by Sarah Bird
When the hee-hawing went on—“Hear that? He got him.” “Laid him out on the cooling board!” “Took him to the boneyard!” “Buried him! Clean buried Stanky!”—I turned away and made out like I couldn’t be bothered with such childish moonshines.
“Don’t mind them ignorant fools, Bill,” Lem said.
I slept little that night for, even more than a woman alone, season was always open on nancy boys. I clutched at the collar of my jacket and started at every noise. Most of my barracks mates were fine men, but there were jackals amongst them. Jackals and the easily led. I grew up hearing of what men did to women, but recalling the stories about what they did to boys who’d been singled out as funny made my blood run cold.
On top of everything else keeping me anxioused up, tomorrow was Friday. Last day I had to prove to Allbright that I was fit for the cavalry. Though I wasn’t any circus performer and never would be, Bunny and I had smoothed out enough that I could keep up with the rest. What I had to do now was show Allbright that I wouldn’t be a divisive element in the unit. Somehow or other, I had to get right with Vikers. Or, at least, appear to the Sergeant’s eyes to be.
Chapter 42
Friday.
As the company fell in and marched to the training field, I felt the Sergeant’s eyes on me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in the army anymore, but I for God sure knew I’d die before I left with him thinking ill of me.
When we reached the field, I saw my salvation: the corporals had set up eight hay bales and were pinning bull’s-eye targets on them. We were going to shoot. My heart bumped with joy thinking of how I’d prove myself today.
But the best of it was when wooden crates were pried open and brand-new Spencer repeating carbines were thrust into our hands. I’d already seen the Spencer in action and knew it beat my old yagger and any other single-action rifle all to blazes. I had itched to get my hands on one back when Sheridan’s soldiers were being drilled on them. I knew more about this weapon than the instructors walking us through loading, sighting, and such.
After we were split up into eight lines, Allbright explained how we had to be winnowed since ammo was limited and he needed to find the good shots before it ran out. “Our lives will depend upon identifying our finest marksmen,” he said. “They will be named ‘troop riflemen.’ They will ride point and be our first line of defense as we pass through territory held by hostiles.”
The winnowing went fast for there weren’t but a dozen or so who’d ever held a gun and fewer still who’d fired one. I was last in my line, watching, itching for my chance to show out.
Greene and Caldwell both shot wild and were pulled out of line. Vikers turned out to be a fair shot for a four-eyes. Good enough not to be cut, but not anywhere close to me. The man in front of me was Fernie Teague. He hit an old robin’s nest and joked, “Thought I’d shoot y’all down some breakfast.” Everyone laughed. Even Sergeant Allbright. Still grinning, Fernie added his magazine to the pile of those handed over by the bad shots and stepped away.
Corporal Masters barked out, “Cathay!” I stepped up to the head of the line. A cloud of smoke from the shooters who’d gone before hung heavy as a black fog and smelled like a battlefield. Blinking, I put that fine Spencer carbine to my shoulder, flipped up the sight, breathed out, fired, and put one close to the bull’s-eye. I sighted in, got my range, and inched closer with the next shot. The third was a dead bull’s-eye. I did that five more times then Allbright told me to step back before my carbine locked up from overheating.
I was barely able to suppress my grin for there was no doubt, I was the best shot in the company.
The Sergeant dismissed us and he left without a word.
When the black powder fog cleared I saw that most of the country boys were clumped around Teague, laughing at his joke about breakfast. Vikers had his growing flock all shining up to him like he’d been the one shot best. Other groups here and there complained about how their rifle was out of true or the wind had carried off what should of been a dead shot. Lem would have been making over me, but, as farrier, he’d been excused, so I stood by myself, alone on that big field.
To blazes with them all, I thought. Not a damn one of them had to like me now. Not even Allbright. I’d be riding point. I’d be what was between them and the hostiles. They needed me. And needing was a hell of a lot stronger than liking. I’d proved myself. I was going out West and none of them could stop me.
