Standing there thinking on Yeller and Cookie and looking at that army horse I was suddenly hit with grief so bad it near bent me in two.
Then Henry sticks his head under the neck of my horse. He’s working himself into a muck sweat. “You know what to do, Charley?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
I mean, I got the saddle on, but fixing the straps to the buckles in the right places was another matter altogether. Henry was perplexed as me by it. Lucky for us a recruit by the name of Elijah knew what he was doing. Turns out he been a smith before the war so he can tell one end of a horse from the other. He give me his animal to hold while he buckles all the straps up right. I watch real careful so as I can do it next time.
Seemed I wasn’t the only dumb recruit in that place. The troopers on guard duty – their shiny white faces sticking out of new-made uniforms – was damned near splitting their seams laughing at us. None of us knew how to get a saddle and bridle on a horse. Elijah was real busy. And all the time them horses was getting twitchier and twitchier.
When Elijah was done helping out, he come back and takes his own horse from me.
“You know how to ride?” I says.
“Nope.” Elijah smile. “You think my master gonna let a worthless heap like me on top of his horses? I ain’t never sat in no saddle in my life.”
The man who’s giving out the orders is called Captain Smith. He looking a little perplexed by now but he finally give the command to mount. We does our level best but what follows is enough to make his eyes pop.
We’re strapped up with sabres at our hips and water canteens across our chests. Was just as well we ain’t got no rifles because them sabres was enough to get in the way. Add rifles in and we was likely to have all been killed stone dead. I couldn’t see for the life of me how to get all the way from the ground up onto that critter’s back. As soon as I get one foot in the stirrup the animal starts walking forward. I have to hop along to keep up. Can’t get my foot out but can’t jump up neither. I hop clean across the parade ground like that. Animal only stops when it reaches the water trough and lowers its head for a drink. That’s when I make my move. I grab the front of the saddle and give a great heave. My leg gets tangled with my sabre, but I manage to throw it across his back before we’re off again.
I ain’t got no notion how to steer the thing. But if I’m faring badly them other recruits is faring worse. All about me horses is snorting and squealing and men is cussing fit to make a preacher’s ears bleed. I see Henry’s horse kick its heels up. It come back down, then stands right up on its hind legs, pawing the air like a lady’s lapdog, begging for a treat. Henry comes flying off, crashing into the muck heap. A man by the name of Isaiah is flat on his back in the dirt. One by the name of George is yelling his head off because his horse is treading on his foot and he can’t shift it.
Elijah’s critter is running in circles around the parade ground and he’s begging it, “Hey! Hey, horse! Horse! Don’t do that! Whoa! Stop!” But that animal don’t pay the blindest bit of attention. It gallops clean out of the fort, starting a regular stampede. Mine follows along with the rest of the herd and I find myself begging and pleading like Elijah.
“Mind the fence! Horse, stop! Stop! Hey, stop!”
Guess I was lucky. Luckier than Elijah, anyhow. My mount proved to be plain greedy. Soon as he feels good grass underfoot he slows down to a trot, then stops dead. I get thrown onto his mane and before I can set myself right he lowers his head to snatch a mouthful of grass. I slide down the length of his neck real slow, reach the ground and roll sideways onto the turf. Wasn’t a dignified ending to our glorious cavalry charge, but at least I ain’t landed in the muck heap like Henry. Least I ain’t disappeared over the distant horizon like Elijah.
I lie flat on my back for a while, waiting for my heart to stop thumping. Feel like all the breath been knocked out of me. Was half hoping the horse would run off again so I don’t have to do nothing more with it. But it don’t. It just stands there, chomping. So finally I have to get back on my feet and figure out what to do next.
I can see a few soldiers coming back. Some was leading their horses, scared to get up in the saddle in case they took off again. Most had lost their horses altogether and was walking on their own. A few must have taken a bang to the head because they was weaving from side to side like the master did when he was drunk. All of them done lost their caps.
I look at that horse of mine and he looks right back and I decide there ain’t no devilment there, not like there been with Yeller.
“Look here,” I says. “I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but we in this together. If you don’t go running away with me, I won’t go kicking and whipping you. You got that? We got ourselves a deal?”
He lowers his head and goes back to cropping the grass. I cram my cap down hard on my head. I been licked by a mule but I was damned if I was gonna be beat by a horse too.
I take them reins real gentle. Don’t pull his head up. Figure I’ll let him eat while I work out how to get back on. Get my left foot in the stirrup, my left hand on the front of the saddle. Then I give a little jump like I seen white folks do and haul myself up there. Don’t seem so hard doing it the second time.
My horse was mighty easy-going, truth be told. When I give a tug on the reins he lifts his head and starts strolling towards the fort. I don’t have to do nothing but sit there. But I’m the only recruit from Company W who come back into that fort on horseback. Got me a nod from the Captain. Got me a clap on the back from Henry. Was so darned proud of myself I couldn’t keep this big old smile from breaking out across my face.
One by one the rest of the recruits trickled back in. The Quartermaster and one of the other officers rode off in search of the horses. They brought all of them back, excepting Elijah’s brown and white one. And after an hour or two there still ain’t no sign of them.
