by Sarah Bird
I remembered then. It was an afternoon in late fall when gray clouds hung low and a chilly wind sliced across the yard, blowing bits of dried tobacco leaves and twine left over from tying up the bundles. I was working beside Mama that day. We were all out, rechinking the oldest curing barn on the place, and our hands and arms were white and whiskered up to the elbow from the ash and hog bristles mixed into the mortar we’d been daubing onto the chinks.
Across the yard, Clemmie was on the porch, sweeping the stairs. As she stepped down onto the bottom one, the sun cut through a slit in the clouds and shone directly on her. She was waving at us, smiling, when Old Mister came out of the house and put his hand on her shoulder. Instant he touched her, the smile dropped from my little sister’s face. He turned her around, led her back into the house, and shut the door behind them.
I saw it again, Old Mister’s hand on my little sister’s shoulder, guiding her up the steps, into the house, into his bedroom, and the rage roaring through me melted and ran out my eyes.
Tea Cake noticed and nudged Ivory. I lowered my head and waited for the bullyragging to commence. But it didn’t. Instead, I heard them whisper, “Cat-hauled,” to one another like that explained everything.
Late that night, when I couldn’t sleep, I went to the window and stared out across the drill field to Wager’s quarters where his lantern shone behind the drawn curtains. I was feeling so low and mournful that I didn’t even care who might see me mooning there. Let them take me for a sodomite, I thought. It’d be worth it for just a glimpse of his shadow passing behind the curtains.
I held my post until day broke.
Chapter 72
The next day, we were all jumpy, waiting for the order sending us out after Chewing Bones to come down. Tired of listening to the rumors and guesses, I went to the stable to hide out with Bunny. I plucked a few carrots from Mrs. Drewbott’s garden and fed chunks to Bunny while I munched on one myself. Her whiskery lips were brushing across my flat palm, herding a nice orange chunk into her mouth, when I caught sight of Major Carter and his pal Captain Grundy coming in. I ducked down in the stall with Bunny as I had little regard for either one.
“Hello!” Carter called out. I watched them from between a gap in the stall boards.
“Anybody here?” Grundy asked. When they were sure no one was about, they set to doing what they’d sought out this secluded spot to do and that was gossiping like a pair of old ladies rocking on a porch.
“So it’s true?” Grundy asked. “We’re finally moving out?”
“Drewbott told me to pass the order tomorrow at assembly. Sheridan himself telegrammed. And Grundy, I’m telling you, that wire…” Carter whistled long and low. “It scorched my eyes to read it. I can’t believe Drewbott left it out on his desk.”
“Man’s a mental defective,” Grundy said. “Doesn’t have the sense God gave a turnip. What did Little Phil say?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘I will come down there myself and rip the eagles off your shoulders and replace them with chicken feathers if you do not get up off your hindquarters and bring the renegades in.’”
Grundy chuckled. “That’s old Smash ’em Up for you. I guess we’ll see now if Colonel Yellow Belly is more scared of Chewing Bones or Sheridan.”
“You know who he’s most scared of?” Carter asked.
“His own shadow,” Grundy answered.
Carter snorted a laugh, then turned serious and said, “The darkies.”
Grundy sounded surprised when he asked, “The darkies? Why?”
“Guilty conscience is my guess. Drewbott being from the South and all. He knows what was done to them down there. Knows he’d kill the man who’d ever treated him as the slaves were treated.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Grundy said. “Aside from the usual rowdies and drunks, the darkies are the most docile, biddable group of soldiers I’ve ever come across. The white outfits are the ones to be scared of. They’re full of killers and thieves, dipsomaniacs and deserters. You read the report, didn’t you?”
“I had a look at it.”
“The colored regiments have the lowest rate of desertion and highest rate of compliance of any west of the Mississippi. And Company J leads them all.”
I swelled up with pride and could hardly wait to slip out and give the Sergeant this news.
Of course, leave it to Carter to take the shine off of anything sparkly. He came right back with, “Biddable, indeed. Like children, aren’t they? The darkies. Happy all the time. You ever pass by the barracks at night, they’ll be singing and laughing and capering about. Too dumb to even realize that this is the ass end of all assignments.”
“Well, really,” Grundy said, “what else have they got? It’s not as if they could go back where they came from. Johnson acts like we fought the war just to clear out the slaveholders and let this new bunch he’s in cahoots with take over. The Clue Clucks something or other. The ones terrorizing the ex-slaves. Riding around in bedsheets and dunce caps.”
“Yes, they’re a dim bunch,” Carter agreed. “But the darkies, they’re children, I tell you. Someone’s got to keep them in line.”
Grundy sighed. “I suppose so.”
Carter leaned in close. “I’ll tell you this much, if Drewbott really does get off his hind end and go after Chewing Bones, you better believe he’ll have at least two officers between himself and the darkies. He’ll have someone guarding his back at all times. Someone white.”
“You know who should keep a guard at his back?”
Carter gave that nasty little laugh of his and answered, “Allbright. Lord, Drewbott does hate that uppity coon, doesn’t he? He put in to have him transferred a month ago. Mark my words, if that request is denied, Drewbott will find some other way to have him removed.”
