by John Jakes
He thought of telephoning Tomaso at the market and asking about Luisa’s availability.
Another time. He was too damn tired.
Next morning, a few minutes after six, a knock woke him. He tugged on his pants and was surprised to find a white cavalry officer standing outside; a lean, tall man, middle thirties, with blue eyes, bushy brows, and a downturned mouth that gave him an air of extreme severity. The man’s posture was so correct, his uniform so neat, his boots so clean, Paul made an instant judgment. If I were a soldier, I would not want to serve with this man, he’d be too difficult.
“Crown?”
“Yes.”
“First Lieutenant Pershing, 10th Cavalry. May I come in?”
Paul rubbed his eyes as he stepped back. The lieutenant shut the door, flicked the strap of his campaign hat from under his chin, and took the hat off. Paul started to gesture to the chair, then realized it was piled with clothes ready for the laundry. His blue chambray shirt lay on the floor under the dressing table. Almost every horizontal surface was covered by items of his souvenir collection. Pershing’s blue eyes whipped over the disorder and didn’t like it.
“I’ll take only a few moments of your time,” he said. His features were strong, if humorless; a prominent nose, large ears that lay flat to his head. He stood with his boot heels apart, as if at parade rest. “Doctor Long, who serves the 24th, gave me your name. I’m advised that you assisted one of my men yesterday.”
“If you mean the Negro, yes, I did.”
“I’m here to thank you. Corporal Person is a member of the troop that I command. The regiment was informed of his situation last night. The doctor said Person will be up and about later today. I caught the local train from Lakeland at 4 A.M. and I’ve just seen him. We’re tracking the men who beat him. You reported that one was called Cheat?”
Paul raked his dark hair, all tangled from sleep. The lieutenant’s sentences seemed to fly at him like bullets. “That’s the name I heard. Sergeant Cheat. He boasted about his unit, the Jacksonville Light Infantry of the 1st Florida.”
“All I needed was that confirmation. We’ll have him arrested within an hour. The Negro regulars are having a lot of trouble with these damned redneck volunteers. I hate for it to happen to Person, he’s a fine soldier. I hate for it to happen to any man in the 10th. I’ve learned to respect and admire our black troops. They try harder than most because the Army is their ticket to a decent life.”
Then there was a noticeable break in the rhythm of Pershing’s speech; a pause as he studied Paul’s reaction. “That isn’t what you expected me to say, is it? I’m very much aware that it’s a minority view. I recently did a short tour at the Military Academy, as a cadet tactical officer. Went there from service with the 10th at Fort Assiniboin, Montana. My former post didn’t make me popular. When I told my cadets of my high regard for black troops, the cadets started calling me Nigger Jack. Behind my back, mostly. Sometimes they softened it to Black Jack. That name I don’t mind. Now, Mr. Crown, a request. If you can, please go up to Tampa Heights before the day’s over. Corporal Person very much wants to tender his thanks to you.”
“I believe I can go, I set my own schedule.”
“Are you a newspaper correspondent?”
“A camera operator for the American Luxograph Company of Chicago. The moving pictures.” The lieutenant looked vaguely disapproving.
“I gather from your accent that you’re German.”
“Yes, Swabia, and then Berlin.”
“I have German roots myself. The family was Alsatian originally. The name was Pfoershing in the seventeen hundreds.” He shot his hand out. “You’re a very decent chap. Thank you again for helping one of my men.”
They shook hands. With crisp movements, Lieutenant Pershing donned his campaign hat and snapped the strap under his chin. Once more he looked at the litter of souvenirs and laundry. He started to say something but reconsidered and about-faced. He didn’t walk out of the room; he marched.
In the yellow light of the dying afternoon, Paul rode the trolley again. Evening fires were burning throughout the camp; cooks were tending their kettles and seeing to their stocks of dishes and cutlery stored in boxes and crates nailed to trees. The smells were pleasant, except for that of the latrines.
