by Sarah Bird
“What’s that, Sergeant?”
“Our children. It’s like Brother Douglass says, it’s easier to raise strong children than it is to fix broken men. And that’s what we are, Cathay. We’re broken men. We have to create a new generation built from the ground up of strong, capable men, true and brave.”
“And women,” I added, quietly.
He chewed on that for a moment or two then sat up abruptly and slapped the water with his free hand. “Damn it to hell, Cathay, you’re right. It takes someone like yourself who doesn’t have the normal man feelings about women to see that they’re the key.”
“Well, men can’t do it alone,” I pointed out. “This creating a new generation.”
The gleam came to his eye that meant he had been seized by an idea. “The problem is finding a woman whose spirit hasn’t already been broken. Who hasn’t been warped beyond repair. Made into something that she’s not. Like you and Lem. In your own way, not that I approve, but you two haven’t let anything change who you really are, have you? Not slavery. Not a civil war. Not even the U.S. Army.”
I thought of all the ways I was not who I really was and said nothing.
Too fired up to notice my silence, the Sergeant went on. “You and Lem. He’s your all in all and you don’t give a hang what the rest of the world thinks.”
Lem and me?
“You have that steel inside you to know who you are. That’s the kind of wife I need. One with that unbendable steel. I’ve only ever met one woman made of such strong stuff.”
I didn’t know if my heart could stand hearing him speak again of the dream woman I never was and never could be.
Nothing moved except for a light breeze shimmying through the dainty leaves of the mesquite tree. The buzzing whine of the cicadas filled the silence before he finally asked, “Have you ever had a memory so perfect you were afraid that putting it into words would spoil it?”
I nodded. I did. Yes, I did.
“Cathay, remember when I spoke before of the woman who saved my life? Whom I loved though I’d never even seen her?”
“I do,” I answered, the jealousy I felt for the woman I both was and could never be twisting like a knife through my guts.
“I don’t know what it is about you, but, in spite of, or maybe because of, your ‘peculiarities,’ you are the only one I’ve ever breathed a word about her to.”
I nodded. Too sad to comment, I watched a water strider carve a V into the still water that grew wider and wider until the ripples reached almost to either edge of the water hole.
“Cathay, I need to apologize to you.”
I bit back the “Sir?” that sprang to my lips and said nothing as he went on. “I was wrong. For condemning you. Who am I to condemn anyone for who they love when my heart belongs to a woman whose name I don’t even know?”
He flicked up a geyser of water with his thumb like he was shooting a marble, the drops pattered down around us, and I muttered, “It’s fine.”
“It’s not though. Not when I think of how besotted I am. How often I’ve tried and failed to chase her from my mind. My heart. Yet still I cling to the conviction that I will find her and will know her when I do. And here’s the oddest part of my odd story. I will know her because she bears six rows of scars, marks of Mother Africa, raised upon her skin like the most perfect of pearls.”
I came close then to yanking down the neck of my wet shirt, showing him those very scars, and … and what? The sight would destroy the only bond I truly had with Wager Swayne: the memory of our days and nights together. And all I would have then would be Wager’s embarrassment and disappointment at seeing the marks which belonged on the womanly beauty of his dreams on a body that was neither womanly nor beautiful.
The drone of the cicadas became a mean buzz in my head so loud and painful it took me a second to hear that the Sergeant was asking in a pleading way, “Damnation, Cathay, why do they always think we want their women? Why is that? The last thing on God’s green earth I want is a finicky, stringy-necked, prissy, dried-up white woman. What I want is…” Longing even deeper than what burdened me silenced him.
He sucked in several breaths before he stated a truth wrenched from his deepest soul. “I want a black woman.”
The words stacked up one atop the other like he was erecting a statue. Once it was up, the rest came tumbling out. “You know how it is, Cathay? Well, maybe you don’t.”
It didn’t matter if I answered or not. Or even if I was there or not, his voice ragged with desperation, he was saying what he had to say.
