Chapter 2

1866: The delta duchess

We traveled for ten hours a day, the tow mule being replaced about every two hours. It was two hundred fifteen miles from Defiance to Cincinnati and it took us four days. Breakfast and dinner were prepared onboard by a cook, but suppers were at taverns or inns along the route. At night, the men retired to a single bunk room, with ladies’ accommodations separated from the men’s by a floor-to-ceiling solid wooden partition that could be moved to change the cabins’ size for different gender counts among the passengers.

At Cincinnati, I spent the night at an Army barracks, surrendering another chit from my orders packet. The next day, as directed by my travel orders, I boarded a riverboat named the Delta Duchess. While looking for my cabin I noticed that there was a blackjack table in the saloon. I was only carrying ten dollars and was unwilling to risk more than five, but the minimum bet was only a nickel and the maximum was a dollar, so I thought I might give it a go.

I put my kit in the assigned four-bunk cabin, washed up, found the privy, then returned to the saloon. Two hours later, using the card-scoring method Digger had taught me, I left the game two dollars and ten cents richer.

We tied up for the night at Evansville, Indiana. The next morning, there were a number of both white and colored men who came aboard, and I learned they were also sergeants and corporals, and a few junior commissioned officers. During the afternoon I made another dollar sixty-five at the blackjack table, but I know I caught the dealer’s attention, so I resolved not to go back.

Come evening, we were tied up at Paducah, Kentucky, in what had been a major base for the Union Navy during The War. Even now there were a half dozen iron-clad gunboats tied up to the docks, and twice that number of what had once been tin-clads, though all but a couple of those had been stripped of their armor plating.

In the morning, I stood idly on the upper deck, watching the contingent of white commissioned and colored non-commissioned officers coming aboard on the gangplank when I spotted a large black man with a familiar rolling gait -- Jordie Tipton!

I made my way toward the lower deck just in time to lean down from the stairway and snag his shoulder as he passed below. “Jordie!” I cried out, though my voice was lost to my position on the stairway and in the general hubbub of passengers talking and crew shouting as coal and supplies were being hoisted aboard by the crane and by colored stevedores.

Jordie turned in annoyance, but then saw my arm descending from above and his look became puzzled as he turned his eyes upward. It took him a moment to decipher my features from that odd angle, but then his face beamed a smile.

Meanwhile, others were shoving and complaining about him partially blocking the narrowed passage at the stairs, and even more so when he reversed course to reach the bottom of the steps. But he soon did and then he dropped his bag and we were in a happy embrace. I was so very pleased to see him.

We climbed to the upper deck, each asking the other what he’d been up to. I quickly recounted my months of farm work and the arrival of Uncle Sammie, of whom I had told all of the colored scouts during training.

He told me that he had returned to the plantation in South Carolina where he had been born and lived his first twelve years, in search of his parents and younger sister.

“An’ I found ‘em, I did, at least my Pappy and Janie. Mama died of the influenza in ‘fifty-eight. But Pappy was share-croppin’ a piece a’ land right on the old plantation, and good bottom land, too. Pappy knows his tobacky and he’ll get top dollar.”

“Gee, that’s sounds great,” I said, then I became grim. “I can’t imagine losing touch with my family like that, just sold down the road without regard.” Jordie had been sold twice after that, and ran away from a plantation in North Carolina after he heard about the Emancipation Proclamation.

“That’s what all the fightin’ was about, Seneca, to put an end to that awefulness.”

I offered to buy him a beer, but first we searched out his cabin. From appearances, even white and colored non-commissioned officers were assigned to segregated cabins, as he found a couple other colored infantrymen in his, while my new roommates were both white.

In the saloon, there was a sign advertising “Ice cold lemonade for only a nickel.” A nickel was a stiff price for lemonade, which was usually no more than a couple pennies for a fair-sized glass or a big cup. But the ice cold part sounded good and I offered to buy that instead of beer and Jordie jumped right on it.

We took the drinks to a vacant table and I told him how I had used Digger’s method to earn nearly four dollars at the blackjack table, but that the dealer had been giving me the stink eye, so I decided not to go back.

“Which one?” he asked.

“Which one what?”

“Which dealer? Which table? There are two games.”

I turned partially around to survey the room and, sure enough, a second game had opened after we left Paducah. I also noticed that the first dealer kept glaring at the new dealer, and that the new man wore a rather smug smile. Huh. Wonder what that was about.

I turned back to Jordie. “The game behind me just showed up since you boarded. I was playing with that fella over there looks like he’s been drinkin’ lemonade without any sugar.”

“Look like he not bein’ happy wit’ d’ new man. You ought ‘a go fleece the new man, too. Strike while the iron’s hot, my Pappy would say.”

I thought about it and said, “I’ll play until dinner. Keep an eye on sour puss. Let’s see if his expression changes when he sees me join the new table.” I put another nickel on the table. “Have another lemonade. I’ll join you for noon chow.”

