My Name's Not Friday (23 page)

I’ve already seen things I wouldn’t have believed, and none of ’em were good. Neither are Drudge or Jermaine. I try to impress em by bragging. ‘When I was at the river, I heard Whistling Dick.’

Jermaine lifts himself from the floor, enough that I get a glimpse of his face in the dim light. ‘You reckon you heard that gun?’

I nod.

‘Nah. You’re lying. If you’d heard Whistling Dick, you’d be dead. Everybody says so.’

‘And you ain’t dead, are you?’ Drudge says, looking at me like I’m nothing.

‘No.’ I say quietly, feeling like I want to be. ‘I ain’t dead.’

In the morning we take the cart up to the camp. Drudge is driving, sat next to the doctor, and I’m in the back with Jermaine. We’ve been told to smile as we go through the camp and we do. Sometimes we wave at the soldiers and the doctor lifts his hat and shouts out, ‘Good day to you, sir,’ to anyone who meets his eye. He says it’s all part of the service.

The first tents we come to are full of contraband. Women are cleaning pots and pans or cooking outside makeshift shelters, and their kids walk alongside our cart with empty buckets, on their way to fetch water. We pass a line of men stood waiting for work, though it’s too late in the day for ’em to get anything that’ll pay well.

Ahead of us, a hillside of white tents stands out of range of the guns and we take the cart through the middle till we’re out the other side and closer to the front. We set up a table and chair for the doctor where he’ll spend the day canvassing for trade by handing his cards out to soldiers who’ll pin ’em to the front of their jackets, so that whoever finds their bodies will return ’em directly to us.

It ain’t raining like it was yesterday. There’s even a bit of sun now and then to cheer the place up. ‘Take the litter, Samuel,’ the doctor tells me. ‘Take it and go with Drudge and Jermaine. Watch them work and see what they do. They are highly skilled operatives in the field, so take good notice of them and they will teach you well.’

Drudge thrusts two long poles at my chest. ‘Carry this.’ I take one end and Jermaine takes the other. Drudge leads us through the camp, keeping out the way of horses or carts that come our way. Between the straight white lines of tents I glimpse soldiers doing drills, and elsewhere they’re sitting on stools, sometimes cleaning rifles or washing their faces from small tin bowls. No one seems to be doing much fighting, though every now and then there’s still an explosion, a crack and boom that shakes the air, then comes back to us off the hillside before rumbling away into the distance. The first one makes me flinch but then I know better than to show it.

Past the last tent, the ground opens out into a wash of mud that rises more steeply to the ridge. We pass a picket line of horses. At the first outpost Drudge nods to a sentry as we walk through a defence that’s been made by piling cotton bales two deep and two high, then driving stakes down into the ground behind ’em. The next line of defence has a row of mortars dug into a bank and the guns look like little black pigs with their heads in a trough.

We move out into open ground and I know we’ve reached the battlefield when we quicken our pace across the wet mud. ‘Hurry,’ orders Drudge and Jermaine thrusts the poles forward. I got to skip along to keep up. There ain’t no trees here, and the only cover comes from rocks too big to move. I see the first dead soldier after we’ve gone a hundred yards, but then a cloud moves aside and the sunlight picks ’em out for me, a whole field of scattered bodies, each one a patch of blue against the black-brown earth.

Drudge takes in all of ’em with a quick eye as he leads us forward, moving lightly over the broken ground. Sometimes he changes direction and we follow him, turning the litter sharply to the right or left, getting close enough to see whether a man’s got stripes and is worth our while.

‘This one could be all right.’ We stop at a fella lying face down and Drudge turns him over with a foot. It gives me the shivers, thinking it might be Hubbard or Gerald and that’s stupid, but it’s what I think.

Drudge kneels quickly. He undoes a button on the man’s tunic, puts his hand inside and pulls out a pencilled sketch of a girl – a sweetheart. He turns it over and I see her name, Louise Caburn, and a date, 1860. Drudge thrusts it under my nose. ‘Is that an address?’ I shake my head. ‘Thought not,’ he says then drops the letter and pushes past me.

Another fifty yards on and the bodies are more frequent. Drudge thinks we could cover more ground by splitting up and he directs me away to his left. ‘Take that side over there. Look for officers. Check for an address; otherwise they ain’t no good to us. Pick the clean ones too. Understand? They can’t have no damage to their face unless it looks heroic.’

I leave the litter with Jermaine and start out on my own, making for three corpses that lie close to one another until I
see they ain’t right. There’s not enough of em left. I can tell before I get too close. So I change direction, watching where I tread as I try and pick my way through the blood and bones of battle. I look back across my shoulder, unsure how far I should wander away from the others. Jermaine drags the litter over the stretch of wet earth between the two of us. He’s turning clods of mud with his foot, looking bored while he waits for one of us to find a customer.

