My father-in-law was right.
This dolly is amazing.
And my head, so clear. No Kleenex.
And the shadows, thick and plenty, are with me.
––
Rolling the dolly, a crowbar from the collection of tools stuffed in my belt, I proceed to the front of the tower. I'm wearing a jumpsuit. Gray. Workman's uniform. For a while I worked for the janitorial department on campus. My attempt at a trade.
They fired me for reading in the janitor's closet.
But I still have the jumpsuit.
––
The foyer is open, but the elevators are locked.
I pull the dolly upstairs.
It is a chore, a bump at a time, but the dolly straps hold the trunk and I can hear the guns rattling inside, like they want to get out.
––
By the time I reach the top I'm sweating, feeling weak. I have no idea how long it has taken, but some time I'm sure. The shadows have been with me, encouraging me.
Thank you, I tell them.
––
The door at the top of the clock tower is locked.
I take out my burglar's key. The crowbar. Go to work.
It's easy.
On the other side of the door I use the dolly itself to push up under the door handle, and it freezes the door. It'll take some work to shake that loose.
––
There's one more flight inside the tower.
I have to drag the trunk of guns.
Hard work. The rope handle on the crate snaps and the guns slide all the way back down.
I push them up.
I almost think I can't make it. The trunk is so heavy. So many guns. And all that sweet ammunition.
––
Finally, to the top, shoving with my shoulder, bending my legs all the way.
The door up there is not locked, the one that leads outside to the runway around the clock tower.
I walk out, leaving the trunk. I walk all around the tower and look down at all the small things there.
Soon the light will come, and so will the people.
Turning, I look up at the huge clock hands. Four o'clock.
I hope time does not slip. I do not want to find myself at home by the window, looking out.
The shadows.
They flutter.
They twist.
The runway is full of them, thick as all the world's lost ones. Thick as all the world's hopeless. Thick, thick, thick, and thicker yet to be. When I join them.
––
There is one fine spot at the corner of the tower runway. That is where I should begin.
I place a rifle there, the one I used to put my family and dog asleep.
I place rifles all around the tower.
I will probably run from one station to the other.
The shadows make suggestions.
All good, of course.
I put a revolver in my belt.
I put a shotgun near the entrance to the runway, hidden behind the edge of the tower, in a little outcrop of artful bricks. It tucks in there nicely.
There are huge flowerpots stuffed with ferns all about the runway. I stick pistols in the pots.
When I finish, I look at the clock again.
An hour has passed.
––
Back home in my chair, looking out the window at the dying night. Back home in my chair, the smell of my family growing familiar, like a shirt worn too many days in a row.
Like the one I have on. Like the thick coat I wear.
I look out the window and it is not the window, but the little split in the runway barrier. There are splits all around the runway wall.
I turn to study the place I have chosen and find myself looking out my window at home, and as I stare, the window melts and so does the house.
The smell.
That does not go with the window and the house.
The smell stays with me.
The shadows are way too close. I am nearly smothered. I can hardly breathe.
––
Light cracks along the top of the tower and falls through the campus trees and runs along the ground like spilt warm honey.
I clutch my coat together, pull it tight. It is very cold. I can hardly feel my legs.
––
I get up and walk about the runway twice, checking on all my guns.
Well-oiled. Fully loaded.
Full of hot-lead announcements.
Telegram: You're dead.
––
Back at my spot, the one from which I will begin, I can see movement. The day has started. I poke the rifle through the break in the barrier and bead down on a tall man walking across campus.
I could take him easy.
But I do not.
Wait, say the shadows. Wait until the little world below is full.
––
The hands on the clock are loud when they move, they sound like the machinery I can hear in my head. Creaking and clanking and moving along.
The air had turned surprisingly warm.
I feel so hot in my jacket.
I take it off.
I am sweating.
The day has come but the shadows stay with me.
True friends are like that. They don't desert you.
It's nice to have true friends.
It's nice to have with me the ones who love me.
It's nice to not be judged.
It's nice to know I know what to do and the shadows know too, and we are all the better for it.
––
The campus is alive.
People swim across the concrete walks like minnows in the narrows.
Minnows everywhere in their new sharp clothes, ready to take their tests and do their papers and meet each other so they might screw. All of them, with futures.
But I am the future-stealing machine.
––
I remember once, when I was a child, I went fishing with minnows. Stuck them on the hooks and dropped them in the wet. When the day was done, I had caught nothing. I violated the fisherman's code. I did not pour the remaining minnows into the water to give them their freedom. I poured them on the ground.
And stomped them.
I was in control.
––
A young, beautiful girl, probably eighteen, tall like a model, walking like a dream, is moving across the campus. The light is on her hair and it looks very blonde, like my wife's.
I draw a bead.
The shadows gather. They whisper. They touch. They show me their faces.
They have faces now.
Simple faces.
Like mine.
I trace my eye down the length of the barrel.
