Sunshine and Stones

By Cynthia Wilson

We were on our way to school in Jack Spyder’s truck jammin’ to the tunes when an announcer’s voice broke in the middle of “Blinded by the Light.”

“Late last evening, a Convair 240 carrying the members of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, crashed in a swamp near Gillsburg, Mississippi.” The announcer had tears in his throat. “Dead are lead singer Ronnie Van Zandt, guitarist and vocalist Steve Gaines, his sister, vocalist Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, along with both the pilot and co-pilot.” We sat with our shirts stuck to the back of the seats, a sudden sweat upon us, while the truck slowed down as if from its own shock. We could hear the announcer shuffling papers, attempting to collect himself before going on. “The plane was en route from a concert in Greenville, South Carolina to Baton Rouge, Louisiana when sources say it ran out of gas and went down. Injured are drummer Artimus Pyle, Gary Rossington, and Leslie Hawkins. Guitar player Allen Collins and bassist Leon Wilkeson  are both in serious condition. We will have more details as information comes in. Again, the plane carrying members of southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd has crashed in Gillsburg, Mississippi. Ronnie Van Zandt, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines are dead. And now, a moment of silence.”

The truck drifted over to the side of the road. The silence was black. The decision to skip school that day was unspoken, and Jack went off to find dope. Sarah and I went to raid her parents’ liquor cabinet. All we came up with was a bottle of cherry vodka. We met up in the cemetery. It seemed the appropriate place. The headstones were a scattered Stonehenge baked silver by a hot sun. We sat among them, legs crossed Indian style.

It was 1977. Like the sixties without riots about black and white and protests against war. Free love and drugs floated like good incense into the next decade. The kids in the sixties had experimented and we were the receivers of the results. We knew what we liked. Southern Rock and hard partyin’ was the flavor of the time, and Lynyrd Skynyrd was our icon for freedom, southern style.

Jack and Dane were already there when Sarah and I showed up, cherry vodka in hand, Skynyrd shirts on from the last concert tour over hip-hugging angel flairs, and Candies slides. Jack sat on the open bed of his truck, legs swinging, licking the tip of the paper on the joint he had just rolled. Setting it down with the pile he had already rolled, he picked up the bag of yellow-green weed and stuck his nose deep into it as if it were a brandy snifter full of Louis Tres. The doors were open to his truck, the eight track playing “Gimme Back My Bullets.”

“Nothin like it, man. Makes ya high just thinking about it.”

Dane leaned against a headstone, Budweiser longneck in hand, peeling the label off bit by bit, dark bangs covering his face. He looked up.

“I’m tired of thinking. Spark one up.”

Sarah took a seat next to Jack. Stuck the bottle in front of his face.

“Cherry Vodka. The folks keep the good shit locked up.”

Jack smiled and stuck a joint in her mouth. “ ‘salright, Dane brought beer. Couple cases.”

He dug a matchbook out of his pocket, Millie’s Craft and Head Shop it said on the front cover. We’d been there many times. He struck a match and lit the joint. Sarah sucked in the smoke, and coughed while she exhaled. She grinned. The unmistakable smell of pot and sulphur filled the air between us.

“Good shit.”

“Yeah, well pass it over.” Dane reached out his arm, just out of reach from where Sarah sat. I walked the joint from Sarah to Dane, taking my share on the way.

The sun was a juicy peach by the time Dane stuck out his hand, uncurled his fingers, and showed us the tiny orange barrels in his palm.

“Orange Sunshine,” he grinned.

“Holding out on us?” Jack reached his long bony arm across the space between us, his snake tattoo uncoiling its full length. He took a tab and rolled it around in his fingers before popping it in his mouth. He smiled so wide that his cheeks touched the ends of his hair that fell in brown strings around his face.

Dane put his palm before Sarah and me, offering the goods. We each took one and put them in our mouths. I curled the end of my tongue around mine. It felt like a jujube. Dane licked his off his palm like the things he wanted to experience had been written there. Ronnie Van Zandt’s voice came from the truck, “Swamp, swamp swamp, swamp music…”

Jack opened the cooler for another beer. He tossed one to Dane. “So, what do you think they were thinkin’ when they knew the plane was going down?”

“Shit, we’re gonna die.” Dane began peeling the label from his beer.

“No, really, man, like do you think they had the whole life-flash-before-your-eyes thing, or what?”

“I think they probably prayed to whatever they prayed to, I mean God, or whatever.” I said. I took a swig of cherry vodka, and curled up my nose, looking at the label as if I had grabbed the wrong thing.

“Do you think they can see us? Right now?” Sarah’s face was shadowed in the dimming light. A bullfrog squawked somewhere behind her.

“There’s your answer, man!” Jack rolled on his back, holding his stomach, laughing.

Sarah looked behind her as if someone might actually be there. “Don’t be a dick. I mean, do you think there’s anything after we die?”

“You mean like heaven?” Dane peered into the opening of his beer bottle.

“Or ghosts,” Jack got up and skipped between the headstones around us. “Woooooooo,” he jumped on top of one and stretched out his arms, “woooooooooooo.”

Sarah took a long pull from the bottle of vodka and jumped up, throwing her arms in the air in a whiff of cherry and sandalwood.  I could tell by the extra light in her expression that she was starting to get high. She was on her way over the rainbow.

“Woooooooo,” she waved her arms at Jack, chasing him, “wooooooo.”

I turned to Dane, who sat peeling his beer bottle, smiling after them.

“So, it’s like an ending, man, like the end of something. With Skynyrd and all,” I looked at him, pushing a stray bit of hair out of my face. I could feel my skin turning to rubber.

“There’s no ending, just a beginning. All endings are beginnings.”

I looked at Jack dancing on top of a headstone, all golden purple shadows.

“I am the ghost of music past!” He did a little tap dance and fell, laughing.

Sarah came dancing between Dane and me. “We’re all the ghosts of music, man, we carry the music with us. That’s why we have music, man, so we can vibrate with the universe.” She did a sort of pirouette and deposited herself cross-legged next to me.

“Ronnie Van Zandt was the best, man, the best. Every man feels he has to be exceptionally good at something. He’ll keep those closest who both know and admire this thing.”

The peach sky had turned to black velvet with holes in it where the stars should be. Just as I was about to comment about the missing stars a single light began approaching us from across the cemetery illuminating headstones as it came towards us and we all stopped, froze, not sure if it was the drugs or not.

“What the hell you kids doing here?” came the voice behind the light. “This ain’t no place to party, this here’s a cemetery, don’t y’all have any respect at all for the folks resting here? Ever since that goddamn Easy Rider movie, suddenly graveyards are the place for you kids to trip out or whatever it is you do. Not on my watch. Y’all get now, go on home.”

Dane smiled angelically, his dark hair hiding his brilliant eyes, eyes that changed color with his voice, like one of those colored strobe lights that changed with the music. “Dude, we’re not hurting anybody. I mean, c’mon, everyone here is already dead. What could we possibly do to them? Just chill, dude, chill.”

Sarah stepped into the light and made a grand sweeping motion with her hand and said, “The cemetery is a great place to picnic, if you don’t mind aunts.” Then she took a deep bow, turned to us and said, “Haiku.”

“Gesundheit,” Jack shot back.

Everybody laughed, even the man behind the light.

“Well, don’t do no desecrating and take all your trash with you. Don’t let me catch you here again, got me?” the voice said.

“Don’t worry man, we don’t like to desecrate in public, we can use the bathroom at the 7-11 down the road. Thanks for considering our bowels though,” said Jack.

The voice made a hmmmph sound and the light turned away, illuminating the headstones again.

“Watchman for the dead. How cool is that? Think Ronnie and Cassie have a watchman?” Dane looked at me, his eyes flashing purple, pink, orange, then black. “I think it would be cool, I want someone to watch over me when I’m dead.”

I could feel the top of my head buzz like it was a radio receiver. My tongue felt thick. “Geez Dane, don’t you ever get scared of dying? Doesn’t death scare you?”

Dane considered me for a moment, looked out where moments ago dozens of headstones were lit up like monuments.     Suddenly the dark became intense, like it was emanating from Dane’s words. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in a dark hole, falling, and I can’t see where I’m going. Then I get real sad and afraid, and it feels like a million ants with frozen feet are running up and down my skin.”

Sarah held her hands in front of her as if she were looking for ants. She rubbed her arms and shivered. “Bad scene, man.”

Jack jumped off a headstone and landed next to us, pulled a joint out of his shirt pocket and lit it with a Millie’s match.

“I’m learnin there are no absolutes,” he said as he inhaled, his voice strained. “There’s no definites, no solutions,” his words came out in puffs with the smoke. He passed the joint to Dane. “It’s all just how we deal with it, you know?”

Jack was still gold and purple. Suddenly we were our own counsel, an ancient counsel of druids bathed in our own light among the headstones. Our own private Stonehenge. The October night was warm, the moon was cut in half like the day had been.

“Yeah, but it’s still just another entrance to the dark hole of unknowing,” Sarah took the joint, a rainbow trailing her hand, took a long drag, then passed it to me. I looked at it, the fingers of smoke dancing up toward the sky, rainbow-like, like Hindu goddesses. I got up and raised my hands to them, then danced on the nearest grave and said, “Look at me, I’m Kali, the Hindu goddess of Tantric eternal energy. The Goddess of change. She danced on Shiva’s dead body, and he was her lover. But she could never separate herself from him, she is his creative energy.” I danced around and stomped my feet as if I were dancing on someone. “Just like a man to need a woman for creativity and eternal life. Funny thing is, it happens again and again, without end. Shiva always dies and Kali always dances.” I stopped my dancing and fell to the ground, laughing, watching the holes where the stars used to be turn into a kaleidoscope of color.

“Maybe there isn’t an ending or a beginning,” Dane said, “ maybe all we have is feeling. Like when the sky’s so red it feels like the world’s life is bleeding over me. Other times I feel like the world wraps itself around me like a blanket. Pure feeling, man, that’s the wisdom.”

“Merry-go-rounds are my favorite,” Sarah announced, “I mean, you go round and round, and up and down, and you just keep going in circles – never going anywhere and never expecting to. Just comfortable in the ride. Round and round. Yeah, Merry-go-rounds. I like ‘em.”

I looked at Dane through the Goddess-smoke, his black hair hanging over his eyes like he held some ancient mystery there. His eyes were so dark they looked like the ancient springs at Delphi. I thought he was crazy and beautiful.

“Where do you think you’ll go when you die?” I asked Dane.

“Depends on who’s taking me there, maybe I’ll go to Gillsburg and hang out with Ronnie. Yeah, that’d be cool. Free Bird live whenever I want.” Dane turned into a Sphynx.

Jack bounced back between the silver and purple stones, rainbows trailing behind him. He was a jester, a God, a muse.

“We can just go then,” Jack announced.

Sarah looked up at him, eyes wide, her face awash in color. “With Skynyrd? With Ronnie? Now? I mean, don’t we have to die first? I know, it’s a suicide pact, right? Just like the Kool-Aid. I like grape.”

Jack swung Sarah around and sat her atop a stone and told her, “This ain’t no suicide pact girlie. I’m talking driving to Gillsburg, man, see the place where they went down. Talk to ‘em, like maybe there’s messages there that only true Skynyrd fans can get.”

“Yeah, man, like to where they landed. Crashed. It would be so beautiful. To crash,” Sarah mused, still intent on understanding death from first hand experience.

My life came back to me. “To Gillsburg? To the swamp?”

Dane jumped up, animated with purpose, his hair parted over his face. “To the swamp!”

Sarah looked at me, her eyes palettes of color. “I’ll plant some resurrection ferns.”

“No resurrection fern is gonna bring back Skynyrd. Besides, you can’t plant resurrection ferns, they just grow. You know, like when it rains, then after the rainbow comes the resurrection ferns,” Dane explained.

“Hey man,” I said, “Maybe that’s it. Ya know? Like the resurrection ferns. Maybe they’ll come back, you know, if it rains.”

Jack wove back and forth between headstones, leaving a long trail of rainbows behind him. He started singing:

“I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a haaarrrd rain is gonna faaaaallll.”

“Bob Dylan, man, he’s like, Jesus or something, like, he always has the right message.”

“What is it with you and messages anyway, Jack? Dude, there’s a message in everything.” I watched him as he turned from gold to purple to orange, then back to gold again. “Jack, you’re golden, man. I mean really golden.”

Jack immediately pounced on to the top of a large headstone and stretched his arms out wide. “That’s because I’m a God! Didn’t you know all Gods are golden? Ever see a picture of them big ass Buddhas? They’re golden. Golden Gods.”

I got up and walked to where Jack was still perched on his stone, looked straight into his kaleidoscope eyes and said, “If you’re a God, then why did you let that plane crash? Why did you take Ronnie and the Gaines? You’re a shitty God, man.”

Jack crouched down, still atop the headstone, and said in a conspiratorial tone, “We’re all shitty Gods. That’s the secret. That’s what everyone is trying to figure out. That’s the secret of life, man. That’s it right there. We’re all shitty Gods.”

“But what about Ronnie, and Steve and Cassie, they weren’t shitty Gods, they were musicians. The greatest southern rock band to ever live!” I protested.

“Yeah! The greatest band to ever live!” Sarah joined in, twirling in circles; rainbows followed her every move, she became lost in the light.

“You mean to ever die,” said Dane.

* * *

Cynthia Wilson holds and MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Hyperbole, The Aquila Review, The Pitkin Review, Fine Flash Fiction, and several small house publications. She is currently working on her novel and lives at home with her life long love and her two dogs.

You can visit Cynthia at her blog, www.cypresswillow.com.

The Tale of Rauðúlfr
By Lisa Farrell

Hulda watched the flames dance until her dim eyes saw only light. She listened to the snapping and popping of the twigs, and ignored the sound of women’s voices through the wall. A bird was screeching outside, and she wondered how it could bear to open its beak and call out in such cold.

She had not thought she would survive this winter, but the children told her that the signs of Harpa-month were already here. Well, she could not yet feel it. Her bones still felt like the twigs in the fire, though under siege by ice rather than heat. She could barely move, but spent her hours trying to fold herself up small, keeping her face in the glow, until they teased her that the bristles on her chin would singe. They did not respect her, these young women whose bellies still waxed and waned like the moon. They had continually knocked into her as they prepared the day meal around her, as though she were an unwelcome guest. Yet this was her seat, her place, and she had earned her spot by the hearth-fire, having cooked on it for so many years. At least Rauðúlfr had made the women promise not to let the fire die. He was a good boy; he took care of his mother, as a son should.

Hulda sat up suddenly, and had to readjust her dress to block the chill air again. She sniffed. There was something in the air; sweet, like sheep-dung, but stronger. She stood, and arched her back until it clicked. Then she shuffled to the door in her calf-skin shoes, and through into the hall.

They were both sat there at the loom; her daughter, Saldís, and her son’s wife, Erna, who played at being mother, mistress of the farm. They looked up quickly, then back to their work, but did not speak to her.

Hulda went out into the snow. It turned to slush beneath her feet and she could feel the dampness seeping through. Mountains loomed on either side of the farm and cast great shadows over the valley, so though there was no wind, the air was sharp.

As she approached the animal shed a new smell reached her nostrils; the thick, warm stench of soiled hay and dung. She walked around the shed to the back where, between the wooden slatted wall and a hardy, scraggly bush, lay the body of a sheep. The wool was tangled, and crawling with lice.

“How can the shepherd not miss you, eh?” she asked it, as she pulled away the brittle branches of the bush to get a better look. She did not like to stoop for so long, but took hold of a curved horn and dragged the dead sheep from its hiding place. She stopped when she realised what else lay under the bush. The small, malformed body of a premature lamb lay in what must have been a sticky pink puddle, but had now dried into stiff, dirty spikes on its back.

“Now,” said Hulda, “just look at you!”

The still-born was shrivelled, short black legs wrinkled under its swollen little body. On its neck was not one head, but two. Two identical white faces, with closed eyes and open mouths, below four little stumps of horn.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” she said, “and at last, transformation… ‘Twas all I lacked.” She looked up to the mountains. “Now I can see you again, Fálki,” she murmured. “At long last.”

She reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out a small bundle. Unwrapping her treasure, she fingered the contents carefully; a lock of his blond hair, made delicate by age, a falcon’s feather, like the one he used to carry, and a length of blue thread. She reached down again, and pressed the thread against the twisted body of the lamb, rubbing it hard into the skin of the belly and then the face, until it came away dyed red. She spat into her palm and moistened the thread there, before wrapping up the bundle and knotting the thread tightly at its neck. This took some time, as her fingers were red and bent with cold. Then she moved a little away from the dead sheep, before burying her wish in the snow. Hulda lowered herself slowly and knelt on top, her knees turning numb the moment they sunk onto the frozen ground. She spread her cloak over herself, before she began her chant in the privacy of the darkness there.

#

His body lay inside the belly of the mountain, pinned by blades of ice. He was reflected and fragmented across craggy walls, which captured the pricks of light that infiltrated the cave and so shone even in the dark. His limbs were stiff, splayed, his arms like broken wings. His neck bent back over a rock, split to reveal a ridge of bone in his throat, visible only when the sun was directly overhead and beams of yellow light cascaded through the hole in the roof of the cave. He had not been disturbed; he had lain with his sword useless at his side for what could have been a hundred days or years. His flesh, though cold and brittle, still retained a hint of pink.

As the spirit reached him, crawling into his ear like a familiar voice and squatting there in the dry hollow of his head, his body tried to twitch. Feeble spasms crossed from the tip of one forefinger, to the tip of the other. His toes curled tighter in his boots. The wrinkled fruit that had lain still in his chest for so long, began to warm.

His icy prison lost its glow and faded, as his body began to move. His eyes had remained open, but only now did they become aware of the dark. When he stood, it was as though the ice meant nothing to him. He placed one foot heavily before the other, and passed through the rock in the direction of that voice, that smell that felt like Hulda’s breath upon him.

She said his name, that he had long ago forgotten, and he was drawn on.

#

They lit the long fire in the hall that evening, and she could hear their voices deepen and thicken with drink as the hours passed. That son of hers had more friends than he had workers; she hoped he could afford enough ale for them all. She had needed the latrine for some time, but refused to move from her bench, and her own, more benevolent fire. She could hear his wife cackling and squawking in there, and men stamping their boots. They would be dancing next. She would not pass among them, even for the sake of her bowels.

Then the noise stopped. It took her a moment to realise that this was real silence, not just a trick of her ears. They could not have all left so quickly. She rose, and pulled her shawl tight around her neck before moving to the door.

They sat along the benches in the hall, drinks half-raised, staring across the flames at each other. She hobbled towards the fire. This seemed to rouse them.

“What was that?” whispered Saldís, who should have known better than to keep such company at such an hour.

“What was what?” Hulda asked, peering at the faces, trying to distinguish those she recognised from those she did not.

“A knock,” said Rauðúlfr, “that’s all.”

“A single knock, and after dark,” someone said. “That is no friend outside.”

She was too far from the door. She tried to get out, but the chill had long since stiffened her legs, and Rauðúlfr was there before her to bar her way.

“It’s only superstition,” she told him, “don’t leave the poor soul out in the cold.”

“Sit down, mother.”

She shook her head, but her son was taller and broader besides. He only had to place a heavy hand on her shoulder and she would be rooted there where she stood.

Then they looked up, as they heard a hollow thumping on the roof, and a scrabbling, and then the beams began to shake as if someone were sitting up there, kicking their heels and causing the whole hall to shake. The banging made the children cry, and even Erna, Rauðúlfr’s formidable wife, shrieked in fear.

“No, no, it’s just a storm! That’s all!” Hulda shouted above the din. But dust and cobwebs were filling the air, landing in the fire and on her head, and she allowed her daughter to usher her into the corner with the other women, while the men crouched at the door, in case.

“Will no one go out to him?” she wailed, but no one answered.

#

Few slept well that night. Even once the spirit seemed to have passed, they were afraid to speak or move. She did not tell them who it was, because it would do no good; they still believed Fálki had left her of his own accord, because she nagged him.

As soon as light could be seen through the cracks around the wooden door, Rauðúlfr led some men outside. The rest soon followed, and even Hulda moved to stand in the snow and stare. The gate had been flattened, as though by some giant’s foot, and the animal shed nearest the house had been turned on its side, as though only a toy. Remains of the animals were scattered in scarlet heaps. The snow had already formed veils over the bodies, and would gradually bury them.

Rauðúlfr strode towards the gate, clumps of wool drifting around his ankles as he moved through the destruction.

“Where is the shepherd?” he asked, but the shepherd could not be found.

#

The next night Hulda did not make the same mistake. She left the hall while the women were busy cooking the night meal, and crunched her way across the snow in the dark, heading towards the gate. It still lay on the ground, so she walked over it, her footsteps echoing, and out of the farm. They would miss her, but not for some time yet.

She walked until her knees refused to bend, and then she stood and waited, feeling the chill spread up her legs and into the very core of her. She shivered and cursed, but stayed where she was, staring up at the mountainside in the moonlight.

Until Fálki came.

He came swiftly, silently, though he had swelled to three times the size he had been in life. His eyes were two eggs bulging from his skull, and she almost feared to meet their gaze. But as he stopped before her, one huge hand supporting his head, she readied herself to speak to him at last.

“Away! Away, evil draugr!” shouted Rauðúlfr, running towards them with his sword drawn. Hulda screamed, but as the blade came down the ghost was gone, and a falcon soared away up towards the top of the mountain.

“What have you done?” she asked, grabbing her son’s arm. “Why couldn’t you let me speak to him?”

He shook her free of his arm and sheathed his sword. “I feared it was you that had loosed this ill upon us. When I saw you leave the hall tonight, I knew you went to meet it.”

“It was no ‘ill’, it was your father’s ghost,” she cried. “I wanted only to speak to him, to see him one last-”

“That was not my father,” Rauðúlfr said. “That was trouble caused by your meddling. You should have let my father rest.”

“How can he rest when he is lost in the mountains? You should have sought him out long ago, when he was newly lost. But even you believed that he had left me, that he did not want to be followed, that he did not need your help.”

Her son gripped her by the wrist and led her quickly back towards the hall.

“Just because he is a ghost now, mother, does not mean he did not leave by his own choice.”

#

Rauðúlfr waited until the sun rose again before following the creature. He climbed the mountain, and though he would never admit to such a feminine skill, he followed his nose to the cave.

From outside, it was no more than a hole in the rock, a gap through which snow and rain would travel, and sometimes light. This was a hole that could trap the unwary traveller, but now Rauðúlfr lowered himself through it with a purpose. The fit was tight, but he drew his shoulders in towards his chest and wriggled, rubbing snow into his armpits as he slipped through at last, into the darkness.

He did not want to move away from that pool of light, but there was a glint in the back of the cave that called for his attention. He drew his sword, and carried it before him for those few delicate steps across the slippery floor of the cave.

In the dark, he could barely tell the head from the body, but he waited and listened to his heart pound like an animal beneath his tunic, as his eyes accustomed. He lifted his sword above his head, and swung it down in a practiced arc. It only took one slice to decapitate the ghost, whose neck had been already broken. Rauðúlfr grasped the hair, frail as straw between his thick fingers, and positioned the head between the feet of his enemy. There was no danger of it rising again now.

Rauðúlfr returned to his farm with no trophy but the dull stain on his sword. His mother was waiting at the broken gate to meet him.

“I can smell your father’s blood on your sword,” she said, “and so you have killed your mother too.”

He took her back into the warmth of the hall, telling her to keep her peace and not to frighten the children. Erna was in the hall and she waited, her arms folded, as he led his mother to her accustomed seat. Erna went outside, and though she did not speak, he knew to follow her. The world was frozen but her cheeks were red.

“Why did you leave the farm? Where did you sneak to today?” she asked. “The men are suspicious enough already, and everyone is afraid. Could you not have told us where you were going?”

“I can tell you now that you are safe,” he said. “I followed the ghost, and found my father’s body at long last. I have put him to rest.”

When the day’s work was over and everyone had returned to the hall, the fires were lit and drink was passed around. Rauðúlfr was toasted for his bravery and his skill with a sword.

Erna went to the hearth-fire where lamb was boiling for the night meal. Hulda seemed to her to be sitting very still.

Erna placed a hand on the old woman’s to rouse her, but found the skin cold.

