Captain Blackman: A Novel

ONE

Tell them that if I am Black I am free born American & a revolutionary soldier & therefore ought not to be thrown intirely out of the scale of notice.

John Charts, 1832

1

The AK-47s were chewing up everything. Not supposed to be any tough stuff out here. Looks like the Major snapped the string on me.

Abraham Blackman tried to force himself down into the wet ground. Buttoned down and they’re looking for me, especially that one, he thought, as a patch of grass was chopped up close to his face. Blackman pressed down again, and with that extra movement, thought he saw a cobra slither away. Once any kind of snake might have made him recoil for a few seconds; not now. It was the cobra or that 47; he’d take his chances with the cobra, or two or three of them.

There, finally, he thought, hearing a couple of bursts of M-16 fire.

But that hungry 47 was still hunting him; its rounds chewed another trail past him, not four inches away; he heard the rounds thud-thudding into the marsh, a sound like ripping out a wet stitch.

Captain!

Captain-Brother. You in there? You all right?

Blackman was both relieved and annoyed. They were out there, Harrison, Griot, Woodcock and the others. He’d have to let them know he was okay, but once he opened his mouth.…

Okay! he shouted. But I’m pinned. Once more he tried to disappear into the ground as the 47 opened up again, spattering water into his eyes from its bullets. Blackman began to shake. He heard his men firing at will. They were splashing toward him. Blackman hunched and another 47, a forty-five degree angle away, sent him burrowing into the ground again.

The guys’ll come splashing down here, Blackman thought, thinking there’s only one or two of em out there, and they’ll drop the hammer on them. What to do?

Captain?

Why didn’t they keep quiet? Why didn’t they figure it out?

Okay, he called. In the momentary stillness he tried to imagine what it felt like being hit with about twenty rounds of 47 ammo. That many rounds, he told himself, you don’t feel anything, because you’re dead. Five then, or maybe three. He could not imagine it.

Blackman pushed a blade of marsh grass out of his eye. He heard the 16s again, and Griot’s M-60, which he liked to hold the way they did in the movies. He heard them closer now, splashing, and he was relieved, because he didn’t want to die. But he was angry, too. Only yesterday he’d told them again at the end of his black military history seminar that he didn’t want any heroes in his company. Things were close to the end, and even if they weren’t, they had nothing to prove. He’d told them time and again, these legs with their mushrooming Afros and off-duty dashikis, that they were not the first black soldiers to do what they were doing. He’d gone back to the American Revolution to Prince Estabrook, Peter Salem, Crispus Attucks and all the unnamed rest; from there to the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Plains Wars, tlhe Spanish-American War—all the wars. He’d conducted the seminar during their off-duty time, without the blessing of the brass, with the obvious, smoldering resentment of the Major, who, for some reason, had let him carry on.

We don’t have anything to prove to anybody, he said. We’ve done it over and over and over again. No heroes. Just do your jobs.

Blackman’s body was tense with momentary indecision. They were walking into what looked like a trap. He recalled in a flash that when the seminar ended, they stood and gave him the salute, the fist, the arm. The same one being used all over the Army these days, wherever there were Brothers. He’d saluted back. He hoped they’d remember the lessons he tried to teach. He hoped they now had that sense of continuity that everyone tried to keep from them, from kindergarten up.

They were closer. He knew the little brown men holding the 47s were waiting. He’d have to do it now; five seconds more would be too late. His mouth was dry, his legs trembling. He thought of Mimosa.

And he sprang up, not wanting them to die for him, thrust his six-four frame skyward, swinging around his 16, screaming, Get down! Get back! and felt his weapon kicking against him, felt, rather than saw its bullets attracting the rounds of the 47s, then took the first ones in the thigh, spun around as they clawed for his torso, and he splashed down, sliding in his own blood. He came to rest against a stump which forced his face skyward toward the bright blue Vietnam sky.

