by Sarah Bird
“You’re saying you know horses?”
“I am, sir. That’s percisely what I am saying.”
The Sergeant narrowed his eyes, showing that he half believed me, half thought I was full of shit, and that fifty percent was about all he could ever expect from me. He told his corporal that since I was a lanky, low-weight sort to bring me whatever they had from the stable.
The corporal paused and asked, “Do you mean…?”
“Indeed, I do, Corporal,” Allbright answered, appearing to already know what horse Masters was referring to.
The corporal led two horses from the stable. One was a large chestnut near as tall as the General’s heroic black steed. He handed the reins of that prime mount to Lem who lit up from grinning so big.
Masters had a specimen of an entirely different sort for me. He made a show of calling out, “And you, Private Cathay, here is the very special horse you will be riding.” Everyone was watching when he handed over the reins of a swaybacked gray with knock knees and the longest set of ears ever seen on a horse. Also the strangest. For they drooped. Hung down like a hound’s on a hot day.
By the time Masters announced, “We like to call her Bunny,” men all up and down the line were hooting. And though Vikers wasn’t a hooter, he fixed me with a smug look that said he had the goods on me. Again.
Chapter 40
From the instant we mounted up, Allbright was calling out comments. “Caldwell,” he yelled. “You’re not walking a tightrope! Get your hands down!”
“Greene! Your stirrups are too short. Dismount and let them out.”
“Vikers! Relax, man, relax! You trying to ride that horse. Not choke him to death! Let up on the reins. Better. Better.”
Throughout all this, I had been maintaining a death grip on Bunny’s reins for, to my surprise, actually being atop a horse was nothing like I’d dreamed it’d be. In fact, it was flat-out terrifying. I didn’t mind heights and wasn’t particular about being knocked about, but the idea of another creature being in control had me in a state. Plus Bunny had a terrible gait. She threw me high with every step and I came down so hard I feared my tailbone would break. Luckily, Sergeant Allbright wasn’t paying any attention to me flopping about in the saddle.
He was focused on my friend Lem. “Gentlemen,” he shouted out, “look at Powdrell! That is how you ride a horse! Watch his posture. He’s sitting deep in the saddle but not mashed up against the cantle like too many of you are doing. That might make you feel safer, but your mount hates it. Scoot forward toward the horn, all of you!
“Notice Powdrell’s arm position. He’s carrying them about lap height and he’s got the reins in one hand. That is imperative! You are fighting soldiers. You will need a free hand. If we were as good as the redskins, we’d ride bareback, control our mounts with our knees, and have both hands free. But we’re not, so keep your shooting hand free! Powdrell, turn to your left!”
Seemed like Lem’s horse did just that before the words were even out of the Sergeant’s mouth.
“Excellent! These are trained mounts and, clearly, Powdrell is a trained rider. You should only need a slight touch of the rein, a nudge, to get the job done. Think of it as a gentle push, not a pull. I don’t want to see any more tugging or sawing on the reins. If you want your horse to turn left, gently, gently, touch the right rein to the horse’s neck. Many of your horses have been through the Rebellion. They know a hell of a lot more about mounted warfare than any of you ever will. Let them do their job. Thank you, Powdrell. Back in line.”
Lem, busting with pride, showed out, grinning at us big.
“Eyes forward, Private!” Allbright ordered.
Lem snapped his head back around, and the Sergeant turned his attention to the rest of us. When he gazed my way, I came completely unscrewed, got my left and right twisted around, and steered poor Bunny straight at him. Bunny’s ears flopped up and down with every step and I flopped along with them. Sad to say, neither of our flops was timed up together and I was a big, dumb rag doll atop the goofiest-looking horse in the U.S Cavalry. I didn’t need the jackass hee-haws to alert me to the comical sight we presented. Allbright took one step to the side, reached out, grabbed the reins, brought Bunny to a smooth halt, and ordered, “Trooper, dismount!”
My foot got tangled up in the stirrup and the first part of me to touch the ground was my butt end. You think Vikers and his crew didn’t have themselves a jubilee of sneering about that?
“Rest of you men, keep circling!” Allbright hollered. “Not a one of you doesn’t need the practice!”
When they were all in motion again, Allbright asked me in a low voice, so as to keep the shaming between us, “You haven’t been horseback before, have you, Cathay?”
“No, sir,” I answered, my eyes straight forward.
“You’re not a natural, Cathay.”
“No, sir.”
“You weren’t a barn foreman, were you?”
“No, sir.”
He heaved a breath or two as he considered mustering me out then and there. At last, he said, “Show me your riding position.” I went to mount up again, but he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “No, let’s give your mount a rest. Just show me right here.”
“Here, sir?”
“Here, Cathay.”
I glanced around.
“Don’t mind them.”
I squatted down.
“Let’s see your hand position. Just let your hands drop. Nice and relaxed.”
My hands were as relaxed as a couple of cast-iron frying pans dangling at the end of each wrist. Allbright guided them into position. “You’re nervous, Cathay. Hands feel like you’ve been using them for ice tongs.”
“Yessir.”
Without another word, he put one hand under my butt and the other on the inside of my thigh, far enough from my crotch that there was no danger of him discovering what wasn’t there. “Here! Cathay,” he said, pressing against those tender spots. “You’ve got to feel your mount here!” He pressed up on the cleft of my arse. “And here!” He pressed hard against the inside of my thigh, spots no man had ever touched before, and he moved my hips back and forth in a slow rock. “You feel that?”
I tried to answer but couldn’t work up the spit to get a word out and nodded my head instead.
“Don’t fight it, Cathay.” He kept up the motion until my joints unfroze and followed where he was pushing them. “I’ve been watching you, Cathay. No one better on the marching field than you, but off it you keep your guard up all the time. And the others don’t like you.”
My lips trembled from stuffing the hot words I had to say on that topic back down my throat.
“I’m not saying they’re right,” he went on. “Just that it makes you a divisive element. And I can’t have divisive elements. Can’t have a soldier who’s not pulling this unit together. You don’t have to like everybody. They don’t have to like you. The fact is, you can hate every single man here, but you have to unite with them. Do you understand me?”
I nodded stiffly as he continued guiding my hips.
“All right, better. You’re getting the rhythm of it. Thing to remember is that riding a horse is like being with a woman. You know that feeling, Cathay? With the woman next to you, your body and her body making one body? Her smell all up in your head? You know that feeling, Cathay?”
I nodded, for words had slipped even further beyond my power now.
“Smooth, Cathay. Don’t fight her. Don’t fight us. I’ll be watching you. You might be meant for an infantryman instead of the cavalry. No shame in that. I just can’t have a man who’s not committed, heart and soul, to making this the best goddamn unit in the army. They’re watching us. They want us to fail. We will not fail. You got that?” I gave a feeble nod.
“I’ll give you until end of the week, Friday, before I decide. You’ve got the next four days to make me believe you’re fit to ride in the U.S. Cavalry. If you don’t…” He stood and shrugged. “I guess you can just
keep on walking to St. Louie like you were the day I rode in.”
I reddened, as I realized that he knew I’d been deserting.
“Caldwell!” the Sergeant yelled, walking away. “You look like a duck. Get your ass down, man!”
That evening at mess, in spite of not eating all day, I couldn’t choke down a single spoonful of the slum. Or even the special treat they put out for us: real bread with butter. I was happy to pass mine on to Lem, saying my stomach wasn’t right. Which it most definitely had not been since the instant Allbright laid his hands on me.
That night, sleep would not come. I lay awake listening to the sounds a hundred men make at night. Snores, groans, creaks, whimpers, the senseless babbling of someone talking back to his dreams, shrieks when the nightmares came. Crying. Lots of them cried softly at night.
“You awake?” Lem whispered from the next bunk. Though I never made the tiniest sound, Lem always sensed when I was awake.
“Yeah,” I answered, my voice extra deep to cover up the girlish spell I had fallen under.
“Pretty exciting day, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Special, huh?”
“First day I ever sat a horse,” I said, laying off my giddiness on Bunny.