As they left the stables, Carter’s words drifted back to me. “No, it wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if Sergeant Allbright meets an untimely end on this mission.”
Chapter 73
“Cathy,” the Sergeant said when he opened the door of his quarters late that night. It was long after lights out. I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was thick with sleep. He caught himself and demanded, “Private?” loud enough that anyone passing in the night could hear.
I told him straight out, “They mean to kill you.”
He pulled me into the dark room and shut the door. He wore only his muslin drawers. His shoulders and chest were bare. Still honoring his promise, he quickly stepped away from me.
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard Carter and Grundy in the stables. Sheridan has ordered Drewbott to go after the renegades. Drewbott, he’s going to kill you while we’re in the field.”
“Drewbott?” he scoffed. “That pansy? I’d half respect him if he had the sand for such a thing.”
“Listen to me. I’m serious. Drewbott already requested you be transferred.”
“Transfer, huh?” the Sergeant asked with a casualness that worried me.
“The man hates you. He’s eaten up with it.” My words seemed to make no impression on him and my voice went shrill as I warned him again, “He will kill you if he gets the chance.”
This caused a little smile to play across his lips and I had to ask what on earth was wrong with him.
“Nothing,” he answered. “I just like hearing your real voice. Especially like this. Full of emotion and…” He paused before adding, “And worry. You’re worried about me.” He sounded like he barely believed it possible.
“I am. Of course, I am. Every second of every day.”
The smile he gave me had a sweetness to it I hadn’t seen before. “Don’t worry, Cathy, Ednar Drewbott is not what’s going to put me in my grave.”
We stood in silence. I’d said my piece. The moment came for me to leave, to hold to the promise that I’d forced him to make, but it passed and I did not turn from him.
“You should leave,” he said. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t leave. Couldn’t not touch
him. Wager. The forbidden name hummed through me. My head grew heavier until, of its own accord, it leaned over and came to rest on Wager’s warm, bare shoulder. I pressed my lips against his neck and breathed in his scent like I hadn’t had air for all these past weeks.
“Cathy?” he said, making my name into a question.
“Wager,” I said, giving him my answer.
Dim light from the new-risen waxing crescent moon streamed in through the window. He took off my jacket and shirt, angled me so that the light fell across my face, untucked the end of the binding that held it in place and unwound the strips of fabric. Gently, he peeled the long loops away, gathering them up in his free hand like a wilted bouquet then let the loops uncoil and fall to the floor. Moonlight dappled my throat, my shoulders. As soon as my scars were bared, Wager licked each pearl like it was a gumdrop. He lapped at my bare shoulders, throat, breasts as though he could lick the silver glow from my skin.
He laid me upon his bed. We faced each other, the eagerness of his body touching mine. His hands rounded over my cheeks, shoulders, hips. I was grateful to the ones who’d taught him to love so tenderly. Beneath his touch, I felt small and dainty and feminine.
“Did you think of me?” he asked, his need to talk winning over the other need. He wasn’t the one Mama had warned me about, the man, any man, all men, who’d do me wrong. She’d never met his like. Neither had Clemmie. Nor, maybe, had any other woman ever except me.
“Wager, I never stop thinking of you.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” he asked, his finger tracing the curl of my ear.
“I hope so,” I answered. “I told you the biggest one I will ever have.”
“I was drawn to you, from the start. I didn’t know why. I sure didn’t want to be. Some part of me, though, knew. Knew you were a woman. Knew you were the woman who’d saved me.”
“Didn’t stop you from trying to run me off, telling me I was a ‘divisive element’?” Small laughs puffed between us.
“You were. You are. But I still favored you over the others, didn’t I? Found reasons to be alone with you. It worried me. Wanting to be alone with a man. But it was there. Right from the start.”
“Wager, I loved you from the moment I saw your bandaged face in the back of that wagon. It wasn’t peeling away those bindings made me a woman, it was you.”
He didn’t say the words back, didn’t say he loved me. But I hadn’t expected he would.
Chapter 74
Colonel Drewbott refused to go out after the renegades until he had “trustworthy” scouts. By this he meant “white scouts.” The great John Horse and his men, veritable bloodhounds every one, would not do. “Too unfamiliar with the area,” Drewbott had harrumphed to Wager when he explained the delay. “Too colored” was more like it.
Drewbott’s chickenshit dithering gave Wager and me three more nights together. By then, we were both past caring whether or not the entire regiment took us, as Lem did, for a pair of sodomites. One night, hell, one minute with Wager was worth all the gossip and snickering the company could slander us with. Many, maybe most, couples can spend a lifetime together and not know each other the way Wager and I came to know each other in those few, stolen nights together.
We made plans. Come hell or high water, we’d each finish out our hitches so we’d have those pensions to build us a new life together in California. We’d light out for that far land which had not been poisoned by slavery. Maybe I’d cook for one of the fine hotels in San Francisco. Or even open a place of my own. Nothing fancy. Simple food for simple folks.
Wager thought he might take to the sea like his father and come home to me and our fine, unbroken children with stories of adventure in the South Seas, his pockets fat with wages. These were the conversations we had for three nights as we lolled in each other’s arms and built our future together, one kiss at a time.