As in a dream he saw them, these men in their wigs. They were in an inn in Delaware, a colony halfway between their homes in Massachusetts, Virginia, North and South Carolina. Many had not met except through letters brought by the packet or post, but they were firmly bound together, sharing in the profit and loss of each venture, all tied to the sea and the land, all based on people who were black.

Well now, then, what is the solution for this intolerable set of conditions?

They mused until one said, patting his wig, It used to be a fair go under Burke and Fox, and even now they oppose the taxes George and Lord North insist on laying upon us.

Another spoke: I suspect that Lord North made too many friends in the service of the East India Company and therefore, not wishing to antagonize them, had decided to levy taxes on us.

The slaves crept around the room pouring water out of thick, clay pitchers. The men in the wigs paid them no attention. A tall thin man uncoiled at the end of the table, moved so slowly that, like an actor stilling an audience, everyone focused on his movements.

Yes, gentlemen, he said. "There are the taxes. Silly, bothersome taxes: written works must bear a stamp. Fees paid on tea (Lord North’s tea from India), lead and glass, and so on. Now, we here have all the glass in our houses we want, I imagine. Our use of lead is now negligible, and I do think that every man here has enough tea among his wares to last at least another two years …

England has not bothered to tax our tobacco or our cotton because it needs and wants those products. It’s clear that Lord North didn’t want to antagonize his largest resource. He could’ve taxed incoming slaves.

The thin man with the hair tied behind the nape of his neck, hair that was golden and made his blue eyes bluer still, then said, We ought to face the meaning of this meeting. We’re here to turn the Crown’s despicable acts toward the masses into something befitting ourselves. Such as a revolt altogether. Such as forming ourselves into a union free of the Crown, so that we may, since our time here’s already proved most lucrative, enjoy not only the profits that derive from the production and distribution of goods, but those higher profits that can be derived by exercising political leadership.

Another man spoke without standing. "The time is ripening. It is true that the commoner bears the brunt of Lord North’s ill-advised policies. But, bear in mind that the Crown knows its real enemies, since it’s already forbidden several Assemblies to meet. However, once the common man is made to realize that the Crown cares nothing about him—no representation and all that—he will come, reluctantly of course, to know that the only path left to him is to revolt to freedom. In the meantime, we can extend our range from the Atlantic to Balboa’s Pacific, increase the slave trade and America will see another, larger Greece."

Knew it all the time, Blackman thought. Chuck ain’t shit. Talk about the Devil!

It grew light around him and wafting over him came the spring smells of mid-April. Now he saw trees, fields and brush, all filagreed with the first shoots of spring. He walked out of the woods and gained a road, but he was examining the gun in his hand. This is an old one, he thought. Be afraid to fire this one, man. Something thumped softly against his rib cage. He looked down. A powder horn. Now, wait! he thought. He stopped. Where was he? Feeling a weight at his side, he felt with his fingers, found a bag filled with lead balls.

C’mon, man, wake up! You dreamin, baby! Get up off it!

For the first time he thought of the woods, the foliage, and jerked with shock. Maples. Dogwood. Oak. White pine. Red fir, and the rocks underfoot—shale. Yet, when he looked at himself, he was in his fatigues, the camouflaged jacket and trousers, the cap. Bars gone, though, he mused, and the nameplate. Wake up! Wake up!

Down the road, the road still damp from the spring thaw, he heard voices, then saw, rounding the bend, a mass of men, walking. There were two or three riders, and one cantered down to where Blackman stood and stopped. The rider was a plump, red-faced man. His horse had seen better days, Blackman noticed.

Whose slave are you? the rider asked. Or are you free? Where did you get the musket? Fall in. With the blacks. Strange clothes you’re wearing.

Riddled with the questions and confused by the rider’s clothing, Blackman fell back to the side of the road, glanced from the rider to the approaching men.

Are you crazy or somethin? Blackman asked. Slave? Man, I’ll beat shit outa you, you funny-talkin peckerwood; you an that silly hat—

What’s that you say? Is your accent from the Islands? Is that where you’re from? Anyway, the British’re coming and we need every man. Every man, so fall right in the front ranks there with the rest of the boys. Go ahead, now.

