Gloryland (13 page)

It took a bit of time for him to find us, and once he did, how could he say what no one would feel comfortable saying to a mother and a father? There ain’t no good way to tell people their own flesh and blood ain’t here no more. If you’re the one getting the news, you can whisper to yourself that the dead are with Jesus, but if you had a choice, you’d decide it’d be all right if Jesus was lonely for a change and you had your son back in your arms.

That soldier who brought us the news didn’t have it easy. He made it through all right, though, and they held him like he was their little boy come home. I heard about it later from Grandma Sara cause I was too little to remember much, and Mama and Daddy never talked about it at all. They fixed the man a good dinner, and he told some stories about Oliver, even got my parents to laugh a little. Grandma Sara said laughter was something she never expected to hear that night in our cabin. For a few hours, my brother was alive
and with us again, all because of a stranger telling stories, a man we’d never seen before and would never see again.

I thought about this when I went to sign that paper, because I was doing the same thing my brother had done. The same as that colored soldier who lived through the Civil War, lived long enough to tell my parents how their son had died. Both men had stood before a white officer and listened to that soldier talk. It was years ago, but their choices were the same as mine.

As I continued writing my name, I began to hear the words of a tune we used to sing in church. The words came through me and I filled up with tears for the brother I never knew, and for my parents who never talked about him. This is what I heard.

I finished writing and handed the paper to the man taking names. He was still smiling, and to this day I’ve never met another officer in the United States Army who had a bigger, more genuine smile than the officer who took my name.

But when he glanced down at the paper and saw my signature, he frowned. “Son,” he said, “an army chaplain will help you learn how to write properly. Some orders are spoken, but some are written down. One day you may even be giving orders. Consequently, you have to be able to read and write in order to be a good soldier.”

He added my paper to his pile, put a stone on top of it, then wrote something down on another slip of paper and handed it to me. He said I was to give it to a Sergeant Henry at Fort Robinson, out a ways past town. He jerked his head to his left, as if to point out a dusty road full of wagon ruts and still caked with ice.

“Thank you, sir!” I said.

He just smiled. I reached out my hand for him to shake, but it was obvious the conversation was done. I looked at that scrap of paper fluttering like a wounded bird under that stone, and wondered if it was me trying to get out. I could feel the weight of it on my chest.

I glanced at the officer again. Who was he? He never told me his name. It might’ve been Death, I don’t know. Death probably don’t need to ever give his name. The business of giving belongs to other folks. Death’s in the business of taking. Whoever that officer was, he took me that day, and I been a soldier ever since.

Most soldiers when they’re awake are worrying bout living, but maybe when they sleep they dream a little, like me, wondering who it was that took their names. Back then I thought, Whatever happens, wherever I get sent and whoever I run into, I hope it won’t be personal. Cause if Daddy’s right, and it ain’t personal, some farm boy might miss and make it a little easier for me to get that pension.

I don’t think that it was war got my brother killed, or others like him. Like Daddy said, probably his luck run out and he found himself at the wrong end of some field, but I don’t think it was iron that killed him. It was freedom. He didn’t have it, and he wanted it. He was willing to die for it, and he did. And when he died, he was finally free. But he could’ve stayed a slave in South Carolina and got that kind of freedom.

If it’s true that there are different kinds of freedom, then there must be different kinds of slavery. One kind means somebody chases you, catches you, and puts you in chains. Then there’s the kind they got in Nebraska. It’s the kind you gotta sign up for.

I
had enlisted the day before, and I had the uniform on now, that bit of blue. I remember the sun being hot on the heavy wool, and I remember feeling different somehow. The difference wasn’t just how the new clothes felt on my skin but how I felt in them, which surprised me. I had to admit, that uniform was different from any set of clothes I’d ever worn.

Maybe this feeling showed, or maybe it was just that blue respectability stiff with too much starch, but the townspeople of Fort Robinson seemed to see something that was new, too. They looked at me now like they really saw me, not like yesterday. Then I was just a drifter, a colored one at that.

Everything before seemed like a dream someone else was dreaming, and right now I was waking up into a life I never knew I had. I walked slow and uncertain down the dusty main street of that dusty town in the hot sun. All the towns in Nebraska seemed like they were eager to go to dust. I was just walking, and people were watching me, but it wasn’t bad. It was good. I was wearing a soldier’s uniform and felt like it tied me to every other man wearing the same uniform, and that all of us represented something bigger than any of us alone.

So the walking I did that day was different from any I’d done before, even on the sidewalk in Spartanburg. I was now a private in the Ninth Cavalry, and I had been ordered to town by Sergeant Henry to get supplies for the barracks. We’d taken a wagon into town, and the sergeant told me to start walking back to the fort because he and the others needed more time. They would pick me up on the road.

