At that moment, Hatch come down on that fly with his hand, and he got him too. He peeled it off his palm and flicked it on the floor. There was this colored soldier standing nearby, very stiff and alert, and he bent over, picked the fly up by a bent wing, threw it out the door and came back. Hatch wiped his palm on his pants leg. “Well,” he said, “let’s see how much of what you got is fact, and how much is wind.”
* * * *
They had a corral nearby, and inside it, seeming to fill it up, was a big black horse that looked like he ate men and shitted out saddlebags made of their skin and bones. He put his eye right on me when I came out to the corral, and when I walked around on the other side, he spun around to keep a gander on me. Oh, he knew what I was about, all right.
Hatch took hold of one corner of his mustache and played with it, turned and looked at me. “You ride that horse well as you say you can, I’ll take both of you into the cavalry, and The Former House Nigger can be our cook.”
“I said I could cook,” The Former House Nigger said. “Didn’t say I was any good.”
“Well,” Hatch said, “what we got now ain’t even cookin’. There’s just a couple fellas that boil water and put stuff in it. Mostly turnips.”
I climbed up on the railing, and by this time, four colored cavalry men had caught up the horse for me. That old black beast had knocked them left and right, and it took them a full twenty minutes to get a bridle and a saddle on him, and when they come off the field, so to speak, two was limpin’ like they had one foot in a ditch. One was holding his head where he had been kicked, and the other looked amazed he was alive. They had tied the mount next to the railin’, and he was hoppin’ up and down like a little girl with a jump rope, only a mite more vigorous.
“Go ahead and get on,” Hatch said.
Having bragged myself into a hole, I had no choice.
* * * *
I wasn’t lyin’ when I said I was a horse rider. I was. I could buck them and make them go down on their bellies and roll on their sides, make them strut and do whatever, but this horse was as mean as homemade sin, and I could tell he had it in for me.
Soon as I was on him, he jerked his head and them reins snapped off the railing and I was clutchin’ at what was left of it. The sky came down on my head as that horse leaped. Ain’t no horse could leap like that, and soon me and him was trying to climb the clouds. I couldn’t tell earth from heaven, ‘cause we bucked all over that goddamn lot, and ever time that horse come down, it jarred my bones from butt to skull. I come out of the saddle a few times, nearly went off the back of him, but I hung in there, tight as a tick on a dog’s nuts. Finally he jumped himself out and started to roll. He went down on one side, mashing my leg in the dirt, and rolled on over. Had that dirt in the corral not been tamped down and soft, giving with me, there wouldn’t been nothing left of me but a sack of blood and broken bones.
Finally the horse humped a couple of sad bucks and gave out, started to trot and snort. I leaned over close to his ear and said, “You call that buckin’?” He seemed to take offense at that, and run me straight to the corral and hit the rails there with his chest. I went sailin’ off his back and landed on top of some soldiers, scatterin’ them like quail.
Hatch come over and looked down on me, said, “Well, you ain’t smarter than the horse, but you can ride well enough. You and The Former House Nigger are in with the rest of the ridin’ niggers. Trainin’ starts in the morning.”
* * * *
We drilled with the rest of the recruits up and down that lot, and finally outside and around the fort until we was looking pretty smart. The horse they give me was that black devil I had ridden. I named him Satan. He really wasn’t as bad as I first thought. He was worse, and you had to be at your best every time you got on him, ‘cause deep down in his bones, he was always thinking about killing you, and if you didn’t watch it, he’d kind of act casual, like he was watching a cloud or somethin’, and quickly turn his head and take a nip out of your leg, if he could bend far enough to get to it.
Anyway, the months passed, and we drilled, and my buddy cooked, and though what he cooked wasn’t any good, it was better than nothin’. It was a good life as compared to being hung, and there was some real freedom to it and some respect. I wore my uniform proud, set my horse like I thought I was somethin’ special with a stick up its ass.