The mob was abreast of him now and Blackman, dazed, wandered into the line of blacks who were armed with stakes, spears and clubs. He noticed that the whites behind them were adequately armed with muskets.

Say, look, Blackman said, pulling his cap down lower over his eyes. What’s goin on?

Still moving, the blacks eyed him carefully. One said, My name’s Peter Salem. That’s Prince; he’s Cato, that’s Cuff, and he’s Pompey—

Peter Salem, Blackman said. He looked at the breeches, the worn waistcoats. He glanced at the white ranks. More of the three-cornered hats, but more often they were hatless, their locks flowing freely. You’re Peter Salem and this is 1775 and you’re on your way to Lexington because a cat named Paul Revere rode through these parts last night talkin about the British’re coming. Is that right?

They were polite and smiled to one another, as though in the company of one gone mad. It was funny, too, the way the big man spoke. And his clothes: where in the world did they come from?

Are you slave or free? the man named Salem asked.

I’m free, man, Blackman said hotly. What’re you?

I’m free, and he’s free, he said, pointing at the man called Prince.

Not Prince Estabrook, is he?

Salem was surprised. Do you know Estabrook? No. This is just Prince. How is it you know Estabrook?

I read about him like I read about you, Mr. Salem, and I sure wish I could wake up and get the hell outa here. Do you know why?

Excuse me, but your accent is strange. Wake up? Get out?

"Yeah, baby, because them Redcoats are gonna lay some shit on you dudes in a couple a days. That’s what all the books say."

But what’re you saying?

I’m saying—the British are going to win at Lexington.

Salem smiled gently. Are you a voodoo priest?

Voodoo, hoodoo, Salem, that’s history.

As if they weren’t listening to him, Cato said, They’ve offered us our freedom, if we fight. So, we’re fighting. Is that the way it is with you, too?

What should we call you, stranger? Cuff interrupted.

Abraham Blackman. That’s my name. He turned to Cato. Freedom? Well, now I hate to tell you guys this, but there’re gonna be damned few of you who gonna get all this freedom they’re preachin. Another eighty-eight years—

Blackman broke off because they were laughing at him. Okay. You guys just go ahead and laugh. Eighty-eight years and another hundred and eight years. You git in this dream with me and see what’s really goin down. Dumb-ass niggers. Never learn nothin.

After a while Blackman noticed that the leaders weren’t attracting too many of the farmers along the way. The men behind him, also farmers, he gathered, called plaintively as they passed the homes and farms where men and boys strained behind horse and plow, opening the winter-tightened ground to the warming sun. When leaders and farmers both were waved off by the plowmen, they hooted, but when others indicated that they would join the group later, they shouted, Hooray! Hooray! And as the group trudged over the miles, slowly now, imperceptibly, it was growing. The riders tried to encourage the mob into formations, but they never held for longer than a few moments.

The black men he marched with were poorly dressed and sometimes barefoot. A part of this mob, Blackman thought, yet prisoners of it, pushed forward by its momentum; they were the expendables, the point of the mob. When the cry went up behind them, To arms! To arms! the blacks shouted, too, but absent from their voices, he observed, was the ring of purity he heard in the shouts of the men behind them.

Where’d you get the musket? Salem asked, and Blackman knew that this was a question they’d all itched to ask him.

Blackman held it up and looked at it again. "Don’t know. I just had it. Got to figure out how to work it, man."

Salem smiled indulgently. The whites don’t like it.

Blackman wheeled around and glanced at the ranks behind him. So that’s what those looks were about. He turned back and studied the gun. The powder must go here, he thought. The ball in the muzzle, and the ramrod—yeah, this is it. Flintlock? He flicked a metal hook and sparks flew. Okay, now. Powder here, ball, ram and bam! Shit! A round every half hour.

They spread out over the Lexington Green. Some lay down, others sat. The riders trotted around placing groups of men. The blacks were in the first group facing the road the British would come on. Campfire positions were set and weapons stacked.

