Buffalo Soldier

  New arrivals on the plantation always caused something of a stir. When Miss Louellen come she brung half a dozen house slaves with her that just about turned me and Cookie’s life upside down for weeks. But I didn’t pay much attention to Amos – the smithy was beyond the limits of my world. He was no concern of mine.

  But Cookie sure noticed him. She’s mashing up potatoes when she tells me, “Master got himself a new man.”

  Her voice was softer than I ever heard it. Something stabbed me, twisted in my gut sharper than a knife. “He nice?” I says.

  “Yeah. He nice.” There’s a smile on her face I never seen before. She kinda glowing, like there’s a flame warming her from inside. And right away I feel unsteady, like someone’s pulling the ground out from under me.

  “You gonna jump the broom with him?”

  “Hush your mouth, child!” She flick her apron at my head and go right on with her mashing. But that smile gets bigger. And that night she don’t sleep on her side, her arm across my chest, holding me close, whispering stories about Moses and Jesus and Joseph in my ear. She lie on her back, silent, her head turned away so she can look out at the stars.

  The very next day Cookie finds that the pan she want to cook dinner in is in need of repair. Well, would you look at that? Them handles is close to coming off! They going to need a rivet through, and she know just the man to do it. That pan’s got to be taken to the smithy. And it far too big and serious a job and that pan is way too precious for me to carry over there. She got to do it all by herself.

  She leaves me in the cook-house, peeling and chopping and dicing – whistling my head off the whole time because Miss Louellen is between babies and she up and about and acting mean. And you wouldn’t believe how long it takes Cookie to carry that pan to the smithy. That place got to be far off as Grandma Rideau’s house the time it takes her. Far off as town, even. I almost got the whole meal cooked by the time I hear her coming back across the yard. And she ain’t even carrying the pan! When I ask her what she done with it she say Amos is gonna bring it himself when he’s done mending.

  One, two, three days pass and he don’t show up. It’s like Cookie’s sat on an ant-hill. She can’t keep still. She all fidgety. Restless. Short-tempered and snappish as Miss Louellen.

  When Amos finally come he’s carrying the pan in one hand and a bunch of flowers he’s pulled from the roadside in the other. And he’s wearing a big stupid smile on his face, same as Cookie.

  Cookie’s old! Older than the master even! She got grey in her hair. The skin on her face is wrinkled up like a dried apple. But she giggles like she just a silly girl. Puts them flowers in a jug, handling them so careful, like they more precious than Miss Louellen’s diamonds. She look at Amos. Amos look at me. The next thing I know Cookie’s telling me to go off to the garden and bring her back some carrots for the master’s dinner.

  “I done that already! I pulled a whole bunch of them. They right there on the table. How many more you need?”

  Cookie don’t pay no attention. She just shoos me out the door. “Onions then. And fetch me some peas.”

  Ain’t no vegetables ever been picked by someone in a worse temper than I was then. Why, I already picked plenty for the meal! Miss Louellen was gonna think I was thieving! I was gonna find myself on an auction stand. Didn’t Cookie care about me no more? I was ripping them onions out of the ground, throwing dirt every which way. I was madder than a whole nest of hornets. But I was hurting too. Felt crushed and bruised like them peas I was picking so rough. My chest was tight, like someone had put a belt around and pulled it hard. And that feeling wasn’t going away any time soon.

  Next thing, Cookie finds that every pot and every pan in the entire cook-house is in a parlous state of disrepair. She don’t know how she managed all this time! Why look here! This one’s almost worn through at the bottom. And this one’s bent so its lid don’t fit. This one’s handle needs straightening. They all got to be taken to the smithy to be fixed. One at a time.

  Sunday come. They was special days on the plantation, leastways for the field hands. Six days a week they was worked from sunup to sundown, but on Sundays they got to rest. Me and Cookie didn’t. We was up before the dawn, same as ever, because the master and his family still got to eat. And Mr Delaney was a sociable kind of man. Liked inviting his neighbours. Sometimes there was fifteen, twenty folks sitting down to dinner. This particular Sunday there was twenty-seven. There was a heap of work to do. But Cookie got herself a spring in her step. She’s whistling like she means it.

