by Sarah Bird
When I spotted another pair of boots raising dust as they moved double-quick toward the General, I lifted my head. It was the Sergeant. As soon as he reached Sheridan, he said, “General, begging your pardon, sir, but one medal has not been presented.”
“Is that true, Colonel?” the General asked Drewbott.
“Yes, well—” Drewbott stuttered.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, that is, I thought, in the interest of time—”
“Damn it, Drewbott, the medals were earned, the medals must be awarded. Where’s the blasted medal. Who’s the soldier?”
With Drewbott leading the way, Sheridan headed my way. My heart thumped heavy with each step he took. I was near passing out by the time his boots came to rest again in front of me. I peeked up just enough to see Drewbott pass him the medal. A handsome thing it was, too. A brass bull’s-eye with four fishtails sticking out like a big, four-petaled daisy. No one else had won one.
“In recognition of superior marksmanship,” Sheridan began, “I present Private … Private…” Drewbott leaned over and told him my name.
“Private William Cath—” He stopped dead for a moment before saying, “Cathy?”
No power on earth could of kept me from raising my head at the call of my name. He was staring at me. I met his gaze. I saluted. He was stupefied. He recognized me. He saw me. He knew who I was. At that second, I didn’t care that I’d been blown and would be tossed out to the wolves and redskins and rapists. Sheridan had recognized me. In front of the Sergeant. In front of Clemmie. They were going to see now that I had mattered. The General remembered me.
I was certain that he would call me out. But Sheridan didn’t speak for so long that Custer asked, “General, is something wrong?”
“No, nothing is wrong,” Sheridan said, his black button eyes turned to hot coals burning into me. “This, uh, soldier…”—he curdled the word so it came out sounding like “piece of pig shit”—“reminded me of someone is all. A contraband by the name of Solomon. Solomon was my cook throughout the Rebellion. He was a fine and honorable man.”
The way Sheridan hit those words, “fine,” “honorable,” and “man,” it was clear he didn’t feel that any of the three applied to me.
“It is in honor of the years during which Solomon served me so honorably, and for that reason and that reason alone, I present this medal. Is that understood, Private?”
With Custer and Drewbott trading puzzled looks, I answered, “Yessir,” though my mouth felt like it was filled with ashes.
Instead of pinning the medal on me the way he’d done the winners of good conducts and the like, Sheridan just handed it to me. Had I not taken it, he’d of dropped it on the ground. Then he turned away, leaving me there with my hand quivering from being hacked into my forehead so hard. The Sergeant, Clemmie, Custer, Drewbott, they all saw that the General didn’t return my salute.
“Not quite up to snuff, are they, General?” Custer asked. “Not quite regular army quality,” Custer babbled on, plenty loud enough for every fellow up and down the line to hear. “This is exactly what I’ve been telling you, old man. They’re fine in wartime. Burying details, cooking, entrenchments, and the like. But the peacetime army? Actual soldiers? It is folly to believe that Negroes will ever make true fighting men.”
“It is not a belief, General. It is a proven fact,” Sheridan said. Then, with a hard glance back over his shoulder at me, he added, “That the men … The colored men who enlisted honorably have already made fighting men. Their valor was established during the war. During combat.” He raised his voice as he stomped off to the mess hall, making sure I wouldn’t miss a word. “Combat. The only place where men, real, true, and valiant men, have ever proved themselves.”
Custer, at his heels, went on, “Sure, a few of them managed to come up to the mark, but…” He fluffed his golden locks up and off the back of his neck, whipping them from side to side. His yellow silk kerchief billowing as he strode along, he added, “No white officer worth his salt will ever accept a colored command. You saw how fast I turned it down when you offered me one. There’s your problem, Sheridan. You’ll never get a decent white officer to command them. All you’ll ever get is a no-hoper like Drewbott.”
Sheridan didn’t answer, but Custer stayed on his heels and went on, “All the action, all the glory is up North. The Sioux, Sheridan, they’re massing. Give me a command fighting those red devils and you’ll see an end to your Indian problem once and for all.”
