by Jon Walter
I yank the cloth off the table, putting a hand underneath and turning the whole thing over so the flowers fall in the wet mud and the picture’s at my feet. Then I stamp my heel into His face, breaking the frame, cos I can’t stand to look at it.
I run away, dodging between the tents, just like I ran from Mrs Allen, just like I’ve been running ever since.
I can’t go far before I have to crouch down and rest, taking huge gulps of air like I just been chased. And suddenly I’m scared for Joshua, scared like I’ve been blown up all over again and everything hurts.
Cos if God don’t love me no more, I don’t suppose He loves him either.
*
Three days go by that I don’t see the Major, and when he finally returns to the room he is brisk with me and ill at ease. He don’t want to talk to me any more than he has to. ‘I have some news for you, Samuel. We’re moving on. I have orders to take the town and there’s going to be a big push. It’ll happen soon, perhaps the day after next, and it means you and I must part company.’ He puts a hand up to my head, bridging the gap between us and he’s softer when he says, ‘There’s a soldier I’m fond of. He’s a nice young man who’ll be more use to me if he accompanies you to Middle Creek. I assume that’s where you want to go, isn’t it?’
My heart leaps into my mouth at the thought of seeing Joshua and the urgency leaves me breathless. I nod like an anxious dog but the Major is already walking to the door. ‘It’s only a two-day ride from here. My man will come and collect you after breakfast.’
He returns to the room much later, once I’ve gone to bed. He smells of whiskey as he walks through the door and I hear him clatter and bump as he gets into bed. After a moment, he speaks to me across the room. ‘When I found you, I was hiding. I was scared to death, Samuel, and I was hiding instead of leading my men. I was trying not to get shot.’
‘There ain’t nothing wrong with being scared.’ I tell him.
He thinks about that for a moment. And then he says, ‘I won’t be scared this time. I wanted you to know.’
Chapter 23
Middle Creek is only two days’ ride away. That’s what the Major told me. He’s given me a good horse and a travelling companion with a letter in his pocket to ensure our safe passage through the ranks of Union soldiers. But Harry Maguire can’t bring himself to talk to me and he won’t look at my face. He’s sulking cos the Major won’t let him go into battle, and I know he blames me. We’re only a few miles from the camp when the big guns start to boom and he stands his horse and stares back down the road, sniffing the air like a dog that senses something good.
He takes a while to catch me up and then rides alongside, all sullen and slumped in his saddle. ‘Looks like the Major saved you too,’ I tell him. ‘You should be grateful.’
‘I ain’t scared. There’s no point joining up if you don’t wanna fight. If it weren’t for people like me, you’d still be in chains.’
I nudge my horse forward on the open road. ‘I guess that’s true.’
But I soon begin to see what the Major likes about my companion. Harry Maguire is a good-looking boy of nineteen or so with a naturally cheerful disposition, and if he wanted to stay mad at me then he wasn’t very good at it. Before long he’s telling me interesting things about the countryside we ride through or the people that live close by. I don’t know how he knows ’em but he does, and he’s a good talker too, with a way of describing things that lets you see em like a painting.
Later, when we make our camp around a small fire, I cook up some hominy rice and cured meat that the cook gave Harry before we left. He’s got some coffee too – the real stuff, not chicory and dirt – and there’s enough for a cup each. He divides both the food and drink equally, which I appreciate.
I lift my steaming cup into the air. ‘To the Major!’
Harry’s too generous to hold a grudge and he raises his cup with mine. ‘To that son of a bitch,’ he grins. ‘Till I get back and give him a piece of my mind.’
That coffee sure warms my soul.
‘Say, have you ever been to New York?’ Harry asks me.
‘Who, me? I’ve never been anywhere much. Is that where you’re from?’
‘Best place to live in America.’
Harry’s eyes start to sparkle as he tells me about New York, and by the time he’s done I almost believe I’ve seen the great big buildings and the busy streets for myself. I hadn’t ever dreamed there could be a place with so many people in it.
He asks where I come from and I tell him it’s Middle Creek, the town where we’re headed, then I tell him my story, the same as I had told the Major. Harry listens patiently and doesn’t interrupt till I’m done.
‘What you going to do with the preacher when you get there?’ he asks me.
‘I don’t know. Why?’
Harry shrugs. ‘He must have known what was going on.’
I haven’t thought about that for a long time. Even if it was God’s plan for me to go to the plantation, it was Father Mosely who was selling us boys into slavery, and I wasn’t the only one. All the things he’d said about us boys – how we should never be second best to anyone, how we ought to take pride in ourselves and what we might achieve – and all that time he was selling us off on the quiet. Perhaps it wasn’t even Joshua who laid the turd on the altar of God. Perhaps it was Father Mosely himself.
The thought unnerves me. What’ll I say to him? And how will he react to seeing me? It sends a shiver right through me just to think of it and I hug my blanket closer, trying to think of Joshua instead, trying to fill my head with his face, till there’s no room in there for anyone else.
I can’t imagine how my brother might have changed to look at, cos it’s been two long years since I saw him. He always had a line of straight white teeth and he’s got dimples that appear out of nowhere when he smiles. Yes, I remember that. I guess he’ll be taller than he used to be.
I wonder how he’ll see me too – wonder whether he’ll mind having a brother with a face like mine.
*
In the morning we eat some bread and a thin slice of cheese, which Harry unwraps from a bit of brown paper.
Once we’re packed and ready to go he produces two pistols from his saddlebag and hands one of ’em to me. ‘The Major said for you to have this. Do you know how to use it?’
I turn the gun in my hand, feeling the weight of it. ‘I ain’t sure I want a gun.’
Harry shrugs. ‘You can always sell it.’
He decides I need to practise and stands a row of stones along the top of a boulder, then shows me how to load the gun, and we take turns at shooting, though I miss every time. ‘Don’t go picking any arguments with a shot like that,’ Harry warns me. ‘And hide that gun in your saddle bag. Folk don’t like to see a black boy carrying arms, even if we are at war.’
It’s getting late in the day by the time we reach Middle Creek. ‘Is this it?’ Harry looks disappointed. ‘It ain’t a lot, is it?’
That makes me smile cos the place has changed so much I can hardly believe my eyes. I catch sight of a large camp of tents spreading out from the south side of the High Street, and as we ride into town it’s busier than I’ve ever seen it or could imagine it might be, full of the kinds of people I’ve never seen here before, like soldiers, and young women in pretty dresses, and traders who’ve set up stalls at the side of the road to sell food to the people from the camp. The muffled sound of a piano comes from a bar that we pass as a group of men spill out onto the street, holding bottles in their hands, all whooping and hollering. I laugh at Harry for thinking this is quiet. ‘You should have seen it before,’ I tell him. ‘There ain’t never been anything exciting happen in Middle Creek till the war got here.’
The orphanage is another half a mile out the other side of town and we turn into the side street that leads towards it and quicken our pace. Harry lets me go ahead. ‘You better lead the way if you know where you’re going.’
We ride past the Bakers�
� house and go on towards the orphanage. At Turner’s Wood we come out of a bend and I can see the old schoolhouse. It looks just the same as it always did, but then, as we get closer, I notice soldiers on the gates and it’s obvious this isn’t an orphanage any longer.
I get a spooked feeling as we get off our horses. Looking through the gate, I see that soldiers are billeted here and the boys must all be gone. That means Joshua too and I think ’bout how I ain’t been praying or doing the good things I did to keep him safe.
‘Come on,’ says Harry, once the guard lets us through the gate. A soldier takes us to Father Mosely’s old office. He knocks on the door, as I have done so many times before and we wait. The commanding officer doesn’t even stand when we enter and he looks me up and down with disdain once he’s read the Major’s letter. ‘So you’re looking for your brother? It’s hardly a military matter, is it?’
