by James Lear
This was not Chester’s usual idiom, and I wondered to whom he had been speaking. I found out soon enough.
“We’ve had a visitor, boys, A very fine man from the Fourth Virginia Cavalry. Spoke a lot of good sense about the situation that we find ourselves in during these…er…these turbulent times.”
Chester swept the room with a grand gesture, as if here, among the stale costumes, spilled powder, and bitter coffee could be found some symbol of our national conflict.
“What did he want, exactly?” Billy asked, looking suspicious.
“He wanted men, Billy.”
“Don’t they all. Which one of us does he want? The big black stud, the handsome young gentleman, or the lady-with-a-secret?”
“He wants all of you, and me as well.”
“Greedy bastard.”
“And he wants all the other men in the theater.”
“That I’d like to see,” Charlie said, sounding interested for the first time.
“And he’s going to have us,” Chester said, scowling. I realized that this was not about servicing the appetites of some opportunistic client.
“In other words,” I said, standing up, “you’ve sold us to the army.”
“I wouldn’t say sold, Aaron…”
“What were your terms?”
“Now listen to me,” Chester said, sitting on a dressing table and lighting a cigar. (His cigars had grown cheaper and fouler as the war dragged on, but he still got them.) “It may not be apparent to you boys, living in the lap of luxury and getting all the cock you can handle—” We groaned, but Chester chopped the air with one commanding hand. “—while you’re going from one bed to another, fucking and sucking and making merry, for which I am, by the way, truly grateful, some of us have been dealing with…shall we say, reality? Shall we say politics? Shall we say the fact that there is a war going on under our noses and that it is no longer possible to ignore it?”
“He threatened you, then,” I said, looking Chester coolly in the eye. His gaze flicked away from mine for a moment, then returned more resolute.
“Indeed he did, Aaron. That damn recruiting officer told me in no uncertain terms that if I did not provide ten good men for a new company, he would shut the theater down.”
“So you saved your own skin,” Billy said.
“I saved my skin, sure, and I saved your pretty little white skin as well, Miss Billy,” Chester said, throwing a powder puff across the room. It exploded like a tiny smoke bomb. “If he don’t get you, then the prison does. Do you know what they do to deserters down here?”
“We ain’t deserted from down here, though,” Charlie said, sounding scared. Underneath his bravado, he was by far the most cowardly of us three.
“You will have, if you don’t join up,” Chester said. “This isn’t a question of volunteering, boys. This is conscription. You don’t have the choice to say ‘Yes, please’ or ‘No, thank you.’ If you don’t jump to attention pretty damn quick, you get hauled up before the board and you go down. You may think it’s fun in one of those military prisons, boys. You might think that your pretty faces and asses and your big stiff dicks will keep you out of trouble. Boys, I’m telling you, they’d kill you pretty damn quick. They might fuck you first, they might fuck you after, but they’d kill you, sure as I’m standing here.”
“So we join the army and you get to keep your theater open.”
“What do you take me for?” Chester said, puffing out his chest. “Didn’t I always tell you I was a captain? I’m coming with you. Now clean yourselves up, make any farewells you need to make, and meet me in the front office in two hours. We’re going to war.”
Company K of the 4th Virginia Cavalry was made up of every layabout, ne’er-do-well, and miscreant who could be flushed out of the Richmond tenderloin. In addition to us four, there were two more stagehands from the Alhambra, a couple of acrobats and dancers who appeared regularly on the stage (in both the legitimate and the illegitimate shows), and a six-piece band that played the same ragged repertoire whether they were accompanying a plate-spinning act or an all-male butt-fucking orgy. There were a few other faces that I recognized from around town: doormen, barmen, and pot-boys from the bars and whorehouses, some regular drinkers and clients from the same establishments, even a couple of honest office workers who had, once or twice, saved up enough money to avail themselves of the Alhambra’s more exclusive services. In total we were about 20 men, more or less sound in mind and limb, although a less likely fighting force I never did see. Needless to say, mine was the only black face, and I stuck out as we mustered in the city square to be addressed by the recruiting officer. We all tried to look brave, but I noticed a large number of heavy winter coats and mufflers, even though it was a mild day. I suppose that nobody wanted to be seen shivering.
