“Anyway,” I said without prompting, “Montana wasn’t even a state yet. That didn’t come until much later. Actually, Cascade wasn’t even an incorporated town yet, either, so there was some question about the laws out here. For example, I know the town was called Ulidia before it became Cascade. The Town of Cascade wasn’t incorporated until 1877. That was just before I got out here to the Mission from Ohio. There basically wasn’t nothing out here in Montana back then except Blackfoot and Crow Indians, Copperheads, and ranchers. The copper miners would come later.”
“What’s a Copperhead?”
“A Copperhead is a Confederate. The Copperheads were known for fighting on the Confederate side during the Civil War. Mr. Lincoln won the Civil War. He tried to make up with the South afterwards to keep the Union alive and growing. He basically let these guys roam around out here and not give up their ways. All they had to do to get back into the good graces of the federal government was to take an oath to uphold the Constitution. That was it! And I remember how it felt during the Civil War. It wasn’t that long ago. Back on the plantation in Tennessee, we got word about the campaigns, the battles, the casualties, the steady advance of the Union troops to the sea the same way it came to everyone else. It came in glimpses from what was written in letters, reported in old newspapers, assuming we were lucky enough to get an old newspaper, and the stories people who had read newspapers and letters told us about the war. That was it. Our imaginations played a role in its eventual reality.
“And, of course, there was always the chance the Civil War might visit you at your doorstep. Back then, that kind of scared you to think about it. I know you didn’t ask me about the Civil War, but it was really the only thing on our minds back on the plantation.
“The colored troops made us proud to be colored during the campaign. The 26th Colored Regiment had its battle flag and wore the colors of the federal government. Think of it. The 26th went out and got us our revenge. Those colored soldiers won revenge on the battlefield. If we had nothing else to show for the years we were enslaved—and it seemed like the nation was determined that we would never get anything to show for those years of slavery—we at least got our revenge.”
The thought of the 26th made my voice quiver. I paused. I was nearly in tears. I decided right then and there to take command of the interview, like seizing the reins of a team of horses hitched to a stagecoach.
“I am going to tell you the reports we heard about the 26th and Mr. Lincoln’s courage,” I said, looking deeply into the reporter’s eyes. “Whether Mr. Lincoln’s plan would succeed came down to what happened on the battlefield. You have to remember, we were still enslaved people on a plantation in Hickman County, Tennessee. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was terrifying.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The reporter fell into a stunned silence. Most folks did, actually, when anyone who lived through the war was ready to talk about it. His eyeballs were magnified to sheer enormity by the thick lenses of his eyeglasses.
“Reports of the war changed me in ways I never would have believed possible,” I said, looking out across the newsroom.
“How could the war move you so deeply if you only heard reports about it and didn’t actually see a real battle?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say it was the battles that changed my outlook. I would say it was what came after the battles. You see, I found out about that firsthand from the people who were there. See, I knew two boys who had joined up with the 26th, one of the colored regiments. Some of the colored soldiers acquitted themselves on the battlefield, but others were only given servile roles, like tending to the horses, cooking, helping out around the hospital tents, and digging graves.
“I happened to know a couple of soldiers who were given the job of digging holes on the battlefield after one side had retreated. They were given the job of working on the battlefields long after the battles were over. One of the boys was a lanky negro from Missouri. Nobody quite gathered how he came to join up with the 26th instead of one of the volunteer units closer to his home. Anyway, he was real quiet, odd. Didn’t say much about himself, ever. The boys in his regiment eventually managed after a few months to get him to say his name, Edmund Bouchard.
“Missouri told me later that everyone in the 26th thought Bouchard was a comical name for a slave, but weren’t quite sure why it sounded comical. He said when he was asked if he was free or a fugitive, he ignored the question altogether. The other colored soldiers took a liking to him, so they decided to take the liberty of giving him a nickname, Missouri.
