Ten days after Sergeant Jeremiah Waters got away from the reb prison camp, sick in the head from summer heat and prolonged hunger, he met Gilead. He’d come out of the forest and into a clearing. Later he’d remember black-eye susans and clover and the sound of a dog yapping nearby. He’d remember looking toward a brilliant sun in a white sky. He closed his eyes and saw bright yellow where he’d been accustomed to see blackness. But he never remembered tumbling down into the patch of browned grass nor whatever rock or tree root split his forehead.
“You can’t rest, friend, you got to move.”
Waters had never seen a man so black. He’d learned that most of the so-called negroes down south were brown or even lighter–their very skin tone proof of the lust of the southern aristocracy. This huge man’s skin reminded him of blue-black ink with which he wrote while in the academy. Gilead prided himself on pure African blood. In Mrs. Stowe’s novel, the most intelligent negroes were those with an admixture of white and black blood and Waters had thought that such must necessarily be the case. But Gilead proved an adept and able man, one of great strength and cunning.
Gilead said, “I see you are on the run, young master.”
“I think I’m coming down sick.”
Gilead put his palm on Water’s forehead. This was the first time ever Water’s skin touched black skin. He could tell no difference in the way it felt and the skin of his father or of the soldier Wilkins or the reb to whom he’d given his watch.
“We better get you somewhere you can rest,” Gilead said and raised Waters to his feet. “Any other with you?”
Waters said, “I came by myself.”
Waters thought they walked for hours. Never looking back, the black man stayed just three steps ahead. With the woods in shadow, it was hard to measure the passing of the day. After a while, Waters began to hope that the man would stop and let him rest, perhaps offer food. His leg muscles–stringy like a horse’s bridle–were no longer strong as they had been before his prison days. He needed to stop. But Gilead continued, his broad back rising and falling with every confident step. Waters thought to reach out and touch the back, even lean up against it momentarily, to try to draw in some of its vigor, but he could not bring himself to do it.
They emerged into a ragged clearing. There was a small log house, a tumbledown shed, a corral with one horse and a dead mule, an acre of cotton and a patch of corn. Water wondered what was a slave doing living here all alone? But he could only conclude that this must be the man’s home. He hurried to close the three steps between myself and the man.
“What’s your hurry?” Gilead sounded amused.
Waters spoke with difficulty. “Is it safe?”
“Safe enough. If we’re careful. Slow down.” Gilead brought his arm around Water’s shoulders. Waters finally permitted himself to slump against the black man. “Finally, I can rest,’ he said as the man half-carried him. It seemed he barely needed to touch the ground with his old broken brogans–Gilead almost lifted him above the earth.
Gilead opened the low door to the shed and stooped to usher Waters in. The soldier looked meaningfully back at the house, but Gilead shut the door just enough to block the view.
“No sir. I wish I could keep you in there but it wouldn’t do. News travels in this neighborhood.”
“It’s all right.” Waters recognized some wisdom in Gilead’s words. He regretted how dark it would be in the shed and how hot–it was no more than a windowless building with a packed earth floor. But to rest in safety, away from that camp, out of the wilderness… This was more comfortable than anything he had hoped to see again.
Gilead acted both apologetic and satisfied. “Have to be,” he said. While Waters rested on the packed earth, he made a lying-place out of a blanket, some straw, and a broke-down saddle.
The sergeant said, “Water?”
“Thirsty?” Gilead smiled.
“To wash.” Then, correcting himself, “Both.”
“Wait here.”
Waters had no real choice. Gilead left–shut the door and shut him in–but came back quickly with a bowl of water and a clean rag. Gratefully, the soldier scoured himself of prison grime. But the bath irked his pride a little, because Gilead stood watching. His eyes made Waters feel oddly scrutinized.
“You’re sick,” Gilead said. “You better eat and sleep.”
“Can you get me to our lines? Where is our army?”
“Eat and sleep now.” Obedient, Waters sat down to wait for the food, but fell asleep instantly.
Doing his business in the camp sinks one day, Waters had spotted a small piece of bone amidst the excrement. Some poor soul must have swallowed it whole and passed it through his guts undigested. Waters reached into the mess, plucked the bone from it, and went a few steps upstream, to wash the bone more times than Pilate washed his hands. As he went back to the barracks, he kept this small knob concealed in his fist, afraid that another prisoner might somehow guess he had such a delicacy. Only after lights out, when the darkness made him feel safe, did he try to suck whatever dry nourishment might be left in this shard of a bone from an animal he could only hope had been fit to eat.
