by Carla Kelly
She had crammed in her trunks, spread the army blanket on the grass, and was setting up the rocking chair when someone rapped on the tent pole.
She knew it would be the adjutant even before she turned around. Emma pulled back the flap and stepped outside. “You can’t have it, Lieutenant.”
He shook his head and smiled this time. “Oh, no, ma’am. I wasn’t going to bump you again.” He held out a large square of green fabric.
She took it. “What’s this for?”
“Ma’am, I used to serve in Arizona Territory, and most folks down there line tent ceilings with green. Easier on the eyes.”
He smiled again, and Emma began to see that the lot of an adjutant was not to be envied. She smiled back.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate it.” He helped her fasten up the green baize, and it did make a difference inside the tent. Before he left, he pulled her cot away from the tent wall. “So the tent won’t leak when it rains,” he explained and then laughed. “But it never rains here anyway.”
Since she couldn’t cook in the tent, she messed with the officers in Old Bedlam that night. There were only three. The adjutant was a bachelor, Captain Endicott was an orphan who had left his family back in the States, and the other lieutenant was casually at post on his way from Fort Robinson to Fort D.A. Russell.
The salt pork looked more at home on a tin plate, and she discovered that plum duff was edible. The coffee burned its way down, but she knew she could get used to it.
She excused herself, ran back to her tent, and returned with the tin of peaches she had bought at the post trader’s store for the exorbitant sum of $2.25. The adjutant pried open the lid, and the four of them speared slices out of the can and laughed and talked until Tattoo.
Captain Endicott walked her back to her tent before last call. He shook his head when he saw the tent. “Women ought to stay in the States. Good schools there, doctors, sociability. Much better.”
“Don’t you miss your family?” she asked.
“Oh, mercy, if you only knew … ,” he began and then stopped. “Beg pardon, Mrs. Sanders.” He said good night to her and walked off alone to his room in Old Bedlam.
Emma undressed, did up her hair, and got into bed. She lay still, listening to the bugler blow Extinguish Lights. She heard horses snuffling in the officers’ stables behind Old Bedlam. When the coyotes started tuning up on the slopes rimming the fort, she pulled the blanket over her head and closed her eyes.
She knew she was not alone when she woke up before Reveille next morning. She sat up and gasped. A snake was curled at the foot of her blanket. She carefully pulled her feet up until she sat in a ball on her pillow. She was afraid to scream because she didn’t know what the snake would do, and, besides, she didn’t want the sergeant at arms to rush in and catch her with her hair done up in rags.
As she watched and held her breath, the snake unwound itself and moved off the cot. She couldn’t see any rattles on its tail, and she slowly let out her breath. The snake undulated across the grass, and she stared at it, fascinated. She hadn’t known a reptile could be so graceful. “How do they do that?” she asked herself, as the snake slithered through the grass at the edge of the tent. “I must remember to ask Hart.”
She took the rag twists from her hair, pulled on her wrapper, and poked her head out of the tent. The sun was just coming up, and the buildings were tinted with the most delicious shade of pink. She marveled that she could ever have thought the old place ugly.
Her first letter from Hart was handed to her three days later at mail call. She ripped open the envelope and drew out a long, narrow sheet. She read as she walked along the edge of the parade ground.
Dearest Emma,
Pardon this stationery, but I forgot to take any along, and this works better for letters than in the sink (um, that would be a privy to you). Good news. We’re going to be garrisoned here permanently, so you’ll be moving quite soon, perhaps within the next few days. Or it could be a month. That’s the Army. Bad news. Brace yourself. There aren’t any quarters available, so we’ll have to make do in a tent.
Emma stood still and laughed out loud. A soldier with a large “P” painted on the back of his shirt stopped spearing trash and looked at her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She read on.
It won’t be that bad. The commanding officer swears there will be quarters ready by winter. Am looking forward to seeing you soon. I can’t express how much I miss you.
Love, Hart
She was almost back to her tent when the adjutant caught up with her.