“I met him after the war. I only knew him by his nickname—Missouri—nothing else. I thought he was odd, too. Anyway, he took a liking to me, and he was really the only man I remember who ever cared about me one way or the other, to tell the God’s honest truth.”
“Was he your boyfriend?”
“It never got that far. He didn’t seem to know how to make it go that far if those really were his intentions, or maybe it was the war that took away most of what was supposed to be inside of him. I don’t know. He told me he was a soldier, but he didn’t get the chance to fight. But when the fighting was over, he said he was one of the two boys assigned the duty of burying the dead. He told me this in a very strange way. He didn’t really ever look directly at me while he told me the stories. He looked at me sideways. He stared off toward nowhere, like he was seeing what happened to him all over again in his head. It was really so odd, all of it. He told the story in a way that made me see it, too. I believe that’s why it hit me so hard.”
“What did he say that made it seem so real?”
“He said the next day after the battle, the battlefield was crowded with the gore of dead bodies, Union and Confederate alike. Most of the men were faced downward. Those were the easy ones to move. He said he didn’t have to look at their faces, as he dragged those bodies by their limbs that were made dumb by death, limp and flopping around at strange angles. He said he could turn those bodies over without looking at them and roll them into the holes. But he said the other bodies, the bodies that faced the sky, were the hard ones to move. He had to look at the shocking looks on their horrified faces. He said the flies were busy at most of the bodies that were swollen in death well beyond their normal sizes. The smell was oppressive.
“It would get worse the higher the sun rose in the sky and the hotter the afternoon became, so he said he worked as fast as he could to finish the job. There were guts on the ground here and there, exposed and baking in the sun. He said there were always two boys assigned to do the work. They’d cover their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs like bandits, but the stench penetrated the cloth. There was nothing they could do except work fast. They dug holes eight to ten feet long, and they rolled as many bodies as possible into each hole. He said they were careful to follow orders not to drop Union and Confederate soldiers into the same hole.”
“Did he ever tell you what happened out on the battlefield?” the reporter asked, pulling off his eyeglasses.
“They had a war,” I deadpanned.
“I know. I mean what happened exactly during the battles to make so many casualties? Did you find out?” The reporter wiped the lenses of his eyeglasses with a white handkerchief.
“I guess I was never interested in asking him about things like that—battle tactics, which side had the other side outnumbered, or anything else about rifle pits, bridges, creeks, swamps, woods, federal tactics, federal formations or rebel tactics and rebel formations, or anything else you might ask about battles. I really didn’t care none about any of that. All I could think about was how the dead were left behind on the battlefield long after it was all over, and well after the sun had risen the next day, and how all that was left after the battle was the sun and the flies and no real explanation for why the men were dead.
“The sky was still wonderfully beautiful over the dead the next day, but Missouri still had his orders to roll the Union and Confederate bodies into separate holes. I gues
s the emptiness of that story tended to mess with your mind if you thought about it too long.”
“You never did figure it out, did you?” the reporter asked.
“Figure out what? You should have asked me whether I asked Missouri whether he figured it out. He was there. He was the fellow doing the digging.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Yes, and the answer he gave is one of the reasons his story hit me so hard. The way he told it he said he once really tried to figure it all out. He was working with another boy, digging holes. Missouri said he stopped work to rub the sweat off his brow with the back of his wrist, stood over his shovel, and looked out over the battlefield toward the horizon. He said he had been digging all day. By then, the sky was streaked with the orange of sunset. He said he rested for a minute or two. Both he and the other boy stopped work at the same time, so there was no noise. He said he looked at the boy to see if he wanted to talk. The boy didn’t say a word. Then, Missouri said he really began to think about things when they started digging again, and this time, he didn’t bother making eye contact and didn’t try to talk to the boy. It was understandable. The boy hadn’t said anything intelligent the entire time they were digging.”
“What happened next?”
