December 21, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
THERE IS A JUDAS HOLE IN THE HEAVY WOODEN DOOR. Peering through it, the cavalry officer can see the prisoner sleeping under a buffalo hide rug on a rough, grass-stuffed mattress, his forage cap pulled as low as it will go against the cold. The officer tries to summon the prisoner’s face from days past, from the war.
It is bitter winter and the cavalry officer can see his own breath, the dirt floor of the fort’s guardhouse frozen solid under his boots. In his hand is a hardbacked quartermaster’s accounts ledger belonging to the prisoner and in it is the prisoner’s story. The officer cannot be certain that this story is the truth but he feels it is a kind of truth, a strain of verity.
In his account, the prisoner has written that he and the officer have met once before but there is much about the war that the officer has forgotten, wishes to forget. He was drunk for much of it. Has been drunk since and is drunk again now.
A truth. There are as many truths as there are witnesses to a thing, the officer thinks. But it does not matter. Murder cannot matter. If it did, there would be little left to do in the world for men such as himself. Men such as the prisoner sleeping behind this door. For if God loves us and has put us here for a reason, then surely He means for us to do what we have found we do best? It does not matter.