Gloryland

by Shelton Johnson

  I’m not living in Anger full-time anymore, but I’m still so mad bout what happened in Florida that I can’t feel good bout what happened in Cuba. I just can’t get there cause of that blockade in my heart. And it’s a shame, cause good men died in Cuba. They fought bravely, even gallantly, no matter what Colonel Roosevelt said later. Roosevelt was wrong to say what he said, and maybe he apologized, but it wasn’t good enough.

  Colored soldiers running from a fight, he’d said. Colored soldiers who weren’t no good unless white officers were leading them. Yeah, he should’ve been sorry!

  Like those white boys who started that riot in Tampa. After the streets “ran red with Negro blood,” like a newspaper said, those white soldiers from Ohio could go to any restaurant they wanted, cause you work up an appetite pulling a trigger, or maybe they went to get something cool to drink cause they worked up such a thirst. But no matter where they chose to go, they would’ve been served like gentlemen, while a colored soldier could only hope to get served round the back, if at all. Do you think those white boys ever said “I’m sorry” for what they done?

  So that’s why I can’t get to Cuba. I want to, believe me. I need to get to Cuba. I want to talk bout the heights of San Juan, bout gallantry under fire. It would be a helluva lot easier to talk bout war and grown men dying than bout some child who was used for target practice in Tampa.

  But the blockade’s in my way, and until it clears, I won’t ever be able to see past Florida.

  To Accustom Horses to Military Noises and Firing

  If the horses become much excited discontinue the firing

  until they become calm.

  from Cavalry Tactics

  philippines

  I finally got over Tampa, got past the blockade, and saw what was on the other side.

  The Pacific Ocean. The war with Spain ended just a couple months after it started. America won, so on a piece of paper called the Treaty of Paris, we got what had been Spanish property, including the Philippine Islands. The problem was that no one bothered asking the Filipinos how they felt about the deal.

  They didn’t like it. Which is how Troop K and the rest of the Third Squadron, Ninth U.S. Cavalry, ended up on transport ships to the Philippine Islands, by way of San Francisco. We’d received orders to quell the revolt. I didn’t quite understand what quell meant till a corporal of mine, who was from Atlanta and had more schooling than me, said it basically meant the same thing as suppress.

  Well, I knew that word front and back. After that, we all got drunk together, Corporal Bingham, that word, and me. And when it came to me that we’d be quelling people who’d been fighting the Spanish for their freedom, I felt like having another drink.

  Freedom. There it was again. That word. And once again I felt like I was on the wrong side of it. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get my bearings, couldn’t tell which way was north or south. Besides, I was out there in the ocean, and being in that big water without a compass was a bit like being on a battlefield when guns are blazing round you, and people are dying round you, and there’s so much commotion you’re not certain where the enemy is.

  Bingham and I were afraid that where was about to be replaced by who, and that’s what led to the whiskey. It’s hard to explain the feeling of going to war. You don’t completely know what you’re getting into, or if you can get out of it alive. Over that bottle of whiskey, Bingham told me he’d had the same feeling when he got married.

  “No sir,” he said, when I asked him about it. “I didn’t know at all what I was getting into when I got hitched, but so far so good. Maybe cause Helen knows I’m the one with the revolver.”

  I laughed, and he looked at me, smiled back.

  “You’re a soldier,” he said, “you know as well as me that in war, it’s the man holdin the gun who gets to sort things out.”

  “But Bingham,” I argued, still laughing, “in a war every soldier’s got a gun!”

  “That’s right!” he agreed, his eyes bright, “and that’s why a cavalryman’s got the edge over a woman in a marriage.”

  Once we landed in the harbor in Luzon, we figured the main enemy might be the climate. Manila was steam and a fiery sun, like a bath of mist, but no water you could drink except what was on your skin, and your clothes were never dry. Inside you were a forest that was underwater, and you were breathing rain, you were breathing clouds, and I felt suffocated. I could never get a breath without feeling like I was drowning.

  The people were colored but not South Carolina colored or Mississippi colored, but Philippine colored, and they talked Philippine talk and wore clothes that could handle clouds and had faces that didn’t mind water flowing over them. They were sad faces and smiling faces at the same time, and even though they were strangers I felt I knew them, because they were colored. I never felt more like a stranger than when I was in those green mountains trying to find something cool enough to breathe without getting killed. Those Filipinos were fighting hard for their freedom, and I was fighting to take it from them . . . me, Elijah Yancy, who didn’t know what freedom tasted or looked or smelled like, but could take it out of the hands of a child.

  And I had no choice cause I had enlisted. I had made my mark, signed my name on that piece of paper to get a job, a profession, a pension. A man taking names took mine, and before I knew it I was killing people who could’ve been my family, but I didn’t have any choice cause I didn’t want to be a sharecropper.

  You understand what I’m saying? I got sent to those islands, and nobody asked me how I felt about it, but it didn’t matter what I felt cause I was just supposed to say “Yes sir!” and do what I was told. So the ship took me there, and the islands took me once I was there, and once I saw how beautiful the people were and what they were doing, I knew I had made a mistake. But I couldn’t get out of the uniform.

