Buffalo Soldier Page 5

  So I took myself off, walking westwards again. Don’t know how long I done that. Days? Weeks? Months? I plain don’t know. Don’t know how far I went neither. Could have been ten miles, could have been one hundred, could have been one thousand. I just kept setting one foot down and then the other followed right along.

  I thought the Lord didn’t care none if I lived or died but I guess I was wrong. Because all the while I was roaming the country no harm come to me, though I seen sights that would make the Devil weep. Seemed there wasn’t nothing some folks liked more than the sight of thick white rope around a thin black neck. One morning I seen a whole family dangling heavy from sagging trees like they was ripe fruit ready for picking. Not just the grown ones neither. There was children. All sizes, right down to a tiny baby. What manner of a creature would do that to an itty-bitty baby? Felt like I’d walked straight into the heart of hell this time. And this time there didn’t seem no way out.

  But one fine day a cart come rumbling up behind me. Wasn’t no sweet chariot, and the driver wasn’t no angel, but it sure carried me home. Leastways, it carried me to the closest thing I could call a home. Sitting on that cart was a bent old man who give me a good looking-over before he says, “Where are you heading, son?”

  Son. He takes me for a man, same as everyone else done. “No place special.”

  “Can give you a ride to the next town,” he says.

  “There work there?” says I.

  “Some. Climb on up.”

  And that’s what I done.

  He was carrying a load of lumber and I was glad to go along with him. Was so darned tired I was finding it hard to keep dragging one foot along after the other. But if I needed a ride, he needed company just as bad. That man was a talker. Charley was his name and he had a heap of things he wanted to get off his chest. Didn’t none of them make me feel no better. He seen whippings and burnings and killings just about every place he passed through. He seen folks starving, dying by the side of the road. Didn’t seem to be nowhere in the whole damned country I could live safe.

  I didn’t do more than grunt each time he paused for breath. I didn’t feel much like talking. Couldn’t speak about what I’d seen. Couldn’t tell what I’d done. Couldn’t say what, in God’s name, I was going to do next. Wanted to sit, just sit, put my fingers in my ears, empty my head, not even think. Didn’t like what ran through my mind when I was thinking.

  Most of what Charley said flowed clean over me. But then I hear, “… President Johnson pushed it through Congress. The army taking on coloureds now.”

  Something snag in my head. “Johnson?” I say. “What happened to Abraham Lincoln?”

  Suddenly he looking at me like I’m plumb crazy. “Hell! Where you been all this time, son? He dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yep. Long time back. Got himself killed. Wild, crazy Confederate sonofabitch shot him.”

  It takes a while for that to sink in. I got no idea of whether it happened before Cookie and Amos been killed or after. Before – news been hard to come by. And after? Well, after, I wasn’t in no state to take anything in. Folks could have been screaming it in my face and I’d never have heard nothing.

  Yet now I had. Guess I was waking up some. Coming back to life. But I figured that if the white folks been scared and mean enough to kill their own president, what in the heck chance did I have of surviving? If it wasn’t Jonas, it would be some other man. Yankee, Confederate: as far as I could see they was both the same. I might as well give up right here and now.

  A silence fall. For a while there’s just the creaking of the cart and the horse’s hooves on the dirt road. Then Charley start up again.

  “You know, son, from what I hear the army be happy to take on a young buck like you.”

  A young buck like me? I look at my shirt. My britches. They in a parlous state. I might look like a man. I sure got him fooled. But do I look like a soldier? Is he messing with me? I mean, the army? The army?

  I says, “They pay anything?”

  “Thirteen dollars a month.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Enough to live on, I guess.”

  The cartwheels keep rolling. I don’t say nothing.

  “They giving food too. Lodgings. From what I hear.”

  Food in my belly? A roof over my head? Money in my hand? All three at the same time? Sounded too good to be believed. Sounded like the Promised Land. Still, the army? I seen what them soldiers done. I couldn’t go acting like that. But maybe I wouldn’t need to.

  I says, “War’s over, ain’t it?”

  “Surely is.”