“Mrs. Sanders,” he began. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he put up his hand to rub his head, she was sure.
“It’s all right, Lieutenant,” she broke in before he could continue. “I’ve already heard. When am I leaving?”
“In the morning, ma’am.”
“I’ll be ready.”
As she was repacking her trunks that evening, she remembered something her mother had said to her when she left on the train to join Hart in Cheyenne. Mother had dabbed at her eyes and said over and over, “Such brave men, Emma, such brave men!”
Emma smiled.
Break a Leg
Before the story begins
By August of 1882, Hospital Steward Colm Callahan, 34, had decided he was bored with army life. Perhaps it was just life at Fort Laramie, which used to be interesting during the Great Sioux War. That conflict had ended when most of the hostiles were trundled onto reservations. Someone had definitely waved a white flag and declared the war done when Sitting Bull and his ragged band left Canada and surrendered at Fort Buford in 1881.
The end of the Indian Wars had turned the grand dame of the plains into a backwater garrison. Arrow wounds and amputations had given way to catarrh with copious phlegm (hacks and coughs to laymen), and the occasional case of diarrhea—neither ever interesting. Women of the garrison still gave birth, but the post surgeon managed without help from his hospital steward. Even social diseases had slowed down, to the relief of the surgeon.
On the average morning now, Colm handled sick call with little or no interference from his post surgeon, Captain Dilworth. After nineteen years of army medicine, Colm knew when something warranted the more specialized attention of the post surgeon and in those cases, he summoned the surgeon from the breakfast table accordingly. When it was just catarrh or the dry heaves, he left Captain Dilworth to his newspaper and toast.
Handling sick call meant admonishing any malingerers trying to put one over on the Medical Department, physicking those who needed it and sending them back to the barracks for rest, or hospitalizing the promising few. His reports were done by 10 a.m. and left, squared away, on Captain Dilworth’s desk.
Then what? A steward could only count linens, roll bandages, and inventory the pharmacy so often. There was seldom anyone stiff and cold in the dead house to embalm. Lately, Colm found himself upstairs, staring out the window. Situated on a bluff, the hospital commanded a view of the whole garrison.
Depending on his mood, he would look in the direction of the iron bridge—out of his sight—which still saw traffic to the Black Hills, even though the major gold strikes were ancient history now. The Shy-Dead Road, the storied route from Cheyenne to Deadwood, was traveled mostly by law-abiders now. Worse still, rumor hinted that soon the cavalry would be withdrawn, leaving Fort Laramie with infantry only. Colm could almost hear the death knell of the Queen of the Plains.
More profitably, Colm might look out the windows that faced the parade ground. He watched children walking to school, which was held in the newly completed admin building by the Laramie River. Soon mothers with prams would stroll the wooden boardwalks, chatting with one another. That domestic sight sometimes sent him into melancholy, as he remembered desperate days in 1876 and ’77, when troops came and went, and war waged all around. Fort Laramie looked as gentrified as a Midwestern town now. Great Gadfreys and all the Saints!
If Colm was lucky, he might catch a glimpse of
Ozzie Washington, easily the prettiest woman on the post, or so he reckoned. Depending on who might be ill among the officers’ wives, the lieutenant colonel’s wife was kindly inclined to send Ozzie, her servant, with a tureen of nourishing broth, or a loaf or two of bread to the House of Affliction.
Ozzie was not a time waster. Bowl- or basket-laden, she moved at a clip that set her hips swaying so nicely. She was grace personified, moving rapidly but with the dignity of her race. Once—perhaps on a dare from one of the lieutenant colonel’s children—Ozzie had set a bushel basket square on her head and wore it the length of Officers Row without mishap. During Reconstruction days in Louisiana, he had seen women of color carry goods that way. So much grace and symmetry had impressed him then and did so now with Ozzie.
Always the observer, he had noticed how nicely the races had mingled for at least a century in New Orleans, producing graceful women of café au lait skin called mulatto or the regrettable “high yaller.” He had admired them because they were so different. Ozzie’s hair was wildly curly to a fault, and her skin was more olive than coffee, but her nose was straight and her lips at least fuller than his.
