Buffalo Soldier

  Days, weeks, months, went by. It was the same thing, over and over. Seemed we was going round and round in circles. Fighting. Losing men. Having new recruits come from out east to replace them. Trying to train them up, but losing them even quicker than the old soldiers because they was so raw didn’t none of them know what they was doing. Fighting, killing. Fighting, killing. Fighting, killing. Didn’t seem there would ever be an end.

  The generals was discussing tactics and strategy but down on the ground it didn’t feel like there was nothing orderly nor organized going on. A piece on a chequerboard don’t know why it’s being pushed from square to square and neither did we. They was zigzagging us back and forward, driving them Indians so hard they couldn’t hunt or rest or eat or sleep; driving them head first into a noose.

  And in the middle of all that mess of blood and stink and pain there was me and Elijah and Isaiah, clinging together like drowning men. None of us was proud of what we was doing. But we didn’t make the rules. When you’re in a situation like the one we was in you just do what you’re told, keep your head down. And when you get ordered to ride into an Indian camp and destroy everything you find there, you ride right on in, you torch them tepees and even shoot the horses, and you shut your mind right off because there ain’t no point in thinking. Thinking keeps you awake. Thinking gives you bad dreams. Thinking just about kills you.

  It was killing me.

  I kept telling myself that we wasn’t doing what General Michaels and his men done to Bent Back and his people. He’d lied to that man: I’d heard him. Said he wouldn’t be attacked, then gone right ahead and done it. What we was doing wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same at all. We was just trying to bring them Indians back in onto the reservation so they could live peaceable. If they chose to die out there in the wilderness that was up to them. It was their choice. Their decision. I told myself that so often I almost come close to believing it.

  It went on and on. One year? Two? Ten? I plain don’t know. Felt like a hundred. I didn’t care enough to keep count.

  Then come a summer when the weather was mighty strange. Seemed like Judgement Day had arrived. We had heat so bad you felt like you was gonna shrivel up. It was a hundred degrees and we was buttoned up in them wool jackets the whole time because there ain’t no flexibility in the army when it come to rules and regulations, leastways not for the likes of us.

  Finding water was a real big problem and sometimes we had to dig for it and scrape it out of the ground with our tin cups, and sometimes we was days without it, which can make you feel like you’re going crazy, and it can make you feel like you want to kill someone for just cracking his knuckles and you’d do it too if only it weren’t so darned hot that you ain’t got the strength to lift your rifle and pull the trigger. And our mouths was dry and our tongues was swollen so you couldn’t eat nothing because you couldn’t swallow it, not even eat the sugar that was in our packs because sugar won’t melt if you ain’t got no saliva.

  The sun was burning, and the wind was hotter than Satan’s breath. Sometimes the land was flatter than the master’s dining table and when the land’s that featureless you can’t tell distance because there’s nothing to judge it by. Ain’t no trees, no bushes, ain’t nothing but sand and grass and a horizon, which never comes no closer. You can ride for hour after hour and you don’t seem to get nowhere, so pretty soon it’s like being in a real bad dream where you’re riding, endlessly riding, and never getting nowhere and you don’t know whether you’re awake or asleep or alive or dead.

  In the middle of that heat a swarm of grasshoppers come flying down and strip the whole prairie clean. Wasn’t nothing left. Not a single blade of grass. A train got itself derailed when it run into a three-foot drift of them and about twenty folks was killed. It was like we was living through them Egyptian plagues and I got to thinking about Moses and the Promised Land again and wherever that place of flowing milk and honey was, it sure as hell wasn’t in America.

  Next, a freezing wind come down from the north, whipping up the dust, turning the prairie from brutal heat to brutal cold in a matter of minutes. Rain followed, drops so cold they froze soon as they landed, covering everything in a sheet of ice – horses, saddles, troopers.

