Coal Black Horse

by Robert Olmstead

  From there he could smell wisps of smoke and cresting the low rise he could see the town sprawled out beneath him where a river made a great oxbow turn, and at the extreme arc of its curvature, crossing the river twice, were the railroad tracks nicking past beneath the night’s first veil. There were engine houses, water towers, and fueling stations. There was the meander of inbound dirt roads feeding plank pikes cut straight as dies. Wagons and soldiers were converging on the town from all directions, their dashing black shapes spectral in the last bands of red light that seamed the western horizon. A cold fog was drifting in and had begun to numb and wet the empty fields.

  The pain in his ankle dulled with the night’s cooling and it no longer concerned him. He knew he was now near to something big, an army, a battle, a horse. He felt himself on the very edge of the fields of war, the ever-moving place of grinding violence whose turbulent wake he’d been following for days. The winding river, the rails, the hard-riding cavalry told him so, and he had little idea how deep he was or how far they sprawled before him. No matter the distance, no matter the depth, he’d come so far, and no matter what he’d been through he concluded he was at the beginning once again.

  He did not know what to do right away, so he sat down and held his arms clasped round his folded legs, his chin on his knees. Where before he’d been desperate to travel and driven foolish in his decisions, he now felt a calming patience hard learned. The rain was falling more heavily and was cold and the air turned unseasonably bitter, and he had the passing notion he was going to freeze to death, but he knew it was fatigue and hunger and the lingering effects of his head wound. He felt the darkness pressing his eyelids and there unconsciousness momentarily caught him.

  His short dream was the brief and repeated experience of falling without end. Each time he fell, he could not stop himself no matter how hard he tried. He was shot and falling to the ground. He was tumbling past the windlass and falling into the tomb of the well. He was falling from the coal black horse. He knew he was dreaming even as he dreamt. He murmured and called out to himself but could not break through to consciousness. When he did wake he did not know that he had even slept, but he awoke in darkness and a heavy shoe was kicking at his swollen ankle.

  “What are you,” came a hollow voice from over his head.

  The voice was coming at him from a great distance and he could not see its source. It was as if he’d awakened at the bottom of a pitch-black well. As he found wakefulness he felt himself arriving for a long time until he understood it was a soldier’s voice asking the question and the soldier was now prodding him at the leg with the point of his bayonet. When he did not answer the soldier’s question, the soldier set the point of a bayonet against his thigh and pressed. He could not feel the pain for how frightened he was at the shock of discovery. The soldier leaned harder and his leg spasmed and kicked when the blade went into his skin.

  “I know’d you weren’t dead,” the soldier said with delight. “What’s your purpose and I don’t want to hear any lies come out of your mouth.”

  He looked up and saw standing over him a man dressed in a blue uniform and his heart went cold. The soldier wore a thin black beard and gold-rimmed eye glasses and off his shoulder was the rising moon. The soldier stepped back so he might stand, and when he did the soldier flicked open the shell jacket with the point of the bayonet revealing its dyed interior. The soldier relieved him of the pistol he wore in his belt and his knife and then they waited not long before another soldier walked in on them.

  Immediately the two soldiers disagreed over the appropriate password and this issue they debated between themselves for an inordinate amount of time. Each claimed his was the new password and the other was still using the old password. Without arriving at any satisfactory conclusion as to what course of events they should pursue, they finally lost interest and let it drop and turned their attention to Robey.

  “You got any money hid?” the second soldier asked. “Got any ‘backy? You rebs always got ‘backy.”

  Robey shook his head no, in reply.

  “He don’t talk?” the second soldier asked of the first.

  “He ain’t talked yet, ‘cept in his sleep.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “I don’t talk sleep so’s I don’t know.”

  “Cat got your tongue?” the second soldier said to Robey.

  Again he shook his head and the second soldier snickered.

  “Maybe he’s got a head full of cotton,” the second soldier said. “By God, he’ll talk when they stick a rope around his neck.”

  “He’s just a boy,” the first soldier said.

  “A boy’ll kill you as dead as anyone else,” the second soldier said. He then unfolded his pocketknife and slipped the blade into each of Robey’s pockets and sliced them open.

  “He ain’t got nothing,” the first soldier said, impatient to be relieved of sentry duty and already tired of the responsibility of the prisoner he’d taken on.

  They determined that maybe he was not the curiosity they’d thought he was, but still, the coat was suspicious enough and he was armed and so should be delivered to the major. The second soldier told him to cross his hands behind his back and then tied his arms at the wrist with a piece of twine and twisted the bindings tight with a stub of wood he carried. Then the first soldier indicated with his bayonet that he was to move in the direction of the town below where torches had been lit and the streets were bright and lined with wagons.

  The walk down the hill was a torment to his swollen ankle now that it’d been put back to work. He stumbled in the tufted grass and tripped and the soldier accompanying him prodded him at times and at other times assisted him as if he could not decide which way to treat him.

  Eventually they reached the town and as they passed through the narrow streets, curtains were folded back and squares of pale yellow light showed from small-paned windows. Soldiers were everywhere in the streets and wagons were positioned to barricade side lanes and alleys. Soldiers stood posted at the junction of intersections. They milled about in conversation and squatted on the ground wrapped in oilcloths, hunkered against the rain.

