by John Keene
Soon enough here came Anderson, stomping over from the area of the officers’ tents, grinning broadly like the lottery man had called his name, but unlike Sydnor he knew not to mess with me when I was studying on something, so he stood beside me as my eyes followed the light's shafts down into the greenery, tracing it with my fingers, smelling it, listening to the aftersounds and the silence enfolding it and only then did he utter anything, only when he was pretty sure I was done, Sydnor watching me too until he couldn’t sit no more and hurried over to hear what Anderson had to say. Excuse me but what news you got for us, Pop James? is what this young man, once in bondage yet who knew how to write out notes like a schoolmaster and recite chapter and verse from the Bible and Longfellow without mixing up a single word, and who behaved like a gentleman when he spoke to an elder like me, asked me.
I answered, “I got to think about it for a little while more, but if you look at this sign here”—and I pointed to the cross of light with the faint shape of a heart hovering just above its center, a forewarning and lament—“and here, to the way the blades is bending outward on either side like an invisible arrow”—urging us to stay right where we were—“and to here,” a patch so dusty it was as if the desert of solitary death had already laid claim to it, “this is not the time to attack, I can almost assure you on my parents’ and my grandparents’ graves of that.” DeVeaux, who had also walked over, countered without even acknowledging me that my mumbo jumbo and hoodoo claptrap couldn’t be right, that what we needed to do is fight our way to the next line, lay those Confederates and their French and Mexican infantrymen low like the reaper, and they all commenced to smiling and clapping, Johnson, Scott, Shepard, Morris who had his sisters kidnapped into Arkansas well before the first shot down at Sumter, Wilson, Patterson, Renard, Kelley, even Bergamire, nearly every last one of them. DeVeaux was on a roll now, his voice a common preacher’s, which is what his father was, Anderson told me the first time I witnessed him going on like this, soon as he got free the daddy took up the Good Book and the son intended to follow that profession, these folks from the far northwestern corner of the state, near Nebraska, though he had shifted into testifying about how we all needed to go beyond shooting them down, we needed to kill at least ten apiece, have a slaughter to send a message to Price and Bedford and all the rest. When he had finally quieted down, Anderson reminded everyone we had orders to take them prisoner rather than go on a spree.
When he said this last word a few of them guffawed because they hadn’t ever heard that word before, but Anderson was wont to speak real proper at times, like a dictionary would if a dictionary could talk, which made me think of my old lady back home. He and Bergamire and a few of the others would take turns teaching classes early in the morning and by the campfire, on spelling and speaking and math, not the kind of learning people learned in the fields or in the store rooms in country towns, but the right way so that you can pen your name when the time came, and understand what your documents were saying, and count your pay before and after it hit your pocket, instead of having to rely on them other folks to do so for you. I found myself growing close to Anderson, and would tell him what I was picking up so that he could convey it to the rest as if he had somehow assessed it himself, since they were more likely to listen to him.
But that day was not propitious, and yet Colonel Barrett ordered us to ready ourselves and proceed against the gray traitors, which meant eight companies of our United States Colored Troops, which is what we became when the Army federalized our Missouri brigade, would head with the white 2nd Texas Cavalry Battalion under the command of Lt. Colonel Branson through Boca Chica Pass to engage the enemy, driving them back to Brownsville and capturing any we could along the way. All day we prepared for the evening march, though it was already clear that four dozen of the white men would have to proceed horseless, but both Anderson and Bergamire circulated among all the companies to say that as soon as we overtook the insurrectionists we were to requisition as many of their mounts as we could. Between readying and packing equipment I sat and composed brief letters, which Anderson wrote out in his steady hand, to Johnny O., who was with a regiment still stationed in Tennessee, and to Bessie Amelia, who was raising money for the troops all across Minnesota and Wisconsin, and to Louisa, who loved hearing about nothing more than the tedium of my daily military life. A fine rain began falling in the late morning, and I pointed this out to Anderson, who thought it might let up, but by the time we had reached the pass, the downpour had thickened into batteries of water, and the sky cracked open with thunder and foreboding light. Our progress was glacial through the high, wet grass, which now hid all its secrets, giving off strange waterlogged sounds and odors, the cattails fizzling like flares, the figworts emitting their noxsome fragrance, the nightshade extending its mortal embrace, but we followed the curves of the river throughout the night and caught a brigade of the Confederates unawares. The Texans took three of the traitors prisoner, and sent some of our men to husband the supplies from their bivouac, though Anderson had me help set up camp for the night and read the surroundings for any clues about the following day.