Their comments faded out and were lost in the distance. But all of us, including Drewbott, whose fine, pointed nostrils were flaring like a flagged bull’s, had heard plenty. Our moment of glory had ended in humiliation. For the single, solitary time such a thing was ever likely to occur, Colonel Ednar Drewbott and I were of one mind: we both blamed our humiliation on the goading of the preening colorphobe, George Armstrong Custer, and we hated him with an equal intensity.
Unlike the chickenshit colonel, though, I was going to do something about it.
Chapter 61
The tow sack slung over my shoulder was heavier than you’d expect when, the next day, I hauled it into the kitchen.
Pinkney was busy hollering at Adams or Poteet, I couldn’t tell one from the other, who were, at that moment, using the edge of Pinkney’s oak table to play mumblety-peg. Those pinhead louts were zinging their knives onto the table, thwokking the points of their blades hard onto the wood, then snickering when Pinkney jumped as the knives came closer and closer to his hands.
Pinkney was hacking up chickens, and the next time he dropped that cleaver, he was glaring at the pair of dimwits and hit the table hard enough to decapitate one grown man or two undersize dimwits.
Poteet stopped snickering long enough to say, “Uncle, mind how you cut up the general’s chicken. Remember, uncle, Custer hates dark meat.” Adams laughed at his chum’s wit.
That uncle business, that was the final straw. Pinkney yanked Poteet’s knife out of his worktable, held it up high with that pig-sticker blade pointed right at its owner, who, seeing the murder in the cook’s eye, shut his maw. Pinkney stood with the blade trembling for a moment, then flipped it up high, caught the beechwood handle without ever tearing his eyes from Poteet, cocked it back, and sent that piece of carbon steel flying with a masterful flick of the wrist that cartwheeled it through the air.
Thwok! It landed at the toe of Poteet’s boot. No, on second glance, I saw, it had landed in the toe of Poteet’s boot, stuck into the bit of sole protruding along the front, pinning that little toad where he stood.
“Oh, excuse me, suh,” Pinkney drawled. “It slipped.”
As the two corporals rained curses and threats down upon Pinkney, who was now smiling and whistling, I hurried past them to where Clemmie was pulling the pin feathers off some chicken carcasses. I hefted the sack off my shoulder and dropped it on the worktable next to her cleaver.
Clemmie stifled a shriek and jumped back, hissing, “Get that away from me! I told you I didn’t want any part of this. Told you not to do it. But when have you ever listened to—”
My back to the white boys, I leaned in close, whispered, “Don’t worry. They’re dead,” and opened the sack a crack.
Clemmie yelped when she saw my fine, fat, dead rattlesnakes. “I told you, I didn’t want any part of this. I like my job. Like being—”
“Do you like Custer?”
“General Goldilocks? That prissy bastard can burn in hell. All that mess about only eat white meat, only be served by white troopers, would never take a black command, that just about fries my gizzards.”
“Well then, we need to hit him back only way we have.” I dumped a carcass onto the cutting board. Clemmie threw a dishrag over it, and hissed, “Why do you want to take a risk like that after you lucky enough to make it through inspection? Huh? Why do you always got to push things?”
I lifted the towel and chopped the creature’s head off with one whack of the cleaver. “
Because if you don’t push, you never move ahead. Come on, Clemmie, you’re not Old Miss’s house girl anymore. Old Mister is dead. We’re free, Clemmie. Maybe we can’t speak up, but we can do this. We can get back a little of our own.”
Clemmie heaved a big sigh, took several glances back at Adams and Poteet bullyragging Pinkney, and gave a nod of agreement. I had those venomous creatures skinned, dressed, and chopped into dainty portions before Poteet and Adams had finished cussing Pinkney out.
When we passed the word later to Pinkney about what the secret ingredient in Custer’s dinner was going to be, he had only one objection: that he hadn’t thought of it first. We worked together on creating a special dish for Custer. Pinkney made a white sauce that finally had me believing his claim that, before the bottle took him, he’d been a cook at the Astor House in New York City.
“Man,” I told him, stealing another taste of his sauce, “you could put that on a roof shingle and have you some fine eating.” He slapped my hand away as he did something he told me was “napping” and blanketed a choice selection of deboned chunks of rattler with his sauce.
Word spread fast. By suppertime, the serving area off to the side of the officers’ mess hall was crowded with troopers foregoing their own evening meal for a peek at Custer eating his.
The mess hall was done up with candles and bunches of wildflowers that the wives, under the supervision of Mrs. Drewbott, had arranged. Sheridan, Custer by his side, presided over the long table lined on either side by every white officer on post and his wife if he had one, arranged in order of rank, with the bachelor lieutenants sitting at the end.
Adams and Poteet, in their dress blues, wearing white gloves on their hands, hair gleaming with pomade, swept plates covered with silver domes down in front of Sheridan and Custer. They were followed by a small army of white noncoms, recruited so as to save Custer from having to glimpse a black face while he ate.
“What’s he doing?” Caldwell asked in a whisper, craning to get a glimpse at Custer.
“He’s using his hand like a fan to waft the aroma up his nose,” I told him.
“Oh, now,” said Clemmie, “he’s spearing him a big chunk of prime rattlesnake.”
The crowd closed in tighter around me. “He’s chewing,” I related to those in back who couldn’t see. “He’s chewing and … yes! He swallowed.”
A couple of the men tapped their hands together in applause that was as gleeful as it was silent.
Next we all heard the rattler-eating Custer tapping on his glass with his knife. The big room fell silent and he spoke. “My compliments to your cook, Drewbott. I have been told that he created this dish, Poulet Fricassee à la Custer, especially for me.” He held up a morsel for all to admire. “White meat, eh, gentlemen? No one can deny its inherent superiority. It is all I shall ever eat.” He popped that chunk of rattler into his bewhiskered grub hole, chewed, and through a mouthful of viper, said, “It is all I shall ever command.”
We all about exploded then, blown up as we were by stuffing the laughter that bubbled up at the sight of Custer smacking his lips over Pinkney’s rattler fricassee. The only officer not digging in was the General. I saw that he was in a black mood and didn’t appear hungry enough to eat much of anything, let alone that hind leg off the Lamb of God he used to talk about.
Custer and Drewbott fell to gassing on about how President Johnson was packing the army with coloreds to clear us out of the South where we were “malingering” and “stirring up unrest.”
Drewbott said it was just so the army could get our cheap labor and have us doing the jobs “decent” whites wouldn’t touch.
“Cheap labor is all well and good,” Custer answered back, “but tell me this: what’s to prevent our coloreds from joining up with the coloreds they’re supposed to be out here fighting? The black man and the red man? Like joins to like, correct? The coloreds’ natural allegiance is to other coloreds. Bear that in mind, Drewbott,” Custer warned. “Next time you’re out in the field alone with nothing but a company of coloreds and surrounded by more of their kind, what’s to keep the coloreds from joining up with the redskins and slaughtering all of you and then having their way with your wives?”
An uneasy silence fell over the party as the wives exchanged glances. Even tubby Mrs. Drewbott fancied our men were lusting for her. Just like I’d seen him do back at Cedar Creek, Sheridan had gone quiet. Dangerous quiet.
Showing that he couldn’t read his commander any better than Colonel Terrill had at that other officers’ dinner party, Drewbott, his face red from being wallpapered on the fine whiskey he’d had freighted in, stood, raised his glass, and brayed out in his jackass voice, “May I propose a toast to our most esteemed visitor for honoring our humble post with his presence. To General Philip Sheridan, who led us to victory in the recent unpleasantness and will do the same in eradicating the redskins. To the Generals Sheridan and Custer!”
Chairs were scraped back, all the officers except for Custer and Sheridan popped up, and a hearty cheer was raised. I watched the General’s face turn to stone and felt like a play that I had seen before was about to commence.
