Paradise Sky

“It’s a story has to do with Noah’s balls,” I said. “Noah’s the fellow that had all those animals in his boat, and his balls and us being slaves is just as silly as it sounds.”

“Oh, I know the story,” he said, but he didn’t make any more comment on it. Instead he looked into the fire awhile, as if he might see someone he knew there. “I loved Young Master like a brother. I was his special servant in the home. We did everything together. He got shot in the war, in the throat. It killed him deader than a tree stump. I sopped up his blood in a piece of his shirt I cut off, mailed it back home with a note on what happened. As a house nigger, I can read and write pretty well. After the battle, I had to bury Young Master not far from where he fell. Wasn’t any other choice. I went home then, as there wasn’t any call for me there, and I was needed by Old Master.”

“You chose to go home?”

“I did. When the war was over and slaves were freed, I stayed where I was comfortable, which was on the plantation with Old Master and his wife. By then, though, it was all coming apart. Damn Yankees coming in and telling how things were to be done. All the other slaves didn’t have any loyalty. Not a drop. They ran off. Including that high yellow bitch that was Old Master’s mistress. He had treated her good, and his wife had to put up with it, so I’m not sure of her complaint. She had nice clothes and perfume and so on.

“Old Master and his wife died, him first, her right behind him. I buried them under an elm near the house. It was a good spot. Uphill and a good distance from the privy or any pooling water. That just left me and Old Master’s dog.

“That dog was as old as death and then some. Couldn’t eat good, fell down a lot, so I shot it. That hurt me almost as bad as the death of the family. That dog was eighteen years old if he was a day. Not long after that I took some goods from the house, took to the road, not having any more mind where I was going than a blind chicken. I came upon the news about the government signing up coloreds for the army. I’m not any good on my own. I need someone to tell me what to do, so I decided the army was for me.”

Well, now, I decided the Former House Nigger had a shingle loose, but I didn’t say nothing about it, least not right then. We was riding companions, and it was wise to stay peaceable.

About three days later we rode up on Fort McKavett, between the Colorado and the Pecos Rivers, near the head of the San Saba River. Grand as a kingdom, that fort, or so it seemed to me back then. It was situated on a wide mount of land and had a good view of everything below and around it.

Out front was colored fellows in army blue drilling on horseback, looking sharp in the sunlight, which there was plenty of, it being so bright you had to squint to stand it. It was hot where I come from, sticky, even, but you could find a tree to get under. Out here, all you could get under was your hat, or maybe some dark cloud sailing across the face of the sun, and that might last only as long as it takes a bird to fly over.

But there I was. Full of dreams and crotch itch from long riding. Me and my new friend, the Former House Nigger, sat on our horses checking that fort over, watching them horse soldiers drill. It was a prideful thing to see, for they did look sharp, but that was their looks, not their abilities. Them uniforms kind of lied to you. They couldn’t ride a horse if they was tied to it. They fell off so regular you almost got to thinking that was their plan. Ride out, fall off, remount, do it all over again. Still, it was colored troops, and I was glad to see them doing something besides following a plow or plodding along after white folks, ready to chop their wood or wipe their children’s asses.

We rode on down to join them.

In the commanding officer’s quarters, me and the Former House Nigger stood before a big desk with a white man sitting behind it, name of Colonel Hatch. He had a caterpillar mustache and big sweat circles like wet pie pans under his arms. His eyes was aimed on a fly sitting on a stack of papers on his desk. That bug would lift its wings now and then as if to fly, but it was just a posture. He stayed where he was. Every time those wings lifted, Colonel Hatch would hold his breath, as if fearing it would take to the air and buzz away. Way he was watching that damn fly you’d have thought he was beading down on a charging Apache. Nearby a colored soldier, probably fifty years of age if he was a day, stood at ease, not showing any expression. He might have been dozing with his eyes open, he was so still.

Colonel Hatch said, “So you boys want to sign up for the colored army? I figured that on account of you both being colored.”

He was a sharp knife, this colonel.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ve come to sign up to be a horse rider in the Ninth Calvary.”

The colonel reluctantly took his eye off the fly. “We got plenty of riding niggers. What we need is walking niggers for the goddamn infantry.”

I figured anything that had the tag “goddamn” in front of it wasn’t for me.

“I reckon ain’t a man here can ride better than me,” I said, “and that would be even you, Colonel, and I’m sure you are one riding son of a bitch, and I mean that in as fine and as respectful a way as I can muster it.”

Hatch raised an eyebrow. “That so?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “No brag, just fact. I can ride on a horse’s back, under his belly, make him lay down, and make him jump, and at the end of the day, I take to liking him, I can diddle that horse in the ass enough to make that critter smile and brew my coffee and bring my slippers, provided I had any slippers or coffee. That last part about the diddling is just talking, but the first part is serious.”

“The diddling part ain’t fact,” he said.

“No, sir, it ain’t.”

“But will the horse bring you your slippers and make your coffee, even without the diddling?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Maybe you are a riding son of a bitch,” Colonel Hatch said. “What about you?”

He was addressing the Former House Nigger, who said, “I haven’t any intention of diddling horses, but I can cook and lay out silverware. Mostly as a house nigger I drove a buggy.”

“A buggy, huh?” Colonel Hatch said, and at that moment he come down on that fly with his hand and got him, too. “Bastard,” he said.

He peeled the fly off his palm and flicked him on the floor. The colored soldier, who I had thought might be standing asleep, showed me he was not. He come alert, bent down, picked up the fly with a pinch of gloved thumb and forefinger, took the smashed varmint to the open door, and flicked him into the great outdoors.

Hatch wiped his palm on his pants, eyeing me the same way he had that fly, said, “Let’s go outside and see how much of you is fact and how much of you is fart mouth and horseshit.”

They had a corral nearby, and the horses in it was rough-looking, like they was in line for the soap factory and anxious to get it over with. But there was a separate, smaller corral, and in it was a horse that nearly filled it up. He was a big black stallion, and he looked like he ate men and shitted out saddlebags made of their skin and bones. He put his eye right on me when I come out to the corral. When I walked around on the other side, he spun around to keep a gander on me. Oh, he knew what I was about, all right.

Hatch took hold of one corner of his mustache and played with it, then turned and looked at me. “You ride that horse well as you say you can, I’ll take you both into the cavalry, and the Former House Nigger can be our cook.”

“I said I could cook,” the Former House Nigger said. “I didn’t say I was any good at it. I can make a peach pie, though, and it ain’t bad if you can imagine it with a crust. I mostly just make the pie slop. Crust defeats me.”

“What we got now,” Hatch said, “ain’t even cooking of the lowest order. There’s just a couple of fellas that boil water and put stuff in it, mostly turnips. It’s just one step up from eating horse turds. So if you can do better than that, out here you’re a goddamn chef.”