened to Rosey

It had been a long time since he had allowed himself such free reign in his paranoia, mostly unsoothed by any medicinal fog. But in the next two weeks, he indulged himself, and set Cal and Charlie to the same task: suspecting everyone of trying to discover Rosey’s existence. He couldn’t help that the men came into the hold to tend their horses to bathe occasionally in the frigid river, more easily accessible from the large hold door at water level. What the Captain could do was pilot his boat best he was able, and when the mighty tributary straightened enough for Jerry to manage the steering, he took to entertaining the cavalry troop, best he could. Which, for being a little rusty at the more masculine forms of entertainment, was pretty damn well.

The empty ballroom now held ramshackle black jack games and corn hole tosses, Elvis even agreed to the rigging of a rudimentary shooting lane along the top deck where men kept their aim sharp. And some nights, when the weather was so bad outside with a blizzard and squall that Elvis could not so much as see the lines in his own palm ahead of him, they cast rope and anchored to the bank and men pulled out their fiddles and Jerry his harmonica and some their stringed banjos or guitars, and Elvis his old accordion, and such was the stolen enjoyment of those nights that the growing irritability of the cramped troop of soldiers would calm for days after. Lulled and soothed by the goodwill of a night of games and music.

For Elvis it was painfully nostalgic to his time in the war, when there were brief moments of terror and violence aboard the ship, followed by weeks and even months of such warm companionship as only to be brought about by cramped necessity and human goodness. He’d missed his old accordion, missed the burn in his forearms as he pumped the bellows and missed the sharp clip of the ivory keys against his fingertips when he slipped a note too fast for human ability. His audience rarely caught the slip, entranced by the pace of the melody, it was a mistake between himself and his bruised fingertip.

When he went below he played for Rosey too, just to keep in practice. It felt good to make new memories of it. Elvis had thought that pulling such a tainted relic from the trunks might send his mind hurtling back to silk and dark allies but instead it stirred only scenes of seabreeze and Scotty’s sunburnt face adeck with him. He missed Scotty these days. He felt he’d been rash with him, he felt he’d had a better friend in him than he’d likely ever know or be able to appreciate now. Not with the likely outcome of this trip.

Scotty would be a good friend for Rosey, though, when he was gone. If he were gone. And that was a great comfort. That led to Elvis thinking of them together, adeck with him in ages gone by, some alternate world indeed, both scrubbing and swathing boat decks while he played them a ditty, Rosey in trousers and loose linen, curls tucked beneath a sailor’s cap that only made her appear adorable instead of rakish. It intrigued him so much that after the first time that odd imagining came to him as he played for her in their little cubby at night, he returned to it again and again like a memory before falling asleep.

Rosey and Scotty and him, young, at sea, boyish and hard working.

The memory always fogged near the end, before he was quite ready to sleep, fogged and slanted and stabilized just enough that he fled from it with unease. Just enough that when he was honest with himself in broad daylight alone at the wheel, Elvis knew his mind wanted to take him to New York, Scotty and Rosey and Elvis in New York, starving, freezing, learning talent doesn’t count for shit without money.

So he played the accordion for the troop some nights with a head full of nothing by shanty lyrics and the next chord progression, and then he’d go down below to Rosey and play her something more measured, and he’d imagine salt and sea and a life where they grew up near and close and time was on their side. And so at night he would fleece the troop at blackjack and poker just long enough into a game to show them he could and garner their angry admiration before he let them win, to regain their equanimity, and after he’d go down to the hold and share nothing but honest kisses with Rosey and compliments for her newest paintings.

“How’re you managing, with all this entertaining?” she asked him after over a week of this, his head in her lap and her fingers working a sorceresses’ swirl on his aching temples. “You’ve enough work with piloting us.”

Elvis just gave her a reassuring smile, eyes lazily closed and fluttering from pleasure at the relief she gave him, “Can’t pilot if there’s a riot on the damn boat. Bored soldiers are worse than Natives, ain’t got the patience of sailors. Just keeping our throats from gettin’ cut, little girl. And the general likes me well enough now.”

“How’d you manage that?” Rosey asked, tone sour at the mention of Sherman, not one to let a past war crime go.

“Likes tryin’ to beat me at cards.”

“Tell me you don’t let him win like the others?” Rosey begged, irate, “I hope you fleece him. Every time.”

Elvis laughed in shock at her anger, a fully throated thing, “I don’t let him win.” he assured and that was that.

It was after a few weeks of this routine when, bone weary and fresh off a fifteen hour shift at the wheel and an hour and a half of drunken revelry in the ballroom, Elvis was arrested in his progress striding along the hall back to the hold and to his bed.

“I’ve put it together.” He was accosted in the close space, it was the straw-haired man from the stables, first night of transport, down with Beans. Making jokes about finding the maids, making jokes about making do with boys, saying he knew him, saying he’d not been posted at Elmira but he knew him. The man who Elvis had doused his candle for rather than have him snoopingly follow him to his berth and discover Rosey there.

Elvis spun round lightly at the man’s incomplete statement, kept his face loose, recalling he was a man with no lady wife to hide in the hull. He was just an easy-going captain with a job to do, and people liked to try to place him sometimes, mostly it was from a news article and they mistook their recognition for memory. “Hmm?” he queried mildly, cocking an ear as the revelry in the adjacent ballroom was still in full swing despite his recent abandonment of the soldiers.

“Where I’ve seen you.” The man picked up their conversation from weeks gone by.

“Did ya now?” Captain Presley encouraged.

“Haarlem.” The man stated.

“I- beg pardon?”

“Haarlem.” He reiterated, almost fierce in his barely suppressed excitement.

“I ain’t ever been to Haarlem.” Elvis lied easy as ever.

“No?”

“No. I told ya, Elmira. I was imprisoned at Elmira.” The captain turned to go.

“Oh Elmira, yes. That would explain it, s’how I remember you, slight, lanky, all ribs.” The fucker chuckled, “Waist so willowy I could put my hands round it like a lady’s-“

“They didn’t let us out for sight seein’ while we was there, sir.” Elvis only bothered to tilt his head, still persistent in returning to his course and to bed, “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

“I mean after it, after the war.” the man called after him and Elvis felt his legs go stiff, “You’ve grown, or broadened since. Aren’t all ribs anymore. But if those lips weren’t it, there’s no forgetting the way you tear up an accordion. That’s talent, boy.”

“No.” Captain Presley demurred with a tightened jaw, quite still and drawn up to his full height now in the hallway, “That’s the navy, man, anythin’ light enough not to sink us, we learned how to play. Now if you’ll excu-“

Sudden the man was near him, up to his shoulder, “-you play a lotta flutes back then? Or just in Haarlem?”

“The hell’d’you just say?” it was little more than a hoarse rumble leaving Elvis’ throat.

“I asked if you played a lotta flutes back in the day.” The dig was familiar, but the conviction behind this one sent chills down his spine.

His smile grew tight then fully flattened, a haughty sneer of self preservation forming like a habit on Elvis’ rich face, “I’m gonna assume you’re drunk, otherwise I don’t take kindly to what you’re intimating. Go to bed or you’ll have my fist.”

“Not without you.” That smile was sickening in its surety, Elvis found a compulsive dread already curdling in his gut as if this were as unavoidable as whatever godforsaken rendezvous this man treasured from ten years back. A gnarly hand crept from his premature grasp of his shoulder to a caress of his neck and then to just below his jaw, a tobacco stained thumbnail pulling down on the plump flesh of his lower lip, “I still dream of what these lips-“ a flash of white teeth clenched in a brilliant row, “used to do.”

