Coffee Beans

While I think the story below is a good one, and I have worked hard to make it as historically accurate as possible, no one has shown any interest in publishing it. I did have one magazine critique it and tell me basically I had no right to picture a black man as I had and that the black English I used was degrading minstrel show speech. The suggestion of the commenter was that it might be a saleable story if I took the black man out of it completely.

Read the story and in the comments at the end let me know what you think.

Coffee Beans

by Stan Dryer

            Commissary Sergeant Silas Foster sat next to Washington, his colored driver, on the last wagon of four as the little convoy made its way out of the Union lines. The loaded wagons went slowly up the slight grade toward the remains of Robert E. Lee’s defeated army. Lieutenant Patterson was leading the procession on horseback, where Foster wanted him to stay, at least until his little surprise for the Rebs was done with.

Washington was a contraband who had appeared six months before in their encampment outside Petersburg. He had such a way with the horses no one thought of leaving him behind when they took to chasing the Rebels through Virginia.

Foster had shown Washington, step by step, how to harness the four Morgans to the wagon. The first time Washington had hitched up the horses, he did it exactly as Foster had prescribed. Then he had pressed his head against the head of each horse in turn and in two cases adjusted a strap that was obviously too tight.

Up ahead of the wagons, Foster could see two Union soldiers with rifles standing in the road. They were obviously there to make sure the two armies would not mingle in friendship or restart the war.

He told Washington to stop. One of the soldiers came down by his wagon. “Are those more rations?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Just head up to the field full of Rebs on the left, just beyond the crossroads. It’s bout a quarter mile. You’ll find all the hunger you want up there.”

Just past the sentries, the Rebel bivouacs began. Foster knew bivouacs; he had been in enough of them himself. On their way up from the railroad they had driven through the encamped Union troops, fields full of motion, cooking fires, a miasma of talk and laughter. These were men just beginning to realize they had survived the War and also won it.

He remembered other more solemn bivouacs, the ones on the bloody road down to Petersburg where men lay collapsed with weariness from marching half the night. When they staggered to their feet in the morning, they were never sure they would still be around to cook and eat what passed for supper. Yet they knew, whatever the cost, Grant would not turn around and run from the Confeds.

Here, the bivouacs on either side of the road were different. Even though the sun was well up and warming the day, there was little motion in the fields. Scattered across the land were hundreds of grey tent shelters with a few colorless mounds mingled in, men rolled in blankets, men lying propped on bedrolls. There was only a faint sound, what felt to Foster like the murmur of resignation.

Just past the crossroads and next to another field of tent shelters, he spoke to Washington. “Stop here.”

As the wagon came to a halt, a soldier who had been sitting on his bedroll in the field stood slowly up and came down to the road. He was a gaunt, sun-darkened man wearing a worn butternut shirt and a pair of blue uniform trousers, obviously of Union issue. His hollow eyes looked out from a face smudged with an untrimmed beard. If he had stood in the middle of a cornfield, no crow would have come near him. “What you got there, Yank?” he said.

“Rations,” said Foster. He swung down from the wagon seat. “I’m Foster.” He held out his hand.

The man looked at him, slightly puzzled. Probably more used to saluting, Foster thought. The soldier finally extended his hand. Foster felt he was shaking hands with a skeleton.

“Crawford, former Sergeant Crawford,” the man said.

“You have an officer here anywhere?” Foster said.

Crawford laughed, actually more of a croak than a laugh. “Skedaddled. Went and got his parole and took off for home. He left with a fancy speech about his not wanting to kiss Yankee ass when we surrendered. More likely he just wanted to get home and tumble his wife a few times.”

“So you’re in charge?”

“Ain’t nobody in charge much anymore. But I think I can keep the boys from killing each other over them rations you got.”

Foster went to the back of the wagon and let down the tailgate so it hung on its chains, making a little platform. “I got a bit of a surprise.” He pointed at three small barrels in the wagon bed. “Coffee beans,” he said.

“Coffee?” said Crawford. “You ain’t jesting me? Real coffee?”

“Roasted beans.”

“Where in blazes did you get coffee?”

