by Sarah Bird
The Sergeant had the sextant to his eye. I wanted to ask if we couldn’t just skip this one water hole. What would it matter if we let some women and babies and old folk live? But he whispered, “Coordinates,” and I fumbled in my pocket for the notebook. When I had it and the stub of pencil in my hand, he dictated to me the numbers that would reveal this secret spot to the army and they would come after us and blow it up or poison it.
I wrote the numbers down.
Progress back to our horses was slow as the wind was against us. The temperature kept dropping. When we reached the horses, the Sergeant had trouble untying the reins as his fingers had stiffened and he was shivering hard. I worried about him not having a jacket and wished I could give him mine. We mounted up and, for a minute, he peered about, looking almost dazed, like he was trying to recollect where he was and which way to go. I spurred Bunny ahead, he followed, and I led us out.
The Sergeant, though he was trembling so much he shimmied in the saddle, was able to pick up our trail when we left the arroyo and he took the lead. Though the wind cut straight through my jacket and set me to shivering, I figured we’d be okay. All we had to do was follow our trail back to camp.
The northern wind blew Bunny’s mane so hard it flew straight out from her neck like a black flag. My bare hands on the reins were numb as stones. Wind-whipped water streamed from my eyes, blurring my sight and chilling my cheeks. And then it started to rain. The icy rain blew in at us sideways by the bucketful, soaking us to the bone. Thunder boomed. Lightning cracked and the sky showed a poisonous violet in the flash. The signs we’d left coming out, the hoof marks chalked onto rocky ground, horse plops, trampled brush, they were all washed away. It was dark, we had no signs to follow back to camp, no light to see by even if we had, and nothing to shelter us from the cold and rain.
We went on by dead reckoning. I rode next to the Sergeant and saw that he’d stopped shivering. He looked calm and unworried. That eased my mind, until, stiff fingers fumbling at the buttons, he started to take off his shirt. I’d heard stories of men lost in the winter, stripping off and rolling in the snow. The stories always ended with them being found naked and dead. Like those poor souls, the cold had taken his mind.
“No!” I screamed, and he stopped. His face was blank. The reins dropped from his hands and he wobbled in the saddle. I tied his reins to my saddle horn and mounted up behind him on his horse. He slumped forward and didn’t resist. I opened my jacket and leaned forward, covering his back and giving him what warmth I had. I harred Bunny up, loosened up on the reins, and let her pick the trail. She was a good night horse and could see a sight better than me in the dark.
We trudged along, the Sergeant mashed up against my chest. He listed to the side. Even though the rain had stopped, we were both stiff and cold as boulders. I hugged him and whispered into the back of his neck, asking him not to die.
Of a sudden, Bunny picked her pace up to a jerky canter. I figured that her brain had frozen, too, and we’d die when she tripped on a hole. A minute later, I heard a tinny sound that turned to a clanging as we drew closer. A speck of light, so small it vanished when I blinked, appeared in the distance, growing steadier the closer we came.
“We made it, Sergeant,” I whispered. He slumped and it took all my strength to keep him from tumbling off.
The speck became a bonfire. Lem was silhouetted in front of it, banging on a big tin kettle with a ladle. My friend was there to catch me and the Sergeant when I dismounted and my legs folded up under me. The Sergeant’s arm over my neck was stiff as old putty as Lem helped me carry him to the tent. We laid him on his cot. Lem lit the stub of a candle. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing anything in this world. His wet clothes had frozen to his skin in spots and we had to melt them off before wrapping him in his blanket.
Lem left to hunt up more blankets. I knelt beside the cot. The Sergeant lay still as death, his eyes closed. In the light from the candle, he looked like he’d been carved out of marble. A statue or some other thing too perfect for this world. I pressed my ear against his chest, but I heard nothing.
I felt like I was falling from a great height and heard myself whimpering, “No, please, no. Sergeant. Please.”
I listened again. Only when I stopped breathing could I catch the sound of a slow thump. Something else came to me along with the faint beat of his heart: his smell. It was the first time I’d been close enough to smell of the Sergeant since those long days and endless nights when I had brought him back from death and, with just that one whiff, hard as I had tried to deaden him, Wager Swayne came alive again in my heart.