  By the end of the day, I’m asleep on my feet. When I was tired that bad Cookie used to sling me over her shoulder like a sack of flour, carry me up to the attic and lay me down, curl herself around me like a big old wall, keeping the outside world away, keeping me safe from harm. But tonight she don’t even come up the ladder. When we’re finally done she tells me to go get some sleep. Then she slip off into the night. The only thing that kept me from following was the fear I might run into Jonas Beecher.

  Well, it ain’t too long before Amos goes to the overseer, and the overseer goes to the master and the master is feeling in an accommodating mood – maybe on account of the fact that Miss Louellen has took to her bed again and the place is so peaceful – because he give permission for Amos and Cookie to be wed. There can’t be no noisy celebration with the mistress sick. But they jump the broom. And that night Amos moves into the attic.

  We was all shoulder to shoulder in there night-times before he come, and now we packed so tight you can’t stir us with a stick. But come the morning I find I’m lying on my back with my arms stuck straight out like Jesus on the cross. I ain’t never had so much room to myself. Cookie and Amos had snuck off someplace – to the woods maybe – to have themselves some private time. When she come back to fix the master’s coffee she smiling fit to bust. Cookie ain’t never been so happy. And I ain’t never been so miserable.

  4.

  Well, heck, maybe it didn’t matter if I did get sold! Didn’t no one seem to care whether I was here or not. The day after Cookie and Amos jumped the broom I was banging and clanging pots around in the cook-house, banging and clanging them so loud it sounded like Jonas Beecher had set me another trap. I stormed across the yard to feed the peelings to the hogs, yelling their names, thumping the pail into the trough. Miss Louellen was sick in bed and I was singing my head off when I come back, singing my lungs out. But the master didn’t tell me to git. Mammy didn’t come scooting down to whup me. Cookie didn’t tell me to hush my mouth. No one even noticed. I was so wrapped up in myself it never occurred to me to wonder why. It’s dark by the time I find out.

  We all in the attic but ain’t no one settling down to sleep. Amos is whispering about how the South don’t want to be part of the Union no more; they want to be a country all by themselves – only the North don’t want to let them go. Some gentlemen someplace had taken to shooting at each other. I didn’t hardly listen to him. I didn’t give no thought to what it meant. It was just white folks, a long way away, doing who-cares-what to each other. When Cookie clasp him by the hand and murmur it’s the beginning of a war, that don’t mean nothing to me neither. I ain’t got the faintest notion of what a “war” might be. It didn’t make no difference to nothing, as far as I could see.

  But I was wrong. Because the first thing that happened was that Mr Beecher packed up and left.

  Next day, I’m drawing water when I see a cart piled high up outside the overseer’s house.

  “Hey, Ham! What’s going on?”

  The master’s valet come over and explain it to me.

  Up until now I thought white folks was the same all over. But it seemed there was two kinds: Yankees and Confederates. Mr Beecher was a Yankee. He been born in New York, or Washington or someplace way up north. Mr Delaney was a Confederate. Now the Confederates was rebelling against the Yankees and they’d all started fighting each other, Mr Beecher figured he’d better take himself back home, sign up for the right a
rmy.

  I didn’t understand more than half of what Ham told me. But one thing sure grabbed my attention. “So, they going? Leaving? All three of them?”

  “Yep. Every single one.”

  I been miserable as sin just a moment before. But now my heart’s pounding and a wave of joy come crashing over me. They going! Leaving! All three of them! My heart’s singing it over and over.

  I’m standing there with my mouth wide open watching while Mr Beecher check them trunks is roped down good. When he’s done, he climb up on the box and call to his wife to come join him.

  She all scrunched up, like a dishcloth that been washed out one time too many and never smoothed flat to dry. But when Mr Beecher flick the reins and the horse move on away her shoulders drop and she sits up taller, holds her head higher. She don’t look back, not once. As they go down the drive it’s like seeing a weight being lifted off her. I know precisely how she’s feeling because I’m feeling the same.

