Gloryland

by Shelton Johnson

  And the view didn’t improve as I looked all the way up, into the eyes of Captain Charles Young.

  I’d always wanted to meet Captain Young, but not like this. Not with what I’d eaten this morning all over my coat, my pants, my shoes. I wanted to look my best when meeting one of the few colored officers in the army, a colored man who was also a West Point graduate, and who I’d heard had said that “the worst thing I could ever wish on an enemy would be to make him colored and a cadet at West Point.” The man every soldier in Troop K looked up to cause of who he was and what he was and what he’d done, the same man who was standing in front of me for the first time.

  “Captain Young!” I gasped, so excited I forgot to salute. I stuck out my right hand to shake his, and only then remembered that I was just using that hand to wipe the puke from my mouth, but it was too late to pull it away. I didn’t want to offend him, but, hell, I was offending him anyway.

  Captain Young looked down at my hand and then in my face, and I saw that what’s at the bottom of this ocean was also at the bottom of this man’s eyes. And whatever that is, I still ain’t got a name for it.

  “Sergeant,” he said finally, “you’re a mess. No, soldier, you’re beyond a mess, and I’ll take your hand once it’s clean, but for the moment I suggest you go below and wash yourself thoroughly.”

  I stood at attention, stiff as a flag after an ice storm. Here was the man I wanted to meet more than any other man in this world, the man who made me proud to wear the uniform, and I was a disgrace in his eyes.

  “Yes sir!” I said to him. “I’m sorry, sir, but ocean-goin don’t agree with me, sir. I thought the fresh air up here on deck would be better than bein down below, and it was for a bit, but—” I paused to gather myself and steady my words. “I’m sorry, Captain Young,” I said again, as if repeating it would make things better. “It won’t happen again, sir!”

  He seemed to lose a little iron. His body was still stiff like he had joints missing, but his eyes were warmer. I thought I could see some part of him the army had never touched, somewhere way down at the bottom of his eyes.

  “Very good, sergeant, very good,” he answered. He started to turn with the motion of the ship, but then turned back to me and asked, “What’s your name?”

  I stood up even straighter before replying, “Sergeant Elijah Yancy, Troop K, sir!”

  And this time I saw just a bit of a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth.

  “Yancy,” he said. “Well, enjoy the rest of the voyage, Sergeant Yancy. California will be somewhat steadier than the ocean. You’ll settle down soon enough.”

  He saluted, I saluted, and he walked off. The rolling of the ship didn’t seem a problem to him at all. Must be something they teach you at West Point, but I think the most important things about him he didn’t learn in school.

  Of all my time on the Logan, meeting Captain Young is what I remember most clearly. I was embarrassed at the time, but no more, cause at least he saw that I was a human being, and every officer needs to be reminded about that once in a while. I remind myself all the time.

  Patrol report on Yosemite Park stationery, under “Remarks,” Soda Springs, August 1, 1903

  Corpl. Holmes & 1 man Patrol the Bloody Canyon. return Aug. 2nd. No trespassing what ever. 1 Private patrol the Alkali Creek. return the same day, no trespassing.

  Corpl. Holmes,

  K. Troop, 9th Cav.,

  Soda Springs

  a prayer at sea

  It’s strange, not being where you’re going and not where you were either, but somewhere in between. That’s what it was like being on the Logan. I’ve spent most of my life at sea, between one thing and another, but it wasn’t always as violent and perilous as the part of that voyage a few weeks out of Luzon.

  dear God, don’t let me die. it would hurt mama and daddy to lose me, but it would really upset grandma sara. you know how she is. she would be sure to rage at you for lettin me get myself killed, and she wouldn’t mean to be disrespectful, but she’s bout done with pain.

  I kind of got used to being in between. I was at sea growing up in Spartanburg. I was at sea serving at Fort Robinson and fighting in the Philippines.

  no, i think it would be best if you let me live. not for my sake, but you pretty busy and probably don’t have the patience to listen to my grandmother rail at you, especially when she so good at it.

  What does it feel like to cross over? To really get to where you’re going? Maybe when Death finally gets you, he’s just letting your dreams go free cause they’ve been trapped in your head all your life and could never open up their wings and fly off.

  and it would probably break mama’s heart to lose me cause she’s already lost one child, and i know there’s plenty of other mothers who lost children and you thinkin why should i save this one? i don’t know the answer to that. i just know that daddy don’t want to hold me when i’m dead and put my body in the ground.

  No one wants to die. No one wants to be forgotten, and to be forgotten is to die. Maybe that’s why I pray so much, so God can learn to pick my voice out of the noise he’s got to listen to, so he can remember my voice.

  i hope you take these words as the prayers of a fearful and chastened man and do not doubt the fierce devotion that was mine when i was a child on sundays in spartanburg, where we had so many conversations bout me being colored, and how that made my life so interestin.

  Lots of soldiers pray to God and got good reason for it. I never met most of them, but that don’t mean I don’t know them or don’t care about them. They wore the uniform, and it doesn’t matter if it was infantry or cavalry.

  and i appreciate the opportunity to fight for my country, but i didn’t feel right killin filipinos when all they wanted was freedom, and i’m curious how come colored men got to take away freedom from some other people when we ain’t ever had it ourselves?