  Stable hands and draymen sat in the clutter of hand trucks and upturned carts, their shafts thrust into the air. They were eating crackers and cheese, scraping out cans of sardines with the backs of their crooked fingers, licking them clean and lighting cigarettes. A large poland hog, its throat already slit and blood gushing to the cobbles, was being clubbed to its side with an axe and slaughtered in the street under a dozen knives. Soldiers roamed in kitchen gardens, stabbing the earth with bayonets looking for silver plate, gold coins, and jewels. Many of the them conversed in languages he had never heard before and all seemed used to the chaos that swirled around them. Tonight this town and a few days ago it was another town and in a few days it’d be a third and they’d do it all over again.

  In one garden there were soldiers eerily lit by an oil lamp and tied to a tree branch by their wrists and gagged with bayonets.

  “They’re drunkards,” the soldier told him without being asked.

  From an alley came a shriek that stopped them and when they looked into its darkness they could see a cabal of soldiers lifting the skirts of a servant woman to see if her master had hidden any money or jewels close to her body. When they found none they still did not let her skirt down, but began to cut away its folds with their clasp knives.

  “You’re too young to see that,” the soldier said, and prodded him in the back that he should continue along.

  More cavalry were arriving by the minute, unsaddling their lathered mounts and tethering them to bayonets stabbed in the ground. The soldier stopped him, handed him his rifle, and held to his shoulder as he bent to pick some gravel out of his shoe. Where they paused, a shutter flapped open and a woman’s head filled the opening, her hair let down and draping her shoulders. Soldiers milled at the wooden steps to the side entrance of her house. A sentry, sitting by its closed door, occupie
d himself by tossing his hat in the air and catching it. One soldier laughed and observed to another that he didn’t think the town would have any old maids left after tonight.

  Peddlers moved amongst the soldiers and queued at the women’s doorways, hawking their common wares of writing paper, sewing kits, candy, and tobacco. Knots of teamsters paced about, smoking and restless with their prolonged wait while the draft horses stood shifting in harness. Ahead of them lanterns hissed as their reflectors threw coves of light that cut into the cold and drizzle and showed stockpiles of lumber, kegs of nails, horseshoes. Sacks of oats, potatoes, and flour were already loaded in the wagons. There were ducks, chickens, and turkeys in slatted crates. Beef calves blatted for their feed of milk.

  The light they passed through showed a gang of black men dressed in rags and cast-offs standing quietly on a long expanse of railroad platform. The men of the perimeter were made to hold up a rope that encircled the lot of them and outside the rope there were soldiers with sharp-edged bayonets fixed to form a hedge of steel blades pointed at their chests.

  A soldier with a megaphone was warning them that if a single nigger hand should ever let go the rope and it should fall below their waists, they’d all be shot where they stood.

  They continued to wind through the back streets, seemingly lost in their maze, when finally they came to a large square, the majority of which was taken up by a dry stone fountain and at the head of the square, behind a tall wrought-iron fence, was their destination. An immense house glared with white lights that emanated from three tall windows across each story. Rising to the house’s deep-set front door was a half-story granite stoop manned by guards and under which was an entrance below ground for tradesmen and servants.

  They climbed the stairs and entered into a foyer where the light softened and filtered through an interior door’s glass panel. A guard opened the interior door and told them to wait where they were and shut the door on them. Then the guard came back, opened the door, and led them into a hallway, where an old woman greeted them. She wore a white veil and white gloves. Around her neck was a string of pearls and each pearl was the size of a marble. Behind her stood a maid and coming up behind the maid was a young officer. He carried before him a wide leather book stuffed with papers.

  The old woman told them they’d have to wait as the major had yet to arrive but was anticipated shortly. She told them there were others seeking an audience with the major and she was looking forward to meeting him herself, as if the occasion was not military occupation but one of a social nature. His guard and the young officer with the book of papers exchanged irritated looks and exasperated, the young officer swirled a finger next to his head.

  “Go ahead,” the young officer said, resigned to the old woman’s hospitality. “It’s her house. We are here as her guests.”

  Her intentions affirmed, the old woman glowed. Gracefully she showed them down the hall and through a doorway where inside the parlor, the blended fumes of tobacco and whiskey and the heat of the room’s wood fire overwhelmed him. There were other people in the room, standing and sitting, and these he avoided with his eyes. He asked his guard that he might sit and the guard agreed to let him.

  Here they waited in the company of more guards, bored and hardened men standing at ease and, oddly enough, talking about shooting quail. Inside, the house was as if outfitted from the China trade. There were silver clocks and rosewood tables, enameled screens and porcelain vases blooming with peacock feathers. He imagined each room like this one: crystal chandeliers, dark paintings hung in ornate frames, the embossed spines of books, silver snuff boxes, upholstered furniture, and heavy curtains misty with condensation.

  His brain began to unreel. The heated room was slipping from his mind. Could this be what people were fighting over, the many possessions that surrounded him? These objects with so much value and so little use? He thought how the sweep of a hand or the lick of a flame and they would be broken and burned. Maybe it was the weak and the fragile and the beautiful that made you the craziest and made you fight the hardest.

