“I figure I’ll be on my way shortly,” the Former House Nigger said, leaning close to me, “and without a cooking job.”
“That ain’t any show of confidence,” I said.
“I am looking at a thing straight-on and seeing how it’s bound to turn out,” he said. “Have you got any last words?”
“Bury me under a tree, if you can find one,” I said. “Better yet, bury me with this horse, and him with a stake through his heart.”
Having bragged myself into a deep hole, I had no choice but to get on that beast.
7
I wasn’t stretching the blanket about how I was one fine horse rider. I had learned a lot from Mr. Loving on that matter. But I had never been given a mount like this one to ride. He was blacker than the bottom of a silver mine. Had muscles on top of muscles, had the air of the devil, and was scary just to look at.
I climbed onto the corral, and that monster turned his piggy eyes on me. I swear I seen sparks in them. As soon as I swung on him, he jerked his head, and them reins was snapped off the railing, and I went to grabbing at them. Now, I had been taught to ride Indian-style, using my knees to press in tight to the horse, but that was when a horse had been trained to know what you was doing. This one hadn’t been trained for nothing. He was a natural-born killer. But I managed to stay on and was able to grab the reins. Still, I was tottering from side to side like a whiskey bottle that had been whacked. I maintained the center of the saddle, one hand on the reins, the other clutching the saddle horn. My knees was turned into him so hard my nuts was swelling up.
And fellows, did he buck.
He went up so high and for so long I think I seen some ducks flying northward, though none of them mistook my ride for a horsefly, I will guarantee you that. Down we’d go to the pits of hell, among pitchforks and devils, and up again to the land of harps. Then it got so I couldn’t tell down from up. All I knew was my butt felt like I was bent over a stump and someone was beating me with a stick and my bones was jarred so bad I figured I’d be spitting teeth out of my asshole.
I come out of the saddle a few times, my butt going skyward, but each trip I was able to bring myself right back into the leather. Finally he took to another plan and come down on his side and rolled. This mashed my leg in the dirt, then my side and head. It was loose dirt that had been kicked up by a lot of horses, so it was soft, and when he rolled I rolled with him, losing my hat and keeping my head. Had that dirt not been spongy, my bones would have been mixed into it so close you couldn’t have sorted it with a flour sifter.
After that roll he came up, snorted, and run me along the corral railing, trying to scrape my leg off. I managed to swing my leg over the saddle horn and stay in the saddle. When that didn’t work, he run to the middle of the corral and made one more great leap skyward, this one so high I thought I wasn’t never going to come down and might bump my head on the moon. But come down I did and when I did I wished I hadn’t, cause it pained my rear something fierce; a bolt of lightning rode up my backbone and into my head and made my sizable ears wiggle like hummingbird wings.
When we landed he kind of stumbled a bit, gave a couple of sad bucks, and then started to trot around the corral, snorting as he went. I leaned close to his ear and said, “You call that bucking?”
He seemed to take offense to that and run me straight into the corral. He hit the rails with his chest, dug his feet in so tight they was as rooted as oaks, and I went sailing off his back and over the upper railing and landed on top of some watching soldiers, scattering them like quail.
Colonel Hatch come over, looked down at me. “Well, you ain’t smarter than the horse, but you can ride good enough. You and the Former House Nigger are in with the rest of the riding niggers. Get you a uniform and boots that mostly fit, and with those ears you got, I figure you can pretty much hold up any size hat. Get all that figured out and put on, and come the crack of light you start training to be a member of the United States Colored Cavalry.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Ain’t there some papers to fill out?” he said to that sleepy colored soldier.
“Yes, sir,” said the soldier.
“Well, then, fill those out, too.” He walked away, and the sleepy soldier and the Former House Nigger helped me to my feet.
