Summary

Chapter 1 is set in Missouri in 1851 during the Indian Wars that led up to the American Civil War. The novel’s narrator, Thomas McNulty, thinks back to his younger years. He begins his narrative by recalling the elaborate preparation of a fellow soldier’s body before burial, a process that he says “sure took the proverbial cake” (1). This event marked his “first engagement in the business of war” (1). Thomas then thinks back to when he was 17, when he and his “friend for a whole life” (4), John Cole, volunteered for the army to earn some money and avoid going hungry. Thomas describes the fateful moment when he met John Cole “under a hedge” (3) at the age of 14.

Soon after they had met, Thomas and John Cole passed through a town called Daggsville, where they were hired to entertain customers in a saloon owned by...