There’s no way of telling how long Henkins would have made Caleb run if he hadn’t looked up and seen Major Rogers watching from his window. Then Henkins recalled that Rogers, the battalion’s executive officer, had made it clear that he would be keeping a close personal watch on Caleb’s training and progress. The next time that Caleb came around, Henkins halted him, relieved him of the rifle, and ordered him to fall back in ranks.
“What was that all about?” whispered Hellewell, a scrawny recruit from Pennsylvania.
“You tell me,” said Caleb.
“Silence in the ranks!” ordered Henkins and went back to drilling his company.
About a month after Caleb enlisted, things started looking up. The company was coming to the end of basic training, and Henkins had the men out drilling as usual when a brawny cavalry sergeant came striding onto the parade ground carrying a pair of blunt-edged training sabers. Henkins turned the company over to the visitor, who faced the trainees.
“My name is Sergeant Blanchard,” he told them, speaking slowly as though to a group of foreigners. He held the sabers at arm’s length. “Does anyone know what these are?”
No one answered.
“Are you deaf?” he roared.
“No, sir,” came the ragged response. Blanchard surveyed them with disgust. His eye caught on Caleb.
“You—Big Boy,” he shouted, pointing a saber at Caleb. “Do you know what this is?”
“Yes, sir,” said Caleb. “It’s a saber.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Blanchard sarcastically. “In fact, it was a forty-two-inch scimitar type known popularly as a ‘wrist breaker.’ That’s why we cut it down to thirty-six inches. Get your black butt out here.” A sigh of relief went up from the other recruits.
Caleb stepped out of ranks and approached the sergeant, who looked him up and down.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Jardine, sir. Caleb Jardine.”
Caleb had at least two inches on the sergeant. “Big as you are, Jardine,” Blanchard said, “you might be excused for mistaking this for a razor.” The recruits laughed, as they were expected to. Suddenly, Blanchard threw one of the blunt training sabers at Caleb, who caught it by the hilt.
Without a pause, Blanchard followed up with a broad stroke that Caleb parried noisily with the side of his blade. Instead of waiting for the sergeant’s next move, Caleb let the force of Blanchard’s thrust spin him halfway around and took advantage of the momentum to launch a chopping blow that caught Blanchard’s saber solidly just above the hilt. The sound of steel on steel rang out over the parade ground. Blanchard clutched his right hand in his left and waited for the pain to subside. Caleb stood at the alert.
The recruits held their breath as they waited for Blanchard’s reaction. Instead of exploding, he looked at Caleb and said, “Now that you’ve got that out of your system, why don’t we show these boys what a saber is for.”
For fifteen minutes, he and Caleb showed the recruits the variety of thrusts, blows, blocks, and parries available to the skilled sabreur. Finally, both running with sweat, they stopped, and Blanchard told the recruits, “Though it can be used on foot, the saber is essentially meant to be employed on horseback.”
Raising two fingers to his mouth, he gave a shrill whistle. There was a whistle in response, and a corporal of cavalry came galloping onto the parade ground leading a big bay. He dismounted and handed the reins of the second horse to Blanchard.
Pointing with his saber at Caleb, the sergeant said, “Pritchard, lend your mount to this recruit.” Though clearly not happy, the corporal obeyed. Without even inquiring whether Caleb could ride, Blanchard swung aboard the big bay and rode thirty yards to the front left of the formation. Caleb mounted and rode thirty yards in the opposite direction. Then he wheeled the dappled gray around so he was facing Blanchard. The saber was in his right hand, its blade vertical and resting lightly on his right shoulder.
Holding his saber high overhead, Blanchard bellowed at the recruits, “Your friend Private Jardine and I will now demonstrate some of the basic equestrian tactics with the saber. Since I am a sergeant in the United States Army, for the purposes of this demonstration, Jardine will represent the rebel cavalry. He looks pretty fierce, does he not?” The recruits laughed. “However, do not expect him to win this engagement. Johnny Reb never wins.” Extending his arm and saber fully toward Caleb, Blanchard spurred his horse into a trot. So did Caleb.
