Caleb (26 page)

47

Caleb kept looking for work, but nothing tempted him enough to leave the comfortable life at the Rosemont Arms and the little community around it. There was too much to look at in New York City to ever see it all. Caleb even figured out a way to gain entrance to every part of the city. He wrapped a small box carefully and neatly wrote on a label the name “Mr. Boyd Jardine” and an address in the area he wanted to see. This invariably got him through the legion of policemen, doormen, and other uniformed functionaries who seemed to have no other purpose in life but to keep him within half a mile of the Rosemont Arms. As an extra touch, Caleb neatly penciled “By Hand” on the package. Sometimes Caleb would even seek out a policeman and thrust the package before his eyes with a suppliant “Suh?” Invariably, the officer would point an imperious arm in the right direction. To get back home, Caleb would readdress the package to a location not far from the Rosemont. And he always carried, safe in an inner pocket, his freedom paper from Jardine. He’d heard of gangs of slave catchers working the city streets.

In this way, Caleb saw much of New York City. In his travels, he began to notice soldiers parading on the streets in the days and weeks after the surrender of Fort Sumter. In all parts of town, local militia and new units of volunteers blossomed with banners, drums, and brand-new uniforms, usually flourishing antiquated weapons. The Chelsea Volunteers, the Hunter College Dragoons, the Lexington Heights Zouaves, with their colorful, Arabian-looking uniforms, all flaunted their willingness to march south and conquer the stronghold of King Cotton.

Caleb had plenty of time to follow the progress of the war in the papers he read every day. He looked eagerly for mention of South Carolina, but saw none after the confrontation at Fort Sumter that started the whole thing. The battles started small, with relatively few casualties, but then in July at a place in Virginia called Bull Run came a major collision of the blue and the gray that resulted in over 4,800 casualties. Close to two-thirds of them were Union troops. It was the North’s greatest defeat of the war thus far. This was followed by battles at Hatteras Inlet, Ball’s Bluff, and Belmont, which resulted in the loss of more young lives but didn’t lead to a resolution. Lincoln juggled his generals, but failed to get the knockout punch he was looking for. The best thing you could call the war so far was a stalemate.

Restless and rootless, Caleb—his money dwindling—took a job as a stevedore unloading ships all night at docks on the Hudson River. This eased his financial situation and at the same time kept him off the streets, which were becoming even more unfriendly to a black face. Some New Yorkers who had lost loved ones in the war didn’t hesitate to blame the blacks. Several blacks were attacked by drunken groups of young men and boys. New York didn’t seem so safe to Caleb anymore, so he worked all night, slept all day, and was very careful in the evenings and on the weekends when he left the area around the Rosemont.

The remainder of 1861 passed seamlessly for Caleb. His work at the docks helped him grow stronger every day, but he had little use for his strength.

The new year started much the same, but then one Saturday near Washington Square, Caleb saw something he’d never seen before: a black man in an army uniform.

He was only a private, not very big and wearing a new blue uniform that did not fit, but he was definitely black, and the spectacle stopped Caleb cold.

“What are you looking at?” demanded the object of his attention.

“You,” said Caleb. “What are you supposed to be?”

“I’m not supposed to be anything,” the soldier said indignantly. “I
am
something. I’m a private in the Thirty-Ninth New York Black Volunteer Infantry. We’re quartered in that armory down there.” He pointed in the direction of a huge, grimy dark-brick building that looked like a medieval fortress.

“Tell me something, Mr. Private,” Caleb asked, “do army rules allow you to drink beer?”

“Is it Saturday? Yep, especially on Saturdays.”

“And is there any place near here that would sell a black man and his soldier friend a beer?”

“I think I can take you to one,” said the soldier.

The private, who turned out to be called Henry Todd, told Caleb that even before the war was very old, there had been talk that free blacks ought to play a part in liberating their subjugated brethren. Although there was some uneasiness about putting weapons in the hands of blacks, Negro units had tentatively begun to be recruited. Henry, who had previously held a position much like that offered to him by Miss Jenkins, although in a humbler establishment, was one of the first in Manhattan to step forward.

“They even gave us these uniforms,” Henry said once they were seated in a dungeonlike cellar room at a long wooden table. He wiped beer from his lips with a blue sleeve. “Of course, our rifles right now are old, but we’re going to get new ones soon. And they’re talkin’ about teaching the illiterate to read and write.”

“But you read, of course,” said Caleb.

“And write,” said Henry, taking another swallow of beer. “
And
cipher. Two and two is four.”

“So I have heard,” said Caleb.

“You know,” said Henry to his new friend, “you ought to think about joining up. You’re a big fella, not like most of us. You can see for yourself the uniform. The food’s okay, and the pay’s not bad for what you do.” He leaned confidentially toward Caleb. “Tell you God’s honest truth, Caleb, we don’t do much.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Caleb.

When they parted a couple of beers later, Todd suggested casually, “If you do sign up, mention my name. They know me in that office and it won’t hurt your chances.” And he told Caleb about the five-dollar bounty he would receive for recruiting Caleb.

“You can count on it,” said Caleb.

After another couple of days of thinking it over, Caleb walked down to the armory Henry had pointed out. The white sentry looked at him.

“What do you want, Sambo?”

Caleb ignored the insult. “Fellow named Henry told me you were looking for black soldiers.”

“You’re no soldier,” sneered the sentry.

“I might be,” said Caleb.

