Night Song
Page 32
Determined to stay mad, Cara snatched her hair from his hands. She spun to face him, intending to let go with both barrels, only to find her face positioned only a breath away from his own. “I love you, Cara.”
His nearness washed over her and the anger slid away. “What—what were you going to ask?”
He kissed her, pulling away with a tender, slow reluctance. “You didn’t have any say last time. This go-round, you will. Would you be my wife, Cara Lee?”
Astonished joy widened her eyes. She couldn’t speak.
“It’s your choice.”
Cara finally found her voice and said yes. Laughing, she launched herself into his waiting arms.
After they slowly broke a kiss, Cara whispered, “Now I have a question for you. Is this wedding going to be soon? Because we have a baby on the way.”
Chase’s jaw dropped. “A baby?”
“Yes, Sergeant, you’re going to be a father.”
“A baby?” he asked again, searching her face.
Cara nodded.
“A baby!” he yelled at roof-raising volume. “Hot damn!”
He grabbed her around the waist and they were soon rolling around on the bed. Cara was screaming with laughter and Chase was crowing like a fool.
When they finally settled down, he turned to her and asked, “When’s the baby going to be born?”
“The first of the year.”
“A baby . . .” he said, amazed.
“A baby that’ll cross into the next century, Chase. Can you imagine that?”
He could.
“Do you think things will be better for our child?” Cara asked seriously. She didn’t want her children to grow up in a Jim Crow world.
“We can only hope, darlin’,” Chase said, looking into her eyes. “We can only hope.” He kissed her softly.
“You know,” Cara said later, when they sat down to breakfast at the kitchen table, “Delbert said the baby was probably conceived back in March.”
Chase thought back to last winter and smiled devilishly. “Hmm. Probably that March morning when I had homecoming breakfast right here on this very table.”
Cara shook her head, smiling. “Probably.”
“That was a very good breakfast as I recall.”
“You are outrageous. Do you know that?”
“Yep,” he replied, the mustache framing his dazzling smile. “I know a schoolmarm who tells me that all the time. Pass me the preserves, please.”
Cara smiled and passed him the peach preserves. “I love you, Chase.”
He looked up and said softly, “I love you, too, Cara Lee.”
Author’s Note
Night Song is grounded in the little-known history of the Black migration to the West after the Civil War. “Kansas Fever” or the “Great Exodus” began in earnest in 1879 as over forty thousand Blacks fled the violence of Reconstruction, then the terror-filled era of the Redemption. In Kansas they founded all-Black towns, knowing hardship at first, enjoying success in succeeding times. The most famous of these towns is Nicodemus. Nicodemus and its nearby towns in the Great Solomon Valley lost population in the early 1900s, due mainly to the decision by officials of the Missouri Pacific Railroad to lay their tracks far from the area. By 1945 the town that had fueled the dreams of the Great Exodus of 1879 lay virtually deserted.
Today Nicodemus has had a rebirth. Once again, the mostly Black population is on the rise.
The ‘dusters—all the descendants of the fictional characters of Cara and Chase in Night Song, their friends, foes, and acquaintances—would be proud.
Historically, the name buffalo soldier refers to four regiments of Black soldiers: the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry. Between 1869 and 1890 they earned eighteen Medals of Honor for distinguished service to our country.
In 1981 when he served as Fort Leavenworth’s deputy commander, General Colin Powell, later Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, began to dream of erecting a monument to the Buffalo Soldier. He thought the two gravel alleyways in Leavenworth named Ninth and Tenth Streets a poor tribute to men who’d played such a significant role in the nation’s history.
In July 1992, the Buffalo Soldier Monument Committee made his dream a reality. The statue of a mounted buffalo soldier named Scouts Out was unveiled at the 126th anniversary reunion of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Association at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
If readers would like more information on the statue or any of the other ongoing projects of the Buffalo Soldier Monument Committee, write to the committee at P.O. Box 3372, Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027. The National Headquarters of the Ninth and Tenth (Horse) Cavalry Association can be be reached by writing P.O. Box 475, Junction City, KS 66441.
When I first began showing Night Song in manuscript to my friends a few years ago, they enjoyed the story of Cara and Chase and loved the history, which was new to them. I promised that if Night Song was ever published, I would list some of the sources I used when writing it.
So for those readers who want to know more about this fascinating part of American history or who want to build their own African-American history library, here’s a list to start you on the journey to greater knowledge.
Cornish, Dudley Taylor. The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army 1861–1865. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1965.
Dann, Martin E., ed. The Black Press 1827–1890. New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1971.
Erdoes, Richard, and Ortiz, Alfonso, eds. American Indian Myths and Legends. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.
Lingeman, Richard. Small Town America. New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1986.
Painter, Nell Irvin. Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1986.
Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Civil War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1953.
Sterling, Dorothy A. The Trouble They Seen: Black People Tell the Story of Reconstruction. New York: Doubleday, 1976.
Sterling, Dorothy A. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1984.
Thompson, Erwin J. “The Negro Soldiers on the Frontier: A Fort Davis Case Study,” Journal of the West (1965) 7 (2): 217–235.
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NIGHT SONG
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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NIGHT SONG. Copyright © 1994 by Beverly Jenkins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express writte
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