Over the days we drilled with the rest of the cavalry recruits up and down that horse lot and finally outside and around the fort until we was looking pretty persnickety and thinking we was a lot sharper than we really was. I sure felt better about being part of the cavalry than being in the infantry, who always seemed to be tired and pissed on, sweating and fretting and looking as if they needed a place to lie down.
The horse they gave me to ride was that black ogre I had tried to break in and had done so enough to loosely call him a mount. He really wasn’t as bad as I first thought: he was worse. You had to be at your best and alert every time you got on him, cause deep down in his bones he was always thinking about killing you. If you didn’t watch it, he’d act casual, like he was looking at a cloud, a bird, or some such, then he would quickly turn his head and take a nip out of your leg. I still got scars on my knee.
Anyway, the months passed, we drilled, and my buddy the Former House Nigger became the second-best rider in the troop. Me being the first, of course. He also cooked, and wasn’t nobody died during that time, though there was some sickness of the belly now and then. We mostly had grits and an occasional potato. Thank goodness there was weevils in the grits, or we wouldn’t have had no meat at all.
I thought it was all good at the time. I was uniform proud, I’ll tell you that. I sat on that black horse, which I had named Satan, like I was something special.
My pride got washed over by boredom in short time, though. We mostly did a little patrolling. Sometimes we’d go out for a few days, leaving some soldiers to guard the fort. What we did was ride around and see the countryside and collect our thirteen dollars a month, which was just so much paper, cause there wasn’t any place to spend it. It was all pretty much of the same from day to day. I did get to know a few horny toads by name, and I could have sworn a couple of crickets I’d seen was familiar, too.
Colonel Hatch was our overseer, though most of the training and such was done by a white lieutenant and a colored sergeant everyone called Tornado, this being the fellow we had met that first day in Hatch’s office, the one who seemed sleepy and had tossed the fly away. He had got this name from when he first came there and rode a horse for the first time and could only make it go in circles. Even though now he was a good rider, the handle had stuck. Still, I always thought of him as Sleepy or the Fly Catcher.
Colonel Hatch was an all-right fellow, by the way, and always treated us fair and square, if a little rough. He had faith in us and was a good soldier and polite in his own way. I had seen him leave the circle of the fire to walk off in the dark and fart. You can’t say that about just anyone. Manners out on the frontier was rare.
The rest of the country, unlike Colonel Hatch, saw us as a little suspicious. I even read about it here and there in the newspapers that come our way, many of them being weeks and months old, a few of them smelling like long-dead fish. They said how we was an experiment. The government had its worries about us, too, and seemed to figure we was just a bunch of ignorant niggers who might at any moment have a watermelon relapse and take to getting drunk and shooting each other. They had already made up their mind who we was, and every day we had to prove we wasn’t that and hadn’t never been.
Our hopes of showing folks we was prime and ready didn’t seem to have any chance of coming to be. We hadn’t seen any action, unless you want to count the morning Rutherford got into it with Prickly Pear—I didn’t name him; that come from his mother—and they fought over the last biscuit, which was due to the Former House Nigger actually cooking a good batch for a change. It was a hell of a fight. I have never seen fists thrown as fast or so much biting. Colonel Hatch, either to teach a lesson or out of hunger,
come over and ate that biscuit while they was scuffling, so it was a wasted bout.
But then there came a morning when things changed. We was given an assignment. Our orders was to go out to a nice run of creek water branching off the Colorado River and stop there. Some trees grew near the creek, and there was frequent dead wood. We was to pick that up and cut down some of the scrubby trees for firewood, giving room for the other trees to grow. That way we’d have a regular woodlot.
It took us most of the day to get to it, the twelve or so of us assigned to the job. It was near nightfall when we showed up. The white lieutenant, Scufford, was leading us, and we had Tornado with us, too. He was Top Soldier among the colored troops, though he didn’t always ride out with us, having duties to attend to for Colonel Hatch, like fly tossing and such.