  Then we got floods when every stream and river busted its banks and the whole of the plains was awash with mud and we didn’t have no ark to come and save us. Ain’t pleasant making camp in them conditions. Ain’t pleasant fighting in them neither, but we done plenty of both.

  After the fall floods come the winter snow, and I already said how that could be.

  But if it was bad for us, it was worse for them Indians. We hounded them so hard that in the end they just couldn’t keep on running. When they finally give up – starved, broke and beat – it was one hell of a goddamned almighty relief.

  The relief didn’t last long.

  As soon as the last of them prairie Indians come trailing in we get sent out. Company W was moved again, way out west, further from civilization than we ever been.

  This time we was supposed to be rounding up Apaches.

  I didn’t know nothing about them. None of us did. They was just Indians, as far as we was concerned. Cheyenne, Sioux, Kiowa, Comanche: didn’t matter none what tribe they was – Indians was Indians, and they was all one big old pain in the ass.

  There I was. Still alive. The good Lord been protecting me all this time and I guess I should have felt grateful. But I didn’t. I was like something mechanical. Had as much heart and soul as a steam engine. Everything human inside of me been shut down. I didn’t feel nothing. I didn’t think about nothing. As for living or dying: I didn’t care what happened either way.

  But soon after we arrived in Apache territory I laid eyes on a man who changed everything. After that, I cared. I cared a lot. He was my saviour. Or he was my downfall, depending on how you look at it. Guess maybe he was both.

  32.

  Company W was sent along into Apache territory with a scout by the name of Bill Hickey. He passed the time along the way telling tales about the enemy. We had a bunch of new recruits along and he was scaring them half out of their minds. If Captain Smith had of been with us he’d have found a way of hushing that man’s mouth.

  But he wasn’t.

  Captain Smith had got himself a promotion. He was being sent back east with his family to set up some kinda new school. He was gonna bring the benefits of education to the Indians. Take their children, cut their hair, put them in white man’s clothes and teach them all to grow up civilized. I don’t know if their parents was willing to part with them. Don’t suppose no one asked.

  Saying goodbye to Captain Smith was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I never thought I’d care so much about a white man. The morning Company W moved on out west he went down the line shaking his soldiers by the hand, wishing us luck, saying he was proud to have served with us, and how there wasn’t no better company in the United States Army. When he stopped in front of me, clapped both hands on my shoulders and said that I’m a truly fine soldier and he’d never known anyone so recklessly courageous in combat, well, he cut me up bad. All I been doing was trying to get myself killed. I didn’t deserve his good opinion.

  It cut me up even worse when Tiberius come to say goodbye. That boy had grown tall as me and his hand was big as mine when we shook, but there was tears in his eyes like he still just a boy inside.

  Truth be told, there was tears in mine too. He looked me in the face and I saw his expression was the same as the first day I’d laid eyes on him. There wasn’t no hate there. Not a trace of it. Wasn’t nothing but open-hearted honesty.

  As we mounted up and rode on out of the fort a question started nagging at me: if Tiberius hadn’t changed when he got bigger, why in the hell had Jonas? It banged against the sides of my head like a fly against a window pane. I couldn’t shake it free. Not until Bill Hickey started talking, and then I had other things to think about.

  Without Captain Smith I felt lik
e a turtle whose shell been ripped off. I was a mess of raw meat, and Bill Hickey was a bird pecking bits off of me. I kept wishing the Captain was there. But he wasn’t. So I had to listen to Bill Hickey’s ramblings. It was like standing in the bottom of a latrine, letting the shit and piss rain down on my head.

  “Now an Apache warrior can’t look you in the eye, man to man. They’re liars, cheats, thieves, every man jack of them. If you ever get talking to one, why then, you’d better not believe a single word he says. Their tongues are more forked than a rattler’s. And when they start a fight, you’d best look sharp. They won’t ever come at you straight.”

