My Name's Not Friday (22 page)

‘If he hadn’t shot at ’em, he’d have been all right,’ I tell her. ‘I’m sure he would’ve been all right if he hadn’t shot at ’em.’

But Mrs Allen ain’t even looking at us. She’s watching the soldiers torch the house, an empty look on her face as the pretty yellow shutters catch fire and flames flick out across the walls like snakes.

‘Look at Gerald, Mrs Allen.’ I reach across and tug at the
sleeve of her dress. ‘You got to look after him. You gotta see what happened to his head.’

She shakes me off, flicking me away like an unwanted bug on her dress, and when she does look down she don’t move to touch Gerald at all. ‘I suppose you couldn’t wait to steal his shoes.’

That’s a strange thing to say. But then I see his bare feet. And I step away from her. I edge away, taking slow sure steps, more scared of Mrs Allen than I’ve ever been.

The Yankee officer looks down at the shoes I’m wearing. He says, ‘Now hold on there, that’s not on,’ and he tries to grab me by the arm, but I turn and run. I run down behind the gin barn and on through the woods, too scared to call the names of Hubbard’s wife and daughter, too scared to stop and think of anything at all, a picture in my head of Gerald lying dead on the ground, all alone and bleeding at his mother’s feet.

And I run through the trees till I’m out in the open. Ahead of me the fields are ripe with fire and behind me the air is thick with smoke, a big black cloud of it, rising up above the plantation house.

But I keep running, the stiff black leather of Gerald’s shoes slapping hard and quick upon the ground.

And I make for the river and the distant guns.

And everything is burning.

Mostly I keep to the riverbank. I creep through corn. Hide from men on horseback. I don’t know who they are, and though they ain’t following me – I’m sure of that now – they have stretched my nerves till they’re tight as the wire on a snare.

I follow the noise of guns, and it ain’t right for that to feel safer than the silence. Every time one booms I think of Gerald. Sometimes I think of Hubbard. Soon I’ll be dead in a field, dripping blood from open wounds.

When the bark of dogs brings me down to the water, I walk in past my waist. The cold numbs my skin. It takes away the hurt. I lie back, my arms and legs stretched wide on either side of me, and let the river take me.

I don’t know where we’re going, but neither does the river.

When the branch of a tree passes, I take hold, and it carries me along like we’re old friends. I expect it’s dead too. We drift downstream together, each of us in the other’s arms, two bits of dead wood cut from a tree the Lord don’t want, being drawn towards the war like water to a plughole.

I’m colder now the sun’s gone. My chest is cramped up tight as a fist.

The gunboats surprise me, coming from behind and bearing down on me, already too close. I find my feet and kick for the riverbank as the first boat passes only twenty feet away, it’s engine making so much noise I can’t believe I didn’t hear it. The boat lies low in the water, like a turtle in its shell. It has four open hatches and a cannon points from every one. The eyes of a sailor look out from a view hole as his vessel makes waves that I swallow if I try to breathe.

I let go of the branch and thrash at the water, my head twisting from side to side. I swallow air and then water, air and then water, as the river tries to throttle me. I turn over on my back, kicking hard with my legs, getting one good mouth of air and then a second before a boom rocks the river and a streak of fire leaps out across the sky, exploding the bank above my head and sending mud into the water like a patter of rain.

The force of the explosion hits my stomach like a punch and I roll back again to my front, gasping as the night rips itself into shreds of red and yellow. I swim like a dog, panting toward the land. Ahead of me, a burning tree leaps up into the air then disappears into the river with a hiss. I change direction, my arms slapping at the water all around my head and when my foot touches a rock, I kick one last time and stumble forward onto wet mud. I got the ground beneath my feet and I crouch there, breathing hard, my wet clothes clinging to me like they’re more scared than I am. Another explosion makes my ears sting before they go dull and I can
hear my own heartbeat, as the smoke drifts across me like a mist.

A bugle cries out once. There are muffled shouts and the crackle of muskets.

