Counternarratives (31 page)

I answered, “I got to think about it for a little while more, but if you
look at this sign here”—and I pointed to the cross of light with the faint shape of
a heart hovering just above its center, a forewarning and lament—“and here, to the
way the blades is bending outward on either side like an invisible arrow”—urging us
to stay right where we were—“and to here,” a patch so dusty it was as if the desert
of solitary death had already laid claim to it, “this is not the time to attack, I
can almost assure you on my parents' and my grandparents' graves of that.” DeVeaux,
who had also walked over, countered without even acknowledging me that my mumbo
jumbo and hoodoo claptrap couldn't be right, that what we needed to do is fight our
way to the next line, lay those Confederates and their French and Mexican
infantrymen low like the reaper, and they all commenced to smiling and clapping,
Johnson, Scott, Shepard, Morris who had his sisters kidnapped into Arkansas well
before the first shot down at Sumter, Wilson, Patterson, Renard, Kelley, even
Bergamire, nearly every last one of them. DeVeaux was on a roll now, his voice a
common preacher's, which is what his father was, Anderson told me the first time I
witnessed him going on like this, soon as he got free the daddy took up the Good
Book and the son intended to follow that profession, these folks from the far
northwestern corner of the state, near Nebraska, though he had shifted into
testifying about how we all needed to go beyond shooting them down, we needed to
kill at least ten apiece, have a slaughter to send a message to Price and Bedford
and all the rest. When he had finally quieted down, Anderson reminded everyone we
had orders to take them prisoner rather than go on a spree.

When he said this last word a few of them guffawed because they hadn't
ever heard that word before, but Anderson was wont to speak real proper at times,
like a dictionary would if a dictionary could talk, which made me think of my old
lady back home. He and Bergamire and a few of the others would take turns teaching
classes early in the morning and by the campfire, on spelling and speaking and math,
not the kind of learning people learned in the fields or in the store rooms in
country towns, but the right way so that you can pen your name when the time came,
and understand what your documents were saying, and count your pay before and after
it hit your pocket, instead of having to rely on them other folks to do so for you.
I found myself growing close to Anderson, and would tell him what I was picking up
so that he could convey it to the rest as if he had somehow assessed it himself,
since they were more likely to listen to him.

But that day was not propitious, and yet Colonel Barrett ordered us to
ready ourselves and proceed against the gray traitors, which meant eight companies
of our United States Colored Troops, which is what we became when the Army
federalized our Missouri brigade, would head with the white 2nd Texas Cavalry
Battalion under the command of Lt. Colonel Branson through Boca Chica Pass to engage
the enemy, driving them back to Brownsville and capturing any we could along the
way. All day we prepared for the evening march, though it was already clear that
four dozen of the white men would have to proceed horseless, but both Anderson and
Bergamire circulated among all the companies to say that as soon as we overtook the
insurrectionists we were to requisition as many of their mounts as we could. Between
readying and packing equipment I sat and composed brief letters, which Anderson
wrote out in his steady hand, to Johnny O., who was with a regiment still stationed
in Tennessee, and to Bessie Amelia, who was raising money for the troops all across
Minnesota and Wisconsin, and to Louisa, who loved hearing about nothing more than
the tedium of my daily military life. A fine rain began falling in the late morning,
and I pointed this out to Anderson, who thought it might let up, but by the time we
had reached the pass, the downpour had thickened into batteries of water, and the
sky cracked open with thunder and foreboding light. Our progress was glacial through
the high, wet grass, which now hid all its secrets, giving off strange waterlogged
sounds and odors, the cattails fizzling like flares, the figworts emitting their
noxsome fragrance, the nightshade extending its mortal embrace, but we followed the
curves of the river throughout the night and caught a brigade of the Confederates
unawares. The Texans took three of the traitors prisoner, and sent some of our men
to husband the supplies from their bivouac, though Anderson had me help set up camp
for the night and read the surroundings for any clues about the following day.

I woke that morning and studied the omens, which were ill but not fully
open to interpretation, so I kept them to myself. By midday we were creeping on our
hands and knees like turtles across green expanse at the base of Palmito Hill when a
fusillade, followed by a brigade of Confederates, engaged us. I usually kept to the
rear as I was ordered to, but Anderson urged several of us to crawl out to the far edge
of the field, near the river, where there was a stand of Montezuma cypresses, which
I did and when I rounded them flat on my stomach, creeping forward like a panther I
saw it, that face I could have identified if blind in both eyes, him, in profile,
the agate eyes in a squint, that sandy ring of beard collaring the gaunt cheeks, the
soiled gray jacket half open and hanging around the sun-reddened throat, him
crouching reloading his gun, quickly glancing up and around him so as not to miss
anything. I glanced behind to see if Anderson was nearby, but he and most of the
rest were proceeding to the north of me, along the open field of battle, a blue line
undulating forward in the high grass, their mismatched uniforms behind the white men
in their blue streaming like waves on the one side and the gray of the
insurrectionists on the other, the gunfire crackling like the announcement of the
end of something terrible, and I looked up and he still had not seen me, this face
he could have drawn in his sleep, these eyes that had watched his and watched over
his, this elder who had been like a brother, a keeper, a second father as he
wondered why this child was taking him deeper and deeper into the heart of the
terror, why south instead of straight east to liberation, credit his and my youth or
ignorance or inexperience, for which I forgive him and myself but I came so close to
ending up in a far worse place than I ever was, and I heard Anderson or someone call
out in the distance, and raised my gun, bringing it to my eye, the target his hands
which were moving quickly with his own gun propped against his shoulder, over his
heart, and I steadied the barrel, my finger on the trigger, which is when our gazes
finally met, I am going to tell the reporter, and then we can discuss that whole
story of the trip down the river with that boy, his gun aimed at me now, other faces
behind his now, all of them assuming the contours, the lean, determined hardness of
his face, that face, there were a hundred of that face, those faces, burnt,
determined, hard and thinking only of their own disappearing universe, not ours,
which was when the cry broke across the rippling grass, and the gun, the guns, went
off.

