by Sarah Bird
Rube whooped with delight for drivers looked down on cowboys same way cowboys looked down on soldiers and white soldiers looked down on black soldiers. Truth of it was, pretty much everyone looked down on black soldiers. Especially the stupidly ungrateful settlers whose towns, ranches, and farms only existed because we were out here guarding them and herding the savages onto reservations.
The joke tickled Rube so much he hee-hawed himself into a coughing fit and had to calm himself with a chaw on his quid of tobacco. Like all coach drivers, Rube loved his plug and had two half-moon curves of brown juice on either side of his mouth, staining his white mustache to prove it.
The Sergeant held his silence, glaring out at the rocky terrain and the billows of white clouds puffing up against a sky as blue as a cornflower like he held a grudge against nice scenery.
“Right pretty day,” I finally ventured.
“Oh, it’s perfect.”
He spit that out with so much vinegar, I had to say, “Sergeant, sometimes you remind me of a man I knew back during the Rebellion. Never satisfied. It’d be raining silver dollars, he’d complain about not having his umbrella.”
At that, he turned to study me straight on. What he saw did not please him. He checked to make sure Rube was occupied in wrangling the team for we were passing over ground so rough that the coach was pitching like a little boat riding out a bad blow. Though there was no chance Rube could hear him, the Sergeant still leaned in and whispered, “I thought you were smart.”
I didn’t know how to answer that and so I did not.
This seemed to make him even sourer than he already was about being forced into my degenerate company and he hissed, “Do you know what we’re carrying back there?” He nodded down at the passengers.
“A drummer, a captain and his wife bound for Fort Bliss, and Miss Regina Armstrong,” I answered, saving for last the name of our “precious cargo,” a beribboned and furbelowed woman well into her spinster years. Though she might have been a bit shopworn, and lightly mustached into the bargain, she carried herself in a fancy, high-nosed way. “And a dozen or so sacks of mail,” I concluded, wondering what the Sergeant’s true purpose was in having me recite an inventory that he knew well.
“We’re carrying,” he said in a low, harsh voice, “the end of the West for black folks.”
“What are you talking—” I started, but he interrupted.
“It is over for us, Cathay. Once their ‘decent white women’ arrive, it is over for the black man.”
“What about the officers’ wives already here? They’re decent enough.”
“They’re army. That’s different. They’re not permanent. They’re not living in town. It’s the towns where the trouble starts.”
“What kind of trouble? We’re Union soldiers, Sergeant. We got the blue suits, the horses, the guns, the whole damn Union Army behind us. We’re safe.”
“That’s what those three black troopers in Fort Hays thought,” the Sergeant said. “Pulled out of a jail cell by a vigilante mob and lynched.”
“But Sergeant,” I said, for I had heard about the Fort Hays incident. “Those troopers shot a civilian to death. Black barber testified he heard them swear they were gon shoot the first white men they came across.”
“Did I say those men were angels?” he asked, hotter than need be. “Am I saying any of us are angels? Not much doubt they did it. Lot of murdering in Hays City. But when it’s whites doing the killing, they don’t get hauled out of the jail and strung up on a railroad trestle way those three black troopers were.”
“Well, that’s Kansas,” I said, feeling that the state was a world away.
The Sergeant snorted out a bitter laugh before he set me straight. “Cathay, open your eyes.” He stabbed a finger at the rocky ground rolling beneath the coach’s high wheels. “This? Where we are right now? This Lone Star State? It’s the most colorphobic of them all. Not enough of the war took place here to beat the fear of federal troopers into these un-Reconstructed Rebs. Didn’t you hear about that civilian over near Fort McKavett who murdered a black private name of Boston Henry? Also shot Corporal Albert Marshall and Private Charles Murray dead when they went to bring him in?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t heard a word even though Fort McKavett was less than three hundred miles away.
“And you know what kind of sentence the jury, the all-white jury, in Austin gave that civilian who laid out three of our men?”
I knew I wasn’t gonna like the answer.