I was heading for the mess hall when Masters approached and told me to report to the Sergeant’s office. I hurried over, eager to hear direct from him that I’d be a troop rifleman.
He was waiting outside his office, standing in the shadows, where he had been watching everything. He gave me an at ease and said, “Congratulations, Cathay, you’re a fine shot. Best in the company. You’d be a rifleman, if you were coming out West with us.”
If?
“But you’re not. Though I warned you, it is clear that you have remained a divisive element. I can’t have that. Come to my office after reveille tomorrow. I will have your orders issued. You will proceed to HQ for reassignment to an infantry unit.”
Chapter 43
Giving up was such a relief that at lights out I fell direct into the first night of real sleep I’d had since I set foot in the barracks. Soon as I let my guard down, though, the night riders came creeping out of the dark forest where they’d hidden, waiting to pick me off as I rolled away from Old Mister’s farm.
Their faces were tombstone white, but the hands they reached out for me were black. I wasn’t in the wagon, though. I was running. Trying to run anyway, but I had that damn skirt on again. Though I fought to move, I was frozen in place. They were coming for me. I glanced over my shoulder, but it wasn’t the pattyrollers coming for me. The savages were. They would discover I was a woman and use me the way they used enemy women. When they grabbed me, though, their hands weren’t red, but black as rotten pawpaws. And I knew I was to be lynched. I tried to scream, but my tongue was frozen and the cry got trapped in my throat. Trapped by a tight strap of cloth.
I woke as a gag was cinched up so deep in my mouth, I near choked on my own tongue. I lashed out in the darkness at my attackers. Kicked one fellow in the head, another in the crotch judging from the loud “Oof!” he blew out.
“Hey?” I heard Lem ask. “Whatcha all—”
The hollow clunk of what sounded to be the heavy stock of a Spencer hitting Lem’s head was followed by a screech as the iron feet of his bunk raked across the floor when his falling body pushed it aside.
Six pairs of hands cocooned me in a rough army blanket until I couldn’t fight anymore. They finished the job by winding rope around the whole package and tying me fast.
They toted me atop their heads like a wild boar they were bringing back to camp to be dressed out. I heard a door open, then close, and we were outside.
They’re going to drown me in the river.
I waited for the slope that meant they were carrying me down the steep hill to the Mississippi and tried to work out how to get untied before I drowned.
But the descent I was expecting never came. Instead another door opened and from the way the sound of it closing echoed, I worked out that we were in the washroom with its hard tile walls and floors. This I came to know for a fact when they chunked me on the tile floor, face-first, causing my teeth to bust through my lip so that blood filled my gagged mouth. Then a couple of men hoisted up the draping ends of the blanket and started to swing. When they’d built up a good head of steam, they slammed me against the wall. I wasn’t knocked out, only left senseless. I drew myself into a ball as much as I could, trying to protect my head.
“Come on, boys!” It was no surprise to hear Vikers’s rasp of a voice. The hatred surged up in me throbbing hot. “Put your backs into it, we’ve got to give our champion shooter a real ride.”
The next few swings were the worst. After that I was beyond feeling anything. Worn out, and figuring they’d killed me, they dumped me o
n the floor. I played possum. They untied me. Vikers kicked the blanket away from my face with the toe of his boot and I sprung on him like a cougar leaping up to rip out a deer’s throat. I would have brought him down had his men not locked a stranglehold on me.
Vikers pulled up straight so that he stood an inch or two over me since my legs had given out and I drooped between Greene and Caldwell. “What did I tell you?” Vikers asked the other troopers’d ganged up with him. “Our man here sleeps in his uniform. Never takes it off. Any y’all ever seen our man here naked?”
His mob, already scenting even more blood, tried to top each other with insults about me and the nasty doings they claimed they’d seen me and Lem get up to. When they reached the right pitch of blood lust, Vikers pulled out a wicked-looking wire brush last used for scrubbing flaking paint off the stables. “Man never undresses, is a man must not ever bathe,” Vikers said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
They keened for me like one of Iyaiya’s mobs calling for an enemy prisoner to be thrown down to them.