I take a deep breath and then another, forcing myself to stand and then run, my shoes slip-sliding and stumbling against rocks. But figures appear up ahead of me, black shadows caught out against the moonlight on the water, some waist high in the river while others leap from small flat boats toward the shore. I can’t go there, so I turn and run back the way I came, crouching low, hoping there’s somewhere else for me to go. But the river’s full of fire and guns. As I crouch and rest again, one of the ironclads gets hit so hard it rings like a bell.

I try a different direction, turning in toward the steep bank and using the roots of trees to climb, one hand over the other, one shoe cutting in to the moist soil and then another, till my hand touches the top and I pull myself up onto a lip of grass and mud. I lie flat on my stomach, breathing hard, the whiff of a fox in my nostrils. Now that I’m not moving, the cold bites on my bones. It makes my teeth ache in their sockets.

I edge forward on my knees, a hand stretched out ahead of me, feeling my way. And then the ground disappears, leaving me patting nothing but the night air and I stop sharp, bring my hand back toward me till I feel the edge of earth which descends straight down past the length of my arm.

In front of me is a dark hole and I hesitate, not knowing how deep it is, thinking it might swallow me whole. But then I hope it does. I don’t care if it takes me forever, for I am forsaken of the Lord and I disgust him. I know I do.

And I let myself fall.

I drop about eight feet, slipping down the wet mud bank till I come to rest on my stomach in damp earth. There’s the click of a gun being cocked before I can even see where I am. ‘You better put your hands in the air pretty quick, boy.’

I got no life left in me and I can’t move.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

I put a hand up somewhere near my face.

The barrel of a gun kisses the back of my head, just behind my ear, but then a second voice says, ‘Let him up,’ and a hand brushes the gun away. A mortar explodes above us, lighting the sky with falling fire and showing me the edge of boots stood close to my cheek. Two hands take hold of me under each arm, gripping my shirt and pulling me up till I’m propped against the cold mud wall.

Four men are in the pit with me.

‘It’s a slave boy!’ says one of ’em.

‘What’s he doing here?’ says a man with hollow eyes and he brings his rifle to my forehead. ‘He might have a gun! Look in his pockets. Check if he’s got a knife.’

‘He ain’t got a gun,’ says another and I see a rebel soldier sat opposite me, a prisoner with a gun held to his head just the same as me. ‘We don’t let ’em carry guns,’ he says.

‘Let’s kill him,’ says the man holding the rifle to the rebel’s head. ‘Let’s kill ’em both,’

‘We’re not killing anybody,’ says the soldier who helped me up out the mud. ‘That’s not what we’re gonna do.’

I’m shivering so much I can’t keep still, and my jaw don’t work properly either, it just chatters of its own accord, rattling the teeth all together in my mouth.

They can shoot me if they want to. It’d be a blessing.

The man puts his hand on my shoulder to keep me from falling on my face. ‘You ain’t armed, are you?’ I stare blankly but he says, ‘I thought not,’ and takes a piece of hardtack from the pocket of his tunic. He breaks off half the biscuit and puts it in my mouth. ‘Eat that. It might help.’

‘What you doing?’ The man with the rifle leans across and breaks the edge of it away before I have it past my lips. ‘You shouldn’t give it to him.’

‘Don’t I get any?’ asks the rebel, and all three of ’em turn on him saying, ‘No.’

He shakes his head with a wry smile. ‘First time I’ve ever been lower than a nigger boy. Is that what you Yankees are fighting for? You wanna see a good American like myself laid lower than a nigger?’

I chew on the biscuit I have saved between my teeth and it sticks up around my gums.

A shell explodes close enough to shake the pit we’re squatting in. And then there’s another and another and the sky becomes bright white and filled with screaming metal. Each blast seems louder than the first and I close my eyes tight and curl up in the mud with my hands around my head and my knees up in my chest as the world splits itself apart. This must be how it all ends.

But it don’t.

