Buffalo Soldier

  A warrior rides up alongside us and I still got that knife in my hand but he’s on my left side, and with Reuben’s arms round my middle and Abe’s neck stretched out and bobbing up and down with each step I couldn’t see how to get to that Indian without hurting Abe or Reuben or both. The fella’s got his tomahawk raised, and it’s aimed at the side of Reuben’s head and there ain’t no way I can do nothing about it and neither can Reuben because he’s hanging onto me and he can’t get to his sabre and even if he could I’m in the way. The fella brings down that weapon. But right then Abe stumbles, and that tomahawk slices through empty air instead of Reuben’s head. We go down in a great rolling mess of tangled arms and legs and hooves. We was moving so fast we just kept going, head over heels across the grass, and I couldn’t see nothing but a blur of sky, grass, horse, but I could feel a whole barrelful of pain, and something cracked in my arm – my right arm – so there wasn’t no way of defending myself. Or so I thought. But it’s amazing what a body will do when it’s trying to stay alive. Before I know it I got that knife in my left hand and when that Indian comes at me I’m using it with a skill I had no idea I possessed.

  Of course then it ain’t just the one warrior we got to worry about. Soon as I got him killed a whole bunch of them descended on us like vultures. Reuben’s using his rifle like a club, cracking skulls every which way. Elijah’s riding into the distance, and I get a glimpse of him, looking over his shoulder, and I’m thinking, Keep on going, Elijah. Don’t turn. Elijah don’t catch the thought – he wheels round in a great big circle and rides back for us. He don’t get as far as me and Reuben. He’s lost in a storm of savages.

  It’s all noise and sweat and blood and rage and fear, and you can’t see nothing excepting the man you’re fighting.

  But the thing about the prairie is that if you can see something – like a fort – you can be pretty darn sure it can see you too. The sight of a bunch of troopers galloping across the plain with three hundred whooping Indians in pursuit was enough to make every soldier in that place spring into action. In two minutes they rolled the cannons out. They aimed them wide. One ball crashed to the side of us, throwing grass and dirt high in the air. Another landed maybe fifty yards to the other side.

  Them Indians didn’t sound no retreat. Wasn’t even no order given, far as I could tell. But them cannon blasts was enough to break up the attack. They ride away and we’re left to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get ourselves back to the fort.

  We made a sorry picture. Me and Reuben was back up on Abe. Elijah was sunk forward over his horse’s neck and his blood was running down, staining its mane scarlet but thank the Lord!, he’d survived.

  We didn’t look none too pretty. But we was alive. It was a whole lot more than could be said for Henry.

  A couple of days later Captain Smith said how he’d been talking to one of the scouts. The word was that them warriors had give us a name: Buffalo Soldiers. The Captain said it was on account of how we fought like cornered beasts and how the buffalo was a sacred animal and it was something of an honour, something we should be proud of. It meant them Indians was giving us some respect.

  The General said different. He figured it was on account of our nigger hair being just like hair on the hide of a buffalo. He must have thought it was a mighty fine joke because he kept on and on repeating it.

  And maybe the General was right. When a patrol brought Henry’s body in he been scalped. So them warriors knew exactly what our hair was like.

  Well, we got ourselves patched up, leastways on the outside. Inside I had a wound just wouldn’t heal. While my arm was mending there wasn’t nothing for me to do but sit brooding. I didn’t have no doubts now about being able to fight. I promised Henry I was gonna pay them Indians back for what they done to him, even if I had to kill every last one of them with my own bare hands.

  I kept dreaming about Henry. Night-times, he was sitting there on the end of my bed, that big smile across his face. Sitting there, his skull showing, red blood and white bone. He’s holding his hair in both hands, twisting and turning his scalp like it’s his cap. He’s asking, “What was you saying to me, Charley? I didn’t hear you. Charley?”

  I got me such a lump in my throat I can’t speak so he gets to pleading.