“No other woman smells like a black woman. Feels like a black woman. Feels like…” He stopped again, bound not to break down in front of one of his soldiers, one of his men. He took another drink then stood up and walked out until no part of him was covered. Water streamed down his naked backside.
At the edge of the pond, he stopped and, determined to say what he had to say, no matter what the cost, he turned and faced me. Standing tall and lean and strong, he was as I had imagined he would be. He was as God had imagined a man should be. His broad shoulders caught then turned loose of the sun as they heaved up and down a fraction before he composed himself and concluded, “No other woman feels like home.” He nodded and repeated to himself, “Like home.” I could barely hear when he concluded, “A black woman. I want to hold. A. Black. Woman.”
I’d never heard such loneliness in my life. Angry at all that had been taken from him, all he’d never had, he bent over, snatched up his uniform, and walked away.
I dove beneath the water, and sunk like a stone to the bottom where I sat and hugged myself, my right hand pressed against the rows of scars as my body remembered who I was.
I ran my hands over my breasts. Being a man, eating mens’ rations, living in a man’s guarded body, had made me a woman. My breasts had filled out into pretty, budded things. There was a flare to my hips now that hadn’t been present before.
“Private! Cathay! Where are you?”
Underwater, the Sergeant’s voice sounded distant and wobbly, like he was calling to me from a long time ago. From back in the free time when I would have run wherever my feet and heart carried me and I would have loved and protected a king.
I pulled off the undershirt and the drawers. Then I unwound the long strips of muslin from around my breasts. They twirled, floating and dancing about me like white smoke rising from damp wood.
I was naked. I rose to the surface.
Chapter 69
Without so much as a ripple, I walked onto the flat rocks at the edge of the pond.
The Sergeant, dressed in shirt and trousers, suspenders looping down either side of his waist, was sitting with his back to me, tugging a boot on. He didn’t know I stood behind him, dripping water, feeling the thirsty wind sucking the wet off me, and he yelled out over his shoulder, “Private! Move it, man! You’re burning daylight.” He was a commander again, one who was plastering over the weakness he’d let slip out, making sure nothing but a hard wall showed.
Chalky minerals were drying on my skin, leaving it ashy and rough. Out of the water, my womanliness was already parching. I stood there, a creature too tall, too strong, too ornery, and too plain to be female. To be beloved.
The Sergeant glanced back, saw only my naked legs and ordered wearily, “Cathay, get your uniform back on, man. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
My back hurts and my shoulders ache from crouching.
That’s what the hell was wrong with me. And I wasn’t having it anymore. In the end, it was as simple as that: I was tired of the pinch in my shoulders and the ache in my back from stooping and crouching. I straightened up and threw back my shoulders. I stood taller than most men and any woman I’d ever known.
When I didn’t answer the Sergeant turned, got a good look at me, and jumped to his feet. For a long moment he stood there, bumfuzzled, not able to credit what he was seeing, probably thinking he’d either lost his mind or was seeing some brand of sissyness he’d ne
ver encountered before. “Get your uniform on, man.”
I stepped closer, hardly feeling the sharp rocks poking into my bare feet. My walk was a woman’s walk. I let my hips sway as they wanted. His eyes walled as he watched me advance. I stood before him and, in my soft woman’s voice, said, “I am not a man. I am a woman. A black woman.”
He put his hand out to stop me or touch me, I didn’t know which. It trembled. Spooked, he snatched it back, still not convinced that I wasn’t some unnatural thing or a vision he’d conjured up out of loneliness and longing.
I took his hand and placed the flat of his palm against my cheek where I’d dreamed so many times it might once again rest. I no longer cared what might follow. Even if the Sergeant turned from me now, from the plainness of my features and the manly ways I’d had to claim as my own, this touch was worth whatever it cost. For one, terrible moment his hand froze and then he pulled it away. I dropped my gaze, shame already beginning to burn through me. Shame at my naked body. Shame at loving someone so far above me. Shame at being a woman who could pass for a man.