We mostly did a little patrollin’, and wasn’t much to it except ridin’ around lookin’ for wild Indians we never did see, collectin’ our thirteen dollars at the end of the month, which was just so much paper ‘cause there wasn’t no place to spend it. And then, one mornin’, things changed, and wasn’t none of it for the better, except The Former House Nigger managed to cook a pretty good breakfast with perfect fat biscuits and eggs with the yolks not broke and some bacon that wasn’t burned and nobody got sick this time.
On that day, Hatch mostly rode around with us, ‘cause at the bottom of it all, I reckon the government figured we was just a bunch of ignorant niggers who might at any moment have a watermelon relapse and take to gettin’ drunk and shootin’ each other and maybe trying to sing a spiritual while we diddled the horses, though I had sort of been responsible for spreadin’ the last part of that rumor on my first day at the fort. We was all itchin’ to show we had somethin’ to us that didn’t have nothin’ to do with no white fella ridin’ around in front of us, though I’ll say right up front, Hatch was a good soldier who led and didn’t follow, and he was polite too. I had seen him leave the circle of the fire to walk off in the dark to fart. You can’t say that about just anyone. Manners out on the frontier was rare.
* * * *
You’ll hear from the army how we was all a crack team, but this wasn’t so, at least not when they was first sayin’ it. Most of the army at any time, bein’ they the ridin’ kind or the walkin’ kind, ain’t all that crack. Some of them fellas didn’t know a horse’s ass end from the front end, and this was pretty certain when you seen how they mounted, swinging into the stirrups, finding themselves looking at the horse’s tail instead of his ears. But in time everyone got better, though I’d like to toss in, without too much immodesty, that I was the best rider of the whole damn lot. Since he’d had a good bit of experience, The Former House Nigger was the second. Hell, he’d done been in war and all, so in ways, he had more experience than any of us, and he cut a fine figure on a horse, being tall and always alert, like he might have to bring somebody a plate of something or hold a coat.
Only action we’d seen was when one of the men, named Rutherford, got into it with Prickly Pear—I didn’t name him, that come from his mother—and they fought over a biscuit. While they was fightin’, Colonel Hatch come over and ate it, so it was a wasted bout.
But this time I’m tellin’ you about, we rode out lookin’ for Indians to scare, and not seein’ any, we quit lookin’ for what we couldn’t find, and come to a little place down by a creek where it was wooded and there was a shade from a whole bunch of trees that in that part of the country was thought of as being big, and in my part of the country would have been considered scrubby. I was glad when we stopped to water the horses and take a little time to just wait. Colonel Hatch, I think truth be told, was glad to get out of that sun much as the rest of us. I don’t know how he felt, being a white man and having to command a bunch of colored, but he didn’t seem bothered by it a’tall, and seemed proud of us and himself, which, of course, made us all feel mighty good.
So we waited out there on the creek, and Hatch, he come over to where me and The Former House Nigger were sitting by the water, and we jumped to attention, and he said, “There’s a patch of scrub oaks off the creek, scattering out there across the grass, and they ain’t growin’ worth a damn. Them’s gonna be your concern. I’m gonna take the rest of the troop out across the ground there, see if we can pick up some deer trails. I figure ain’t no one gonna mind if we pot a few and bring them back to camp. And besides, I’m bored. But we could use some firewood, and I was want
in’ you fellas to get them scrubs cut down and sawed up and ready to take back to the fort. Stack them in here amongst the trees, and I’ll send out some men with a wagon when we get back, and have that wood hauled back before it’s good and dark. I thought we could use some oak to smoke the meat I’m plannin’ on gettin’. That’s why I’m the goddamn colonel. Always thinkin’.”
“What if you don’t get no meat?” one of the men with us said.
“Then you did some work for nothin’, and I went huntin’ for nothin’. But, hell, I seen them deer with my binoculars no less than five minutes ago. Big fat deer, about a half dozen of them running along. They went over the hill. I’m gonna take the rest of the troops with me in case I run into hostiles, and because I don’t like to do no skinnin’ of dead deer myself.”
“I like to hunt,” I said.