To say he admired Ozzie Washington was to minimize the matter. He was no expert, but Colm thought he loved her. He had met her seven years ago in 1875, when the Fourth Infantry was first garrisoned at Fort Laramie. The Medical Department had assigned Colm permanent duty there—barring field emergencies—so he had ample time to watch the movements of various regiments. Ozzie stood out because the hospital had been plagued with endless winter ailments, and then-Major Chambers, commanding, ordered her there to help.
Help she had. Ozzie had no fear of the pukes or runs and did exactly what the surgeons required. She never complained, and she kept her mouth closed when other women on similar assignments objected long and loud.
During a welcome lull in sheet changing and basin dumping, Colm had mustered his courage and asked her how she remained so calm. She had given him a kind look, the sort of glance women reserved for the young and the addled, and said in her velvet voice, “Suh, if I didn’t help, who would?”
She was right. Colm assured her that he was no sir, just a hospital steward. She nodded with understanding, but everlastingly called him “suh.” He quit arguing about it, because he liked the languid way one word glided into the next when she spoke.
Ozzie Washington was exotic to Colm Callahan, who himself was an orphan from New York’s bleak Five Points slum, a drummer boy with the Irish Brigade, who had become an impromptu hospital steward at Gettysburg, when he had no choice—much like Ozzie.
Her kindness stood out more than her beauty. He remembered an endless night in 1876 when the post surgeon had stretched out onto the table in his operating bay to grab a nap. Colm had slumped to the wall in the corridor, weary nigh unto death of 36-hour days. With a tap on his shoulder, Ozzie had handed him a cup of tea and an apple already sliced, then sat beside him. When he forgot to eat, she put a slice in his hand. So kind.
Once he had mentioned her to a friend, a corporal in the Third Cavalry, tentatively expressing himself. The corporal had looked at him in shock.
“You know what she is,” the man had said, then said it anyway—a word Colm heard all the time, and had probably said a few times himself; everyone did. After that day, he never said it again, because it wasn’t a polite way to talk about someone as thoughtful as Ozzie Washington.
Any fears the corporal would blab to others that the Irish hospital steward was enamored with a maid of color ended at the Battle of the Rosebud, where the corporal died. Colm had never chanced his feelings again; he kept his thoughts about Ozzie to himself. He was too shy to ever act on them.
Still, during moments like this at the window, he wondered what he would do when the Fourth Infantry was ordered somewhere else and Ozzie went along as Mrs. Lieutenant Colonel Chambers’s trusted maid. When that happened, as it inevitably would, all he had left was resignation, leaving the army far behind. Another encounter with Ozzie would be more punishment than a shy man deserved.
A
Also before the story begins
Ozzie Washington knew it was time to visit the post office. Three weeks had passed since she had given her letter to a private in A Company, Fifth Cavalry, and asked him to mail it for her when the troop reached Fort Russell in Cheyenne. He’d never asked questions, because he couldn’t read, and she always gave him a dime for her errand. He would mail the letter she had addressed to Audra Washington, Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, which would arrive back here in a week or so.
The first time she had mailed herself a letter, the Fourth had been garrisoned in Fort Concho, Texas. Lieutenant Colonel Chambers, then a captain, had checked the mail, staring a long time at the envelope.
“Audra Washington? Who do we know named Audra Washington?” he had joked.
“My real name is Audra,” Ozzie had said.
He hadn’t handed the letter to her until he teased her about a beau, which made her smile. She had no beau. Even when the Fourth had been garrisoned with one of the colored regiments, she never had one; she was too white for those men, even if they were former slaves too. The corporals and sergeants of the white regiments considered her too dark for them. There would never be a beau.
She never wrote herself more than four letters a year. When the day’s work was done, she would make herself tea and open the letter she had written to herself. “Dearest Little Audra,” she always began, as if this letter were from her mother, an illiterate woman who had been sold away from her, screaming, when Audra was only five, and sent to an East Texas cotton plantation. In these letters, this mother she barely remembered was living as a seamstress in New Orleans, with her own shop and an elegant clientele.