The black troopers lay napping in their tents, or sat reading in the shelter of big heavily sprung army wagons. On a sandy diamond, some of them were playing a noisy game of baseball. The white officers had a small enclave to themselves, with camp chairs arranged under a giant live oak draped with Spanish moss. A table made of citrus crates held copies of New York newspapers and popular magazines. An officer reading Harper’s Weekly took his pipe from his mouth and looked curiously at Paul.
He found Corporal Person on the cot where he’d left him. Behind the insect netting Person was sitting up, playing a solitaire game laid out on a copy of the Police Gazette. Nearby on another cot, a soldier more amber-colored than black thrashed and groaned.
A sheet covered Person’s lower body. His muscled chest and shoulders were shiny in the heat. A long bandage was wrapped around his head; crinkly gray hair showed between his ears and the bandage. A knife scar several inches long ran from the middle of his right cheek to his jaw. When he saw Paul, he broke into a grin. He had large teeth and a smile bright as a searchlight.
“You got to be the German fellow who pulled my hash out of the fire.”
“I brought you here, if that’s what you mean. Paul Crown is my name. Everyone calls me Dutch.”
“When I woke up this morning, I thought about you. Didn’t know your name so I gave you one. Heine. Heard another German called that once, he didn’t seem to mind. Dutch is a name for one of them fellows with wooden shoes who lives in a windmill.”
“You mean a Hollander. It’s a confusion Germans can’t straighten out. I’ve quit trying. Call me Heine if you want.”
“Good. Everybody needs a nickname or two. Only man I know who don’t have a proper one is the sarge over there.” He pointed to the groaning man. “Sergeant Leander, all he’s got is a terrible case of the Tampa trots.”
“Do you have a nickname?”
“Ott. Short for Othello. My brother’s Duff, short for Macduff. My sister’s name is Filia, from Ophelia. Our daddy was a Pullman car porter, y’see. Had lots of time to read during the night. He was partial to poetry, especially Shakespeare. After President Lincoln and General Grant brought the jubilee, and pop was allowed to learn to read, you couldn’t stop him. Pop used to say he hated to take time from books to earn a living. Man’s never lonely with a book in his pocket, he’d say. Books gives a man ten thousand friends. Some are smart, some are funny, some are just pleasant for passing the time, but they’re all good. Me, I ain’t as smart as my pop but I still read a lot. Here, I’m forgetting my manners. Pull up that stool, sit yourself.”
In the street, a long file of mounted troopers passed at a walk. Their lieutenant, like Pfoershing-Pershing, was white.
Paul asked, “How’d you get in that fix yesterday, Corporal?”
“Hey now, you helped me out, let’s keep it Ott, all right?”
“Fine,” Paul said.
Ott Person seemed a gentle man, easygoing, yet he had an unmistakable toughness. Under his right arm, along his ribs, Paul saw another scar, a long, horizontal pucker that might have been made by a bullet, or an Indian arrow.
“Tenth Cavalry’s camped way out in Lakeland. I was sent in with dispatches for General Shafter at the hotel. Rode thirty miles on horseback, delivered the pouch, and thought a drink of soda water would taste good. I didn’t want to ask at the hotel, place gives me the jitters. Too fancy. I rode across to Tampa and spied that drugstore. I went in, said ’scuse me to a nice-lookin’ lady and sat down on the stool next to her. Those Florida boys came in a minute later.”
The blaze of his grin disappeared. “They dint take kindly to me bein’ there, sitting by a white lady. Lot of that feeling in this town. Tell the truth,
there’s a lot of it wherever we’re posted.”
They exchanged some facts about themselves. Ott had been raised in Philadelphia and had run on the streets until he was eighteen, old enough to enlist. Paul said he’d been a street boy in Berlin. Ott grinned.
“Knew there was something made me like you right off.”
“And you like the Army?”
“I most surely do. I guess I been an American longer than you, so let me explain something. In this here country we got equality, but some’s a lot more equal than others. In the Army it’s a mite better. There’s travel, and some self-respect, even some danger now and again to prove a man’s worthy. My brother Duff, he thinks I’m crazy. When I was on leave last month, Duff said he’d never go to war for a damn bunch of white folks. ‘I got no country to fight for,’ he said. ‘I got no rights here.’ I told him, ‘Duff, you’re wrong, you’re dumb as a mule. We got some rights. Not enough, but more than Poppa had before the jubilee, and I keep chipping away to get a few more.’ That may be why I walked into that drugstore yesterday. I knew it was a white man’s place.