“Don’t worry, Private!” Sergeant Henry had laughed. “We won’t forget you, but after all that walkin you’ve done, this won’t seem like nothin at all!”

I had a feeling I wouldn’t see that wagon anywhere on the road back to Fort Robinson, and I was right. At first I was angry, but then I started to find it funny that my first duty for the army involved walking. I was so lost in those thoughts, you know I was bound for trouble, and trouble found me. He was heading out as I was heading in, and I walked into him right in the shadows of the Fort Robinson gate. As I stood there on the doorstep to my new life, dazed and my head smarting, Trouble was glaring at me and rubbing his chin. He was a big colored man, about six foot five, in a blue uniform with three yellow stripes on his sleeve. He was around the size of my father.

“Sorry, sir!” I said, like I would have said to Daddy.

“Sorry!” spat Trouble. “Sorry!” he said again. “Private, is that all you say to a sergeant when you walk into him?”

“No sir,” I coughed, “no sir, I just, I mean, I’m
really
sorry, sir, I just wasn’t payin attention.”

Sergeant Trouble didn’t say anything for a while, just looked me over good, and then something in his look seemed to soften a bit.

“When did you enlist, boy?” he asked.

I answered promptly, “Yesterday, sir. Yesterday afternoon.”

“Well, well,” the sergeant said, “it shows, boy, it shows. But I’m a forgiving man, so I won’t hold it against you. What’s your name, Private?”

“Yancy, sir,” I answered.

“Yancy,” he echoed. “What kind of name is that?”

I’d never been asked that, so I thought before answering.

“It’s my name, sir,” I stated flatly, “and the name of my family.”

“Don’t mean no offense,” he offered, “but knowing your name is the beginning of knowing you better. It tells me something.”

He paused and then asked, “So what was that tune you were humming when you walked into me?”

I blinked. “Sir,” I asked, “what tune?”

He looked at me, his eyes getting bigger. “You were humming something, son,” he said, “and whatever it was I couldn’t recognize it, which means you need help. A soldier who can’t properly carry a tune probably can’t carry other things either.”

I’d never heard that before either.

Then a thought seemed to come to him, and he added, “As a matter of fact, I have something for you.”

Now I was more surprised. I had just acted like a fool with this man, so what could he have for me that was any good? Trouble reached down into a bag he had on with “U.S.” stamped on the outside. It had a worn leather shoulder strap that looked busted in too many places to hold up, but the bag was still holding on, probably terrified of letting go.

“Yancy,” he continued, “you’re just the sort that should have something like this, so I’m goin to give it to you!”

Trouble was holding some kind of musical instrument. It looked like a flute. It was made of wood and straight, with an opening at both ends, the mouthpiece tapered and very worn, while the other end was just a hollow tube. The end that was tapered had a carved figure on top of it that looked like a buffalo.

“That’s real nice of you, sir!” I managed to say. “I only enlisted yesterday, and to be honest, I wasn’t expectin any favors, especially a gift on my first day as a soldier. No sir. Why me?”

Sergeant Trouble didn’t answer at first. He looked round as if he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He seemed uncomfortable, like his uniform didn’t fit and he was trying to squirm out of it, but at the same time trying to behave like nothing was out of place.

“Well,” Trouble said very slowly, his eyes narrowed as he leaned in toward me, squinting slightly, “you look musical.” He just about whispered it.

Now that was the strangest thing I’d ever heard. To tell a complete stranger he looks musical . . . it sounded like the beginning of a conversation I once had with a scoundrel from Mississippi, a colored man who also offered something he didn’t own but wanted me to have.

“Are you from Mississippi, sir?” I asked.

That simple question took the wind out of Trouble so sudden that all he could say was one word, “Jackson.” Then he asked, “How did you know I was from Mississippi?” He seemed suspicious now.

“Just a guess, sir. No offense meant. But go ahead, please tell me bout that flute.” I thought it was best to change the subject.

“I’ll do that,” he said after a bit, “but why don’t we move away from this gate and sit for a bit under that tree over there?” He indicated which tree with a nod of his head and began to walk in that direction, and I followed him. I was curious bout where this was heading.

He didn’t start talking right off, but seemed to gather his thoughts, and as he did, his eyes seemed to lose focus. Then he began talking in a slower, quieter voice, clenching and unclenching his right hand. Talking like he couldn’t help himself.

“It began at sunup. I was riding behind the second lieutenant, and the rest of the men were behind me as we moved down the slope toward the river. It was almost cold enough to see the horses’ breath, and they were breathing so loud, I knew we’d wake up the village before it was time. I remember the sun seemed far away, and the heat of it even farther. I heard
Draw saber!
and then the ring of steel sliding out of steel. It seemed louder than the river.