We sat down in the sunny side of the wagon, next to each other, so we could both look at the speech, munching on the bread and dried apples. I tell you, it felt might funny to sit side by side with a colored Yankee soldier, like we were old pals having a grand time together. “Okay, first you got to learn your ABC’s.” I figured I’d tell him A was M, T was J, and so on.
“I know that part. I learned it.”
That was another surprise. “How’d you do that?”
“Back home they had a school for the white children, just a little old tumbledown place. I took to sneakin’ off there when I could. It was raised up a foot off the ground, for the snakes, the way a lot of them places is. I squeezed underneath it and lay there listening to the old missiz teachin’ them kids.”
“Weren’t you scared of those snakes?”
“Naw. I had an old snake skin in a little pouch tied round my neck, that I got from a conjure lady. Snakes won’t go near nobody with one of them things.”
It was just like the colored to believe something like that. But you never knew about such things—sometimes they were true. “So. Go on. How’d you learn the letters?”
“I lay there quiet as could be and took it all in. Then one day I had a sneezin’ fit. The missiz thought a skunk or a possum got under the school. She came out with a broom and poked me out of there. She whaled me with that broom all the way back to the house, where I was supposed to be hoein’ the radishes. So I never got no further than the ABC’s.”
One way around teaching him, I could see, was to keep him onto some other subject. “Where’s back home?”
He sort of waved to the north. “Back up the Shenandoah Valley.”
“Where exactly? I’m from over that way.”
“Just an itty-bitty place. Up toward Stephens City.”
“I’ve been up there, teamstering.” It was funny to think we were almost neighbors.
“Spent my life hoein’ tobaccy and getting my tail whipped with a birch switch and never had no hope of nothing else.”
I wouldn’t have liked that very much myself, knowing I was to spend the rest of my life hoeing tobacco. But of course the darkies didn’t suffer from it as much as white folks would. “My pa whipped me when I did something wrong,” I said. “Once I stole five cents out of his coat to buy candy with. He whipped me till I hollered so loud Ma made him stop. I never did that again.”
“I bet he didn’t draw no blood. When I got whipped, Marse Stevens generally kept at it until he cut my skin. Eat standing up for a week after that.”
“Pa never wanted to hurt me, only give me a good stinging, so’s I learned my lesson.”
“Gettin’ whipped by your pappy ain’t the same as by your massa. Pappy whipped me, too, when I got uppity, but he didn’t draw no blood. Marse Stevens drew blood on him, you can bet. Took three men to hold him down, and Marse Stevens whipped him until his back wasn’t nothin’ but blood and meat. By the time Marse Stevens sold him off to South Carolina, his back was so shiny from scars you could near see your face in it.”
“Probably he did something wrong and deserved it.”
He stuck his face in mine. “Don’t you ever say nothin’ about my pappy or I’ll kill you dead where you sit.”
I jumped. I’d never seen a darky lose his temper with a white man like that. Of course, I wouldn’t like it, neither, if somebody said my pa deserved a whipping, but I didn’t expect Private Turner to feel the same as me.
I wasn’t about to apologize. I’d never apologize to a darky even if he was to shoot me for it. But I could see where it would only be Christian to tone it down a little. “Most likely your master was too hard with his colored. Some of ’em are.” I decided to get on a subject less likely to rile him up. “Why’re you so all-fired-up to learn to read? I never heard of a nig—darky who could read.” You take an ordinary white boy, you practically had to beat him to get him to learn anything. And here was a darky you had to beat to keep him from learning.
“Why, what you talkin’ about, Reb? Plenty of colored can read, and write books, too. You take Frederick Douglass, he wrote a wheelbarrow full of books. He says it ain’t goin’ to do the colored no good just to be free. We got to be educated, too, like the buckra, else well spend our lives behind a plow lookin’ at the wrong end of a mule.”
