We unloaded on the banks of the Mississippi River in East St. Louis and took a ten-mile paddleboat ride downriver. At the dock we were met by a young white corporal name of Withers who was jovial and welcoming even though he had the strangely rosy cheeks of one taken with consumption and a cough that left his handkerchief speckled with blood. We gathered our traps and Withers led us up the bluff to the post, talking and coughing all the way.
As we entered the post, Withers told us that Jefferson Barracks had been a hospital during the war. Eighteen thousand patients, Yankee and Reb, himself included, had come through and left behind a whole quarry’s worth of white marble tombstones in a big graveyard.
“Want to have a look-see?” Withers asked, eager as a kid with a new bag of hand-rolled clay marbles to show off.
Graveyards were not one of my people’s favorite spots. Especially not when the sun was setting and the lonely cries of hootie owls were greeting the night. But the corporal was already leading us there, carrying on with his own special guided tour. As I’d done during the journey here, I hovered at the edge, away from the other men who were always jostling and bumping into each other, heedless as a litter of kittens. I stayed extra far away from Vikers, who kept his eye on me tight as a planter watching a bad runaway.
No matter how far from my draft group I went, though, Lemuel stayed right next to me, true as a shadow. My back ached from caving my shoulders forward so far my sack coat made a straight line from where I kept it buttoned below my chin down to my crotch. The sweat that collected along the rough bindings strapped around my breasts caused a terrible itching. I yearned to do nothing more than sit off by myself alone somewhere and scratch.
The corporal showed us an immense mound where they had buried the body parts sawed off by surgeons during the war. Then he went on for a bit about the unforgettable smell of gangrene. “Makes you want to cut off your own nose,” he promised us. “Just see if it don’t!”
After that detour, he led us to Jefferson Barracks. Though the place scared me spitless for reasons I’ll go into a bit later, it was a grand post. It set a few miles south of St. Louis, high atop a bluff looking down on the Mississippi River. From up there the river was a surging thing that, though brown as a muddy dog during the day, went golden when the sun set and evening came on.
The buildings were made of white limestone that fair shimmered in the sunlight, and everywhere you looked tall oaks cast a heavy, cooling shade. Long rows of one- and two-story buildings and wide verandas made a rectangle open on one end to the breezes that blew up off the river and set Old Glory to snapping on her high staff.
“And here is where you new recruits will be quartered,” Withers announced, stopping outside a plain, wooden structure. “Carlisle Barracks.”
We cautiously entered the two-story building, awed by the high ceilings and windows that let in a lavish of light. Though the floors were a good bit tore up and so moldy and rotted in spots that an odor of decay fell heavy about the large room, they were wood. For most who had slept on dirt their whole lives, it was paradise.
“Had the dysentery cases in here,” the corporal babbled on. “Tell you what: couldn’t pay me to sleep on them beds.”
All the Appomattox men kept glancing around. The same question that was on my mind showed on their faces. The old Cathy would of piped right up and asked, “Where’s Sergeant Allbright?” but William Cathay had to keep his head down, lay low, and not attract attention.
Finally one of a group of six friends who’d all come off the same plantation in Georgia and been recruited at Appomattox said, “Suh, ’scuse me, suh.” His accent was so country Southern the words dripped out of him more than being spoken. Later I would learn that his name was Duchamps but his friends called him Tea Cake. The rest had nicknames like Baby King and Ivory. Four of them were Duchamps’s brothers and cousins, but I never figured out which four.
“Yes, Private,” the corporal said.
“Where’s Sergeant Allbright?”
“Who?” the corporal said.
“Sergeant Allbright. One who recruited us. Said we’d be riding west with him.”
“Never heard the name,” Withers said. Shoulders sagged all around me. We’d been bamboozled again.