Peter Salem sat under a giant hardwood maple, watching his fellow blacks, particularly Blackman, and thought of Crispus Attucks. Blackman reminded Salem of Attucks, now dead five years in the massacre at Boston. Obviously Blackman was mad. In dress and manner. Look how he was pacing around.

Blackman moved back and forth. He stopped. Closed his eyes. When I open them, he thought, none of this’ll be here; the dream’ll be over. Now! He snapped open his eyes. Still April in Massachusetts, and Salem was still watching him, the way you watch a nut. Blackman moved another few paces and closed his eyes again. He thought of Mim. When I open my eyes I’ll be in bed, she’ll be beside me, at her place, and it’ll be warm and we’ll be sipping a good Meursault and blowing some high-grade grass. That’s all Saigon meant, Mimosa. He opened his eyes and found a group of whites staring at him. The farmers. It was still April and he was still in Lexington.

Wearily, he trudged over and sat down beside Salem.

Salem said, Every white eye here’s on you, Abraham. The Brown Bess makes em nervous.

Salem, you just don’t know how old this tale’s gonna get, man. White folks’re always gonna be uptight about niggers with guns. I can’t let that worry me now. I got another problem.

Both turned to watch another company of farmers arrive amid a clatter, of muskets. Now, in the afternoon heat, the smell of sweating men mixed with that of trampled earth, grass and things newly green. Additional runners were sent out and instructions were being given in the use of the musket; Blackman was not invited to join. Sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, the farmers straggled in, and by dusk Blackman knew that all who were coming were already there. The camp-fires were lighted and soon the smell of food began to drift over the Green.

Later, the salt fish and salt pork eaten and the fires reduced to glowing coals of hard maple, the men tried to sleep. Some could not and sat talking quietly. Pickets, flung out from the Green, clumsily patrolled their areas, stepping on the drying detritus of early spring, wind-downed branches, beds of dried leaves, leaning boundary walls of shale. The moon came up a bright, yellow crescent.

A distance away from the black men a group of farmers, also sitting around a fire of heat-giving coals, smoked their pipes and tried to think of the morrow when the British would surely come. But they were being interrupted by the grumbling of one of their number.

Now, I don’t think that man ought to have a firearm. A nigger with a gun is just unthinkable.

The farmers puffed their pipes and thought of seeding. Surely, the nigger, as strange as he talked and looked, had a master in a high place. Who else would arm a black man with a gun? The sight of the big man with the gun had certainly made them pause for a moment, but it had to be all right. Didn’t want to antagonize the gentleman.

We ought to take it away from him, that’s what we ought to do, the grumbling farmer said. One by one the other farmers peeked out beyond the bowls of their pipes at him and said nothing. They thought of the next day. The British had killed Colonials before, in random instances. What about tomorrow? Would it all turn out to be some, kind of game? What was going to happen when they met face to face? They thought these thoughts and of their families, their planting and, one by one lay down and closed their eyes, not so much to sleep as to enter privately the deepest recesses of their fears.

But each of them heard the grumbling farmer, some time later, rise from his crouch and step away from the fire into the darkness. They opened their eyes, thinking they could hear better that way.

Abraham Blackman lay on the ground, wrapped in a tattered cape one of the blacks’d lent him; his feet were toward the fire. The snoring of his fellows surrounded him like a heavy, warm blanket, and he felt himself slipping off to sleep. He pressed his fingers tightly to the musket, then opened them and wrapped them around the smooth, cherrywood stock.

He didn’t know what time it was when he felt that smooth stock moving slowly out of the grasp of his now relaxed fingers. At first he accepted the movement as a part of his dream or as one controlled by his own body; but as his fingers, slowly and insinuatingly, were left gripping nothing but cool air and cooler earth, he came awake and like a flash his hand moved swiftly in the direction of the gun, recaptured it. He felt it being pulled away again, being sucked into the darkness, and he pulled too, peering intently into the night in which he seemed to see shadowed there, gray and ghostly, the face of his battalion commander, Major Whittman. Blackman felt the gun returning to his control; triumph welled up in him even as a flash of paining, yellow light blossomed silently in his head, then faded slowly to a darkness tinged with red.