‘His name’s Joshua, sir. We used to live in this house, about fifteen of us boys, together with the Father and Sister Miriam. I don’t suppose you know where they went?’
The officer scratches his chin. ‘The priest who ran the orphanage has a mission in town. Far as I know he still keeps some boys. He holds a service most evenings in a tent out the back of the hospital block. That’d be your best place to start.’ He looks at Harry. ‘This letter says you’re to stay here under my command, so I’ll have someone show you where to report.’
‘But, sir, I understood I’d be reporting back to the Major. They’re making a push for the town and I ought to be there.’
The officer hands the letter to Harry so he can see for himself. ‘The Major a relative of yours, is he?’
‘No, sir. He’s not.’
The officer shrugs. ‘Well, he seems to like you. You’re stuck here now, and I suspect you won’t find much to do other than make sure the drunks get home safely. I don’t like it any more than you do, but there’s nothing either of us can do about it.’
‘I could curse that old man for this,’ Harry says once we’re back at the gate.
I shake his hand. ‘Good luck,’ I tell him. ‘Give my regards to New York when you get home.’
He wishes me luck too and then stands at the gate, watching as I walk back into town.
*
By the time I get back to Middle Creek it’s already night, and there are campfires glowing in the dark. I slip away from the road, passing through the first line of white tents where a group of soldiers are playing cards around a makeshift table, each with a pile of coins stacked at his right hand. Someone, somewhere, plays a sad song on a harmonica. Ahead of me, a man sits alone at the doorway of his tent. ‘I’m looking for the mission,’ I tell him. ‘I’m after a priest by the name of Father Mosely.’
He looks me up and down. ‘You got a need to confess?’
‘I suppose so … Who don’t?’
He laughs at me – I don’t know why – but he leans forward and points away to the left. ‘The tent’s that way, ’bout another couple a hundred yards or so. You’ll hear ’em before you see ’em. That’s normally how it is.’
I walk quickly through the lines of tents, listening for the sound of singing and then I hear it hanging in the air, mingled in with the noise of the busy camp. I listen closely, turning my head to find the direction and recognize the words to “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?”, a song I know from my time at the orphanage. I hurry in its direction and when I stop again it’s loud enough that I can hear a tambourine keeping the beat and I spot the tent, another fifty yards away, but taller than the others and brightly lit inside by lamps. There are silhouettes of standing men flung up against the canvas, all of ’em clapping their hands like we used to in class.
Sure I must fight if I would reign.
Increase my courage, Lord.
I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain.
I hurry towards it, excited at the thought that Joshua might be inside. I arrive at the back of the tent as the singing stops, but there ain’t no way to get in. Then suddenly Father Mosely speaks. His voice is only a few feet the other side of the canvas, asking ’em all to be seated. ‘I want to talk to you about sacrifice,’ he tells ’em. ‘I want to talk to you about the reason for loss, and the sacrifice you make to give us a better life for those we love.’
His voice puts the fear of God in me. It takes the breath from my lungs, dropping me to my knees like a little boy about to get a hiding, and I crouch on the ground, breathing fast, unable to even think straight. There’s nothing I can do but wait till my heart climbs back inside my chest where it’s supposed to be.
Father Mosely begins with his sermonizing and I hear him shout and I hear him whisper gently. He can only be a few feet from me but it’s not the distance that matters. He could be the other side of the world and I’d still hear him, cos I got his voice inside my head, teaching me right from wrong and tormenting me like he always did.
One moment he’s being kind as a father and the next he’s angry, full of the wrath of God, hurling fire from the skies onto some poor soul inside that tent, the same as he’d done countless times to all us boys – one day telling us we were no good, and the next that we were little lambs and blessed of the Lord himself.
One of the congregation interrupts him. The man says, ‘Listen to me, Father, for I am a lucky soul! I tell you I am. I know you all must be looking at me, wondering what reason I got to call myself so fortunate. But it’s true. I’m the luckiest man alive.’
