Gloryland (18 page)

I
t’s strange, not being where you’re going and not where you were either, but somewhere in between. That’s what it was like being on the
Logan
. I’ve spent most of my life at sea, between one thing and another, but it wasn’t always as violent and perilous as the part of that voyage a few weeks out of Luzon.

 

 

I kind of got used to being in between. I was at sea growing up in Spartanburg. I was at sea serving at Fort Robinson and fighting in the Philippines.

 

 

What does it feel like to cross over? To really get to where you’re going? Maybe when Death finally gets you, he’s just letting your dreams go free cause they’ve been trapped in your head all your life and could never open up their wings and fly off.

 

 

No one wants to die. No one wants to be forgotten, and to be forgotten is to die. Maybe that’s why I pray so much, so God can learn to pick my voice out of the noise he’s got to listen to, so he can remember my voice.

 

 

Lots of soldiers pray to God and got good reason for it. I never met most of them, but that don’t mean I don’t know them or don’t care about them. They wore the uniform, and it doesn’t matter if it was infantry or cavalry.

 

 

All my life in the army, and elsewhere, I heard voices other than my own. The army teaches you to work together, to be a unit. Maybe I been in the army too long. Maybe this ain’t just my story I been telling.

 

 

Those Filipino colored people had families just like mine. And those families worried about their men when they were far away.
And prayed for them the last thing before they went to sleep at night. Just like me, they wanted God’s help.

 

 

Yeah, most soldiers are strangers to me, but God knows each of their names and what’s in their hearts, cause each soldier sleeps in the space between a mother’s or a father’s hands, black hands in prayer. There are words in that darkness, and they’re not all meant for me.

 

 

So many voices in the night. How many prayers will get through to the other side? How many lost at sea?

 

T
he 12th of May 1903 was sunny but cold. I stood along a sidewalk on Van Ness Avenue with San Franciscans on every side: whites, Chinese, Mexicans, a few colored people, but mostly whites, and lots of schoolchildren in their Sunday best, all waiting to see President Theodore Roosevelt.

When people looked at me, I could tell that some of them had never seen a colored soldier before. It was a strange look, curious but with no hate. They didn’t look for long, though, cause folks were there to see the president, who was on a speaking tour of California.

A few anxious policemen were walking down the street with their batons, so no one got too close. Their uniforms fit them well, as the occasion warranted, and looked new even if they weren’t. Nothing was frayed or dirty.

It was cold in the shadows and loud from all the talking, but I could see the sun bright on the building opposite where I was standing. I felt something or someone brush against my right side and I looked down. It was a young boy with reddish hair and blue eyes, peering up at me and smiling.

“Can you see President Roosevelt?” he shouted, breathing hard. I wondered how this child could talk without air in his lungs. The excitement of the crowd lit up his face so much he could’ve been used at night for a lantern.

“Naw,” I said. “All I see is people waitin all along Van Ness, and the police havin a devil of a time keepin folks out of the road.”

“But the president . . . can you see him? I mean, he should be here soon, he’s supposed to be here!” he said. Each word came out of him
with no room for the next, so it took a bit for me to make sense of what he was asking.

“All I see,” I began, gazing up the street, “is what I told you. No more. But he’ll be here, and the Ninth as well,” I added.

“Who’s the Ninth?” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was really curious or just being polite. He probably didn’t have many conversations with colored people, let alone soldiers.

“Young man,” I said, “the Ninth means Ninth Regiment of Cavalry. I’m with Troop K. There’s quite a few colored soldiers stationed here at the Presidio. Some of us were picked to escort the president at this here parade, and some were not.”

The boy did something funny with his mouth as if he’d just put something in it that didn’t taste right, and he couldn’t make up his mind whether to swallow or spit. He looked me up and down good. I think about then was the first time he’d really seen me, though I was clearly wearing a uniform.

“You’re a nigger,” he said, “and a soldier?”

He was confused. He could deal with me being a nigger and probably was all right with me being a soldier, but both, well, that was unusual enough to challenge whatever he’d been taught.

“No,” I said, “I ain’t no nigger, and don’t know any either, but I’m African and Seminole Indian, which means I’m part Creek and possibly Muskogee. Might be some Gullah in there, I don’t know for sure.

“And I’m not just a soldier. I’m a U.S. cavalryman, a sergeant in the Ninth Regiment, but don’t think about it too much right now. You don’t want to fall down on this sidewalk, cause what with everyone watchin for the president, you could be lyin here for hours before someone notices you. You could give it some thought when you get older, cause by then you’ll be able to handle whiskey. And you might need a drink.”

He seemed to be considering whether or not to smile, but he didn’t want to get into trouble, and I think he already sensed that the
conversation had gone on too long. He smiled anyway as he turned and said, “Thanks, soldier!”

It was so crowded that he was gone just like that behind a jumble of pants, dresses, sleeves, arms pointing, and white hands gesturing up the road. All those white hands like birds, white birds, so many I couldn’t see the bodies they were attached to, and the sun making them flutter by themselves. I couldn’t see whole people, just pieces of them: faces, heads, hats, parasols, cravats, white shirts, hair in curls, rings, all jumbled up. The only thing keeping it all from spilling out onto Van Ness were the frustrated policemen, who obviously were not enjoying this duty at all. Shaking their heads, shouting to the crowd to keep back, yelling the same things over and over, and no one seemed to be listening.

“Move on back, folks, please!” I heard one officer say. “Please make room! You can’t see the president if you don’t make room for him to get here!” The officer, a tall fellow with gray hair, red cheeks, and sideburns too long for his face then spat on the ground and kept moving down the line.

So many people together made the air sound like the sea. All those voices, high and low, sounding together like waves rolling down the avenue, a waterless sea, and you could hear and feel the power of it whenever the crowd started moving. That’s why the police were so nervous, cause they knew they couldn’t stop the crowd if it wanted to move.

Then the mules and horses came. You couldn’t hear them till they were up close. I watched their legs move and their hooves strike the ground, but it was silent with all that cheering going on. First there were mounted police, but people didn’t pay much attention to them. What caught their eye was what came after: column after column of cavalry swinging into view.

Not just any cavalry, the Ninth was parading down Van Ness, right in front of the presidential entourage. It was most of Troop I, about fifty men in dress uniforms, and they were all staring ahead
down the street as if no one at all was standing alongside, and as they came it seemed to me that the sea of sound parted, and silence was at the bottom. Over that silence the tap and click of mules and horses moving at the walk suddenly could be heard as Troop I forded that silence, like they’d been drilling for years on the safest way to manuever through it.