Without so much as a ripple, I walked onto the flat rocks at the edge of the pond.
The Sergeant, dressed in shirt and trousers, suspenders looping down either side of his waist, was sitting with his back to me, tugging a boot on. He didn’t know I stood behind him, dripping water, feeling the thirsty wind sucking the wet off me, and he yelled out over his shoulder, “Private! Move it, man! You’re burning daylight.” He was a commander again, one who was plastering over the weakness he’d let slip out, making sure nothing but a hard wall showed.
Chalky minerals were drying on my skin, leaving it ashy and rough. Out of the water, my womanliness was already parching. I stood there, a creature too tall, too strong, too ornery, and too plain to be female. To be beloved.
The Sergeant glanced back, saw only my naked legs and ordered wearily, “Cathay, get your uniform back on, man. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
My back hurts and my shoulders ache from crouching.
That’s what the hell was wrong with me. And I wasn’t having it anymore. In the end, it was as simple as that: I was tired of the pinch in my shoulders and the ache in my back from stooping and crouching. I straightened up and threw back my shoulders. I stood taller than most men and any woman I’d ever known.
When I didn’t answer the Sergeant turned, got a good look at me, and jumped to his feet. For a long moment he stood there, bumfuzzled, not able to credit what he was seeing, probably thinking he’d either lost his mind or was seeing some brand of sissyness he’d never encountered before. “Get your uniform on, man.”
I stepped closer, hardly feeling the sharp rocks poking into my bare feet. My walk was a woman’s walk. I let my hips sway as they wanted. His eyes walled as he watched me advance. I stood before him and, in my soft woman’s voice, said, “I am not a man. I am a woman. A black woman.”
He put his hand out to stop me or touch me, I didn’t know which. It trembled. Spooked, he snatched it back, still not convinced that I wasn’t some unnatural thing or a vision he’d conjured up out of loneliness and longing.
I took his hand and placed the flat of his palm against my cheek where I’d dreamed so many times it might once again rest. I no longer cared what might follow. Even if the Sergeant turned from me now, from the plainness of my features and the manly ways I’d had to claim as my own, this touch was worth whatever it cost. For one, terrible moment his hand froze and then he pulled it away. I dropped my gaze, shame already beginning to burn through me. Shame at my naked body. Shame at loving someone so far above me. Shame at being a woman who could pass for a man.
I walked away, gathering up my uniform as I went, clutching it against my chest, slouching again to hide who I was.
“Wait.”
His hand fell upon my shoulder and turned me to face him. He gaped, not at me, but at my scars. Unable to speak, he tapped his fingers beneath his own collarbone.
I nodded but would not speak the words.
Yes, these are the scars. Yes, I am the woman.
He ran the tips of his fingers across my scars, all the while whispering, “You. It’s you. But you’re not…”
“Pretty?”
“No, you’re not.”
“But I’m here and I saved your life twice and I love you and you loved me until now. You know what’s inside me. Outside’s the only part that’s different.”
The battle going on in his head played out across his features. His dream of the fine, beautiful woman who’d saved him was crashing into the strapping length of muscle and bone that stood before him now. His face prickled with the effort of making the two fit together. He shook his head for the pieces weren’t coming together, and he started to back away.
“I know I don’t please you in the usual man-woman sort of way,” I said. “But I am good and true and will give you strong children who will build a new world for our people.”
“I don’t—”
I stopped him before he said what couldn’t be taken back. “If you touch me,” I promised, taking his hand, “you will make me beautiful.”
I put the palm of his hand against my cheek and curled into it like a bird into the nest she’s flown her whole life to reach. I tilted my head into his palm and kissed the lines that foretold his life, pressing myself into them with my lips, making his future our future.
His palm, roughened by reins, brushed over my cheek, my neck, my shoulder. I was as good as my word for every place he touched turned velvety soft and beautiful. He traced his fingers across the scars and down to the swell of my breast. When he whispered, “You are a woman. You are her,” there wasn’t a molecule of either doubt or command in his voice.