Just as I had saved my soldier then in that wagon rolling away from my girlhood, I would save him now. I opened my jacket, lifted the blanket, and pressed my warm chest against his. I laid my head against his neck and blew my warm breath against it.
For nearly the first time since that terrible moment when I accepted that I would never be the phantom woman he loved, I allowed his name, the name of my soldier, back into my thoughts. And then for the first time ever, I spoke it out loud. “Wager,” I whispered. “Wager Swayne.” When I said his name, it was in my own voice. The voice of the woman who’d kept him in this world once before and was bound to do it a second time.
“Wager Swayne. Wager Swayne. Wager Swayne,” I crooned. I let his name swell with all the love I had tamped down until it became a chant as strong as the one Mama had blessed me and Clemmie with. His heart thumped a tiny bit louder as I let my love pour forth. “Wager,” I pleaded, speaking directly to his spirit and calling it back. His chest rose and fell. But the breath that came forth was icy as death. I put my mouth on his and breathed up heat from the pit of my belly, but his lips against mine did not warm.
“Wager,” I whispered and became every woman he had ever loved. Every woman he’d ever wanted. Every woman who had made his life sweet enough to go on living. I became the woman he dreamed had saved him. I put my lips against his and pressed my need into them. His breath came back up then, stronger, warmer, heavier with life, and I kissed him even more deeply. He was alive. My love had brought him back from death and no one would ever tell me different. Not even after what happened next.
He yanked his head to the side, jerking his lips from mine, reared back and stared at me, his eyes snapped wide open in horror. With what strength he had, he shoved me away.
“It’s not what you think it—”
“Shut up, Private. Just shut up.” Anger unfroze his throat.
“I saved your life. I—”
“Shut your damn mouth, man. Stop talking in that strange voice. Stop. I warned you once before. And now, if you say one more word to me, ever, I will have you court-martialed for moral turpitude.”
“Sergeant, listen—”
“Get. Out. Of. My. Sight.”
Every word was a punch to the gut. I couldn’t of spoken if I’d wanted. I spun around. Lem stood at the tent opening. I pushed past him.
I went to Bunny and would of ridden off that night, but she was played out. I fed and watered her, staked her out for what was left of the night, and went to the tent I shared with Lem. Without making a sound, I wept. Lem lit his candle, came and sat next to me and wrapped his blanket around both of us, but nothing could stop my shivering.
“Bill,” he said, his words soft and consoling, “I’m sorry your heart is broke. I know there ain’t no pain to compare with lovin’ someone don’t love you back.”
Even if he was talking about a man loving a man, what he said was true and little shuddery gasps I could not hold back slipped from me.
“There now, Bill,” he said, pulling me closer. “It’s gon be all right. Just gon take time’s all. Trust Lem, okay?”
His kind words and friendship after being alone for so long caused all the sand to drain out of me. I leaned my head against his shoulder and wept, slumping more and more into him as the fight went out of me.
Lem wrapped both his arms around me and I snuggled against his ches
t. “I can’t stand to see you hurtin’ like this, Bill,” he said. A moment later, his mouth was on mine.
I tried to pull away, but it was like being trapped beneath a bank vault.
“I love you, Bill,” he murmured. “Loved you from the start. I’ll take care of you. Treat you good. You won’t never have no man treat you better.”
“Get off me!” I screamed. “I’m not like you!” This last I accompanied by pulling the razor from my pocket and holding the blade to his neck.
He stood, and asked, more hurt than mad, “You put a blade to my throat? After everything…? After…?” He did not have words for how wrong I’d done him.
“We’re quits, Bill. That’s the last time I ever speak your name and I’ll thank you not to ever say mine again.”
Chapter 65
Lem was as good as his word and, from that night on, I stopped existing both for the Sergeant and for him. Back at the fort, he paid Tea Cake three dollars to switch bunks with him. Neither he nor the Sergeant would so much as glance my way. The misery and loneliness of the year that followed, I do not care to return to even in memory and will say only that the days were long and the nights were longer.