Without me really knowing it, the gun snaps sharp in the morning light.
The young woman falls amidst a burst of what looks like plum jelly.
The minnows flutter. The minnows flee.
But there are so many, and they are panicked. Like they have been poured on the ground to squirm and gasp in the dry.
I begin to fire. Shot after shot after shot.
Each snap of the rifle a stomp of my foot.
Down they go.
Squashed.
I have no hat, father-in-law, and I am full of manliness.
––
The day goes up hot.
Who would have thunk?
I have moved from one end of the tower to the other.
I have dropped many of them.
The cops have come.
I have dropped many of them.
I hear noise in the tower.
I think they have shook the dolly loose.
The door to the runway bursts open.
A lady cop steps through. My first shot takes her in the throat. But she snaps one off at about the same time. A revolver shot. It hits next to me where I crouch low against the runway wall.
Another cop comes through the door. I fire and miss.
My fir
st miss.
He fires. I feel something hot inside my shoulder.
I find that I am slipping down, my back against the runway wall. I can't hold the rifle. I try to drag the pistol from my belt, but can't. My arm is dead. The other one, well, it's no good either. The shot has cut something apart inside of me. The strings to my limbs. My puppet won't work.
Another cop has appeared. He has a shotgun. He leans over me. His teeth are gritted and his eyes are wet.
And just as he fires, the shadows say:
Now, you are one of us.
SOLDIERIN’
They said if you went out West and joined up with the colored soldiers, they’d pay you in real Yankee dollars, thirteen of them a month, feed and clothe you, and it seemed like a right smart idea since I was wanted for a lynchin’. It wasn’t that I was invited to hold the rope or sing a little spiritual. I was the guest of honor on this one. They was plannin’ to stretch my neck like a goozle-wrung chicken at Sunday dinner.
Thing I’d done was nothin’ on purpose, but in a moment of eyeballin’ while walkin’ along the road on my way to cut some firewood for a nickel and ajar of jam, a white girl who was hangin’ out wash bent over and pressed some serious butt up against her gingham, and a white fella, her brother, seen me take a look, and that just crawled all up in his ass and died, and he couldn’t stand the stink.
Next thing I know, I’m wanted for being bold with a white girl, like maybe I’d broke into her yard and jammed my arm up her ass, but I hadn’t done nothin’ but what’s natural, which is glance at a nice butt when it was available to me.
Now, in the livin’ of my life, I’ve killed men and animals and made love to three Chinese women on the same night in the same bed and one of them with only one leg, and part of it wood, and I even ate some of a dead fella once when I was crossin’ the mountains, though I want to rush in here and make it clear I didn’t know him all that well, and we damn sure wasn’t kinfolks. Another thing I did was I won me a shootin’ contest up Colorady way against some pretty damn famous shooters, all white boys, but them’s different stories and not even akin to the one I want to tell, and I’d like to add, just like them other events, this time I’m talking about is as true as the sunset.
Pardon me. Now that I’ve gotten older, sometimes I find I start out to tell one story and end up tellin’ another. But to get back to the one I was talkin’ about...So, havin’ been invited to a lynchin’, I took my daddy’s horse and big ole loaded six-gun he kept wrapped up in an oilcloth from under the floorboards of our shack, and took off like someone had set my ass on fire. I rode that poor old horse till he was slap worn out. I had to stop over in a little place just outside of Nacogdoches and steal another one, not on account of I was a thief, but on account of I didn’t want to get caught by the posse and hung and maybe have my pecker cut off and stuck in my mouth. Oh. I also took a chicken. He’s no longer with me, of course, as I ate him out there on the trail.
Anyway, I left my horse for the fella I took the fresh horse and the chicken from, and I left him a busted pocket watch on top of the railing post, and then I rode out to West Texas. It took a long time for me to get there, and I had to stop and steal food and drink from creeks and make sure the horse got fed with corn I stole. After a few days, I figured I’d lost them that was after me, and I changed my name as I rode along. It had been Wiliford P. Thomas, the P not standing for a thing other than P. I chose the name Nat Wiliford for myself, and practiced on saying it while I rode along. When I said it, I wanted it to come out of my mouth like it wasn’t a lie.
Before I got to where I was goin’, I run up against this colored fella taking a dump in the bushes, wiping his ass on leaves. If I had been a desperado, I could have shot him out from over his pile and taken his horse, ‘cause he was deeply involved in the event—so much, in fact, that I could see his eyes were crossed from where I rode up on a hill, and that was some distance.
I was glad I was downwind, and hated to interrupt, so I sat on my stolen horse until he was leaf wiping, and then I called out. “Hello, the shitter.”
He looked up and grinned at me, touched his rifle lying on the ground beside him, said, “You ain’t plannin’ on shootin’ me, are you?”
“No. I thought about stealin’ your horse, but it’s sway back and so ugly in the face it hurts my feelings.”