We stood around in a nervous group, talking in undertones, wondering what the next 24 hours would bring, when Chester nudged me in the ribs and nodded toward the steps of city hall. I saw the bright brass buttons of an officer’s uniform, I saw a strong, solid silhouette ascend the steps, I admired the gray hair curling neatly over the collar of his gray tunic—
And then he turned around.
Jed Brown. Sheriff Jed Brown, from the prison in Allentown, the man I had last seen covered in spunk and wallowing in piss. Jed Brown, in the uniform of a Confederate officer. I was too shocked to ponder this puzzle; my eyes goggled and my mouth hung open as he began his address.
“Men of Company K!” he began, surveying us all with a cool stare. His eyes passed over my face, stopped, came back, rested on me. I tried to compose myself, to stop catching flies, but he saw my discomfiture and smiled, very slightly. His eyes narrowed, his eyebrows arched a fraction of an inch, and I remembered his last words to me before I fled with Charlie and Billy to freedom: I’ll be looking for you. I’ll get you, black bastard. Well, now he had me. I glanced around at Charlie and Billy, who both looked a greenish shade of white.
Brown’s address was impressive. He spoke in even tones about the challenge facing the South, the value of democracy and freedom, the fact that the war was turning in favor of the Confederate cause—which I knew to be untrue, and yet when he said it, you could believe it. His voice was deep and well modulated, his hand gestures sparing but emphatic, and in all he seemed like a well accomplished politician. How he had gone from being a sheriff in Union Allentown to a major in Confederate Virginia I had no idea—but something about his idealistic oratory suggested to me that the Rebels had welcomed a man spurned by the Yankees, and he was properly, volubly grateful. Within ten minutes, he had turned a group of 20 scared, disaffected men into a cheering band of comrades in arms, or soon to be. We marched rather than shuffled out of the square, heading straight toward the army camp just outside town. Some of us, including Charlie, were already dreaming of feats of arms. Few, I suspect, were thinking of the almost certain death toward which we walked with such a spring in our step. One of the musicians produced a small fife from his waistcoat pocket and began a jaunty rendition of “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” with which we all joined in. I thought it better to put on a show of obedience, whatever my private thoughts and fears.
Jed Brown stood at the gate of the camp taking the salute from his new recruits as they marched in. I raised my hand to my brow and looked straight ahead, hoping to pass in unnoticed—I had just about as much chance as a chicken passing unnoticed into a fox’s den.
“Mr. Johnson, I believe,” Brown said, detaining me with a hand on the arm. “We have some unfinished business. You’ll report to my tent in ten minutes.”
I was in no position to argue; Brown was backed up by two surly-looking men carrying rifles.
“Yes sir.”
I had just time to see Charlie and Billy settled, and to allay their immediate fears, telling them that the only alternative to our current position was far, far worse, and that here, at least, we had a chance to use our wits to make life comfortable for ourselves. I left them to the tender m
ercy of the quartermaster, who was ordering all the new recruits to strip off and hand over their civilian clothes in exchange for uniforms. I looked fondly at those two white asses that I had fucked, and seen fucked, so many times, and then, squaring my shoulders, set off to find Jed Brown’s tent.
It wasn’t difficult; it was the only tent of any size, and certainly the only one with an armed guard at the entrance. The two men were both sizable brutes, but not unattractive. They barred my way with their rifles and asked for a password. I was about to reply with a particularly choice four-letter password, but bit my tongue. Brown emerged from the tent, his tunic undone, a clean white shirt underneath, his head bare, his face wet.
“Come in, Mr. Johnson. I’ve just been washing up. You get so dirty in these damn camps.”
“Yes, sir.”
I stepped into the tent; it was furnished with a desk, a couch, a bed, a proper wooden floor spread with rugs—all of it, I suspected, appropriated or stolen. There were some fancy bits and pieces hung from the ropes—a birdcage with no bird in it, a handful of horse brass ornaments, a wicker basket filled with artificial flowers. There were files and boxes of documents stacked in crazy piles and no discernible order, there were bills and posters rolled up, some of them crushed and muddied. This was not the tent of an efficient recruiting officer, but rather a showy opportunist. I felt right at home.
“I wasn’t so clean and tidy last time you saw me, was I, Johnson?”
“No, sir.”
He chuckled; things were not going to be as bad as I had feared.
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you and your little friends got me into that day?”
“I have a shrewd idea.”
“Handcuffed, naked, in my own jailhouse. Stinking of piss and cum. How do you think that went down with the good citizens of Allentown?”
“Like a cup of cold vomit, I imagine.”
“You’d be right. I should have you executed for that, Johnson.”
“What would be the charge this time, sir? Not vagrancy again, I guess.”
“Treason.”
“Treason against whom, exactly? As I recall, sir, you weren’t quite such a hot-blooded Rebel as you are now.”
“Careful what you say,” Brown said, drying his handsome, lined face on a towel. “I’m your commanding officer now. I can do with you whatever I like.”
“No change there, then.”
“I can make life nice for you and your friends, Johnson, or I can make it sheer hell. Which is it to be?”
“I’ve lived through good times and I’ve lived through bad times,” I said, facing him squarely. “On the whole, I prefer the good times.”
“Smart boy.”
“So what do I have to do?”
“First of all, you have to promise me that you won’t breathe a word to anyone in this camp that we’ve met before, and under what circumstances. And your boys had better keep their mouths shut too, at least in that respect.”
“That I can ensure.”
“Secondly, you can put together a team of the best men—or the least bad—and organize them into a decent police force. Think you can manage that?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. What are we policing?”
“In the first instance, Richmond town. You may not know this, Johnson, but we’re in for a hungry winter—the corn’s running low, Jefferson Davis isn’t quite the tactician we’re supposed to believe, and the coffers are empty. The Yankees have cut off his supplies from the bandits in the North. When the good folk of Richmond find out that they’re going to go hungry, they’re going to get very, very mad. I need someone with a strong arm and a cool head to keep them in order. Think you can manage that?”
“I reckon I can.”
“And there’s a few other jobs that need doing around the place.”
“Name them, sir.”
“Well, first of all, you can wipe that goddamn insolent smirk off your face.”
I cleared my throat and tried to look serious.
“Secondly… Well, God damn it, I don’t have to ask, do I?” He sunk to his knees on the rug before me, and started unbuttoning my pants. Within a few seconds, I was fucking his mouth.
My interview with Jed Brown set the tone for the weeks to come; there was a great deal of sucking and fucking in Company K. Even those who were not naturally that way inclined fell into what they called “bad habits,” although they would occasionally break out of the camp and attempt to rape local women, in order to reassert their masculinity, I suppose. Brown dealt harshly with them before delivering them to the authorities. One such disciplinary hearing, which I was obliged to attend, involved the two miscreants being fucked in turn with fingers, dicks, and, finally, some very large vegetable squash, being forced to come while these large fruits were up their asses and then being tied to posts in the center of the camp with signs reading LATRINE and USE ME hung above their heads. You can bet that every last man in camp pissed on that unhappy pair, and more than a few used their mouths for quick, brutal relief.
My job, apart from giving Jed Brown my cock whenever he required it, was the policing of Richmond; I formed a small patrol of eight men who took turns walking the streets of the city throughout the day and the night, breaking up meetings and reminding the citizens that they were under constant observation. I hated doing it, and I felt sorry for the townsfolk, who were clearly experiencing hardships that they never believed they would suffer, but it was better for all that they should be dissuaded from open riot, even by the use of threats and force. My worst nightmare was that Company K would ride through the streets of Richmond firing at will, so I endured the threats and the insults (most of them related to the color of my skin) that rained down on me every time I led my patrol into town.