When Waters escaped, he had fetched this piece of bone along. Each morning, after sleeping out in the woods, he had to decide anew whether to gnaw it down to bone-meal, for the nourishment, or save the dry bone for the juice. There was a small indentation along one side, which his tongue could caress and, as it could trap salvia, sometimes he fancied there was a particle of real meat and gristle clinging to the bone.
Food had been his greatest problem. He owned nothing with which to hunt, nothing with which to fish. Flat, pale mushrooms grew at the base of trees, but, ignorant of southern botany, Waters didn’t trust himself to tell the wholesome from the poisonous. He harvested green pecans, filled his pockets with them, and ate a few every day. A couple of nights, when he came nearer human habitation, he found stands of corn and he stole roasting ears that he could not cook but at whose hard kernels he could nibble. Some days, like Nebuchadnezzar–or a sick dog–he fed on grass. This was no worse than the prison camp and it was in the camp, he believed, not during his arboreal sojourn that he grew weak and sick.
When Gilead shook Waters awake, he found himself sprawled across the blanket, his nose in the saddle: the smell of leather and sweat and horseflesh. He sat up too quick and, head throbbing, had to lie back down.
“That’s all right, young master,” Gilead said, “I’ll just leave it here.”
“Don’t close the door.”
Gilead served Waters fatty bacon and cornpone and a cup of make-do coffee–roasted acorns maybe or parched corn. To Waters, it tasted like a Sunday dinner. Gilead stood over him while he ate.
Gilead said, “You’ll be as healthy as a horse in just a few days.
Waters thanked him. Gilead walked out, pulling the door closed behind him. But he must have had an afterthought, for presently the door opened again. “Name’s Gilead.”
“Sergeant Jeremiah Waters.”
“Yes sir. Sergeant.”
Before Sergeant Waters had arrived at that flea-bitten collection of shanties the rebs called a prison, his one thought was how to escape it. All the long train ride from Virginia south, several days of sitting on shuntings or moving so slowly that the boxcar barely rocked, he sized up his companions, wondering whom he could rely on, whom he could take with him. He never doubted that he would escape.
The men on the train disappointed him.
Some looked sturdy, some counted themselves brave, some had long service and scars to recommend them–but not a man really understood the true nature of the war he fought. Waters knew that slavery and the slavocracy have long poisoned the nation, but these men couldn’t see it. Waters could not trust those men who said that this was a white man’s war and even less those who joked about “Sambo’s right to be killed.” He said to himself, give me a plain soldier who understands what he fights for.
All of them had heard about darkies helping Union soldiers find their way back north after they’d made an escape. Hiding them, showing them back roads and secret ways, bringing food out to where escapees waited until it was safe to go on, nursing them back to health. But these soldiers blamed the negro for the war and cursed Lincoln because he had shut down prisoner exchange for “nigger rights.”
“It’s not nigger rights,” Waters said. “He’s standing up for the right of every man who wears Union blue.”
Wilkins, a man from Waters’s company, with a beard like a goat’s and a leg as plump as a hog’s, said, “You reckon the niggers is worth it?”
Waters said, “As much as the rest of us.”
He said, “That ain’t saying a hell of a lot.”
Wandering lost in the woods, Waters laughed at himself sometimes. Back on the train, escape had meant organizing the men, leading a troop, perhaps a mad, gallant rush at the walls under fire. He never thought it would be as simple as bribing a guard with a watch he hadn’t even paid for. And the saddest part of the whole funny business is that the old man approached him before he even thought of it. That had been the joyous beginning of a painful, laborious journey that for the time being had ended at Gilead’s. Waters didn’t know if he should head north toward Grant’s army, or west toward the mountains, or east toward the Union navy. Like a runaway slave, he guided himself by the north star, followed the drinking gourd, travelling by night, hiding in the day. If he could recuperate, he knew he’d be home soon.
Wilkins had been chewing a plug of tobacco during that talk on the train south. Rebs always had tobacco; they were always eager to swap it for something good. The bulge in Wilkins’s cheek made him look an idiot. That goat beard of his stunk of tobacco juice. He said, “I didn’t join the army to fight for the niggers. I joined for the Union and sixteen dollars a month.”