I woke that morning and studied the omens, which were ill but not fully open to interpretation, so I kept them to myself. By midday we were creeping on our hands and knees like turtles across green expanse at the base of Palmito Hill when a fusillade, followed by a brigade of Confederates, engaged us. I usually kept to the rear as I was ordered to, but Anderson urged several of us to crawl out to the far edge of the field, near the river, where there was a stand of Montezuma cypresses, which I did and when I rounded them flat on my stomach, creeping forward like a panther I saw it, that face I could have identified if blind in both eyes, him, in profile, the agate eyes in a squint, that sandy ring of beard collaring the gaunt cheeks, the soiled gray jacket half open and hanging around the sun-reddened throat, him crouching reloading his gun, quickly glancing up and around him so as not to miss anything. I glanced behind to see if Anderson was nearby, but he and most of the rest were proceeding to the north of me, along the open field of battle, a blue line undulating forward in the high grass, their mismatched uniforms behind the white men in their blue streaming like waves on the one side and the gray of the insurrectionists on the other, the gunfire crackling like the announcement of the end of something terrible, and I looked up and he still had not seen me, this face he could have drawn in his sleep, these eyes that had watched his and watched over his, this elder who had been like a brother, a keeper, a second father as he wondered why this child was taking him deeper and deeper into the heart of the terror, why south instead of straight east to liberation, credit his and my youth or ignorance or inexperience, for which I forgive him and myself but I came so close to ending up in a far worse place than I ever was, and I heard Anderson or someone call out in the distance, and raised my gun, bringing it to my eye, the target his hands which were moving quickly with his own gun propped against his shoulder, over his heart, and I steadied the barrel, my finger on the trigger, which is when our gazes finally met, I am going to tell the reporter, and then we can discuss that whole story of the trip down the river with that boy, his gun aimed at me now, other faces behind his now, all of them assuming the contours, the lean, determined hardness of his face, that face, there were a hundred of that face, those faces, burnt, determined, hard and thinking only of their own disappearing universe, not ours, which was when the cry broke across the rippling grass, and the gun, the guns, went off.
PERSONS AND PLACES
Editor's note: "Persons and Places" appeared in the print edition of this book as two columns, side
by side. Due to technical limitations, the story appears here as one single column.
Cambridge Journal: October __, 1890
Of what did this chilly afternoon consist? After lunch with Morgan in Mem. Hall, work and a swift visit to 20 Flagg, I took a round-about way from the Gymnasium for my breather. Past the Square terminus, dodging the chattering crowds and dust and clattering hooves that transform Cambridge at times into something of a mini-metropolis.
I was feeling rather out of sorts, for I once again had to put off Mrs. T[aylor] with a promise to pay in a fortnight and a smile. Throughout the meal I sat and ate, only moderately aware of my companion, Morgan. His jovial self as always, was he recounting to me last Saturday’s Hill festivities and his impressions of some new young Ladies on visit from Philadelphia, or did I only imagine hearing him say this? In truth I was concentrating on my questions for the coming meeting of the Philosophical Club, where Santayana, that new graduate student and my likely tutor, is set to speak on “Spinoza and the Ethical Sensibility.”
Indeed, as I was passing down Mount Auburn Street, I spotted his black-clad figure floating by. Ghostly, yet swarthy, an Iberian by birth, though perhaps not in temperament, something dangerous and daring in those black eyes. Our gazes met, glancingly. As he has been wont to do whenever we have seen each other, he abruptly turned away, striding faster than before he had caught sight of me. I continued on toward the river, where I thought I might walk for a while and observe the currents slowly pulling whatever traffic still lingered toward the Institute.
Why does he glower so? Is it fear, for certainly he has seen a Negro before, or can it be an acknowledgement of how deeply we are linked? Or does he, like nearly all the rest of them, not really see me at all? Of course there will be scant possibility of a friendship. Be he a Latin or the Statue of Liberty; for even Professor [Wm.] James, in all his eccentric allegiance, admits, when we are at the same table, of those unshakable walls that separate us. Still I know that at some point soon I shall have opportunity to probe his mind, share my inquiries—he and I alone, in an upper room—and he will come to appreciate our common humanity.
For fifteen minutes thus I stood, gathering impressions in the chill, until true cold settled in. Then I hurried back, darting between carriages and odd fellows, almost missing the news stand. I could only glimpse the evening headlines—a human bullet runs the 100 yard dash in under 10 seconds; the Abyssinian War continues; another lynching—making swift mental notes on all issues pertaining to my people, even though the various other national and international events of the past few weeks have not yet had a moment to sediment. . . .
