Next few days were even worse. It was a sore disappointment to discover that I wasn’t the horseman I’d always dreamed I’d be if only given the chance. Problem was, I was trying too hard. Turned out that riding a horse was one of those things, like sleep or moving your bowels, that gets worse the more try you put on them.
By the end of the day, I could barely stand. Felt like I’d been dropped from a shot tower direct onto the old Arschloch. About a hundred times. Walking bowlegged, I led Bunny to the stables for grooming. The stables were my favorite place on post to escape from prying eyes. With Bunny I could relax for a bit, leave off the manly airs that I found so wearying. It was also the only place where my odor wasn’t noticeable, for all the riding combined with avoiding the bathhouse had caused me to ripen to such a degree that comments were being passed. Many comments.
The problem wasn’t exactly me, though, since I slipped off to wash every other day or so. It was my uniform. Since every cent I made was going to pay off Vikers, I didn’t have even the three pennies a washerwoman charged to iron a shirt, much less what it cost to mend, soak, boil, scrub, blue, bleach, rinse, wring, dry, and fold the whole truck. But with Allbright studying on exiling me to the infantry, the least I could do was not stink. I headed for Suds Row hoping to convince one of the gals to IOU the deal.
I was just turning the corner out onto the central promenade when I spotted Sergeant Allbright on the other side, his laundry wrapped up neat inside a jacket and tucked under his arm. My step slackened as I gazed upon him striding beneath the oaks, their leaves starting to make a dark lace against the sky as dusk came on. His walk had the smooth action of a show horse and he didn’t seem to spend any more energy covering ground than a hawk did riding a high wind current.
I picked up my pace, cut across the promenade, and intersected him just as he was about to turn off for Soap Suds Row.
“Why, Sergeant,” I piped up with a note of surprise that sounded fake even to me. I slipped in beside him with a salute which he only half returned. “Right nice evening, isn’t it, Sergeant?”
He nodded stiffly.
“Out for a walk, sir?” I asked.
He pointed to the bundle beneath his arm.
“Soap Suds Row! You don’t say. Why, that’s just where I’m headed,” I said, as if us both headed toward one of the two places anyone off duty’d ever walk to was a coincidence of the highest order. “Be happy to take that for you, sir,” I said as I grabbed hold of his bundle of laundry.
Allbright jerked it away, saying, “No need, Private.” He started to leave, pivoted, and added, “Cathay, I am still watching you. Still going to have to make my choice based on what’s best for the unit.”
It was clear that Allbright thought I was brownnosing him, sucking up so he wouldn’t send me down to the infantry. Shamed by that realization, I fumbled a salute and hurried away to the far end of the last barracks where I hid at its edge. Far below the bluff the post sat on, the evening light had polished the river up to a shine, but, in my humiliation, I took no notice of its silver ripples and slow, snaking turns. Without thinking, I lowered my face into my hands and caught the barest whiff of his smell of sweat and soap and sun that either lingered there from the touch of his clothes or was put there by my wanting.
As I was sniffing, I felt the spidery sensation of being watched. I dropped my hands, glanced behind me, and there, standing beneath a monstrous oak that had a perfect view of the promenade, was Justice Vikers, grinning for he had seen the whole set-to.
I tried to wait until after lights out to return to the barracks, but a corporal spotted me and ordered me inside. Tea Cake and his bunch were singing field chants to ease their homesickness. In the middle of the room the cots had been cleared away leaving the floor empty and Vikers was running his usual crap game. A stable boy out of Shreveport name of Fernie Teague was clinging to the dice too long. Vikers yawped at him, “You chokin’ them dice, Teague! Shake and lemme hear the music! Rattle them bones!”
I made my way around the gamblers to my bunk, surprised that Vikers had passed no comment. Turned out, he had a different game in mind. His first move was declaring, “Uh-huh! Lucy Landreau, that was one fine piece of womanflesh.” This Lucy Landreau had made so many appearances in Vikers’s accounts of his many conquests that she needed no introduction. He went on as he always did, saying, “Of course, I do have a decided preference for high yellow tail.”
