“Form up! Form up!” a bucktoothed lion roared into my face and I barely stifled a shriek that would have announced me as the girliest of girls. On second glance I saw that my nerves had got the better of me, and it was only a round-faced corporal with a bushy blond mustache and beard and front teeth that poked out to where he couldn’t close his mouth over them.
I tried to step out of line so I could get my hands to quit shaking and take in the lay of the land before it was my turn at the enlistment table, but the bucktoothed corporal jobbed me a smart one in my hindquarters with the butt of his rifle and ordered, “Step up, boy! Step up! You’re on army time now!”
The private behind the table squared up the pile of forms in front of him, dipped his pen into a little ink bottle, flicked the excess off, and asked, “Name?”
Caught off guard, I squeaked out, “What?” sounding, for the one and only time in my life not just female, but feeble-minded to boot.
From behind me came Vikers’s high-pitched cackle. His cronies joined in laughing at me. The sweat ran down my face in rivulets.
A drop of ink plopped onto the form from the tip of the private’s pen as he stared, blinking into the early morning sun up at me, and ordered, “State your first name.”
When I responded by opening and closing my mouth like a gaffed bass, he and his buddy at the next table exchanged little snorts of sad amusement directed, not just at me, but at my people in general. “Step aside!” he ordered. “We got men to process. Ranks to fill. Step aside!”
“Naw, naw,” a gentle voice behind me muttered. “Give the man a second.” The stranger leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Don’t have to be your slave name. Go on. Pick your own name your own self.”
The man’s kindness steadied me and I said, “Williams.”
“Is Williams your first name?” the private barked. “Or is Williams your last name? If Williams is your first name, do they call you Billies for short?”
Oh, how the white soldiers and Vikers and his crew, standing behind me, snickered about that weak little joke.
I tucked my head down, almost crushing my chin into my neck to make certain my voice’d be good and low, and said, “William. First name’s William.” My voice was so deep I’d of made John Henry sound like he ought to of been serving tea at a quilting bee.
“Last name!” the private barked.
“Cathy, sir!” I barked back even louder.
“Cathay,” he said as he wrote down my name the way he heard it. “You are eighteen, aren’t you?”
“Every bit of it,” I snapped right back, as he’d made it clear that eighteen was what he and the U.S. Army wanted me to be. He filled that in, handed me the paper, and told me to proceed to the barn.
I stepped out of line and got my first look at the kind soul who had come to my aid. He was a bull-built country boy, every solid inch of him, with shoulders like a set of smoked hams. His face was broad and open as whatever cotton patch he’d fetched up out of, and when he smiled, his teeth were big and white with a gap between the two front ones probably made him a champion watermelon-seed-spitter. Soon as he finished with his enlistment form, he stepped over to me, his hand stuck out, and said, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, William.” He had the velvety-soft, molasses-slow accent of the Deep South, but his hand was big and hard as a hickory knot.
As he told me about “’nother William I knows back home though he ain’t got your height,” we took our place in the next line, this one leading into the barn. The whole time, I kept an eye on Vikers. He was a true leader, a man who could influence those around him. What he appeared to be leading his growing crew toward, though, was being bullies, for they mocked and picked on anyone in their vicinity. Most of them he bullied ended up flocking with his gang as it is considerably more entertaining to bully than to be bullied.
When Vikers stepped up to the enlistment table, he made a big deal of taking the pen from the private and sweeping it around in the air several times before plunging it down to the paper to fill in his name and age. His cronies then begged him to do the same for them. Soon they were all signing their Xs on pieces of paper that I took to be IOUs as Vikers collected one from each man whose forms he filled in and signed.
The barn line was barely moving and Vikers and his boys fell in behind us just as the country boy announced to me, “Why, I believe I’ll call you Bill. They calls me Lemuel.”
To which Vikers squawked out, “Lummox, did you say? You’re saying your mammy named you Lummox?” In spite of most of them not having the faintest idea what a lummox was, Vikers’s followers knew it to be an insult and and cackled loud.
Lemuel took no offense and merely replied, “No, sir, I goes by Lemuel. Not Lum … Lummah … Whatever you said.”
I winced, for, as I’d learned from Mama, being polite to most men, but bullies in particular, was a terrible mistake. Politeness being the first inch of the mile of misery they’d take from you.
“Oh, excuse me for my error,” Vikers said.
“Nuthin’ to excuse,” Lemuel answered, with a gap-toothed smile. “Folks don’t hardly never catch it first time.” He offered his hand. “I’m Lemuel Powdrell out of Tallapoosa County, Alabama.”
“Oh, I have it now,” Vikers replied, turning his back on us so as to address his cronies. “Mule. Mule Powdrell.”
Being as I hated nothing more in life than a bully, Vikers’s insult made the blood pound at my temples. My fists were balling up and, for one second, I almost forgot that I couldn’t be Cathy Williams anymore. I was Bill Cathay and my life depended on passing unnoticed.
And passing unnoticed is just what I’d of done had not Vikers then added, “Well, Mule, maybe you two field apes…”
Field ape?