  Bill was riding beside me, but he was making damned sure his voice was loud enough to carry on down the column. “Listen to me, boy, and listen good: I’m telling you now they are the slipperiest varmints in all creation. Wily as coyotes. You won’t know they’re there until men start dropping dead all around you. I’ve seen entire columns of troopers wiped out before they had time to fire a single shot. When they’ve finished fighting, why then those braves vanish into thin air – it’s like they can make themselves invisible! They don’t leave a trail, not so much as a footprint.

  “And whatever you do, don’t ever let them catch you alive. If you’re ambushed, if you’re ever in a tight spot my advice is this: save one last bullet for yourself because you’re going to need it, boy. If they get hold of you they’ll give you over to their women first. I say ‘women’. Huh! She-devils is more like it. They’ll peel the nigger hide off of you inch by inch with their flint knives. Then they’ll let their kids have their turn. By the time they’ve finished sticking their spears in your back you’re going to have more spikes than a porcupine. If you’re still alive after that the men will tie you up by your feet. Hang you from a tree, cut off your dick and stick it in your mouth. Then they’ll light a fire under your head and cook you real slow. Yep. I’m telling you, boy, you don’t ever want to get yourself caught by an Apache.”

  Bill had what looked like a strip of beef jerky wound around the pommel on the front of his saddle. He was fingering it while he talked, and when he notice me looking a slow smile start spreading across his face.

  “Of course, I’ve never had a problem with Apaches myself. I showed them who was boss a few years back. A group of them came thieving. Ran off fifty head of cattle from a friend of mine. We got ourselves up a posse and caught them when they got back to their camp. We showed those redskins what a white man can do. Killed the warriors. Had the squaws. Sweet Jesus, that was some party!”

  I don’t know what manner of a trophy he had there on his saddle. I didn’t care to ask. But I knew deep down in my belly that man had done something so ugly to them squaws it made the red veil come down over my eyes.

  It’s men like him made me sign up for the army. Men like him keeping me in this goddamned uniform. Men like him mean there ain’t never been no place else for me to go. Hell and goddammit! Ain’t there nowhere in this whole godforsaken country I can get away from men like him?

  Across my back Mr Cody’s rifle starts purring. My fingers are itching. Wasn’t nothing I’d have liked better than to pull out my gun and use it on Bill Hickey.

  But I can’t. I got to bite my tongue. Hell, I got to do it so hard my mouth fill with blood. I’m spitting drops of scarlet, leaving a long trail of them in the dirt all the time we’re riding west.

  The fort we was posted to was different from them ones on the plains. I guess there wasn’t much timber to be had in these parts. Not much stone neither, from the look of it. The little low buildings was made up of mud bricks set around a hard-baked parade ground. There was dust everywhere, a fine sprinkling of it coating everything. Horses, officers, troopers – whiteys and niggers – it turned us all the same colour.

  If the fort was different, the men inside it was much the same. The General was a man by the name of Howker, but he might just as well of been called Michaels or Sullivan because when it come to how he felt about Company W they was all blood brothers.

  We was on the apprehensive side when we finally come riding in and it wasn’t just on account of Bill Hickey’s bone-chilling tales. We could see with our own eyes the territory was a tough one to be fighting in. We’d come through deserts criss-crossed with gulleys plenty deep enough for hostiles to hide in. There was whole mountain ranges, sitting in the middle of flat plains like islands in the ocean. And there was ravines. Plenty of ravines. A whole world of them.

  But the worst part was not knowing who was gonna replace Captain Smith. That man had always stood between Company W and the General Michaels, and the General Sullivans, and the General Howkers of this world. Without him I guess we all felt kinda fearful of what was gonna be coming our way.

  Well, we didn’t have time to sit around twiddling our thumbs, worrying and waiting for our new Captain to arrive. We was given a man by the name of MacIntyre to tide us over and pretty much as soon as we arrive we get sent back on out. Seemed a band of hostile Apaches been running wild, raiding ranches and thieving cattle, until they gone and got themselves captured. They was being held as prisoners someplace. We got the job of escorting them – along with a whole bunch of peaceable Apaches who been living nice and quiet – to a new reservation.