I walked away, gathering up my uniform as I went, clutching it against my chest, slouching again to hide who I was.
“Wait.”
His hand fell upon my shoulder and turned me to face him. He gaped, not at me, but at my scars. Unable to speak, he tapped his fingers beneath his own collarbone.
I nodded but would not speak the words.
Yes, these are the scars. Yes, I am the woman.
He ran the tips of his fingers across my scars, all the while whispering, “You. It’s you. But you’re not…”
“Pretty?”
“No, you’re not.”
“But I’m here and I saved your life twice and I love you and you loved me until now. You know what’s inside me. Outside’s the only part that’s different.”
The battle going on in his head played out across his features. His dream of the fine, beautiful woman who’d saved him was crashing into the strapping length of muscle and bone that stood before him now. His face prickled with the effort of making the two fit together. He shook his head for the pieces weren’t coming together, and he started to back away.
“I know I don’t please you in the usual man-woman sort of way,” I said. “But I am good and true and will give you strong children who will build a new world for our people.”
“I don’t—”
I stopped him before he said what couldn’t be taken back. “If you touch me,” I promised, taking his hand, “you will make me beautiful.”
I put the palm of his hand against my cheek and curled into it like a bird into the nest she’s flown her whole life to reach. I tilted my head into his palm and kissed the lines that foretold his life, pressing myself into them with my lips, making his future our future.
His palm, roughened by reins, brushed over my cheek, my neck, my shoulder. I was as good as my word for every place he touched turned velvety soft and beautiful. He traced his fingers across the scars and down to the swell of my breast. When he whispered, “You are a woman. You are her,” there wasn’t a molecule of either doubt or command in his voice.
I reached for his face and, like I was pulling the sun down, brought his lips to mine. I had kissed the Sergeant twice before. This time he kissed me. The scent of dogwood and sage rose from my body and the chalky mineral dust floated off of me in a cloud.
He put his lips on my neck, inhaled, and said, “You smell like home.”
We were both home. I was his home and he was mine.
He rolled out the coach driver’s bedroll and we lay upon it, facing each other. He put his lips on my lips and on the scars and on my breasts. I learned everything I needed to learn about him. I learned that his skin was the color of a baby fawn that was prettier than the sunset next to my smoky quartz tone. I learned that he had been with many women and was disciplined and tender and kind. I learned that too much joy and too much pleasure make me weep.
Later, a violet and orange sunset shone through the green lace the cottonwoods tatted against the evening sky. We did not speak until the light was gone and a fire built. There was a slight chill in the air and he held me against his chest, both of us facing the fire.
“Why,” he asked, running his hand along my arm, “didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“As soon as I was sure you were you,” I answered, “I did. Or tried. Remember? When we were out on patrol that time?”
“I do. I thought—”
“You made it clear what you thought. The next time I tried, when you were sick and I called you back from the dead using your given name and blowing warm breath into you, you threatened to have me court-martialed for moral turpitude.
“After that,” I went on, my voice small, “I stopped trying. I didn’t want to wreck the vision you carried in your head of the woman who saved you. I wanted to stay beautiful to you. Beautiful and womanly.”
His hands stroked me. My breasts, my belly, between my legs. He kissed my shoulder, my neck. “You are womanly.”
He manned again. I took him into my body. This time he held himself away so as to look at my face in the firelight and he held back until a frenzied jubilation overtook us that was as keen and thrilling as riding the high line ahead of an electrical storm and I knew I pleased him.
When we finished, the night was chill. The Sergeant pulled the blanket about us, and we moved closer to the fire, sitting there with me cradled between his legs, his back resting against a warm rock. He had hardtack in his pocket and we ate that, washing it down with spring water. With his arms cradled around me, I rested my head on his chest.
“When you saw me?” he asked. “At the recruitment? Did you know?”
“I thought I did, but the man in the wagon’s name was Wager Swayne. Not Levi Allbright. Which one is really your name?”