Had that little runt just called me a field ape or had I gone deaf from hate? The open guffaws of his gang told me I had heard right.
His next words came in loud and clear. “Perhaps you two hadn’t noticed, but you’re not standing in some field in Hog Dick, Alabama, picking goober peas, so Mule, if you and your odoriferous friend would step forward…” He whisked his fingers at us like he was flinging snot off of them.
Lemuel, who wouldn’t take up for himself, now did so when the attack included me and muttered, “They ain’t no cause to be so ugly.”
“Oh, they ain’t, ain’t they?” Vikers singsonged, mocking Lemuel’s country accent. Next he brayed out for the benefit of his buddies, “Lincoln should have given these country boys a brain instead of freedom.”
Well, that cut it. I wheeled on him and said, “Listen here, Little Man, Lemuel can learn to speak proper, but you ain’t never gon learn to be a full-size man.”
Because I caught them off guard, a couple of his new buddies laughed. Laughed hard. The one I’d heard being called Greene was a skinny country boy had a head and eyes the shape of almonds with ears placed so high they were near level with his eyebrows. The whole arrangement made him look like a baby possum. The other one, name of Caldwell, was a strapping fellow nearly as solid built as Lemuel. He had a big head and eyes, no neck, and sloping shoulders, all of which gave him a striking resemblance to a six-foot owl.
Little Possum Greene was laughing so hard he had to hang on to Big Owl Caldwell, as Caldwell hooted out, “Hoo-WEE! Little Man, Little Man, Stinky done hit you a straight lick with a crooked stick!” Hooting and gasping, Caldwell even laughed like an owl.
Lemuel joined in with one of those hard sucking-in laughs sounded like a mule braying.
The only one not amused was Vikers, who’d gone flinty and black in the eyes. He cut his boys with a stony gaze and asked in a voice more low and slithery than his usual high and piercing tone, “Caldwell, Greene, did you two suddenly learn to read?”
That tone even more than the words caused them to snap their yaps shut.
Vikers went on, “If you did, then you won’t be needing me to watch out for you, will you? Won’t need me to read the papers the army’s gonna get you to sign. Won’t need me to make sure they don’t trick you.” Vikers shrugged real casual, like it was their funeral and none of his concern. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll sign yourself right back into slavery.”
You think that didn’t bring them to heel? Then you don’t know the least little bit about the unimaginable trickery inflicted by whites upon my people. I fought hard against the urge to lick Vikers’s boots myself and get on his good side so he’d read for me, too. Before I had time to turn myself into a toadying ass sucker, however, the door of the rickety barn creaked open and a white corporal came out, blinking into the bright sun, and yelling, “Next six men! Step forward!”
Grinning like there was a taffy pull going on inside that barn, Lemuel said, “Come on, Bill, it’s our turn,” and practically danced inside. Not wanting any further word or scrutiny from Vikers and grateful to Lemuel for shouting out my new man name at every opportunity, I followed him in.
Coming in from the dazzling sun, it took my eyes a bit to adjust to the gloom inside the old barn. For a few seconds, all I could see were horizontal stripes of daylight shining through the gaps between the weathered boards and the dust motes floating through them. The rusty hinges of the barn doors creaked as the soldier slammed them shut then planted himself in front to guard that no one got out.
As soon as my eyes adjusted, I saw that all the men of color, both those being examined and those waiting, were naked as boiled chickens. I stood there, stunned. I can’t say exactly what I expected, but it did not involve airing out my particulars before a barnful of naked men. Surely that pair of lady lovers I had seen slurping on each other back to Cedar Creek hadn’t been required to show all that God had given them.
Peacetime be a whole other deal. I heard Solomon’s voice clear as if he was standing next to me, complete with his told-you-so laugh.
A private holding a musket with a bayonet attached shouted in my ear, “Strip down and line up!” He jerked back sharp, though, when he caught a whiff of Dupree’s rank garments.
I stepped forward to where Lemuel was already bent over taking off his britches. He straightened up and became another sturdy trunk in an orchard of dark-barked trees. I froze, conspicuously dressed amidst that forest of naked bodies. The back of my neck prickled and I glanced around to find Vikers studying me like a hawk focused on a baby squirrel. He glared, letting me know that he had a heavy score to settle on account of my mocking him.
“Bill,” Lemuel said, “you best shuck off them leathers, man.”
“I need to…” I pointed vaguely off toward the back of the barn.
Lemuel gave me a knowing nod. “See a man about a horse?”
When I continued searching for a possible escape route that didn’t pass by either Vikers or the guard at the barn doors, Lemuel clarified, “Means you got to go wee-wee. You might could slip in behind one them stalls back there.”
I shuffled out of the line, and performed the magic trick that all slaves were good at: I turned invisible. Of course being a walking heap of stinking hides helped.
With folks clearing out of the way of my stink shield, I was looking to sashay on out when Lemuel sang out big as glory, “Bill, hey, Bill! I got your place saved right here. Come on now. You up next!”