dacks and the Poconos in New York and Pennsylvania. These people had mountains in their blood, and they still sang the Gaelic songs of the Highland clans from the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie, as well as the songs of their cousins from the northern Irish counties. They sang them at their whiskey-soaked gatherings year after year, generation after generation, until grad ually the sound of their voices and the rhythm of their tunes evolved into a different kind of music altogether, one that would have been only slightly recognizable to their ancestors, yet would have set their feet to tapping all the same.
And then there were the families descended from the oppres sors of these people, which was the kind of people the Musgroves
The Good Neighbor 51
were: English lairds, nobles who’d been granted land in Scotland and Ireland that they would never even see. Early Musgroves had assisted in the systematic eradication of every trace of indigenous culture from the Scottish Highlands with sword and English Bible as their weapons, just as they would cleanse the North American continent of red-skinned heathens centuries later. The Captain knew his family history intimately, and was proud of every bit of it. His was a family of winners. They would never sink. Some of what they’d done wasn’t pretty, he knew, but this was the price of progress, and it was better to be on top than on the bottom. That was a motto he repeated to himself every night, in the only Latin he knew, to pacify the pangs of conscience that were plucked in his head like a harp. Melior in summo quam in fundo : Bet ter to be on top than on the bottom.
❚ ❚ ❚
Musgrove would name the house Adencourt because it sounded like something he’d heard about that had happened once in France. He had not been to France—but it had happened there, a battle or something, he wasn’t sure what. He just liked the name. It had resounded in his skull now for years, ricocheting like a mus ket ball in a bell, ringing with all the force of destiny.
The word he sought was “Agincourt,” of course, which was the name of a battle between France and England in 1415; it had been a complete rout for the French, who were demoralized and embar rassed by not having made good on their threat to cut off the mid dle and index fingers of every English longbowman on the field, so that they would never pluck anything again, be it bow-, harp, or heartstring. It was a shame the Captain wasn’t familiar with this story, because he would have enjoyed it thoroughly, especially the part about the French losing.
But he also would have liked the idea of cutting off fingers. In his youth, like many others, the Captain was a practitioner of bat
52 W ILLIAM K OWALSKI
tlefield mutilation. For many years, from the rafters of the long porch of his new house near Plainsburg, there hung oddlooking things, something like horsetails with a bit of horse still attached. These were human scalps. The Captain had taken them himself, from three warriors of some Apache tribe, at the battle of San Fer nando. In those early days of America, to hang body parts of your enemies in public places was, though perhaps excessive, still so cially acceptable. Visiting ladies politely averted their eyes from the grisly trophies, and the more squeamish business gentlemen up for a few days from Philadelphia or New York (who often stopped in to meet the old war hero on their way to points west) would take a great deal of time working up the courage to ask what, exactly, it felt like to rip off a man’s scalp. The Captain was only too proud to describe it, in his diffident, frontier manner:
“Feels just like skinnin’ a possum. Makes the same kind of noise, too. Yeh make a gash with your hatchet at the front of the head, not too hard, for yeh don’t want to dash his brains out. Yeh want him to feel it, yeh see. Then yeh get your knife blade under there, just ’twixt the skin and the skull bone. Yeh run it up
And then there were the families descended from the oppres sors of these people, which was the kind of people the Musgroves
The Good Neighbor 51
were: English lairds, nobles who’d been granted land in Scotland and Ireland that they would never even see. Early Musgroves had assisted in the systematic eradication of every trace of indigenous culture from the Scottish Highlands with sword and English Bible as their weapons, just as they would cleanse the North American continent of red-skinned heathens centuries later. The Captain knew his family history intimately, and was proud of every bit of it. His was a family of winners. They would never sink. Some of what they’d done wasn’t pretty, he knew, but this was the price of progress, and it was better to be on top than on the bottom. That was a motto he repeated to himself every night, in the only Latin he knew, to pacify the pangs of conscience that were plucked in his head like a harp. Melior in summo quam in fundo : Bet ter to be on top than on the bottom.
❚ ❚ ❚
Musgrove would name the house Adencourt because it sounded like something he’d heard about that had happened once in France. He had not been to France—but it had happened there, a battle or something, he wasn’t sure what. He just liked the name. It had resounded in his skull now for years, ricocheting like a mus ket ball in a bell, ringing with all the force of destiny.
The word he sought was “Agincourt,” of course, which was the name of a battle between France and England in 1415; it had been a complete rout for the French, who were demoralized and embar rassed by not having made good on their threat to cut off the mid dle and index fingers of every English longbowman on the field, so that they would never pluck anything again, be it bow-, harp, or heartstring. It was a shame the Captain wasn’t familiar with this story, because he would have enjoyed it thoroughly, especially the part about the French losing.
But he also would have liked the idea of cutting off fingers. In his youth, like many others, the Captain was a practitioner of bat
52 W ILLIAM K OWALSKI
tlefield mutilation. For many years, from the rafters of the long porch of his new house near Plainsburg, there hung oddlooking things, something like horsetails with a bit of horse still attached. These were human scalps. The Captain had taken them himself, from three warriors of some Apache tribe, at the battle of San Fer nando. In those early days of America, to hang body parts of your enemies in public places was, though perhaps excessive, still so cially acceptable. Visiting ladies politely averted their eyes from the grisly trophies, and the more squeamish business gentlemen up for a few days from Philadelphia or New York (who often stopped in to meet the old war hero on their way to points west) would take a great deal of time working up the courage to ask what, exactly, it felt like to rip off a man’s scalp. The Captain was only too proud to describe it, in his diffident, frontier manner:
“Feels just like skinnin’ a possum. Makes the same kind of noise, too. Yeh make a gash with your hatchet at the front of the head, not too hard, for yeh don’t want to dash his brains out. Yeh want him to feel it, yeh see. Then yeh get your knife blade under there, just ’twixt the skin and the skull bone. Yeh run it up
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