That took me all right, for it was just what Pa said: a lot of the fellas he soldiered with couldn’t read nor write and would spend their lives behind the plow. Most likely this here Douglass must of overheard some white man say it first. It was probably true that there were some black folks you could teach things to. Just by the law of averages there was bound to be. But from what I’d seen of the colored—the way they talked and such—it didn’t seem likely that you could teach most of them very much. I was curious to know how much Private Turner actually knew. “How’d you learn the letters if you were under the school and couldn’t see ’em?”
“Oh, she had ’em writ on the blackboard. Whenever I got a chance I’d slip off there and peek at ’em through the window. Course I didn’t know which end of the ABC’s come first—the end toward the window or the end toward the stove. I just guessed at it and picked the end by the window, and learned the whole thing, scratching out the letters in the dirt. I got it memorized good, and then one day I saw little Marse Richard, who wasn’t but seven then, writing his name in the dirt the same as I done, and saying the letters out loud to show off to his ma, and I seen I’d learnt the whole thing backward. Oh, it made me feel mighty blue, all that work for nothing. But I set about clearin’ it out of my head and learned it right.”
One surprise after the next. This fella wasn’t as stupid as most of ’em. It was hard for me to believe there was a darky in the world that had any brains. But maybe he was lying. I pointed my finger to the word brought in that speech of Lincoln’s. “What’s those letters?”
He put his finger down next to mine and I pulled my hand away. “B-r-o-u-g-b-t. What’s that say?”
I began to feel kind of uneasy. He was going to be harder to fool than I reckoned on, and would be mighty riled up if he caught me at it. But I wasn’t going to help a darky set himself up as good as a white man. “Oh, that means broke,” I said.
He put his finger under the word again, and worked the sound of it out for himself. “Bro-ugg-t.” He looked at me. “That’s mighty funny. You sure you got that right?”
I began to feel hot. He was on to me, but for the wrong reason. “No, that’s right. Only the h doesn’t count.”
He gave me another funny look. How come the h don’t count?”
He had me stumped. “It just doesn’t, is all. In words there’s a lot of letters that don’t count. Like, you take neighbor, any fool would think it was spelled n-a-y-b-o-r. But it isn’t, it’s n-e-i-g-h-b-o-r, only the g and h don’t count. Same as in weigh. There’s a g and h in there that don’t count, neither. Or freight.”
“Why don’t they just leave g and b out’n the list if they don’t count?”
“Oh, sometimes you need ’em. You take ghost. The g sounds there, it’s only the h that’s a waste.”
He scratched his head. “All right, keep the g but let the H go if it ain’t no use.”
“No, you can’t do that. You need the H for through. Tha-roo,” I explained. “In that one you don’t need the g.” I frowned. “Of course, there’s an h at the end you don’t need, neither.”
He stared at me. “You sure you got this right?”
Well, I did have. I was confusing him more by telling him the truth than by teaching him wrong. “Oh, it’s right. You can ask anybody.”
He shook his head. “It’s the most mischievous thing I ever come up against. Now lemme ask you this. How do you know when they count and when they don’t count?”
I was stumped again. “There isn’t any rule for it. You just got to learn ’em, is all.”
Luckily, just then the Federals started hollering that it was time to get back on the road. Private Turner t
ook the newspaper clipping from me, put it carefully in his breast pocket, and buttoned the pocket. I hitched up the mules, climbed onto Regis, and pulled onto the road with the little wagon train, feeling kind of relieved that I’d got out of the reading lesson safe.
I was still worried about bouncing those poor wounded fellas too much. Every once in a while Jeb would ask for a drink of water, and I’d give him some from my bottle. He didn’t drink much of it, just wet his mouth a little. I’d ask him how he was doing and he’d try to give me a wink and say he was fine. But he wasn’t. The other fella wasn’t doing even that good. He had his eyes closed most of the time and mumbled a good deal. It seemed to me like it would be kinder to set him off someplace in the sun by the side of the road and let him die in peace, but you weren’t supposed to do that.
