Chicken Thief
My words with Grandpa did not go as I intended. I aimed to land the first strike to his wall of lies, but it ricocheted back at me. Now that my lie is flayed open and put behind me, I need to lance Grandpa’s blister.
Virginia Lee Kent
For supper, we finish our soup. I feel Grandpa’s eyes on me, but I keep eating and wait him out.
“Wish I could undo what Simms done,” he finally says. “Don’t know if the money I give ‘im put notions in his head, or if he’da been a polecat anyhow, but I’m sorry. Don’t let it eat at ya. Somethin’ past is somethin’ past.”
I chew my lip. Grandpa is feeling big-hearted. This could be my chance. “I don’t understand why you went clean to Gettysburg after fifty years, but you scarcely spent two minutes in the Veterans’ Camp.”
“I done told ya,” he snaps. “I were lookin’ fer a feller fer ya, and earnin’ some dowry money.”
I don’t back down. “Mrs. Grome thinks you were scared.”
“Scairt’a what?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. But don’t tell more lies. I told the truth today. Can’t we have a day of truth between us?”
Grandpa’s fingers run through his hair and down his beard. His jaw tightens. He shakes his head.
“Ain’t easy ta talk about things I never spoke aloud to another soul.” He pokes at the fire with a stick, pushing its logs this way and that, until a burst of flame shoots up and burns steady. “Ya said ya was afraid I’d kill Simms, and ya didn’t want ta feel blameful if I did. Remember?”
I nod.
“Back afore the war,” he goes on, “Ma fretted ‘bout chicken thieves. Once or twice a week, one’a ours come up missin’. I suspicioned Thad Willoughby were doin’ it. Been bad blood twixt our kin.”
Grandpa goes silent and pokes again at the fire. I wonder what chicken thieves have to do with the Reunion or Gerald Simms, but I sit quiet.
“One day, I come in from huntin’ and was fixin’ ta use the backhouse. I heared the chickens a-squawkin’ and a-carryin’ on somethin’ fierce. I snuck ta the coop, my gun raised, expectin’ ta scare tarnation out’a Thad. It were comin’ on fer dark, but I could tell it weren’t him a-reachin’ fer one’a Ma’s best lay-ers. I didn’t stop ta think. I fired. Just like that, I shot ‘im.”
Grandpa sighs. “It weren’t nobody we knew, some ol’ bum holed up in the woods, likely a-stealin’ his supper. If he’d come ta the door, Ma’da fed him, but stealin’s stealin’, and he died on account’a it.”
Grandpa’s face tightens. “I never kilt nobody afore, never watched nobody die, but I seen his blood flow like spilt sorghum. I seen his breath slow and his body go limp. Didn’t need no backhouse after that.”
The fire spits sparks, and Grandpa watches them rise into the dark and disappear. “Pa said I done nothin’ wrong, Ma said I was safeguardin’ what was ours, and Fred said he’da shot him, too. Nobody knowed how wrong it made me feel, how sick I got inside.”
The fire’s crackle seems to understand, and Grandpa appears to change the subject. “When the War commenced, some folks ‘round Skitter Falls follered Yankee thinkin’, some follered Southern thinkin’. I were just a fool young’un without no thinkin’ a’tall. Onliest thing I follered was Fred. Wanted ta be like him, aped him all the time, stood the way he stood, rested my chin on my fist like he done.”
Grandpa raises his chin, and I’m not certain it’s me he’s talking to. “When Fred follered Jackson, I follered Fred. Didn’t yearn ta fight. Didn’t think on what war meant. Just wanted ta be like Fred. He latched onto ever’ word Jackson spoke, took it like gospel. Jackson was a good general and a religious man, but when it come ta Yankees, he had one notion. It weren’t enough ta run ‘em off Southern land. He wanted ever’ blasted Yankee dead.”
Grandpa’s eyes return to the fire, and flames trace images on his face. I see that other face, the face of a boy who followed his brother to war.
“I knowed it from our first battle at Manassas,” he tells the fire, “killin’ weren’t in me. Seein’ that chicken thief die at my hand burnt it clean out’a me. Last thing a’ army needs is a soldier what cain’t kill the enemy.”
I finally speak. “You should’ve gone home.”
He jerks his head toward me. “It don’t work like that. I’da been a deserter. They shot deserters. Seen ‘em do it. And I’da shamed my family.” Grandpa turns back and jabs the fire with his stick.
“Fred and me could shoot like the dickens. Could hit most anythin’ I aimed at. Durin’ the fightin’, I aimed low. Scairt a Yankee or two when my bullets hit the ground in front of ‘em. But I didn’t kill nobody.
“That first night after Manassas, Fred was lathered up like a rabid dog, says ta me, ‘How many ya think we kilt today, Shadow? How many dang Yankees won’t clutter this earth no more on account’a the Kent boys?’ I didn’t answer. I knowed nobody was dead on my account. Yankee or no, I just couldn’t do it. First time in my whole life I couldn’t be like Fred.” He snaps his stick across his knee and throws the pieces in the fire.
Grandpa turns to me. “I weren’t no coward, Ginnie Lee. When they said ‘March,’ I marched. Through dust thick enough ta choke a lizard. Through air so bitin’ cold it froze my nose hairs. On icy roads where footin’ were treacherous, I marched. I built breastworks and dug latrines. I collected our wounded and buried our dead. Time and again, I faced enemy guns. I done ever’thin’ they asked’a me.” His eyes drop to the stones around the fire. “Ever’thin’ but one.”
He tells the stones, “They thunk I was a good soldier, but I knowed better. Fred was the soldier. Was me should’a died.”