Fleeting Impressions on an Autumn Afternoon (Harvard)
After lecturing on thought and the color-sense, during which I pressed the students to investigate how the context of one’s perception shapes mental impressions, I took lunch with one of Royce’s students. A robust, poetically-minded young Platonist from New Hampshire, we navigated for an hour around the shoals of idealism and the literal embodiment of the Absolute in the lyric moment, to which he has rather romantically subscribed. Is that not a danger of the current state of the literary arts? He then inquired, sub rosa, whether the body, though withering on the vine of a man’s life, might somehow be restored to its most dangerous state of beauty by thought alone. The perils, I thought but dared not say, of a little Wilde or Swinburne, a dose of Pater or, forgive me, William Shakespeare. . . .
Later, as I strolled along Mount Auburn Street, quietly composing, concepts racing in my head like the regattas these New Englanders love to hold, I noticed him again. The intense young colored man, a Negro most certainly, brow high, stern mien, walking briskly toward the river, his eyes fixed upon an invisible target, an imaginary star. This Du Bois, who, I am told by that collector of personalities, William James, fashions himself a philosopher, though gifted with scientific and other facilities. It is true that I have noted him haunting the precincts of the Yard, books peeking from his tattered leather satchel, his cheeks the color of tea into which several tablespoons of sweet cream have been poured, that gaze pressing intently toward some hidden point. Several times we have glimpsed each other, in wary appraisal, and I have, I shall not dissemble, hurried on. Perhaps he recognizes me as one of those who professes, an admirer of mental industry whatever the outward appearance of the bearer; or perhaps through some profounder spiritual auscultation, divined the passion and ritual in my gait.
This jeune philosophe, like the other Negro students, the handful of unassimilable Easterners, Chinese, Mexican boys, must by necessity subsist on an island even more remote than that on which I sojourned during my College days, within this larger crimson archipelago. At one level, I imagine it would provide a place of refuge and some element of happiness for their small and scorned society.
He observes me as if he has already examined the catalogue of ideas and impressions which I shall tell him when we eventually speak, of the gulf between the true-self and the world outside and how the mind, through its exercises, bridges it; of the forests rising around the language of the physicist’s thought; of the importance of doubt in the philosophical method; of those fugitive joys and sincere ecstasies—that heaven that lies in the heart of the earth; of my own long and unfolding exile.
Editor's note: See the following images for the original layout:
ACROBATIQUE
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somewhere far down there, below, from the sandy circle of the circus floor or a seat in the lowest ring of tiered chairs, plus haut! the voice I can easily discern, it’s the ringmaster’s, the crowd’s, the words, now a lone one in my head, höher, repeating, fleet and fluttering, soaring, past me up into the rafters, scattering among the trusses, vaulted arches, the cupola, clambering amid the bats and the blackbirds, across the brickwork seen only by its masons and ghosts, though I see it, often scale it with my eyes when I ascend, every night I am performing, on the cables or trapeze, sometimes studying that map of bricks and buttresses and plasterwork of this chocolate jewel box and nothing else, this elaborate testament to human handiwork, rather than the lights flickering blue-white against this hexadecagon’s drafts, or the violet Paris night flowing in through the high, narrow windows, or, at least at first, the flaring faces of every evening’s audience, until I dare myself to look at them too and do, all those brows and chins masked in chiaroscuro, all those muffs and fans and ruffles and opera spectacles, all those glowing pipe bowls, cigarillo embers flashing like starlight quilting the surface of the Oder on a mid-summer night, and I do but see no one, only a blur no more distinct than the ceiling’s shadows, until I fix a face fixing me, lips agape, eyes firm as beads of beryl, amazement streaming out of them that I am hovering above, the mouthpiece in my teeth and no harness or net to rescue me, or more startling when I hang upside down with the cannon suspended from my teeth, its chain clenched like a whistle, which after the build-up of the horn and drumroll one of the assistants ignites, and when it fires everyone screams, but I have never, ever let it go, never dropped it, never come close to allowing it to slip, though the metal cuts my embouchure and my jaws and head and neck ache for hours after, and someone is crying out, Bravissima, Madame La La, une miracle, magnifique, followed by the barely audible But how does she do it? and another, My God, it is i
mpossible, but she is an angel—or do I hear an animal?—la mulâtresse-canon, la Venus noire, elle là la nôtre, a marvel of nature, cheers, applause and catcalls fire, that mouth, that body, unnatural, such strength you’d see in a monster, as I prepare for the next series of maneuvers and rest my hips and torso on the bar while the clowns caper in reprise below, awaiting my sister butterfly, Theophila, Kaira la Blanche, her hands a doll’s in mine,
around my wrists, my ankles,