  “I’m brave, ain’t I? Ain’t I, Charley? Did I fight good? I didn’t run away, did I? Why won’t you say nothing, Charley? You mad at me? Didn’t I fight good?”

  Now I know I didn’t see it happen, but in my mind I saw that Indian taking the knife to Henry’s head over and over again. Waking and sleeping, I just couldn’t shift it. I heard the noise of it too, clear as clear: his skin coming off the bone. Was the sound of Cookie peeling a possum for the pot. And somehow all that gets mixed up with Jonas and them men, and I dream I’m down there in that yam cellar with Henry asking, “What you doing down there, Charley? You’re a soldier, ain’t you? You can’t hide.” But I don’t move. I’m curling into a tighter ball and I’m sticking my fingers in my ears, pressing them in so hard it hurts like hell, but no matter how hard I do it I can’t block out the sound of Jonas laughing.

  18.

  The girl I’d been was killed the moment Henry took that tomahawk in the head. “Charlotte” was as stone-cold dead as he was. I wasn’t acting like a man no more: in my heart I’d become one. I was a soldier, right through to the core.

  Something happened to the men of Company W after we seen our first piece of action. When you’re fighting side by side like that, when you’re all staring Death in the face, when you’re up so close you can smell his breath and count his nose hairs, it has an effect. We wasn’t like dust settling after a storm no more: we was packed together, tight as salt pork in a barrel. We didn’t go talking about it none: there wasn’t no great declarations of love nor loyalty. But we was tied together all the same, closer than if we been family. And me and Reuben – who been clinging to Abe like ticks on a dog – felt closest of all. We was blood brothers.

  Captain Smith told us he was real proud of how we conducted ourselves, but our great courage in the face of the enemy didn’t impress General Sullivan none. I had a feeling that the better we got, the less that man was gonna like it. As for them whitey troopers: they was still hell-bent on making fools of us any chance they got.

  Oh, they didn’t think they was being mean. They were just funning. What was wrong with us? Couldn’t we take a joke? Didn’t we have no sense of humour?

  Didn’t a day go by without a heap of “joshing” and “funning” and “playing tricks.” I can’t even recall the number of “practical jokes” what come our way. There was sometimes so much hilarity we damned nearly died laughing.

  The bone in my arm been cracked but not broke clean in two. The post doctor bound it up and it was healing well enough. I was itching to pay them Indians back for what they done to Henry but a couple of weeks after he been killed they packed up their tepees and went off. According to the Captain, they was chasing after buffalo and for now at any rate they was the responsibility of some other company in some other fort.

  Things was quiet so the General decides to have himself a day’s fishing with some of his fellow officers. But he ain’t content for them to entertain themselves. No, he wants to take me along too.

  I was minding my own business, giving Abe a rub-down with my one good hand, when the General shows up. He takes a long hard look at the two of us. I’m praying to God that he’ll just walk on by, but he points at me and says, “Hey, you. Private! Saddle your mule and come along with us.”

  Now I didn’t much mind what he called me but I took offence to him calling Abe a mule. When a horse carries you fast and sure the way Abe carried me and Reuben you get kinda fond of it. But it didn’t take a whole lot of looking to see that the white troopers’ animals was a whole lot better than the ones belonging to Company W. Their horses’ necks arched and they looked down their noses kinda proud but Abe’s neck was bent the other way. Looked like it been stuck on upside do
wn. His hips poked out like a cow’s and his back sagged in the middle. Didn’t matter none to me how he looked. I liked him and that was that.

  But General Sullivan was my superior officer. I couldn’t make no objection to him calling Abe names. When you’re in the army you does what you’re told, no talking back. Thirteen dollars a month: unquestioning obedience. That’s the deal. Ain’t no getting out of it.

  So I saddle up Abe. My arm’s still busted too bad to fight, but I can ride all right. Once we’re ready the General give me a keg of bait which he says I gotta balance on the front of the saddle. He don’t meet my eyes, not once. That thing stinks, seeing as how it’s full of minnows that have been dead for a deal of time, but that’s part of the good, honest sport them men got planned.

