Gloryland (30 page)

How long do you have to be there, to be noticed by those mountains? Even Methuselah didn’t live long enough to be noticed by the ground he walked on. I figured if the settlers round Yosemite didn’t talk about the Ninth being there, then we were going to be forgotten. Not very long after we leave, people will be surprised that we were ever there. That’s why memories are so important to me, particularly my memories of Yosemite. I’m there only in my own head, in my own heart, and in the heads and hearts of my brothers in Troops K and L and I and M. Four troops of Ninth Cavalry, two in Yosemite and two in Sequoia. Four groups of colored men. Four families sent to the mountains to take care of something that would never know it was being taken care of and probably would be just fine if every human being walked away and never came back.

But it was a wonderful time, a good time. How could it not be when we weren’t in a garrison with the routines and drills of post life, and in a place nearly empty of officers? That’s what I call paradise. There was an officer back in the ’90s, don’t recall his name, who called duty in the Sierra “the Cavalryman’s Paradise.” He was right.

We had to take care of ourselves, since nobody was going to do it for us. Maybe if you’re in paradise, you ain’t got a right to be remembered
by the angels. Figure angels, cause they live forever, got a lot on their minds and don’t want to be bothered whether or not Elijah Yancy bathed today or yesterday, or if he’s happy or sad. But I remember a certain evening down in Wawona when we had a particular good time. And even if the ground has forgotten, and the deer don’t remember, and the South Fork of the Merced never reflects on how I once stared into it wondering where all that water was heading, something happened that night that no soldier in the Ninth will ever forget.

It wasn’t planned or anything. It happened on a Sunday at Camp A. E. Wood, which was park headquarters, in the southern part of Yosemite. Camp Wood was just white tents, wooden buildings, a corral, horses, and men, built on a flat on the east side of the river, a mile or so from the Wawona Hotel. Like all things army, it looked planned but really it had just been growing up here and there since ’91, when the first cavalrymen were posted to Yosemite.

Work was over, dinner was over, and we were all sitting round another campfire. Actually there were several campfires spread out over a pretty good space, cause we had at least two troops of cavalry present, and all getting ready to bed down for the night. At least until someone started singing.

Usually it was a harmonica that started things off, or a banjo like the one a corporal from Troop L played. I can’t remember his name, but I can remember his music well enough. But this time a man was singing, and it wasn’t some popular song, it was a spiritual. And then it seemed everyone all at once remembered that it was Sunday. Maybe that was cause we were at headquarters, and headquarters meant letters and news and finding out what’d been happening in the world outside Yosemite. When we were up in the high country, away from headquarters, every day was like every other.

Anyway, that man, who was sitting at another fire fifty feet away from me, started singing “I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray” in a fine deep voice that the still air carried over to the other campfires.

Slowly, one by one, as if on cue, the soldiers near the first man
began to sing along with him. And it didn’t take long for all the conversations taking place round the other fires to quiet down as more men began to listen, then to sing or hum along. Some of them added their own harmonies, weaving their voices into whatever space they fit.

It seemed like we all remembered the music we had left behind with our families. It didn’t matter whether we were from Mississippi or Alabama or Georgia or South Carolina or Louisiana or Texas, we all went to church on Sundays growing up, and we grew up singing many of the same songs.

Singing and listening to that music brought out something that had been silent in our hearts till then. There wasn’t a man there who didn’t ache for someone he’d left behind in those places where we were brothers and sons and husbands and fathers.

sounded under the ponderosa pines, the cedar branches, rising up between wood and sunlight now going out slow, red as coal, and then more voices from other fires melted into the sound.

“In the valley . . .” he sang.

“. . . couldn’t hear nobody pray,” others answered.

“On my knees . . .” he sang.

“. . . couldn’t hear nobody pray,” came the response louder.

“With my burden . . .” he sang slow and alone.

“. . . couldn’t hear nobody pray,” they responded, deeper.

“And my savior . . .” he sang, quieter.

“. . . couldn’t hear nobody pray,” came the hushed response from more men.

And then a wind from nowhere picked up ashes and embers, and the voice of that soldier rose right up with them to the sky.

By the second chorus everyone was singing, or it sure sounded that way, at least all the men sitting by me were singing, and some were crying but trying to not show their tears, acting like it was smoke that made the water flow, raking their hands cross their cheeks as they cursed the smoke. They stared into the fire, remembering and singing. I can’t tell you how many soldiers went AWOL sitting right there round those campfires. They were gone, they were back home.