  Jonas is sitting at the back, legs dangling down. He’s maybe fifteen years old but he’s crying. Snuffling and crying like a baby. And he’s looking my way.

  I’m thinking, I won. I beat you. You didn’t get me. You’re leaving and I’m still here. I feel like dancing. I can’t help myself. I mouth the words at him, “Got ya!”

  They nearing the bend in the drive. The last thing I see Jonas do is point at me with one hand. He put the other to the side of his neck and clench it into a fist. Then he jerks it up sudden, cocks his head to the side, lets his tongue loll out like he been hanged. It send a shiver right through me. Just like that, my happy mood is gone.

  But can’t nothing change the fact that Jonas has left. My heart is pounding it out, over and over.

  That same night there was a whole heap more whispering in the attic and this time I paid attention. According to Amos, who heard it from Josiah, who heard it from Ham, who heard it from the Rideaus’ Walter outside the post office in town when he been sent to collect the mail, the president of the United States of America – Abraham Lincoln himself – had his heart set against slavery. And most all them fine gentlemen in Washington agreed with him. The whisper was that if the Yankees won the war, we might get ourselves freed.

  Well, that confused the hell out of me right off. Mr Beecher was a Yankee. The notion of him heading north to join an army that might free the folks he been whipping the hides off all these years didn’t make no sense. The notion Jonas might do the same was even crazier! I figured Amos must have heard things wrong.

  But there was this thing: freedom. I didn’t know what it meant. Couldn’t imagine it. But that word tasted sweet as molasses on my tongue. I rolled it around my mouth, pushed it up against my teeth, stowed it away in my cheek like a wad of tobacco. My lips formed the shape and I breathed it out on the warm night air. Freedom. There was something powerful good in the sound of it.

  I made my own picture of what it would be like. Took the notion from the stories Cookie had told me nights before Amos come along, and from the words of songs I’d heard drifting in from the fields on the wind. I figured Freedom was out there, just waiting over the horizon for the right time to show its face. And one day it would arrive in a blaze of dazzling light, trailing clouds of glory and there would be a whole host of angels singing sweet alleluias carrying jugs of lemonade and plates of gingerbread and one of them angels – the one with biggest wings and the brightest halo – would give me a spoon and a whole tin of molasses all to myself. Me and Cookie, we’d sit easy in chairs on the big house porch, rocking slow and steady, watching the sun go down just like the master and Miss Louellen.

  To begin with, the fighting was all happening a long way off. News was spread from mouth to mouth in whispers. There was battles and there was Confederate victories and Yankee defeats. Then there was Yankee victories and Confederate defeats but we all remained the property of Mr Delaney. A whole year went by. Then two. Three. Mr Delaney’s neighbours was losing sons. Brothers. Husbands. Old Grandma Rideau lost every single man – they all got themselves killed, one after the other. But the only thing that changed on the Delaney place was that the cotton harvests got stacked in the barn instead of being took off to be sold. Seemed them Yankees was stopping everything from coming in or going out of the county. Miss Louellen’s dresses was getting faded and worn and fine cloth to make new ones just couldn’t be had. She minded about that more than anything. As for the master, he couldn’t get no Irish liquor. He took to sending Ham off into the woods to buy corn whisky from the white-trash family lived there. The other thing they had to whistle for was coffee. And ginger. Molasses. Cookie and me couldn’t bake no gingerbread no more. The Delaneys had to eat what come off the plantation, same as us. But they didn’t have no one measuring out rations of cornmeal for them. So they ate plenty and we ate less than ever. They was doing fine on it. But we was all getting one heck of a lot thinner.

  Then, about three and a half years after it started, the war come riding right on into the neighbourhood. The second that happen, Miss Louellen go riding right on out. When word come that General William Tecumseh Sherman is marching the Yankee army through the mountains and heading right on down towards us, she takes her children, along with Mammy and most all the house slaves, and runs off to refugee someplace with her cousins. I was almost as glad to see the back of her as I had been to see the back of Jonas. Suddenly there was no one watching me. No one trying to trip me up, catch me out. So long as I kept out of the master’s way when he was having one of his drinking times there was no one even trying to hit me.