“Anyway, Heine, I try to b’lieve in this country spite of all the bad things it’s done to people of color. I don’t know of a better country, and I’ve read on the subject. Things do improve. Sometimes hellish slow, but they do. A hundred years ago the Person family dint have a last name. The Persons bent their backs on a cotton farm in Chatham County, Georgia, right along with a dozen others whose granddaddies were snatched from Africa. I ’spect there’ll be a lot more changes, time another hundred years have gone by. If I didn’t b’lieve it, I’d gather all my uniforms in a pile and set fire to ’em. Then I’d go home and tell my brother Duff, ‘Hey, you’re right.’ But I don’t b’lieve like Duff does, and I ain’t ready to give up hope. Not just yet.”
Paul consulted his pocket watch and said he had to leave. Ott Person swung his bare feet off the cot, keeping the sheet on his middle. “They say I can go back to my troop in the morning. We’ll be off for Cuba one of these weeks and I may not see you if things get hot down there. But if I do see you, and you’re in a fix, remember this. I owe you for helping me. I always pay what I owe, you won’t have to ask twice.”
“Thanks, Ott, let’s hope it won’t be necessary. So long.”
“So long, Heine.”
Troubled, Paul trudged a sandy road under widely spaced street lights. What kind of country was it that asked a man to wear its uniform, then spat on him? Americans bragged that theirs was a nation of liberty and law. Were the liberty and law only for an elect of white men? It seemed so.
At the hotel gate he paused to listen to a regimental band playing “After the Ball.” The music flowed into the dark gardens where couples were strolling and laughing in a way that made a single man feel sad. “Julie,” he whispered. “Julie.”
Don’t do that, it’s over. She’s gone.
He realized he’d wrapped his hand around one of the wrought iron bars of the gate. Clutched it so hard, there was a small bleeding cut on his palm. He couldn’t stand celibacy any longer, he was going to have to telephone Tomaso.
The frailty of human flesh kept him from it. He caught the sickness of the town, the “Tampa trots,” from food, dirt, bad water, the tent where he visited Ott Person—who could say?
He’d never felt so miserable and helpless. He had a lot of bad thoughts. He was a speck of common clay, meaningless in the great scheme of the universe. His wishes and hopes counted for nothing.
Jimmy was considerate enough to look in a couple of times a day, though he made a lot of tasteless jokes about Paul’s plight. When he visited on the second night of Paul’s illness, he seemed unusually cheerful. Paul asked whether he’d done any filming on his own.
“Ah, jeez, I couldn’t. The crank jammed. Sand or something. I took it to a photo shop, it should be fixed later this morning.” It was a lie. Who in Tampa would know how to repair their kind of camera? But Paul didn’t have the energy, or the evidence, to accuse Jimmy.
On Monday, June 6, feeling better, he went down to the rathskeller about noon. He paused at the bottom of the stair for a check of the customers. He was determined not to meet Uncle Joe if he could avoid it.
Bitzer was finishing his lunch at a table. “Hey, Dutch, glad you’re well. Getting any good pictures?”
“There isn’t too much to photograph in my room, I’m afraid.”
“Not much left to photograph outside, either. I wish we’d get going.”
Paul agreed. He left the Biograph man mopping up gravy on his plate and surprised the barman by ordering iced tea in a tall glass. He was sipping it when Crane came in, looking as bad as ever.
“Hallo, Dutch. Heard you were down with the local quickstep.”
“I was, but I’m much better. Care for a cigar?”
Crane shook his head, ordered whiskey, and packed his pipe. “There was another break-in last night, did you hear?” Paul shook his head. “Burglar got into the room of some major from Michigan. Stole about forty dollars and a gold watch chain. I expect it’s the same enterprising boyo who’s been working the joint for a week or so.”
“There have been other robberies in the hotel?”
“Four.”
“I haven’t heard a word about it.”