And it got better. A group of soldiers farther off, in a meadow on the other side of some cedars, got tired of that one and began to sing “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” while most of Troop K, the men nearest me, kept on singing “I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” and in the silences between the lines you could hear an echo that wasn’t an echo saying:

After a third chorus the voices got quieter, and you could hear one soldier singing in a high sweet tone:

And men on both sides of the trees began the chorus again:
this time louder, as if to drown out the other voices singing “I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” but they couldn’t, so you could hear both spirituals sound together, and it was beautiful hearing all those voices, all those souls finding their own path through the gathering dark.

Even the ponderosas and cedars seemed to be leaning over to hear the music, and the mountains around brought it all back, shaped different from how it went out into the world. On and on, the voices rising and falling, but building the way you see thunderheads build on snowy peaks, as if the air was trying to outdo all that granite. So were these soldiers trying to outdo one another, and it was a passion coming out, all they had and all that was taken away, coming out right there, on this side and the other.

You could see the music in the eyes across from you with fire coming up in between, you could watch the swelling of the sound in the raising and lowering of shoulders and heads, rising and falling in rhythm with what your ears could catch. I wish I could tell you true what it was like, but this is the best I can do without singing myself.

It’s gone now, and the ponderosa, the cedar, the grasses below and sky above, none of them remembers that music. Like when the wind
takes a spark from a campfire, and you see it fly out into the dark for a bit, and then it goes out, but before that it sure is pretty lighting up the night.

sounds again through the years like time was nothing, sounding strong like that spark braving the blackness that wants to swallow it up.

And then the last chorus sung loud by every soldier in camp, round every fire, brave words ringing like a farrier’s hammer at the forge, a bright gift to the Sierra and to a cold river nearby called Mercy.

And I know God took what we sang and held it, even though the river couldn’t, even though the trees don’t remember, even though the words were buried in the earth. And it can never be lost.

That was the night we really arrived in the Sierra Nevada, the night the mountains knew us, recognized us, welcomed us for the first time, and on that night we were home.

D
ear God:
i wanna thank you for what you did
this mornin, i mean the sun
comin down slow
on Cathedral, that was mighty fine
work so early in the day,
and you were so quiet
bout it, no fuss or complainin
of the work to be done,
you just coaxed the glow
to a blaze on top
of that mountain tellin the world
below that day was comin
soon enough, i just wanna say
i appreciate the early notice
that a new day was breakin,
and how you used just a little light
to let me know that a lot more was comin
along, yeah, i appreciate you takin the time
to show me all that I was missin in the night.

 

dear God:
i wanna thank you for these mountains
which make it easier to talk
to you cause they so high
heaven’s practically next door.
i swear i can reach up
fully into the blue of the sky
and stain my fingers
with the footprints of angels,
so maybe that’s why i’m happy
cause i’m finally takin in
what i didn’t even know
i was livin without,
and there’s so much of it,
that i don’t know what to do
with the kind of light that makes eyes
hungry, the sounds that make ears
go blind, i never knew there was such a country
called yosemite and how it would wake me
from this long sleep, wake the part of me
that needs to feel earth
or a cold wind blowin
down from places where
there are no people, i never knew
silence was a property
you could own,
but i did, once, i just simply forgot
the feel of bein naked
on a rocky spur thrust
out into space
like a prayer.

 

dear God:
thank you for rain
on manzanita.
i never knew water
could turn a plant
into a sunset.
leastways in the shine
after a storm
you can see twilight twistin
red into branches.

 

dear God:
i greatly appreciate
what you were sayin
bout that little red fir
bent double
under packed snow
as i rode through
the merced grove this past
spring cause when i reached over
and shook that tree
all the snow fell off
that fir’s branches, quick
to sky the tree stood tall,
and i knew its burden woulda melted
come summer, but if you see a burden
pressin down on somethin
you just reach out then and there
cause one day it may be you
under that mountain
prayin for freedom.

 

dear God:
when ravens fly over
why do they sigh?
if something’s botherin them
they should just speak out,
and stop all that whisperin.
i’m also gettin tired of hearin
all their squawkin bout this or that,
you see, i’m doin my best,
but bein black ain’t easy
unless you a raven,
so the last thing
i need is some bird
thinkin it knows my problems
whisperin to the wind.