Gloryland (22 page)

We stood there so long that people outside started to come in, thinking it was all over, and that broke the tension. Dunn slowly lowered his weapon as they came in, peeking over shoulders to see what was left of the excitement.

Statements were taken, but no one asked us anything. Bill Dunn told his story. You could read it in the
Gazette
a few days later. We never went back to that saloon, we found other places in town that didn’t care what color you were as long as your money was American.

I can’t forget that day, but no one asked me my opinion. I guess I didn’t have one. Some of the cavalrymen who were there followed the story for a while. Luckily Ben Bane survived his injury, but the criminal charges against Bill Dunn were eventually dropped, as there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting. There was just William Dunn and a saloon full of colored soldiers.

W
e had posts up in the high country, wooden shelters lost under the blue of that sky. They were small and seemed way too small when I first saw one. There was grain in a little shed next to the post, and hay too. There were cracks in the walls to let the heat out and the wind in. Those cracks worked pretty well. The floor was packed dirt that didn’t want to stay packed. The ceiling was rows of cedar slats with pitch in between to discourage rain and snow.

When you walked in, you saw a table and a lamp on the table and a ledger beside the lamp. You wrote down what had happened before you came inside, things that had gone wrong on that patrol and things that had gone right. If your mule or horse was looking thin, well, you wrote that down. If someone’s mount lost a shoe or an animal had colic, you wrote that, or if you were low on grain, or if a red fir had fallen across the trail, you wrote that down too.

There were so many things you wrote down, like a broken halter, a latigo fraying on your saddle, the bit your horse was trying to spit out as if it could spit out what it didn’t want to swallow . . . yeah, write it down, write it all down. Prove that you can write, prove that you can follow orders, but don’t say that, just write down what the lieutenant wants to hear. Good news, cause bad news makes the man unhappy. Officers like good news. Write it all down. But I remember things that never got on paper, things you couldn’t put onto paper, cause it would be asking too much of something so weak as paper.

Should I have put down the anger burning in the eyes of that gentleman from San Francisco who didn’t appreciate colored soldiers stopping him from going where he needed to go? No, I didn’t write
that down. Anyway it wasn’t anger, it was what anger sits on top of and keeps hidden. The contempt in his voice, like he was talking to someone who didn’t even have the right to talk back, something lower than a mule, only mules ain’t low even if some people think they are. How do I put that down in the ledger sitting on a table by a lamp in a one-room shack under a red fir in the cold bright mountains, how could I write that?

You’d think that with tall trees leaning down like giants and speaking in whispers, with the wind blowing all the time and so much sky leaning over the trees leaning over me, with all that, you’d think there wouldn’t be room left in my head for that fool in his nice suit looking down on me from a height of more than thirty years. Cause that’s how much time has passed since that day and me writing it down. But a man can always make room in his head for foolishness.

That morning was a bright sun, a bitter wind, and trees sounding lonesome. It was the last day of a patrol, and we were just a few miles from Soda Springs, Corporal Bingham and Private McAllister trailing behind me. As we headed down the rocky trail, I saw a horseman below me heading up.

You could tell the man had money by the way he rode. It was strange, putting so much effort into something that didn’t matter at all out here. Even his horse, a big shiny bay, had an attitude. I swear that animal was looking down on my mule, which wasn’t easy considering we had the higher ground, but when I got a closer look, I could tell right off the horse was just following orders. I hate it when people mistreat their animals.

“Who are you?” the man sputtered, and, “What is the meaning of this?”

We had stopped him right in the middle of the trail just to say hello, just to ask if he was enjoying the country he was riding through and advise that he go cautiously. It was meant to be civil and pleasant, but some people got a manner that whips pleasant right on the butt, so you got to work to get pleasant in the right mood again.

“Well, sir,” I must’ve said, “we’re soldiers, as you can see, and we have an obligation to say hello to folks, and you a visitor and all, so it seemed right to—”

“To stop me from my business, is that what you were going to say?” he cut in, and now his face was red, and there were veins in his neck that looked like they didn’t want to be in his neck anymore, like they was about to burst any time. I never met anyone, before or since, who looked and sounded like they could be killed by a “hello,” but here he was in front of me, and there was no way round him and his problem.

“No sir,” I said. “It’s just we’ve had a few fires round here from campfires that haven’t been put out proper. So I was only saying hello, and respectfully was going to ask you to take care with your fires, sir.” I ended there cause it looked like he was going to die from what was boiling inside him.

“Now you listen to me,
soldier
,” and he said
soldier
like it was a curse, like it was the nastiest thing a man could say to another man, a thing you’d say to someone who’d spat on you. It was something hard, cold, and mean the way he said it, but all he did was call me what I was.

“I don’t know who you people are or who you think you are, but it’s obvious you have never been taught the proper way to address a gentleman!” he said in a rush. The words came out like bullets fired with the intent to maim or kill, but afterward I was still sitting there on my horse, and Corporal Bingham was still there, and the private too.

Then Bingham, who was behind me, did something I’ve never forgotten. He started to laugh. First it was kind of low, like thunder so far away you imagine it ain’t really there, and then it began to grow, and there was no doubt as it rose into peal after peal of genuine hilarity that my trooper was just laughing and laughing at the poor man!

And if that rich man had looked like he was about to bust before, now he was truly giving way in his shoulders and at his neck, yes
indeed, he was about to blow. Then Bingham stopped laughing and said softly, “Sir, the sergeant here was just tryin to say hello, but you just actin like he’s been pissin on you the whole time, so it seems to me you the one who’s behavin poorly.”

He said it calm as calm could be, like he always said that sort of thing to white people.

Now the white man did explode.

“What is your name, boy? How . . . how
dare
you speak to me with such a tone!” His voice was like a loud growl, but it held too much contempt for the truthful sound an animal makes. The mix of hate and fear in his voice I’d heard all my life, as a child in Spartanburg and in the army too, but it sounded funny here under the great trees, like it was lost.

I turned around and said, “Bingham,” quiet enough that the gentleman couldn’t hear but my corporal could. Could hear in my voice that he was on the edge, that we were all on the edge, and considering that none of us could fly, I didn’t appreciate him pushing us over on account of this fool here.

Bingham looked at me, and I could tell he was considering his choices, which were few, and then he looked up to the sky as if God had something to say, which he probably did. It’s always easier to hear God when you’re about to die. I don’t know if God spoke to Bingham, but the man came to some kind of decision.

“Sir,” Bingham said to the visitor, saying it slow. Even slower, he took out his Colt with his right hand, casually resting his forearm on the pommel of his saddle with the revolver visible, but pointing down. “You don’t have a right to call me nigger.”

It had been quiet since the white man’s outburst, but now I could hear the horses breathing and the red firs around us creaking, and I could see that man seeing us for the first time with the blue hardness he used for eyes, how they looked at Bingham’s revolver without focusing on it.

“Soldier,” he said carefully, “I didn’t call you any such thing. Don’t be putting words in my mouth!”

“No sir,” Bingham corrected him, still speaking soft and slow. “You called me a nigger, you called us all niggers, and maybe you didn’t use that word, but those words you did use, well, they added up to nigger. I may not be an educated man, and I know there’s much in this world I’ll never understand, but one thing I know is when I been called a nigger—”

I broke in. “Excuse me, mister, what is
your
name, sir?” While Bingham spoke, the man had been looking round at all of us with those cold eyes, but as he turned toward me, he seemed to be considering something he hadn’t thought of before. Maybe he was thinking how we were all alone out here in the middle of nowhere.

“My name is unimportant,” he answered sourly.

“All right, Mr. Unimportant,” I began, “it appears you’ve mistaken Corporal Bingham and the rest of us for niggers, and to be honest, I can understand how that happened. I mean, the sun is bright and hot, but here we are in the shade of these beautiful trees—you know they’re red fir? Well, I guess you just couldn’t make out our uniforms with all the glare and shadows, isn’t that right? I mean, you couldn’t tell we were soldiers, and that we’re armed and all, and you probably didn’t know that we have the authority to stop anyone at any time for any reason. You couldn’t see all that cause of the sun and shade, so you just thought we were men who had no business stoppin such an important man as yourself.

“But now, sir, I think you clearly see your mistake, just as clearly as you see the corporal’s desire to use that revolver. And I hope you can discern—now, ain’t that a fine word? The chaplain taught me all about
discern
—so I’m hopin you can discern how eagerly the corporal’s waitin for me to give the order. Cause that’s how the army is, you can’t just do somethin without orders.

“So, Mr. Unimportant,” I finished up, “I haven’t quite decided what order to give the corporal here. Do you have any suggestions?”

Mr. Unimportant fidgeted a bit in his saddle, looked up at the sun as if for advice, then pulled out a red silk handkerchief from the waist pocket of the vest he wore under his coat. Holding it to his face,
he cleared his throat before speaking, cleared it of all the words he wanted to say but couldn’t get up the nerve to say.

“Sergeant,” he said in a low voice, like he was talking to a dog that he suddenly realized had teeth and wasn’t friendly, “I think you should ask your corporal to put his gun away because I meant no harm, and I really must be going.” And then he added quickly, “With your permission, of course.”

I waited a minute, holding his eyes.

“Well, now, Mr. Unimportant,” I said, “how can I refuse such courtesy? You may proceed on your way, sir, but remember that Yosemite is under the protection of the Ninth Cavalry. That means colored soldiers, and we have a job, no, a duty that we do our best to fulfill. And that means makin certain everyone understands that huntin’s not allowed, and grazin livestock up here’s not allowed, and leavin your campfire for the rain and snow to put out is not allowed.

“As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of things not allowed, and one of them is somethin you just did, but you admitted your mistake, and I’m happy bout that cause we avoided havin to ride through some rough country. You understand what I’m sayin, sir?”