A gnash of teeth, a click of the jaw. Copper flooded against Elvis’ tongue and with it an exultation of freedom as his consciousness recalled his progress, his surroundings, his newfound desire to be something more than a toy tormented for hire.

He was a free man. Damned but free.

He bit down still harder and his erstwhile client, who no doubt tossed junk coins at him in exchange for an excruciating loss of self, howled.

Perhaps it was an admission of guilt on his part, to respond so viciously to the goading was confirmation beyond any wise course, but the Captain could not find it in himself to care, his neck was free and his hips untouched and his mouth was making a man howl -this time in agony.

There was a satisfaction to it so pungent he thought he saw a mist cloud his vision as the violent delight took over, grit his teeth a little harder and he could be down to the knuckle bone, a spurt of marrow his victory signal.

A knee between his legs reminded Elvis sharply that it was a soldier he was baiting, the sharp crack of it broke his bulldog grip and he stepped back, careful to stagger as little as possible from the blow and draw himself up tall and ready against the opposite wall. It was well he did so as the man was on him again, too close and sweaty, the sharp prick of a drawn knife already nicking ribs beneath his exquisite waistcoat and fine muslin shirt. A warm dribble of blood tickled the soft handles of his waist and Elvis gave a bloody grin in return, familiar with this dance, even down to the expected haggling of a price and the piercing pain of a blade stuck in swift.

“The fuck do you think you’re doin’?” he asked the man, a broad question regarding accusations and the foolhardy knife to his ribs. “Goin’ round accusin’ me of shit and now what? Gonna murder your captain? How’s that gonna work out for ya, hmm?”

“Oh aye, I’ll do worse than murder you.” The man gleamed, so near, “You know I can, make your life a hell, you know it. Not even denyin’ it now are ya, y’fuckin’ fairy?”

Elvis’ gave a twitch of his eyebrow at the irony of his silence being accredited to meek admission and not the ever sharper stab beneath his rib. “Get your hands off me, or it’s you who’ll be dead.” he warned, lowly, listless hands by his thighs starting to gently curl.

“A price, let’s go down to your cabin, and work out a price.” The man suggested and the smooth pet of his hand to Elvis’ other set of ribs sent a shiver through him.

“A price for what? Your goddamn coffin? I said -unhand me, you’re drunk.”

“I’m not,” the man shrugged, “and I’ve got friends who know what I know.”

Elvis stilled against the wall and listened with the intent of a man willing to be drastic.

“They know of you, they’re…our kind, you could say.”

“I ain’t got any kind-“

“-and they are expectin’ a price. Split three ways. I know you’ve got money, and word is you’ve got prospects. Would be a shame if word got around you were anything less than an upstandin’ gambler now, wouldn’t it?”

It would. And not for all these years had Elvis been so sure that such a report would make it off the boat were this man to be let at large, bribe paid and all manner of indignity suffered and still no discretion bought.

“Be a shame if somebody undid all your mama’s hard work.” Elvis bit back, having decided it was a worthy shame, sporting a manic smile.

Calculating the loss of a kidney, he kneed the bastard in the groin.

And that’s about how it went. The knife slid fully home in the captain's flesh while the man crumpled over, the raucous of such a scuffle growing loud enough to distract from the fiddle music in the adjoining ballroom and with a limp screech, the bow slid from the violin strings and chairs emptied as the bored company of horse soldiers poured into the cramped hall, eager to witness the most entertaining bit of kerfuffle they’d seen in ages.

“Fuckin’ fairy.” His opponent seethed as he straightened with effort and Elvis left off palming the still vibrating knife in his side to dodge a vicious first punch the man threw at him.

Chants of “fight fight fight” rose like a ampetheatre’s clamor and soon Elvis and his foe were battering each other against the mahogany paneling in the tight little space in the hall that the encroaching audience allowed. It didn't look good for either of them, but hardly for the fancy dressed man with a knife under his ribs accused of being a lavender sort. He was a brothel owner after all, and even horse soldiers have a more likely testimony than his.

To Elvis’ battered mind, it was clear amongst the exultation of a long wanted fisticuffs that whatever inquiry might be held for why a boat captain would stoop to brawling with a Cavalry man, it could hardly bode well; not for him. Elvis thought of the man’s supposed associates and the thought of looming blackmail and the whole jig being up before he even tried to return to Memphis and sort it. Those associates would need a clear message to be deterred, and this man with his intimate knowledge of the captain would need to be handled.

Or removed. Else, Elvis would find himself removed.

Nobody but Colonel Parker was gonna succeed at defaming him, and nobody was gonna kill him ‘cept for that old toad, neither, and if Rosey had anything to do with it-

-Rosey.

She was all his prospects now, prospects that the knowledge of the man beneath his fists threatened.

He thought of her as he took the bastard down with a painful thump to the plush carpet, and it was her and for her and the million little prayers of impotent fury that his younger self had murmured into ratted sheets that poured out of him and into the skull of his accuser.

The crowd had stopped its chanting some time ago, a hushed blood lust descending instead as the struggle grew mortal and ugly. Then utter silence except for the wet gush of his fist into pliant flesh.

Suddenly Elvis was being pulled up and away from the mash of blood and brain beneath his hands, strong, rough men, many of them, tugging him away from the fellow who dared try to take him back where he swore he’d never go again.

“Enough, enough, you hellion. You’ve done murder.” That was Cash’s voice close against his back amongst the clamor around him and Elvis stopped his struggle against the embrace of the crowd, dozens of men staring at his handiwork on the floor or else at his pretty face with his ashen cheeks and blazing sapphire eyes. Johnny Cash stared down at the knife in his friend’s side, still wobbling with each breath, sharp steel stemming the blood loss for the time being, a vicious little dam.

“The hell is going on down here?” a booming voice made a tunnel amongst the fevered crowd and soon one of the General’s aide-de-camps appeared in front of the hubbub and took in the splattered humanity on the floor with a subtle rock back on his heels and a salvageable slosh of his brandy glass. “Sweet mother of God.” the aide muttered looking down at the good work, for if one is to kill a man he might as well be very dead by the end of the attempt. And then the aide’s eyes flicked up to scan the crowd, one uniformed soldier after another with clean hands and no stains.

Then there was Captain Presley, panting heavily and wild eyed as a fury with a large bruise already blooming on his jaw and a trickle of blood pooling in his Cupid’s bow from a busted nose. Flashing sticky red in the oil lamp’s glow was the handle of a small pen knife in his gut, still moving with each breath. “I take it this is your doing.” the Aide gesticulated with the brandy glass and a tone entirely unbiased.

“Your man stabbed me.” Elvis muttered with a calculated simplicity, the knife underscoring his point rather nicely.

“I see.” the aide wet his lips and squinted in the manner of those complacent drunks who think a matter resolved at the first explanation but feel some need to make the process more lengthy and -sober.

“…After this Molly propositioned him.” someone amongst the varying faces of the crowd jibed and Elvis’ nostrils flared with a new fight, sharp eyes squinting to make out who said the lie.

“The hell did you say?” Cash’s voice rumbled against Elvis’ back like the heavens had opened to thunder in righteous indignation at the charge against his friend.

There was dead quiet and a great deal of uncomfortable looks tossed among the throng of soldiers, plenty of whom had begun to disperse after the killing was done, only now stalled to see if this accusation would provide the further entertainment for criminal charges of the most disgusting nature.

“I guess that's a retraction.” the aide muttured in discomfortment as no further goad emerged.