“On this first pass,” shouted Blanchard, “I shall thrust, and Private Jardine will parry my thrust.” He spurred the bay into a canter. Caleb did the same. As the two horsemen converged, Blanchard hit the bay hard with his spurs, causing it to cannon toward Caleb. At the same time he thrust the blunt saber directly at Caleb’s chest.
Patiently, Caleb maneuvered the gray at a slight angle from the charge of the bay and waited for the thrust, his saber close to and across his body, right to left. His eyes never left Blanchard’s face. At the last moment, Caleb spurred the gray, meeting the bay’s charge shoulder to shoulder and checking Blanchard’s progress. Leaning to the left, he let the sergeant’s saber pass his body and then immediately swept his own saber across his body and tied up Blanchard’s sword arm. The two horsemen remained locked like this for perhaps twenty seconds, a tableau of frustrated energy. Blanchard struggled—he hoped not too obviously—to free his sword arm but could not. Finally, he relaxed and so did Caleb. The two horses danced apart with a clatter of metal and a groan of leather.
“You see,” Blanchard told the recruits. “Jardine managed to successfully parry my thrust and tie me up long enough for an infantryman to shoot us both. There is a lesson in that. The cavalry saber is a shock weapon. Once the horseman loses forward momentum, its value is greatly decreased.”
The recruits—and Sergeant Henkins—tried to look as though they understood this.
“And now,” Blanchard shouted, spurring his horse, “we will reverse that last exercise. Jardine will thrust, and I will parry.” The two again rode thirty yards in opposite directions and wheeled to face each other. “In your own time, recruit,” Blanchard shouted.
Caleb patted the neck of the nervous gray and imitated the horse-settling noise he had often heard Jardine make. He gathered the gray under him as Blanchard waited impatiently. Then, wishing that he were wearing spurs, Caleb used his heavy army boots to viciously jolt the gray in the ribs on both sides. The shocked horse rocketed toward Blanchard, eyes flaring and tail streaming straight out. Caught sitting back in the saddle, Blanchard barely had time to raise his saber halfway before Caleb’s blade knocked it aside and passed between the sergeant’s left arm and body. As Caleb’s shoulder hit his chest, Blanchard rocked back in the saddle, and for a minute it looked as though he would fall to the dusty brick parade ground.
Finally, Caleb reined back, and Blanchard regained his balance. The two horses backed off. “As the result of that charge, gentlemen,” Blanchard told the recruits with a forced smile, “I am officially what we in the cavalry call dead. Your friend Jardine has killed me. You see what I meant when I said that the cavalry saber is a shock weapon. That marks the end of today’s demonstration. They’re all yours, Sergeant—except Private Jardine.”
Henkins marched the dazed troops away, and the corporal rushed up to see what damage had been done to his horse.
Blanchard whirled around. “What the hell do you think you were doing?”
“Shock tactics, sir,” said Caleb.
“You could have killed me,” Blanchard said.
“Yes, sir,” Caleb said, “if I’d wanted to.”
“Get off that horse,” Blanchard ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Caleb said, dismounting easily and giving the gray a pat on the neck by way of apology. The corporal grabbed the reins from Caleb’s hand and for a moment considered throwing a punch at him. Once he took in the size of the rec
ruit, however, the urge passed quickly.
Blanchard also dismounted and threw the reins of the bay to Pritchard. “Cool ’em off and rub them down and see if this madman has done any harm to Ben,” he told the corporal. He turned to Caleb. “You, follow me.”
Caleb followed the sergeant’s broad back into the castlelike headquarters and through the gloomy corridors to Major Rogers’s outer office. Rogers’s orderly looked up at Blanchard affably.
“I want to see the major,” Blanchard told him.
“I’ll see if he’s in,” said the orderly.
“I know damn well he’s in,” Blanchard said.
“I’ll see if he is in to you,” said the orderly.
In a minute, the orderly was back. “The major will see you now,” he told Blanchard.
“You sit down,” Blanchard told Caleb.
“The major will see you both now,” the orderly told him. “His orders.”
Without another glance at Caleb, Blanchard marched stiffly into Rogers’s office and saluted with an unnecessarily forceful stamp of his right boot.