“None. They set that murderer free. Blue suit don’t mean shit when it’s on a black body. Soon as they can, they’ll get rid of all of us.”
“Beg pardon, Sergeant, but that’s crazy. Matanza, none of these little towns could even exist without us. They need us.”
“For what?” he asked. His anger was too hot for him to keep on freezing me out. “Why do they need the black man? To kill the red man so they can steal his land for other white men.”
It knocked me sideways to hear the Sergeant talk this way. “You sound like John Horse. I thought you said he was a traitor.”
“A traitor to who?” the Sergeant asked. “I’ve come to see that the man who is true to his own people is no traitor.” The sourness had peeled away to show a misery beneath that had nothing to do with me. As always, his real friends and enemies were the big ideas battling it out in his head. “Once we do their dirty work, then what?”
“Then we get us some land. We have us our own towns.”
“Do you really think they’re going to let that happen?”
“Sure. Look around.” I waved my hand at the open prairie rolling on forever in all directions. “All this land. Has to be a corner we can tuck ourselves into and have a decent life. Has to be.”
He shook his head, pitying me for my stupidity.
“Sergeant?” I asked, thrown hard by his change of heart. I waited for him to explain, but he just shook his head like the job of setting me straight was too big for him to take on.
Though Matanza was only ten miles from post as the crow flew, the ride took hours for the trail was gullied and, in a couple of spots, we had to climb down and shove away boulders that blocked our way entirely. Through it all, the Sergeant was so lost in whatever big argument was raging in his head that we didn’t exchange another word.
Instead of heading into the stage depot in the center of town, Rube halted at the edge of Matanza where a welcoming committee, led by the mayor, waited. Behind them was a new church. Though it was hardly bigger than an outhouse, it was a church, and I figured that the mayor thought a house of the Lord’d make a better first impression on Miss Regina Armstrong than the saloons and bawdy houses we had to pass to reach the depot.
The handbrake screeched as Burrow set it. The seat bounced beneath us when he hoisted himself down. The mayor, himself no more of a prize than his bewhiskered fiancée, having a pair of hunched vulture shoulders and but a few strands of hair, which required coatings of axle grease to remain plastered across the bald dome of his head, was a perfect match for Miss Regina Armstrong in the fancy airs department. He actually bowed as he held his hand up and helped his fiancée to step out of the coach. Hats swept off the pale, untanned tops of the men’s heads, and they shook the tips of Miss Regina Armstrong’s fingers, welcoming her to their “it’s not much, but we call it home.”
Through it all, the Sergeant, glum as a toad, sat up top with me. Far out on the other side of town, a plume of dust rose high into the still noontime air. I nudged the Sergeant. “Look, the inbound’s coming in from the West.”
The Sergeant and I climbed down off the stage and set out to catch the inbound back to the fort as was the practice on special short runs like this. Soon as our feet touched the ground, though, the dozen or so men in front of the church clustered around Miss Regina Armstrong like she was a sparkling jewel and us a couple of thieves. The mayor, his eyes held tight on us, scurried off to chew Rube’s ear. The Sergeant and I had hardly gone more than a few st
eps when the driver called after us, “Uh, boys, uh, hold on there. I need to talk to you.”
The Sergeant stopped dead, but he didn’t turn around. He made Rube hustle over to us on his stumpy jockey legs.
“What is it, Rube?” I asked. “We got to get to the depot before the inbound leaves without us.” Though the icy looks being directed our way by the mayor and his cronies chilled the mirth right out of me, I gave a fake chuckle and added, “Long walk back to the fort.”
“Well, now, that’s the thing,” Rube, who stood half a foot beneath me, started off. “The thing is…” He put a hand on the back of his neck where it had to have been prickling, nervous as he suddenly was. “That is … Well, dammit, the mayor thinks it’s time for a change.”
“Change?”
The Sergeant grinned in a mirthless way and looked up at the clear sky like he was reading every word that was to come up there.
“Shitfire, boys,” Rube went on. “Were up to me, wouldn’t be no changes. But that damn mayor … What with ladies coming in and all … Well, the long and the short of it is, he don’t want all y’all on the stage anymore.”