“Missouri said he began to preach to the other boy. He told the boy that they can dig as many holes as they want, but the souls of the dead live on as surely as the sun sets and rises. He said he had thought about the question a long while and warmed up to an explanation. The other boy stopped digging to listen to the explanation. Missouri said he told the boy that if the soul ever lives, it must live in a place like this. They can kill the body on this field, but they can’t kill the soul any more than they can kill love or hope, or sorrow or hate.”
“Did you ask Missouri if he told the boy what he meant by that?”
“Yes, I did. Missouri really didn’t look at me as he answered, but…he answered.”
“What did he say?”
“Missouri said he didn’t give the boy an explanation, and the boy didn’t ask for one. Missouri said there wasn’t anything else to say about it, anyway. Instead of talking, he said they just kept digging.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I needed time to recover. I remembered the letters and newspaper stories about the war vividly. Our humanity was at stake.
The news reporter gave me time. He knew how deep sentiments about the Civil War ran for those who lived through it. He wisely switched to a less controversial topic. It was only right.
We began to reconsider my early days in Montana, the one place on earth that had captured my admiration. I knew the history of the place quite well.
The federal government had decided not to interfere in the affairs of the Territories, aside from guaranteeing a narrow strip of land to the railroads. Everything else was fair game. It was wild.
The stagecoach lines covered treacherous going. The railroad and the ferry would eventually inspire dramatic change. Of course, Sister Amadeus founded the Ursuline Convent of the Sacred Heart, a school for Blackfoot girls just outside of the Cascade town limits. Montana was certainly a major part of the ambitious Western expansion.
“You know, I often wondered why. Why would the Jesuits come all the way out here to form a school?” the reporter asked.
“Oh, that was very important to the Catholics. It was a way of life for them. It was a way for them to spread the Word of God. The Jesuits were above all missionaries. Don’t forget that, but forming the school was also a way for them to help the country evolve.”
“How so?”
“They figured if they could make the girls Catholics, when the girls became mothers, they would raise their children as Catholics, and the Blackfeet would become less hostile to the idea of evolution and the railroad and the white man coming out here, progress, the westward spread of the nation. You have to admit, it worked.”
“I suppose you could call it a form of progress.”
“I suppose you’re right. Anyway, we were a growing town, area really. The copper miners started speculating out here. The ranchers basically were always out here. The ferry across the Missouri River brought new folks out this way. They opened up a bank, assay office, and two saloons, and of course they had a couple of whorehouses open up when things got going good around here, one of them was a place called Fat Jack’s, believe it or not.”
“Fat Jack’s.”
“Let’s see, we talked about the baseball team already. The team was a major part of our identity, our pride, who we were as a town.”
“Clearly.”
“I recorded more knockouts in Montana than anyone, ranchers, farmers, miners, Copperheads, it didn’t matter. They popped off at the mouth. They get dropped. Heck, I was beginning to wonder whether any of these boys out here could fight. I was wondering if they ever heard of the idea of practice. Yes, practice. Take a boxing lesson or two if you can’t fight, for example. Then, you get the idea of the science. Hell, don’t just take a broken nose and the humiliation that comes with it lightly. There is more to the idea of knocking out a rancher than just throwing back enough whiskey to gain courage. It is a science. Science.”
“A science? What do you mean, a science?”
“A science in the sense that you measure a fellow before you decide to knock him out.”
“How do you take those kinds of measurements?”
“First, I look at the size of the hands, the mitts. If a fellow has oversized mitts, you’d best leave him alone. Now, on the other hand, if the guy has little girlie hands, no matter how big his frame, I have no problem trading punches with him. He can’t hurt me with a punch even if he lands, and the chances are that he isn’t going to land in the first place. So, the first tip is the hands.”
“Of course, I bet you had to make sure to watch the hands to make sure he wasn’t drawing.”