The barrage suddenly stops and there’s an eerie silence that makes me wonder whether there’s anything left beyond this hole.

I’m still shaking from the cold. I begin to blubber. I can’t help it. I begin to cry like a baby.

The rebel laughs at me. ‘I ain’t never seen a kid so scared. Look at him. He’s almost turned white.’ He laughs again and when he stops there’s just the silence. Nothing but the
silence. The soldier sitting closest to me adjusts his feet with a squelch of mud and looks up at the edge of the pit.

The rebel laughs again, more nervous than he was before. ‘If the boy’s scared now, he better not hear Whistling Dick. Any of you boys ever heard that gun?’ He grits his teeth and whistles till he’s out of breath. ‘You can hear him coming for ya. You know what I mean? The louder that whistle gets, the closer you are to death. I’m telling ya’ll, you ever hear old Whistling Dick, you better make your peace with God.’

All of us cock our heads to the sky, listening out for Whistling Dick. But the night is so very quiet. When the crack of a rifle shot finally comes to us through the darkness, we all breathe easier knowing we ain’t the only ones left alive on this earth.

The soldier that gave me the biscuit suddenly stands and steps toward the rebel. ‘Give the boy your clothes.’

‘I ain’t giving him my clothes.’

He takes his pistol from its holster and cocks it. ‘I’m the only person here keeping you alive, but I’ll kill you myself if I have to.’

That changes the rebel’s mind. He unbuttons his shirt, takes out his arms then throws it at me. He begins to unbutton his breeches too.

I look at the butternut shirt in my lap.

‘Go on then,’ says the soldier kindly. ‘You don’t want to catch your death.’

The rebel’s shirt is covered with mud, but it ain’t drenched wet like my own and so I peel the shirt from my back and put his on instead, my fingers fumbling at the buttons till I get some help. I feel the warmth from it too. I put on his breeches then throw my Woolseys back at him, though he won’t wear ’em. Says he’d rather die of cold than put ’em on,
and he crouches naked in the pit, telling me that if the two of us should ever meet again, he’ll kill me. I believe him too.

We sit and wait, each of us keeping our eyes on the other, wondering what might happen before a new day dawns. But nothing happens. Come sunrise we’re half dead from cold and scared somewhere near to madness.

A Yankee officer comes upon us in the pit and stands at the edge to look down on us. He’s wearing a smart tunic with buttons that gleam in the morning sun and I realise we must look like monsters to him, dragged out from the cloying mud.

‘You boys all right?’ he asks and points to the rebel squatting naked in the dirt. ‘Is this man a prisoner?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get him some clothes.’

‘What’ll we do with this one? The man with the hollow eyes flicks his rifle in my direction. ‘Should we give him back to the rebels?’

The officer looks me up and down. ‘Do you want to go back to the rebels?’

‘I never been with the rebels.’

‘You got somewhere to go? You got someone can look after you?’

If I ever had anyone it was Hubbard. But I got Joshua. He’s the only soul alive that knows me and I know him too. Suddenly I miss him so much it hurts.

‘Do you know Middle Creek?’ I ask the officer once he’s helped me climb out of the pit.

He shakes his head but points downriver. ‘There’s a camp a few miles that way. Someone there might know.’

At the camp, the white folks call us contraband since they regard us as the spoils of war. We live in the same camp they do. Only thing that divides us is a path where we stand in the mornings, hoping to be chosen to work on laying railroads or digging new trenches.

They don’t make us do it. We’re free to starve if we choose to, but I work for three weeks, trying to buy the fare back to Middle Creek, and I never make more in a day than it costs to feed me and put a roof above my head.

So on the first day of the fourth week, I start walking.

The wasps at the crossroads have all gone wrong. I don’t know why. I watch ’em buzz about in circles, bumping into each other like they’ve lost their minds. It must be something like that, to make ’em behave that way. A few of ’em stagger over Gerald’s shoes and I kick ’em off into the wet mud then stand and watch ’em wriggle.

It starts to rain again.