 

PERSONS AND PLACES

Editor's note: "Persons and Places" appeared in the print edition of
this book as two columns, side by side. Due to technical limitations, the story
appears here as one single column.

Cambridge Journal: October
__, 1890

O
f what did this chilly
afternoon consist? After lunch with Morgan in Mem. Hall, work and a swift visit to
20 Flagg, I took a round-about way from the Gymnasium for my breather. Past the
Square terminus, dodging the chattering crowds and dust and clattering hooves that
transform Cambridge at times into something of a mini-metropolis.

I was feeling rather out of sorts, for I once again had to put off Mrs.
T[aylor] with a promise to pay in a fortnight and a smile. Throughout the meal I sat
and ate, only moderately aware of my companion, Morgan. His jovial self as always,
was he recounting to me last Saturday's Hill festivities and his impressions of some
new young Ladies on visit from Philadelphia, or did I only imagine hearing him say
this? In truth I was concentrating on my questions for the coming meeting of the
Philosophical Club, where Santayana, that new graduate student and my likely tutor,
is set to speak on “Spinoza and the Ethical Sensibility.”

Indeed, as I was passing down Mount Auburn Street, I spotted his
black-clad figure floating by. Ghostly, yet swarthy, an Iberian by birth, though
perhaps not in temperament, something dangerous and daring in those black eyes. Our
gazes met, glancingly. As he has been wont to do whenever we have seen each other,
he abruptly turned away, striding faster than before he had caught sight of me. I
continued on toward the river, where I thought I might walk for a while and observe
the currents slowly pulling whatever traffic still lingered toward the
Institute.

Why does he glower so? Is it fear, for certainly he has seen a
Negro before, or can it be an acknowledgement of how deeply we are linked? Or does
he, like nearly all the rest of them,
not really see me
at all
?
Of
course there will be scant possibility of a friendship. Be he a Latin or the Statue
of Liberty; for even Professor [Wm.] James, in all his eccentric allegiance, admits,
when we are at the same table, of those unshakable walls that separate us. Still I
know that at some point soon I shall have opportunity to probe his mind, share my
inquiries—
he and I alone, in an upper room
—and he will come to
appreciate our common humanity.

For fifteen minutes thus I stood, gathering impressions in the chill,
until true cold settled in. Then I hurried back, darting between carriages and odd
fellows, almost missing the news stand. I could only glimpse the evening headlines—a
human bullet runs the 100 yard dash in under 10 seconds; the Abyssinian War
continues; another lynching
—
making swift mental notes on all issues
pertaining to my people, even though the various other national and international
events of the past few weeks have not yet had a moment to
sediment. . . .

Fleeting
Impressions on an Autumn Afternoon (Harvard)

A
fter lecturing on
thought and the color-sense, during which I pressed the students to investigate how
the context of one's perception shapes mental impressions, I took lunch with one of
Royce's students. A robust, poetically-minded young Platonist from New Hampshire, we
navigated for an hour around the shoals of idealism and the literal embodiment of
the Absolute in the lyric moment, to which he has rather romantically subscribed. Is
that not a danger of the current state of the literary arts? He then inquired,
sub rosa
, whether the body, though withering on the vine of a man's
life, might somehow be restored to its most dangerous state of beauty by thought
alone. The perils, I thought but dared not say, of a little Wilde or Swinburne, a
dose of Pater or, forgive me, William Shakespeare. . . .

Later, as I strolled along Mount Auburn Street, quietly composing,
concepts racing in my head like the regattas these New Englanders love to hold, I
noticed him again. The intense young colored man, a Negro most certainly, brow high,
stern mien, walking briskly toward the river, his eyes fixed upon an invisible
target, an imaginary star. This
Du Bois
, who, I am told by that collector
of personalities, William James, fashions himself a philosopher, though gifted with
scientific and other facilities. It is true that I have noted him haunting the
precincts of the Yard, books peeking from his tattered leather satchel, his cheeks
the color of tea into which several tablespoons of sweet cream have been poured,
that gaze pressing intently toward some hidden point. Several times we have glimpsed
each other, in wary appraisal, and I have, I shall not dissemble, hurried on.
Perhaps he recognizes me as one of those who professes, an admirer of mental
industry whatever the outward appearance of the bearer; or perhaps through some
profounder spiritual auscultation, divined the passion and ritual in my gait.

This
jeune philosophe
, like the other Negro students, the
handful of unassimilable Easterners, Chinese, Mexican boys, must by necessity
subsist on an island even more remote than that on which I sojourned during my College
days, within this larger crimson archipelago. At one level, I imagine it would
provide a place of refuge and some element of happiness for their small and scorned
society.

He observes me as if he has already examined the catalogue of ideas and
impressions which I shall tell him when we eventually speak, of the gulf between the
true-self and the world outside and how the mind, through its exercises, bridges it;
of the forests rising around the language of the physicist's thought; of the
importance of doubt in the philosophical method;
of those fugitive joys and
sincere ecstasies—that heaven that lies in the heart of the earth
; of my
own long and unfolding exile.

Editor's note: See the following images for the original layout: