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Well he ain’t a major now, is he? Come in in his beautiful suit that some tailor in Boston has laboured over. He’s looking much better. The few months has done him good. Tells me Angel is going real well at her schooling and he wants her to go on to the university to please her mother. Alright, I says. He has a big bunch of papers with him. He’s gone back to all the fellas was in the battle and asked each and every one what they knew or saw. Finally he says he gets to Corporal Poulson. He kinda has the same account as the German Sarjohn but there’s a difference. He says Corporal McNulty were trying to stop a Indian girl being killed. That old Starling Carlton’s blood was up and nothing would do him but to shoot her with his pistol. A-course, yes, I’m thinking, since he were trying to follow your damn orders, the loyal old bastard – but a-course I don’t say that aloud. Poulson says he sees it all and keeps his mouth shut till the major asks him. That’s the army way. Whatever you say say nothing, just in case. So Major Neale goes over to Washington and takes up the case there. And then he goes down to the head of the army of the Missouri. Well, he says, slowing down now in his account, they can’t stop your sentence. Laws don’t allow it. When he says this my heart drops to my boots. But, he says, they can commute it to hard labour for one hundred days and then you will be freed. The major says if I don’t mind breaking stones a while then that’s what I can do. I says, Major, sir, I thank you, I really do. Don’t be thanking me, he says, I thank you. You saved my daughter the only one remaining to me and you fought like a
dog in the war and your service under me was always exemplary. I says I am sorry his wife is gone and he says he is too. He lays his right hand on my shoulder. I ain’t washed in a month but he don’t flinch. And he says he will always remember me and if he can ever be of service to me again in the future I know where he is. Well, I don’t know where he is but I don’t say nothing because that just what people say. Another thing I don’t say aloud is, Are you the boy that killed Silas Sowell? I say I sure will be glad to get back to Tennessee where my people abide and he says he’s certain they will be glad to see me.

So I am one hundred days making big stones into small stones. In the time of the hunger in Sligo a lot of men did that work, trying to earn the pennies to feed their families. It were called Relief Works. Well, I am feeling mighty relieved. I am happy to strike down at those stones and my fellow prisoners are mighty puzzled at my happiness. But how could I been otherwise? I am going back to Tennessee. The day come when all my work is done and they kit me out in a set of clothes and they set me on the road outside the prison. The clothes is tattered but give me my modesty, just. Set free like a mourning dove. In my exultation I forget I ain’t got a bean of money but it don’t concern me and I know I can rely on the kindness of folk along the way. The ones that don’t try to rob me will feed me. That how it is in America. I never felt such joy of heart as in those days traipsing southward. I never felt such pure charge and fire of joy. I am like a man not just let loose from death but from his own discomfited self. I don’t desire nothing but to reach our farm and witness the living forms of John Cole and Winona step out to meet me. The
whole way sparkles with the beauty of woods and fields. I had wrote I was coming and soon I would be there. That’s how it was. It were only a short stretch of walking down through those pleasing states of Missouri and Tennessee.

About the Author

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His novels and plays have won the Costa Book of the Year award, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year, the Independent Booksellers Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
A Long Long Way
(2005) and the top ten bestseller
The Secret Scripture
(2008) were shortlisted for the MAN Booker Prize. He lives in County Wicklow with his wife and three children.

Also by the Author

fiction

T
HE
W
HEREABOUTS
OF
E
NEAS
M
C
N
ULTY

A
NNIE
D
UNNE

A L
ONG
L
ONG
W
AY

T
HE
S
ECRET
S
CRIPTURE

O
N
C
ANAAN
’
S
S
IDE

T
HE
T
EMPORARY
G
ENTLEMAN

plays

B
OSS
G
RADY
’
S
B
OYS

P
RAYERS
OF
SHERKIN

W
HITE
W
OMAN
S
TREET

T
HE
O
NLY
T
RUE
H
ISTORY
OF
L
IZZIE
F
INN

T
HE
S
TEWARD
OF
C
HRISTENDOM

O
UR
L
ADY
OF
S
LIGO

H
INTERLAND

F
RED
AND
J
ANE

W
HISTLING
P
SYCHE

T
HE
P
RIDE
OF
P
ARNELL
S
TREET

D
ALLAS
S
WEETMAN

T
ALES
OF
B
ALLYCUMBER

A
NDERSEN
’
S
E
NGLISH

poetry

T
HE
W
ATER
-C
OLOURIST

F
ANNY
H
AWKE
G
OES
TO
THE
M
AINLAND
F
OREVER

Copyright

First published in 2016
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA

This ebook edition first published in 2016

All rights reserved
© Sebastian Barry, 2016

Map: ‘United States at the Period of the Civil War 1861-1865’ from
The Century Atlas
by Benjamin E. Smith, published in New York, 1899

The right of Sebastian Barry to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–27703–2