Gloryland (19 page)

All their tack was clean and smooth, bridles, reins, saddles, saddle-bags, stirrups, blankets, all looking like they’d just come out of a box, and even the horses looked just unpacked, brushed down and combed, and they moved as one, like they knew President Roosevelt was riding behind them.

But what got to me were the men on horseback, sitting bolt upright in their saddles and looking straight ahead. They didn’t wave at the crowd or even look to one side or the other, just rode as if this was the last time they’d ever ride on this earth. That’s what I can’t forget. And they didn’t have to say anything about pride, cause it was in how they held themselves as they rode. A sea of cheers and cries was breaking on either side of them like waves, but they calmly rode through and it never touched them.

Thousands of schoolchildren along the edges of the sidewalks were frantically waving their little flags, and I saw those flags slow as the cavalry approached, those children just as surprised to see the Fighting Ninth as that little boy was to see me close up.

I thought I saw the regimental flag borne by a fellow I remembered running into at the Presidio, but I couldn’t be sure. The flag drooped in the shadows for a bit, but just as it came out into the sun, a breeze picked up and it fully unfurled for all to see. But I had no trouble at all recognizing Captain Charles Young riding at the head of the column, even ahead of the flag. He wasn’t a big man, but there was a quiet resolve in the line of his body that made him taller. Back straight, head pitched slightly forward, heels down in the stirrups, he gazed coolly down the road at something only he could see.

By the time Roosevelt came by in his carriage, with the Secret Service walking behind him, well, it was a bit of a letdown. All the
pomp was riding up ahead of him in columns of two, and he was just the circumstance.

I felt something that day I’ve not felt since, and it wasn’t just pride. I still can’t put a name to it. I guess the closest thing to what I was feeling would be the sight of Captain Young riding in front of that column of men. He was all alone out in that road, in that parade, in that city, in all the brightness, a West Point graduate and a colored officer, but the weight of that seemed nothing as he rode by sitting tall on his horse, his back as straight as if an iron rod had replaced his spine. That man was a soldier on the inside and a real officer, and he didn’t even need a uniform. You can tell when people are in command of themselves, and Captain Young was like that.

Then the parade was over, so fast, but I keep seeing it, the troop of colored soldiers going past and the people watching them, not quite certain what they were really seeing, oh yeah, I remember that part of the day better than the sky or the sunlight or the flags or the cheering. What I can’t forget is a few dozen colored men in uniform with Teddy Roosevelt in tow behind them.

They weren’t escorting the president, no sir. On that day, President Roosevelt was escorting Captain Young’s soldiers. And the silence that followed them down Van Ness Avenue is still there, the same silence they strode over, those mules and horses and men, on that day in May of 1903.

I
remember another day during that time President Roosevelt came to San Francisco. More of a person than a day. More of a woman staying in my head like a coal that don’t know the fire’s out.

This time they were marching at a parade ground called Crissy Field. It was a place for horses and noise, officers shouting and movements like razors cutting the air, and the smell of sweat. Once again Troop I was there parading with President Roosevelt. And more thousands of people, old and young, all there to glimpse one man, get close to one man.

Maybe it wasn’t the man himself that drew people, but when someone’s got power like he did, how can you not look? When you run into a bear up in the mountains, you got to look cause it might be Death coming toward you, and you want to see it coming. Roosevelt had that kind of power.

But there are other kinds of power that pull you even if you don’t want to go. There was this woman at Crissy Field on the day when Roosevelt was filling up the view. I was there, off duty, just like other folks who wanted to see the president, and I saw her along the edge of the crowd.

I saw her in pieces at first: an arm, part of a shoulder, her umbrella, her hands moving. That’s all, but the pieces made me want to see all of her. I remember moving closer, walking past people who ignored me or were angry cause I got in their view, and I apologized and kept moving closer to that colored woman in a white dress on the edge of the crowd.

She was tall, straight as a tree that never knew the wind, and her
long brown fingers were wrapped round the handle of her umbrella in such a way that I began to envy that umbrella. She was as pretty as the statues you see outside public buildings.

There are things you get hungry and thirsty for when you go without, particularly things you can’t find in the army. I mean things so pretty you want to pick them up and hold them in your hands, get their scent and taste, and if they tasted all right, bite into them and never regret swallowing, the feel of something real good going down. You can’t find those things in the army.