Cash scoffed angrily, “Can’t just deliver a slander like that and fuck on back to your bunk. Who said that filth?” he demanded of the crowd and moved towards them, finding Elvis capable of propping himself up against the wall.

The crowd of soldiers buckled then closed as he approached them, a mix of sentiments apparent among them. Curiosity the foremost, while some looked fearful and other placating, not a few wore looks of outright disgust at the charge, which Elvis knew full well would morph in disgust for him were it to land with any effect.

“I said who?” Cash bellowed and the aide squirmed at his job being done for him by another but was content to nurse the brandy glass and offer the Captain a handkerchief for his bloodied nose.

Elvis stared at the white lace with savage distrust and the aide gingerly tucked it back, unused, in his own pocket. “Maybe someone should go get the general.” the aide decided as Mr. Cash stared down his men who had now begun to murmur amongst themselves, divided between those who wouldn’t hand over a fellow soldier and those who were questioning their chief suspect, a slight, browned little man, of his accusation.

“Was it you?” Cash wheeled round on this man who had been singled out by attention of the crowd alone.

“I’s only— -Billy done told me—- he was concerned for his safety.” the man protested as a large swell of mutterings ran amongst his comrades at this admittance.

Elvis straightened up at the distinguishing of this accomplice and braced for the next poison drip of accusation. This sort of matter, this subject alone amongst all others was one a man could not walk free from even after exoneration, it followed him always once it had even been contemplated. The fact a man would not have been so upright as to banish all suspicion, for the charge of such prolicivites to even be thought of in conjunction with a man’s name was damning enough. The suspicion was tantamount to a charge and the useless aide by his side seemingly began to sip the brew of scandalized suspicion.

“Why? Why was a member of the United States Cavalry so very scared?” Cash jeered but the little man drew himself up with the confidence of premeditated malice.

“Cause a fuckin’ molly is runin’ our ship!” the man cried out in angry exasperation that was almost convincing, even to Elvis who had been put to use by ever so many men who hated him for their very own tastes in male flesh. “And that fancy bastard wouldn’t leave him alone, poor Bill was wore to distraction in horror of it all, carried a knife with him at all times, feared he was gonna get jumped in some cramped hall, just like this one-“

“Good of a horseman as Bill was,” the gravelly tones of their commander, General Sherman, suddenly amongst them, cut the ever increasingly hysterical babble of queerified terror to a dead calm, “he didn’t have the face for bein’ jumped for free.” the gathered men stepped aside for their general and Elvis watched shiny black boots smash down blood sodden carpet until Sherman was standing over the emulsified corpse. “Not even before Captain Presley took his fists to it.”

Elvis breathed easier at this favorable logic, watching stock still against his polished wall as the general squatted over his dead soldier and with a methodical gravity that belied the otherwise disrespectful action, began to rifle through each of the dead man’s pockets. “No change.” he rose again after this proclamation. “You do your dead mate a disservice, Higgins.” the general glowered at the little man, “I can’t very well question him now, can I? And according to your testimony I must suspect him of proclivities that would make the most innocent man among you tremble. Bill could shoot and saddle well as each of ya, but he weren’t no beauty. Didn’t strike me as fuckin’ queer neither, though what you do in your bunks is not my concern. It becomes my concern when ya got a dead man seekin’ company with no coin in his pocket but penknife. That’s when i gotta make a report for a man dead out of the line of action, who is also, unless I’m mistaken, guilty of stabbing our captain.”

This heavy little speech settled on his men with all the weight that was intended. A court martial for vice was hardly the sort of diversion a man as hard boiled as General Sherman wanted to have eating up his precious time before the Dakotas. Or running amuck in newspapers, further demoralizing a country mourning the death of their sons on the frontier with suspicions of a depravity so sickening as to never be named, not even over a corpse. Only a few, among them those most likely of sharing such proclivities or else driven by holy zeal against pretty men with rich waistcoats, murmured sullenly amongst themselves at the General’s dismissal.

Cash stood to the side, gravely weighing the group’s opinion as it veered wildly from wanting to shelve the matter to a fervent need for justice for a fallen comrade -this last, noble impulse, being no doubt spurred on more by boredom than any real sense of equity.

“Maybe he wasn’t gonna pay him, maybe they was…close.” the little man, with the hunted awareness of a man who has plagiarized himself already to a degree as to make bunk life unbearable, pressed on. “Bill said he’d known, him. Before—, he’d known him.”

Silence followed this before someone else piped up in agreement, “Bill said he recognized him from Sweetheart Row-“

“-are you fuckin’ daft?” a chorus of shocked reactions mounted, varying from scolding and horror to derisive speculations on the speaker's own tastes, now that he’d gone and said the unsayable. It wasn’t very bright of him, damming as the sentence was, Elvis knew full well it bode worse of the dead man and the accuser than even himself.

-“Why the fuck did you get to talkin’ bout fairies with Bill?”

-“You callin’ Bill soft?”

-“Bill weren’t no queer, you callin’ him queer?”

A babble rose up and Elvis stippled his fingers against his thigh in nervous optimism that the tide had changed and his own participation was of lesser interest than the idiotic outing of Bill’s nature by his erstwhile, dim witted friend.

“Maybe Captain Presley wants to say a single goddamn word?” The general suddenly barked so angrily that everyone jumped in surprise and Elvis licked his lips slowly, weighing his options.

Honestly was, as usual, the best course. “Your man was drunk.” he drawled levelly.

“And how did such merry drunkenness as we were all sharing escalate to this.” the General pointed a stubby finger down at the mashed face.

There was a Major among them, middle aged and with the driving enthusiasm of a man passed over by his superiors that crowded Elvis on his left side, an intensity of feeling from the individual that Elvis could almost taste. “I reckon he mistook me for his wife, sir.” Elvis laughed: a practiced, snickering, masculine sorta laugh at a drunk fella’s expense. One he’d learned in the navy, and one he’d been covering all heaps of shit with for the last decade.

“I’m to believe he wished to stab his wife?” Sherman’s craggy face wore an expression of exhausted patience.

Elvis swallowed thickly under the minute scrutiny of the Major and replied gravely, “No sir, he had propositions I declined as he was drunk and no doubt unaware of his mistake.”

“And he pulled a knife on you, thinking you a lady, to try to coerce you?” The Major chose to join in now, skepticism written plain on his face and the men around them shifted uneasily at a near mention of the very crime they were loathe to name. “Bold to think a pen knife would suffice. You are pretty, but not small.”

Elvis knew a skeptic when he saw one and he glanced back at General Sherman who, in an amusing twist of expectations, leveled back a look of something close to appeal for him to extricate himself from his shitstorm of a reputation. Not one to sweat the details, that one, not when a job was half done. And they were only halfway up a muddy river to the Dakotas.

“I may have taken exception to his language, it was drunken but vile. I hate to disparage a dead man but-“ Elvis paused for dramatic, sorrowful effect before admitting, “-his appeals and words were vile, I took exception to them. As any honest man would.”

This admittance to unnatural propositions caused a new wave of murmurings amongst the men. General Sherman gave him a brief grimace of a smile at this before the Major at his side came in with a ruining: “Must've been appalling to have to endure such talk,” the fake sympathy had an edge of fury to it and Elvis squinted at the glowing, greasy face seething so near his own, “one assumes as a brothel owner you’re only used to hearing such talk a couple hundred times a day, hmm, Madame?“

Elvis took one look at such self satisfied righteousness -to be called a Madame? when he captained a ship?- and followed his first instinct: his spit landed goopy and squarely right in the fucker’s eye, all those lazy hours spent in expectorating competitions with Jerry finally paying off.