  All my life in the army, and elsewhere, I heard voices other than my own. The army teaches you to work together, to be a unit. Maybe I been in the army too long. Maybe this ain’t just my story I been telling.

  that’s how i feel and i’m not alone cause some of the men in troop k feel like they fightin on the wrong side.

  Those Filipino colored people had families just like mine. And those families worried about their men when they were far away. And prayed for them the last thing before they went to sleep at night. Just like me, they wanted God’s help.

  thank you for listenin and i hope you can hear me cause i’m a long way from home. in my absence, please take care of mama and daddy and grandma sara.

  Yeah, most soldiers are strangers to me, but God knows each of their names and what’s in their hearts, cause each soldier sleeps in the space between a mother’s or a father’s hands, black hands in prayer. There are words in that darkness, and they’re not all meant for me.

  respectfully,

  So many voices in the night. How many prayers will get through to the other side? How many lost at sea?

  elijah yancy

  To Accustom Horses to Military Noises and Firing

  Young horses are in like manner accustomed to the manual of

  arms, waving of flags, military music, &c.

  from Cavalry Tactics

  parade

  The 12th of May 1903 was sunny but cold. I stood along a sidewalk on Van Ness Avenue with San Franciscans on every side: whites, Chinese, Mexicans, a few colored people, but mostly whites, and lots of schoolchildren in their Sunday best, all waiting to see President Theodore Roosevelt.

  When people looked at me, I could tell that some of them had never seen a colored soldier before. It was a strange look, curious but with no hate. They didn’t look for long, though, cause folks were there to see the president, who was on a speaking tour of California.

  A few anxious policemen were walking down the street with their batons, so no one got too close. Their uniforms fit them well, as the occasion warranted, and looked new even if they weren’t. Nothing was fra
yed or dirty.

  It was cold in the shadows and loud from all the talking, but I could see the sun bright on the building opposite where I was standing. I felt something or someone brush against my right side and I looked down. It was a young boy with reddish hair and blue eyes, peering up at me and smiling.

  “Can you see President Roosevelt?” he shouted, breathing hard. I wondered how this child could talk without air in his lungs. The excitement of the crowd lit up his face so much he could’ve been used at night for a lantern.

  “Naw,” I said. “All I see is people waitin all along Van Ness, and the police havin a devil of a time keepin folks out of the road.”

  “But the president . . . can you see him? I mean, he should be here soon, he’s supposed to be here!” he said. Each word came out of him with no room for the next, so it took a bit for me to make sense of what he was asking.

  “All I see,” I began, gazing up the street, “is what I told you. No more. But he’ll be here, and the Ninth as well,” I added.

  “Who’s the Ninth?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was really curious or just being polite. He probably didn’t have many conversations with colored people, let alone soldiers.

  “Young man,” I said, “the Ninth means Ninth Regiment of Cavalry. I’m with Troop K. There’s quite a few colored soldiers stationed here at the Presidio. Some of us were picked to escort the president at this here parade, and some were not.”

  The boy did something funny with his mouth as if he’d just put something in it that didn’t taste right, and he couldn’t make up his mind whether to swallow or spit. He looked me up and down good. I think about then was the first time he’d really seen me, though I was clearly wearing a uniform.

  “You’re a nigger,” he said, “and a soldier?”

  He was confused. He could deal with me being a nigger and probably was all right with me being a soldier, but both, well, that was unusual enough to challenge whatever he’d been taught.

  “No,” I said, “I ain’t no nigger, and don’t know any either, but I’m African and Seminole Indian, which means I’m part Creek and possibly Muskogee. Might be some Gullah in there, I don’t know for sure.

  “And I’m not just a soldier. I’m a U.S. cavalryman, a sergeant in the Ninth Regiment, but don’t think about it too much right now. You don’t want to fall down on this sidewalk, cause what with everyone watchin for the president, you could be lyin here for hours before someone notices you. You could give it some thought when you get older, cause by then you’ll be able to handle whiskey. And you might need a drink.”

  He seemed to be considering whether or not to smile, but he didn’t want to get into trouble, and I think he already sensed that the conversation had gone on too long. He smiled anyway as he turned and said, “Thanks, soldier!”

  It was so crowded that he was gone just like that behind a jumble of pants, dresses, sleeves, arms pointing, and white hands gesturing up the road. All those white hands like birds, white birds, so many I couldn’t see the bodies they were attached to, and the sun making them flutter by themselves. I couldn’t see whole people, just pieces of them: faces, heads, hats, parasols, cravats, white shirts, hair in curls, rings, all jumbled up. The only thing keeping it all from spilling out onto Van Ness were the frustrated policemen, who obviously were not enjoying this duty at all. Shaking their heads, shouting to the crowd to keep back, yelling the same things over and over, and no one seemed to be listening.

  “Move on back, folks, please!” I heard one officer say. “Please make room! You can’t see the president if you don’t make room for him to get here!” The officer, a tall fellow with gray hair, red cheeks, and sideburns too long for his face then spat on the ground and kept moving down the line.

