26
Lieutenant August? Come quick."
Charles shot up from the desk. "Someone hurt?"
"Nosir," puffed the recruit. "They taken' down those tents you told us to put up an hour ago. They was ordered to take 'em down."
"What stupid noncom—?"
"It's some general. Krig?"
"Krug. Damn." He grabbed his hat. What a way to start his third day in uniform.
"With all due respect, Captain, what's going on here?"
Krug's gray eyes spiked him. "You'll address me as general."
In a weedy field a half mile outside the main gate, five black recruits, none in uniform yet, struggled to dismantle two A-frames. Tangled canvas hid the fallen poles. Red-faced, Charles pointed at the men. "Why are they striking those tents?"
The raw autumn wind snapped the elbow-length cape of Krug's overcoat. "Because I ordered it. They're to move to the ground immediately west of the steam pump."
"That field is full of standing water."
Krug jutted his jaw. "Change your tone, mister, or I'll have you up on charges. Three quarters of the men on this post would like to see you gone."
Including most of my own, Charles thought. The five recruits watched him as though he were old Salem Jones, Mont Royal's overseer before the war. Through gritted teeth he said, "The barracks assigned us — General — is infested with rats, bats, roaches — it's a damn zoo. While we fumigate it, these men need temporary quarters. Why must they move?"
"Because, August, General Hoffman rode past this morning. He doesn't like to look at nigger soldiers. He wants them out of sight when he travels to and from Leavenworth City. Is that clear enough?"
Charles recalled Grierson's warning about Army bigotry. "Sir, if you insist on this, we'll have to put down lumber to floor the tents. Build walkways —"
"No lumber. They sleep on the ground. They're soldiers, or so we've been led to believe."
"Why the hell are you so angry at me, Krug?"
"Two reasons, mister. One, I still consider you a traitor. Two, the North fought for preservation of the Union, not the glorification of darkies. General Hoffman shares that view. Now move those men."
Krug marched to his horse, mounted, and headed for the gate.
Charles approached the recruits. Slate-colored clouds filled the sky. Dead weeds rattled in the wind, and canvas flapped and snapped. The five black men stared at him with expressions ranging from stoic to sullen.
"Men, I'm sorry. Guess you'll have to move for the time being. I'll try to commandeer some lumber somewhere."
A large walnut-hued man stepped forward. Potiphar Williams, formerly a cook in a Pittsburgh hotel. He could read and write; he'd learned as an adult, in order to understand recipes and prepare menus. Charles had marked him as promising.
Williams said, "We'll hunt the wood. Sir."
"It's my responsibility to —"
"We don't need favors from a white man who rode for the rebs."
Rigid, Charles said, "You get this straight. I didn't go to war to preserve slavery, or the Confederacy, either. I went to fight for my home in South Carolina."
"Oh, yes, sir," Williams said. "My brother and his kin in North Carolina, the only home they had to fight for was the slave cabins they lived in." He turned his back. "All right, boys. Let's pick up and go where the white man tells us."
Ike Barnes, already miserable and in bad temper because of a case of piles, turned the air blue when Charles reported the incident. Grierson went to Hoffman. The general refused to rescind the order. Two of the recruits caught pneumonia from camping on the wet ground. They were sent to the post hospital, causing three white patients to walk out in protest.
The next week, a gaudy troupe of travelers appeared, bound for Fort Riley. The troupe consisted of two white women, a former slave who did the cooking, a little black jockey from Texas, four horses, including a pacer and a racing mare, and dogs: a greyhound, a white pit bull, several hunters.
"Is this a circus or the Army?" Barnes grumbled. "Whatever it is, it's a damn disgrace."
"Agreed," Grierson said. "But you notice we're here, aren't we?"
The two of them and Charles, along with two dozen more of the curious, had gathered to see the elegant young soldier who headed the troupe. As George Custer supervised the loading of his colt Phil Sheridan into a special rail car on the post spur, he shouted boisterously and cracked jokes, playing to the crowd.
Charles remembered Custer vividly from the war. He was still dandified: flowing hair, walrus mustache, bright red scarf, gold spurs. Charles said to Barnes, "I rode against him at Brandy Station. I know he fights to win, but he's too reckless to suit me. I'm thankful I'll never have to serve with him."
The fall produced a smashing Republican victory in the national and state elections. Johnson's catastrophic "Swing Around the Circle" had worked against him and for the Radicals. When Congress eventually convened, the course of Reconstruction would be in Republican hands more surely than ever.
At Fort Leavenworth, meanwhile, in spite of trouble with white men because of their prejudice, and trouble with black men because of his background, Charles again began to savor Army life. He liked the measuring of the days by bugle and trumpet, drum and fife. It had been part of his bone and blood since West Point. In his monastic cubicle in bachelor officers' quarters, some internal clock wakened him every morning at 4:30, fifteen minutes before trumpeters' assembly.
Reveille, guard mount, call for first sergeant's report, mess, fatigue, evening retreat with a formal parade in good weather — he relished every call. His favorite was 4:30 p.m. stable call. At that hour he supervised the new soldiers, many of whom found horses frightening. While trying to correct that and familiarize the men with horse furniture, Charles sneaked in some pleasurable minutes looking after Satan.
Then came some of the day's sweetest music: the gongs and triangles announcing evening mess. The music usually surpassed the fare: hash or slumgullion, baked beans or contractor's beef of dubious color and odor.
Each company of the Tenth was supposed to contain ninety-nine men. But recruits arrived so slowly, Charles wondered if Grierson would ever have a full-strength regiment. The reputation of the Tenth wasn't helped when one recruit ran off, and word reached Leavenworth about trouble in the all-black Ninth Cavalry down in San Antonio. Recruits in the Ninth had clashed with local police and started a riot. Many of them went to jail. "Fine," Grierson snorted when he heard the news. "Just what Hoffman needs to confirm his opinions."
Charles freely admitted responsibility for the desertion. The surly recruit had mistreated one of the horses. Charles had stopped it and assigned extra fatigue duty. "Sure, you would take the side of a nag over a nigger, you piece of Southern shit," the recruit said, and punched him.
Charles had to be pulled off the black man; they said later he was on his way to killing the recruit with his fists. Two nights later the recruit ran away. He was recognized over in City of Kansas, captured and quickly processed with a bobtail discharge. When a man got a bobtail, the section of the discharge dealing with character was shipped off. It was a lifetime mark of dishonor.