“All us what?” I demanded, commencing to heat up. “All us soldiers of the United States Cavalry?”
“No,” Rube answered, his face pickling up like the words he had to spit out were sour. “Dammit, you know. You Aunt Hagar’s children.”
“Us what?” I asked for I had never heard that one.
“The Affrish,” he muttered. To his credit, Rube was embarrassed, and hurried to explain, “This ain’t my idea, I had no part in it. But, well, fact is, mayor and the sheriff and them”—he pointed a thumb back at the men glaring at us—“they’d prefer it if all y’all’d keep out of town entirely.”
The anger jumped into me so sudden that I yelled at those brave townsmen who’d sent a jockey to do their talking for them, “You want us United States Army soldiers who are out here keeping the Indians from scalping every damn person in this damn town to keep out? Is that what you’re saying!”
The men all started bunching together, putting themselves between us and Miss Regina Armstrong, as if the Sergeant and me were lusting to get at that withered-up hank of mustachioed gristle.
“You got something to tell me,” I hollered. “Step on over here and say it to my face!” They packed in tighter but made no movement in my direction. “Or are you too chickenshit? Makes sense. Bunch of Rebel deserters, appears you’re still too scared to face the United States Army.”
Even as I was stomping it into the dust, I knew that I’d crossed the line. Instant I did, that bunch of fine, upstanding gentlemen protecting their first upstanding white woman turned directly into a lynch mob.
Rube hurried away from us as fast as his stubby legs would allow, clambered back up onto his seat, tossed down his canteen and bedroll, tipped his chin toward the men, and said, “You two best head for the high line, right quick.” He cracked his whip like a clap of thunder and rolled on, leaving nothing except wheel tracks between us and the welcoming committee.
The Sergeant stared straight at the citizens, daring them to come on ahead.
They moved forward.
The instant the danger pointed at the Sergeant, I grabbed hold of his jacket and tried to pull him away, but he didn’t shift.
“Sir,” I pleaded, trusting that he’d do for one of his men what he wouldn’t for himself. “I don’t want to die today.”
He kept staring hate and vengeance at the mayor until I begged him again, my voice cracking for the word “lynch” had bored into my brain. Only then did we start putting distance between ourselves and the cracker assholes of Matanza.
Chapter 68
“I told you it was over,” the Sergeant said once we were out of sight of Matanza. After that, we tramped on without him opening his mouth again except to spit out the bile rising from his liver.
The trail rose then fell in a long, gradual slope toward the fort. It dropped away on the south side down into the valley that Agua Dulce Creek ran along. I was watching a hawk dive through the sun-bleached sky when the Sergeant startled me by saying, “To hell with this.” He stopped dead in the middle of the trail and, seeming to notice me for the first time, asked, “Why should we kill ourselves getting back to the fort?”
“So we won’t get hunted down and shot for deserting?”
He spit, then reached back under his waistband, brought forth a small, flat brown bottle, uncorked it, tipped it my way and said, “Here’s to you, Private. You’re a man-humping degenerate and more trouble than you’re worth, but the way you called out that egg-sucking pisspot of a mayor? That took more guts than you can hang on a fence.”
He gulped down a long tug, then passed the bottle to me. “Come on, Cathay,” he said, “we’re going AWOL.” He left the trail and disappeared down the hill we’d been climbing.
I was like a cat watching two pieces of yarn get pulled apart. I didn’t know what to be more stupefied by: the Sergeant revealing himself to be a spitting, cussing, drinking man or one who seemed to be deserting. The dust settled around me and I was as alone as Adam before he lost a rib. I thought for a moment, maybe two, about a firing squad all aiming at my deserter chest and then I followed him off the trail.
Though I galloped down the steep incline, following the twisting path that the Sergeant was scraping in the sandy dirt, I couldn’t catch sight of him. His trail wound through high boulders that abruptly gave way to a stand of desert willows and cottonwoods just tall enough to throw some shade. The willows were heavy with pink and lilac blossoms that looked like orchids and smelled like sweet talcum powder. The creek running through them was clear and, I discovered, cool.