“Thought he been a smith,” says Reuben. “How come he don’t know what to do with a horse?”
When he hadn’t shown after three long hours of watching and waiting Captain Smith took a party off looking for him. And because I come back riding I had the dubious privilege of going along too.
We didn’t find Elijah’s horse till nearly sundown. It was grazing quietly near the river, about six yards from a stunted tree. Couldn’t see no sign of Elijah.
“Must have come off somewhere else,” says the Captain. “Lord, he could be anywhere. I hope to God he’s not injured.”
My mouth fall open. Can’t help it. That’s the very first time I ever heard a white man sound concerned for a black one. Does he mean it? Or is he fooling?
Just then we hear a rustling, and Elijah’s face pops out of the leaves halfway up the tree. He been thrown there by his horse and his canteen strap was caught on a branch. He was held so tight he couldn’t get back down and it took me and the Captain a while to get him freed.
We didn’t ride back into the fort till after dark. Me and Elijah was ordered to take the horses and bed them down while Captain Smith reported to the General. Their voices drifted out of the officers’ quarters on the cold night air.
General Michaels is just about laughing his head off at the mess we made of things. But the Captain ain’t joining in. He saying how he been too hasty with us, how he been expecting too much, that it was him was at fault, not us. He needed to go more slow, he said, teach more careful. While Elijah show me how to give my horse a good rub-down we can hear the Captain promising his superior officer that, come what may, he gonna lick us all into shape.
12.
Next day, Captain Smith has us all stand shoulder to shoulder. As he marches up and down the line he tells us we’re part of a new-formed regiment. Ain’t that something to be proud of? We’re Company W. And we got ourselves a fine and noble job to do. Folks is flooding in from Europe, coming to settle in America, Land of the Free. Every single day hundreds, maybe thousands of them are setting out in wagon trains, heading west, taki
ng hold of the empty wilderness and turning it civilized. They’re carving ranches out of nothing, building homesteads, churches, towns. And them brave, upstanding folks are in need of our protection. He starts talking about honour and patriotism and nation building and a whole lot more besides.
Well, I didn’t go joining the army to defend nobody. I wasn’t interested in upholding the nation’s honour. Only person I was interested in protecting was myself. Only honour I wanted to preserve was my own. But hearing Captain Smith talk gets something stirring deep inside of me. I start wondering if maybe I can’t be part of something. Something big. Something fine.
When he finish he come to a halt right in front of me. I can feel him look me up and down, real slow. His eyes are sliding over every inch of me and I’m feeling hot and cold all over. Can he see through this uniform? Damn! Has he found me out? Am I gonna get kicked out on my ass already?
Whatever he’s thinking, I learned my lesson. I ain’t never looking no white man in the face again. This time I’m keeping my eyes fixed firm on the ground.
“Chin up, O’Hara.”
“Sir?”
“Chin up. Shoulders back. Eyes ahead.”
“Sir?”
“Come on. Like this. Look up. Look at me. I won’t bite.”
I can feel the sweat coming. Is he messing with me? What’s he planning to do? There’s a whip in his hand. He’s gonna flick me across the face with it the second my head come up. Punish me for sassing him; punish me for impersonating a soldier. Hell! I ain’t got no choice. I lift my head.
He don’t hit me. He look me in the eye. Simple. Straightforward. Like it’s a natural thing to do.
He got eyes the same colour as Jonas.
And all of a sudden I’m small again and I’m being swung through the air. Someone’s got their arms under mine, their hands clenched tight across my chest, and they whirling me in circles under the cottonwood tree and I’m laughing so hard my face is aching. And whoever is swinging me is laughing too. Squealing, almost. High-pitched. Like a hog.
That’s all there is. Just that one little flash. Then I’m back in the here and now, looking my commanding officer square in the face. He’s smiling at me.
He slap me on the shoulder. “Good man.”
Relief come washing over me. I’m safe. But I’m mighty puzzled. Why’s he being so kind? All I can think is that he must be sick in the head. He got to be the craziest captain in the entire army.
Well, crazy he may be, but he sure knows his job. For the next few days he has us up on them horses and he’s teaching us to ride and we’re at it until our rear ends is so sore can’t none of us hardly sit down. Nights we was laid flat out in them tents complaining.
“I never knew I had bones in my ass!” Reuben’s a fine-looking man. Only he don’t look so fine lying on his belly with his legs spread, trying to fan his behind with his cap.
“My bones is cutting clean through my skin.” George’s hands is cupped over his butt cheeks like he’s trying to push them back in.
“My knees ain’t never gonna hold me up again,” says Isaiah.
“Your knees is bad? My legs just about ready to snap off at the hips!” Elijah’s on his back, rubbing his privates. “And I just about worn these balls of mine off.”
“Your wife gonna have something to say about that, Elijah!” says Reuben.
Isaiah tells him, “She gonna have to go someplace else she want to get more babies.”
Well, I didn’t join in but neither did Henry. I was keeping myself to myself and Henry just wasn’t quick enough to keep up when they got to messing with each other. He sat there, smiling and nodding, but the sense of what they was saying mostly passed him by. But so long as we both laughed along didn’t nobody mind how quiet the two of us was.