  It had me and it was tight, and if I took it off I would be naked and alone, so I kept it on and kept killing people, following orders that said kill the Insurrectos. And then when the Insurrectos were either dead or gone, things slowed down to confusion cause then I could really look round, see what I had done and who I had done it to. I didn’t like things being that slow, I didn’t like that I could focus clearly on what was before me and behind me, and it got to a point where I stopped looking over my shoulder cause it hurt too much.

  My hands were scalded from the heat of my Krag firing, hotter than the sun in my hands, but no hotter than what was in my heart, what was in my throat. And I couldn’t say nothing, all I could do was follow orders and give orders and hope at the end that I wasn’t to blame, hope that something good happened at the end. I couldn’t see how, though, cause there was so much hate heating up a place that was already plenty hot. I’d come all the way across an ocean just to find more hate, mostly. It was hard to see these people fighting for freedom, and then see how they was treated by so many American soldiers, white soldiers, who treated them no different than colored folks back home, and that’s what started the war between us.

  I can’t forget that white sergeant in Manila, his face the color of spoilt cream and his smile with no heat in it, the way he looked at me standing on a street corner, looked me over like I was meat hanging from a hook and he was wondering if I was fresh or rotten, good enough to eat or something to bury quick.

  “What they call you, boy?” he asked, and his voice was a knife sticking in and turning.

  “My men call me sir,” I said back to him, “if you want to know, Sergeant.” Cause he was a sergeant just like me, we were the same rank except he was white and I was colored, and he wanted me to know the difference, wanted me to feel it deep. He didn’t have to try so hard.

  “Well, Sergeant,” he said, like he was spitting out something that tasted awful. Then he stopped and looked round at all the Filipino people that was passing by us in the street, sliding their eyes over us so we wouldn’t notice them. He looked at them the same way he looked at me. Then he started talking again, but not really to me, caus
e he didn’t really see me no better than my shadow on the ground.

  “I’m from Minnesota, boy, and we got plenty of niggers round there, but I ain’t seen niggers like these before. Sure, the women are all right after a while, but they still stink like niggers, they feel the same, and I was wondering when I saw you, what you felt bout them, considering you a nigger too and all. And, well,” he paused again, “I consider myself a fair man, so I figure you got an opinion bout that, so I ask you, boy, what do you think of these niggers round here?”

  Talk about smell, I hated his smell and his arrogance and his hate most of all, but I didn’t hate him cause he was sick, my mama would have said, and people who are sick need help, not curses.

  I did want to curse him right there for all to hear, but all I said was, “Well, Sergeant, I been here several months now, and I’ve seen many interesting things and people who are even more interesting, but in all that time I ain’t seen any niggers. Now, seems like you seein something that ain’t there, so I’d be careful of drinkin any more of what you been drinkin, cause it’s makin you see what ain’t there and not see what is, which ain’t healthy for a soldier.”

  He took a step back from me as if I had just jumped up out of the ground, like a dead man who decided to speak up and say things he could never say when he was alive.

  “Nigger,” he snarled, “if we was back home, you’d be dead now.”

  “Sergeant,” I replied, “maybe I’m already dead and this is heaven, and these are all angels round us, and you got off the train at the wrong stop cause you weren’t meant to be here. Maybe none of us was meant to be here, but we got to make the most of it cause we’re supposed to be in hell, but somehow we got up to heaven and it’s only a matter of time before we’re found out. But if you keep raisin your voice, then we’ll be found out, so I’d whisper if I was you. If you ain’t careful, both of us is goin to end up in hell.”

  He looked confused by all that, which is what I wanted. Sometimes talking crazy makes more sense than being reasonable. Plenty of colored people been killed in South Carolina trying to be reasonable with people who just wanted them dead. If you have to talk to crazy people, and you act crazier, maybe you can walk away while they’re trying to understand what wasn’t meant to be understood.

  So I walked away from that fool, who just stayed there with his mouth open and didn’t do nothing cause he didn’t know what to do.

  I’ve seen men out of their minds on a battlefield and no bullet touches them, while men who keep cool and try to reason get all shot up, and they’re lying there bleeding trying to figure out what happened to them, as if reason had anything to do with it. If something’s crazy, then you got to be crazier if you want to survive.

  A lot happened to me in the Philippines. Not all of it was bad, and some of it was beautiful. Now and then I managed to get out of my uniform and breathe a little better. But mostly I was bound up in my uniform and my orders and the hate that came across the ocean with us. That sergeant in Manila, and people like him, was the real cause of the Philippine-American War. Yes, an American ship in the Havana harbor blew up, and President McKinley was assassinated in 1901. But I believe the Philippine Insurrection happened mostly cause of hate no one bothered to hide. When you call someone nigger while you’re shaking his hand, you shouldn’t be surprised when he gets angry and wants to hurt you as deep as you hurt him.

  Just about anywhere I know, that’s reason enough for a fight.

