I raised up to yell for the driver to stop. Before I could open my mouth, though, I saw that we were coming up on an aid station of some sort.
“Hang on,” I begged my soldier, hoping that some part of him could hear. “I can get you help now. You’ll be fine. Just fine.”
There, on the outskirts of camp, was a row of tents large enough to stand up in. Cedar boughs to keep out insects and clean the bad air decorated each one. The flaps in the front and sides were open. Wounded men were laid out on cots with the blanket pulled away from stubs of missing arms and legs that had been stitched up with wide tracks of black catgut like embroidery around a hem.
“Hospital tents,” I told him. “For soldiers. Real soldiers like you. We made it. Driver’s headed there right now. You’ll be resting on a cot before you know it.”
But when we reached the tall hospital tents, instead of stopping, the driver veered away like he hadn’t seen them at all and made for a desolate area back beyond camp. Though it was dangerous to speak out to a white man, I didn’t have a choice. I yelled out, “Sir! ’Scuse me, sir. Sir?”
For the first time, the driver looked over his shoulder at me. Most of his face was covered by an assortment of whiskers—mustaches, sideburns, and whatnot. Out of that foliage peered a pair of hard blue eyes shot with blood by short nights and long days of trail dust.
“Sir,” I said, turning all humble and meek, the way most men of any color preferred to be addressed, “aren’t the hospital tents back yonder?”
The driver curled his lip up to reveal a limited selection of stumpy brown teeth, let fly a thin stream of chaw juice and said, “Not for you Ethiopians they ain’t.” He tipped his head toward my soldier and added, “’Specially not dead ones.”
Without thinking, I scrambled to the foretop, jerked the reins from the driver’s hands, yanked hard to turn the wagon around, and was rewarded with a string of curses regarding my race and a righteous clout in the nose from a fist hardened by years of mule persuasion. Catching me off balance, the blow pitched me back into the bed and I only righted myself when the driver whoaed the mules and we stopped at a desolate place on the far edge of camp. A raggedy pack of contrabands, escaped slaves, and other hard-luck cases sprung forward.
“Got ’nother one for you, boys,” the driver informed the contrabands, cocking his head back toward the soldier. “Haul him to the boneyard. Throw that there other one in with him for all I care. I’da dumped him out myself except Sheridan wants him delivered to headquarters.”
The instant one of the men grabbed hold of my soldier, I screamed, “No!” with all the force of my voice, which was a mighty one when I chose it to be. With no more thought than I’d give to drawing a breath, I threw my body across the soldier and announced, “This man is alive! He needs doctoring! Water! Food! Medicine! He’ll be fine!”
The men cut glances back and forth until a snowy-topped gent with a few scraggly white hairs poking out of his chin like bean sprouts inquired gently, “You touched in the head, son?”
It was then that I saw that my soldier’s struggle for breath had ended. The half of his well-made face not covered by blood-blacked bandages was serene and at peace now that he’d stopped fighting the pain. He had been taken home. I lay across his chest, not letting the men take him, and said Iyaiya’s prayers asking that his ancestors would be waiting for him. I told him I was pleased to have made his acquaintance and then I kissed him good-bye.
That kiss unleashed a torrent of abuse and rough handling from the men, who cursed me as a sodomite as they drug the soldier from his bed of grain sacks. A dark stain of blood marked the spot where his head had been. My soldier hung between the men, limp as a gutted animal. His head, thrown back, neck to the sky, bounced with every step as they made their way to a great pit in the distance. At that pit, men with bandanas over their mouths and noses were shoveling lye powder on those who had already been laid to rest. I turned away, unable to bear any more.
“You got a name for that last one?” a thin private holding a tattered notebook and the stub of a pencil yelled up at the driver.
“Last what?”
“The soldier the graves men just took away?”
“Oh, the nigger,” the driver grunted. “Yeah, they gave me his paper when they loaded him up.” He pulled a document folded in eighths from his pocket and handed it down to the private. The private, a nearsighted boy with narrow shoulders, practically put his nose on the document as he copied my soldier’s name from the limp document to the list he held.
Looking up, he asked, “Where are his personal belongings?”
“Say what?” the driver asked.
“His effects? He was a soldier. I have to collect his personal effects.”
The driver’s face soured.
“What all he had on him,” the graves private explained. “Money. Bible. Penknife. Shaving glass. Last letter home. Such like. It’s regulations. Have to collect them. Store them in this here personal effects box.” The private held up a pretty pine box a bit bigger than a cigar box, and added, “We have to store a soldier’s effects for when his kin comes to claim his personal belongings.”
The driver shooed him away, saying, “You want to go paw through a dead nigger’s pockets, go on ahead,” then went to yelling at the mules, “Back! Back!” to get the wagon turned around.
As the driver backed up the mules, I called out to the private, “Sir! Sir!”
The boy glanced up at me.
“What was his name?” I asked.
The private stuck his nose back down on the list and, as we rolled on into camp, he hollered after us, “Swayne! His name was Private Wager Swayne!”