“-That’s enough!” the General bellowed, before this altercation could escalate too. But even then it was too late, and this fertile seed of doubt had been sewn in the minds of the informal jury around them.

“It’s true!” rose up a great many voices, “Why should we take the word of a riverboat scallywag when one of our own’s been murdered?”

“Because only he can drive this boat!” Spit flew from the general’s mouth at the vehemence of his proclamation and Elvis curled his own hands into fists, trying to keep from swaying in dizzying pain as the adrenalin of the fight and performance of his innocence began to take a toll on him, leaving shaky limbs and the keen feeling of sharp metal gently sawing at him from inside with each shallow breath.

The General stared around him with wild eyes and his crazy shock of thinning hair made the man look capable of any manner of retribution if any were to object.

His proclamation was true, and while it did not suggest innocence, it admitted the Captain’s necessity. Elvis felt sick at the thought of running this boat for another two weeks with men crowding it, all of whom would enjoy killin’ him for the joy of ridding the world of perverts.

A maidenly denial of all such wickedness was exactly the sorta idiocy most men in his position would now indulge in. From previous experience amongst similarly riled jail mates and irate customers, Elvis knew there is nothing so unconvincing or unsympathetic as an accused whore swearing to virtue. And so he kept his mouth shut. Besides, he didn’t think there was a man alive who had the guts to break the heavy silence the General’s scream had created.

“I’m not here to listen to past histories, or speculation on appetites.” the general pronounced in a measured tone, given weight by his momentary rage, “I’ve a good soldier dead and a captain stabbed. That’s enough mischief done and if we were back home in peacetime we’d have a harangue, a look into it.” he turned to his colonel pointedly at this moment, “A court would investigate and lawyers would be called and a jury would ponder and a judge would get paid and whichever outcome suited the goddamn powers that be, would be delivered. On this boat? -I am those powers, and it suits me that my hired captain gets me to where I’ve been commanded by the authority of Congress to go. We are headed to a war!” he stepped past his Major and put a firm hand on Elvis’ shoulder, broadcloth and sweat beneath his palm as he pondered his next statement. He seemed to have a second thought, and so, while keeping his hand on the Captain’s shoulder he asked a so far quiet figure in the doorway, “What is your judgement of this, Mr. Clemens? You are an observer of human nature by trade, are you not? What say you of this debacle.”

It was with a deeper shame than he had felt in some time that Elvis felt those keen grey eyes of his favorite journalist staring at his no doubt bruised throat. He had forgotten about him, he had hoped he wasn’t privy to these details. Now he waited for his judgment.

Mr. Clemens was measured as always, with a slightly weary but invested edge to his voice when he addressed the volatile crowd like a patient grandfather, “You do yourselves a disservice with this talk, truth or no.” he addressed the men and Elvis held his breath, his own eyes burning into the wall behind the group of men, fixating on where the crown molding met the ceiling, praying and dreading against some sort of damning defense being made for his younger self. “You’ve besmirched the name of a comrade who coulda been buried as nothin’ more than an unlucky drunk,” Clemens continued to address them, “but no, you had’a’have a say and speculate on matters that don’t pertain to yous. And so yous say all manner of things that won’t be forgotten anytime soon; you’ve accused our living captain of an occupation punishable by death, and in such a happy muck of speculations you forget -“ the writer stared down at the knife handle wedged in Elvis’ ribs and his hand twitched by his side, “If a boy once got paid to be fucked by a man, it stands to reason a man paid to fuck a boy.“

Well there it was, said with all the plainness usually reserved for mundane issues of life.

Something about the clear and precise articulation of what had been a shame hidden by layers of deceit and artifice for so long had the opposite effect on Elvis himself than he had anticipated. Rather like pulling a knife from a wound, it felt like learning the weapon used to hurt you was hardly the crutch you had made it out to be. His crimes were, after all, ordinary, like all other sins and disappointments and failures regularly burdened on the human race. Never once had Parker spoken so plainly, not even when he sent Elvis in to sacrifice himself to the latest patron. If he had spoken so plainly, perhaps the mirage of binding shame would have shattered and Elvis might’ve felt as he felt now, hollow and embarrassed, but fully deserving of a second chance at it all.

General Sherman’s hand landed with heavy pressure on the knife handle, the weight of his palm alone digging the blade down a bit. Elvis sucked in a breath and he saw Cash move nearer in his periphery. Poor Cash, what a scene to be subjected to, and still the old man was there for him. The Captain braced a hand against the wall as the general’s fingers tightened round the plain wooden handle, his other hand digging out a red handkerchief wadded in his pocket. No wonder the man’s coat was always so frumpy and bulging, Elvis thought amusedly, he had a million artifacts in there to ruin the fit.

"What's more criminal,” the General seemed to ponder aloud as he pressed the handkerchief to the hilt, “a boy doin' something to survive or the man who, instead of being a good Christian and exercising charity, takes advantage of that boy's desperation?"

Cash heard the sickening slither of metal leaving flesh and the gush of blood quickly smashed down by the general’s firm hand. Elvis’ own large palm came to rest on top of it from sheer reflex at the pain.

“Tomorrow at first light we’ll bury him.” The general continued unperturbed, “And we’ll do it respectfully as a member of our troop deserves, and if any of you harbor any doubts on this matter, you can spend your evenings praying they aren’t true for his soul’s sake and considering who among your dog faced lot would be up to the great honor of taking over the helm of this barge if your capable captain falls ill to sepsis from this here wound.”

Elvis leaned against the wall on his own accord, hand pressed to his gushing side and teeth gritted at the smart of it. Head flung back and nose pointed derisively, his eyes dared the company to make a parting remark. The aide’s decision to kneel and begin collecting the parts of his deceased comrade’s skull was sufficient incentive to keep tempers at bay.

With a sharply barked, —“Dismissed.” from their general, soon the crowd of men dispersed or went to fetch a cloak to take the body away, and water pales to wash the carpet.

“You have my sincere hope that this doesn’t impede you, captain.” General Sherman said as he drew back to take his own leave, about as nonchalant as if men stabbed each other and accused each other of abominations regularly in his troop.

Perhaps they did. Fuckin’ war criminal Yankee bastard-

“It ain’t shit, a scratch. I’ll be perfectly fine by tomorrow.” Elvis insisted, stepping away from the wall on his own steam and sending Cash’s supportive hand a glare.

“Good.” The general sighed, “In that case I expect you at the burial and by eight bells I want to be off.”

“As you say, sir.”

“You would do well to bring your lady friend in the morning.” Sherman added as he made to go.

“Sir?”

“It would be…affirming.” he explained, “There’s nothing quite so puzzling to simple men as a man with assorted tastes. Have a good evening, captain.”

Elvis stared after him with squinted eyes, trying to decipher what exactly was the final, apparent outcome of this entire debacle. It was bad, but it could’ve been worse. And wasn’t that the story of all his deliverances? Not a single saving grace came to him that didn’t extract its price in blood and shame. His belly flipped, a roiling, seething anger that felt better than embarrassment and had nothing to do with the biting wound at his side. “General!” he called out after him, Sherman turned ‘round with wary displeasure, “Can I have it?” Elvis asked, hand outstretched, and then expounded when the general remained clueless as to his desired object, “The knife- I’ve got a little collection goin’.”

Sherman let out a gruff scoff, which in the language of taciturn war criminals called him a a crazy bastard, and tossed the knife to him.

“Let’s get you down below.” Cash urged, hand to his elbow firmly but Elvis tried to shake it off.

“Don’t need help walkin, it’s nothin’.”

