Inspection day dawned hot and bright. Too bright. I’d been praying for rain. At least some clouds. But Clemmie had convinced me that if I just kept my head down and my hat tipped low, the General wouldn’t look at me twice since he hadn’t ever really seen me in the first place. And now, there he was, inching his way down the long line toward me. Though it hurt, I prayed that Clemmie was right.
Our line gleamed for, like everything else on post, we had all been spit-and-polished to within an inch of our lives. Every button, every buckle, every boot, every saber, every crossed-sword insignia atop our caps shone in the sun. Drewbott had even ordered a couple of men to trim the tall soapberry tree outside the fort so that a bit of pristine green would greet the General.
No one spoke. The flag on the pole didn’t even flutter, as the General made his slow, careful way down the line. He was just as I’d seen him last, standing in front of that farmhouse outside of Appomattox. He might of fattened up a bit now that he didn’t spend all day in the saddle chasing Rebs. But he still had that big ferocious head, jaw clenched, eyes black and savage, all set atop his stumpy, bulldog body. He eyed every trooper hard. But, to my relief, I saw that he didn’t pay any mind to faces. The only parts he cared about had patches, buttons, or shoeshines on them.
In the stillness, we all heard Drewbott say, “General Sheridan, sir, tell me something.”
“What’s that, Colonel?” Sheridan asked, not taking his gaze from the trooper in front of him.
“Since this is your first tour of the Lone Star State, what do you think of Texas?”
“What do I think?” Sheridan repeated. “Colonel, I think that if I owned Texas and hell, I would rent out Texas and live in hell.”
Custer, standing behind the General, about wet himself laughing. Though the Boy General was now but a lowly captain, Custer had not been demoted in Sheridan’s affection. His laughter pleased the General. The instant Drewbott joined in, though, Custer and Sheridan went solemn as judges. They were still the two bad boys together, the outcasts of West Point, sneering at the timid good boys.
Leaving Drewbott chuckling too loudly at a joke that had already been taken away from him, Sheridan snapped, “Colonel, there is rust on the guard of this man’s saber.”
“Noted, sir,” Drewbott said as he added the rust spot to the list he was keeping of every unpolished buckle, missing button, and stray bit of lint that the General observed.
Inspection had already gone on long enough for the sun to rise up noon high. Heat and nerve sweat ran from beneath my cap. I caught sight of Clemmie in the distance, watching from the shade of the kitchen porch. When Sheridan reached the man two down from me, I ducked my head so low all I could see were his boots.
“General,” Custer asked in a jokey way. “Did you notice that the band which greeted us was missing a bass drum?”
Playing along, Sheridan answered, “Why yes, General, I did. What do you think happened to it?”
“I couldn’t say for sure,” Custer replied then lowered his voice and said out of the side of his mouth just for Sheridan to hear, “But from the looks of her, they’d better bring Drewbott’s wife in for questioning.”
When he reached me the General was too busy snickering about Drewbott’s fat wife to pay me any mind. And though he passed by close enough that I could hear his stomach growling, he didn’t so much as pause, much less pin that sharpshooter medal on me. I should have been grateful and relieved, but I wasn’t. Leastwise, Cathy Williams wasn’t. William Cathay was delighted that he wasn’t going to be mustered out. But Cathy Williams? She was downheartened that her old commander hadn’t seen that she’d done what he said could not be done. And done it well enough that she was getting a medal.
When I spotted another pair of boots raising dust as they moved double-quick toward the General, I lifted my head. It was the Sergeant. As soon as he reached Sheridan, he said, “General, begging your pardon, sir, but one medal has not been presented.”
“Is that true, Colonel?” the General asked Drewbott.
“Yes, well—” Drewbott stuttered.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, that is, I thought, in the interest of time—”
“Damn it, Drewbott, the medals were earned, the medals must be awarded. Where’s the blasted medal. Who’s the soldier?”