And then I see another possibility. This one’s lying spread across a low flat stone with open arms, like he’s inviting me over. I go closer. His clean-shaved chin looks promising and he’s still got his rifle, it’s right there by his side, and I reckon that’s a good sign too, so I hurry across to him. He’s got a young face but I can’t see a wound on it. He’s just perfect. I step slowly toward him, coming close enough that I could reach out and touch the glinting buttons on his tunic. He’s got a cutlass too, still hanging from his belt, with a twist of gold braid falling across it like a ponytail.

I edge closer, too scared to touch him, hoping a letter will just drop at my feet from the pocket of his tunic.

Jermaine shouts out, ‘You got one?’ and I turn and shout back, ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

I step up onto the rock, putting my boot near the man’s shoulder. There’s no need to be afraid of him. There’s no way that he can hurt me. But I don’t like looking him in the face and I turn my head aside as I reach out a hand and slip it inside his breast pocket. I feel a wallet and remove it, stepping quickly back off the rock and turning my back on the man before I open it up. First thing I see is a five-dollar bill. I fold it quickly, twice over, and kneel to put it down the inside of my shoe. Now, that’s stealing, I know it is, and it don’t matter if the fella’s dead, it’s still not right – but if I
don’t do it, someone else will. Probably Drudge or Jermaine. The doctor for sure. And five dollars is a lot of money.

I make the sign of the cross, whispering, ‘Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned,’ then look round to see if anyone saw me do it. Jermaine ain’t even watching me. He’s looking the other way, out towards the enemy line.

I open the wallet back up, searching for a letter and I find one, not in an envelope like Drudge said, but that don’t matter because there’s an address across the top. I read the start of it, ‘To my darling mother, if you are reading this then I fear the worst …’

I don’t want to read more but I’m suddenly excited. ‘I got one, Jermaine.’ I wave at him across the battlefield. ‘Over here. I think I got a good one.’

All the fear I had is gone as I walk back to the soldier, stepping up onto the rock as though we’ve just become friends. It’s then I hear a faint, faraway wheeze. It’s so quiet I can hardly hear it, but it turns my blood cold. I got a strange sense he’s whistling at me. I look at his lips as my own mouth turns dry. And the whistling gets louder. I step back off the rock, stumbling down onto a knee as I turn, cos he’s alive for sure – I know he is. He’s alive and whistling at me. He’s whistling like a steam train and I turn in terror to Jermaine, but Jermaine ain’t where he was; he’s lying flat on the ground with his hands over his head. He’s screaming, ‘It’s Whistling Dick! It’s Whistling Dick!’

And then the breath of God blows through me to my bones.

I am not alone.

They touch me.

They pick me up and put me down.

They put their hands upon my head.

The Devil took me for himself. He must have. Found me right there, under the sole of his boot, and dug me up again.

Now he’s in my head with needles and he’s stabbing at the good bits so it hurts like hell.

Sometimes the Devil smells of grass, but mostly he smells of whiskey.

Hell is full of people. Talking. I don’t know why.

I don’t know what they’re saying.

You wouldn’t believe how many there are here. All the people – screaming.

I remember a cabin in the woods. The scratch of squirrels in the branches. The hoot of an owl overheard at dusk.

There are frogs close by. Croaking. They’re all up inside my head, smelling of whiskey. All stretched out in a window, sleeping.

Though mostly I’m alone.

A man belts out ‘Home, Sweet Home’. He’s singing out of tune. Croaking. When he finishes he starts the same song over again.

Sometimes he sings,
Hold on, Abraham, I’m going down to Dixie.

One time I heard the church bell ringing. Four chimes. And all of ’em for me.

I seen a pond that’s frozen over.

Men come and cut the ice with big knives.

Some of ’em got saws.

They’re up inside my head, all of ’em, with their big knives, cutting the ice into blocks to take it away on carts.

And they have their hands up on my face.

There’s a man I hear more often than the others, but mostly I’m alone.

He says, ‘Come in. Thank you for coming.’

There’s another man. A voice I don’t remember. He says, ‘I can’t stay long. Prop him up and let’s take a look.’

They take hold of me. Turn me right side up. Touch my shoulders. Touch my legs. He puts his hands on my head.

‘The danger is the other eye.’

‘Yes, you told me.’

‘Deprived of the loss of one, the other will often react in sympathy and swell. It can become diseased. Be a shame to lose ’em both.’

The men unwind my head and dazzle me with a light that puts out my eye.

I don’t want to look, but they make me. They pull the lid apart and I see a man with a telescope. He’s staring right at me. He puts his finger in my cheek till it comes through the other side and it’s only when I’m screaming that he takes it out and winds my head back round the right way.

He says I’ll live.