  I figured General Sherman must be Moses, Jesus and Joseph all rolled into one. He was gonna lead us to the Promised Land. I was expecting them Yankees to bring us a slice of heaven.

  But what they bring is more like hell on earth.

  5.

  Word on the grapevine was the Yankees was attacking someplace fifteen, maybe twenty miles north of us. I was dizzy with excitement. But then they come marching a whole lot closer and my mood turn itself on its head.

  We was three miles from town and I never been there but I knew in which direction it lay. And there wasn’t no angels hovering in the sky and there wasn’t no blinding glorious light. Sure wasn’t no heavenly choir. What there was, was smoke rising. The smell of gunpowder carried on the wind. The smell of burning.

  I could hear the cannon, feel it pounding through my feet. Set every nerve in my body jangling. Made every tooth in my head rattle. It went on for two, three, four days and it was bad. But it was worse when it stop. Then there was just a silence hanging over everything like the one before a storm. Any moment the clouds would burst. There’d be thunder. Lightning. Rain would fall. Hard. Heavy. We’d all be needing to run for shelter.

  I was in the garden, grubbing in the dirt same as always, when I see clouds of thick black smoke coming from beyond the woods. I’m thinking, Hey! Did Grandma Rideau’s place catch fire? How’d that happen?

  Then there’s a speck in the distance. It’s moving fast. That speck turns into a man, and the man’s running from the woods across the fields towards the foreman. Foreman jumps off his horse. The man grab him by the shoulders. He scream something in his face. And the foreman throws his straw hat in the air and give a whoop of triumph. And then all the field hands start yelling. They grabbing each other, hollering, cheering. Then they calling out. They start piling into carts, young ones first, men and women reaching back over the sides lifting up the children by their arms, taking hands, pulling the old folks in. Then they whipping up the mules, driving away right off the plantation, stirring up clouds of red dust as they go, moving like every demon in hell is chasing after them. Before I know it the field hands is gone. They left! Run off. Just like that. Hadn’t none of them thought to wait for me. Or Cookie. Hadn’t none of them thought to wait for any house slave.

  I’m still standing there when Amos come running from the smithy. He been close enough to hitch a ride but he wasn’t going no place without Cookie. He’s looking for her
right now but as he reaches me there come the sound of hooves thudding on the road. Hundreds of them. And around the bend in the drive come the Yankee army.

  I hadn’t never seen no soldiers before but I’d spent a heap of time imagining them. I’d pictured smart uniforms, gleaming boots, fine horses. Men with warm eyes and gentle voices who would speak to us kind. I’d imagined heroes. Gentlemen. Angels.

  These was worn-out from fighting, I guess. They was shabby, filthy, mean-looking, reeking of blood and sweat. Wasn’t a halo in sight. And wasn’t none of them remotely like Moses, Jesus or Joseph.

  Me and Amos, we couldn’t see the front of the big house from the garden but we knew well enough the master was there. He been sitting on the porch for days, rocking in that chair of his, drinking corn whisky, oiling his gun, watching the driveway, cussing all the time and saying that his pa built this place from nothing, and his grandpa before that, and how he wasn’t never gonna let no damned Yankee set foot on his land.

  Mr Delaney don’t give no warning. He fires at the soldier leading the column. Clips him is all. The Yankee don’t even fall off his horse. He don’t speak neither. Just cocks his gun, fires it back at the master. We hear Mr Delaney hit the porch deck. Then nothing. He don’t cry out. But Ham does. He been with the master since he was a boy. Ham starts screaming, “He dead! He dead! Master’s dead!”

  The air is knocked from my chest. Can’t seem to breathe. The master’s dead? Lord above, Mr Delaney’s dead? I can’t feel nothing. Not sorrow. Not joy. Nothing.

  Them soldiers come riding right up to the house and they yelling, “Everyone out. We got orders.”

  Miss Louellen had took most all the house slaves with her when she went off. But Kissy and Rose is here. They pull Ham to his feet and drag him along to where me and Amos is rooted to the spot. Cookie come running over. We huddling together while the Yankees go storming through the house.