| I have read a fiery gospel,
writ in burnished rows of steel…
Julia Ward Howe
Battle Hymn of the Republic
On a soft summer afternoon in 1953, my father took me to
visit the grave of my great, great uncle. I had never been
to a cemetery before, much less one that was broken and demented
by time. Imagine that fear possessed my six-year-old soul,
covered it with wilting ivy and green mold and left me breathless.
I never recovered from that day, nor any of the days before
or after; the feel of my Daddy's big hand on my back, pushing
me forward, telling me that history is never dead, that we
are still part of this dirt and that killing
and whatever hate. Whether we want it or not. Crossbars
and crucifixes are like paste around my heart. We went we
three: a little girl, a big man who meanly saw the world from
a crooked angle, and a woman whose concern for her child filled
the years with nothing but echoing silences.
But the other came back with us. The Confederate soldier,
hitching a ride into a time and place he still belonged and
would find cold comfort. Only I was to know his misery. The
Confederate soldier has lived with me for fifty years now
and refuses to go away. He had followed me home that day many
years ago, after we stood next to the grave of my ancestors,
Confederates all, dead all, no heroes to speak of. I felt
him, then saw him, sitting next to me in our black Buick,
sleek, funereal, chamber-car heading toward the gray house
at the edge of town. I loved the sleek silver holes that impaled
the front end sides of that moving mausoleum. The slopping
back, the smell of oiled leather, the wide front seat that
captivated my mother's small body, my father's shoulders,
hard, malicious. Flakes of white oily dandruff caked on the
turned down collar. I stared, petrified at the taste in my
mouth. My feet stuck out over the vinyl cushion, trembling,
my black patent leather shoes shining like dead fish at midsummer,
their half-moon tips massaging the back of my parents' breathing,
heaving lives. He yelled, Depeche tois, goddamnit. Il
fait chaud. We rocked over crunching graveled roads and
away from the graveyard where my Confederate soldier had waited,
cold, rotting, his soul still hovering over a battlefield
splattered with bodies, lost forever to no purpose great or
small. I could not look back. I only know that I saw what
he saw, that the sky was as white as the feathers of a new
goose, the sun searing and fine, as we were interred in that
amethyst afternoon.
You know now, mouffette, where you come from, eh? Mais,
respect you your past. I tell you, remember them dead peoples
your ancestors, Daddy said through a steely cloud of
smoke, the cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, pieces
of tobacco sticking to his chin. Daddy. D..da.daddy...see
the real God running from the battlefield in a fit of melancholy.
He will never return.
I remember. The shattered headstone, carved by the hand of
a slave by the name of Jeremiah Benoit. His hands had turned
to leather after years of hoeing and pulling sweet potatoes
from the time the east was a growing flaming red ball until
the west slashed the horizon purple with blood. Jeremiah had
been my Confederate soldier's neighbor and had survived when
he did not, because he was black and did not fight. My soldier,
though, was indentured as any of color but taken to the field
of blood; a slave is a slave he tells me. The name on the
headstone, the letters curled and punctuated by moments of
grief, is Jean LeJeune. Let it been known that he has no sympathy
for any of us.
His eyes are black like the raccoons that imbibe the night;
skin yellow and willowed, dried and flaking from the travels
in and out of limbo. But he is handsome and cold and not at
all frightening to a young girl who expects nothing special
from this life anyway. He has stared at Ma Mere,
his head lopsided, his eyes foaming tears of agony. Oh, to
die at the age of seventeen and not touch your Mama, not one
last time. He pulls a worm from his sleeve. A yellow butterfly
lands on his nose, gives spastic wing to the air, then lifts
and bangs against the glass. Falling on my lap, I cup it to
my breast, watching the black back head, knowing that despite
it all he will see me through time, the hurt full and devastating.
Jean, my companion in defiance of the black-headed god.
The sun is red again, peeping out between hanging clumps
of neon green moss. The shadows of the great oaks are like
silhouettes of monsters. But I am comforted by the smell of
metal on flesh that is the familiar of my Confederate soldier.
He comes back to me, he has always been, sustaining me by
the nightly stories of his own suffering.
I feel the drive from the graveyard to our house, the constant
drone of my father's voice, the history lesson of the south,
of pride and flags and dead men, lonely women. My soldier's
hand covers mine like the chromed sheets of mold that cover
the earth on hot summer mornings. He does not speak, waiting,
I know, until I have the courage to look him full in the face.
