by Simon Rumney
She was wondering what could have made him so angry when she heard the man called General raise his voice. "This is Captain Calhoun's only defense witness. Do you mean to deprive him of his deference, Colonel?"
"I do not wish to deny the defendant his witness, sir. I merely wonder if a savage, such as this, understands the gravity of an oath given on the Holy Bible."
Julii realized that the serious looking gray man with the red collar was calling her a “savage”. She did not know what the word meant, but his tone and how it was said made it clear that it was not intended to be respectful.
Much to Julii's horror, the General nodded his understanding to the gray man with the red collar. Looking at Julii without sympathy, he asked: "Do you understand what the act of swearing an oath on the Holy Bible means?"
Until now, Julii had sensed the General was sympathetic towards her Robert, but now she was not so sure. She was afraid for her Robert. She had been called a “savage”. She was deeply offended and angry about everything that had happened to her since arriving in Atlanta and, above all, she was exhausted.
She wanted to shout at the man called General and all of these horrible gray men. She wanted to tell them to leave her Robert alone, but she had to help her Robert, so the reply she gave was measured and showed nothing but respect. "I understand that the thing you hold so dear is sacred to you. It is not sacred to me, but telling the truth is."
Julii saw the respect in Robert's eyes and she felt proud of herself. As intimidated as she was, she had used her new words well and it made her feel much stronger.
"You account for yourself well." The General sounded impressed as he added, "Where did you learn to speak English?"
Julii smiled and looked at her Robert. "Robert taught me your words as I helped him heal."
The nasty gray man called Prosecutor, who was sitting at the table next to the table she had been sitting at, leapt to his feet and shouted: "Objection!"
Julii jumped with surprise. This horrible, rude man called Prosecutor had been doing something called “cross examine” all day. He had spoken down to all of the people who had walked to the little pen at the front of the room, and now he had pounced on Julii's words as though she had insulted the thing called Bible.
He shouted in his ugly booming voice: "Are you trying to tell this court martial that Robert Calhoun taught you such fluent English in the little time since the battle of Shiloh?"
Julii looked at her Robert. She was afraid of the man called Prosecutor. Her voice was shaking as she asked: "What is the word ‘fluent’?"
"Objection!"
Once again Julii jumped in her seat at the violence of the man called Prosecutor's shout.
The man called General looked at Julii as he barked out the word: "Sustained!"
Then he added, "The accused must not speak to the defendant during these proceedings!"
The prosecutor spoke through a gloating smile. "Thank you, General."
The prosecutor then turned on Julii. The smile was replaced with a look of disgust. "Your play-acting aside, I put it to you that you are fluent in English. Yes, I use the word ‘fluent’ safe in the knowledge that you understand me completely! I also put it to you that your proficiency in our language is proof of many years of learning, not mere weeks!"
Julii looked at the man called Prosecutor while silently repeating three new words: “play-acting”, “fluent”, “proficiency”. They sounded nice in her mind. She would have to ask Robert what they all meant.
Then she noticed the man called Prosecutor was looking at her with an expectant look on his nasty face. 'Was he waiting for her to say something?' 'Had he asked a question?'
The answer to Julii's silent query came when he shouted, "Well? What do you have to say to that?"
Julii looked at the man called General and pointed to her own chest by way of asking if it was her turn to speak. When the General nodded his head, 'yes', she looked back at the horrible prosecutor. "I don't understand."
The man called Prosecutor made a big thing of turning to the man called General. His tone was pleading and overly dramatic. "General? Please?"
The man called General leaned towards Julii. "You understand our language, don't you?"
Nodding, Julii said "Yes".
"Then be so kind as to answer the prosecutor's question."
As Julii thought through the man called Prosecutor’s words, something dawned on her. The man called Prosecutor was accusing her of telling untruths, and this made her very angry.
Turning to face the man called Prosecutor, Julii spoke in a confident and defiant tone. "My first words in your language were learned on the third day after I found Robert by our waterhole. Robert could not speak for those first three days because he had been hurt in the head and the leg. The hurt in his head made him sleep."
"What waterhole do you refer to, may I ask?" The man called Prosecutor was speaking at Julii with utter disdain, while pacing around the front of the room and smiling at the crowd of white faces.
"Our waterhole." Julii sounded confused. She silently wondered, 'What other waterhole could she mean?' 'Anyway, what does her waterhole have to do with Robert's inability to speak?'
She did not understand what was going on and that felt dangerous, so she berated herself for it. She told herself she was cleverer than this. 'She was the brightest of her peers!' She wanted time to explain, time to make herself clear, but the nasty man called Prosecutor snapped another irrelevant question at her.
"You said 'our' waterhole? Who does the 'our' in that sentence refer to?"
The man called Prosecutor seemed to be closing in on something that Julii could not understand. It felt like she was being pushed towards a trap that she could not yet see. He was like a hunter taking the last few steps before striking, but Julii could not understand his tactics or see his quarry. She answered his question with simple honesty. "My people. We share it."
"Your people?"
The tone of his rising voice told Julii he had struck his killer-blow but, search as she might, she could not understand how. Once again she employed simple honesty. "Yes, my people."