The blacks threw more wood on the fire and pressed cold stones to Blackman’s head. No word passed between them; they understood. They nodded and smiled at each other when they saw the Brown Bess in the big man’s hands. Farmers still awake at other dying camp-fires wondered why the niggers were getting up already.

2

By midmorning the Colonials heard the pipes distantly, carried on a warming wind. They were up and in position, their morning tea already digested.

Blackman’d insisted on taking the center position in the road in the front rank of the blacks, although it’d seemed to Salem, Pompey and the others that he was still suffering from the blow in the face. Perhaps in a good way, Salem observed, for Blackman no longer seemed to be irritated and bewildered. And they could understand him better this morning, maybe because by now they were used to his accent. With the borrowed, tattered cape around him and hatless—Blackman’s hat had been lost in the struggle—he now looked more like one of them than a ludicrous apparition. Calmly he’d loaded his musket and now knelt, his gun, butt on the ground, held straight up before him.

The other blacks were also kneeling, one knee down, their stakes and spears straight up. Blackman was staring down the road. Like the others, he heard the pipes, but for the moment the road was enclosed in thin green. The next moment there appeared a regular shape of bright red and white, a centipede. Now he heard drumtaps. Behind him the lines of white farmers rippled with whispers and movements.

Stead-eee! one of the officers of the Framingham militia called out. His cry was taken up by other officers.

The British were coming up the road, their pace easy and measured, like a company nonchalant about marching long distances with heavy packs and killing farmers, Peter Salem thought. He glanced at Blackman, then behind him to the ranks of the farmers. Which one had it been? That one? Him? That one over there? That boy? Out of the corner of his eye he studied Blackman again. A slight swelling in the center of the forehead. He’d said nothing about what’d happened in the night.

Blackman could hear the crunch of booted feet, all hitting the ground in unison; the sound chilled him. Black boots, white pants, red coats. Pink faces, some slashed by mustaches. The helmets on their heads made them appear as tall as giants, and their muskets with bayonets fixed seemed five feet long. They came up, their weapons rattling, their gear creaking, and halted on a shouted command. Another cry sent them into a smooth flowing skirmish line. An officer walked to the front to hail the farmers.

Pitcairn, Pompey whispered to Blackman.

A man, Blackman thought, known for brutality and ruthlessness.

At Pitcairn’s order to disperse, the farmers jeered. The officer stepped forward again and repeated his command. Long moments passed, then Blackman heard the farmers moving, drawing back, and his rank backed up, too.

Then a musket was fired, and no one could tell whose it was, a Yankee’s or a Redcoat’s. Cursing and pushing, the Colonials broke ranks even as Pitcairn’s order to fire was given. The volley cut in among them but the Colonials, black and white, every man for himself, kept running. To hell with the dead and dying.

Blackman found himself with Prince and Pompey racing over the moss-covered ground. They ran at top speed as long as they were unencumbered by brush, and then, panting, glancing over their shoulders, they slowed to a trot but didn’t stop until they’d gained the Concord road, where they found Peter Salem, still gasping for breath, waiting. Salem held a Ferguson. From one of the dead farmers, Blackman guessed. They sat wordless, gasping, acknowledging with dull eyes the passing of more farmers, singly or in groups, all on the way to Concord, most out of breath, their faces mirroring shame.

Blackman was the first to regain his feet. Let’s go, he said, and Pompey, Prince and Salem were too tired to argue his assumption of leadership. He led the way, trotting a few paces, walking a few; they matched him. None of the farmers they passed seemed to mind the two guns.

Under the high noon sun at Concord, Blackman saw the group of farmers. Fewer than at Lexington he quickly estimated. At almost the same moment they arrived, another column of Redcoats joined the Royal Marines, already in Concord searching for supplies. The farmers withdrew to North Bridge.