The Captain could train us all he liked, none of them other officers believed we was ever gonna shape up. They’d sit around on the porch outside their quarters evenings and damn near split their sides over what happened when we was first given the order to mount. They tired of that particular source of hilarity after two, maybe three weeks, because by then we could all of us ride well enough to keep a tight column and do a passable charge.
Instead they started remarking on our level of general competence and wondering aloud about the wisdom of allowing men of colour to sign up for the army in the first place. “What in God’s name were they thinking of in Washington?”
It didn’t surprise none of us excepting Henry. Whenever he heard them his eyes would go wide and he’d have the look of a puppy dog that been kicked. “Don’t they want us here, Charley?”
“Guess not.”
“Why’d they let us sign up, then?”
“I don’t know.”
Henry wasn’t the only one puzzling things out. The last few weeks I hadn’t heard a voice that sounded like the master’s, not once.
“They all Yankees, ain’t they?” I asked the others.
“Sure are,” says George. “Ain’t no Confederates allowed in the army.”
I recalled what Amos said. “I thought we was the United States now.”
“Yep. But they started the war. Them Yankees don’t want to put no guns in no rebels’ hands.”
“Why’d they fight for our freedom? Can’t none of them stand the sight of us.”
Elijah spoke up. “Yankees wasn’t fighting about us. We was a sideshow is all. It was a white man’s war. About who’s in charge. Who’s the biggest rooster in the yard. Who’s sitting at the top of the woodpile.”
Henry asked again, “But why’d they let us sign up?’
Couldn’t none of us answer him.
Henry was on the simple-minded side. I figured his question didn’t much matter. But maybe I should have been asking that same thing myself. Maybe we all should.
I put it to the back of my mind. I was more occupied with trying to figure out Captain Smith. Any time he heard them whitey troopers shooting their mouths off about us he’d speak right on out. He’d take on the officers too. One time he even done it to the General.
General Michaels was sitting there, saying loud and clear, “Allowing volunteer regiments in wartime was one thing. But I see no reason to have coloureds in the Regular Army now. They’re simply not up to the task.”
Captain Smith didn’t sass his superior but he wasn’t going along with him neither. “They lack training,” he says real calm and reasonable, “but they’ve been in the army less than a month. Give them time.”
The General come right back. “It’s a question of raw material, Captain. If that’s inferior, the finished product will never make the grade.” His eyes fall on Henry. “Some of your men don’t seem to have the sense of children!”
Captain Smith give him a smile. “Children, you say. And yet children grow, sir, and are nurtured and educated as they do so. With the right encouragement I see no reason why my men shouldn’t make fine soldiers.”
“Care to make a wager of it?” says the General. “Ten dollars says your coloureds will never match the standard of my troopers.”
Me and Henry watched them shaking hands on it. He told Isaiah and George; I told Reuben and Elijah. By the time we bedded down for the night word of that wager had spread through Company W’s tents like a fire through cotton bales. Before it was even dark we was all bragging, talking big and swearing solemn that each and every one of us was gonna prove General Michaels wrong.
13.
Day followed day and we was being drilled most all the time, on our horses or off of them. We was issued rifles – Spencer repeating carbines – that felt good and heavy in the hand. Them things had the bullets lined up in a magazine in the butt; could fire off seven shots, one after the other, in as many heartbeats. Leastways, they was supposed to. Mine had a habit of getting itself jammed no matter how often I cleaned and oiled it. Was the same with my pistol: Colt .44 single shooter with a hammer that was prone to sticking. Seemed my weapons was as independent-minded as my horse.
; We practised shooting until our trigger fingers was just about dropping off. I soon figured out that so long as I aimed a little to the left with my rifle, a little to the right with my pistol, I could hit the centre of my target every time.
After that come the inspections which covered everything from the cleanliness of our sleeping quarters to the cleanliness of our socks. Heck, we weren’t even allowed to gather no fluff between our toes.
Didn’t none of us mind. The war had turned the world on its head, but it was over now. Company W was settling down into place, like the dust after a storm. We been slaves: we was used to doing what we was told. But there was something different about being in the army. Something new. For the first time I was following the orders of a man I could respect. A man who might be plumb crazy but who seemed to respect us, who looked us in the eye, who wanted to see us do well. Not just to please him. To please ourselves.
We all of us picked up army routine quick enough, excepting Henry, who was on the clumsy side. He was always dropping his sabre or falling off his horse, climbing back up again with that big, empty grin spread across his face. The Captain never got mad though – I never once saw that man yell at him. I did my best to help Henry along, shining up his boots, fastening his buttons, tightening his belt, so he’d be ready on time. I even took to running him through the manual of arms when we was off duty and Henry improved some, but he always stayed one beat behind the rest of us.
Yet when it come to it, it wasn’t Henry let the Captain down. It was me.
Now the way things worked was this. Guard mount happened in the morning, and most all the officers and their wives and families turned out to see it, there being so little else to do in that place. While we was training we didn’t take part, us being such a goddamned shambles to begin with.
But then the day come when the Captain decides we’re ready to be drilled along with the whiteys.
Buffalo Soldier Page 6