The Color of Lightning (30 page)
“Jube, ask her for anything she might remember of the place and the time when she was taken.” Hammond lifted his head to the two children from behind his desk. “Did she ever have a birthday party?”
“A what, sir?”
“Ah, let’s see. That’s where you celebrate when you become a year older. Every year your parents make a cake, and put candles on it, and you get presents.”
Jube appeared very interested. “Are they supposed to do that?” “Well, some people do.”
“Well, I had better tell my mama.” Jube’s face took on a firm and censorious expression. “She never did that and here she is supposed to.”
Hammond laughed. “I didn’t mean to start a family quarrel.” “No, sir, but I will just tell her.”
“Yes, Jube, but just ask her if she ever had a birthday party.”
He wants to know if you remember when you were little if your mother and father had a sing and a dance and sweet bannock with lights on it for you when you became a year older.
Good Medicine stared flatly at Hammond for a moment with her open gray eyes. Then she said,
My mother and father had a sing and a feast and a dance all night when the time came when I was a woman.
No, he means your Tejano mother and father.
Oh, them.
Good Medicine bent her eyes to the carpet and tried
to remember. She had seen many people die, so the images that came to her of her Tejano mother and father lying on their faces dead, with stripped and bony skulls, and lakes of blood on the floor that quickly drained off down the cracks of the floorboards, did not bother her unduly. But then in her segmented and disjointed mem- ory came an image that attached itself to the Kiowa words
sweet bannock
and
lights on it.
These then became the English words
happy birthday to you,
which were particularly pleasing to her because they were sung like Kiowa words.
Good Medicine said,
There were some lights on it. Maybe this many.
She held up her hand and spread her fingers so the agent could un- derstand.
They sang a song.
Then, hesitantly, she began to sing.
Happi biltday to you, happi biltday.
Then the song faded away.
Hammond listened. His eyes grew wet. He walked to the win- dow and cleared his throat and stared out at the sifting branches of the trees along the creek and a milk cow grazing at the end of a rope. Then he turned back and smiled.
“Good, good. So she was five or six when she was taken. If she is fifteen now, it was ten years ago, in ’fifty-six. And it was down on the Sabinal River. I will look on a map but I think there are some settler communities down there. I will put a notice in whatever newspapers there are.” He turned to Jube. “Tell her she will not go hungry again. Tell her there will always be plenty of food for her. She need not worry.”
Jube repeated this. Even though he knew she was not afraid of going hungry, or of starvation. She was afraid of the slow death of confinement. Of being trapped inside immovable houses and stiff clothing. Of the sky shuttered away from her sight, herself hidden from the operatic excitement of the constant wind and the high spir- its that came when they struck out like cheerful vagabonds across the wide earth with all of life in front of them and unfolding and perpetually new. And now herself shut in a wooden cave. She could not go out at dawn alone and sing, she would not be seen and known by the rising sun.
W
B
r i t t wat che d fr o m
horseback as the soldiers ran the United States flag up the pole at Fort Belknap. It was the spring of 1867. The Stars and Stripes streamed out into the wind for the first time in seven years. It had taken the federal government
that long to reoccupy the Texas frontier forts.
It was a very windy day. The army band played “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the grit blowing around them. The trumpeters squinted their eyes shut, and the man with the tuba had his coat collar turned up. They had dust on their lips and the tips of their fingers. They stood resolutely in their blue wool ranks and blew on their instruments while the stone buildings of Fort Belknap appeared and disappeared in the clouded air; the barracks and the officers’ quarters and the stables, the granary and the workshops. The bandsmen turned from one side to another; with the wind and the snare drums they could hardly hear one another but fixed their eyes on the major with his baton who led them all to the final Glory Glory Hallelujah.
