Shavetail by Thomas Cobb

Author:Thomas Cobb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Lieutenant Anthony Austin

He did not have to ask about the reply from George Crook. He saw it in the set of Bobby’s jaw, in the way that he pulled his head back, the way a turtle does when it’s threatened, pulling into itself and away from the world outside. He did not speak, except to conduct the most mundane business. How Bobby thought that Crook would react differently he could not understand, except that somehow, somewhere, Bobby believed in a destiny that defied the known and obvious.

They were here, in this last outpost of the world, because that’s where George wanted them, out of his way. It was clear to him, as once it had been clear to Bobby, that given their chance and having failed it, there would not be other chances. But in time, that realization had faded from Bobby’s consciousness, though he must somewhere in his mind understand it, and he had allowed himself to hope, once again, that there were other chances.

Hope was a cruel thing. Those who spoke of it so fondly and nourished it blindly as a quality of fortune, or a measure of God’s love and kindness, did not see hope as it was: a failure to accept the obvious. How fortunate were the lesser beings of the world, who having no ability to grasp the obvious, lived and died oblivious, and, he supposed, happy, or at least not despondent. What had happened on the Pit was his fault, his own miscalculation, and he had looked long for a way to rectify his error, but he had found none and, finding none, had understood that rectification was an illusion.

And it was despondence that gave heft to the weight he carried. He understood, as he had been told by surgeons and physicians, that he suffered from melancholia, a condition that was neither uncommon nor untreatable among men, though it was more the province of women. And whisky, especially the finer whiskies of Kentucky and Tennessee, had a palliative effect, though only temporarily. Once that effect wore off, the darkness again abided.

He uncorked a bottle of Kentucky bourbon whisky, one of only three remaining, and set a glass on his makeshift desk, thought better of it, and drank a long pull straight from the bottle. He calculated. If he marshaled his store well, and did not go to excess (but how does one not go to excess when excess is precisely what one requires?), there was enough whisky to share with Bobby and to perhaps drag them both from their funks before Mr. Donovan’s arrival in two days. If he did not share, there was ample sufficiency, but what good did it do to elevate his own mood if Bobby’s remained stove in? To see one you love suffer is to suffer yourself. Suffering in moderation was its own palliative, and he resolved after one more long pull to take greater care with the whisky, so that they both could ease their days.

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