  “What they need men for, then?”

  “Keep the peace, I guess.”

  Keep the peace. I liked the sound of that. “I’ll get me a weapon, won’t I?”

  “’Spec’ so.”

  Them words filled my head with something other than darkness. They warmed my belly with a kinda fire. My mind was racing.

  I’d grown a whole head taller than Cookie. Been as strong as Amos almost, before he died. Hadn’t no one took me for anything other than a man the whole time I been wearing his clothes. If I signed up, well, there’d be some practical difficulties. But I was on the flat-chested side. A thick army jacket would cover up what I got growing on there. And, from what I seen, soldiers slept in their clothes same as slaves: I wouldn’t never need to go stripping in front of nobody.

  Of course, I couldn’t piss standing up. But I’d already solved that problem by making out I needed to shit every time my bladder was busting. I’d squat down behind a bush. Didn’t no one ever come looking to check my leavings.

  As for them monthlies, I was lucky: they didn’t come regular and they wasn’t never heavy. A pocket full of rags and an imaginary shit sorted that problem out too.

  There was the question of shaving to consider. Right now I was young enough to pass for someone whose whiskers hadn’t started to push through. But when I got older? I figured as long as I lathered up, shaved like every other man then wouldn’t no one look too close at my baby-smooth chin.

  I glanced sideways at that cart driver.

  Folks see what they expect to see. Charley thought I could do it. And if he figured I was man enough for this, why wouldn’t they?

  By the time we drove into town my mind was made up. I surely didn’t have nothing to lose. I was for the army if they’d have me.

  Charley drops me by the recruiting office doors.

  Wishes me luck.

  Drives off.

  And I take a real deep breath and walk on in.

  10.

  I stand there, in front of that desk.

  “Name?” says the recruiting officer.

  “Name?” says I.

  He looks at me. “Name,” he says again. “What do people call you?”

  Heck! What do I tell him? Cookie called me child. Girl. Honey, sometimes, when the mood took her. The things other folks called me ain’t fit to repeat and I can’t tell him the name my Ma give me. Charlotte was a fool, fancy thing for a slave. Was a downright crazy one for a soldier!

  But hey, guess I can pick my own now. I can be anyone I damn well please!

  Only I can’t come up with nothing. He’s staring at me, tapping the end of his pen against his teeth. So I say the first thing that come into my head: “Charley.” Figure that cart driver won’t mind me borrowing his name. I’d mumbled it, though. Sound like I’m ashamed of my very existence so I try again. Louder, deeper. “Charley, sir.” I even try giving him some kinda salute.

  He writes Charley down in his big old book and then says, “What’s your surname, Charley?”

  “Surname?” I says.

  He’s looking at me like I’m soft in the head. “Surname … your second name. You do have another name, I take it?”

  “Yes, sir,” I says, real slow. My heart’s thumping and my palms is getting damp. I ain’t never needed no second name before. Only time we was ever called by one of them was when we was off the
plantation. When Ham went for the mail folks called him Delaney’s Ham to tell him apart from the Rideaus’ one. I was never off the place until the Yankees come and I ain’t needed no second name then, neither. I guess I could have picked just about anything. My head was spinning trying to think but all that I come up with is another big fat nothing. I look out of the window and there on the side of the building across the street is painted the words O’Hara’s Ready Remedy: A Cure for All Ills. So I says, “O’Hara.” Then – finally – I have an idea so I add, “That’s Charley T. O’Hara, sir.”

  “What’s the T stand for?” says the officer.

  “Tecumseh,” I says, thrusting my jaw out. I figured I’d take one from General William Tecumseh Sherman.

  “Age?” says the recruiting officer.

  “Eighteen, sir.”

  He give a sniff like he ain’t fooled but he don’t say nothing, excepting, “Sign here.” He turns the book around. Points where I’m supposed to write.

  Sign? I think. Now, what in the hell am I supposed to do? I look at him, trying to figure it out and he’s staring at me like I’m a flea-ridden cat or a lousy dog. His nose is puckered up too, like he can smell something real bad and I know it’s me.