Those standing around were men and women from the outlying ranches and young cowboys and scouts and those who had contin-
ued to live at Fort Belknap even after it was abandoned by Union troops. They kept their personal loyalties to themselves. They did not cheer nor did they call out derisive remarks. The men in broad hats leaned their elbows back on the corral rails, boys sat on the roof of the powder magazine, staring silently. The wagonmaker stood in the doorway of the wagon shop, and when it was over he turned back inside. His name was Nathan Finch. A painted board over the wide stone doorway said
Nate Finch Wagonmaker Wheelwright
Britt followed him into the shop and ran his hand over the heavy planks of Osage orange. It was also called bois d’arc. Bodark. The wood was an orange-yellow, neatly fitted together to form the truck and the running gear, the axles and tongue hounds. The wheels were made of hickory aged four years in the bark and brought from Arkansas. Britt had sent off for the fifth wheel, a single-perch, short turn. This was the steel half-circle that allowed the front axle to swivel one way and another, and Britt had ordered the best to be had from Houston.
The wheelwright and his helper lifted the 150-pound wheel onto the lathe to bore out the hub box. The wheelwright stepped on the pedal and the wheel began to spin. He left the pedal to the assistant and pressed the bore into the hickory hub. It was one of the tall rear wheels, fifty-four inches. The front ones were thirty-seven inches. Sawdust spun out of the hub box, hot and golden.
Britt took three pennies out of his pocket and walked over to the workbench by the forge and dropped them on the splintered wood. He took up the bottle of hot sauce where the wagonmaker had left his lunch and poured the red mixture over the pennies.
“Britt, you going to eat them pennies?” The wheelwright stopped the spin and then he and the apprentice lifted the wheel off and turned it to the other side.
“No, sir, Mr. Finch. They’re for my boy.” Britt waited a mo- ment and then picked them up in his hand and dipped them in the
quenching vat and rinsed them off. He dried the brightened pennies on his pants. The copper was now brilliant and gleaming. He put them in his pocket and wiped his hands on his shirt. “You just think what that stuff is doing to your stomach.”
“I like it.” The wheelwright lifted another wheel to the lathe. They had two more to go. Britt regarded the shining felloe plates, all the new metal gear that held the wheels and the wagon itself together. The iron rims were already on the wheels. They would not spin correctly on the lathe were they not shod. This was his best wagon, new-made from tongue to tailgate. He had purchased another used one from Elizabeth Fitzgerald. He had the good big bays and then Duke and a borrowed mare, and Cajun for his saddle horse. With this wagon loaded with ten thousand pounds, about four tons, he would have to use all four horses on the one wagon. If he was carrying something lighter—army blankets, the uniform issue, Indian trade goods—he could put two horses to a wagon and use both.
“There’s a lot of work here now,” said Finch. He spoke in a half- shout over the noise of the boring bit and the racket of the revolving wheel. Their voices boomed in the hollows of the stone building. “I’ve been told the army may keep me on.”
“Well, good,” said Britt.
“Now, the officers are going to need their washing done. Your wife might find a lot of work here too.”
Britt didn’t answer for a moment. Then he lifted his head to Nathan Finch. “She’s not well,” he said. “And I don’t want to see another man’s drawers hanging on my clothesline.”
“Well, excuse me,” said Finch. Then to his assistant, “Take aholt and stop that shit-eating grin.”
He and the boy took hold of both sides of the third wheel and lifted it off and then heaved up the fourth one.
“This wagon, it would take a lot of knocking around,” said the wheelwright. “Like Indian attacks.” Finch pressed in with the bore and the drill spun and bit its way into the hub box. “But they say you got a friend there with the Indians.”
“My time will come,” said Britt. “Friends with one Indian ain’t friends with all of them.”
“Yes, well, some people are just lucky.”
Britt listened to the tone of the man’s words and didn’t say any- thing. He put his hand in his pocket and jingled the pennies. Then he said, “I’m going to find Paint and Dennis.”
“I ain’t going nowhere,” said the wheelwright.
Britt stood outside and watched the regimental band straggling back to the barracks with their instruments in hand. Troopers of the new black Ninth Cavalry had been dismissed and were housing their guidons in the long leather cases. They walked back to the stables, leading their horses. All bays. Brown shoe polish had been used on those horses with white blazes or socks and so they all looked alike. He walked on toward Nance’s store. The store was made of upright pickets and a sheet-metal roof like a big cowshed.
He saw Paint Crawford sitting at one of the little wooden tables out in front of the store with a piece of paper on the table between his hands and a quill pen being held out to him by a black man in uniform.