* * *

Lisa Farrell holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and her short stories have appeared on pulp.net, Open Magazine, and in Volume magazine, among others.  You can visit Lisa, and read her other online stories, by going to her blog.

The Man Who Shot Stonewall Jackson

By Gary Beck

It happened once before, when I was a young man. The newspapers clamored for war, self-appointed know-it-alls told us why we had to fight and everyone believed them, especially the youngsters like me who got all fired up to join the army. So now, when those big headlines screamed ‘Remember The Maine,’ there wasn’t any more doubt that there would be war with Spain. And off they went to enlist, just like they were going to a picnic, as irreverent and ignorant as we were back in 1861. My eldest son told me he had to join up and I tried to discourage him. I told him how crazy it was for two groups of men to stand and blaze away at each other, but he wouldn’t listen. All he said was: “War’s not fought that way anymore, Pa.”

So I held my peace and watched him go, like my pa watched me go. When he died of yellow fever, before he even fought in a battle, it was another terrible affliction that I had to accept. But I guess he was right about it being a new kind of war, because it was over pretty quick and we got all these new places; Cuba, Puerto Rico, The Philippines and Guam. I never even heard of Guam. So I kept on farming and doing my chores but I was pretty much empty inside. I had been that way ever since the surrender at Appomattox, which ended my daily suffering, but left me a hollow man. I went through all the motions of the living and tried my best to be a good husband and father, and I never told anyone how I felt. How could anyone who hadn’t been there understand? Sometimes, when I went to town and saw the few old hands who survived the entire war, like me, there was nothing we could say. We just looked at each other for a moment, nodded in recognition that we were still alive and moved on.

Then one day, long after Spain surrendered, I saw a soldier who had just come home from the Philippines. I was buying something in Dahlgren’s general store and his pa brought him in. He had that look that I hadn’t seen since the war with the Yankees. His flesh was sagging on his bones and his uniform hung on him like a scarecrow on a hard luck farm. He walked as if it was a great effort to put one foot after the other. Old Mr. Dahlgren kept prodding him to tell us what it was like over there, but he refused to talk, until his pa urged him. Then he looked at everyone for a moment and said coldly: “You want to know what it was like? I’ll tell you. I watched my buddies die in ambushes, or of tropical diseases, or in battles with savages who just kept coming at us, even after we shot them. I watched my friends butcher women and children!” A look of absolute horror ate his face. “All I saw was death and suffering. Is that what you wanted to hear?” Then he turned and walked out. I couldn’t get him out of my mind the rest of the day.

That night I thought about the war with the Yankees, which I had shut out of my life a long time ago. I remembered how I had rushed to join up that spring of 1861. I ignored Pa when he told me not to go, just like my boy ignored me. Then Pa told me how bad it was when he fought the Mexicans in ‘46, but I didn’t believe him. Everyone I knew was hurrying to the colors and I wasn’t about to be last. We were going to whip the Yankees good, then go back home with our chests full of medals. Once I was in uniform it didn’t take long for me to wake up. Almost half the boys I joined up with got killed or wounded in our first battle at Manassas. Maybe the Yankees finally ran off as fast as they could for Washington D.C., but not before they put up a mighty good fight. We fought up and down Virginia for the next two years and got leaner, hungrier, tireder and sicker. The more we ran out of ammunition, food, or shoes, the more the Yankees kept coming. We learned everything about the horror of soldiering the hard way.

One day we were camped somewhere near Chancellorsville, after a tough battle where we whipped the Yankees good. Of course it wasn’t like when the war first started. Then we knew we were better men then the city folk and immigrants they were going to send against us. Before First Manassas, most of us talked about beating them proper, then going home. If anyone thought it would go on and on for years, they didn’t say it where I heard. Anyhow, we had been resting because it had been a long, hard fight and these Yankees weren’t like the rabbits who used to run when they were beaten. When these Yankees lost, they retreated resentfully and we knew they’d be back. Then the word raced through the camp. Stonewall was dead. Rumors, like disease, travel swiftly in an army, especially when it’s bad news. This hit me and the old hands particularly hard, because we were the 31^st Virginia and we were Stonewall’s men from the beginning.