  We ride all the way to a bend in the river where the water pools deep under the roots of an overhanging tree, which is about four miles, and we can’t go fast on account of my busted arm, so by the time we get there I’m feeling kinda sick.

  The rest of the day them men ignored me while they done their fishing. I was less than a rock or a tree stump. Was like being back at the plantation. I’d become invisible to the naked eye.

  I ain’t got nothing to do so I just sit there watching them string minnows on a line, drag them slow and steady across the pool. All day. By the time the sun was getting low they’d pulled fish after fish out of that river and used up all them minnows. They’d caught a whole heap – way too many to fetch home in the keg.

  So here’s what them officers do. They cram all the white fishes in the keg and load that on me and Abe as before. These being freshly caught they don’t stink so bad, which is something of a relief. Then they tie the catfishes together on two long strings and they fix them to the rings on the back of Abe’s saddle.

  Well, I’d have figured out what was gonna happen next even if the General hadn’t been so near pissing himself with laughing he could barely tie them knots. When I seen the prongs on them catfishes I resigned myself to the explosion that was sure to follow.

  “Time to head back to the fort,” says General Sullivan, slapping Abe on the rump. “Lead the way, trooper.”

  As soon as Abe move off them catfish start banging against his flanks.

  Now Abe and me had come to an understanding. We had a bargain: if he does what I ask him, I don’t use no spurs. Was what you might call a gentleman’s agreement. Soon as Abe feels them prongs sticking in his sides he gives a snort and I swear it’s more disappointment than pain – he thinks I done break my promise. What’s worse, the pricking don’t stop when he speeds up. He’s walking, then trotting, and the faster he goes the more them fish bang against him. Soon he’s squealing like he’s being poked by a dozen arrows and kicking out like he’s plagued by every devil in hell. He’s bucking – Lord above, there was so much movement everything was a blur. I drop the keg, but not before all them fish come flying out. They soar into the air with the force of Abe’s bucking and come down slap! slap! slapping! on my head.

  Now Abe figures that the bucking didn’t work, and he’s still got them things banging into his hide so it ain’t entirely surprising the next thing he does is try to run away. We’re off, galloping between them trees, and for such a funny-looking animal Abe sure has one hell of a turn of speed. All I can do is let him run until them strings break and the catfish go thudding into the dirt. Soon as that happens he slows and then stops dead and by now I know him well enough to predict that the next thing he’ll do is stick his head down and eat, so I don’t slide down his neck like I done that first day.

  But I do dismount, and he looks at me and rolls his eyes and snorts – suspicious, like.

  “Wasn’t my idea,” I tell him quietly. And he flicks his ear, so I know he’s listening. “They was messing with both of us.” Then I give him a bit of hard tack from my pocket and he takes it so I know I’m forgiven.

  I break a branch off of a tree. I gather up them catfish and loop them strings on each end. Abe skitters sideways and looks at them real nasty, like he’s figured out what was hurting him. But he lets me get back on up and with that branch across my legs the fish is dangling a long way from his sides so he don’t get no prongs sticking in him. And then we got to go back and find them fellas who was all darn near paralysed with the hilarity of the situation.

  Well, me and Abe got back to the fort without further mishap, but I had to endure a whole cartload of humiliation as the story of me and my “crazy bucking bronco” got told to them who hadn’t seen what happened. Jonas would have loved it. I could almost hear that laugh of his, mixed up with all them others.

  Captain Smith wasn’t none too happy but he couldn’t say nothing. General Sullivan was his superior officer too.

  19.

  I done a good deal of sitting around while my arm was healing. Guess it was that idle spell helped fill me out some. That, and the fact that I been getting three meals a day while I been in the army, which was more than I’d ever been fed in my entire life. I was still on the flat-chested side – wouldn’t no one ever call me well endowed – but them things weren’t the itty-bitty bumps they’d been before. One night I took one of my shirts into Abe’s stall, cut it into strips with my knife. Wound them around my chest tight, like a bandage. I’d have to pay for the loss of the shirt, but a few cents out of my wages was nothing compared to the danger of getting caught out.

