The next week, we encamped at Cedar Creek and Sheridan swore that that was where we would hold the line. That he and every soul under his command would die before he’d allow the Rebs to cross Cedar Creek.
Third night there, I made the General his cup of tea way I knew he liked it. Dark as tar, with a touch of blackstrap molasses and two tablespoons of a new delicacy, Gail Borden’s milk that came in cans they called “airtights.”
I handed the cup to Solomon, but he passed it back. “You take it to him tonight.”
“Me?” I asked, certain I hadn’t heard right. Solomon had been nice, almost gentle with me, since the night a week back when I told him about Mama and Clemmie. He had even patted my back a little and given me Matildy, saying I needed the company, something warm to love on when sleep failed me. Next morning, after I’d cried until dawn, he let me sleep late then did most of my chores himself. And now here he was telling me to take the General his tea.
I was so nervous walking to Sheridan’s tent my hands were shaking with the bumfidgets. The General always stayed awake, studying maps and writing dispatches and whatnot, long after the rest of the camp had doused their candles and slush lamps and turned in. So, as usual, his was the only tent glowing in the darkness. It reminded me of the pumpkin lanterns Little Miss and her brothers were partial to carving back before the war when there was food to waste.
As I approached, I heard the General chanting low in the “me boyo” accent that I’d come to learn was Paddy Yankee. Through a slit in the flaps, I saw that he was on his knees beside his cot praying to the Irish goddess he favored. He clutched a string of beads and said one prayer for each pearly bead he counted off. When he ticked off the last one he whirled the cross hanging from the beads around his head and shoulders.
He brought the cross to his lips to kiss and I caught a glimpse of the Irish Jesus nailed there. I had heard about Jesus and the Crucifixion and the Crown of Thorns from the white preacher Old Mister made us listen to, but the only cross I ever saw was two plain boards nailed together. This was my first look at the fellow himself bleeding and near naked and drooping from where he was nailed to the cross. It was gory enough to have come out of one of Grandma’s stories and it raised my opinion of Jesus considerable.
I tiptoed to the flap of the General’s tent and though I was barely breathing, Sheridan grabbed up his saber and whirled around, ready to skewer any intruder. He had a ferocious, slaughter-minded look on his face would of done that lunatic King Andandozan with his bone-crunching hyenas proud.
Recalling my father’s instruction in correct speaking, I plucked myself up and piped out, “Begging your pardon, General, I am here to deliver your tea.”
And just that quick, the warrior switched off and Sheridan said, “Ah, my tay,” in his Paddy manner. “Come in. Come in.”
I pushed through the canvas flaps. Inside, the air smelled of cigar smoke, kerosene, camphor, sweat, and gun oil. A rug, a genuine parlor rug, covered the dirt floor. He had himself a cot, a spindly table, and a chair cut out of a barrel half so that it had a back. On the table was a saucer with the butts of several stogies crushed out on it, a gold-nibbed pen, and a stack of laid paper. His hat and greatcoat hung from a nail pounded into the back support.
Sheridan’s dark eyes were bright and quick as a hawk’s. It seemed he recognized me. But that might just of been my pride hoping such a thing was so since I wanted the General to see what I’d made of myself since being a no-count pissing down her leg in a barrel.
“Put it there.” He nodded to the table.
I placed the mug on the table next to the saucer of stogie butts and waited for my next order. But the General’s attention had already turned to a map spread over another table and I backed quietly away, leaving him to reckon how best to smite Jubal Early so that Lincoln could get reelected and I could stay out of chains. I was content knowing that I’d made the cup of tea’d help him do that, and was almost through the canvas flaps when Sheridan, eyes still on the map, raised a finger, pointed it in my direction, and said, “You.”
I stood unbreathing. He turned to face me, jiggling that finger my way as though he was trying to shake something off it. “You, you are the contraband I freed, aren’t you? The one who intends to sing at my funeral.”
He knows me. General Philip Henry Sheridan knows who I am.
I was as proud as Iyaiya must of been when the scout saw her for who she really was. I wished more than anything that my soldier could of seen me at that moment. A grin I couldn’t control went east and west, and I popped back, “Yessir, I’m keeping in tune, sir.”
Sheridan tipped his head to the side, and the lantern light fell full on his face. He was as fierce as any Africa warrior. Even the ones from old times like Iyaiya who sharpened their teeth into points to rip the throats out of the king’s foes.
My heart lurched and my smile dropped, though, when I saw that I had riled him. The thing about the powerful is that sometimes they like a peppery comment from those beneath them so they can laugh along and show what sports they are. And sometimes they don’t. And what with interrupting his Mary prayers and all, it appeared that this was a don’t time.
“Sir, I … Sir … I…”
“You what? Don’t want me dead?”
“Last thing on earth I want, sir. What I want is for you to stomp a hole in Jubal Early so wide the whole Union Army can ride through it and squash them Rebs like the vermin they are. That’s what I want. And unless God’s a possum that is what General Philip Henry Smash ’em Up Sheridan is going to do.”
He gave me something in the vicinity of a smile and said, “Good night, contraband.”
Without thinking, I saluted him, but the General’s back was already turned.