Stories (2011) (117 page)

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.

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 horse 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.”

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.