When the cheer was done, the officers stayed on their feet with their glasses raised high, waiting for Sheridan to stand.
The General didn’t move a muscle other than his tongue. “Sit down! All of you fools,” he ordered. They did. “I might as well speak plainly and to your face, Drewbott. As all present are fully aware, you were given this command because no competent officer would take it. I expected little of you, Drewbott. You have delivered less.”
Drewbott’s face went from red to pink to white and settled at green.
“Drewbott, the United States Army has not expended considerable resources, scarce resources I might add in this new day with both the people and the Congress against having a standing army at all, for you to waste in establishing this fort. That money, Drewbott, was not appropriated so that your wives could grow ______ petunias!”
The old, familiar curses came back as Sheridan grew hot.
Mrs. Drewbott gasped and pressed her hankie to her mouth. Ladies back then, white ladies at any rate, were never supposed to hear such salty language.
The General didn’t slow down a whit. “The ______ mission is to, as you yourself put it, ‘eradicate redskins.’ You seem to believe, Drewbott, that this is a mission that I will accomplish on my own. Might I remind you that I am but the head. My ______ commanders in the field are my hands. And, you, Drewbott, have done nothing but sit on yours. Thus far, you have failed to so much as even map the ______ savages’ water holes. That is a crucial piece of reconnaissance in helping us to shut down the ______ redskins’ pantry by eliminating the buffalo.”
No food, no fight. Solomon’s words came back to me and I realized then that the General was going to do the redskins the way he’d done Old Mister and all the other Rebels in his path: starve them out.
“The ______ war may be over, Colonel, but we are still ______ soldiers. And soldiers soldier, Drewbott. Soldiers soldier. Soldiering is something you have done precious little of during your tenure. Instead, you have turned this fort into your own personal hidey-hole where you have sat on your fat ______ backside waiting for the redskins to come calling. As you have been told many times, Drewbott, they will not ______ come to you! You must get up off your ______ plump posteriors and hunt the ______ savages down.”
Gasping and trembling, Drewbott looked as though his heart was failing him. And still the General did not let up.
“We are daily inundated with reports of the depredations committed, in particular by the renegade chief Chewing Bones and his pack of hyenas. Not fifty miles from this very ______ post a farm was raided. Crops and buildings burned. Livestock stolen. The man’s wife was cruelly used by the savages to the point of death. His two maiden daughters were carried off. The settler and his sons were slaughtered in an unspeakable manner. Are you in receipt of that report, Colonel?”
“Yessir, I am, sir.�
��
“Ah, good. And tell me, Colonel, would you care to be knowing how I learned of this atrocity?”
Drewbott, who barely squeaked out “Sir,” appeared to know how dangerous it was when Sheridan fell back on the “me boyo” talk.
“From my superior officer, General Sherman. General ______ William ______ Tecumseh Sherman. He was not happy, Colonel. Perhaps you’ve not seen General Sherman when he is not happy. This report and your failure to do one ______ thing about it did not make the Commander of the United States Army happy.”
Sheridan stood so suddenly that his chair tipped backward and crashed to the floor. He flung his napkin onto the table and thundered, “By Christ, Drewbott, you shall either begin immediately hunting down and exterminating Chewing Bones and his murderous band and driving the ______ savages from this territory or a soldier in possession of a functioning pair of testicles will be found who can!”
Chapter 62
When I reached her the next morning, Clemmie was already packing her traps onto the kitchen wagon. Sheridan, Custer, and their staffs had cleared out right after supper rather than spend another night in Fort Arroyo.
“There you are,” she said. She sounded mad. “I need to tell you something.”
I peeked around. As usual whenever Clemmie appeared, most of the company flocked around, all of them bobbing their necks about like geese going after June bugs trying to catch a peek of my sister.
I moved in close so she wouldn’t be talking so loud in case she called me “sister” or talked about our mama. We’d spent every second we were free together in the Sergeant’s quarters and some of the men had already started teasing me about my “sweetheart.”