Rogers returned his salute. “At ease, Sergeant. What can I do for you?” Caleb remained at attention. He might as well not have been there.
“Sir,” Blanchard began, “this man—”
“I know, Sergeant,” the major interrupted. “I saw it all.”
“Then you know, sir, that this recruit disrupted a demonstration of equestrian saber techniques, abused a US Army horse, endangered my life as well as his own, and violated army discipline,” said Blanchard.
“That’s about what it looked like to me, too,” Rogers said easily. “He also deeply embarrassed a noncommissioned officer of the US Army in the course of his official duty.” Rogers swiveled toward Caleb. “What do you have to say for yourself, Recruit Jardine?”
“Nothing, sir,” Caleb said.
“Well, then,” Rogers said. “It looks like an open and shut case to me. What would you like me to do with this man?”
“I want you to give him to me, sir,” Blanchard said. “We’re forming the first unit of black cavalry, and I need men who can ride and fight. I don’t have time to turn your webfeet into horse soldiers. I reckon this one”—he nodded toward Caleb—“is crazy, but then you have to be crazy to be in the cavalry anyway. I think I can tame him.”
“I don’t know, Sergeant,” Rogers said as if Caleb weren’t there, “I had plans for Recruit Jardine myself. When his draft finishes training, I was thinking of keeping him on to help train new levies.”
“Sir,” Blanchard said, “begging your pardon, but that would be a waste of a natural cavalryman. If he can shoot like he can ride and handle a saber—”
“I know,” Rogers said, “I know. And I do not want to impede the war effort, but there are other considerations. I was going to make Recruit Jardine a corporal, the first black noncommissioned officer in this command. What has your unit got to offer Jardine besides hard work, horse shit, and certain death? I assume that the officers and NCOs of this new black unit will be white.”
“Of course, sir,” said Blanchard, taken aback. “Our blacks are all privates.”
“That’s a shame,” Rogers said. “Now, if I thought that within, say, three months, given continuing progress on Recruit Jardine’s part, he could be wearing corporal’s stripes, that might go a long way toward loosening my hold on him, which, at the current time, is a death grip. I don’t like to lose a good soldier.”
“Sir, as you well know, I can promise nothing,” said Blanchard. “In the cavalry, sergeants do not hand out corporal’s stripes.”
“Oh, I know,” Rogers said with a smile, “but in my experience they have an awful lot of influence on their commanders. Who is yours, by the way?”
“Colonel Surridge,” Blanchard said.
“Iron Pants Surridge?”
“I have heard the expression,” Blanchard said neutrally.
Rogers thought and tugged on his long mustache. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If Recruit Jardine wants to die in the saddle, you can take him with you. But I’m going to be writing Colonel Surridge about our little discussion and your promise to make Jardine a corporal within three months.”
“Sir,” Blanchard protested, “I—” but Rogers was turning to Caleb.
“Recruit Jardine,” he said, “are you crazy enough to join the cavalry?”
“Yes, sir,” said Caleb.
50
For his first two weeks with the cavalry, Caleb cleaned the stables. He could see some justice in this because of the way he’d abused that corporal’s gray gelding, and he made special efforts to be nice to Ben, sneaking him sugar cubes and carrots from the mess hall. But toward the end of the second week, horse shit and wet straw had begun to pall.
“Tell me, Zeke,” he complained to another black recruit one day in the stables, “does a black man in this troop ever get to handle anything more dangerous than a pitchfork?”
“You may be eager to get your ass shot off,” Zeke said, “but not me. I still can’t explain why I raised my hand when they asked could anybody ride a horse. I’m happy in this nice, warm stable. I’m in no hurry to get killed.”
“You’re a smart boy, Zeke,” said the first sergeant, who had just walked into the area between the stalls. “You may live to see this war finished.” The first sergeant, a big man with an outsized head, opened the door to the stall where they were working. “As for you, Jardine, report to the parade ground with your unit tomorrow morning, and we’ll see how dangerous you are with a bayonet. In the meantime, get this shit hole cleaned up. The horses are starting to complain.”