  I done learn all kinds of new things since Amos and Cookie died. One of them was that when a man gets strung up he soils himself. I’d washed out Amos’s britches since then but I guess I hadn’t done too good a job on it. Hadn’t cared much on the road but in the warmth of that office I was aware of the stench rising from my rear end.

  “Are you literate?” he says again. “Can you read and write?”

  Well, I ain’t never held a pen in my life but I can read well enough. Mr Beecher had sat under the cottonwood tree teaching Jonas his letters the evenings Mrs Beecher was out at her sewing circle. The overseer had always yelled for me to come and fan them, keep them cool.

  Truth be told, Jonas wasn’t none too smart. His pa was patient but it took a whole heap of time for his son to learn. There wasn’t nothing for me to do but stand and listen and watch. Mr Beecher draws out the letters in the dirt for Jonas to say out loud over and over. Before I know it, the alphabet’s drummed into my head like the words of one of Cookie’s stories.

  One evening Mr Beecher come with a book. I’m looking over his shoulder and his finger’s moving along the line of black shapes. And suddenly them squirming little things on the page form themselves into something that make sense. Jonas was stumbling to spell it out but I saw “cat” long before he did. Saw the whole darned sentence. I almost said it out loud. Was so shocked I dropped the fan. It hit Jonas on the head and I was sent back to the cook-house. Mr Beecher didn’t never go calling on me to fan them again.

  I didn’t tell Cookie. Didn’t tell no one. I recalled too clearly what happened when the master found out Ezekiel could read. Had the book-learning beat clean out of him. I breathed me a big sigh of relief that Jonas never figured out what I could do.

  But maybe Mr Beecher did. Because once in a while I’d catch him looking at me. Watching. Just watching. Wondering, maybe, if I was gonna give myself away.

  I look at that recruiting officer. Telling the truth ain’t worth the risk. I shake my head and he sighs and I can see him thinking, “Ignorant darkie!” so plain he might as well have writ it in big black letters right across that page.

  “Make your mark, then,” he says. “There.”

  I take up the pen in my fist and scratch an X. Before the ink’s even dry he slams the book shut.

  And, for better or for worse, I signed away my life to the United States Army.

  That very same day me and a whole heap of other raw recruits was shipped on out. We was all freed slaves, far as I could tell. Must have been a hundred or more of us. I wasn’t worried about where we was headed. West, was all. Further away from the Delaney place. Further away from home. Further away from Jonas.

  It felt good to be surrounded by a crowd. A big crowd, heading the same way. Felt good being told what to do. Where to go.

  Then we set foot on that paddle steamer and for a long while nothing felt good at all.

  I ain’t never been on a boat and I sure didn’t like the way that thing rocked and rolled. Sight of that brown water boiling either side made me sick to the stomach. I started retching and soon my head was spinning so bad I had to cling onto the rails to stop myself falling in.

  Everyone was keeping just about as far away from me as they possibly could and I can’t say I blamed them. The only recruit come near was a fella by the name of Henry. He was a great bull of a man – nothing but muscle. Me retching and spewing my guts up didn’t seem to bother him none. He was like a dog that’ll come and rest its head in your lap when you’re feeling blue. He stuck close to me the whole time. Didn’t say nothing. Didn’t do nothing. Just stood there, staring out along that horizon, solid as a rock.

  In between them retching bouts I come up for long enough to see there’s a big old dent in the front of his head.

  “What happened there?”

  “Where?”

  “There. Right there. On your head.”

  He run his finger around the edge, then give it a poke in the middle. It go in halfway up to the first joint. He looks kinda surprised, like he only just noticed it. He shrug. “Don’t know. Fell, I guess.”

  Maybe the reason wasn’t worth remembering. But it looked to me like he been hit hard enough one time to near cave in his whole skull. It had healed on the outside, but something been knocked loose in there and his thoughts didn’t hang together the way they should. Guess we was two of a kind.