A cart comes along the road. It’s driven by a soldier. When he reaches the crossroads he panics and swipes at the wasps. He thinks they’re after him but they ain’t. They’ve just gone wrong like everything else.

‘Going into town?’ I shout out, but he ignores me like I knew he would. He knows I want a lift and it ain’t allowed for soldiers to give lifts to people like me. I didn’t expect he would. Raindrops tap on my shoulders. They hit the top of my head. I didn’t expect sunshine either. No sunshine or shelter. I don’t expect a thing.

My legs are cold. The bottoms of my breeches are rolled above my knees and my shins have mud for skin. Father Mosely once told me that the road to heaven ain’t paved with gold. I don’t know if that’s true but I know about the
road to hell. It’s made from mud. Has to be. There ain’t a road been built that could be any worse than this one – but it’s a slow road back to Joshua.

I start walking in the same direction the wagon went and the rain runs down into my eyes. I try not to put my feet into the puddles. Gerald’s shoes are a deep wet brown and they don’t keep out the cold as much as they would if they were boots. I could have got boots. Back in the last camp I was at I could’ve stole ’em but I didn’t. Just cos the world’s gone to killing and stealing, doesn’t mean I have to do it too.

A tree offers shelter from the rain and when I reach it I settle myself against its trunk. This rain makes the world so miserable. Everything is dull and grey and hopeless. I wipe my face with my hand. If I stay here too long I’ll get even colder. I can’t remember the last time I was really warm and I hug myself, waiting for the rain to ease.

Another wagon comes into view. It’s moving slowly down the road. A couple of men are hunched up in the front. One of ’em has a hat and the other one doesn’t. When they reach me I see a white gentleman in a coat and bowler who’s well wrapped up against the rain. He’s got a beard. He’s got a pair of spectacles on his nose. He’s being driven by a Negro who ain’t so well dressed, though it’s still an improvement on the clothes I got on.

I watch ’em pass me by but I don’t shout out. About twenty yards up the road they come to a stop and turn to look back at me. I can see ’em talking. The black man jumps down onto the road and his big boots make a splash in every puddle between us as he runs to my tree and comes in under the shelter of its leaves.

‘Get in the cart,’ he tells me.

I know I shouldn’t. I look back up the road to where the
wagon waits in the rain, but the man steps in front of my face to block my view. ‘Don’t you want work?’

‘You got some food?’

‘I told him you wouldn’t be no good.’ He reaches down, takes hold of my arm and lifts me to my feet. ‘The doctor’s got a position needs filling. So get in the cart.’ I don’t think he can smile.

Now that I’m standing, the idea don’t seem so bad. Not if they got food. I could do the job for a day or two. Do it long enough to get a meal and a lift in the cart.

I walk out into the rain with the man by my side and we splash through the puddled mud till we’re alongside the cart. The man in the bowler hat has a good long look at me then takes a bag of boiled sweets from his coat pocket and offers ’em. ‘You free to work?’ His accent has the ring of money, all clipped and neat around the edges. I don’t know where he’s from.

Sweet sugar brings my mouth to life so that all I can think about is food. ‘How much you gonna pay?’

‘A dollar a day. You get to live in though, free of charge. You get food as well, and if you work hard I’ll give you decent clothes.’ He takes off his spectacles and wipes the lenses with a grubby handkerchief. ‘Do you want to work?’

I nod my head. The money ain’t bad. More than I got in the camp and he says I get my meals on top. I don’t like to wait but I can’t get to Middle Creek if I’m too weak to walk.

The doctor flicks his eyes to the rear of the cart and I go around the back. A coffin takes up most of the space, its lid already screwed in place and I stand and stare. ‘Get in then!’ he calls out. I climb aboard, squeezing in beside it as the driver whips his horse and we ride on through the rain. Another mile down the road we pull to a stop outside
a shack of a shop that stands on its own at the roadside. A man is stretched out asleep in the bay window. He has his hands across his chest and it’s a long time since I seen anyone look that peaceful.