Whereas the first dealer was very straightforward, more businesslike, the new dealer was more of a showman, as much as one could be within the confines of a card game with some rather strict rules. He dealt additional cards with a small flourish and liked to add a colorful comment with the card, for example, “And the man in the red shirt gets a red nine of hearts to match.” It enlivened the game, but slowed it down. And it also made it easier for me to score the cards.

At first, I thought this dealer might be doing flashy things to cover up some cheating, so I watched very carefully. Digger had told me what to watch out for, mostly in the form of the dealer palming cards or otherwise stacking the deck to his own advantage, or wearing a polished ring or other device for seeing the hidden side of dealt cards. But I didn’t spot anything nor did the number of his winning hands seem exceptional.

By dinner time, I was up another three dollars seventy-five cents, and I tipped the dealer a dime. As I left the table, I glanced at the other blackjack table. That dealer met my eye, smiled, and gave a wink, as if we had conspired together. It was a mite unsettling.

Jordie told me that, when I’d joined the new dealer’s game, the first dealer appeared to enjoy some private amusement, as to appear to silently chuckle.

During dinner, Jordie and I compared the farming methods between South Carolina and Ohio, and crops like tobacco, cotton, corn, wheat, and hay.

The Delta Duchess continued to add passengers once a day, about every hundred river miles. It appeared everyone on the boat, including Jordie and I, were headed for assignment at Baton Rouge. We learned that the recruited privates were to arrive there on the fifteenth of July. We should have a week to prepare for them.

What amounted to our last stop was at Natchez, Mississippi. By then the boat was near full to capacity. I had continued to play blackjack for two to four hours a day, making certain I lost money at every third session, either intentionally or by cause of luck. So as not to draw attention, I had continued to bet small but even so, by the time we reached Natchez, I was up twenty-five dollars and forty cents for the trip.

The dealer must have overheard Jordie address me, as he had begun calling me Seneca at the table. I really don’t think he noticed that I won more often than I lost. Maybe he was playing with someone else’s money. It turned out, that wasn’t far from wrong.

On the last day, the dealer from the first game caught up with me outside the privy and he asked, “How much did you take him for?”

Not fully certain, I nonetheless decided to answer. “Since I got on the boat, I’m up a bit over twenty-five dollars.”

“Well, you took four from my table, so he’s lined your pockets with over twenty dollars, and he never noticed you doing it. I’d give you credit for being clever with the system, but you’re not good enough to not get noticed by a professional, except by a moron like him.”

“You don’t seem to like him much. Why not?”

“Ah,” he vented harshly, “we had a sweet deal here, on this tub, my partner and I. We each had a table and gave the owner a twenty-five percent cut of our winnings, split the rest evenly between us. But then the owner’s son, that roscoe you’re playin’ with, decided he was a big-time gambler, and they took one of our tables away. My partner and I drew cards, and he lost, so I got the table and he moved on. Sounds like he’s doing pretty well, from what he writes.”

“And that’s why you didn’t warn him about me?”

He nodded. “Nor about that lefty, either.”

“Hold on, are you saying--”

“Yeah, the fella what always sits at the end. He’s been aboard since New Madrid. You really are an amateur, ain’cha?” He consulted his watch. “Well, good luck fightin’ Indians, Seneca.” And he walked off toward the saloon.

Jordie and I were in our usual spot on a bench on the upper deck, resting our chins on our arms on the rail, watching the new men come aboard at Natchez, when we noticed several blue uniforms in the crowd.

“What’s this?” Jordie said. “Looks like things be turnin’ official.” So far, all the passengers on board were in their own duds.

“Well, we knew it couldn’t always be mint juleps and cucumber sandwiches.”

“You mean they’s not gon’ be trimmin’ that nasty ol’ crust from d’ bread no more?”

I nodded. “Well, not for you coloreds, anyway.”

He punched my shoulder, then turned back to watching.

Of a sudden he bumped against me and, pointing to the gang plank, he said, “Hey, ain’t that your ol’ sergeant what’s-his-name, uh, Lange? ‘Cept he be wearin’ two stripes on top his shoulder, now.”

I looked where he was pointing and, sure enough, it was Oskar Lange and he was in a captain’s uniform. Moreover, he was searching the boat’s rails with his eyes and, at that same moment, he’d focused on us and, with a broad smile, began waving.

We both waved back and he gave us the “wait there” sign, with an open hand, then a pointing finger.

As Lange crossed below and we lost sight of him, we walked over to the top of the ladder. Jordie had corrected my referring to the steps that passed between the upper and lower deck as a stairway. On a boat it was properly termed a “ladder,” he reminded me, as we had learned in a brief lesson in naval jargon that the Forty-fourth U.S. Colored Infantry’s Sergeant Michael Jones had provided, the night before he was killed at Johnsonville.

Now the Fourteenth Ohio Infantry’s former Sergeant Oskar Lange came bounding up the so-called ladder as we drew ourselves to attention and saluted, even though we were not in uniform.