“That’s some disappointin’ shit for you,” Colonel Hatch said. “I need you here. In fact, I put you in charge. You get bit by a snake and die, then, you, The Former House Nigger, take over. I’m also gonna put Rutherford, Bill, and Rice in your charge...some others. I’ll take the rest of them. You get that wood cut up, you start on back to the fort and we’ll send out a wagon.”
“What about Indians?” Rutherford, who was nearby, said.
“You seen any Indians since you been here?” Hatch said.
“No, sir.”
“Then there ain’t no Indians.”
“You ever see any?” Rutherford asked Hatch.
“Oh, hell yeah. Been attacked by them, and I’ve attacked them. There’s every kind of Indian you can imagine out here from time to time. Kiowa. Apache. Comanche. And there ain’t nothin’ they’d like better than to have your prickly black scalps on their belts, ‘cause they find your hair funny. They think it’s like the buffalo. They call you buffalo soldiers on account of it.”
“I thought it was because they thought we was brave like the buffalo,” I said.
“That figures,” Hatch said. “You ain’t seen no action for nobody to have no opinion of you. But, we ain’t seen an Indian in ages, and ain’t seen no sign of them today. I’m startin’ to think they’ve done run out of this area. But, I’ve thought that before. And Indian, especially a Comanche or an Apache, they’re hard to get a handle on. They’ll get after somethin’ or someone like it matters more than anything in the world, and then they’ll wander off if a bird flies over and they make an omen of it.”
Leaving us with them mixed thoughts on Indians and buffalo, Hatch and the rest of the men rode off, left us standing in the shade, which wasn’t no bad place to be. First thing we did when they was out of sight was throw off our boots and get in the water. I finally just took all my clothes off and cleaned up pretty good with a bar of lye soap and got dressed. Then leaving the horses tied up in the trees near the creek, we took the mule and the equipment strapped on his back, carried our rifles, and went out to where them scrubs was. On the way, we cut down a couple of saplings and trimmed some limbs, and made us a kind of pull that we could fasten on to the mule. We figured we’d fill it up with wood and get the mule to drag it back to the creek, pile it and have it ready for the wagon.
Rigged up, we went to work, taking turns with the saw, two other men working hacking off limbs, one man axing the trimmed wood up so it fit good enough to load. We talked while we worked, and Rutherford said, “Them Indians, some of them is as mean as snakes. They do all kind of things to folks. Cut their eyelids off, cook them over fires, cut off their nut sacks and such. They’re just awful.”
“Sounds like some Southerners I know,” I said.
“My master and his family was darn good to me,” The Former House Nigger said.
“They might have been good to you,” Rice said, pausing at the saw, “but that still don’t make you no horse, no piece of property. You a man been treated like a horse, and you too dumb to know it.”
The Former House Nigger bowed up like he was about to fight. I said, “Now, don’t do it. He’s just talkin’. I’m in charge here, and you two get into it, I’ll get it from Hatch, and I don’t want that, and won’t have it.”
Rice tilted his hat back. His face looked dark as coffee. “I’m gonna tell you true. When I was sixteen, I cut my master’s throat and raped his wife and run off to the North.”
“My God,” The Former House Nigger said. “That’s awful.”
“And I made the dog suck my dick,” Rice said.
“What?” The Former House Nigger said.
“He’s funnin’ you,” I said.
“That part about the master’s throat,” Rice said, “and runnin’ off to the North. I really did that. I would have raped his wife, but there wasn’t any time. His dog didn’t excite me none.”
“You are disgustin’,” The Former House Nigger said, pausing from his job of trimming limbs with a hatchet.
“Agreed,” I said.
Rice chuckled, and went back to sawin’ with Rutherford. He had his shirt off, and the muscles in his back bunched up like prairie dogs tunnelin’, and over them mounds was long, thick scars. I knew them scars. I had a few. They had been made with a whip.
Bill, who was stackin’ wood, said, “Them Indians. Ain’t no use hatin’ them. Hatin’ them for bein’ what they is, is like hatin’ a bush ‘cause it’s got thorns on it. Hatin’ a snake ‘cause it’ll bite you. They is what they is just like we is what we is.”