“I’d say it was past time Stanky had him a bath. Get him on his feet.”
Greene and Caldwell jerked me up, and though my mouth was gagged and my throat was nearly ruined with my silent screams, I gargled out a protest.
“Appears Stanky is trying to say something,” Vikers observed, playful as a cat toying with a mouse. “What do you have to say, Stanky? Were you going to scream for your sweetheart Mule to come save you? Let’s hear what Stanky has to say. Take the gag off.”
When they did, I didn’t have to work to lower my voice as I promised, “If you touch me, you hard-tailed bastard, I will kill you. Even if I have to come back from the grave to do it, you will die, screaming in agony.”
The men’s hold slackened a bit. I could of terrified any one of them into letting me go. But Vikers, who feared losing power more than death, said, “I believe this mouth needs cleaning up first.”
The pain of a wire brush being ripped across your lips is beyond my ability to describe. But not a drop fell from my eyes, nor did a cry escape from my ravaged mouth after that first cruel stroke. This surprised Vikers, and I took the opportunity to kick him in the face. That broke the spell and they fell on me, Vikers gouging me with the brush, the strokes getting hotter and harder when I refused to scream for mercy.
Panting hard as a roused-up stallion on the prod, his eyes walled, nostrils open wide, quivering in an odd way, Vikers ordered, “Strip him!”
With many idiot remarks about how I stunk and deserved what was coming, his boys tore my pants off, revealing my drawers. I went limp then, defeated by the inevitability of what was to come. Much worse than dying was how those men would use me when they discovered my true nature. There was no evil worse than a man sticking his business in a woman not of a like mind. I wished fervently for death instead of that. They were clawing off my drawers when the sound of a rifle being cocked stopped them.
Sergeant Allbright stepped forward. Lem, blood caked around a gash on his head that showed white to the bone, stood beside him. Allbright, his carbine pointed direct at Vikers, said, “Next man touches that trooper is dead.”
Vikers and the rest backed away, and though the pain was terrible when I moved, I managed to pull my uniform on.
Allbright took a long time getting his words out for his mouth was clogged with disgust. “There’s one reason and one reason alone that I am not going to hand every man in here a dishonorable discharge. Our orders came in late today. We deploy tomorrow for Fort Arroyo. I won’t muster every single one of you out. Not because you don’t deserve it, but because we are the first colored cavalry regiment in the history of the United States Army and we get one chance. I will not allow you animals to destroy that chance for those more worthy who will follow you.”
He stared, breathing hard against the anger he was reining back. When he spoke, though, it was with a sadness that stung worse than anger ever could. “Damn you all. Don’t be the animals they tried to turn us into. You are not slaves anymore. But if you keep on acting like slaves, like something less than men, they will keep on treating us as such. We will only be free men when we act like free men. Now get out of my sight. All of you.”
They slunk away beneath his hard stare. Barely able to walk, I shuffled past Allbright and he said, “I’ll leave your orders with the regimental clerk.” He shook his head, started to walk away, then stopped and added, “Or,” he paused before finishing, “you can come with us. If you’re fit for service.”
I think he made the offer to punish Vikers. Also, I’m certain he didn’t believe I would take it.
“I’m fit, sir,” I mumbled, blood and pain flowing with every word.
Allbright, disappointed and disgusted, shook his head sorrowfully as he walked away.
Nearly carrying me, Lem helped me outside. We passed Vikers and he hissed, “Something not right about you, Cathay. You know it and I know it. You can hide it here, but no place to hide out there. No place to hide.”
BOOK THREE
Out West
Chapter 44
When we rode out in the black hours before sunrise, I was nothing but an oozing sack of pain slopping around atop Bunny.
“Hang on, Bill. Hang on,” Lem, riding next to me, chanted. “All’s you got to do is make it down to the river. Ain’t but a mile or two. After that, I’ma load you on that boat and you can rest easy. Bill. Bill?”