“Mm, well, I’m helpin’ anyways.” his good friend replied sternly, and shot the few meek individuals scooping brain matter into a tarp with their bare hands, a look of severe pity.

“I’m sorry you had to-to be there for that.” Elvis muttered as they jostled down the stairs side by side, his busted hand gripping the stair rail at each pained step.

“You killed a man.” Cash stated his most pressing discomfiture and Elvis should’ve known this old friend would not have minded the sordid talk, it was the taking of a soul he’d have concern for.

“He deserved it.” Elvis said simply and at the foot of the stairs Cash turned and gave him a searching look.

“I told ya I didn’t like the looks of him.” he reminded.”

“Yes I recall.” Elvis nodded, “And you were right.”

“And did he know you?” Cash pressed and if it were anyone else, Elvis would suspect them of vulgar curiosity. But not Cash, never Cash.

“Apparently.” he muttered, eyes flitting about the boat’s hold in self consciousness, scanning the rows of horses in an effort to center himself. “He recalled me, his own lack of exceptionalism didn’t deter him from trying reacquaintance.”

“I see.”

“He wanted money, and he wanted favors, or else he’d go to the press, -I guess.”

“Then God damn him.” Cash decided vehemently and took Elvis’ arm again, convinced and in need of no further details, “You’re a goddamn mess, I’d put you in a tub if we had one down here. Can’t tell who’s blood is whose.”

“We’ve got a whole river.” Elvis laughed a hiccuping little chuckle that sounded close to hysterics and Cash eyed him warily.

“Oh yeah, ice cold Missouri water’ll do wonder for the fever you got comin’.”

“That’s what I was sayin’!” Elvis cheered.

“I was being sarcastic, you fool. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

“No I won’t.” Elvis shook his head with childish surety, already beginning to strip out of his waistcoat as he staggered closer to the large side door from where they watched the gators and watered the horses.

“You won’t?” Cash repeated, unimpressed and not a little worried at the lack of coordination in his friends movements.

“No I won’t.” Elvis insisted, whining softly as he pulled his shirt over his head, the wound on his side stretching and gushing out anew at the movement. “I got me a warm woman.” he explained dreamily and Cash, fully alarmed now at this altered mood gave a furtive look towards the closet Miss Rosey Beaumont inhabited, hoping the approaching footsteps he heard were not a figment of his hopeful imagination.

It was her, thank God. She came out of the hall with a coat wrapped tightly around her, petticoats peeping out the bottom and bare feet on the hay suggesting she was part way through undressing when she heard them lurching down the stairs and came to investigate.

“What in God’s name happened?” Rosey cried out, breaking into a sprint to reach them, stopping right before the captain with a gasping survey of his battered, half naked form. “I heard a great deal of banging above— did you get in a fight?”

“Whadda ya think?” Elvis teased, laughing again at his own joke and Rosey sent Cash an appealing look of alarm, as much at his wounds as the manically cheerful attitude her man now wore.

“Did you -is that- were you knifed?” She stuttered.

“Oh, yeah, yeah I was.” Elvis sobered slightly as he thumbed at the gash in his side. “Open the damn door won’t ya, Cash?” he gestured to the pulleys that swung up the folding wall.

“Whatever happened?” Rosey demanded, heart racing despite her attempts to console herself that he was obviously alive, which was the only outcome she had any great stake in.

“I killed a man.” Elvis stated, shucking his trousers and stepping towards the edge of his boat that, with the great door open now, had the water lapping only feet below them. “Here take this knife, add it to the others in the chest.”

“You what?” Rosey repeated dumbly, trying to process such a statement while impotently protesting what appeared to be his intention to jump into a frigid river with an open wound and limbs shaky from blood loss. “Don’t get in there, don’t! Elvis!”

“They’re all drunk above.” Cash explained while going to his friend’s side, grabbing an elbow again since Elvis had determinedly squatted and swung a leg into the frigid river current. “And certain threats led to a knife fight. Owner of the knife doesn’t have much of a face left. Easy, easy man, im hangin’ onto you,” he addressed Elvis as his friend lowered himself in, yanking at his gripped limb petulantly, “only need a little dunkin’, this ain’t time for a midnight swim. C’mon! Get, get up now, outta there, that’ll do, c’mon.”

Elvis obeyed with muttered protests of being able to do whatever he damned well liked whenever he damned well pleased until he was cut off by a pained cry as the effort of hauling himself back up into the boat’s hold required the recently stabbed muscle of his belly to contract. “Shit shit, that hurts.” he wheezed as Cash stared down at him unimpressed.

Rosey was more sympathetic, she dropped to her knees beside him, gently swiping at the oozing wound with soft hands and tsking over his bruises with mouthwateringly feminine concern. Elvis was in heaven under her attention and Cash left him there to retrieve a blanket so as not to have the Captain sprawled naked in the main hold with spitting snow swirling in from the open door.

“Captain, darling.” Rosey cooed in consternation and admiration and he laid there with his head in her lap, so numb from cold he didn’t feel his perforated belly or the burning pain in his chest from a never ending shame. “What am I to do with you?” she asked him rhetorically.

“Love me.” he suggested thickly, the most painful want covered beneath a jest.

“That cannot be helped.” she sniffled back. “Do not die from this.”

“I won’t.”

“Alright.”

“Alright then.” he agreed.

Sister Rosetta returned with Cash and the blanket, her usual stern attitude was softened by Elvis’ obvious plight. Cash must’ve put in a good word for his cause, that he had not incurred this damage through stupidity, for she was consoling and nice about it. “Lecherous bastards.” she cursed the men upstairs while producing m linen to wrap his belly with. “Girl,” she told Rosey with womanlike efficiency, “these will need changing every few hours if they’re not to get festered.”

“Alight.” Rosey took on the challenge.

They helped him up and shuffled him into bed, his three helpers, and when all had been done to alleviate his wound, they left him under Rosey’s soft hands and tenderly brushing lips.

“What is it?” she asked him after a long while, where despite his exhaustion he could not fall asleep under her petting and quiet singing.

He was trying to sort that out, the feeling he’d had in the hall. The feeling that came not when he’d been trapped, or threatened, or accused, or realized he’d sent yet another soul to its maker.

No. The other one. The feeling of burning shame that felt keen as ever but so utterly, dismally commonplace. “Clemens spelled it all out.” he told her in a whisper, eyes trained in the ceiling, heart thudding under his heaving chest, “Spelled it out for them, and for me. God it was so plain. I ain’t ever—“ Elvis took a deep breath and tried to be equally plain, “I ain’t ever prayed that plain before. Not even for forgiveness.”

“To speak a thing makes it manageable.” Rosie recited and he grunted in agreement. “What now?”

“Nothin’.” he muttered, "Changes nothin’. We go on. As does everyone knowin’ my business, I’m a fool for thinkin’ I can ever outrun it.”

“I don’t like it when you talk like that.” she said.

“Well, you’d’da hated the way he talked about my tight little ass, then.” he snapped back at her, aggravated at times by the tender view she had of his sordid self.

“Elvis!” Rosey rebuked, aghast as much this sentiment as his language.

“Sorry.” he conceded, then burst out again, as if too worked up to contain it, “No but he- he’s been in me, inside me! Do you know how that feels? And I didn’t even know ‘em at close sight. God help me!”

“Oh my love.” she moaned helplessly.

“Will this ever end?” he muttered, hands over his face, abjectly miserable.

“You know,” she went on, “I’d marry you before everyone, even if everyone knew. You know that don’t you?”