When the air becomes heavy, he is near. He comes when the
semblance of joy vanishes with heavy touches, when the dawning
haze gently soothes the edge of Bayou Teche, dark like overcooked
roux, like the spots on an old lady's hand, gone to certain
death. He has taught me much about dying, this Confederate
soldier.
I turn to the dark, only the small glimmer of constant nightlight
in my room, and I see his face and I am led again to the time
before the battlefield.
There. His mother, a woman in a long black dress, chasing
a chicken, a gleaming knife reflecting the sun. The chicken
is bleeding, now cooking, a tough stew piled in blue and white
bowls, in the hands of two young boys sitting on a levee,
eating and laughing. Mais, Maurice he say da cows been
stole. Dey go fo the wa. Then blood, not a chicken, but
the brother Hulin and then Jean is taken on a horse, away
towards the western sun, hollering mere, mere…
until his voice is like the slowing drip from the cistern.
A father with steady, knotted hands, leaning over a half-made
wooden barrel, rusty strips of iron, bent nails, a hammer
with an oak handle, blacksmith's wrinkled brow. He pays no
attention to the theft.
Imagine his new world. A world of empty sadness, of bodies
lying flat in mud so thick on the back of a man's head he
is not what he once was. A face, cats' eye marbles entreating
dear heaven. They ride by, dump him near a flapping tent,
and dress him in another's uniform rank with sweat and shit.
Maggots squirming in the creases. What do Presidents know
of this? I feel his hand, cold like a block of ice from the
old man's creaking wagon. Please, I say. Tell me who you are.
I am Jean Remember me LeJeune. Your great, great….oh,
an uncle by the blood of this land. He raises the hand that
does not cling to me and points to a spot to our left. I look
at his fingers, broken, knuckles like the back of a snail,
and run my eyes slowly to the place he is showing me. A collapsed
black bear, knives slashing up, down, catching the sun, one,
two, all at the stomach, laughter, grunts of hunger. That
is me, see, the one with the longest knife. It is my first
and last meat of the war. All there was . . . all was hunger.
The troubles; years and years of it.
I lift my face to look at him. Only the bony side of a skull,
with gold and red confetti on his cheekbones. Wind whistling
through his teeth. How did you die?
A bullet in my leg. Left there for more than a week. Near
two, maybe. Got lost in the swamp and thought I'd die from
the moccasins. Hiss, hiss, hiss all day. I dreamed they were
on me already when I woke in the camp hospital. It was only
the surgeon sticking his finger in the bullet hole, over and
over. Sucking his teeth. Pyorrhea. Looking for the bullet
in the pus. The stink of lye soap covers me even today, petit.
The doctor said emetic, emetic of lye soap. Burns
like them hounds of hell. Lazy green flies swarm looking for
yellow. Touch of pity, that's what I asked for.
We are now on a shadowed chenier that overlooks the edge
of the marsh. I am tired, I say. Nothing soft to lay my head
on. Only cold rocks. He says with a voice so low-down sad
I cry. I wet my pillow with wasted tears, I whisper.
The air carries the scent of dried fish. The full moon faces
us, hanging in the air light and threatening like a one-two-three
spotlight. His bones are silver under its care. He laughs
out loud. The smell of wisteria, the clapping of hands echoing,
twelve men dancing under a mulberry tree. He hums, taps his
foot, touches mine, right then left tap, tapping. Get
down, get down. They are all Confederate soldiers, fire
shadows licking against the night at the entrance to White
Lake. The flag pole holds its charge, the flapping in the
wind, the crossbars and stars fading to crimson and brown.
Get her down to the river, they yell. Take off
her clothes down by the riverside, the riverside, the riverside.
Get down, get down, man.
I can't go any further, I say.
They my buddies. All dead like me. Bodies smoldering in the
grave.
Lies 'a molding, I say. And then, Why are we here?
Last chance to meet my buddies 'fore they die sho thing.
No more calling back to life. One last time for you. One last
dance, petit. Go down.
A mist surrounds us. Things shiver beside me, the splash
of a thousand sac-au-lait behind the willow tree. Dead darkness.
Gone moon.
I used to fish here, petit. Cook da fish, pok-fried,
cornbread, okra and racoon stew. My Mere, she smelled
like the blue mornin'. Her name was Ouida.
Then the rumbling thunder again and again. Cannons, battery,
infantry, lines of silver fish on the hill. They cut my leg
without anything. They said they'd run out of even the opium.
Then the fever came. I didn't want to die so slowly. Pain,
oh, Mere, the pain of it all. Lonely son-of-o-bitch.