  Didn’t none of us know one end of the territory from another so we get given scouts to show us the way and Bill Hickey’s one of them. The others are Indians. One’s squatting down in the dirt and he got his back to us until Captain MacIntyre calls him, “Hey you! What’s your name? Jim. Get over here.”

  He stand up. He turn around. And suddenly I’m in a whole heap of trouble.

  He the finest-looking man I ever did see. I stare at him and two seconds later I’m hurting so bad I got to bite my lip to keep from yelling.

  When you’re frozen in the snow there’s a numbness that come after the shivering and it’s a kind of blessing. Before too long it’ll send you right to sleep so you won’t never wake up. The pain only start if you survive, when you get back by the stove and the blood gets flowing.

  I been frozen solid for months. Years. I’d forgot I was a human being, let alone a woman. Seeing that man made a melting warmth spread through me. So now I was in pain and I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. But it seemed I didn’t have no choice.

  My heart was thumping and my head was screaming inside. I was praying. Begging. God Almighty, stop this. Make this stop. Who you messing with? This ain’t funny.

  I mean, Lord above, why? Why that man? Why that particular one? I been surrounded by men for years. Ain’t hardly seen nothing but men. I was adrift in an ocean of men and didn’t none of them affect me in that way, excepting maybe Reuben. Why here? Why now? Why that man? Why him?

  To answer that question I got to look again. And when I look again I just can’t tear my eyes away.

  It wasn’t just that he was fine-looking. Though, sweet Jesus, he was a beautiful sight to behold! But there was a stillness about him. Was like gazing into a deep, deep pool. And all I wanted to do was dive on in.

  I’m sitting there staring at him and as he turns his head his eyes meet mine. And I swear at that moment I feel my soul detach itself from my body and fly right into his.

  How much does a soul weigh? Must be a heavy thing. Because I’m as light as air without it. When Captain MacIntyre give the order to move out I’m floating a good two inches above my saddle. Wasn’t a pleasant feeling. I was like a broke-down paddle steamer. Suddenly I was drifting. Didn’t know where the current would take me. Could be heading onto rocks.

  I was so occupied with what was going on inside me I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t hardly hear neither over the blood pounding in my ears. Captain MacIntyre thought I was just about the most damned fool sergeant he’d ever encountered. He had to give his orders twice, three times over before I followed them. Took me so much effort to keep my eyes from wandering over to that scout I was nigh on useless for anything else. Every step my horse takes it’s beating out that man’s name o
n the ground. Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim.

  We ride all day and according to Captain MacIntyre we’re still about fifteen miles from where we’re headed. So we make camp and I stick right close to Elijah and Isaiah to stop myself walking over to Jim, who’s with them Indian scouts, keeping themselves to themselves a long way away from the rest of us. It ain’t entirely surprising seeing as Bill Hickey has started off on one of his tales.

  As the sun goes down I discover I got me another God Almighty problem. One of them monthlies has started. Soon as I’m able to, I head off to find a bush.

  There was the light from the fire and there was a full moon besides but there ain’t no bushes nearby. I head on out, away from the camp just as a cloud come scudding across making everything ten times darker. I squat down behind a rock to sort myself out hoping there ain’t no rattlers gonna come biting me on the ass. When I’m done I put my hand out to push myself up.

  The rock’s kinda warm. And kinda soft. And then I realize it ain’t no rock. It’s an Indian. The cloud slide off the face of the moon and I see it’s that Indian. Jim. And he’s seen just about all there is to see.

  His eyes are black as pitch in any case. In that light I can’t read nothing in them. He don’t say a word. Neither do I. What is there to say?

  I button up my pants and I walk back to where we’re camped. I wrap myself up in my blanket and lay down looking up at the stars. After a while I shut my eyes. But I don’t sleep a wink all night.