I reached for his face and, like I was pulling the sun down, brought his lips to mine. I had kissed the Sergeant twice before. This time he kissed me. The scent of dogwood and sage rose from my body and the chalky mineral dust floated off of me in a cloud.
He put his lips on my neck, inhaled, and said, “You smell like home.”
We were both home. I was his home and he was mine.
He rolled out the coach driver’s bedroll and we lay upon it, facing each other. He put his lips on my lips and on the scars and on my breasts. I learned everything I needed to learn about him. I learned that his skin was the color of a baby fawn that was prettier than the sunset next to my smoky quartz tone. I learned that he had been with many women and was disciplined and tender and kind. I learned that too much joy and too much pleasure make me weep.
Later, a violet and orange sunset shone through the green lace the cottonwoods tatted against the evening sky. We did not speak until the light was gone and a fire built. There was a slight chill in the air and he held me against his chest, both of us facing the fire.
“Why,” he asked, running his hand along my arm, “didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“As soon as I was sure you were you,” I answered, “I did. Or tried. Remember? When we were out on patrol that time?”
“I do. I thought—”
“You made it clear what you thought. The next time I tried, when you were sick and I called you back from the dead using your given name and blowing warm breath into you, you threatened to have me court-martialed for moral turpitude.
“After that,” I went on, my voice small, “I stopped trying. I didn’t want to wreck the vision you carried in your head of the woman who saved you. I wanted to stay beautiful to you. Beautiful and womanly.”
His hands stroked me. My breasts, my belly, between my legs. He kissed my shoulder, my neck. “You are womanly.”
He manned again. I took him into my body. This time he held himself away so as to look at my face in the firelight and he held back until a frenzied jubilation overtook us that was as keen and thrilling as riding the high line ahead of an electrical storm and I knew I pleased him.
When we finished, the night was chill. The Sergeant pulled the blanket about us, and we moved closer to the fire, sitting there with me cradled between his legs, his back resting against a warm rock. He had hardtack in his pocket and we ate that, washing it down with spring water. With his arms cradled around me, I rested my head on his chest.
“When you saw me?” he asked. “At the recruitment? Did you know?”
“I thought I did, but the man in the wagon’s name was Wager Swayne. Not Levi Allbright. Which one is really your name?”
“My name was Wager Swayne until the burying detail pulled me out of the grave. I was lost amongst the contrabands for some time. Barely able to walk. I didn’t know where my unit was or how to find it. When I recovered enough, I enlisted under the name of Allbright as the depot was across the street from the All Bright Lantern Company.”
“Why didn’t you use your real name?”
“Because Wager Swayne had been infantry. Too tall for cavalry. But by the time I went in again, I knew who I needed to pay to get the assignment I wanted.”
“What should I call you?”
“Wager was my mother’s family name. My father was Emmanuel Swayne, seaman.”
“Wager,” I repeated. “Wager Swayne.” I liked saying the name his mama and daddy had given him. A name that only I knew for a person that only I knew.
“And you?” he asked. “What do they call you back home?”
“Cathy.”
“Your name really is Cathay?”
“Well, Cathy. Yes, it really is Cathy. Cathy Williams.”
“Your name really is Cathy,” Wager repeated, then burst out laughing so hard that the muscles of his belly bunched up and bounced hard against my back. The chuckles rose to a hard cackle.
I pivoted around and there were tears running from his eyes, he was hee-hawing so hard. “What exactly is so damn hilarious about my name?” I asked.
“I … I…” Wager tried to explain before collapsing again. He finally pulled himself together and said, “Cathy Williams, you sure did go the long way round to do it, but you have got to be the first soldier ever made the United States Army call him by his first name.”
“Her,” I said. “Her name.”
“Her,” he repeated. “Oh, yes, very much her.” And then Wager Swayne kissed me. Me, Cathy Williams.