They might have stayed there and returned to their homes afterward, and in the succession of nights converted their rout at Lexington into a victory, the way most soldiers do when they relate their deeds to their children and grandchildren and others who were not there. But from the town columns of smoke, thick and black, rose into the sky.

They’re burning the town! the farmers cried. Burning it!

In a bunch the farmers and blacks began to run toward the smoke, toward the British. Growls and shouts came, as if voicing with shock the realization that, even more than the killing of their fellows back on the Lexington Green, this deliberate destruction of property could not be tolerated.

Blackman, running with Captain Davis, was as surprised as he when, sprinting over the bridge whose loose planks rattled under their weight, Davis took a ball which killed him instantly. Ambush, Blackman thought, skidding to a stop, then shouting, Ambush!

Once more the farmers broke, but this time for cover. Blackman sought the shelter of a great maple and was joined by Salem.

How you work this thing, Abraham? He was fiddling with the gun; his powder horn rattled on the barrel, seeking a place for the powder to go. Blackman had knelt and fired. Now he was back up. The low hillsides around them resounded with firing, the smell of black powder, the hum of lead balls. Powder, ball, ram, aim, fire! Blackman shouted. He peeked out from behind the tree while trying to load himself. Ready now, he knelt once again, aimed at a clot of red and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, and as he lowered the gun, momentarily puzzled, the ball ran out of the muzzle and fell to the ground. He picked it up and retreated to another tree, Salem with him.

What didn’t I do right? Blackman asked himself. He started all over again. More Redcoats were spilling out of the green woods. Shouts, explosions. He saw Salem aiming. He fired and tumbled backward from the kick of his gun, but he regained his feet screaming to Blackman,

I got one! I got one!

Ready again, Blackman aimed at a phalanx of Redcoats who were making bayonet raids. He got his man, saw him spin backward, jabbing his bayonet into the ground. It seemed that the British were falling back, and around him the farmers were coming out from cover, standing upright to fire. Blackman loaded, cleaned and rammed over and over with a fury; he felt himself sweating. The brush caught at his clothes and made him know he was advancing, not standing still as he believed.

Concord retreated behind them. They advanced over the bodies of British soldiers. Demoralized, the Redcoats were flinging away their packs. The farmers were shouting in triumph. Blackman and Salem fired until their cartridges were gone, but still followed the fight, all the way into Charles Town. Then they followed the farmers back to Concord.

An imposed quiet lay along the line of battle. They’d come so far to die, Blackman mused, looking at the twisted, shattered bodies. And these, the farmers, almost fifty of them, half the force, were dead.

The blacks drew together. Blackman didn’t know them all, but he did know the name of the single black dead man when they told him: Prince Estabrook.

Later, the bodies buried and the weapons collected, the farmers already hurrying homeward, the blacks bid each other good-bye.

Maybe now, Cuff said, we can get this freedom.

They all looked at Salem and Blackman, the only men among them who were free. Where’ll you go? Cuff asked.

Blackman looked at Salem and Salem said, To Boston.

It was Cuff who said it, slowly, but with the determination of one bound to pursue mysteries. He gestured toward Blackman. Yesterday you said we’d get beat at Lexington. We did. Now they all, as if in sudden, collective recall; remembered. How did you know?

Blackman looked slowly around the circle of black men on their way back to slavery. He shrugged. I don’t know; I don’t know how I knew. He sighed. In fact, I don’t even remember saying it.

Cuff, no more than a boy, but with a hard face, nodded. His eyes flicked momentarily up to the swelling on Blackman’s forehead. He nodded once again, turned and started off to his master’s. The others followed. Blackman and Salem headed at once for Boston, for safety, trailing the Brookline company. They slept in the woods, and in the morning, before breaking camp, they hid their guns.

We can’t walk into any settlement with them, Abraham, Salem said. They’d tear us limb from limb. We’re not even supposed to have clubs, you know.

And we’re free men? Blackman asked