When I didn’t answer, he suggested, “Maybe you should take them transfer papers.”
I gave him an animal growl left no doubt how I felt about that. Lem went on talking, but his voice came from farther and farther away and then, along with the clang of the riverboat bells and the rusty croaks of a flock of purple grackles, it stopped altogether.
Next memory I had was of opening my eyes on the terrifying sight of a white plume of steam rising up between two tall crowns of iron that stabbed black points into it as its whistle hooted out the mournful song Cotton and slaves. Cotton and slaves. Every splinter of that haunted vessel vibrated its history of evil and cruelty up through me from the planks I laid upon.
“Rest easy, Bill,” Lem’s voice soothed when, whimpering like a sick dog, I struggled to rise up and escape the terrible fate that waited down the river. He patted me back down, my head resting on his jacket, which he’d folded into a pillow since, even more than I had before, I kept a death grip on my own jacket, buttoned up to my chin. My saddle and other belongings sat next to me in the neat stack where Lem had placed them.
“Hard part’s over,” he said. “Leastwise for the next few days. All’s in the world you got to do now is lay back and heal up.” Gently, he patted sweet calendula cream on my ruined mouth, then he brought his canteen to my lips. When he lifted my head so I could drink, he tipped me up enough that I saw how the rest of the company was all sprawled out across the top deck like so much felled timber. This hectic scene doubled and tripled and tilted back and forth for the beating had rattled my brain.
Fearing I would spend the rest of my days trapped in a cartwheeling world, I tried to focus on the paddle wheel turning at the back of the boat. It was a dozen yards wide and tall as a three-story house. Faces, always two of the same one, appeared above me. They were like mirrors reflecting back how bad I looked. The good men in the troop, Fernie Teague, the Georgia boys and them, could barely look upon my battered face. The bad ones had no trouble staring at me with critical eyes. Like I was a piece of poor workmanship. A job that hadn’t been done up to standards. A killing that’d gone half finished. I was mostly out of my head for the next couple of days. Every time I opened my eyes ghostly white birds were flying across an overcast sky gray as wash water and Lem was dripping water into my mouth just the way I’d dripped cider into my dead soldier’s mouth.
At some point, the boat must of made a stop, for Lem was giving me some bark he’d stripped off a willow tree to chew on to quiet the moans I wasn’t aware I’d been making. The long and short of it is, I’d of died except for
Private Lemuel Powdrell. He tended to me gentle as a mama to her babe. He’d of given me a sponge bath, but, even when passed smooth out, my wits would collect themselves the instant a hand came anywhere near the uniform I kept buttoned up around me tight as a second skin, and I would not allow it.
One time Sergeant Allbright’s face appeared between me and the white birds. I was mortified to smithereens to have him see me, shape I was in. I was a thorn in his side. At best a nuisance and at worst the reason his troop wasn’t coming together the way he’d dreamed black men in uniform ought to. It hurt my heart for him to see me in such pitiful shape and I closed my eyes and slipped off away from that pain, too.
The next time I opened my eyes, the Georgia boys were lined up across the edge of the deck pissing into the Mississippi, wagging their beans about so the streams would crisscross and arguing about who was shooting farthest.
Lem asked me, “You think you can make water? Want me to help you up?”
“Can’t stand,” I croaked. “Fetch me that blanket and my mess kit.”
Lem unstrapped the bedroll from my saddle and helped me to tent up inside it, and I proceeded to squat like a frog and fill my tin to overflowing. It hurt so bad that if I could of picked one moment to die that’d of been the one. The whistle blew and the black came up again.
Chapter 45
Though we were meant to sail on down to Indianola off the coast of Texas, there was a yellow fever epidemic raging from New Orleans on south. Sergeant didn’t want to risk that it had reached Indianola, so we docked north of New Orleans in the town of Vicksburg and unloaded in what remained of the city Grant had bombarded and burned to cinders.