The desert willows, greedy for that rare moisture, grew thick along its banks, blocking my view and swamping me with the womanly powder smell of their blossoms. I pushed through a dense fringe of long, skinny leaves and found the Sergeant standing naked in a water hole that reached up to his waist. Cottonwoods shaded the large pool and their heart-shaped leaves floated atop it amidst the squiggly patterns traced by water striders.
He held the brown bottle up high like he was saluting me with it and called out, “Thought I’d lost you. Come on in.” Even more astonishing, he was grinning.
I didn’t move.
“Don’t worry,” he said, running the palm of his hand across the still pool, scattering leaves and water striders. “I already scared off the cottonmouths.” He tipped his head up and drank. I watched the long column of his neck work and did not move.
“Can’t you swim?” he asked, taking my stupefaction for fear. “It’s not deep. Look.” Holding the bottle up high, he dunked his head under, and came back up, flinging crystal droplets from his hair. The water came up to his waist when he stood. Water sluiced down over his shoulders, chest, and belly.
“Suit yourself,” he said. Taking another long pull from the bottle, he lowered himself into the water and leaned against the boulder at his back. Arms to either side, eyes closed, he was the picture of a man taking his ease.
I ducked behind a thick stand of willows, stripped off everything except my shirt and drawers, double-checked to make sure the bindings were on tight, and waded in. The water was cold and I shrieked. Catching myself, I turned the girlish cry into a grunt and stifled the impulse to fold my arms across my chest.
“Nice, huh?” he asked.
I turned shy and dove underwater.
It was like going home, all the way back to the times when I’d hide out in the creek that ran through the woods around Old Mister’s farm with a reed in my mouth and the world above my head turning into smeary blues and greens. The water around me now was all the greens of the willows and cottonwoods and the velvety moss growing on the round rocks. A small cloud of perch swam through my fingers. The Sergeant’s legs wobbled, sliced into gleaming walnut sections by wavy shafts of sunlight. I quickly looked away from the dark patch where they joined.
The water made my drawers and undershirt
so soppy that they sagged and clung. Afraid that too much would show if I stood up all the way, I only popped my head and shoulders out of the water.
The Sergeant took no notice of me as the peaceful pond had sent him into a dreamy mood. He said nothing, just handed the bottle my way.
I squat-walked over to him and took it.
“Nice, huh?” Allbright asked again after a few more passes of the bottle.
“Yessir.”
“Come on, now, Cathay, don’t ‘sir’ me out here.” Even his voice was different. It had a low gentleness to it that hummed through my belly.
“Yess—” I stopped myself before the “sir” jumped in there.
The Sergeant stared off at a buzzard making long, slow pirouettes through the cloudless sky. He watched it for a long time before he shook his head and chuckled like he’d just told himself a joke that wasn’t particularly funny, and said, “Army can make a white man salute the uniform, but it can’t make him give a man the respect that goes with it.”
“They’re civilians, sir. And fools. Forget about those corn-cracking, piss-drinking skunks. Not a one of them’s fit to tote guts to a bear.”
This got the first real laugh of the day. “For a degenerate sissy, you’re a good man, Cathay.”
“Thank you.”
He leaned against the boulder, his long arms stretched out, head lolling back. Drops of water sparkled in the tight whorls of his dark brown hair and in the coiled spring of his lashes. He studied the depthless sky. In the shaded sunlight, his eyes showed flashes of amber. I swallowed.
Girl, quit eye-eating the man.
I looked away, but not before he caught me staring at him like the lovesick sodomite he took me to be. He snorted a weak laugh, amused and unbothered by what he seemed to have accepted as my peculiarity, and went back to his lounging and drinking.
Eyes closed, he said, “It’s too late for us, Cathay. Doesn’t matter where we go in this country, they’ll be waiting for us. The corn-cracking, piss-drinking skunks. You know what our only hope is?”
