Sweet Song by Terry Persun

“It was only a matter of years, anyhow,” he said. “Spent time fightin’ after gettin’ caught stealin’ meal from some Yankee troops. Put me in a Negro brigade, they did.”
    The men told stories, repeating some exactly the same, while others were changed, altered to fit into the present mood. They created their own histories over and over for one another to hear. They wanted every detail brought in, to share the exact picture of the event as it actually happened, even if it were an outright fabrication.
    “Tell us again how you asked to leave,” Buddy said to Cracker-Jack.
    “After I was tol’ I no longer in charge, I didn’t hang my head one bit. Fact is I was taller that day. Several people tell me that actually true. I growed several inches. I raise my eyes to my long-time friend and master. Look ‘im square. ‘Sir,’ I says, ‘would you kindly set me free?’”
    “And he say, ‘Shoo, boy, shoo.’” Buddy joked.
    Cracker-Jack giggled, then got serious. “I wish he had, but he ask me to stay on. He want me to help out. Said he’d feed and care for me. But I ain’t no old bull cain’t ride the cows no more. I ain’t no worthless, sway-back, no sir.”
    “What he really say was, “Don’ you make me work fo’ that boy don’ know his job yet.” Buddy interrupted.
    “Slap-dammity,” Bob cut in, “let the Negro tell he story.”
    “I could stop,” Cracker-Jack teased.
    Leon laughed to himself.
    *          *          *
     
    The day wore on. The sun burned hotter. As the men told stories, Leon daydreamed about the life he no longer belonged compared with the life he now lived. Two sides of the river. Twodifferent lives, but still much the same. He still felt as if he didn’t quite belong. Perhaps he never would. He wasn’t black or white. He could read like a white man and sing like a black man. Away from his history, blacks thought he was white, and growing up on the Carpenter farm, the whites treated him as if he were black. None of these men even guessed that he was black by birth and upbringing. At best they thought he was foreign.
    Sweat dripped down along his sides from armpits to waist. Mosquitoes buzzed around his face and arms. The bugs were especially nasty in open areas. Leon noticed that Bob had ripped off a small bushy pine branch and kept it moving all around his head like a fan. Bob didn’t have to swat a mosquito so often as the others.
    Leon tried the branch trick and it helped. Except one time when he caught a sweat bee in the crook of his arm and it stung him, leaving a round, red welt.
    Leon had always wanted to go downriver and now he was doing just that. Besides Indian paths, there were wagon trails that were not used any more.
    An hour after high noon, they found a place near the river where they could sit and enjoy the breeze coming off the water. Jesse cut more meat from the piglet for each of them.
    “Are there any towns up ahead?” Leon asked.
    “What you need a town for, boy?” Cracker-Jack passed Leon his cut of pork last, after taking it from Jesse.
    “I can’t keep traveling like this.”
    “You have to work?” Cracker-Jack said.
    “I do.”
    “You don’t work now.”
    “I know that, but I can’t live like this through the winter,” Leon said.
    “He need to be with people his own age,” Buddy said.
    “Why the slam-happy hell would he need that?” Bob said.
    “He young. He need soft womanly company. You forget already, old man?” Buddy said. “I understand, boy.” Buddy turned back to the others. “Besides, what he do after we all die? He know nothin’ but liein’ and beggin’. And he be alone. This life ain’t fit.”
    “Buddy right in his thinkin’,” Cracker-Jack said. “There a nice town maybe three, four days. You help out that long, we leave you there. They’s work there.”
    “It hard work,” Buddy said.
    “I’m not afraid to work.”
    “Nobody said you was, boy,” Cracker-Jack said. “Besides,