The March by E.L. Doctorow Read Free Book Online

in this latest wretched moment of his nineteen years, to have it end entirely.
    A FEW MINUTES later Will, Arly, and some straggling drummer boy the Rebs had found were being marched through the street with their arms roped to their bodies. A growing crowd followed them. Every once in a while one of the horse soldiers looked down from his saddle and spit. Someone threw a rock, and it hit the drummer boy in the back. The boy stumbled along, tears streaming down his face.
    Arly said something and had to repeat it, because Will couldn’t understand the words. Arly’s cheek was puffed out, an eye was half closed, his lower lip was swollen, and he’d lost a few teeth. Also, he was limping because, as he had gotten up off his opponent with his hands raised, he’d received a kick in the ribs. Your own kind, is what Will made out.
    My own kind? Is that what you’re saying?
    Arly nodded. He gestured with his head to people running alongside, laughing and jeering. Folks you come fum, he said.
    V
    C LARKE KNEW THAT HIS ATTENTIONS TO PEARL WERE a source of cynical amusement to the men. Pearl wasn’t the first freed black girl to get special treatment. The lighter-colored, especially, were being picked up all along the march and ensconced in the wagons. They were given choice edibles and clothes pillaged from the plantations. This was a different situation entirely, but he knew better than to try to explain. He couldn’t even make sense of it himself. He was terribly moved by this child in a way that took him completely by surprise. He wanted to do things for her. He wanted to take care of her. Yet, at the same time, he knew he was attracted inappropriately. He noticed the way she carried herself, with a kind of head-high grace that was unlearned and entirely natural. He found himself comparing her to women of his generation back in Boston. Everything they did and said was learned comportment. They were unoriginal girls, argued by propriety out of whatever genius they might have had. They practiced the arts as inducements to marriage.
    He thought that perhaps Pearl had some royal African blood, or else how would that angry intelligence, so commanding, have come to her. She missed nothing with those cat-pale eyes of hers. She was suspicious of him. She was critical of the men. She thought they were filthy and told him so: You white mens smell like de cow barn back at Massah’s. No worse, dat how bad.
    That, he said.
    That how bad, she said. Lord! Even stinky brudders one an two back home more tolable dan dis.
    Than this, he said.
    Than this. Dese mens doan never wash off demselves in no netherpart, jus shit in de groun and move on like dumb animal do.
    Animals. Dumb animals, he said.
    Thas right. An de gun grease gone sour in dere hair, and God know what else grown fum dere hide and dere feet dat stink so. Phewy! Dint dey hab mothers to teach’m?
    Didn’t, he said.
    I ’spect not.
    Pearl bathed herself with hard soap and a basin of cold water every evening in Clarke’s tent while he stood guard outside. Then she went to sleep in a fly tent he’d put up next to his own. He wanted the men to know that she was under his protection but that his behavior was honorable. After the first few days of snickering and talking among themselves, they seemed to understand and accept the situation at face value. They, too, became protective. It was Sergeant Malone who came up with a drummer-boy uniform for her. At first she was pleased. They were camped in a pine grove at the time, and she came out of her tent, having wriggled into the tunic and trousers, and stood for all of them to admire her, though everything was just a mite too big. There was a hat too, and silver buttons that she rubbed to a shine. But then she grew thoughtful.
    I ain’t never played no drum, she said.
    Nothing to it, Malone said. We’ll show you how.
    Sompun wrong bein a white drum boy, she said to Clarke.
    What?
    I too pretty fer a drum boy. I not white, neither, if