Waters said, “Like the President said, some niggers are willing to fight for you.”
Wilkins said, “They can have all the glory they choose.”
Three times a day, Gilead brought pretty much the same food, some combination of hog and corn. Some meals the sergeant’s gut turned and he pushed the food aside, something that worried Gilead. Except for meals, Waters rested. Gilead took away his clothes to boil, as nothing else would clean them. Out of a habit developed in the prison barracks, Waters saved out the bone and hid it, telling himself that he wanted to keep it as a memento of his hard times in the camp. Actually he feared to let it out of his reach.
Gilead gave him a suit of his clothes to wear, coarse nankeen shirt and trousers, far too big. That didn’t matter much. Even his own uniform would have been oversized for his shrunken body. At every meal, Waters would promise Gilead, “I’ll be better soon.”
“Better,” Gilead said.
Evenings were best. Waters was too sick to sit up long, so Gilead would open the door and carry him out on a pallet. Then Waters could lie in the twilight, watching the light thicken.
Gilead told Waters that his master had been a improvident man, a slave himself to cards and whiskey and other unlawful pleasures. He had hired Gilead out to a number of craftsmen, a blacksmith, a harness maker, a man who kept a stable and broke horses. Allowed to retain a portion of his wages and borrowing the rest from the stable-owner, Gilead eventually bought his freedom. Too much money in a lump had been his former master’s undoing; he drank himself to death in a year. Gilead repaid the debt in five years time and had hidden himself away in the wilds, where he squatted on a piece of land he himself had cleared.
One morning in the shed singing woke Waters. He was lying on my stomach and could see cracks of light between the earth and the wall. Gilead had never sung before.
“Tramp tramp tramp the boys are marching
Cheer up comrades they will come.”
The shed door opened and Gilead entered. Waters sat up–stiffly, head ringing, throat dry–but he sat up. That was good. That was hopeful. Gilead handed out the same tin plate with the same food as always on it. Waters bit off a piece of pone and chewed it; then, with the recovering invalid’s excitement, he realized he was actually hungry. He smiled.
“Pie,” he said. “Blueberry pie. Or maybe some applesauce, like we get in the fall.” Fall: the air chilled, the trees loaded with apples, the boys and girls courting as they went among the trees to pick them, the sound of the mill making cider.
“Blueberry pie,” Gilead spoke with derision. He pointed to the cornbread and bacon. “That suits me. It’s been suiting me all my life.”
Waters felt ashamed for even appearing to question his rough fare.
“Now, later this year, maybe I could catch us a coon. You like coon? Bake it with sweet potatoes? Maybe a possum?”
With all the politeness he could muster, Waters thanked him and refused. He did not care to insult him but he didn’t think opossums and racoons would ka good eating.
“Then you better eat what you got.”
Gilead stood over and watched him eat the cornbread and bacon. Then he reached behind the door and fetched out a burlap bag.
“You ain’t so sick now. You can earn your keep.”
“What?”
“Laying by time is over.”
“Gilead?”
“Get off that bed.”
Waters still could not understand. He wondered if he were still sick with fever and all this a hallucination.
“Get off that bed.”
Gilead reached down and placed his forefinger and thumb underneath the soldier’s jaw. The tips of his fingers found the spot where jaw joined skull; then he squeezed appraisingly. When his grip was firm, he pulled lifted Waters from the pallet. His head brushed the ceiling, his toes swept the floor. Gilead set Waters on his feet and put the bag in his hands.
He said, “You think I can afford to feed a layabout the rest of his life?”
Pinching Waters’s shoulder, Gilead shoved him out of the shed into the sunlight. It had been hot in the shed but the dark had provided the occasional illusion of cool. This light seemed composed of pure heat. The roof-line of the cabin, the bag in his hands, the dying grass he stood on all reflected heat into his eyes in waves of light. Any way Waters turned, there were swells of heat, whitecaps, rising from the ground, coming down from the sky, the whole sky it seemed as it was diffuse to be said to come from the sun alone, coming from all objects within sight or touch, so that his own body tortured him, so that every part of his body that touched some other part of his body or just the fabric of his clothes was scorched by another. Out of instinct Waters bent his head. The heat rising and the sweat running out the line of his hair blinded him anyway.
“Welcome to Georgia,” Gilead said. “Welcome to August.”