At general assembly on the morning after our third night alone together, a very flustered Drewbott issued orders for a detachment of sixty men to make ready to ride out at first light the next day. Wager, Lem, and I were on the list along with Vikers, Greene, and Caldwell. Like any decent cavalryman, I spent most of the day in the stable, tending to Bunny.
There are those who don’t believe that a horse can understand human feelings, but Bunny knew I was happy for those floppy ears of hers nearly stood up when I gave her the news that we’d been ordered into the field. I tested, repaired, oiled, and polished every bit of her tack and curried her until she gleamed. Though most everyone else still adhered to the “3 Bs,” bleeding, blistering, and burning, to treat their mounts, I would have laid out the first quack veterinary ever dared to come at my Bunny with a bleeding cup. No, I bought calendula cream at the sutler’s out of my pay to dab on every scratch and sweet feed to make her coat glossy.
Late that night, I went to Wager. We were sitting on his bed when the door burst open and there stood John Horse and two of his men. They stepped in without waiting for so much as a how-dee-do. Instead of beads and deerskin leggings and vests decorated with Mexican pesos, they were all wearing army uniforms. John Horse held the rank of corporal, but still wore his plaid wool tunic.
“They said you would be here,” John Horse said.
“I thought Drewbott wanted white scouts,” Wager said.
“He did,” John Horse answered. “Sheridan didn’t agree.” The chief nodded at me then at Wager and asked, “You two?” He jabbed his pointer finger in and out of a circle he made with the pointer and thumb of his other hand in a gesture as crude as it was universal.
“He knows?” Wager asked me.
“He knew from the first,” I answered.
“But how?”
John Horse translated for his men and they laughed. “How not?” John Horse asked. “I knew by seeing she is a woman.”
“But how?” Wager asked again.
“How did you not?” John Horse asked, laughing with his men. John Horse clapped Wager on the back and concluded, “You have been with white men too long. You only see what you think should be there. Not what is right in front of you.”
He looked around at Wager’s quarters, nodded and said, “We’ll sleep in here with you. In the barracks there is too much farting and…” He mimed masturbation and concluded, “What do you have to eat?”
Chapter 75
At the stable before dawn, I breathed in the good smell of fresh bedding hay as I all but skipped to Bunny’s stall to get her tacked up for the big day ahead. The stall was empty. I ran outside yelling for Fernie Teague, who was second to Lem and now in charge since Lem was coming with us.
“What you hollerin’ about?” Fernie demanded as he hustled up to me, pulling his long white grooming coat on over his uniform.
“Bunny? Where’s my horse?”
“Oh, right, I was going to tell you first thing—”
“Tell me what?” My heart had stopped dead.
“About Bunny. She took sick. Glanders’s what it looks like.”
Glanders.
I thought my legs would drop out from under me, glanders was that fatal bad.
“Whoa, whoa,” Fernie said. “She ain’t dead yet. Quarantined her over to the back pasture.”
I started to go to her, but Fernie grabbed my arm and stopped me. “Sorry, doc said no one’s allowed to get close to her. People can catch glanders and that ain’t a pretty way to go. Horse or man.”
“I have to take care of—”
“Order’s an order, Cathay. Don’t fret. I’ll leave water and feed for her. She’ll be comfortable.”
“Will you…” I couldn’t finish. “If she’s suffering.”
“Count on it,” he answered. “Comes to it, I’ll put her down gentle and fast. Doc says to give her till tomorrow morning.”
Fernie loaned me a sturdy brown gelding and I made myself forget that I’d never known of an animal to recover from glanders. Like always, I put my sorrow to the side, did what had to be done, and was mounted and ready time we m
oved out.
Carter’s prediction turned out to be right. When we rode out, heading south toward Mexico where Chewing Bones liked to hole up across the Rio Grande, Drewbott had four white officers riding between him and us. But the man didn’t stop there. He’d also assigned Carter and Grundy to ride directly behind Wager. As soon as I saw that Drewbott had put two gunmen at Wager’s back, I unholstered my carbine and kept it out, resting on the saddle. I held the reins in my left hand, rifle in the right, with my finger on the trigger.
We rode through a land that, while still vast and magnificent, no longer seemed as untroubled as it had when Wager and I scouted it a year ago. The spring rains hadn’t come and where miles of grass should have carpeted the prairie, only stubbly clumps lay here and there. Even the cactus and scrub oak looked exhausted by the drought.
At night, Wager, Lem, and I bedded down with the scouts, far away from the others. Wager had warmed considerably to John Horse. Instead of thinking him a traitor, he asked Horse to tell him again about defeating the United States Army in the swamps of Florida and escaping from capture in that thick-walled prison. He listened to Horse now like the chief was Frederick Douglass sitting amongst us with a plaid wool turban atop his head.
Wager and I both noticed that Horse and his men always spoke of their white commander at Fort Lewis, Lieutenant Bullis, with the same kind of fondness and loyalty that the Buffalo Soldiers who served under Colonels Hatch and Grierson spoke of those officers. Not only did those white COs treat their troops with respect, but they had them doing more soldiering than pick-swinging.