We rushed to Colonel Barstow’s tent, but he didn’t know any more than we did. Messengers kept arriving, each one with different news. The only thing they all agreed on was that Stonewall had been shot. The colonel finally got tired of our pushing and shoving at the messengers and he sent us back to our bivouac area. But he promised to let our company commander, Lieutenant Rambeau, know as soon as he learned anything. We thanked the colonel, who was one of only three officers left in the regiment who had been with us from the start. All the others had been killed or invalided out. Colonel Barstow had started as a young lieutenant, full of fire and noble speeches. Now he was as old and tired as the rest of us. We snickered about Lieutenant Rambeau as we walked. He was a momma’s boy, a blonde-haired string bean with a mushy face that always looked ready to cry. He had reported to the regiment a few days ago, but he disappeared somehow before the fighting started. The joke going around the camp was who would shoot him first, us or them. Soldiers deserted other regiments before a fight, but not in the 31^st Virginia.

We waited for news, but didn’t relax much. A couple of the younger boys babbled about beating the Yankees again, but the old hands quickly shut them up. By now we knew we could beat them and beat them, but they would still keep coming. We were sick, tired, cold and hungry and we didn’t have much hope left. The gossip around the campfire was no longer about victory. A few diehards still kept trying to convince the rest of us that massa Robert and ole Stonewall would find a way to defeat the Yankees. Most of us didn’t buy it. Now Stonewall was dead. One of the kids asked what would happen if General Lee got killed, but an old hand kicked him a few times and the kid slunk off, leaving the rest of us to brood about things. I couldn’t help thinking how lucky that kid was to get off so lightly. We had just lost our father and that dumb kid was talking about losing our grandfather. We didn’t need any more bad luck.

Later that night we found out that Stonewall wasn’t dead, he was just badly wounded. He had been returning from the battlefield in the dark and a nervous sentry, thinking he was a Yankee goblin or something, shot him. After two years of hurry up, then wait, it wasn’t a hardship to wait for news. We lost so many men at Chancellorsville that I guess they forgot about our regiment for a while, so we loafed in our tents. Once we packed up all the dead men’s belongings, they finally remembered us. They even gave us some food, probably pilfered from the Yankees endless supply of everything. Then the word flew around camp faster than wildfire. A new recruit named Billy Rawlins had shot Stonewall. They didn’t rightly know what to do with him, so they sent him home.

After Stonewall died, the war went on and on and the Yankees kept us on the run. When it was finally over, those of us who survived went back to our homes. I was one of the lucky ones. Pa had kept the farm going somehow, despite the voracious armies trampling back and forth across poor, battered Virginia. I had only been home for a couple of months when I heard that the man who shot Stonewall Jackson, Billy Rawlins, had hanged himself. It seems his pa kept telling him that he killed the man who could have won the war for the Confederacy. I guess the damned fool kid must have believed him, because he went into the barn, threw a rope over a beam and ended his life… But that was a long time ago.

I hadn’t thought about Billy Rawlins for many years. Seeing that soldier in Dahlgren’s store reminded me about what had eaten so much of my soul away. It all came back to me from a distance, like hearing a voice on that new telephone invention: the useless waste of young men, the suffering that devastated so many lives, the ease with which we forgot the dead. All I could think of was that if I knew then what I knew now, I could have gone to see Billy. I could have told him that what he did was just one more crazy mistake in a succession of terrible events. That Stonewall couldn’t have won the war. Hell, it was lost way before that. Only fools believed that we could win after the first year or so. The Yankees had everything. We only had pride and courage. Once they wore out our pride, courage just wasn’t enough. But my understanding of things came much too late to help poor Billy. I couldn’t help that trooper who lost his soul in the jungle. And I sure couldn’t help any of the other innocents who don’t start wars, only rush to fight them.

* * *

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook ‘Remembrance’ was published by Origami Condom Press, ‘The Conquest of Somalia’ was published by Cervena Barva Press and ‘The Dance of Hate’ was published by Calliope Nerve Media in 2009. A collection of his poetry ‘Days of Destruction’ has been published in 2009 by Skive Press. Another collection ‘Expectations’ is being published by Rogue Scholars Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. He currently lives in New York City, where he’s busy writing.  His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines.

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