  So many people together made the air sound like the sea. All those voices, high and low, sounding together like waves rolling down the avenue, a waterless sea, and you could hear and feel the power of it whenever the crowd started moving. That’s why the police were so nervous, cause they knew they couldn’t stop the crowd if it wanted to move.

  Then the mules and horses came. You couldn’t hear them till they were up close. I watched their legs move and their hooves strike the ground, but it was silent with all that cheering going on. First there were mounted police, but people didn’t pay much attention to them. What caught their eye was what came after: column after column of cavalry swinging into view.

  Not just any cavalry, the Ninth was parading down Van Ness, right in front of the presidential entourage. It was most of Troop I, about fifty men in dress uniforms, and they were all staring ahead down the street as if no one at all was standing alongside, and as they came it seemed to me that the sea of sound parted, and silence was at the bottom. Over that silence the tap and click of mules and horses moving at the walk suddenly could be heard as Troop I forded that silence, like they’d been drilling for years on the safest way to manuever through it.

  All their tack was clean and smooth, bridles, reins, saddles, saddle-bags, stirrups, blankets, all looking like they’d just come out of a box, and even the horses looked just unpacked, brushed down and combed, and they moved as one, like they knew President Roosevelt was riding behind them.

  But what got to me were the men on horseback, sitting bolt upright in their saddles and looking straight ahead. They didn’t wave at the crowd or even look to one side or the other, just rode as if this was the last time they’d ever ride on this earth. That’s what I can’t forget. And they didn’t have to say anything about pride, cause it was in how they held themselves as they rode. A sea of cheers and cries was breaking on either side of them like waves, but they calmly rode through and it never touched them.

  Thousands of schoolchildren along the edges of the sidewalks were frantically waving their little flags, and I saw those flags slow as the cavalry approached, those children just as surprised to see the Fighting Ninth as that little boy was to see me close up.

  I thought I saw the regimental flag borne by a fellow I remembered running into at the Presidio, but I couldn’t be sure. The flag drooped in the shadows for a bit, but just as it came out into the sun, a breeze picked up and it fully unfurled for all to see. But I had no trouble at all recognizing Captain Charles Young riding at the head of the column, even ahead of the flag. He wasn’t a big man, but there was a quiet resolve in the line of his body that made him taller. Back straight, head pitched slightly forward, heels down in the stirrups, he gazed coolly down the road at something only he could see.

  By the time Roosevelt came by in his carriage, with the Secret Service walking behind him, well, it was a bit of a letdown. All the pomp was riding up ahead of him in columns of two, and he was just the circumstance.

  I felt something that day I’ve not felt since, and it wasn’t just pride. I still can’t put a name to it. I guess the closest thing to what I was feeling would be the sight of Captain Young riding in front of that column of men. He was all alone out in that road, in that parade, in that city, in all the brightness, a West Point graduate and a colored officer, but the weight of that seemed nothing as he rode by sitting tall on his horse, his back as straight as if an iron rod had replaced his spine. That man was a soldier on the inside and a real officer, and he didn’t even need a uniform. You can tell when people are in command of themselves, and Captain Young was like that.

  Then the parade was over, so fast, but I keep seeing it, the troop of colored soldiers going past and the people watching them, not quite certain what they were really seeing, oh yeah, I remember that part of the day better than the sky or the sunlight or the flags or the cheering. What I can’t forget is a few dozen colored men in uniform with Teddy Roosevelt in tow behind them.

  They weren’t escorting the president, no sir. On that day, President Roosevelt was escorting Captain Young’s soldiers. And the silence that followed them down Van Ness Avenue is still there, the same silence they strode over, those mules and horses and men, on that day in May of 1903.

&
nbsp; Patrol report on Yosemite Park stationery, under “Remarks,” Soda Springs, August 2, 1903.

  1 Private patrol Tioga Road. Return the same day, no trespassing.

  Corpl. Holmes,

  K Troop, 9th Cav.,

  Soda Springs

  woman at crissy field

  I remember another day during that time President Roosevelt came to San Francisco. More of a person than a day. More of a woman staying in my head like a coal that don’t know the fire’s out.

  This time they were marching at a parade ground called Crissy Field. It was a place for horses and noise, officers shouting and movements like razors cutting the air, and the smell of sweat. Once again Troop I was there parading with President Roosevelt. And more thousands of people, old and young, all there to glimpse one man, get close to one man.

  Maybe it wasn’t the man himself that drew people, but when someone’s got power like he did, how can you not look? When you run into a bear up in the mountains, you got to look cause it might be Death coming toward you, and you want to see it coming. Roosevelt had that kind of power.

  But there are other kinds of power that pull you even if you don’t want to go. There was this woman at Crissy Field on the day when Roosevelt was filling up the view. I was there, off duty, just like other folks who wanted to see the president, and I saw her along the edge of the crowd.

  I saw her in pieces at first: an arm, part of a shoulder, her umbrella, her hands moving. That’s all, but the pieces made me want to see all of her. I remember moving closer, walking past people who ignored me or were angry cause I got in their view, and I apologized and kept moving closer to that colored woman in a white dress on the edge of the crowd.