“You’ve been sick. Furthermore, you’re not supposed to hear. The manager isn’t eager to have it known that Henry Plant’s palace of pleasure entertains sneak thieves. I only heard it when I was in bed with one of the tasty colored girls who clean the rooms.” Crane tossed off his shot of whiskey. “Kid, you look like a bee stung you. Why are you surprised by some measly breaking-and-entering jobs? You round up hundreds of high-paid military types for a great and noble crusade like this, thieves are bound to follow along with the whores and saloon keepers and other practitioners of free enterprise.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Paul said in a strained way. His scalp was crawling. He saw a face, and felt unnerved the rest of the day.
At supper in the rathskeller, he sat alone at a table by the wall. Jimmy breezed in about half past six, heading for the bar. Paul had an impulse to hide from him. Reluctantly, he waved.
Jimmy ambled over, full of good cheer. He hung his derby on a wall peg and sat down. The derby was golden brown, with an elegant silk band and the brim curved slightly downward at front and back. Very nobby.
Brand new.
“So you’re back on your two pins, huh?”
“I am, thanks. You sound happy.”
“Top of the world.”
“I looked for you all afternoon. I examined the camera. It seems fine.”
“Yeah, the shop fella fixed it good as new.”
Easy to do, since there was nothing wrong with it.
A bit testy, Paul said, “We’ve not gotten much film.”
“Hell, you’ve been in bed.”
“But where have you been?”
“Here and there,” Jimmy said with a shrug. Paul stared. Jimmy winked. “Ah, you know. Chasing local cunt. Hot stuff, Dutch. I keep telling you to try it.”
Paul laid his small silver fork on his plate of bluepoint oysters in the shell. His revived appetite had abruptly vanished. He suspected something other than women was responsible for Jimmy’s good spirits. On the train coming down, Jimmy had said he intended to make money from the trip.
Abruptly, Paul jumped up.
“Jesus, are you sick again?”
“Yes!” Paul darted from the table, into the billiard room, where there was a separate door to the lower corridor. A close call; Uncle Joe was at the bottom of the stairway, talking steadily and seriously with a major and a captain. Paul left hurriedly.
Tuesday, the seventh of June. The pressure had built to an intolerable level. Late in the morning he telephoned the grocery and asked for Tomaso. Luisa came to his room about half past eight. She took one look and exclaimed, “Ay, Dios mio! Qué cuarto de cochinos. ¡lncréible!”
“What did you say?”
“I said this is incredible. This a room for pi—uh—like a barnyard.” She giggled. “¡Semejante junco! Such junk. Where are we supposed to make love, on the ceiling?”
Mortified, Paul grabbed his straw hat and a new pair of brown canvas leggings, bought as protection against snakes and spiders said to be common in Cuba. He stood sheepishly with the hat in one hand, the leggings in the other, because there was no place to put them. Politeness made Luisa cover her pretty mouth, but her laughter was too strong to be contained. “Jesus save us, sweet, what is all this?”
“Souvenirs. I like to collect things from places I visit.”
“Well, you have certainly done a magnificent job,” she said, hands on her hips. It forced him to see everything he’d accumulated in Tampa. Postcards of the beach. Postcards of shrimp boats. Postcards showing interiors and exteriors of the hotel. Three sand dollars and a dried starfish. Conch shells. A stuffed baby alligator. Four coconuts, two carved into Indian faces. A miniature wooden crate full of orange-colored candy balls. Six pieces of driftwood in assorted, presumably interesting, shapes …
And of course, on the dressing table, the paper flag and the worn stereopticon card.
“I have never seen such a a large—how do you say? Museo?”
“Museum?”
“Yes, such a large museum in such a tiny space. What are you going to do with all of this, querido?”
“Crate the best pieces and send them to Chicago.”
She started to slip out of her dress of bright yellow silk. “Do you live this way at home?”
“This is my home. This or another place like it.”
She stopped, with the dress just above her fine brown breasts. She wore white muslin drawers, knee length and trimmed with lace, but nothing above.
“Hotel rooms?”
“Hotel rooms, furnished rooms—it doesn’t matter.”