That night we fitted in another reading lesson while we ate. I saw pretty quick I couldn’t tell him every word wrong, for I’d never be able to keep track of it myself. I had to teach him wrong just here and there, whenever I figured I could get away with it. When he got suspicious and sounded out the word, I’d explain it was another case of where some of the letters didn’t count. Pretty soon I’d either escape, or get sent north to a Union prison camp. Either way I’d be shet of him, and it wouldn’t matter to me when he found out I’d been teaching him wrong. He was bound to find out sooner or later. After that he wouldn’t trust anything I taught him and would have to start all over again. Maybe he would learn to read and maybe he wouldn’t, but if he did it wouldn’t be my fault.
Still, it was risky teaching him wrong, and I tried to get out of the lessons as much as possible. Anyway, the main idea for me was to get friendly with him, so it came natural to get off Lincoln’s blame speech and ramble on to something else. Like, the speech began off, “Four score and seven years ago.” Naturally, Private Turner wanted to know what in tarnation four score meant. So I explained that a score was twenty, so four score was eighty and four score and seven was eighty-seven. I could see he was mighty impressed with the way I toted that up.
“What’s it mean?”
“Lemme see,” I said, looking for a way to ramble off. I looked at him. “When’s this here speech from?”
“A couple of years ago. Captain Bartlett read it out to us at formation one day. I asked him if I could keep it.”
“Well, all right,” I said, figuring on impressing him some more. “Lincoln gave this speech in 1863. So ‘four score and seven years ago’ is...is...” I picked up a stick and scratched the numbers in the dirt to subtract them. “It’s 1776. Why, blame it, that’s the meaning of the thing. He’s talking about when the Declaration of Independence was signed.”
“What’s that?”
“Why, that’s the most important thing that ever was. It’s when we declared we was free of the British, and fought the Revolution over it. Same as the South declared it was free of the Federal government.”
“Same as Lincoln declared the colored was free of the masters,” he said.
“That isn’t the same thing at all as the Declaration of Independence.”
He thought about it for a minute. “Now, Reb, awhile ago you was sayin’ this here war was about states’ rights and the Constitution. Now you got the Declaration of Independence in there, too.”
The truth was, I was getting myself all tangled up. Why had Lincoln thrown that blame four score in there? “That’s just Lincoln’s way of putting it. I didn’t say he was right.” I decided to get off it. “Anyway, that’s what four score and seven means.”
He nodded. Then he said, “Whyn’t he just say eighty-seven straight out, instead of confusin’ folks?”
“It’s like the way a preacher talks. It sounds more noble if you come at a thing sideways instead of hitting it straight on.” Then I said, “Did Marse Stevens let you go to service when you were back home?” and we rambled off on the subject of preachers and what kind of church he went to, and such. Some of it was mighty interesting. They weren’t allowed to have a regular church, he said, but one of the old slaves set himself up as a preacher. On Sundays all the slaves would come together in a patch of ground by the cabins and old Deacon Jack would holler ’em. Then they’d have a ring shout. That was the best part, he said. “You ain’t allowed to dance at a meetin’, so you got to keep both feet on the ground while you go round and round. Oh, they’s some mighty powerful singin’ at some of them shouts, the folks all clapping their hands. Some ’em ketch the spirit. They eyes roll back and they speak in tongues. It sounds like real talk, but not so’s you nor me could understand it.”
“It happens to white folks, too,” I said. “At camp meetings. Pa didn’t hold with it, and we never went to no camp meeting, but the Reamer boys over to Conrad’s Store did, and they told me about it. They said a couple of women started talking real funny and finally just keeled over. But I never heard of no dancing.”
“It ain’t dancin’. You ain’t allowed to dance. You got to keep your feet on the ground all the while you go around—shuffle ’em along.” And he stood up and showed me. Oh, it was mighty interesting, and as much as I could I got us off that blame speech and rambling on to other things.
I slept in the wagon again that night. It wasn’t much of a place for sleeping, for Jeb thrashed around in his sleep a good deal and the other one mumbled near continuous the whole night, like he had something big on his mind and had to get shet of it. But there was a good side, too, for some warmth came off of them and I wasn’t near as cold as I’d have been sleeping alone.