Now, I don’t know why I done it that day, as I’d mostly left my Winchester under my bunk along with my pistols for the time I was a soldier, but it occurred to me on that dark and early morning to take them along with me to supplement my army Spencer and pistol. You wasn’t supposed to do that, but I done it anyway. I can’t put any reason on my choosing to do it, but I did.
The horses, except for mine, was all tuckered out by the time we got to the creek. We strung the horses on a long rope like catfish, and cut down some greenery to let them eat, but not so much they’d get the serious squirts. The wind blowing through the leaves was pleasant, though the tops of the trees wasn’t all that high above us. Fact was, after living in East Texas, I thought they seemed right scrawny. But they was trees, and you didn’t see many out there, so I was glad to be among them. The night came down and the moon rose up and the wind was cool.
We built a good fire on account of we wasn’t sneaking from no Indians, cause we didn’t think there was any, least not within our range. The lieutenant wasn’t worried anyway, as we had a good position along the creek and in the trees, and there was twelve of us, counting him, and we was well armed. He stationed some of the men as guards, and the rest of us sat around the fire until one of us was called to replace them. The fire was mostly old, dead mesquite, and it crackled as it burned and the smell from it was rich and smoky and made my nose itch.
The Former House Nigger did his best meal, grits and biscuits, and as we sat there eating, talk started up about this and another, horses and women, who among us had the biggest pecker, and then the Former House Nigger went into praising them that had owned him, talking about the men they was and how they had fought nobly for the Confederacy and so on. I don’t know what brought him to that, but his carrying on about their nobility was to the rest of the troops like a mouthful of dirt.
Prickly Pear, who was low to the ground, wide in the shoulders, and dull in the face, and who usually had little more to say than “I’m hungry” or “I’m gonna go shit,” said, “You is the biggest dummy ever walked, you house nigger, you. You is someone ain’t learned no damn thing, cause you was up in that house sucking up to them white folks. You learned to read and such, and you think you is white, or you ought to be. But me, I was a field nigger, and I tell you the man owned us had five hundred slaves. He couldn’t remember which nigger was which, was how it was. We was as similar to him as blackberries on a vine. He got mad at one of his slaves, he liked to tie them down, have a pot heated up with grease, which he made the slave’s own family heat till it boiled. He had him a rack on which he put it, then he go on and tip it a little, letting spots of grease come down on that runaway’s chest. He whipped his niggers, too. And hard.”
Prickly Pear took off his shirt then, turned his back to the firelight. The scars was plentiful and looked like dark ropes across his back. He put his shirt back on, said, “He done it now and again to make sure niggers knowed who they belonged to. Once a couple slaves slipped off to another plantation and stole a ham and some wine, and he had no bother about that long as they didn’t get caught and he got part of it. But they did get caught. They was ham bones and bottles in they hut, and they hadn’t shared it none, and he called them out, and with the owner of that ham and wine standing right there with him, he took one of them bottles and beat them two men, giving that other man, the one got thieved, his chance to swing the bottle. He swung until it broke. Then master got him a bat he made for just that sort of thing, and went to work on them men, who was tied and on their knees and had no way to fight back—whupped on them until they was coming apart, they heads busted up like squash. Beat them until they was dead, making us all stand there and watch, mens, womens, and chillun screamin’ and moanin’ and carryin’ on about what they was seeing. And when the master told them all to shut up, they did, cause they knew they didn’t, that bloody bat would be on they heads next. That’s my kind of learning with masters and white folk.”
“Not everyone was like that,” said the Former House Nigger.
“No, some was worse,” said Prickly Pear, “and I guess some was better, but one don’t weight out t’other. You owned, you owned, it don’t matter if you being beat or you up in the master’s house humping him in the ass and him reaching between his legs to fondle your nuts. You owned, and you doin’ what he wants, cause you don’t, he sell you off, trade you, kill you, cause you ain’t as good as a dog, which he treats better, feeds good, lets lay up on the porch. Me, I be in the fields all the time, and when I was freed I left out of that Southern country so fast the hat on my head spun around. You can paint over it any way you likes, but it don’t make them old times good.