“When I went to get the rations, they were loading a wagon for the officers’ mess. They plumb forgot to leave a guard at the wagon.”

Crawford grinned. “Sure wish we’d had you in our outfit,” he said.

“I just thought having a cup of coffee might show we’re through being enemies.”

“I reckon that might happen,” said Crawford. He turned towards the field. “Coffee!” he shouted. The word bounced across into the field where it picked up volume and spread like a verbal firestorm. Gaunt men squeezed forth from their tent shelters, fumbled cups from their packs and rose to their feet. Then the whole body of skeletons began to move, a living tidal wave surging towards the wagon. There was no color to this onslaught. Not only had war bleached the men’s remnants of uniforms to faint greys and browns, but Foster saw the men themselves as only the faded relics of an army.

Next to Foster, the wagon gave a little jerk forward, pulling against the brake. The mass of men coming out of the field had spooked the horses. Then he heard Washington’s voice, speaking unintelligible words to the four Morgans. The wagon rolled back a few inches, no longer testing the brake.

Foster turned to Crawford. “Better line them up,” he said. “There’s no way enough beans, so they’ll have to do some sharing.”

“We been sharing for four years,” said Crawford. “One more day won’t make no difference.”

Foster dug into a pack and pulled out the old tin cup he always used to measure coffee beans. “I’m going to give out enough beans to make coffee full strength. They’ll be less cups of coffee, but good and strong.”

“Makes sense. You won’t believe what shit we’ve been choking down under the name of coffee.”

The tidal wave had turned into a long line of men that snaked back into the field. Crawford eyed the first few tattered soldiers in the line. “There is coffee but not near enough for all you greedy bastards. Don’t forget your buddies.”

Foster reached in the wagon and pulled two boxes of hardtack out to the tailgate. He called up to the front of the wagon. “Washington, come cut the bacon.”

“Yessuh.” Washington came around the far side of the wagon.

“Are the horses going to be alright?” Foster said.

“Yessuh. I told dem not to get afraid as you and des folks is now all reconciliated.”

 “Reconciliated?” Crawford said the word half to himself.

Foster turned to Washington. “We’re supposed to have rations for five hundred men. We’ve got five fifty-pound boxes of hardtack so each box has got to provide a hundred rations. That means a half pound of hardtack for each ration. That sound right?”

“Yessuh. There’s about ten squares to a pound, so give each Reb five squares.”

“Way I figured it. How about the bacon?”

“Same as de hardtack. We’s got five fifty-pound barrels of bacon. If I cut half-pound pieces, that’ll do it.”

“Sounds good.” Foster started to pry loose the cover of a hardtack box.

Washington climbed up inside the wagon and shoved a couple of the bacon barrels out to the tailgate. He disappeared again into the depths of the wagon to emerge with a large piece of plank, a whetstone and a long pointed knife. He set to work sharpening its blade, intent on the work, but rolling his eyes up every now and then to look toward the waiting men.

As he worked, he began to sing, almost under his breath but loud enough so Crawford and the nearest waiting men could hear. The sergeant knew Washington was a singer. When, on warm evenings, the men had gathered to bring songs to chorus, the colored man was always back in the shadows. On occasion, when a song moved him, Washington would join in with his rich baritone, the words coming clear and tone-perfect out of the darkness. On one such moment, the emotion in his voice had turned the other singers to silent listeners. Many are de hearts dat are weary tonight, tentin on de old camp ground. Tentin tonight, tentin tonight, tentin on de old camp ground…

Now, as he worked, Washington sang again. He did not sing soldiers’ songs. His voice was raised in a strange unintelligible medley set to a wild and plaintive melody. While Foster could not understand the distorted words, he quickly knew the essence of the songs; they were the voice of hard and desperate despair, unwanted baggage Washington had brought with him on his journey north.

Foster looked over at the soldiers waiting in line and was surprised to see a change in their demeanor. He did not see fear in their faces, but more, a growing worry over the message the songs evoked. It was obvious many of the Confeds had heard this song before, perhaps from slaves being herded from one bottomless task to another. Back then, the danger in those incoherent words would not have worried the slave’s masters; they had the power to end the singing with a single vicious word. Now they had no such power.