Along toward dawn, when the sky was just leaving off being dark, it began to grow colder. I shivered and tried to curl up into a ball to stay warm, but the wounded fellas didn’t leave enough room to curl up in. My teeth were chattering, and after a little bit I reached out my hand to touch the fella who was doing all the mumblin’, in hopes he’d shift himself. Suddenly I realized he wasn’t mumbling anymore. I came full awake, sat up, and bent forward to take a good look at him. A shiver went through me, but not from the cold. I touched his face. His skin was cold. I jerked my hand back. I’d been sleeping with a dead man. I leapt out of the wagon as fast as I could move. To think I’d been lying right there next to him when his spirit rose out of him and sailed off to Heaven. I peered in over the side of the wagon. “Jeb,” I whispered, although there wasn’t no need for quiet.
He turned his head a little. “That you, youngster?”
“That fella, he’s dead.”
Jeb coughed a little. “Some fellas has all the luck,” he said.
Chapter Eight
We went along mighty slow for a couple more days. The Yankees didn’t know the country: a few times we made wrong turnings and had to backtrack for two or three hours. Things would happen, too. We had to take time to bury my dead fella, and we hardly got going when a wheel fell off a wagon and had to be fixed—it was always something like that.
As far as I was concerned, the slower the better, for once we reached City Point I was likely to get shipped off north. I had to escape before then, that was certain. But I wasn’t sure I’d got Private Turner fetched along to where he’d let me go off alone to water the mules, or some such. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would manage that—tell him Bridget had come down with the colic and needed to graze on a special kind of herb I saw growing back a ways, that I saw a big beehive I could reach if I drove the wagon under the branch and stood up on the seat. But none of these ideas was any good.
I didn’t have trouble getting his attention, though, for every time we stopped to rest he wanted to go at reading. What’s dedicated mean, what’s hallowed ground, and such. To be honest, I wasn’t sure myself what a lot of it meant, which was a good thing, for it allowed me to learn him wrong by mistake, instead of on purpose. So I said that dedicated meant they was serving refreshments after the speech, and that it was harrowed ground, meaning that the earth was all tore up on account of the battle.
But I understood the words, “All men are created equal” a
ll right, and I wasn’t about to learn him that. “All men are created eagles,” I said. “Like, everybody’s got the same chance to fly up to Heaven.”
He nodded his head. “I knowed that. It’s out of the Scripture. Deacon Jack hollered it out a good deal—‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.’ ”
Generally speaking, though, I was able to twist things around so’s we’d get off that wretched speech and ramble down a side path. Like, one time I asked him how come he was Private Turner instead of Private Stevens—most darkies didn’t have no last name, and if they needed one, they usually were given the name of their master.
“It was when I ’listed up,” he said. “I couldn’t join unless I had two names. They said I should take Stevens, but I wouldn’t, not after the way the old marse whipped us. So I taken Turner, from Nat Turner.”
I knew who Nat Turner was—a slave that got up a rebellion among the other slaves down in Southampton. They murdered a lot of white folks, but he got caught and they hung him. It hit me as mighty uppity for a darky to take the name of a murderer—he dassn’t have done it before the war. But I didn’t say so, for we was supposed to be friendly. So I said, “What did they call you before?”
“Cush is my real name. My pappy give it to me. It’s from scripture. Cush was the son of Ham and was King of Ethiopia and the pappy of Nimrod, the mighty hunter.” I decided I’d call him Cush. It suited a darky a whole lot more than Private Turner.
“When did you enlist, Cush?”
“Right after I run off.”
“Were you in any of the fighting?”
“Naw,” he said. “They use the colored for work details, mostly. Teamstering and sech. We been hauling stuff up to the front. That there battle, where I caught you, was the onliest fight I was ever in.”
So he didn’t know much more about war than I did; except, of course, he’d been up to the front and seen it there. “Some colored was in the fighting?”
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