“And what is we?” The Former House Nigger said.
“Ain’t none of us human beings no ‘count. The world is just one big mess of no ‘counts, so there ain’t no use pickin’ one brand of man or woman over the other. Ain’t none of them worth a whistlin fart.”
“Ain’t had it so good, have you, Bill?” I asked.
“I was a slave.”
“We all was,” I said.
“Yeah, but I didn’t take it so good. Better’n Rutherford, but not so good. I was in the northern army, right there at the end when they started lettin’ colored in, and I killed and seen men killed. Ain’t none of my life experience give me much of a glow about folks of any kind. I even killed buffalo just for the tongues rich folks wanted to have. We left hides and meat in the fields to rot. That was to punish the Indians. Damned ole buffalo. Ain’t nothin’ dumber, and I shot them for dollars and their tongues. What kind of human beings does that?”
* * * *
We worked for about another hour, and then, Dog Den-—again, I didn’t name him—one of the other men Hatch left with us, said, “I think we got a problem.”
On the other side of the creek, there was a split in the trees, and you could see through them out into the plains, and you could see the hill Hatch had gone over some hours ago, and comin’ down it at a run was a white man. He was a good distance away, but it didn’t take no eagle eye to see that he was naked as a skinned rabbit, and runnin’ full out, and behind him, whoopin’ and having a good time, were Indians. Apache, to be right on the money, nearly as naked as the runnin’ man. Four of them was on horseback, and there was six of them I could see on foot runnin’ after him. My guess was they had done been at him and had set him loose to chase him like a deer for fun. I guess livin’ out on the plains like they did, with nothin’ but mesquite berries and what food they could kill, you had to have your fun where you could find it.
“They’re funnin’ him,” Rutherford said, figurin’ same as me.
We stood there lookin’ for a moment; then I remembered we was soldiers. I got my rifle and was about to bead down, when Rutherford said, “Hell, you can’t hit them from here, and neither can they shoot you. We’re out of range, and Indians ain’t no shots to count for.”
One of the runnin’ Apaches had spotted us, and he dropped to one knee and pointed his rifle at us, and when he did, Rutherford spread his arms wide, and said, “Go on, shoot, you heathen.”
The Apache fired.
Rutherford was wrong. He got it right on the top of the nose and fell over with his arms still spread. When he hit the ground, The Fo
rmer House Nigger said, “I reckon they been practicin’.”
* * * *
We was up on a hill, so we left the mule and run down to the creek where the horses was, and waded across the little water and laid out between the trees and took aim. We opened up and it sounded like a bunch of mule skinners crackin their whips. The air filled with smoke and there was some shots fired back at us. I looked up and seen the runnin’ man was makin’ right smart time, his hair and johnson flappin’ as he run. But then one of the horseback Apaches rode up on him, and with this heavy knotted-looking stick he was carrying, swung and clipped the white fella along the top of the head. I seen blood jump up and the man go down and I could hear the sound of the blow so well, I winced. The Apache let out a whoop and rode on past, right toward us. He stopped to beat his chest with his free hand, and when he did, I took a shot at him. I aimed for his chest, but I hit the horse square in the head and brought him down. At least I had the heathen on foot.
Now, you can say what you want about an Apache, but he is about the bravest thing there is short of a badger. This’n come runnin’ right at us, all of us firin’ away, and I figure he thought he had him some big magic, ‘cause not a one of our shots hit him. It was like he come haint-like right through a wall of bullets. As he got closer, I could see he had some kind of mud paint on his chest and face, and he was whoopin’ and carryin’ on somethin’ horrible. And then he stepped in a hole and went down. Though he was still a goodly distance from us, I could hear his ankle snap like a yanked suspender. Without meaning to, we all went, “Oooooh.” It hurt us, it was so nasty soundin’.
That fall must have caused his magic to fly out of his ass, ‘cause we all started firing at him, and this time he collected all our bullets, and was deader than a guv’ment promise before the smoke cleared.
This gave the rest of them Apache pause, and I’m sure, brave warriors or not, a few assholes puckered out there.