Washington continued singing as he put down the knife, broke open the top of the first barrel and extracted a side of bacon. He set to work cutting carefully measured chunks of the meat.

Foster dipped his cup into the first barrel of coffee beans. He shook it to level the beans at the line he had scratched on the inside of the cup. “About seventy beans,” he said to no one in particular.

He turned to face a sun-browned arm with a battered cup at the end. He poured in the beans. At the rippling sound, a sigh came from the men at the front of the line. The sergeant took five white squares from the first hardtack box and placed them in the other extended hand. “Thanks Yank,” said the man.

The soldier moved beyond Foster to where the black man was waiting. Washington picked up the first chunk of bacon with the sharp end of the knife and held it out toward him. The man backed away but extended his hand close enough to grasp the meat. He turned and hurried back into the field.

Twenty minutes later, Foster ran out of coffee beans. He and Washington went on handing out the hardtack and bacon until those too were gone. He gave away the empty boxes and barrels for firewood.

Crawford disappeared after turning away those men on the disappointed end of the line. A silent Washington went back around the wagon and spoke something to the horses before climbing up onto the driver’s seat. Foster sat on the empty tailgate of the wagon and looked out over the field. The home-familiar smell of frying bacon engulfed him. All over the bivouac little fires had sprung up, the smoke rising vertically in the still spring air. A sound filled the field, an endless grinding as rifle butts reduced thousands of coffee beans to grounds. Mixed with that background was the sound of voices, a pleasant murmuring punctuated occasionally with a burst of laughter or profanity.

Foster felt he had planted a field with coffee beans and harvested an instant crop of hope.

Crawford suddenly reappeared, carefully nursing in both hands a tin cup wrapped in an old rag. “I thought we ought to share,” he said.

Foster picked up his empty measuring cup. Crawford carefully poured coffee into it, stopping once to hold his cup side by side with Foster’s, making sure each had exactly half.

Foster took a sip of the hot liquid. It was the first coffee he had tasted since they’d left Petersburg. They had packed the supply wagon in a hurry. No one had wanted to let Lee get away and join General Johnston in North Carolina.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Crawford was probably doing his own reminiscing, perhaps, Foster thought, memories of a warm home kitchen.

“Where’re you from?” Foster finally said.

“Shenandoah, the Valley.”

“Heard from home?”

“I got a letter two weeks ago.”

“Did Sheridan come by your place?”

“Yep. Marion managed to hide enough food to get through the winter but the barn’s gone.”

“Sorry to hear that,” said Foster.

“Ain’t your fault. I just tell myself Sheridan couldn’t take away my land although that crafty bastard would have carted it off it if he could. It’s just too bad Bobby Lee couldn’t have admitted he was beat a mite sooner. I’m just thankful I’ll be able to get home in time to plant the corn. What about you?”

“Ohio. I’ll be planting corn as well.” Foster thought about his farm and whether his wife and the livestock would have been able to make it through the last winter if the barn had not been there.

“I’m lucky I’m married to a clever woman,” said Crawford.

“How’s that?”

“Every time an army came by our place, some soldiers would come looking to steal horses. Didn’t matter whose army. Fortunately, we got this patch of woods where Marion put our livestock. Them horse-thieving bastards never found them.”

“Sounds like you still have the essentials,” Foster said, “land, horses, seed corn and a clever wife.”

Crawford laughed. “I like that. Essentials.”

A little knot of altercation had developed in a far corner of the field, men shouting, a bit of shoving, a lot of anger over what appeared to be a piece of cloth.

“What’s going on up there?” Foster asked Crawford.

Crawford took a long steady look and smiled. “That’s Caleb and his danged flag.”

“Flag?”

“He picked up a Yankee regimental in front of the stone wall at Fredericksburg. He’s got the crazy idea he should give it back to what’s left of the Yankee regiment it came from. Probably wants to bring it down and give it to you so you can give it back. His friends from home want to keep it, put it up in the county courthouse to show they’d whumped the Yankees at least once.”

The little battle between friends subsided. No one came towards the wagon carrying a flag.