He did. “I do.” And he knew he couldn’t ever allow that. And it seemed increasingly foolish to hope he could ever erase that possibility. Where did that leave them? He didn’t know. He didn’t know much of anything lately. Faith, blinde fucking faith was all he had these days. “You’re all I got.” he let her know he knew that, and in that way they fell asleep with her head pillowed beside his, his side slowly oozing blood, his soul hemorrhaging its surety.

He didn’t miss the scared yet pleased way Rosey prepared herself to appear beside him at the burial next morning. She knew how greatly he had worked to avoid her presence being known, and here was a grand display. But, despite that, she was ever his devoted girl, proud at any chance she could get to appear beside him.

Considering the humiliating spectate he’d been the star of last night, he thought her totally mad to still consider it a point of pride. She was an object of pity to most, and only she was unaware or uncaring of it. It made him not care much either, and he liked that.

And in that attitude they stood together, her arm through his, at the riverside grave, the crowd of soldiers looking on. The frozen mud made nasty work of digging. Rain came down in a miserable drizzle. Elvis suspected the tide would come and take the corpse away in a month or less, but he didn’t make mention of it. The soldiers had chosen the location and he appeared out of duty to the General, nothing more.

Standing there, awaiting a finishing of the business, Captain Presley battled flashes of rageful feeling between bouts of strong disinterest.

He’d been a soldier, and then a bootlegger, he’d killed men for less. None sat right with him, but some sat easier than others. This one he could give an account for to the Almighty that might pacify even His most holy self. No, when feeling raged at all it was for himself. His younger self. There were no specific memories or complaints against this faceless despoiler, he was one of so many. And yet. Yet. There was boiling inside him a rageful despair for what had been, something he’d not allowed himself to feel outside of dreams. Nightmares, in fact. The emotions he had seen in Scotty’s face when retelling of his own trials now felt personal, as though he was no longer the untested observer of his own destruction but the most belated of mourners for it.

It sat with him all day. A gruesome loneliness he had not fully felt since New York, a raw and young feeling that was sickening in its newness and also its nostalgia.

Mr. Clemens had been kind enough to take a moment, after the last bits of clodded dirt had been heaped over the wretch, in which to encourage Elvis. “You’ve had a remarkably hard road, Captain.” he had observed harmlessly, “Yet you’ve made an astoundingly good go at resilience.” The pat to his arm had been the final blow to his dignity, with thick confusion at what he felt, Elvis swallowed down the compliment and resigned himself to a distaste for the truth of the matter.

He had, after all, become quite accustomed to the honeyed view of his living demise as told by the colonel.

Here was a new perspective. He’d been a whore, he hadn’t a choice. And when he’d had a choice, he stayed at it because it’s what he’d become good at, all he was good at, according to some. He was resilient, he might’ve cast that off long ago. The inference was plain too, as was the accusation: he could start anew now. And at that, he felt so old and weary he ached under the labor of boat work that needed doing while docked.

But Rosey. For Rosey.

Evening rolled around eventually, a day off from piloting the river hardly less taxing than the ones spent at the wheel. The need to take on provisions, exercise the horses and sure up the hole in such frigid weather was grueling, although what might have been three days' work was made one long day’s labor with the help of the soldiers. They were still smarting from under their general’s grim reproof, both those who had been present to endure his dressing down and those who had only had it reported to them. What this also meant, of course, was that not only had the general’s reproof circulated, and their comrade’s death gone in no way unnoticed, but also the purported cause of the altercation to begin with.

All day there had been stares. Heavy silences. Furtive speculations. Testing little defiances when Captain Presley gave an order. Like they aimed to prove him a little less somehow, like all the good humor and rough hewn respect they’d held him in from watching his piloting and sharing a couple dozen evenings worth of cards and drink had dissipated into nothing but ribald fascination with his supposed past.

Then came the early wintry evening. The time that drinks and cards and song had been engaged in like happy clockwork before now.

They probably didn’t expect him to show. He was, after all, wounded and overworked and discovered. Rosey certainly didn’t expect him to. He’d be a fool to go, to bait them, to put up with their thinly veiled bigotry. But, by the six o’clock bell, Elvis was in their small closet berth below, donning a new shirt after having bathed and allowed Rosey to disinfect his wound again.

“You’re not going up.” she finally said it, disbelief coloring her tone and not a small degree of disapproval seeping in alongside.

“Course I am.”

“Elvis.”

“Rosey.” he responded conversationally.

“Don’t do this,” she argued still, coming around to be at his side, to give him a view of her upset face as he did up his buttons. “You don’t owe them anything. They’ll just…you don’t have to be exposed to such…don’t-“ she fumblingly begged.

“Rosey,” he rejoined, the play gone out of him but the patience so strong she almost buckled in admiration for his steadiness in the face of it all, “this ain’t the first time. You know that. And leave it to me, because I know what to do when the regular folks lose all respect. If ya can’t be respected for you respectability, ya gotta earn some recognition for bein’ ballsy at your disreputation.” he gave her a small smile, like he was a master at it, tired of the craft but sure of it. And she was new and unaware there were rules that simply couldn’t be bucked. “If we want to make it to the Dakotas, those dull bastards are gonna have to reconcile their captain’s varied parts. A situation like this don’t ever just sit, it festers. You can come up too, if ya want.”

Rosey wanted to ask if he’d like that, if it would give him courage. It seemed a little silly, and quite self centered, so she didn’t. “Alright.” she agreed instead.

“Stick with Cash.” was all he stipulated and turned and left her down there with a parting kiss to the crown of her head.

So it was Rosey found herself sat between Cash and Mr. Clemens at the small table in the back that General Sherman favored. Cards had been dealt and a small bit of chatter was already mounting at the various tables around. The room was, however, conspicuously absent any musical enlivenment. Rosey never anticipated being willing to sit at the same cloth as this odious veteran, but hard times made odd allies and she responded to Sherman’s terse but acknowledging “Miss Beaumont” as she took her seat with good grace. “Your man intending to join us?” he asked her.

“He is.” she informed him, trying to keep her voice neutral.

She couldn’t be sure, but Rosey thought she perceived a grim flicker of approval on General Sherman’s face at the news.

She played a round of blackjack as well as she could remember from Elvis’ distracted lessons and with the mounting anxiety of what was keeping the captain so long. Cash provided her a steady and unperturbed presence to mimic, whereas Mr. Clemens seemed to be in good spirits but buzzing nervously, as if he anticipated Captain Presley’s next move as much as she.

And then it happened.

Like the subtle but electrifying zap of a shockwave, the room snapped to a stop, the chatter fell silent, the slapping of cards stopped, and then someone -something- crackled the room alive again.

It was just Elvis.

Elvis as she had seen him down below minutes before. Fresh shirt undone at the throat, sleeves casually rolled up his arms, waistcoat undone and unburdened by watches, slouching into the evening’s lassitude imperceptibility by each missing article of finery, each unplaced lock of hair, the droop of heavy eyelids. It was a compelling image, one that familiarity had not robbed her of interest, even fascination, in. The accordion strap hung round his neck was not new, she had seen him hold and play it before, and it looked utterly at home on his body like all musical things did.

With an ease and casualness that seemed stridently unstudied, he walked through the frozen crowd until he reached the little gathering of high legged stools which had served, in previous nights, as the musical section. The noise of him screeching one single chair on its lonesome to the forefront was deafening. He hopped atop it lightly, as if he did not have malaria plaguing his joints, mercury salts calcifying his marrow, a hard day’s work burning his muscles and a stab wound to hamper his mobility. He sat easily atop the high stool, legs already wide and tucked at the knees to catch his heels on the wrung below. An easy stance, one that would allow for the swaying movement required by the instrument’s bellows. Elvis seemed to melt into the posture, what bit of tension that might’ve been in him dissipating as he drew his arm out, the first whining wheeze of the accordion sounding low and doleful; a test, a trial, an omen.