With Drewbott leading the way, Sheridan headed my way. My heart thumped heavy with each step he took. I was near passing out by the time his boots came to rest again in front of me. I peeked up just enough to see Drewbott pass him the medal. A handsome thing it was, too. A brass bull’s-eye with four fishtails sticking out like a big, four-petaled daisy. No one else had won one.
“In recognition of superior marksmanship,” Sheridan began, “I present Private … Private…” Drewbott leaned over and told him my name.
“Private William Cath—” He stopped dead for a moment before saying, “Cathy?”
No power on earth could of kept me from raising my head at the call of my name. He was staring at me. I met his gaze. I saluted. He was stupefied. He recognized me. He saw me. He knew who I was. At that second, I didn’t care that I’d been blown and would be tossed out to the wolves and redskins and rapists. Sheridan had recognized me. In front of the Sergeant. In front of Clemmie. They were going to see now that I had mattered. The General remembered me.
I was certain that he would call me out. But Sheridan didn’t speak for so long that Custer asked, “General, is something wrong?”
“No, nothing is wrong,” Sheridan said, his black button eyes turned to hot coals burning into me. “This, uh, soldier…”—he curdled the word so it came out sounding like “piece of pig shit”—“reminded me of someone is all. A contraband by the name of Solomon. Solomon was my cook throughout the Rebellion. He was a fine and honorable man.”
The way Sheridan hit those words, “fine,” “honorable,” and “man,” it was clear he didn’t feel that any of the three applied to me.
“It is in honor of the years during which Solomon served me so honorably, and for that reason and that reason alone, I present this medal. Is that understood, Private?”
With Custer and Drewbott trading puzzled looks, I answered, “Yessir,” though my mouth felt like it was filled with ashes.
Instead of pinning the medal on me the way he’d done the winners of good conducts and the like, Sheridan just handed it to me. Had I not taken it, he’d of dropped it on the ground. Then he turned away, leaving me there with my hand quivering from being hacked into my forehead so hard. The Sergeant, Clemmie, Custer, Drewbott, they all saw that the General didn’t return my salute.
“Not quite up to snuff, are they, General?” Custer asked. “Not quite regular army quality,” Custer babbled on, plenty loud enough for every fellow up and down the line to hear. “This is exactly what I’ve been telling you, old man. They’re fine in wartime. Burying details, cooking, entrenchments, and the like. But the peacetime army? Actual soldiers? It is folly to believe that Negroes will ever make true fighting men.”
“It is not a belief, General. It is a proven fact,” Sheridan said. Then, with a hard glance back over his shoulder at me, he added, “That the men … The colored men who enlisted honorably have already made fighting men. Their valor was established during the war. During combat.” He raised his voice as he stomped off to the mess hall, making sure I wouldn’t miss a word. “Combat. The only place where men, real, true, and valiant men, have ever proved themselves.”
Custer, at his heels, went on, “Sure, a few of them managed to come up to the mark, but…” He fluffed his golden locks up and off the back of his neck, whipping them from side to side. His yellow silk kerchief billowing as he strode along, he added, “No white officer worth his salt will ever accept a colored command. You saw how fast I turned it down when you offered me one. There’s your problem, Sheridan. You’ll never get a decent white officer to command them. All you’ll ever get is a no-hoper like Drewbott.”
Sheridan didn’t answer, but Custer stayed on his heels and went on, “All the action, all the glory is up North. The Sioux, Sheridan, they’re massing. Give me a command fighting those red devils and you’ll see an end to your Indian problem once and for all.”
Their comments faded out and were lost in the distance. But all of us, including Drewbott, whose fine, pointed nostrils were flaring like a flagged bull’s, had heard plenty. Our moment of glory had ended in humiliation. For the single, solitary time such a thing was ever likely to occur, Colonel Ednar Drewbott and I were of one mind: we both blamed our humiliation on the goading of the preening colorphobe, George Armstrong Custer, and we hated him with an equal intensity.
Unlike the chickenshit colonel, though, I was going to do something about it.