A Negro boy walks out from behind the shop to meet us. He’s a few years older than me, but I see straight away he’s been bullied sometime in his life cos he’s a whole ball of uncertainty and resentment. It’s obvious from the way he walks. He takes hold of the handle and slides the coffin along till it hangs off the back of the cart by a couple of feet. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ he mumbles at me. ‘Get a hold of it and help.’

I grip the other end and we lift the coffin off the cart. It’s heavy. Takes both my hands and a shoulder to get it round the back of the shop where there’s a barn. When we go inside the place is dark and full of coffins and we rest ours on a stack near the door as the doctor hurries in after us. He pushes past, tying a label to the handle and without thinking, I take hold of it to read the name.
Colonel Barnaby Jones, 1st Delaware Infantry.
That’s what it says.

‘So you can read, can you?’ The doctor watches me closely. ‘Can you write too?’

I don’t see why I should lie anymore and I ain’t got much to be proud of. ‘I can do the both as good as anyone else I’ve met.’

‘See, Jermaine?’ The doctor turns to the boy. ‘He’s already more useful than you. How do you like that?’

Jermaine looks like he hates me.

The doctor takes hold of my shoulder. ‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Samuel.’

He bristles very slightly. ‘No “sir” when you speak to me?
Well, never mind. No “please” or “thank you” either, I bet, but that’s OK, that’s just as it should be. You’re a free man, Samuel. You can bestow your honours as you choose. But congratulations are due.’ He shakes my shoulder, smiling. ‘You’ve just been promoted. Not bad on your first day, eh? There’s no more money in it, mind, but it might mean your work is a little less arduous than it was only a moment ago.’

‘Can I have some food?’

The doctor offers his bag of sweets again and I take one. He don’t offer one to Jermaine, putting ’em back in his pocket as the driver comes in out of the rain. The doctor rubs his hands together, chuckling. ‘I picked out a scholar. Do you see, Drudge? The boy can read.’ He wags a finger in the man’s face. ‘I still have an instinct for good character, Drudge, whatever you might think of me.’

He turns back to me, shaking me by the hand. ‘Welcome, welcome! I’m Doctor Klinghopper. You’ve already met Jermaine. This is Drudge. You won’t find either of ’em have much in the way of conversation, but they’re survivors – oh, I’ll give ’em that – and it’s not a bad gift to have at this particular moment in American history. Wouldn’t you agree, Samuel?’

I don’t know about that. I still don’t know what it is he wants me to do. I look back in the direction of the shop and move the sweet to the side of my mouth before I ask, ‘Who’s the man asleep in the window? Does he work here too?’

The doctor laughs at that. ‘We don’t actually know who he is, Samuel, but that shouldn’t stop you from making his acquaintance. Come along. Come with us and say hello.’

He leads the way outside, all of us in a line as we walk around to the front of the shack and go in through the shop door. The room is cold and smells of turpentine. We line up
along the window and the doctor spreads his hands wide, taking in the man asleep on the sill. ‘Behold, Samuel – the unknown soldier. Miraculously preserved and restored to us in the form of a working companion.’ He bows and brings his lips closer to my ear. ‘We call him Lucky because he brings in the customers – those that have had the foresight to plan for their likely demise.’

Drudge sneers and Jermaine sniggers like a dog with a cold.

The doctor walks across to a side table, picks up a decanter and pours himself a drink. He holds the glass in the air like he’s going to make a toast. ‘Don’t be alarmed, Samuel. We shan’t wake him with our loud talk, will we, Drudge? Do you want to tell our new friend why we won’t wake Lucky up?’

‘He’s dead,’ says Drudge.

I look again, but the sleeping soldier appears to be in better health than all of us. He’s got good colour in his skin and his cheeks are fresh and plump. But he ain’t breathing. Now that I look properly, I can see he ain’t breathing.