Reluctantly, the sentry allowed Caleb through the gate and pointed him toward an orderly room just off the brick parade ground that made up the core of the armory. On the parade ground, white noncommissioned officers were drilling platoons of black soldiers. Shrill voices and the stamping of heavy boots echoed in the vast space.

In the orderly room, another white soldier told Caleb to sit down, pointing at a rough wooden chair near the window. Caleb sat and thought about the army’s welcoming manner until a portly middle-aged man with three stripes on his blue sleeve came into the office, brushing crumbs from his impressive mustache.

“Sarge,” said the soldier, “this fella says he wants to sign up.”

The sergeant looked at Caleb with flat, appraising eyes.

“Papers?” he demanded.

“What kind of papers, sir?” Caleb asked.

“What kind of papers have you got?” the sergeant asked. “You can’t sign up without papers.”

“I’ve got a paper saying that I bought my freedom,” Caleb said. “Will that do?”

“Let’s see it.”

Caleb brought the precious document from its hiding place. The sergeant snatched it from his hand, whirled, and started walking into an inner office. But before he could get to the door, Caleb was in front of him blocking it.

“What do you want?” the sergeant demanded, looking up into Caleb’s determined face.

“Sergeant,” Caleb said quietly, “where that paper goes, I go. I don’t let it out of my sight.”

The sergeant tried to force Caleb out of his way but lacked the weight necessary. Caleb did not budge.

“Damn your black—” the sergeant exclaimed, backing off and raising a fist. When Caleb neither flinched nor moved, he lowered his arm and said over his shoulder, “Private, call the guard.”

“What seems to be the problem here, Sergeant?” asked a calm voice.

Caleb and the sergeant looked toward an officer just coming in from the parade ground. He was slim and soldierly, with a long mustache that curved on each side and an empty right coat sleeve neatly pinned up to the elbow.

“Major, this recruit is making difficulties,” said the sergeant. “He won’t—”

“I’m not a recruit yet, sir,” said Caleb. “And that piece of paper is precious. I don’t know where the sergeant was going with it, but if I lost it—”

The major looked Caleb over carefully, from his scarred face to the firm set of his feet on the rough planked floor. He listened to the Boston inflection in his voice. After a moment, he extended a hand. “I’ll take care of this matter, Sergeant Garrison.”

Garrison reluctantly surrendered the paper, raked Caleb with a look that had more promise than threat in it, and marched stiffly into an inner room.

“I’m Major Rogers,” the officer told Caleb, extending his left hand. “If you will come with me”—Rogers looked at Caleb’s paper—“Mr. Rivers. We can have a talk in private.” He led Caleb through a maze of dark hallways and finally into a room with a barred window looking out over the parade ground. The commands of the drill sergeants were just audible. “Won’t you have a seat,” Rogers said, directing Caleb to one of a pair of chairs on either side of a small, round table. When Caleb was settled, the major seated himself and shouted for an orderly.

Major Rogers ordered two coffees from a white soldier and then turned to Caleb. “So, you want to be a soldier, Mr. Rivers?”

“Not very much, to be honest, sir,” said Caleb. “But there doesn’t seem to be much worth doing for a free black man in this city. I have to do something other than unload cargo ships all night.”

“Don’t you want to get revenge on those rebels who enslaved you?” the major asked.

“I was first a slave up in Boston,” Caleb pointed out. “They call it indentured servitude there, but it adds up to the same thing. Down south, they just carried on the good work. I was freed in the South.”

“So I see,” said Rogers, surveying Caleb’s precious paper. “I also see that you paid Mr. Jardine the impressive sum of five hundred and fifty dollars for your freedom. Do you mind if I ask how a slave accumulated that amount of money?”

“No,” Caleb said. He told the major briefly about the summer he’d spent prizefighting in the boxing shows and fairs of Kershaw County. He didn’t mention the poker game with Jardine.

“Most impressive,” said the major with a smile once Caleb had finished. “Did you always win?”

“More than I lost,” Caleb said modestly, “but it wasn’t the prize money that counted, but the side bets made by Mr. Jardine.”

“Mr. Jardine sounds like he was an excellent owner,” said the major.

“He improved as he went along,” said Caleb.

The orderly brought the coffee, and Major Rogers drank his in a quick gulp. “I’ve got to inspect the troops very soon, so time is short. Let’s get down to business.”

“All right,” said Caleb a bit warily.

“My job,” continued Rogers, “is to build one of the army’s first-ever combat-ready black units to fight this war. A lot depends on my success. So far, I’m not setting the world on fire. These New Yorkers, frankly, are not impressive. For a start, most of them stand about five foot nothing and weigh even less. And there’s not a whole lot of fighting spirit here that I’ve noticed.” The major slammed his palm down on the little table, jolting the coffee cups. “No, Mr. Rivers, I need young men like you to build a fighting unit to be proud of.”

He gestured toward his empty sleeve. “I’m not a whole lot of good as a fighter myself. I left this at Buena Vista. And I was right-handed, too,” he added ruefully. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t build an outfit able to disprove the general opinion that free blacks can’t or won’t fight. Do you see my problem?”

“Yes, sir,” said Caleb.

“From what you tell me, it sounds like you can fight. Can you ride?”

“Some.”

“Shoot?”

“Some.”

“It’s a long gamble,” Rogers said, “but have you had any experience with a saber?”

“Some,” said Caleb.

“By God,” said the major, pounding the table again, “I’ve got to have you, Mr. Rivers. What will convince you?”