“Yeah, and it’s blind in one eye and has a knot on its back comes right through the saddle. When I left the plantation, I took that horse. Wasn’t much then, and it’s a lot less now.”
He stood up and fastened his pants and I seen then that he was a pretty big fellow, all decked out in fresh-looking overalls and a big black hat with a feather in it. He came walkin’ up the hill toward me, his wipin’ hand stuck out for a shake, but I politely passed, because I thought his fingers looked a little brown.
Anyway, we struck it up pretty good, and by nightfall we found a creek, and he washed his hands in the water with some soap from his saddlebag, which made me feel a mite better. We sat and had coffee and some of his biscuits. All I could offer was some conversation, and he had plenty to give back. His name was Cullen, but he kept referrin’ to himself as The Former House Nigger, as if it were a rank akin to general. He told a long story about how he got the feather for his hat, but it mostly just came down to he snuck up on a hawk sittin’ on a low limb and jerked it out of its tail.
“When my master went to war against them Yankees,” he said, “I went with him. I fought with him and wore me a butternut coat and pants, and I shot me at least a half dozen of them Yankees.”
“Are you leaking brains out of your gourd?” I said. “Them rebels was holdin’ us down.”
“I was a house nigger, and I grew up with Mr. Gerald, and I didn’t mind going to war with him. Me and him was friends. There was lots of us like that.”
“Y’all must have got dropped on your head when you was young’ns.”
“The Master and the older Master was all right.”
“ ‘Cept they owned you,” I said.
“Maybe I was born to be owned. They always quoted somethin’ like that out of the Bible.”
“That ought to have been your clue, fella. My daddy always said that book has caused more misery than chains, an ill-tempered woman, and a nervous dog.”
“I loved Young Master like a brother, truth be known. He got shot in the war, right ‘tween the eyes by a musket ball, killed him deader than a goddamn tree stump. I sopped up his blood in a piece of his shirt I cut off, mailed it back home with a note on what happened. When the war was over, I stayed around the plantation for a while, but everything come apart then, the old man and the old lady died, and I buried them out back of the place a good distance from the privy and uphill, I might add. That just left me and the Old Gentleman’s dog.
“The dog was as old as death and couldn’t eat so good, so I shot it, and went on out into what Young Master called The Big Wide World. Then, like you, I heard the guv’ment was signing up coloreds for its man’s army. I ain’t no good on my own. I figured the army was for me.”
“I don’t like being told nothin’ by nobody,” I said, “but I surely love to get paid.” I didn’t mention I also didn’t want to get killed by angry crackers and the army seemed like a good place to hide.
About three days later, we rode up on the place we was looking for. FortMcKavett, between the Colorady and the Pecos rivers. It was a sight, that fort. It was big and it didn’t look like nothin’ I’d ever seen before. Out front was colored fellas in army blue drilling on horseback, looking sharp in the sunlight, which there was plenty of. It was hot where I come from, sticky even, but you could find a tree to get under. Out here, all you could get under was your hat, or maybe some dark cloud sailing across the face of the sun, and that might last only as long as it takes a bird to fly over.
But there I was. FortMcKavett. Full of dreams and crotch itch from long riding, me and my new friend sat on our horses, lookin’ the fort over, watchin’ them hors
e soldiers drill, and it was prideful thing to see. We rode on down in that direction.
* * * *
In the Commanding Officer’s quarters, me and The Former House Nigger stood before a big desk with a white man behind it, name of Colonel Hatch. He had a caterpillar mustache and big sweat circles like wet moons under his arms. His eyes were aimed on a fly sitting on some papers on his desk. Way he was watchin’ it, you’d have thought he was beading down on a hostile. He said, “So you boys want to sign up for the colored army. I figured that, you both being colored.”
He was a sharp one, this Hatch.
I said, “I’ve come to sign up and be a horse rider in the Ninth Cavalry.”
Hatch studied me for a moment, said, “Well, we got plenty of ridin’ niggers. What we need is walkin’ niggers for the goddamn infantry, and I can get you set in the right direction to hitch up with them.”
I figured anything that was referred to with goddamn in front of it wasn’t the place for me.
“I reckon ain’t a man here can ride better’n me,” I said, “and that would be even you, Colonel, and I’m sure you are one ridin’ sonofabitch, and I mean that in as fine a way as I can say it.”
Hatch raised an eyebrow. “That so?”
“Yes, sir. No brag, just fact. I can ride on a horse’s back, under his belly, make him lay down and make him jump, and at the end of the day, I take a likin’ to him, I can diddle that horse in the ass and make him enjoy it enough to brew my coffee and bring my slippers, provided I had any. That last part about the diddlin’ is just talkin’, but the first part is serious.”
“I figured as much,” Hatch said.
“I ain’t diddlin’ no horses,” The Former House Nigger said. “I can cook and lay out silverware. Mostly, as a Former House Nigger, I drove the buggy.”