“That stuff about drawing in Montana was seriously overrated. Everybody thinks it was that wild out here as in gunfights and duels and stickups every day, the Wild West you read about in books. Hell, it was wild out here, but it wasn’t that damn wild. Besides, everybody had a gun in those days, so there was no sense in drawing unless you really were serious about using the gun. It just never was that serious. Seriously, there were bandits, thieves, stagecoach robbers, and hostile Sioux and Cheyenne, but it was rare anybody had a problem with a gun, very rare. That stuff about Montana was purely theatrical. Now, Oklahoma, Indian Territory at the time, now that may have been an entirely different story.”
“Unless, of course, someone decided to shoot someone else in the buttocks.” The reporter was making jokes, very entertaining.
“That was a charity shooting. I hope that guy didn’t take it personally, but I bet he learned his lesson about racial slurs, think? That stuff about Montana being wild with gunplay and shootouts and bank robberies was purely theatrical. Hell, it was a long time before we even saw our first bank out here. How do you rob a bank that ain’t there? Now, Oklahoma may have been an entirely different story. They was really wild in Oklahoma, barely civilized.”
We laughed. I matched him joke for joke.
“Why pick on Oklahoma?”
“I ain’t picking on Oklahoma. It wasn’t even Oklahoma at the time. It was Cherokee and Creek Nation in what was known as Indian Territory. There was Arkansas across the border, Fort Smith, places like that, at least that’s what was written in the newspapers we got out here. The railroad inched its way across Indian Territory the same way it inched its way out here, except Montana is far more rocky and treacherous territory than Oklahoma. Anyway, back to the fighting rules. You know what my second rule on fighting was?”
“No, tell me.”
“Never fight a little fellow. The little fellows have been proving themselves in fights from the time they was yea high.” I extended the palm of my hand, indicating diminutive size. “Them boys will trade if you look at them wrong. They throw. They throw gladly. They throw wildly. They get prac
tice fighting. The reason is fellows look at their size, get it twisted, and then want to take them on.
“The second rule is, don’t fight little guys, unless you really are looking to have a fight on your hands. Now, big guys, on the other hand—big guys usually can’t fight at all. The reason is they never get no practice, so they never get good at it. The size discourages fellows from taking them on. They get by just on intimidating folks with their size. They never have to prove themselves. I’ll fight a big fellow any day of the week.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to know the third and final rule about fighting?”
“Yes.”
“There are no rules. That is the third rule of fighting. There are no rules, so there is no such thing as a fair fight. There are only fights. That is the third rule of fighting.”
“Sounds about right for the West.”
“Sounds about right for anywhere. This stuff is in the soul of the nation. It goes into what makes it tick.”
“What?”
“The concept that you go out and get it done on your own. You overcome the bitter cold of the winter on your own. If your friend is stricken with pneumonia, you don’t call a doctor. There are no doctors for over sixty miles. And if you got one, they don’t know no cure for pneumonia any better than you do. So, you best find a way to cure it yourself, or there is a grave site somewhere with your name written on it, right? Death was a constant visitor in Montana.
“They called us pioneers. You needed a house to live in, you built it yourself. If you didn’t know how to build a house, you weren’t likely to ever have anyone to come along to build it for you.
“You needed to build a Mission, run stagecoach, you got it done yourself, or it didn’t get done. That’s what’s inside the soul of the nation. I believe that is what they meant when they called us pioneers. The nation might have looked down its nose at us, but we are part of its soul. The soul lives in a place like Montana, a place off in the middle of nowhere. While we were still one of the territories, we were already here before there technically was a here. It is funny to look at it this way, isn’t it? If you lived through it, you might think of it this way. In a way, we are in a type of eternal childhood that promises to forgive us for who we truly are no matter how badly we behave. This explains why the nation is halfway invulnerable. In the case of the Louisville Colonels, Mullane’s vulnerability that day was tipping his fast ball. Billy waited for it. He got it. Like Billy hitting a home run, the only way anything gets done in Montana is if you do it yourself.”
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