Rosey clasped her hands in her lap, beside her Mr. Clemens seemed not even to breathe.

Into the furtive silence the Captain spoke, easy, clear, a showman of the salt of the earth variety, as if a boy who’d plowed fields had become an entertainer, as if a man who might make you pay a dollar to see below his third button could also punch you dead.

“Since you sick fuckers like a good yarn about desperate people gettin’ their asses handed to them by fate for the hundredth time,” Elvis observed without a shred of malice, for malice would suggest enmity and enmity would suggest he cared, and a showman did not care, for he was the one who others cared about, not the other way around, “I’ve got ya a New Orleans special. I’m sure ya’ve heard it, probably even sung it many a time. If ya know the words, sing it again now. Goes like this—“

With a flex and drag of that ever so tantalizing forearm, and to the dead silent attention of his accusers, Elvis’ accordion mournfully wheezed to life, ominous, anticipatory, perfectly alluring:

“There is a house, in New Orleans,

They call the Rising Sun

And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God!

—I know I’m one…”

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Firestar sighed, but his eyes creased. There was no fighting Dustpelt on this. “I appreciate the concern. Thank you in advance, Thornclaw.”

Thornclaw nodded even harder.

“Get him!” a scratchy, high voice yowled. “Go for his throat!”

Firestar looked over; by the nursery, Bramblepaw and Tawnypaw were trading swings, with Rainkit, Sootkit, and Squirrel watching. Squirrel’s bushy tail whipped back and forth and she was bouncing on her toes.

“We’re not aiming to kill, here or in the battle,” Bramblepaw said to her, ducking easily out of Tawnypaw’s way. “We’re just trying to scare them.”

“We should be killing, but emar* doesn’t want us to.” Tawnypaw swung again and missed.

“I don’t want us to, either,” Bramblepaw replied. He lowered his head and lunged with his shoulders leading the way, knocking into Tawnypaw and sending her rolling.

Squirrel’s eyes shone. “Wow, can I do that? Show me how to do that!”

Tawnypaw got to her feet, a rare hint of amusement in her eyes as Bramblepaw turned to Squirrel and said, “I mean, you’re a little, um, too small for that. I think you could do better with something else—”

“Show me! Show me then!” Squirrel bounced again.

Bramblepaw hummed thoughtfully, then nodded. “Well, someone your size should focus on being quick and agile, and going for vital areas. A small cat can easily hang on an opponent’s face and claw their eyes and nose—”

“And ears!” Squirrel dropped into a crouch and wriggled her rump. “I’ll make sure none of them have ears left!”

“Oh, ears don’t matter as much.” Bramblepaw rolled a shoulder. “I mean, they hurt when you cut them, but a cat can fight through that. What you want to do is slow them down as much as possible, so you have more of a fighting chance. Slashed-up eyes mean they can’t see you—or, at least, if you get them bleeding right on the brow, they’ll have to constantly shake blood out of their vision, and that would do almost as well. Noses are sensitive, too, and a cat who can’t smell very well or is clogged up with blood can lose track of what’s going on just as easily.”

“What about the throat?” Sootkit piped up. “Does that slow them down?”

“I mean, a good, deep hit could easily kill someone, if you were to clog their throat with blood, or hit a vital point…” Bramblepaw mused, then startled and shook his head. “But you don’t want to do that. Don’t kill unless you have no choice. That’s in the code.”

“What’s the code?” Squirrel asked, head tilted like an owl’s.

“Oh, it’s this set of rules the Clans live by, and one of them is to not kill anyone except in self-defense, and…”

A grunt to Firestar’s left twitched his ear. When he looked over, Mousefur had pinned Teaselfoot to the ground and was stepping off of him with a smug face.

“Not fast enough for me, I guess,” she said, and thwapped his leg with her tail. 

“Ugh.” Teaselfoot got to his feet and shook sand out of his fur. “Fine, whatever. I’m just glad Lizardtail didn’t see that.”

“I did,” Lizardtail called from across camp, while he and Snowshade traded soft blows.

Teaselfoot groaned and sat down. “I’m taking a break.”

“You barely got started!” Brackenfur protested, watching from the side with his mother. “At least train with me, too.”

“No, no.” Teaselfoot waved a paw dismissively. “The shame of losing to my pipsqueak of a sister is too much. I ought to lay down and die before any of the other Clans could see me in my greatest failure.”

“I’d say your greatest failure was losing a race with a WindClan cat that you insisted on,” Frostfur said with a twitch of her whiskers.

“It was close!” Teaselfoot protested.

“It wasn’t,” Cloudnose said as he trotted up. “I remember. You were at least six body-lengths behind her, and—”

“Alright, alright.” Teaselfoot chuffed. “Stars, I can’t catch a break tonight. Can we talk about something more fun, like the deadly battle ahead of us?”

“Yes, what a thrilling conversation topic,” Mousefur said. “Place your bets on who’s going to die.”

“Mousefur!” Frostfur said, only a little sharply. “We’ll be okay. This is ThunderClan; we’re born to fight.”

“You know we only have one -claw in this Clan right now, right?”

“And like the slowest WindClan cat is faster than the cat of any other Clan, the weakest fighter of ThunderClan can trounce anyone from anywhere else.”

“Not Firestar.” Cloudnose winked at his uncle.

“I don’t count,” Firestar said, and decided to walk up and join the conversation. “I’m a kittypet and a wuss. Even Rainkit could beat me up.”

“Good thing we’ve got Thornclaw protecting you, then.” Mousefur sat down beside Teaselfoot. “Honestly, I’m tempted to leave you home so we know you’ll be safe.”

“I can’t leave you all to fight alone,” Firestar said, though the idea greatly appealed to him. “What sort of leader would I be to send you out on your own?”

“In your case, a smart one,” Mousefur replied. “You’re going to end up with worse scars than Tornface.”

Teaselfoot shook his head. “That’s a tall order. If you’ll pardon me, Frostfur, it’s hard to look worse than her.”

“What are you talking about?” Cloudnose said crossly. “She’s the most gorgeous cat in the territories.”

Every eye in the conversation turned to him. Frostfur looked pleased, and Brackenfur and Teaselfoot swapped an amused glance as Cloudnose startled and turned his head back and forth, quickly growing flustered.

“Well—” he spluttered. “Well, she is! Anyone can see that!”

Teaselfoot ducked his head. It did nothing to hide his chuff.

“Shut up, Teaselfoot!” Cloudnose reached out to bop him on the head, missing by a wide margin as the tabby reared his head back.

“I’m glad to know my daughter has such sweet support,” Frostfur said, eyes creased. To Teaselfoot, she added, “And I’d watch my mouth if I was going to comment on someone’s kit in front of them.”

“Sorry, sorry!” Teaselfoot jumped up and backed a few steps away from Cloudnose’s continued boppings. “Mercy from both of you!”

Firestar watched, silent, trying to be equally happy as everyone else. A weight, its grip tight, clung to his heart, sinking the poor thing down into his toes. Joy seemed so far away, even with it being right in front of him. While the others chuffed and chatted, he quietly backed away. None of them noticed.

His feet gently carved thin lines in the sand as he dragged himself over to the corner of camp by the entrance that most stayed away from. He sat down heavily, his vision on the entirety of his Clan.