  Patrol report on Yosemite Park stationery, under “Remarks,” Wawona, Cal., July 19, 1903

  A heard of sheep at Arndt Lake numbering abought 1600. Brand “M”, A Pack train of (2) burrows.

  Very Respectfully,

  William Alexander,

  Sgt. “L”, 9 Cavy.

  Commanding Detachment

  two prayers from luzon

  Dear God:

  i’m havin a hard time breathin

  it’s so hot and the air is full of water,

  i’m walkin on the ground, but i’m drownin,

  my clothes never dry

  and neither do i,

  i would be so grateful for a wind

  to blow over me, a cool wind

  off a mesa in arizona at night,

  yeah, that would be nice,

  just send that cold, dry breeze

  into this green weeping filipinos call a forest,

  thank you, God!

  oh, i forgot,

  i do appreciate the sun,

  but i wish it were clearer,

  i think even the sun

  is troubled by all these clouds

  so you’d be helpin the sun

  as well as me if a wind

  would come up and blow

  the rain away, and then i could see

  clearer who’s tryin to kill me,

  who i’m tryin to kill,

  and all the reasons why,

  although i don’t know if light can do that

  cause seein clear is not always bout

  illumination

  even when you see how water

  washes all the blood away

  all the rot away

  all the pain away,

  well, not all of it cause

  lately in my soul nothin is flowin

  and no breeze is blowin,

  it’s just a big dark hole

  full of whispers, prayers, curses,

  tears, piss, and stagnant water,

  so a wind out of arizona

  goin right through me

  would be sweet.

  dear God:

  i don’t know what to do

  no more with a smile

  or long black hair down to a waist

  my hands were hungry to hold.

  what do i do with black eyes

  starin at me that way?

  and how her dress

  come up over hips that way

  what do i do with that?

  and it wouldn’t have mattered

  if she hadn’t looked at me

  like i was the one, the only one

  that was meant to hold her

  that way, and she smiled at me

  as i rode by, lookin up at me,

  and i almost fell off a my horse.

  i become a deserter right there,

  i would’ve fought for aguinaldo

  right there, and every insurrecto in these islands

  just for another smile from that sweet young thing,

  twistin me in my saddle till the 2nd lieutenant yelled

  at me bout breakin formation

  as if that mattered, considerin

  my heart was busted

  by those deep black eyes lookin into me

  that way with that smile, God almighty

  why she do that to me?

  To Accustom Horses to Military Noises and Firing

  In firing from the horse’s back the pistol shoud

  at first be held vertically.

  from Cavalry Tactics

  the logan and captain young

  What I remember most bout the voyage back to California was how even the sea felt uneasy. It was more restless than I was, rolling and churning. I wondered what was beneath all that commotion struggling to get out. I’d felt like that ever since leaving Manila, and not just my stomach.

  It was strange to spend all those months on ground that never moved, and the whole time feeling inside like the water out there, neither one ever quiet. I see now that even when I was in that jungle, I was still on that boat in the stormy water, being tossed round and not knowing why. I can see me hunched over and creeping through all that hot green country, and struggling to stay upright on that ship deck at the same time. If someone introduced me to the self I was then, what would I say?

  “Boy, you look like hell, worse than hell, you look like the manure hell is built on top of!” Yeah, that’s what I’d say if I could talk to myself, instead of standing by this railing peering down into an ocean just as roiled up as I am.
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  Listen to it roar. Listen to me roar. Just like water, I am bigger than the world, and nobody knows me even if they know my name. Pacific, that’s what they call you, and the lieutenant says that means peace or peaceful, except you’re anything but. I’ve known a few people who were like this water, all loud and scary on the outside, but what are they really like deep down, so far down you’d drown before you got there?

  Maybe somewhere at the bottom of all this there’s no noise, no movement, just nothing. Maybe nothing wears the ocean like I wear this uniform or my skin. Something to cover up what shouldn’t be seen. The water knows I’m naked even though I’m standing here clothed. Though I act all right, this water can feel the lie underneath. It ain’t pacific at all, and neither am I. Who moves inside me that’s got my name, my voice, my blood, but don’t know me?

  Then the ship pitched again, and I let go of my insides, but it all got lost in the spray. If I fell in, would the Pacific even know I was there? I wondered how many people and other living things had died in this water, and the water took it all in and still was itself, never became something else. I remembered the dream I had when I was just leaving home, the dream about slaves who jumped or were thrown into the sea. The sea got into them after they fell into the sea. This water can become anything it wants to, but it never forgets what it is.

  If it didn’t make you so sick, a man could learn something from this water. Even when I was being sick, it made me think.

  Then came a long slow deep roll to the other side, and I held on tight to the rail. It was like holding on to ice but it was better than becoming ice. I felt someone next to me and looked down, which was easy since I was already looking down on account of I was throwing up my breakfast all over the deck. And I saw shoes down by my shoes, shoes shiny with spray and polish, too bright to be the shoes of an enlisted man. It was an officer’s shoes shining there by my feet, and there were officer’s pants rising up above those shoes.