Foster thought about the Rebel regimental flag, carefully folded and wrapped in paper and stashed up in the front of the wagon bed. He had quietly helped himself to it at Gettysburg.

After the Rebel attack on Cemetery Ridge had been turned back, there had been plenty of captured flags that men on horseback dragged through the dirt while those soldiers still on their feet cheered them on. Foster had not participated. He had been on the losing side in too many battles to wish to desecrate the defeated. He had, however, made sure to note where the captured flags were stacked. Late that night, he had evaded the sentries and cut one flag loose from its staff. It had been too dark to see the flag. That didn’t matter; any Rebel flag would do. He had taken the empty staff and tossed it over the wall on the front of the ridge, out with the bodies they still had to bury.

Back home in Harperville, there were a number of glass cases against one wall of the Town Hall entryway, places where they kept mementos of the town’s history. He had figured the flag would go nicely in one of them. The widows and mothers of those soldiers who would not be coming home could look at it and imagine their menfolk at Gettysburg destroying the last hopes of the Confederacy.

He wondered. If that crazy Reb had come down and given him the Union flag from Fredericksburg, should he have given him his Rebel flag to go back to whichever of Pickett’s regiments it belonged? But did that regiment still exist? He had heard General Lee had had to do a lot of combining of regiments after Gettysburg. No matter. He would keep the flag although he now wondered how much comfort a ragged piece of cloth in a glass case would give to a woman forever missing a husband or son.

Foster glanced up the road and saw a horse and rider approaching. “My lieutenant’s coming,” he said

Foster liked Lieutenant Patterson and wished he had been around for more than just the siege of Petersburg. On his first day of command he had not lined everyone up for a patriotic speech like the one given by the previous lieutenant. That officer had been keen for battle. He had gotten his chance when he was killed at Cold Harbor.

Patterson had lined up the men, introduced himself and said, “All of you have been around this war long enough to know how to obey orders, kill Rebs when necessary and not get killed doing something stupid. Dismissed.”

That evening, he had invited Foster to his tent. “Tell me how things work here,” the new lieutenant had asked

Foster had explained the basics. You kept your head down all the time as there were Reb sharpshooters always waiting and you tried to avoid getting ordered to make a frontal attack on a fortified position.

The lieutenant had nodded his head and said. “Thanks. I must have missed the lecture about the wisdom of frontal attacks when I was at West Point.”

Foster thought there were too many Union generals who also had missed that lecture.

But there was nothing shy about the lieutenant. The men followed him willingly, partially because you didn’t feel he had to prove he was some kind of a hero, but mostly because he did his best to keep them all alive. There was none of that heroic bull of everyone standing up while waiting to attack. If the shelling started, he ordered the men to eat dirt. He stayed standing, sometimes smoking a cigar.

Lieutenant Patterson pulled up his horse beside the wagon and dismounted. Foster saluted. “This is Sergeant Crawford of the Confederate Army,” he said.

“Recently,” said Crawford. “Recently of the Army of Northern Virginia.” He did not salute but brought his body to attention.

“At ease,” said the lieutenant. “Is there an officer here?”

“Skedaddled, Sir,” said Foster. “He didn’t want the humiliation of surrendering.”

The lieutenant looked at Crawford. “There isn’t going to be any humiliation. Tell your men that when they march down to stack their arms, it will be under full honors of war. There will be no derision of men who believed in their cause to the very end.”

Then he looked over at the field of men. “What is going on there? They don’t look very defeated.”

With a quick look, Foster stopped Crawford from speaking. It was his responsibility to explain and take the inevitable heat. “Coffee,” he said, “I figured they could use some real coffee, Sir.”

Patterson turned and looked into the back of the wagon. After a moment, he picked up a stray coffee bean and rolled it between his fingers.

“I know this is going to be pure bull,” he said, “but where in blazes did you get the coffee?”

“At the depot where we were loading wagons, someone must have mistaken this wagon for one of the ones going to the officer’s mess, Sir. They put three barrels of coffee beans in the back. I didn’t find them until we got here. So, I said to myself, ‘No use having those beans go to waste.’”

Crawford stared at Foster in unabashed admiration.