‘“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals. Despise riches. Give alms to everyone that asks. Stand up for the stupid and crazy. Devote your income and labor to others. Hate tyrants. Argue not concerning God. Have patience and indulgence toward the people. Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men. Go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families. Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year
of your life. Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book. Dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency, not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”’

When I open my eye, there’s a man.

A white man. A soldier.

He’s sitting on a chair a few feet from my head, reading out loud from a book. We’re in a white room.

That’s why I opened my eye.

To look at him.

Now I seen him, I shut it tight again.

When I look another time, he sees me. I know he does. He puts his book aside on the table by his chair and walks across to me, his heels and toes tip-tapping on the floorboards.

I got my eye tight shut before he gets to me.

He touches the part of my face that ain’t bandaged. Asks me, ‘How are you feeling?’

But I can’t speak.

I don’t want to, and even if I did, I couldn’t do it.

‘Does it still hurt?’ He has a kindly voice. Or so it seems. ‘We couldn’t spare the morphine for more than a few days, so I’ve been giving you whiskey to help with the pain.’ He laughs gently. ‘I think you’ve got a taste for it, but I intend to stop. The doctor tells me I should let you get used to
managing the pain on your own, and I suppose he’s right. Anyway, it’s pretty difficult to ignore a man who charges his prices.’

I open my eye. See his face and the ceiling to the side of his head, all turned upside down. The man looks older than his voice. He’s got some sort of a wild animal for a moustache and his hair rears up to one side, like I imagine how a wave might break onto a beach.

He says he don’t need me to talk. He tells me it’s too soon.

My eye is watering. If I blink, it’ll trickle down the side of my cheek like a river.

I’m just one great big eyeball – it’s like there ain’t nothing else of me at all – though if I concentrate I can feel the other parts of me. I touch my hip – put a finger on it, just to make sure I’m still all here. When I put a finger to my face it hurts like hell. And it don’t feel right.

When I turn my head I see the bed at the other end of the room where the soldier sleeps. I hear him breathing in the night just like Hubbard used to, the proper deep breath of a big man. He’s got a desk with books and papers. He’s got clothes hung up on rails and a trunk on the floor and there’s people who wait on him, day or night, if that’s what he needs. They come and go and tidy his things. They bring him clean shirts that are folded or they bring water for his washbowl and they call him
Major
.

My body punishes me every day, insisting I take notice, and nagging at me in aches and pains that I haven’t the energy to resist. My bladder and bowels humiliate me. When I call for a bedpan a man arrives. A Negro. I don’t know his name. He sees to my needs in silence and is rough with me when the soldier’s not here. Sometimes he changes my sheets.

There’s a girl comes too. Another Negro. She brings a bowl full of broth with bits chopped up so small I won’t have to chew, and she spoons it into my mouth faster than I can eat. She won’t look at me and I don’t like to look at her either cos she makes me think of Sicely or Lizzie – all those I’ve lost who might look after me.

Sometimes I choke and then she lets the spoon rattle back into the bowl, frightened, and she hurries out.

Mostly I am here on my own. Often I get lonely.

Sometimes, if the Major returns in the evening, he sits and reads his books out loud, and when he breathes the leather on his braces creaks like I imagine the ropes of a ship might do if I were at sea. They let me drift away.

He tells me who wrote the books he reads – says whether it’s Emerson, Thoreau, Walt Whitman. I don’t know any of ’em and I ain’t never heard their like before. They leave their words inside my head.

One evening he brings his chair close. ‘I’d like to know your name. Do you mind me asking?’

I don’t know if I do. I don’t know what to think of this man.

‘My name’s Solomon Winchester,’ he tells me. ‘It was me who bought you here.’ He waits for me like we have all the time in the world.

‘Samuel,’ I tell him eventually.

‘Well Samuel, the bad news is you missed Christmas completely and pretty much slept through the New Year.’ He walks away to the door. ‘You’ll have to wait till next year.’

Samuel. My name is Samuel.

I got a brother by the name of Joshua. I got a brother.

I was going to meet him when … I was out upon the road … walking.

I was getting there slowly.

Often there is singing from the porch outside my room. Always the same old songs – always out of tune.

Today I put my feet upon the floor. First one and then the other, taking small, slow steps towards the window as the pain shoots up my legs. I can’t straighten my back. I take one step and then a second, like an old man, hobbling towards a Bath chair, putting one foot in front of the other at the end of his days.

When I reach the glass I grasp the sill and hold on tight to steady myself cos I’m all out of breath. Outside my room, the weather is fair. There are rows of huts and beyond that there are tents. To the left of me, three buildings built of brick are set around a courtyard, and there are Union soldiers everywhere. There’s horses and wagons full of supplies
and they’re coming and going and it seems like no one’s still for longer than a moment, ’cept for an old man who sits on the porch beneath our window and sings his heart and soul out. His dark skin is stretched tight around his neck and cheeks, like he ain’t never been indoors, just lived outside under rocks and trees, like he’s a lizard or a tortoise.