  I was back on active duty around about the same time that them Indians start moving onto our patch of prairie again. Soon enough word come in that a wagon train was under attack.

  Well, them Chinamen been defenceless enough. But attacking a wagon train? According to Captain Smith, there was decent, ordinary, God-fearing folks on them things, heading way out west into the wilderness to make something out of nothing. They was doing their damnedest to get by the only way they could. There would be babies. Little children. The notion of them being scared out of their minds bring that scarlet veil down again. I was itching to give them Indians a taste of their own medicine.

  The General give the orders and the whole of Company W ride out in fours. Me, Reuben, Elijah and a man by the name of Thomas Walker – who took Henry’s place. He been slave to a painter back in the old days and was something of an artist himself. Isaiah and George was somewhere behind us.

  We ain’t exactly sure where the wagon train is so the General tells the Captain to take thirty of us riding on ahead of the rest of the column so we can scout out the land. And that’s when I learned a real important lesson: never go riding into no ravine when there might be Indians in the vicinity.

  Them prairies was deceiving. When you was in the fort, looking out across that land, it seemed flat as the linen cloth laid on the master’s dining table. But when you was in it – when you was moving out across it – it was more like riding on the ocean. There was dips and crests, and sometimes you’d go down into one and be lost from sight.

  The thirty of us was heading down along one of them dips when we find the land starting to rise up on either side of us like two great waves. It put me in mind of Cookie’s story about the Red Sea being parted by the hand of God. But I don’t know if the thirty of us are Moses and the Israelites, or if we’re them Egyptians, about to get drowned.

  It’s getting real tight and narrow. We can’t ride in fours no more, so go down to threes. Then pairs. Me and Reuben are riding along, our knees rubbing together.

  When I look up the sun’s in my eyes so I can’t see nothing. But I can hear. Something slips. A foot, maybe. And it ain’t wearing no army boot. A little shower of dust come whirling through the air.

  And then all hell breaks loose.

  We was trapped like rats in a barrel. Arrows and bullets are raining down. It’s a stinking bloody mess. In about five minutes flat nearly half the men and most all the horses is dead.

  But not Abe. And not me. We’re fine. We’re wedged under an overhang and can’t nothing touch us.

  The rest of Company W hear the noise of fighting an
d start charging towards the ravine to save us. Which is when all them other Indians – who been hidden by a fold in the land – come riding over the crest behind them. Looking down the ravine, I can just catch a glimpse of what’s happening. There’s this big, barrel-chested red man leading them. Not red in the way the white folks said the Indians was. I mean really red. Painted red. Scarlet. All over. Like he dipped himself in a barrel of blood. He’s blowing this brass horn and that sound is more fearsome than even their war cries. It’s like the Devil himself has come to snatch our souls.

  Now there ain’t nothing much I can do. Abe’s pressing himself so hard against that rock he’s crushing my leg but I ain’t aware of it at the time. I can’t fire at no one from here, but they can’t get me neither. About two yards away I see Reuben have his horse shot out from under him – the second animal he’s lost in less than three months – but he ain’t wounded himself. He’s using his horse to hide behind, taking shots when he can. Ain’t none of us saying nothing. We all concentrating too hard on staying alive. But inside we’re all praying our hearts out.

  I see Red Barrel Chest riding backwards and forwards trying to break through the cavalry lines. But Company W is fighting real good and he ain’t having a great deal of success. By the time the sun start going down we’re all still holding out against him.

  When the light begin to fade my courage fades right along with it. Fear takes me in its hands and starts to squeeze me tight. I’m dreading what’s going to happen when it’s dark. The notion of one of them Indians coming slithering on his belly like a snake, knife in his hand ready to slit my throat, ready to cut my fingers off, scalp me, is enough to make me want to empty out my guts.