“No, you don’t, Paint,” said Britt. “Put that pen down before I break your arm.”
Paint looked up. The random splatters of pink-white skin across one side of his face and on his hands made him look as if he were disappearing piecemeal. His eyes grew round when he saw Britt.
“Aw, Britt,” he said.
“I’ll be damned if you join up,” said Britt. “Put it down.”
Jube ran up to his father from the parade ground where he had been watching the black soldiers. Britt took hold of the boy’s sleeve.
“Son, look, I have three pennies for you.”
Jube took them and regarded them in all their brilliant copper gleaming in his hand.
“Thank you, Pa.” He shut his hand over them. He looked up at the black sergeant with his neat uniform and his shining cap-bill, the yellow cavalry insignia on his shoulder.
“Is he army?”
“Yes, I am,” said the recruiting sergeant. “Regular army. Not scouts. Not orderlies. Regular soldiers.”
Jube shut his fingers around the coins in a tight fist. Black men were now soldiers too to chase after the Koiguh, people like Kiisah and Gonkon and Aperian Crow. He did not know how to think about this.
“You see,” the sergeant said. He tapped his pants stripes. “Yellow is for cavalry, and a blue stripe is for infantry, and a red stripe would be for artillery.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jube. He looked at the ground and then up at his father. “Can I buy something now?”
“Yes. Stand at the door and ask Mr. Nance for three cents’ worth of whatever you want. Horehound, licorice. He has peppermints.”
The black sergeant stood back with his arms crossed and re- garded Britt. Behind him, sitting at another table, was a white officer who swayed very slightly in a battered kitchen chair. The white officer had a sweet and heart-shaped face. The hair under his brimmed hat was fine, drifting, and reddish. His eyes were very round, like doorknobs. A glass of Nance’s whiskey sat in front of him.
“There is no life like the army life,” the white officer said. “The biscuits are mighty fine.”
The sergeant said, “Sir, I am Sergeant Elijah Earl. This is Major Pinney. Charles Pinney.”
Britt nodded, once, to the white officer and then turned back to Earl. “How do you do. My name is Britt Johnson.”
“Delighted. Now, I have no idea why this man should not join an all-black cavalry unit and become a credit to his race.” He uncrossed his arms. “Do you have something against the military?”
“He can do that later,” said Britt. “Right now he’s my driver. We are starting a freighting outfit.” Britt stared at Paint until he finally laid the pen down without signing.
“I myself have done very well in the army,” said the sergeant. “There are advantages.”
The white officer nodded and stared at the glass and finally lift- ed it. He drank it off. “I was sort of blown up a little bit at Vicksburg myself,” he said. “Other than that, I enjoy military life. Don’t we, Susan?”
“Susan is his dog,” said Sergeant Earl, and cleared his throat. Britt saw a fluffy beige tail lifted up and down politely under the table.
“Paint, you better come with me,” said Britt. “You ain’t signing nothing.”
“All right, Britt.” Paint’s shoulders fell. “It sounded so good.” Jube ran up to his father and tugged at his shirtsleeve. “What?” said Britt.
“Mr. Nance says I got to go around to the back door and ask.” “Then go around to the back door.” Britt felt the flush rise to
his head. The saddle-colored skin at his cheekbones and then at the tips of his ears. But you had to choose your fights. This was not one Britt was going to choose at the moment. Jube bit his lower lip and then turned away.
Elijah Earl lifted one hand in the air. “Well, Paint can always reconsider.” Paint stood up and walked away a few steps and then turned back. Elijah Earl turned to Britt, moving his entire body in one motion, and removed his billed cap, wiped his head, and put it on again. “Do you have other children?”
“Yes,” said Britt. “A girl besides. Why?”
“I am starting a colored school. We’ll hold it at the fort here. So there’s no trouble.” He paused. “In the storehouse at the east end. I have permission from the colonel.”
Britt lifted his eyebrows and then nodded. “My wife wanted to teach at one time.”
“Excellent!” Elijah Earl’s severe, lengthy face brightened. “She can certainly help teach.”
Paint stood behind Britt and waved his hands at Sergeant Earl and shook his head.
No, no
. Earl refused to look at him.