The snores rose to a crescendo loud as an August noon in a field of cicadas. “Seems we’re the only ones in the outfit feels that specialness.”
I saw then what kind of special the day had been for Lem, country boy up out of Alabama, nobody’d ever made over him before.
“Sergeant made you an example, Lem. Singled you out.”
“Well, you too, Bill.”
I snorted for, kind as Lem was, it wasn’t any use in pretending why I’d been singled out. “The Sergeant told me I have four days to shape up or I am for the infantry.”
“Aw, Bill. I hate to hear that. Can you? Shape up?”
“Like a steer, I can try,” I joked, trying to sound game.
Lem chuckled. “I hope you do. Sure would be lonesome without you. Good night, Bill.”
“Good night, Lem.”
He was snoring by the time I finished pronouncing his name, but I laid there the whole night, so fluttery I thought I’d take flight.
Chapter 41
Next few days were even worse. It was a sore disappointment to discover that I wasn’t the horseman I’d always dreamed I’d be if only given the chance. Problem was, I was trying too hard. Turned out that riding a horse was one of those things, like sleep or moving your bowels, that gets worse the more try you put on them.
By the end of the day, I could barely stand. Felt like I’d been dropped from a shot tower direct onto the old Arschloch. About a hundred times. Walking bowlegged, I led Bunny to the stables for grooming. The stables were my favorite place on post to escape from prying eyes. With Bunny I could relax for a bit, leave off the manly airs that I found so wearying. It was also the only place where my odor wasn’t noticeable, for all the riding combined with avoiding the bathhouse had caused me to ripen to such a degree that comments were being passed. Many comments.
The problem wasn’t exactly me, though, since I slipped off to wash every other day or so. It was my uniform. Since every cent I made was going to pay off Vikers, I didn’t have even the three pennies a washerwoman charged to iron a shirt, much less what it cost to mend, soak, boil, scrub, blue, bleach, rinse, wring, dry, and fold the whole truck. But with Allbright studying on exiling me to the infantry, the least I could do was not stink. I headed for Suds Row hoping to convince one of the gals to IOU the deal.
I was just turning the corner out onto the central promenade when I spotted Sergeant Allbright on the other side, his laundry wrapped up neat inside a jacket and tucked under his arm. My step slackened as I gazed upon him striding beneath the oaks, their leaves starting to make a dark lace against the sky as dusk came on. His walk had the smooth action of a show horse and he didn’t seem to spend any more energy covering ground than a hawk did riding a high wind current.
I picked up my pace, cut across the promenade, and intersected him just as he was about to turn off for Soap Suds Row.
“Why, Sergeant,” I piped up with a note of surprise that sounded fake even to me. I slipped in beside him with a salute which he only half returned. “Right nice evening, isn’t it, Sergeant?”
He nodded stiffly.
“Out for a walk, sir?” I asked.
He pointed to the bundle beneath his arm.
“Soap Suds Row! You don’t say. Why, that’s just where I’m headed,” I said, as if us both headed toward one of the two places anyone off duty’d ever walk to was a coincidence of the highest order. “Be happy to take that for you, sir,” I said as I grabbed hold of his bundle of laundry.
Allbright jerked it away, saying, “No need, Private.” He started to leave, pivoted, and added, “Cathay, I am still watching you. Still going to have to make my choice based on what’s best for the unit.”
It was clear that Allbright thought I was brownnosing him, sucking up so he wouldn’t send me down to the infantry. Shamed by that realization, I fumbled a salute and hurried away to the far end of the last barracks where I hid at its edge. Far below the bluff the post sat on, the evening light had polished the river up to a shine, but, in my humiliation, I took no notice of its silver ripples and slow, snaking turns. Without thinking, I lowered my face into my hands and caught the barest whiff of his smell of sweat and soap and sun that either lingered there from the touch of his clothes or was put there by my wanting.
As I was sniffing, I felt the spidery sensation of being watched. I dropped my hands, glanced behind me, and there, standing beneath a monstrous oak that had a perfect view of the promenade, was Justice Vikers, grinning for he had seen the whole set-to.