I figured I was safe for the night as, once the nasty talk started, it could go on for hours and all any of them were interested in was getting their own story told. During these endless discussions, I liked to pretend the men were talking about horses or food with all their comments about someone being a “fine piece of flesh” or a “tasty morsel.” Otherwise, I’d get to feeling like a rabbit hiding from a pack of wolves. I knew most of the men were just blowing big, ruffling up like yard dogs to keep the pack from thinking they were little enough to boss around. But some of them truly believed women had been put on this earth for them to use like animals.
It scared me to think what those men’d do to me if they ever discovered that I fell into the livestock category.
“Me,” Greene announced, “give me that dark meat, man.” He added the familiar words, “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”
Teague said, “Wish I had me a piece right now, any color.”
“Me too,” Caldwell cut in. “I’m so horny I could—”
I never did find out what horniness might drive Greene to, for Vikers interrupted, and in a voice could tenderize shoe leather, he asked, “What about you, Cathay? What kind of tail you like?” All eyes turned to me and Vikers asked again, “Cathay? You never have said what kind of tail you prefer.”
“No, Vikers. I never have.” I cut my words off so they flew at him with sharp points.
“Might lead a body to think, maybe, you got something to hide.”
“That so?” I came back, holding his eyes hard and fast until he blinked. “We got a saying back home about that,” I said, laid it out there, hoping he’d pick it up.
Which he did, saying in a peevish, sneery manner, “Oh, you do, do you?” He was looking off at his boys, upping his eyebrows, when he asked, “And just what might that pearl of country wisdom be?”
“Old folks say,” I began. “‘The louder the rooster crow, the less about the hen he know.’”
That was a crowd-pleaser, especially amongst the country boys who outnumbered the freedmen and city slickers like Vikers by a long shot. They whooped it up riotous then settled down, waiting for Vikers to hit me back.
I puffed up, certain he had nothing as he played for time, muttering, “Is that right? Is that right?”
“That’s right, Vikers.”
“Well, Cathay, we have a saying, too.”
Everybody hushed up then.
“Yeah, that’s right. Back home we like to say, ‘Rooster that don’t crow at all. Might turn out to be a capon.’”
The hoots rang out then. “You hear that?” “Got him! Got him! Got him!” “Cut him! Dead!”
Silence fell again for it was my turn and if I didn’t cut Vikers back, he would pitch into me even harder. I was trying to cook up some back-home saying the way Vikers had just done when Lem, puzzled, piped up, “We don’ have that sayin’ back in Alabama. What, exactly, is a kay-pon?”
This time Vikers got the eye lock on me and said, “That’s a cock had his balls cut off.”
“Oh, yes!” Lem exclaimed. “Makes the meat tender.”
Vikers, staring at me dead level, said, “I wouldn’t know. I never tried it that way.”
“Just keep on a-blowin’,” I told him. “Air’s not hot enough in here no how.” That was lame as a sick kitten and the whole barracks knew I’d lost and lost big. Being called out as a nancy boy was serious business back in those days. Though sodomites weren’t generally killed outright anymore, if a man was proved a candy ankle, he’d spend a few years behind bars. And he’d definitely get mustered out of the army faster than even a woman would. First, though, he’d get hard used by anyone cared to have a go at him. Worse even than the way I would be if I was ever uncovered.
When the hee-hawing went on—“Hear that? He got him.” “Laid him out on the cooling board!” “Took him to the boneyard!” “Buried him! Clean buried Stanky!”—I turned away and made out like I couldn’t be bothered with such childish moonshines.
“Don’t mind them ignorant fools, Bill,” Lem said.
I slept little that night for, even more than a woman alone, season was always open on nancy boys. I clutched at the collar of my jacket and started at every noise. Most of my barracks mates were fine men, but there were jackals amongst them. Jackals and the easily led. I grew up hearing of what men did to women, but recalling the stories about what they did to boys who’d been singled out as funny made my blood run cold.
On top of everything else keeping me anxioused up, tomorrow was Friday. Last day I had to prove to Allbright that I was fit for the cavalry. Though I wasn’t any circus performer and never would be, Bunny and I had smoothed out enough that I could keep up with the rest. What I had to do now was show Allbright that I wouldn’t be a divisive element in the unit. Somehow or other, I had to get right with Vikers. Or, at least, appear to the Sergeant’s eyes to be.