You will be wondering, no doubt, how a black man was ever accepted into the Confederate Army, but in truth I was not alone. By this stage in the war, the Confederates were accepting anything with two arms and two legs; there was even talk of some women’s companies being formed in the more backward parts of Georgia. Black men—most of them freed slaves or runaways—were promised all sorts of rewards and privilege if they would set aside their objection to the slave trade and lend their muscle to the Confederate cause. Of course, none of them ever got what they thought they deserved; they were cheated into service, and fought for an administration that would gladly deprive them of their most basic rights. But for many of them—and I include myself—the army offered regular food, a small amount of pay, a roof over one’s head, the companionship of one’s equals, and, above all, freedom from the kind of dangers that we would have encountered on our own. Given the treatment that was meted out to me in the abolitionist North, I was in no hurry to find out how the good ol’ boys of the South would deal with me if they found me stealing eggs from their chicken coops. No, on the whole it was better to wear a uniform and carry a gun, even if they matched badly with my black face.
When we weren’t patrolling Richmond, we spent our time in the camp—and a tedious, degrading life it was. Little wonder that the men were easily persuaded to engage in acts that would have disgusted them in civilian life; there was nothing else to do, apart from drink, gamble, or swear. We had little money, so card games could become heated and violent over a matter of a few cents, or, when cents were scarce, over beads, tobacco, or even pebbles, whatever was the currency of the day. I saw (and separated) men who had come to blows, holding knives at each other’s throats, because they suspected one another of cheating in these paltry contests.
It was not difficult to persuade such men into vice, and within a couple of weeks in the camp I was as big a whore-master as Captain Chester (who managed to translate his fictional captaincy into fact, and swaggered around in his uniform like a real officer). I used my dick on every young mouth and ass in camp, and I even allowed myself to be fucked if I took a liking to a particular soldier—and I liked plenty of ’em. Company K was much like the Alhambra Theater, and very soon I was com
fortable and reluctant to leave.
The only real opposition that I encountered in my early army career was from the small but very vocal religious contingent. There was no official pastor in the camp, but there were one or two officers who set themselves up as ministers, preachers, or priests, and who spent their every waking hour persuading the men that they were wrong to fall into the sin of Sodom. They despised the drinking of strong liquor, they abhorred the corrupting influence of tobacco, they forswore gambling and fornication, but it was for unnatural vice that they reserved the finest flower of their rhetoric. In fact, the only subject on which I never heard them preach was war, of which they seemed on the whole to be in favor.
I lost track of time, fucking and sucking my nights and days away. It was, in some ways, the happiest time of my life. There was good comradeship in the tents of Company K, as well as good sex, and I learned that the men of the South were not always the intolerant, prejudiced slavers that I had known them to be. They were just men, whatever the color of their skin and the condition to which they had been born. Many of them were disillusioned with the war, uncertain of the cause for which they were fighting—if cause there was, other than money and power for a small group of men far remote from the mud and blood of battle. We all had the same dreams, the same hopes, the same fears, and the same appetites, even if we expressed them in different ways. We bled if we were pricked, we laughed if we were tickled, and we came if we were rubbed the right way. Many of them learned that an ass could give just as much pleasure as a pussy, and there were plenty who found more love and trust in that camp than they had ever known at home.
One thing we never talked of, though, was home, or hope, or the future. Whenever those subjects came up, our eyes turned to our boots, or we stared into the fire, and we dropped into silence until someone started singing, or told an obscene joke, or someone (often me) got out his dick and offered it to anyone who wanted to suck it. We fucked away the blues, whenever they threatened to envelop us, and a happier way of dealing with the vicissitudes of life I have yet to find.