‘That’s Old George.’ I didn’t hear the Major come in through the door. ‘Must be ninety years old, I reckon, though he doesn’t even know himself.’ He looks out over my shoulder. ‘He’ll be singing till his dying day, I swear he will. That boy won’t ever stop.’ The Major fetches his chair from across the room and brings it over to the window. ‘You’re shaking, Samuel. You should sit and rest.’

My legs are weak and I’m thankful for the chair. I sit down heavily.

‘I’m glad you’re walking,’ he says to me proudly. ‘I wasn’t sure I’d see this day.’

‘What happened to me?’

The Major hesitates, searching for the right words. ‘You took an awful big whack to the head, Samuel. I guess you already knew that. You lost a lot of tissue and bone, right there around the socket of your right eye. I found you a good doctor, but he had to operate and remove the globe in order to save the vision in your remaining eye. I’d say he saved your sight.’

Every piece of me knows this must be true but I concentrate on my face, try to sense if my eye is there or not and I move my good eye, hoping for some movement in the other. I don’t feel it move but I can’t be sure.

‘I want to look.’ I touch the bandage on my face. My fingers search the back of my head for the pin that holds it in place. ‘Do you have a looking glass?’

‘I don’t think so. I can maybe—’

‘I want to see.’

‘Hold on.’ The Major hurries for the door. ‘Hold on and let me see if I can find one. I expect someone here will have … Just hold on a moment.’ He leaves the room in a hurry and I hear him shout again from somewhere down the hall.

I wait for him with a hand on the back of my neck and another on my cheek, holding my head as though it’s about to break apart. Outside the window, Old George is singing a mournful song ’bout a man and his horse going off to war.

The Major comes back with a looking glass, but offers it to me reluctantly. ‘Are you sure you want to?’

I take hold of it. ‘Would you help me with this pin?’

He comes to stand behind my head. ‘You’re going to be pretty raw under there, Samuel. Do you understand? It ain’t a pretty sight right now, but it will heal if you give it time. You got to remember that, because it’s bound to come as a shock. It’s bound to.’

I hold the mirror up to my face and it shows me the side I know, my mouth and eye and an ear that has always stuck out a little too much for my liking. That’s me for sure, good as I’ll ever get.

The Major unclasps the pin and loosens the white bandage from about my head until the end falls limp across my shoulder and I see myself revealed in the glass, a face I’d mapped out in bruises and the parts I couldn’t touch for hurting.

Only this ain’t me. Not any more. This face I see ain’t mine.

My nose is flattened and points out at a strange angle. The right nostril stays flared, allowing me to breathe, but
the socket of my eye has dropped an inch below the place where it should be, like it has slipped onto my cheek. And it’s empty as a crater.

I touch it ever so gentle, run a fingertip around the smooth bowl where my eyelid has been laid across and stitched up tight to close the wound.

If I turn the mirror to the left, my good eye stares back at me, all fierce and bright, but when I turn it back and take in my face fully from the front, it’s an awful portrait, as though someone has sketched me in charcoal then smudged me with the heel of their hand or used their thumb to rub me half away.

Above the eye and below it, my face is a mess – red and scabbed and stitched with thread. The Major is right – that will heal in time – but I still won’t look right, not in the eyes of God, because my face has lost all symmetry and I am a horror to behold. I have become unnatural – all the bad in me exposed.

I put the mirror to my lap, unable to look at my reflection any more. ‘Why’d you do it?’ I ask the Major. ‘Why’d you have to save me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly. ‘I suppose I reckoned on being kind.’

I have folded the bandage and left it to one side. I won’t wear it again, since it serves no purpose now, except to hide me from the gaze of others. I asked to keep the mirror and have used it often, trying to become accustomed to my face as it heals.

Now when the Major reads to me I sit up and listen. He
assumes I can’t read it for myself and I don’t tell him any different.

On the days that I’m happy with the Major, I’ll sit with my best side towards him, but when I hate him, I present myself to him as an open wound, weeping.

He lets me stay a month with him. He lets me stay another.

I think he must want me for a servant or some such, but he never asks anything of me, and when I offer to work he tells me I’m not strong enough and that I need to rest. I sense he doesn’t want me to leave but I don’t know why.

I ask again why he saved me. This time he gives it more thought, then leans forward in his chair. ‘I believe in this war, Samuel. It’s about justice and freedom and those things are worth fighting for. But the struggle itself – and by that I mean the actual fighting – well, that ain’t something to be proud of. You have to do things that make it hard to believe you’re any better than a savage.’ He pauses, sucking at his bottom lip, perhaps wondering about me being a Negro.