This woman gave so much to the day, to the light from the sky and the air around her, but the people around her never noticed. They were just looking for the president and blind to all else. Maybe what they really needed to find was sitting right beside them the whole time. Maybe it was that little child in a wagon, or the hand of a loved one in their hand. I don’t know, I don’t even know what I was looking for, or hoping for, but something found me when I saw that woman.

I wanted to get closer without being noticed. I didn’t want to be caught, although she had already caught me and didn’t even know I was hers. I think I was moving without being aware of moving. All I wanted was to get closer, like a moth dancing round the fire of a candle.

By the time I was only ten feet away, she wasn’t even human anymore, gone way past human to something higher. Like when I was a boy in church, walking up to the place where the deacon stood, and I figured that was where God was too. With every step I was getting closer to a place like that, and it started to choke up my heart.

She was so beautiful.

I was right behind her. I could see her chest swell up and fall as she breathed. I could see little drops of sweat on her neck, and how smooth her skin was, shining with moisture, and there was a softness about her that went beyond what you could touch with your hands, a softness you could only feel in your mind.

I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I couldn’t. She was a fine
woman, a respectable woman. Anyone could see that. She wasn’t like the women I was used to seeing and touching and holding in those times when you don’t have time to talk, to find out and consider what it means to be close to another human being. That was different, sinful, what the deacon railed against when I was a boy. It was something wrong that felt all right after months or years of not feeling anything that mattered.

This here wasn’t lust. It was desire, but more than wanting a body to hold through the night. It was a different kind of hunger and thirst. Until I saw this woman, I didn’t know my soul was starved and my heart was parched for something besides the flow of blood. She woke me up from a sleep so deep I didn’t even know I’d been dreaming all my life.

What do you do when you wake up for the first time? There I was standing next to the very thing, the very woman, the something without a name that I’d been looking for without knowing I was searching at all, and I was paralyzed at the thought of speaking, struck dumb by even the idea of touching.

I stood a foot or so back from her, close enough to breathe her in, and I breathed so deep of what I thought she might be that my lungs hurt from filling them up. There were flowers coming off her, I could smell them, and they were all kinds, just mixed up and rising off her. I don’t remember if my eyes were closed or open. I don’t think it mattered. You don’t need eyes to see beauty once you’ve breathed it in. You don’t need ears to hear beauty once you got it inside your head. You don’t need hands to feel beauty, once it seeps into your bones.

Yeah, I was taking her in all right. I was getting so much of her that I wondered how there could be any left to cast a shadow on the ground.

She went on paying no attention to the man behind her, who could pay no attention to anything but the woman in front of him.

And then I saw her stiffen a bit and tremble like a tree the first time it ever felt a breeze, from a thrill that I couldn’t understand. I
wondered how this woman could be so excited just to see Roosevelt? He was President of the United States, but I didn’t think he had that kind of power.

And then I saw and understood right away.

There were Ninth Cavalrymen escorting the president, and one corporal seemed to be looking and leaning out the same way this woman was looking and leaning in. When their eyes finally met, I mean, I couldn’t really see that, but her body vibrated like a banjo string that’s been plucked. Something shook in her and in him, they heard it in each other and felt something the whole world round them couldn’t feel.

It was just one look, cause he was riding by, but the look was long and full of something I’ve never had. I don’t even know what to call it. But whatever it is, you can’t buy it nowhere. It was obvious that each of them belonged to the other in a way words ain’t got the power to tell. Being president is one kind of power, and this was another.

Life’s got a kick worse than an army mule. It’ll knock you over and leave you shaking your head wondering what happened.

All those people crowding round trying to get a glimpse of one man who didn’t really care that they were there at all! And right here in front of everybody was something many people never get to see or hear or feel. Yeah, there was something special going on that day at Crissy Field.

After the president passed, the crowd moved into the hole he left behind, and the woman was gone.

I never saw her again.

I went out to Crissy Field hoping to get a glimpse of the President of the United States, but I forgot to look. I did get a good view of something I’d been looking for but didn’t know till I saw it. Something I wanted more than anything in this world moved into my life without really touching it, and then moved out. It was a glimpse of a better way to be with someone, and my heart saw it plain.