On a sloping hill there is a tent. Jean takes my hand and
pulls me with him. My legs are cold. I need to pee. The shadow
of many men moving rattles the tent, the wind is whispering
a chilling song. We stand at the opening slat and face a tall
man. His beard is curled and wet, his mouth a slash in time.
He wears no hat. But it is his eyes that make me cry. He is
searching for a common spark that he will never find. He knows
that sure as the curly wind ruffles the pages of the Bible…open
on the ground. I see the word Matthew. The other men rant
at him, yell that the war will end for naught and naught and
naught. He shakes his head no, signs a paper and rolls it
up, puts it to his eye and looks towards the lee on which
I stand, my hand engulfed by Jean's. The man smiles and nods
for us to go on. I have seen the sight of him before.
Women are screaming in pain or pleasure; I cannot tell the
difference. Screaming is screaming when the dawn has taken
away all hope. Mud flows from wooden shacks where the noise
emits huh, huh, huh…What are they doing, Jean?
Not for a young girl to know, he says. I have to look at him
full in the face. I know he is lying to me. His eyes are red,
dark circles are burnt into his cheekbones. You know all about
this, I say. He hangs his head, as though an anvil called
shame has fallen on his shoulder. No, I never did such a thing,
never. Died before I could. But I dreamed of it, felt it in
the night. When I thought of Delia, sweet Delia. Who? I ask.
Pretty girl lives up to the road. Hair like spun gold. Eyes
bluest in this world. Like a jay took wing in the spring.
I imagined it nice. Not like pigs in mud. Theys not pigs,
I say. Theys people. I am surprised at my speech.
A man comes tumbling out of a shack. Laughing. White spit
bubbling on the corners of his mouth. Move on, you whore,
he yells. Come, says Jean, and I feel a gentle touch to my
back.
Why are we here? I ask him again.
Come to see what lies ahead and behind. Cain't do nothin'
'bout it. His voice has changed, like he had moved away
from me, a man in shallow water.
But what am I to do with knowing any of this? I ask.
Know that every day you wake up I will be there. That fear
is where you come from. The place where we are born makes
us sure as God done come down to tell us that our blood is
nothing.
Jesus came down. Not God.
Same.
Not same.
Who saves us from the places where we were born? Can we shut
our eyes to the landscapes when the golden sun rips through
the earth? When the trees are gone and dead bodies are scattered,
the land cut into pieces? Can the look of a kind man, a man
made brave by sadness, save us from the stripes and stars
and bars and booming instruments?
You ask what I cain't answer.
Then remember to look through the rounded document straight
on. I'll be there. Petit. For the last time, watch
me die, fall down like a felled tree, flipping over, time
to end the sufferin'. I am a young boy riding a red pony towards
my tomb.
That night I woke with a fever, raw throat, foul sleep encasing
my eyes. A child keeping company with the dead, said the wind.
As always, I am given shots of penicillin by the country doctor
who comes to our house, black bag in hand, syringe in the
air, hands decorated with blue lines without blood. As though
I could be disinfected by a smile. He teaches my mother to
give me the needle, every morning for days on end. I will
not attend a girl like that, he says. Talking about the dead,
mon dieu. Comme une bataille.
Non, my baby is not a beast. I tell priest. She
will confess. Mother talks.
Daddy brings me a book, silently, hands covered with obscene
hair, Tom Sawyer, to read in bed, at least until
the sun vanishes behind the black Buick. There is no lamp
beside my bed. I think sadly and fearfully of that Time
Magazine hidden in the top dresser drawer, the pictures
of naked women running to the gas chambers. Fear of what we
find in our parents' private places. Skin of a woman and child.
I want only to sleep forever in the arms of a night defined
by a thousand real lights. To see them sparkle, smell hot
tamales from Mr. Ole's cart as the sweet aromas of onions
and peppers drift to me, hear the rolling laughter of black
and brown children coming to me from three blocks away, from
across the railroad tracks down in Dixieland. These are the
things that hurt my chest, that make my heart pound so hard
I long to quickly disappear from here. I feel such total isolation.
I push myself into the bed, as I have always done for years
and years now, a pillow over my head, the blankets folded
and tucked into me. Jean is with me still and I know that
I am a child, grown, who has been defined by a landscape,
by a time that sought to dictate my beliefs and behavior.
Our excuses, though, are closer to home; they are hands that
wiggle under our bedclothes, or hands that hold onto to us
for dear life and refuse to give up the ghost. He is my charm,
my divining rod, the quark, talisman, my friend.
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