The field to which Gilead steered him was white and green like the ocean. Gilead placed the strap of the bag on his shoulder, and Waters waded in, dragged the burlap behind. He staggered up the line of plants, tearing half or a third or two-thirds of an occasional boll, missing far more bolls than he found. Walking bent over hurt his back. The plants tore his palms. This was hard work. Waters had read about what hard work it was in many an abolitionist tract but this day he grasped the authentic fact.
Gilead waited at the end of the row. When Waters reached him, he took the bag and dumped the cotton into a bushel basket. Then he handed the bag back and pointed.
“Pick it again.”
Waters wanted to protest, but it occurred to him that perhaps this was some kind of joke produced by Gilead’s odd humor. So he worked his way down the row, picking a few of the bolls that had got pass him the first time. He was even slower this time, with legs stiff and fingers bleeding. Again Gilead met him at the end of the line. This time he stared at Waters with contempt.
“Again,” he said.
Tossing the back to the ground, Waters said, “Damned if I will.”
Gilead shoved him and he lost his footing, falling into the cotton. Gilead immediately pulled him up and back on his feet. On his command, Waters went up the row, pretending to pick cotton, but actually just grabbing at anything, cotton bolls, leaves, empty air. Once again, at the end of the row, Gilead took the bag and emptied in the basket. He took the basket over to a piece of canvas and poured its contents out. On his knees, he sifted the cotton, felt it, placed it into several piles meaningless to me. That done, he summoned Waters.
“That’s trashy cotton.”
The phrase meant nothing to Waters. Gilead pointed down. There were rocks, sticks, and dirt in a heap in the middle of the canvas, all the trash the soldier had gathered up while picking the cotton.
“So?” Waters said.
“Don’t be saucy,” Gilead said. “Take off your shirt.”
“You go to perdition.”
“Take off that shirt.” Waters started running but in seconds Gilead had grabbed him by the scuff of his neck. Damn exhaustion, damn infirmity. Gilead ripped his shirt off and threw him on the ground, where he lay like an old newspaper. Then, Gilead stood astride him and systematically whipped with a cowhide.
Just the touch of the sun on the naked back had been painful. This cut the skin; this might break the spirit. This was pain Waters had often heard about; stories about whippings had helped convert him to abolition. As had been the case with picking cotton, he had failed to imagine this pain. Salt from his body entered the stripes as they appeared. He counted the lashes up to fourteen and then could count no more.
It was over. Waters fainted and when consciousness returned, he was no longer outside. He lay on his stomach on the floor of the shed, cotton lint covering him, stuck to his body with dried blood and dried sweat. Flies and gnats swarmed in the air around him; they regarded him as a feast. Waters rolled over but when his back touched the ground, he had to roll back. His nose almost touching the earth, he saw a beetle making its way toward him.
Gilead was there too. Waters could hear breathing above and beyond him; he heard the sounds of mirth as well. But Gilead stooped down and began to wash his back.
“Yeah, boss,” Gilead said, “they used to treat me like that.”
“You can’t do this to me.”
“I saved your life.”
The water stung as if instead of ministering to the sergeant, Gilead whipped him again. The drops that ran across his skin felt like fire-ants crawling.
“I might have started you on cotton too soon,” Gilead said, with a curious sympathy in his voice. He rolled Waters over and looked directly in his eyes. “We’ll start on shingling tomorrow.”
Waters said, “I am no man’s slave.”
“These are unusual times, unusual circumstances, boy. Nobody can predict what he might come to.”
“I’m a white man, Sambo.”
“I wouldn’t run if I were you,” Gilead said. “If I don’t track you down, the rebs are bound to.” Nonetheless, from that night on he kept the door of the shed locked. Whenever he let Waters out, he kept him carefully in sight.
Waters lay in the hot darkness and decided that the next day he would attack Gilead when the door opened, that he would stun him, maybe kill him, and escape. He searched for an old friend hidden in the broken saddle that pillowed his head, the dry bone with its indentation and its knobby head. Its taste and texture had remained familiar to his tongue. As Waters waited for morning and the opening of the door, he sucked on the bone. Saliva came to his mouth and helped soothe his dusty thirst. By morning Waters was engrossed in a dream, debating the war with Wilkins as they drank coffee and ate blueberry pie. When Gilead shook him awake, he had to think hard to remember where he was.
Reid Mitchell is a New Orleanian who spent the last decade teaching in China. In the twentieth century he was an historian of the American Civil War.