Caleb found it hard to get to sleep that night. He knew why he’d spent two weeks shoveling shit, and he knew that he would be a target the next morning. Sergeant Blanchard, when he noticed Caleb at all, still shot him surly looks when they passed in the squadron area. In the black barracks, which not so long before had been stables and still smelled like it, the other recruits stared curiously at Caleb, both in awe of what they had heard of him and glad that they were not getting the attention he was.
The next morning dawned cool and misty. On the parade ground, the black recruits were issued old bayonets to fix onto their even older rifles. “Now, listen, meatheads,” the corporal, an old infantryman, shouted, “whatever you do, do not remove the scabbard from your bayonets. You are here this morning to learn, not kill each other. Now, fall in, and let’s get at it.”
The corporal marched them to a remote corner of the training area, where bales of straw stacked three high and draped with crudely drawn Confederate flags served as the targets for bayonet practice. “Now,” he said, “just because the bayonet is an infantry weapon and you will be the high and mighty cavalry, do not think that it is beneath you to learn how to use it. When you come off those beautiful ponies in battle—and you will—you will be damned glad that you know what to do with a bayonet. Now, form lines facing those stacks of hay bales, and when I say ‘Charge!’ I want you to tear those bales apart. Don’t be shy. You don’t need an introduction. And remember, I want to hear some noise when you attack. If you can’t kill the rebs with the bayonet, maybe you can scare them to death.”
Caleb purposely got himself third in line to attack one of the targets. Back at the armory, Sergeant Henkins had given them some basic bayonet drills. Caleb had a pretty good idea of what to do, but he wanted to see how the other recruits did it before he tried.
“Recruits! Attention. Fix bayonets. Present bayonets! Charge!” the corporal shouted, and the first half-dozen recruits started forward in a ragged line, none wanting to be the first to attack the bales. “No, no, no, no!” screamed the corporal before they got halfway to the bales. The recruits straggled to an embarrassed halt and stood awkwardly, like passengers waiting for a trolley. “It’s not a goddamn dance,” the corporal said. “You’re fighting for your lif
e. It’s kill or be killed. Does anybody here have any idea how it’s supposed to be done?”
They were all silent, but then Caleb raised his hand. The other recruits backed away from him as if he had smallpox.
“What’s your name?” the corporal demanded.
“Jardine, sir.”
“Well, Jardine, step forward. Recruits, Mr. Jardine here believes he is an expert on this weapon. In fact, he is a bayoneting fool. He will now show you the approved method of attacking and killing the enemy.” The other recruits laughed and jostled each other. “Recruit Jardine,” the corporal screamed. “Attention. Fix bayonet! Present bayonet! Charge!”
Before the final word left the corporal’s mouth, Caleb sprang forward with a blood-curdling howl of rage and in three long steps was upon the targets. Using his sheathed bayonet more as a blunt instrument than a blade, he speared the central bale of hay in the first stack, got his weight under it, and then threw it back high over his head, knocking down one recruit and scattering the rest. Then, continuing to scream like a madman, Caleb whirled and attacked the other stacks of bales, leveling them with a sweep of his bayonet and jabbing them viciously when they were on the ground. When his bayonet stuck in one bale, Caleb kicked it to pieces with his heavy boots.
The other recruits just gaped, but the corporal, once he was over his surprise, started shouting, “Well done, Jardine! That’s the way! Enough, Jardine, enough! For Christ’s sake—”
But not until the sixth and final stack had been laid low did Caleb, running with sweat and festooned with bits of straw, stop and come to attention, his eyes staring straight ahead. He tried to control his gasping breaths.
“That, boys, is a bit more like it,” said the corporal.
Drawn to the area by Caleb’s howls, Colonel Surridge and his adjutant rode their horses to about fifty yards away, and then the adjutant stood in the stirrups and shouted, “Corporal!”
Spotting his commanding officer, the corporal said, “Jardine. Get those stacks rebuilt and see if you can inspire these dummies.” As he ran toward the colonel, he heard Caleb say, “All right, let’s get them back up!”
Caleb Page 24