Captain Blackman (iv)
from novelist John A. Williams and Doubleday & Company
Captain Abraham Blackman, United States Army, is still bleeding out in the Republic of Viet Nam. He had risen from cover to draw fire rather than let his young men walk into ambush from an overwhelming force. As he dies he revisits the military history he has taught the young brothers.
His wandering ghost has walked off from the Continental Army after victory in war of independence from Great Britain. He has fetched up in a bar in New Orleans where a griot tells of Daniel Martin walking in to complain.
The British navy had impressed the American citizen, who escaped to join the USN Chesapeake where the HMS Leopard kidnapped him again. London eventually let him go after time served, safe and sound. The sailor’s feelings only got hurt after return, when fellow Americans on the streets of the seaboard called him a worthless black bastard.
War came. What to do? Fight for the empire that might kidnap you like any other man into forced labor but no longer recognized black chattel slavery, or for the one who offered pay for service but didn’t want your vote? Blackman and Griot are Americans. They go fight for Andrew Jackson and for 160 acres of the Louisiana Purchase each.
They soldier and win for the colonel. They get their land. They settle down. The new republic that recruited them first to throw off the British yoke, then to beat back its impertinence, lets them know that service is no longer required from their kind.
Until of course it is. Chapter 3 concludes only the first incarnation of Captain Blackman’s history for his young bloods. It ends with the vision he first saw when arriving at the past, the number of men who can fit around a table deciding the racial order of northern America.
You should know that the novelist John A. Williams is in other work the author of some persistent conspiracy theories that are wrong when they do make an assertion rather than spin a tale. But this one?
Sure it happened. Over and over again. What does that have to do with Viet Nam?
This was fourth Viet Nam letter of 5 so far presenting Captain Blackman by John A. Williams. The first posted on April 4, 2022, the second on May 4, 2022, the third on June 6, 2022, then the fifth on February 16, 2023.
Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.
The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.