The lieutenant looked at Foster, his face hard. “Understand this. You stole those beans from your officers who had paid for them. I told you if I ever caught you stealing from us, you’d be demoted. That means discharge from the service as a private.”

“Please, Sir, said Foster, “take another look at that field.”

Patterson looked out at the field, breathing in the odors of coffee, bacon frying and wood smoke. “You son of a bitch,” he said under his breath.

Then his face became pure military. “Turn the wagon around and head on back. The other wagons will be up in a minute.” He mounted his horse, rode down the road twenty yards and waited.

“Well,” Crawford said, “thanks from the men for the coffee and the rations. They just might look at you Yanks a bit different. And good luck with your planting.”

“Good luck with yours.”

They shook hands. Crawford walked back up into the field. Foster climbed onto the driver’s seat and motioned for Washington to turn the wagon around.

A minute after they had started back towards their own lines, Foster turned towards Washington. “Well, what do you think of the Rebel army now?”

Washington looked at him, his brow furrowed with indecision. He’s trying to decide whether to give me the slave answer or risk speaking his real thoughts, Foster thought.

Washington finally spoke. “Sho looked like a lot of defeat when we got here.”

“And you know defeat when you see it?”

His driver looked at him with a thin smile. “I reckon I know defeat. When you a slave, you is born defeated, you live defeated and you die defeated. Makes you kinda expert on dat subject.”

“And when we left, were they defeated then?”

“They didn’t seem all dat defeated after you feed dem dat coffee and hardtack.”

 “What are you trying to say?”

“You Yanks is real busy trying to prove you and dem Confeds ain’t enemies no more. When you go down south to keep watch on dem former Confeds, you’ll get asked real friendly to come have dinner up at de white folks’ big house. Ain’t gonna be no colored folk invited to dat dinner.”

Foster said, “Are you sorry you came with me?”

“No. You done me a favor. Dat coffee show me how it is. You and dem southern white folks gonna get reunified real quick. A lot of handshakes and de war’s over.”

Foster considered Washington’s words. It was probably true; there would be reconciliation at least on the surface. “Well,” he said, “those Rebs still have to live with having wasted four years of their lives for no purpose.”

“You mean like I’s wasted twenty-two years of mine being a slave?”

Foster thought that one over. “Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to be so friendly.”

“Das alright. Whatever you said, dem Rebs will figure some story anyway, probable like how dey actual won de war. Maybe I need me a story like de one dat white missionary lady tell me, how being a slave for twenty-two years build me character.”

 “Well, for around twenty-two years you must have a lot of character.”

Washington laughed. “You think dat gunna get me a job? ‘Hey mister boss man, I be de man you want, seeing I’s got around twenty-two years of de character.’”

“Speaking of jobs, what are you going to do now the war’s over?” Foster asked.

 “I leave a wife and son behind when I run away north. They ain’t slaves no more, but dey still is colored. I aim to find dem and head north; I’ll leave being a slave way behind.”

“Well,” said Foster, “I’ll ask Lieutenant Patterson to write you a recommendation.”

“Recommendation?”

“A letter saying you’re the best darn driver he ever knew.”

“He’d do that for me?”

“He might not do that for me, but probably for you.”

Washington looked at him with a full open smile. “Dat mighty nice of you, Sir” he said.                                                                                                                                         I

When they arrived back at the depot, a large, red-faced colonel was standing in the middle of the road. He held up his hand for the little convoy to stop. Lieutenant Patterson dismounted and saluted.

 “Sir?”

“You know anything about where our coffee is?” demanded the colonel.

“Coffee, Sir?”

“Someone has stolen three barrels of coffee beans belonging to the officers’ mess. It’s just the sort of trick that contraband driver of yours would try.”

“I didn’t see any barrels of coffee beans in any of our wagons, Sir,” the lieutenant said.

The colonel looked up at Foster on the wagon seat. “You know anything about the missing coffee beans?”

“No, Sir,” Foster said. “And my driver could not have stolen the beans. He’s been with me from six o’clock on this morning, Sir.”

“Drat,” said the colonel. He turned his attention to two approaching wagons.

Washington looked over at Foster. “You white folks sure know how to tell fancy stories to each other,” he said.