I came to many a cold dawn during those long months with my mind set on deserting. A couple of times, in the dark of night, my saddlebags stuffed with stolen potatoes and salt pork, I actually skinned out. Once Bunny and me made it all the way into the nearest town, Matanza, but then, coming upon that grimy settlement, I thought of the faces I would see there. And that put me in mind of all the faces I’d see for whatever remained of my miserable life.
Realizing that there would never again be even the slightest chance that the Sergeant’s would be among them caused me to turn around and head back. Though, once again, the Sergeant might regard me as the worst sort of sissy degenerate, a twist who’d taken advantage of a man when he was out of his head, I’d rather of died straight-out than live without ever seeing his face again. Though there wasn’t the speck of a hope of a chance for a future, I could not stop how I felt. Wager Swayne or Levi Allbright, I was devoted, heart and soul, to the man and would be until the day I died.
Only thing that kept me from killing myself during that awful year was knowing that Iyaiya was waiting for me on the other side and I couldn’t endure an eternity of the wrath she would rain upon me if I took my own life.
After months of no one speaking a word to me that wasn’t an order, I got so lonely I rode into Matanza just to have a bit of company. Matanza had livened up considerably since I’d last passed through. Five saloons, four with whorehouses upstairs, had sprouted along the single street, an avenue of either choking dust or hoof-churned muck. Chubby thighs collared with lace garters, dainty toes pointing, poked out of second-story windows luring white cowboys into one of the whites-only establishments.
All this growth among fancy houses and watering holes, to say nothing of a dry-goods store, a bank, and a hotel was because of the ranch owners who’d turned their herds loose when they went off to kill Yankees for the Confederacy and had come back to find that those beeves had gone forth and been most astonishing fruitful. Quick as the army and the slave owners could set their men free, the ranchers hired them to gather up the herds and drive them to San Francisco along the old Emigrant and Butterfield stage trails. Covering about twelve miles a day, the first big herds out of San Antonio arrived in Matanza during my second spring, my second at Fort Arroyo, when I was a friendless outcast.
The black cowboys, who made up about a fourth of this army of saddle tramps, had to straggle on past the saloons to a rickety, two-story structure, set off a ways out of town. I’d of been shot or lynched if I’d set foot in any of the white establishments. So, on that lilac-skyed evening at the end of a particularly lonely day, near the end of a particularly lonely year, I headed for the one place in town that catered to my people, The Last Chance Saloon.
The Last Chance was a mean, bare-walled place barely better than a barn in construction but considerably worse in aroma. Everyone inside was black except for a few of the girls and the white owner and bartender, Barney, a two-time Confederate deserter who left the Army of the South for good after being branded with a D on his hip. Most of the customers were cowboys with a sprinkling of soldiers. All of them were talking loud and acting like jackasses.
The Last Chance smelled like old beer, sawdust, sweat, wet leather, and every form of chewed, spit, and smoked tobacco you can imagine. It was packed that night as a large herd up from the Valley was bedded down outside of town. A couple of men waited in a line on the stairs leading to the four rooms on the second floor where the daughters of Eve plied their trade. All six of the card tables were filled.
I was sorry to see that Vikers, who’d risen over the past year and was more powerful than ever, sat at one of those tables with Greene and Caldwell guarding his back. But, since Vikers was a card cheat and had a table full of cowboys eager to get swindled, I didn’t think he’d notice me much, so I went on ahead and took a place at the crowded bar.
I’d just ordered a beer and settled in when I spotted a face reflected in the mirror that ran along behind the bottles. The mirror was so cloudy and spotted and cracked that the face came to me like a faded memory. It was Lem and he was staring back with none of the hostility he usually directed my way when I encountered him at the fort. Hoping he’d finally forgiven me, I smiled and raised my hand. Lem picked up his drink and turned his back to the bar. I finished my beer in one long swallow and ordered another.