“My name was Wager Swayne until the burying detail pulled me out of the grave. I was lost amongst the contrabands for some time. Barely able to walk. I didn’t know where my unit was or how to find it. When I recovered enough, I enlisted under the name of Allbright as the depot was across the street from the All Bright Lantern Company.”
“Why didn’t you use your real name?”
“Because Wager Swayne had been infantry. Too tall for cavalry. But by the time I went in again, I knew who I needed to pay to get the assignment I wanted.”
“What should I call you?”
“Wager was my mother’s family name. My father was Emmanuel Swayne, seaman.”
“Wager,” I repeated. “Wager Swayne.” I liked saying the name his mama and daddy had given him. A name that only I knew for a person that only I knew.
“And you?” he asked. “What do they call you back home?”
“Cathy.”
“Your name really is Cathay?”
“Well, Cathy. Yes, it really is Cathy. Cathy Williams.”
“Your name really is Cathy,” Wager repeated, then burst out laughing so hard that the muscles of his belly bunched up and bounced hard against my back. The chuckles rose to a hard cackle.
I pivoted around and there were tears running from his eyes, he was hee-hawing so hard. “What exactly is so damn hilarious about my name?” I asked.
“I … I…” Wager tried to explain before collapsing again. He finally pulled himself together and said, “Cathy Williams, you sure did go the long way round to do it, but you have got to be the first soldier ever made the United States Army call him by his first name.”
“Her,” I said. “Her name.”
“Her,” he repeated. “Oh, yes, very much her.” And then Wager Swayne kissed me. Me, Cathy Williams.
Chapter 70
The pond has grown to an enormous size. The gauzy strips of binding flutter after me like long wings as I swim through water that is alive with dust motes sparkling bright as gold dust. I soar forward, my hands pointed out in front cut through the water like the prow of a boat. Then I remember that this is how to fly. I leave the water and take w
ing, I rise into the blue sky and swim through it. I am doing something no other person ever has. I am flying. Wager stares up at me, overcome with admiration.
As I fly, I become aware of the new place inside me, between my legs. It is soft and tender as a baby’s foot the first time it is ever walked on. The first time it discovers what a foot is for. Now, in my dream, Wager is with me, clinging to my back. His weight presses down and I flap harder. I am strong enough to lift us both and he admires that, too. We rise higher and higher with each flap of the tatters of my binding wings.
Below us, on the drill field, everyone in the company cranes his head back to watch in wonder. I am as beautiful as an angel and I can do something no one else can. That is when I recall that, as Mama warned, it is dangerous to capture the gazes of men. I see now that the hand that grips me is black with rot.
I glance back over my shoulder. It is not Wager clutching my shoulder, eager again for the soft place within, it is Old Mister. And then it is Vikers riding my back. And then it is all of them. Caldwell. Greene. The mayor. The stage driver. Drewbott. Dupree. Even Lem and Solomon. They all know my secret and they are all coming for me. I flap harder and harder, but I sink now, falling from the sky until murky water covers me. It is dark and Old Mister waits there to use me as he used Clemmie because I am Clemmie now that I have shown myself.
“Cathy. Cathy, you’re trembling.”
Wager held me, my breasts soft against his chest, the stubble of his chin beard a nice rasp against the crook of my neck as he cooed and gentled me. “Shh-shh-shh. You had a nightmare. It’s over. I’m here. It wasn’t real.”
I sat up, the nightmare and sleep still heavy on me. The moon, which had been near full when I fell asleep, has set. Wager patted away the tears with his yellow silk kerchief then tied it around my neck, replacing the one I’d left in Mary’s keyhole and leaving his own neck bare, and I said his name, “Wager.”
He answered, “Cathy,” whispering my name as tender as if he was saying “darling.” Wager had laid my clothes out on the flat rocks to dry in the desert air. He’d rolled up the long strips of gauze, and now he unspooled them around my breasts, binding down again what only he had seen. I pulled my shirt on. He kissed me. The kiss deepened. He tried to stop me from buttoning my shirt, but it was late. We had to leave.