"And who, may I ask, are your people?"
The man called Prosecutor's words were becoming excited, and she still could not understand why. 'Why did the waterhole mean so much to this horrible man?' 'What does he know about our waterhole?'
This time she answered with two simple words that she knew could do nothing to hurt her Robert. "My tribe."
But she must have made a mistake because saying these innocent words excited the man called Prosecutor even more. He clapped his hands and threw them dramatically into the air. "This witness should never have been called!"
The man called Prosecutor was shouting in the front of the room. He had obviously won, but Julii could not understand why.
By way of driving home his victory, he extended his arm and pointed directly at Julii. "This witness should not be trusted!”
Then after pausing for effect, he shouted: "No! This witness must not be tolerated in this court martial!"
Nothing about this awful day was making any sense to Julii. She had been told by Nanny that she was here merely to tell the true story of how she found her Robert. She was supposed to tell everyone how she had healed him, and how they had found their way to the town of Atlanta; but the horrible man called Prosecutor kept talking about the waterhole, and her tribe, and now he was saying she should not tell her story.
Robert stood up inside his pen and shouted. "Give her a chance to speak. For God's sake, let her tell you the truth."
"The truth!"
This was the horrible man called Prosecutor again. Pacing faster up and down across the front of the room, he shouted: "The ‘truth’, as you choose to call it, is that there are no tribes east of the Mississippi!"
The man called Prosecutor stopped directly in front of Robert's little pen and stared at him. "Or have you conveniently forgotten, Captain Calhoun? It was your very own ancestor, t
he great John C Calhoun, who devised the celebrated plan for Indian removal back in 1824?"
Not waiting for an answer, the man called Prosecutor turned to speak triumphantly to the silent people in the room. They seemed to hang on his every word as he shouted: "We have much to thank your ancestor for, sir. John C Calhoun made this great country safe for civilized people to live in but, I am quite sure, he did not leave phantom tribes scattered conveniently around the fine state of Tennessee just in-case one of his ancestor needed a place to run to at times of extreme cowardice! No, sir! Your ancestor John C Calhoun was loyal, he was a hero, and he just did not do that!"
The people in the room began spontaneously beating their hands together. Julii looked out at a sea of people all making a terrible din with their hands. They were smiling. 'Her Robert was suffering and they were smiling!'
The man called General added to the horrible noise by banging a wooden thing onto his table. Some people in the crowd started shouting: "Guilty!"
Then the man called General joined in the shouting. "Order!" "Order in this court martial!"
As the crowed settled back into their hushed silence, the man called General looked over at Robert. Julii could see real hope in his expression as he asked, "Do you have any other witnesses who can attest to your injuries on the day of the battle, Captain?"
"No, General. This woman nursed the wounds I sustained at Shiloh. This woman of immense integrity saved my life, and she is my only witness, sir."
Robert was proud of Julii. She could hear see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice as he added, "Without Julii's diligence and care, I would not be standing here before you today."
The man called General paused and glared at the man called Defense - the man who had pulled Julii back into her seat three times. The General sounded very disrespectful: "Does the defense have any more witnesses?"
The man called Defense was embarrassed. He shuffled a few white and black leaves on his table, then looked at the man called General and shook his head 'no'. "There are no more witnesses, General."
The man called General sounded genuinely sad as he looked at Robert and said, "I am afraid your only witness has been discredited. I have no choice but to instruct the jury to deliberate the evidence discarding anything said by this squaw."
Turning to the line of men sitting in gray with fancy collars and the hat with the strange feather, he added: "You may retire to consider your verdict."
One of the men replied immediately. "We have no need to retire General."
It was the rude man with the red collar. The angry man who had called Julii a godless savage. "We have a unanimous verdict of guilty, General."
The General's tone showed sincere sadness and concern for Robert. He seemed to be delaying. "I know that this young officer Robert Calhoun has served bravely, and with distinction, in two battles. The battle of Big Bethel and the battle of Bull Run. I know this because both of those battles he fought bravely under my command. It saddens me greatly to see such a fine young man fall so far from grace."
Looking out into the room full of people, the man called General spoke with a pleading tone. "Is there anyone here who saw Captain Calhoun on the day of the battle? Anyone who can help this man?"
Julii looked out at all of the white-pink faces in the room from her little pen but no one even looked like coming forward.
The man called General sounded resigned. "It is a terrible thing to punish such a fine young officer, but our code of conduct during times of war leaves me no choice but to sentence Robert Calhoun to death by firing squad."
The man called General's wooden thing hitting the table was the most shocking sound Julii had ever heard. She jumped to her feet like a young deer springing from a trap. She had to free herself from the little pen. She had to get to her Robert but the anonymous gray men were already taking him away.
Julii tried to cross the short distance between her and Robert, but malnutrition and her state of panic and rapid movement started to take its toll. White flashes of light moved rapidly at the side of her vision. They were the flashes she saw after hitting her head on the tree by the pregnant brown woman in the thicket.
'Had she hit her head?' 'She had no memory of hitting her head!'