  I was thankful for him being there, and I was a whole lot more thankful when the riverboat stop and we get to marching to some fort. Truth be told it wasn’t far but my legs was hell-bent on giving up on me. Henry took hold of the back of my britches and swung me along like a rag doll every time I stumbled.

  By the time we arrived the sun was going down, streaking the sky with scarlet and turning the river that was winding in big, easy curves behind us red as blood. Ahead and to either side there was rolling hills, some wooded, some not. The fort we fetched up in was four lines of long, low buildings set around a square of open land. There was plenty of soldiers there already. One, maybe two hundred white faces glowing like ghosts in the twilight all staring in our direction.

  We get fed. Hot food. Beans and salt pork. Plenty of it. Coffee. Then we get given bedding and we get told to settle ourselves down in the tents that are grouped maybe half a mile down along from the buildings where the white soldiers sleep. And maybe the ground underfoot is on the marshy side and maybe the tent canvas has got some holes in it and maybe the seams are split in places, but I ain’t had even that much over my head in a long, long while. For the first time in my entire life I got me a full belly. I got a good, thick blanket all to myself to roll up in. The men in that tent are talking and laughing with each other. But I’m so tired I go right off to sleep.

  I didn’t dream. Didn’t even stir until the bugle sounded next morning and we was called to get up. That was the first night since Amos and Cookie was lynched that I hadn’t woke up screaming.

  11.

  The first thing they done was hand out uniforms.

  Back on the Delaney place we been given clothes once a year. Shirt if you was small. Just one. If it wore out before next ration day you’d be walking around stark naked. Them shirts was wove from flax so scratchy on the skin it was worse than rolling on an ant-hill. Cookie worked on it night-times, kneading it between her hands until it was soft enough for me to wear without driving me plumb crazy. When I got bigger the master give me a skirt too. But I ain’t never had no shoes.

  And now here I am, being handed a pair of army boots. Leather. Up to the knee. And more clothes, almost, than I can carry.

  They was clean enough but they sure had seen some action. The pants was close to being worn through at the knees but they was one hell of a lot better than Amos’s britches. I was mighty glad to ditch thos
e. I kept his shirt though. Pulled the army one right on over it. Then come the jacket. Blue, trimmed with yellow. Close-fitting, down to the hip. Bright, shining metal buttons. Cloth was good and heavy, but when I pull it on I see mine has got a hole over the heart. It been patched but looked to me like a bullet been put through it sometime. I guess I was in a dead man’s clothes again. But I wasn’t complaining.

  Got me a cap, to keep my head warm, with a leather peak to keep the sun and the rain from going in my eyes. On top of all that I was given a long coat. Mine was so big on me, it started a fella by the name of Reuben laughing. He offered me his, standing there bare-chested while he said, “This here’s smaller.”

  I shook my head. “I’m good.” It hung almost down to my ankles. Covered my chest, my ass, covered my privates. That was all I cared about. That, and the fact that it would keep the wind out. I hadn’t never had nothing so fine.

  We was given our weapons next. Got me a sabre fixed to a belt that go around my middle, but no rifle. We’d be getting them later, we was told. I found that disappointing.

  Now I didn’t know nothing about how the United States Army was organized. Soldiers was soldiers, as far as I was concerned. Yankees rode horses. Confederates marched barefoot. That’s what I learned in the war.

  If I’d known anything at all I’d have signed up for the infantry. But I’d walked into a cavalry recruiting office. I knew that was a big mistake the moment we was told to take a horse each and saddle up.

  I didn’t know nothing about the army but I knew even less about horses. The closest I’d come to handling anything with hooves was before the Yankees burned the plantation. There was a man come from the mill sometimes with a mule named Yeller, piled high with sacks of flour for Cookie. Yeller might have been called a mule, but I knew that creature was the Devil in disguise. Every time he come the man told me to hold Yeller’s head while he unpacked his load. Guess it made him smile to see me struggling so bad. That creature would jerk his head up, lift me clean off my feet. Drop it down, dump me in the dirt, take a bite out of my belly. I never did find me a way of dealing with Yeller without getting hurt.