Sandstorm, correcting Tawnypaw’s stance as she prepared to leap at her brother. Goldenflower, chiding the kits for scheming on how to get Scourge to sit on thorns. Greystripe, sharpening his claws on the elder’s log while Ravenwing promised One-eye that the Blood’s hordes wouldn’t make it to camp, no matter if the Clans won or lost.

Such confidence. Such happiness.

Such… community.

“You okay?”

Firestar barely had it in him to flinch as he turned his head to see Cinderpelt almost right in his face. Her dark green eyes sparkled with mirth at whatever must have been showing in his expression.

“Sorry,” she said. “I tried saying your name three times and you didn’t respond.”

“Oh…” Firestar limply shook his pelt out. “I was… I was just thinking.”

Cinderpelt sat down next to him, a full head taller and a great deal fluffier. Her tail’s permanently-stuck burrs stung a little as she tapped his side. “You looked more like you were mourning, honestly.”

Firestar gazed at his Clan again, ears lowering. “…I guess I kind of am.”

Cinderpelt’s voice softened, soothing as a queen’s. “What’s going on?”

Taking in a deep, slow breath, Firestar turned his eyes a little upward, just above the heads of his Clanmates, past the brambles lining camp.

“It’s just…” he started, paused, and forced himself to pull at the string holding his heavy heart together. “This is it. This is what we’re all fighting for. The Clans and the Blood. We all want the same thing.”

Cinderpelt tilted her head.

“I saw the Aulmir, Cinderpelt.” Firestar felt the start of a knot in his throat. “I saw their suffering. Their dead kits, their scrambles to find anything to eat. Their desperation, it’s… how can it be fair for us to be doing so well, when just a short walk away, cats are so unhappy and hopeless that they look forward to dying?”

Cinderpelt spoke softly again. “They don’t even know what their afterlife will be like.”

“Just that it’s a happy place,” Firestar said miserably. “And then I look at us, at all the peace and joy and love we have here, and– I mean, we don’t always have the promise of food, but stars know we eat better than them. And we have community—real community—that keeps us all alive and feeling wanted and cared for.” His voice grew bitter. “What’s the difference between us? Luck? Would we turn as cruel and hopeless as they are if we were all born in the Aulmir?”

“We’re Clans,” Cinderpelt said. “We’re warriors. We have a code, and—”

“And that makes us so much better?” Firestar’s head snapped to look over at her, anger bursting from his heart. “We get born or brought into the forest, and we’re automatically a higher class of cat than they are? Warriors die for much stupider reasons out here than loners do there. That very code everyone insists on living by gets cats killed just to uphold it. At least loners are dying out of desperation. You can’t blame them for losing their life to steal food when they haven’t eaten in four days.”

Cinderpelt opened her mouth and then shut it.

“It’s ridiculous,” Firestar went on, the knot in his throat bursting and coating his insides with acrid fury. “We’re lucky. We’re stupidly lucky. And somehow that means everyone around us is so much worse. Kittypets, strays, kemeran, Clans, what in the world does it matter? We’re cats, all of us. We should be working together, trying to find a middle ground to support the queens in the Aulmir who absorb their kits because there isn’t enough room or food to grow them. We should be able to even slightly grasp their desperation. I thought we took care of elders and kits, but we’re setting out to kill whoever comes at us, and if they happen to be old or young, I guess that’s just too bad for them. How is that fair? How is that right?”

Cinderpelt, looking taken aback, barely managed to get out, “They’re aiming to kill us first, Firestar.”

“So?”

“So?” Cinderpelt stared at him. “You don’t think we should defend ourselves?”

“I don’t think we should have let it get to this point,” he said, barely stopping himself from clenching his teeth. “We’ve driven them away for stars know how many generations from all this food and comfort, and we’ve been talking down to them and giving them scars if they fight back. They have nothing, and we give them even less and expect them to just deal with it. Of course they’re trying to kill us. What other choice do they have, if they want to do more than just survive?”

Cinderpelt made a protesting start to a word, then stopped. Her eyes turned disturbed and doubtful as they darted around, like she was trying to find an argument against him and couldn’t.

“It’s rot,” Firestar said, glaring at the ground. “It’s all rot, every piece of this. And the worst part is that I can’t do anything to stop it. To help them. I’m outnumbered. I’m the youngest leader. My voice is so soft in their ears that they can’t hear me over their own heartbeats. They want to kill the Blood, everyone does. Look at our apprentices and kits. Even they don’t listen to me.” Despite his anger, his voice began to shake. “If they would just go into the Aulmir for themselves… if they could just see all that pain and grief and death… maybe they’d understand. Maybe they wouldn’t think I’m weak and an idiot for wanting to resolve this peacefully.”

This, Cinderpelt had an answer for, and a sharp one at that. “You’re not weak, and you’re not an idiot.”

Firestar looked up at her, a little startled.

“I…” Cinderpelt huffed, eyes turned skyward. “I get it. I don’t think you’re stupid for feeling the way you do. And when you explain it to me, it makes sense. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

A salve of hope flowed down his throat now, the acid being washed away.

“I mean…” Cinderpelt looked down at him. “Look, I don’t like the Blood, and I don’t care for loners. Clans are just kind of like that. But—” she interrupted as Firestar opened his mouth. “But, I think we could all stand to at least take a glance into their home and see how terrible it is. I know for a fact you aren’t exaggerating it.” Her eyes now went over to the nursery. “Just look at her.”

Firestar followed her line of sight, where it settled on Squirrel. Goldenflower had just brought her a mouse, and she was squealing with delight. Her ribs strained against her skin, and her hollow cheekbones formed her head into a disturbing silhouette.

“She looks like she can’t believe she gets to eat two days in a row,” Cinderpelt said quietly. “I would rather be hit by a car again than let any kitten have to live a life like that.”

Squirrel chomped down on the mouse, tearing a hole in its fur and eating noisily. Rainkit and Sootkit started to approach her, but she growled at them with unusual viciousness, sending them skittering away and running for Willowpelt.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few nights, Firestar,” Cinderpelt continued, still quiet, “but I hope that these Aulmir cats get a happy ending.” She half-chuffed. “Well, not at cost to ourselves, but something better than what they have now.”

The string around Firestar’s heart loosened its grip a little, easing air into his chest. “Do you think it’ll be okay?”

Cinderpelt didn’t answer right away, her eyes contemplative. When she did speak, she didn’t raise her volume, but something about her voice carved itself into Firestar’s ear.

“I dreamed last night,” she said. “Of a bleeding moon and screaming wind. I was on a hill, and the moon hung in the sky, blood dripping into puddles all around me. But, it’s funny. I wasn’t scared. I knew I wouldn’t die.” Her mouth slowly stretched into a beam. “The ground beneath my feet, it was warm. A soft, comfortable sort of warm, like sleeping in the sun. And it shifted a little, and it whispered as it did, and those whispers were for me to hear.” She looked back down at Firestar, eyes crinkled. “We’re being looked after. The Three, the Mother, StarClan, they’ve all got our backs. We’ll be okay, no matter what happens. If we lose, if we win, if it’s a stalemate… the Clans have eyes watching every move we make. We could be driven out of our home, and our souls will carry on together.”

Firestar sighed out a relief he was only now aware he needed. “If you’re not scared, then maybe our future is a positive one.”

Cinderpelt gazed at Squirrel. “And maybe their future is positive, too.”

Firestar didn’t respond. He just watched Squirrel with her, as the little kit was being told by Goldenflower not to eat so fast, or she’d get a gutache. The Clan buzzed with energy, both anxious and confident.

“By the Three,” he said softly, “I hope so.”