As her subconscious mind fainted, Julii’s conscious mind had still not grasped fully what was happening. By the time her face hit the hard wooden floorboards, all of her failing mental faculties become fully synchronized in a strange and vivid dream of her and Robert standing on the deck of a ship crossing a great ocean.
All alone in a hostile world
Julii came rushing back from the dream of her and Robert standing on the deck of a ship. It was so real she could feel the wind in her hair as they crossed a great ocean. The dream was so vivid; it was more like a memory than a dream. It felt nice and warm and safe, but somewhere in the dream she heard Robert. He was shouting: "Mother! Father! You must take good care of Julii! Please! It is our debt of honor!"
Opening her eyes, Julii saw her Robert being dragged from the court martial room by the two gray men. 'The dream that felt like forever had taken mere seconds, and something seemed strange about what she was seeing.' 'She felt neither asleep nor awake.' 'She wanted to run to Robert but her body would not respond.'
Then it came to her - she was looking up. Somehow she was lying down. She was looking along the floorboards stretching out in a long line before her to where Robert struggled for his life.
There were many moccasins passing her eyes. 'No, not moccasins, boots.' Many boots were walking, on the floorboards, past her face. There were also female boots passing her face. 'Where they called “boots”?' 'Or did women's moccasins have a different name?'
One of the women stopped in front of Julii. She felt the soft hem of her long dress touch her cheek as the woman knelt down. She felt the woman touch her face quite tenderly. It felt nice to be cared for, and just one simple touch gave her hope until a man's boots arrived next to the woman's boots and angrily dragged her away.
After a lot of scraping of chairs and boots crunching on wooden boards, the room fell silent. Julii's dazed mind began to clear just enough for her to lift her head from the wooden floor. As she did so, the last white man left the room.
The thing called “door” slammed shut, and Julii was lying completely alone on an unforgiving floor in a cold empty space. She had never in her life felt so totally alone.
'Robert had been stolen from her!' 'Robert had been murdered!' Just the thought seemed impossible. Robert was her only reason for being in this building. Her only reason for being in this place called Atlanta. 'Her only reason for living.'
'What now?' 'Should she stay here on the floor of this building until Robert's memory died with her body?' 'Should she try to survive?' 'Should she try walking back to her family home?' 'The family home the man called Prosecutor said did not exist?' This seemed like the only real possibility 'but how?' She could follow the road back, the way Robert had brought her, easily enough, but what dangers lay that way?
'There was a thing called “bushwhackers” that kills people and steals their possessions while leaving their boots and bodies in the road.' 'There was also the terrible place called “Shiloh”.'
In the middle of her mental struggle, Julii realized that, to add to her woes, she was incredibly hungry. Much worse than just being hungry at this moment, she was going to be hungry three times a day every day until she reached her tribe.
In the forest she could hunt, but in this town of Atlanta, no one seemed to hunt. When people in Atlanta were hungry, they found food in buildings. 'Maybe she could go to the food building and get some food to keep her alive until she could get into the forest to hunt?'
Standing up, Julii felt another storm in her head. This time a rushing sound accompanied the white flashes passing rapidly at the corner of her eyes. She bent over the back of a chair until the rushing passed. Gently she stood, but the silent white lightning flashes returned. Standing still gave the lightni
ng time to slow then stop.
Things that had never happened to Julii before were now happening at such a fantastic rate she was becoming totally disorientated by them. Something like instinct told Julii that if she was to survive, she could not stay in this horrible place called “court martial” any longer, but the fear of leaving was overwhelming.
Retracing the steps she had made earlier that morning, Julii walked to the tall heavy doors. While trying to work out the thing called “handle”, one of the two doors opened.
The brown man in the open doorway looked at Julii with surprise. His tone was filled with disdain. "You can't be in here."
There it was again - that tone of contempt. Even the brown people of Atlanta hated her. 'Why did everyone dislike her so?' 'They knew nothing about her.'
Julii walked past the brown man and the bright sunlight hit her hard. She leaned against the wall for fear of falling again. Looking up, she closed her eyes against the glare of the sun.
She could not look, but its warmth felt familiar and friendly like something she could trust. It gave her strength and hope. She was out of that bad white man's court martial room, and that was a good first step.
Looking down and opening her eyes, Julii saw that she was standing at the edge of the busy street. The white people walking around her all had that same look of disdain for her.
Those who walked alone simply glared at her as they passed. Those who walked together stared at her with the look of disdain and spoke to each other about her. Julii could not hear what they said, because the words were said from the side of their mouths in low secretive tones, but she knew without any doubt they were talking about her.
In a desperate attempt to remove herself from the ongoing hostility, Julii walked along the front of the building called “court martial” until she reached its corner. At the corner, she ducked into the gap between it and the next building. It was not a very wide gap, but there were no white people and Julii felt a little less exposed.
She sat down in the small strip of sunshine and instinctively curled up into a defensive ball. Even moving such a short distance had drained all of her strength. She knew that moving again was essential for her survival, but she found it so hard to find the courage or the energy to do so. Julii's confronted mind was giving up the fight and drifting off to thoughts of better things.