As the years passed, Ozzie wove an intricate fiction of carpetbaggers and a fine man who courted her widowed mother, leaving her his fortune when he died of yellow fever. Her letters to herself were fabulous, and a welcome treat, because she had no one and would never have received a letter otherwise.
Mrs. Lieutenant Colonel Chambers was always happy to have Ozzie make the trip to the post office. While it couldn’t be said that Hattie Chambers was lazy, it could be said that she cared not to exert herself, especially in high summer when the wind blew, as it invariably did in Wyoming Territory. Ozzie knew the trick of weighting the hem of her dresses with fishing lures or lead shot, the better to fool the wind.
Seventeen years in the employ of the same family meant that Ozzie had them all well trained. The Chambers’ children had been trundled off to relatives in the East for schooling, which meant that life in the lieutenant colonel’s quarters was simple. When her chores were done, she was at her leisure to walk to the post office.
She tried to time her visit with the probable appearance of Hospital Steward Colm Callahan, but lately he had been less cooperative. Either the post surgeon was picking up his own mail, or the dratted man had given Suh other duties.
She always thought of Steward Callahan as Suh. Face red, he had told her once that he was no gentleman, so she needn’t refer to him that way. She had been just brave enough to continue calling him Suh, until he no longer objected. After that non-introduction, they had settled into the familiarity of frontier service, nothing more.
Ozzie admired the way he looked, even if his nose did peel in the summer, and he was too vain (or busy) to coat it with zinc oxide, as some of the other light-skinned men did. He burned and peeled regularly, which detracted in no way from his admirable height and high cheekbones, which gave his face a thin look. His eyes were a surprising brown rather than the expected blue. In a moment of rare candor for a man so reticent, Suh had remarked that her eyes were lighter than his. The fact that he’d noticed flattered her.
He once told her how much he enjoyed the gentle flow of her Louisiana accent, but she never worked up the nerve to tell him that she liked the clipped cadence of his New York speak with just a hint of the Irish. That his grammar was impeccable, even thou
gh he admitted his early years were spent in a ghastly orphanage, hinted something else: he was as ambitious as she was.
Her own ambition had been borne of desperation. Maybe someday she would tell Suh about those dark days as the war was ending. Thinking back, she knew that the time a war was winding down was the worst time of all.
While it was true that the port of New Orleans had been liberated by Yankees early in the game, coloreds on the state’s northern plantations had lingered in slavery. Ozzie thought she was twelve when the other slaves had simply dropped their tools or untied their aprons and walked off the LeCheminant plantation with not a word spoken. She remembered feeble protests from Madame LeCheminant and her daughters. What could they do, with all of the white men gone fighting in Lee’s army?
Ozzie was young, so she’d stayed and found herself saddled with all of the house chores the others had done. When it became too much, she knotted her other dress in a tablecloth, along with her rosary and an ebony-backed hairbrush she’d swiped from Lalage LeCheminant, a child her own age, whose companion she had been. Lalage had been the first to call her Ozzie because she could not pronounce Audra.
At twelve, Ozzie had slung her tablecloth luggage over her shoulder and left the house just after dark, when the haunts were out, which she did not believe in, being of a practical mind. A kindly man of color with a load of chickens trussed for market handed her up beside him in his cart and shared his sandwich with her.
He told her to find a Yankee woman to work for, that the best place was the US Army encampment where he was headed. When they arrived outside New Orleans two days later in the early-evening rain, he helped her down and pointed to a row of houses, Officers Row.
She knocked on the first door, tried to introduce herself, and received a swipe with a broom for her pains. At the second door, she introduced herself, recited her skills—some exaggerated, some not—and did not leave even when Mrs. Captain Chambers closed the door politely on her. She shivered on the porch through the night and was still there in the morning when Captain Chambers looked out the window and saw her, chin up and eyes determined, a child.