From the loud remarks the men were passing back and forth, I figured out that Vikers had lured in a couple of wranglers and one big, fat pigeon. This last was a cook they called Frenchie as he was a Creole-type fellow out of New Orleans. Next to the trail boss, the cook was the most important man on the drive and he pulled down sixty dollar a month. Though Frenchie’s words were sweetened with the honeyed accent of his region, he was as surly as any other cook I ever knew right back to Solomon.
“Soldier boy!” Frenchie yelled at Vikers, who was studying his cards in a way meant to show he was worried. “Feels better in, man. Ante up! Ante up!”
Vikers fidgeted, acted uncertain, and played the greenhorn.
“Got a hunch, bet a bunch!” Frenchie urged, his nose wide open, smelling the pot he thought was his.
At the top of the stairs, Beulah, a heavy white woman corseted up like a battleship with her bosoms heaved high, bawled out, “Who’s next?” She kept her doughy face angled off, presenting a profile that featured a high forehead, thin lips, and a minimum of two double chins, as well as the aforementioned bosoms. Though there were three men waiting on the stairs, no one stepped forward.
“What’s wrong with you smoked Yankees?” she roared. “Ain’t you out here, standin’ in line for pussy?”
“Not off no half-nose woman,” a corporal with a haystack bush of dusty hair yelled back.
She howled insults of a racial nature, turned to advance on the man, and exposed the other side of her face, revealing a nose had been et up by the pox.
In the silence that followed, the sound of moist, snuffling breaths being sucked into and blown out of that black hole left every pecker in the place soft. This being bad for business, Barney flew out from behind the bar, holding a quirt, which he used to threaten Beulah back into her room. Lust brought folks to a low state. It was a sad business all around.
The only other one of the soiled doves I’d heard of was Mary the Murderer. Stories had passed around the barracks that Mary had opened a drifter up from his tail to his scuppers with a straight-edge razor after he beat her up then passed out. Scariest part of the deal was that Mary had no remorse for filleting the lout. Mary was a laudanum addict, and it was said that she’d dosed her victim the night of the murder. I’d never set eyes on the girl and had no desire to do so.
Back at Vikers’s table, one of the wranglers, a long-headed dimwit from somewhere back in hookworm country, prodded Vikers. “Push in or push off.”
> Finally, Vikers, who was still acting hesitant in spite of the aces and kings he was known to keep up his sleeve, matched the pot, and cards were dealt. The long-headed wrangler picked his up and yelped, “Ooo-wee! Hell broke loose in Georgie!” The boy was as country as red flannel gravy and twice as thick.
“What you say?” the dealer asked the other wrangler.
“Hit me,” he answered.
The dealer flipped him a no-account up card. The Creole cook cackled and told the boy, “Eat acorns, son.”
The long-headed boy said, “Pull off again,” and drew a down card that made him say, “Shee-yit.”
Upstairs, doors opened and closed as the ladies did their business and boots clopped in and out as the men did theirs. Vikers kept fumbling and acting like he wasn’t sure how to bet. The pot built. Pretending to be fidgeting over his poke, counting the bills, Vikers slid one of the cards waiting up his sleeve into his hand then pushed his whole roll into the pot.
The two wranglers folded, throwing their cards down in disgust. Frenchie didn’t bother to hide a self-satisfied smirk as he believed he’d suckered Vikers. The cook matched the bet and raised. Vikers pulled out the wad he kept tucked into his boot for just such occasions and slapped that down.
The cook all but licked his chops for he was holding three aces. Vikers laid down a jacks high straight.
“Well, just goes to show, don’t it,” Vikers said, pretending amazement as he scooped up the pile. “Even a blind hog’ll get him an acorn now and again.”
Frenchie, seeing the way of it and that he’d been cheated, was going for the derringer tucked into his boot when he heard two revolvers being cocked. One at each side of his head where Greene and Caldwell had him boxed in.
Since Vikers wasn’t occupied anymore, it was time I left before he noticed me. Staring at the back of Lem’s head, I downed my beer and headed for the door. I wasn’t quick enough.
“Hey, Stanky,” Vikers hollered. “What’re you leaving for? Fun’s just starting.”