I tried to wait until after lights out to return to the barracks, but a corporal spotted me and ordered me inside. Tea Cake and his bunch were singing field chants to ease their homesickness. In the middle of the room the cots had been cleared away leaving the floor empty and Vikers was running his usual crap game. A stable boy out of Shreveport name of Fernie Teague was clinging to the dice too long. Vikers yawped at him, “You chokin’ them dice, Teague! Shake and lemme hear the music! Rattle them bones!”
I made my way around the gamblers to my bunk, surprised that Vikers had passed no comment. Turned out, he had a different game in mind. His first move was declaring, “Uh-huh! Lucy Landreau, that was one fine piece of womanflesh.” This Lucy Landreau had made so many appearances in Vikers’s accounts of his many conquests that she needed no introduction. He went on as he always did, saying, “Of course, I do have a decided preference for high yellow tail.”
I figured I was safe for the night as, once the nasty talk started, it could go on for hours and all any of them were interested in was getting their own story told. During these endless discussions, I liked to pretend the men were talking about horses or food with all their comments about someone being a “fine piece of flesh” or a “tasty morsel.” Otherwise, I’d get to feeling like a rabbit hiding from a pack of wolves. I knew most of the men were just blowing big, ruffling up like yard dogs to keep the pack from thinking they were little enough to boss around. But some of them truly believed women had been put on this earth for them to use like animals.
It scared me to think what those men’d do to me if they ever discovered that I fell into the livestock category.
“Me,” Greene announced, “give me that dark meat, man.” He added the familiar words, “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”
Teague said, “Wish I had me a piece right now, any color.”
“Me too,” Caldwell cut in. “I’m so horny I could—”
I never did find out what horniness might drive Greene to, for Vikers interrupted, and in a voice could tenderize shoe leather, he asked, “What about you, Cathay? What kind of tail you like?” All eyes turned to me and Vikers asked again, “Cathay? You never have said what kind of tail you prefer.”
“No, Vi
kers. I never have.” I cut my words off so they flew at him with sharp points.
“Might lead a body to think, maybe, you got something to hide.”
“That so?” I came back, holding his eyes hard and fast until he blinked. “We got a saying back home about that,” I said, laid it out there, hoping he’d pick it up.
Which he did, saying in a peevish, sneery manner, “Oh, you do, do you?” He was looking off at his boys, upping his eyebrows, when he asked, “And just what might that pearl of country wisdom be?”
“Old folks say,” I began. “‘The louder the rooster crow, the less about the hen he know.’”
That was a crowd-pleaser, especially amongst the country boys who outnumbered the freedmen and city slickers like Vikers by a long shot. They whooped it up riotous then settled down, waiting for Vikers to hit me back.
I puffed up, certain he had nothing as he played for time, muttering, “Is that right? Is that right?”
“That’s right, Vikers.”
“Well, Cathay, we have a saying, too.”
Everybody hushed up then.
“Yeah, that’s right. Back home we like to say, ‘Rooster that don’t crow at all. Might turn out to be a capon.’”
The hoots rang out then. “You hear that?” “Got him! Got him! Got him!” “Cut him! Dead!”
Silence fell again for it was my turn and if I didn’t cut Vikers back, he would pitch into me even harder. I was trying to cook up some back-home saying the way Vikers had just done when Lem, puzzled, piped up, “We don’ have that sayin’ back in Alabama. What, exactly, is a kay-pon?”
This time Vikers got the eye lock on me and said, “That’s a cock had his balls cut off.”
“Oh, yes!” Lem exclaimed. “Makes the meat tender.”
Vikers, staring at me dead level, said, “I wouldn’t know. I never tried it that way.”
“Just keep on a-blowin’,” I told him. “Air’s not hot enough in here no how.” That was lame as a sick kitten and the whole barracks knew I’d lost and lost big. Being called out as a nancy boy was serious business back in those days. Though sodomites weren’t generally killed outright anymore, if a man was proved a candy ankle, he’d spend a few years behind bars. And he’d definitely get mustered out of the army faster than even a woman would. First, though, he’d get hard used by anyone cared to have a go at him. Worse even than the way I would be if I was ever uncovered.