‘Go closer,’ the doctor prompts me with a hand in my back and I step closer to the corpse. ‘You could almost kiss him, couldn’t you?’ The doctor puts an arm around my shoulder. He’s close enough I can smell the whiskey in his glass. ‘That’s the beauty of your new position, Samuel. We’re in the business of bringing the dead back to life. And very rewarding it is too.’

I swallow the last of the sweet. ‘Like Lazarus?’

‘Exactly. We’re raising the dead. Just like Lazarus.’ He takes his arm away, produces a card from his top pocket and hands it to me. ‘Go on and read it out loud. Impress me some more, why don’t you?’

I clear my throat. ‘It says, “Doctor Klinghopper, Medical Practitioner and Embalmer”.’

‘Yes, yes. Oh, you’re really very good. Quite exceptional.’ He takes back the card, nodding enthusiastically. ‘What’s your handwriting like? Are you neat?’ He waves the other two away. ‘Drudge, Jermaine, haven’t you got something to be getting along with? Food perhaps? Samuel looks hungry to me. Why don’t you make us all some food?’

They disappear out the door and the doctor pulls aside a curtain at the back of the shop and shows me in behind. A naked man is spread across the top of a long wooden table and this one’s dead for sure, all pale and shrunken on the bone. His uniform lies across the back of a chair. I spot a wound in his arm and another in his chest, and although they’ve been stitched, they look bad enough to have done for him.

The doctor puts down his glass, unties the label from the man’s toe and hands it to me. ‘Sit down at the desk and take hold of the pen.’ He settles me down, gives me ink and paper, then takes a letter from the desk drawer. ‘I want you to transcribe this letter but change the name and address to this man’s details. Do you think you can do that?’

I begin to copy it word for word and it says this:

As I write out the letter, I see that the doctor has inserted a needle and tube into the armpit of the naked man and is pumping a liquid into him from a tub placed on the floor beneath the table. After a short while he puts the pump down and comes across to check on my work. ‘You have a neat hand, Samuel. A very neat hand.’ He points to the bottom of the page. ‘But raise that figure to two hundred dollars, would you? Believe it or not, this boy had already risen to the rank of brigadier before his untimely demise. I imagine his family will be very keen for his return.’

There’s no table or chair in the barn. There’s no furniture at
all except for the coffins, some of em empty, some of em not. They’re stacked up against the walls or left on the floor so we can sit on ’em. I reckon I’ll have to sleep in one tonight.

The doctor lives alone in the shop and he has oil lamps to see by but Jermaine, Drudge and I have only a single grease lamp and we eat our supper off our knees without being properly able to see our food, though I ain’t complaining cos it’s hot food – rice and pork – and I can feel the good it does me as I chew upon the gristle.

Jermaine and Drudge don’t like me. They think I’m too clever by half and they’re only interested in making me look small.

‘You seen the killing fields yet?’ Drudge asks me, sneering. I don’t know if it’s worse when he speaks to me or when he don’t and I shake my head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think so.’

‘I been in a battle,’ I tell him quickly. ‘I floated down a river on a log and got caught in the crossfire.’

‘You seen dead men?’

I nod.

Drudge puts his face up next to mine. ‘Bet you’ve never been up close though. Have you?’ I think of Gerald and Hubbard. I couldn’t have been any closer. But I won’t tell him that. I don’t want to.

Drudge smiles, satisfied that I’m only half the man he is, even if I can read and write.

Outside the barn the rain starts up again, tapping impatiently at the wooden slats above our heads.

‘Ever seen a white man turn black?’ Now he’s teasing me. ‘You’ll see it tomorrow. You’ll see plenty, cos there’s boys out there been dead for weeks.’ He shows me a full set of teeth like there ain’t a thing could make him happier. ‘Their skin’ll be the same colour as ours.’

‘You don’t know how some of ’em look.’ Jermaine shouts out excitedly from the darkness near my feet where he lies in a coffin. ‘You’ll see it for yourself tomorrow. I saw one yesterday had a mouthful of maggots. Can you believe that?’