“Tell you one thing, though. Heard the old master died, and I went back and found his grave one night. He had been buried for a time, but I dug him up and busted open his coffin, took the money off his eyes, dragged his rotting body out in a clearing, pieces falling off the bones, went all over his stinking self with a switch, like he felt it. I let him lay that night, and I settled down under a tree, watched the next morning till buzzards gathered on him, thick as seed ticks, and when they was eating good, I left out of there and I ain’t never gone back and ain’t got no mind to. I bet them ole buzzards choked to death on him.”
“You didn’t no more do that than fly away like a bird,” Tornado said.
“All right, I didn’t go back there, but that’s what I want to do when I hear he good and dead. It heavy wishful thinking, I admit, but I run it through my head so many times, it almost the same as I went and did it.”
After that, there was some throat clearing, and the white lieutenant looked as if he had suddenly come down with the miseries. The silence fell down heavy enough we could hear a night bird breathe. Even as tough as that old boy was, he must have thought it might be a good idea to calm things down, perhaps fearing, heavy as some of us was with our memories, we was about to revolt and beat him to death with a stick. The lieutenant cleared his throat, and to get us on his side went directly into a story about how he had fought for the Union, making sure to mention the bravery of colored troops, then he told a couple of jokes about army folk, and then two or three long, windy ones I didn’t get. Then he commanded everyone to bed, except them he put on watch as replacements for those that had been standing and was now brought in to eat their supper.
He put me and the Former House Nigger on vigil, and then a couple hours later we was replaced and got to go to bed. It seemed as if I had just put my head down, and then the sun was up, and we was, too. The Former House Nigger prepared a breakfast of beans that contained what he said was black pepper nuggets but looked like rat turds to me. Taste was similar, too. I think it was his way of making us all feel better about the dining.
I ate it anyway, and was sopping up with a finger in the bean juice when I seen the lieutenant coming. We jumped to attention along with the other soldiers that was eating there by the creek.
The lieutenant said, “Boys, there’s a patch of scrub oaks off the creek, scattered out there across the grass, and they aren’t growing worth a damn. They’re going to be your concern. I’m going to take some of the troops and see if we can pot us a deer or two to take back to ca
mp. It would beat beans and grits and inconsistent biscuits—no offense, Private House Nigger.”
“None taken, sir,” said the Former House Nigger.
“Besides, I’m bored,” said the lieutenant.
“I’m bored, too,” I said.
“Looks like you’re going to continue to be that way,” he said, “unless cutting scrub oak livens you up. I want you fellows to cut that scrub down and saw it up and load it in the wagon to take back for firewood, so it doesn’t look like we just come out here and rode around and spent the night at the creek, which is pretty much what we did.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“I thought we could use that oak to smoke the meat I plan to bring in.”
“That’s a good plan,” I said. “That part I can help with. I can smoke meat.” I didn’t mention, of course, that I was a pretty good cook. That was the Former House Nigger’s job, and it wasn’t one I wanted.
“What if you don’t get no meat?” Prickly Pear said.
“We can still burn the wood, but it won’t be for smoking deer shanks. But hell. I saw those deer with my binoculars no less than five minutes ago. Big, fat deer, about a half dozen of them running along. They went over the hill. I’m going to take most of the troops in case I run into hostiles, and besides, I don’t like to skin deer.”
“I be the best deer skinner around, and I love to do it,” Prickly Pear said.
“That’s some disappointing shit for you,” the lieutenant said. “I got Tornado with me, and I need you here, Prickly. Nat, I’m putting you in charge. You get bit by a snake and die, then the Former House Nigger takes over. I’m also going to put Rutherford, Bill, and Rice, couple others in your charge, and Prickly Pear. Prickly Pear, you take charge if everyone else is dead, got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Prickly Pear said, and he looked right proud to hear this.
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