‘Tell us why, my friend,’ Father Mosely says softly. ‘Tell us why that is.’
I struggle back to my feet. It doesn’t matter if I’m scared or not. I got to see if Joshua’s inside the tent. So I edge around the outside, ducking under guy ropes and hoping to find a place where I can see inside.
The man who interrupted is still talking in a loud voice. ‘The shell that did this to me killed six other men who were standing either side of me. But the Lord smiled on me that day, I’m telling you all, because if those pieces of shell had gone six inches to the left or right of me, I’d have met my maker. Sure as hell, I would, Father. I’d be a dead man now.’
I reach the entrance and put a hand to the canvas flap, pulling it aside and putting my head inside. Father Mosely’s there at the opposite end of the tent. Between us are the congregation and they must be mostly from the hospital cos all of ’em look bandaged, bruised or broken.
But I can’t see Joshua. I don’t see any of the boys at all.
‘Tell us why He saved you, Frank!’ Father Mosely shouts out, pointing at the man the way he once pointed at me. ‘You were a sinner, Frank, and the good Lord struck you down,’ he tells him. ‘But He will lift you up again. I know He will.’
The man he speaks to has no arms. I can see the sleeves of his shirt tied up in knots where his elbows should be. ‘The way I see it, Father, the good Lord’s given me another chance to make things right, and I’ll make amends for everything I done that was bad. I surely will.’
I duck back outside the tent, anxious that I shouldn’t be seen. But I got to go inside. Joshua ain’t here and Father Mosely is the only way I got to find him. I tell myself I shouldn’t be scared of him. After all, he’s only a man and I got the better of him once before, when I got up on that desk to save my brother. I weren’t afraid of him then.
But that was when God loved me. That was when I thought God was fair, when I thought he’d protect me. Only He didn’t. And now I know he’s the kind of God who saves a man’s life but takes away his arms and that ain’t being fair. Just the same as taking away my eye weren’t fair. Just the same as shitting on a table and trying to blame my brother for it. No. That weren’t fair either.
‘Repent,’ Father Mosely bellows at the gathered men. ‘Repent of your sins before the Lord and you will be saved.’
I walk inside the tent and march down the centre aisle that runs between the chairs and the men all turn to look at me as I come through the middle of ’em.
Father Mosely stands at the altar, a cle
an white tablecloth and the golden cross of God upon it. He don’t even recognize me at first, and I’m only ten feet from him when the penny drops – I can see it spread across his face – and I know he must be filled with the same dread I felt when he stopped in front of my brother’s desk.
His voice falters to a stop. He coughs then wipes the palms of both hands upon his robes. And then he walks around the table and taking hold of my shoulders, turns me round to face his congregation. ‘This is what makes this awful war worth it,’ he says softly. ‘We’re fighting for freedom, gentlemen. We’re fighting for freedom and the dignity of boys such as this one here.’
There’s a tear in the corner of his eye but he bows his head before it falls and every head bows with him. I bow mine too. I don’t know why.
‘May the love of Christ be with you always, wherever you may go. This is the end of our service, gentlemen. We shall meet again in two days’ time.’
I’m still staring at my new boots as the men stand up and leave the room. One of the congregation comes across to us. ‘Father, may I have a quick word?’ But Mosely waves him away. ‘Come and see me in the morning.’
He keeps his hand on my shoulder and I don’t try to move it. When the tent has emptied he takes me to one side and offers me a seat. ‘Come on, Samuel. Come and sit down.’
I slump down on the chair, immediately hating myself for doing what he told me.
‘You poor child. What on earth has happened to you?’
He tries to touch my face, but I pull away. ‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me!’
He hesitates. ‘I was thinking about you only yesterday … Gloucester was here … Now, Samuel, listen …’
‘You gotta call me Friday,’ I tell him. ‘That’s my slave name.’
