by Clay Fisher
Indeed, the only testimony was from his cadet roommate, the young Alabamian, Jefferson Flowers III. Said Flowers: “I could not imagine where Bob was, and still stoutly maintain he could not be guilty of this heinous crime against a white woman. Yet circumstances compel me to confess that he was not in our quarters during that time when I pray to Almighty God that he had been.”
The precise opposite, I testified, had been the case. I had been in the room; Flowers had not. My charge was never followed up.
The prospect was unthinkable, in any case, as the victim had been Flower’s own betrothed. This one “fact” exonerated the white cadet, of course.
As for the black cadet, almost-lieutenant of the army, R. E. L. Flicker, I could thank a generous Lord that I had been appointed by General Lee. By virtue of this condition, I was offered a sergeant’s rank, permanent enlistment, and my academy records were sealed. The public would be told the course had proved beyond my capacities, providing I agreed to the lie. As any other action by me would have involved General Lee and my father, I accepted the lie and have lived with it.
The army promptly sent me far.
I arrived at this post (Fort Bliss) early in 1868 and was further isolated by special assignment.
Owing to a command of languages, I was made a scout of cavalry. These troops were engaged in illegal forays into Mexico in pursuit of raiding Apache parties and in gathering intelligence against further hostile incursions of US territory. My Spanish was most useful. Many of the Indians spoke it, and I acquired their difficult tongue through this ability to communicate with them. I have since been reasonably content in my duty and have recently become even happy in my personal life here.
I met and fell in love with Miss Luana Thompson, daughter of Albert Thompson, who is the post sutler. But my color caught up to me once again. Luana was ordered by her father to stop seeing me. I heard Thompson quoted as saying he would be damned if his girl was going to marry a black “nigger” horse soldier. We both were heartsick, and we refused to obey Thompson. A new happiness as well as problem had come to us: We had learned Luana was to have our baby. But fate was stalking me yet. The very officer of my past sorrows was transferred here at his own request five days ago. Yes sir, he had found me; it was Lieut. Jefferson Flowers, my old roommate at West Point.
Flowers, first hating me for the lie he had fabricated to ruin my career, hated me still.
He began deliberately to court Luana Thompson. She is a young girl and defenseless. He is a Southern dandy. I understand her being flattered, swept along. I could even accept her seeing Flowers. But yesterday, when her father announced her engagement to Lieutenant Flowers, dismay invaded me. I pleaded with Luana to meet me in our trysting place at the river. She finally did so last night in the early evening. She asked me to forgive her and said that she wanted everything between us to be as it had been before. I said this would be so, and we embraced. I can still hear her soft weeping …
At this point, reporter Stokes tells of emotion overcoming the black cavalryman, and of Flicker then continuing “only through a soldier’s stern discipline.”
As you now know, from the discovery of the body, there is evidence of forcible rape. Yes, I expect to be put in arrest and charged with the crime. You understand that I am already confined to quarters here and am fearful of what will follow now.
Yes, I have been told a board of officers will sit at 10:00 a.m.
Yes sir, I will be given the opportunity to appear and be heard, they say.
But you know what they are already really saying: “The girl was found where she and the nigger soldier have been meeting right along.”
You also know what a Fort Bliss board of hearing will make of that.
I thank you for taking my story and I hope it may serve to one day let the people know who told the truth of this tragedy.
No sir, I do not know what I shall do.
Escape, sir?
How might that be? The night is gone. It is nearing 5:00 a.m. The day is growing and there are troops everywhere out there.
No sir, I do not hate these people. But this is Texas and I am a black man. What verdict would you expect in my place? You nod, yes, you know what I say. Thank you for that. At least, you do not lie.
Will you say then, also, that you do not believe that Sergeant Flicker lied?
This ends Stokes’ piece for the Outpost, but there is a footnote to it. It is contained in the closing sentences of Flicker’s unpublished Memoirs of a Black Apache, and it provides the only known account of the Negro trooper’s actions following his predawn interview with reporter Stokes:
When Stokes had been gone some minutes, an elderly Apache janitorial worker at the post arrived for that day’s duty. He had heard a story that morning, he said, coming over the bridge from Ciudad Juárez, where he lived. The army was already building a scaffold on the east parade quadrangle. He did not know if the story were true, but I went immediately to a window and listened to the east wind; I clearly heard hammers and sawing.
I thanked the old Apache and went out the unguarded high rear window of the noncommissioned officers’ barracks. It was about five-fifteen. The weather was misting and gray. I was able to reach the river and get into the brush. Making upstream for an hour, I crossed into Mexico. There, I stole a horse and rode the entire day, south by south.
With that nightfall, and the failure of my brave mount, I was seventy miles inside Mexico. Still, I knew I was not safe. Stealing a second horse and guiding on the stars as the Apache had taught me, I rode that night through.
Just before dawn, I stole yet a third horse.
Now using landmarks I had memorized in my own scouting, with the United States Cavalry, of the Apache in Chihuahua, I reached Casas Grandes without incident. There, I had been given the names of certain mestizos del campo, poor half-breeds of the countryside, by the old Apache janitor at Fort Bliss. With the help of these faithful ones I was enabled to find the wild band of Nednhi Chiricahua under Chief Juh. The Nednhi accepted me, their past enemy, as a brother. For the next ten years I dwelled with them in Juh’s Stronghold, in the deepest reaches of Sierra Madre del Norte.
I went to Texas but one time after that, but I did not stay. My white wife and I agreed. Our wild brothers were our true brothers.
They still are.