  From the hallway came the commotion of opening doors and crossing the parlor’s threshold, the words of an angry exchange. Robey was tired and hungry, but he was not concerned. He knew he would be delivered. He did not know why he knew it, but he knew this was not the end of his journey.

  “What kind of dodge is this?” a voice came from the hallway. It was the young officer with the leather book of papers.

  “He says he wants to hold a prayer meeting,” the old woman was saying, “and is here to seek the major for his permission.”

  “He’s the worst in love with God of any man I ever known,” said a woman’s urgent voice. “He prays on his knees and sometimes his eyeballs roll around backward inside his head.”

  “I’d like to see that,” the old woman said solemnly.

  “But, ma’am,” the young officer said with all possible forbearance, “we don’t want a prayer meeting.”

  “Well, why not?” the old woman declared. “I can think of nothing more appropriate.”

  “He has a mighty voice,” the woman said. “Sometimes when he prays it’s so awful powerful he has to put his face in a cracker box.”

  “Put them in the parlor,” the young officer said in exasperation, and then commanded that the guard in the parlor be increased.

  When Robey saw the girl, she was following behind the man in all-black livery with white hair and white mutton-chops bushing his cheeks, and behind them was the blind woman, haggard and tired. The man was pink-faced and wore shoulders that rounded above his chest. He limped in one leg, but it did not seem the limp of a real injury. Robey could feel himself in the direction of the man’s wicked little eyes as they scanned the room. The girl had lightened her skin with the slightest stroke of chalk powder and reddened her hard shallow cheeks but could do little about her broken lips.

  The soldier guarding him leaned down and whispered how her appearance surely did not go against her. Another of the guards caught the eye of the girl, hooked a finger inside his cheek, and made a popping noise. He then smiled and kissed his fingertips. Her panicked eyes flew to Robey’s where they stayed, and then they dulled and grayed.

  8

  WHEN THE MAJOR ARRIVED he was carrying his watch in hand and Robey was made to stand as the major, shedding his oilcloth, entered the parlor. The major’s head was large and his face was shaped flat and pale. His eyebrows were great white wings that flared dramatically from his brow as if threatening flight from the surface of his forehead. He was by appearance a horseman, for he was bow-legged and walked with his legs turned outward and his toes turned in. He handed his sword to one of the guards, took off his cap, and said to the old woman shadowing him that, yes, a broiled chicken would delight him to no end if one could be found at such an ungodly hour.

  “Is that altogether necessary?” he said, pointing to the bindings at Robey’s wrist.

  “He’s a prisoner-spy,” the soldier said and tugged open the blue jacket to show gray.

  “Please,” the major said. “Untie the young man. We’ll just have to take our chances.” Then, to the young officer with the leather book, he expressed the sentiment that someday this war would be over and when it was they would all have to live with each other once again.

  The woman directed her maid to immediately kill a chicken and broil it for the good major. She then told the major a fire had been built in the library and he should sit by the fire and warm himself as the night outside was turning cool and wet.

  “It’s spring nights like this that the cold can deceive you the most,” she said, to which he agreed. She then told him he should rest himself as the train was running late but should be along shortly, and when it finally arrived he would surely be busy with the off loading.

  The major looked at his watch in the palm of his hand and asked her how she knew his train was late.

  “I have ears to hear with,” she tried in her most alluring manner.


  “Yes. Yes you do,” he said. He found the young officer’s eyes with his own and communicated reprimand. He told the woman not to concern herself with the train. It was his business to know when the train would arrive as it was his train and then he disappeared through a doorway deeper into the house’s interior.

  It wasn’t long before the young officer with the leather book came to the parlor and indicated they were to follow him. As he stood, Robey cut his eyes to the girl, but she sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap, her vision cast in the direction of a tall window.

  The young officer led them down a long lamplit hallway, smoky and orange and hung with family portraits set in ornate gilded frames to a room that fronted the square. Inside the room, a gallery walled with books, was a fireplace and the major straddling a wooden chair close to the crackling wood. He’d removed his damp jacket. His collar was unbuttoned and he sat as one who wanted proximity to the fire. His arms were hung off the chair back and in one hand he held a glass of amber-colored whiskey. He was teetering back and forth, letting himself onto the front legs of his chair and then the hind legs and closer to the flames where he was sweating and seemed to feel the strange need to do so.

  In the doorway stood the old woman whispering to a much younger version of herself. She too wore pearls and a tightly bodiced peach dress with ample skirts. The woman’s daughter, Robey concluded. Though they were whispering about the major, she seemed intent on another individual in the room, a black-haired cavalry officer.

  “Too old,” the woman was saying, and Robey could see how right she was in her observation. However alert and vital the major at first had seemed, in repose he showed himself to be too old to be in a uniform, his smiling head perched on its stiff collar, his purple-spotted hands hanging from his shirt cuffs, tufts of white hair similar to his eyebrows rimming his red shell-like ears. His face, though elderly and care-worn, was the man’s face returning, as some men’s faces do, to its original boyish likeness.