After that, chain of command broke down fast among everyone except the army regulars, who were few and far between as most of the soldiers were civilians, farmers and shopkeepers, who couldn’t wait to leave. First to vamoose were the homesick boy drummers and buglers. Without them to sound out orders, the army’s clock was broken and all us as had been slaves made the acquaintance of a powerful force we had never known before: free time, our own to do with as we chose.
For the next couple of days, we scratched about like hens for any scrap of information that might come our way concerning the surrender agreement. In specific, what it said about us.
“Way I heard it,” a fellow with a pair of bushy muttonchops winging out either side of his head declared, “we all’s to be divvied up. Straight down the middle. Half go North to freedom. Half go South back to bondage.”
“You’s all kinda liar,” another disagreed. “Ain’t gonna be like that at all. They’s already built the boats gone carry us back to Africa.”
That caused a mighty stir with all gathered putting in their opinions on life in Africa as if we were standing on the dock at that moment. While we were arguing about whether we’d be greeted as long-lost relatives or chunked in a big pot and boiled for dinner, a piercing voice cut into our chin wag and demanded, “Would any of you care to know what the document in question actually says?”
Though the question wasn’t stated in a loud voice, the tone of it cut so clean through the hubbub that every single one of us fell so dead silent that I expected to turn and see a white man.
But the man, compact built and fine dressed, was as dark as me. He wore a mustache with waxed tips pointing directly east and west and a small afterthought of a beard on the chin. He had a kingly bearing about him that made you wonder, “Who is this fellow?”
A gold watch chain looped from one pocket of his waistcoat. From the other he plucked a pair of spectacles and, with more hemming and hawing than seemed entirely necessary, he curled the wire arms around his smallish ears. Next he produced a newspaper clipping that was limp as a rag from much handling. The crowd fell silent for many among us had never before seen a person of color who could read.
Mr. Spectacles waited until even the wind had stopped soughing in the high branches before he held the wilted article up with an outstretched arm and spoke in a piercing voice that drilled straight into your brain and etched the words directly there, “You have before you today a transcript of the Articles of Agreement Relating to the Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.”
Someone chimed in with a chorus of “uh-huhs,” “amens,” and “thas rights.” That someone might have been me for I was distracted by wondering if this small fellow, along with being able to read, might not also possess Daddy’s ability to discern a woman of quality. For though he couldn’t of held a candle to my soldier, and caused none of the firefly flutters he had, it was clear that, like myself, this fellow was a bend or two above the ordinary run.
The small ovals of glass in front of his eyes turned to silver as they caught the afternoon light while he read. Though he quickly lost most of us in a thicket of brigades, detachments, divisions, and corps, we listened as though hearing the word of God. He finished, dipped his head, peered over his glasses, saw our stupefied confusion, and summed it all up this way. “With God as their witness, those damn Rebs agree to lay down their weapons and never again take them up against the government of the United States.”
Oh, that brought on a hallelujah chorus to beat all.
He continued, “Grant’s going to give all the Johnny Rebs parole and let them return home. He won’t send a one of them to prison.”
Though we had seen it all our lives, we were still stunned by this fresh evidence of the murders, treason, and other unspeakable devilry a white man could get away with. No chorus filled the silence this time. There would be no justice. I knew that what Grant and Lincoln and who all else had drawn those terms up might of thought to be mercy was a calamitious mistake. Though beaten and burned out and laid low, the Confederacy was still a snake with poison enough to kill off half a country.
I told Solomon, “Sheridan would of sent them all to hell.” Everyone within hearing distance told me to tell it. Tell the truth.
When our cries for revenge rose up, Bible man shouted us down, saying, “We ain’t what we want to be. And we ain’t what we gon be. But we surely ain’t what we was.”
A moment passed before someone called out the question that was at the top of all our minds. “What’s it say about us?”
Mr. Spectacles answered in that voice made to carry to the top of the mountain we all wanted to climb. “The Rebels cannot claim you for you all are free men. Lincoln already emancipated you two years ago. He just had to whip the Rebs to make it stick.”
We exploded with joy, cheering the well-dressed stranger as if he were the one who’d personally unshackled our bonds. When he was finished, the crowd bunched up like an adoring congregation, paying their respects to the preacher. Several even asked to touch the scrap of newspaper he held as though it was the very document that had ended their days of bondage.
That night, we all went to sleep praying for daylight, for the final surrender would take place the next day.
And I was there for every minute of it, hypnotized by seeing nearly thirty thousand Rebels lay down their colors and their arms. I grinned for twelve hours straight knowing how aggravating it was for the poor Southern boys who’d never had anything in life except being better than girls and coloreds to see me up there lording it over them at the moment they had to holler uncle. I hurt from wishing so hard that Clemmie and Mama were standing beside me.
When the last Johnny Reb shuffled off, most of the contrabands, finally convinced they were really free, drifted away. Some headed back to where they’d run off from or been plucked from to see who was still alive back home. Some cleared off in any direction but south. But a few stayed tight on the spectacled stranger for he had offered to help us with reading documents and making our way through the scary new world we’d been turned loose in.
I went to start after him myself, but Solomon stopped me with a hand on my arm, a sour look wrinkling his face.
“What?” I asked. “Man can read. Can help us with whatever papers come our way. Might keep us from getting bamboozled. He seems to know the way of things.”
“Man seems a lot of things,” he said, peeved. “Lot of miles between seeming and being.”
“Aw, Solomon, you’re just jealous ’cause folks are paying him all the mind.” It was true, Solomon liked being top dog and wasn’t shy about baring his teeth and bristling up when a challenger came too close.
“Because he can read?” Solomon demanded. “Because he can write? I’ll tell you what, that man there, he’d steal the butter off a blind man’s bread and put him on the wrong road home.”
I laughed at Solomon’s jealous words and he stomped off.
Meanwhile, the happy band gathered up around Mr. Spectacles was already heading off. I consulted Mama and Iyaiya on whether I should follow him or Solomon, then waited for their sign.
No sign appeared to nudge me in one direction or the other. And, in that moment, I felt as bewildered and scared about what was to come next as any of the others. The only two people in the world I cared about were dead. I had nowhere to go. And no one who cared if I got there.
Except for Solomon.
It hit me then that if I had a friend, he was it. With no other choice, I started off after him. The last thing I heard from the stranger was the Bible man asking him, “What’s your name, son?”
Mr. Spectacles stopped, turned back so all behind could hear, and answered in his distinct voice, “Vikers. They call me Justice Vikers.”