Corporal Westy Remembers
My mind is so troubled, I pitch about the bed as though my mattress is a frying pan. It’s worse than sleeping on the ground, worse than a spring’s endless poking.
But I wake in the morning with the determination of a mule. No matter what Grandpa’s disposition, I aim to ask why he lied to me about General Walker. I aim to ask a heap of things.
He bedded down last night on Mrs. Grome’s sofa, but there’s not so much as a dent in a sofa cushion to show he slept there.
I feel like Daddy’s sluice gate back home. Grandpa’s lies and vanishings are like water lapping against me over and over. How long can I wait before I pull the lever and let the anger flow? He makes me want to scream and spit fire, but how do you spit fire at someone who is gone again?
At breakfast, Mr. Redmond feels crossways over General Chamberlain’s illness. He and Chance head to the Camp to find news. They invite me along, but I stay here. If I don’t go to the Camp, I can believe Grandpa is there and didn’t lie to me.
I settle for a tame show of defiance. Grandpa said proper young ladies don’t play mumblety-peg and warned me to keep my jackknife in my pocket around Gettysburg folks. I plunk myself on Mrs. Grome’s front step and flip my knife in the dirt.
I’m plumb tired of behaving, and I aim to do everything Grandpa told me not to. I hope someone comes by and speaks to me. I’m fixing to use the worst grammar I can think of.
But mumblety-peg isn’t much count as a game for one. I can flip my knife ten ways to Sunday, but with nobody to watch or imitate, what good is it?
I fetch my flute and play Dixie Land right on that front step. If it ruffles Yankee feathers, let them ruffle. But I can’t see if it bothers anyone. I can’t look around while I play. I need to watch my fingers to make sure they cover the right holes.
I commence the song a third time when the notes echo back at me. I look up and see Corporal Westy playing his harmonica. I let him finish the song alone.
“That Southern hymn should’a drawed me here, without me askin’ folks where ya was.” His grin stretches wide.
“You were looking for me?”
“Fer a fact. Ya asked me ‘bout some fellers name o’ Fred and Stewart, and I didn’t recollect them names right off.” He pulls a toothpick from his pocket, chews on it a second, and lets it hang in the corner of his mouth while he talks.
“Got so bogged down by them names, I plumb fergot what last name ya flung. Was fixin’ ta ask Red Foster if’n he recollected them boys, and danged if I could think who ta ask about. Red was Stonewall Brigade, too. Ya see, Little Lady, we hung nicknames on the men, and most times we plumb fergot what the given names was. There was Red and Southpaw and Shorty and—”
“Their last name’s Kent, same as mine.”
Westy rubs his chin, chews his toothpick, and looks up at the clouds. I hold my breath and bite my lip.
“Seems I knowed two Kents. Brothers, they was. Older one was called Eagle-Eye on account’a he could shoot a flea off a dog without wakin’ the hound.”
My heart does flip-flops in my chest. “That must have been Fred. Grandpa is Stewart, the younger brother.”
“Don’t recollect that name.” He rubs his chin some more and studies those clouds as if an answer is written there. “Younger boy was called Shadow on account’a he went—”
“Everywhere Fred went,” I finish.
“That’s right. Shadow weren’t no more’n a sprout, but he was the onliest man in our whole dang company what could outshoot his eagle-eyed brother. Twixt the two of ‘em, there shouldn’ta been a Yankee left south’a the Mason-Dixon.”
“That’s Grandpa!” I throw my arms around the old soldier. “You did know him! He did fight with Stonewall!” I’m so overjoyed I could dance with Westy right here on Mrs. Grome’s brick walk.
I beg Corporal Westy for details. “Tell me everything you remember about Grandpa and the Stonewall Brigade.”
“A lot’a the tellin’ ain’t purty. War paints some ugly pictures in a feller’s head.” He sits on the step. “And twixt the fightin’, there was a heap’a drudgery. We marched on roads too icy ta stand on, a-slippin’ and a-slidin’ thisaway and that. One time, the general had us haul a locomotive out of a bog. We was diggin’ in mud up ta our shirts, tied it off with ropes, and strained like mules, tryin’ ta git it out.
The chewing on his toothpick slows. “No matter how hard the back-bustin’ work, it beat the blazes out’a gittin’ shot at.”
He pulls the toothpick from his mouth and looks at it. “A war twixt two parts of a country is a peculiar thing. Friends become enemies quick as you can snap a toothpick. One day ya’s talkin’ ‘bout your differences, and the next, ya’s shootin’ each other. Shucks, we fit fer four years, but ya think folks all agreed on ever’thing when General Lee give up his sword?”
I shake my head.
“Course not. They still done different thinkin’. They jist stopped fightin’ over it. I lost friends and kin off both sides.” His words come slower, his eyes wet. “Good friends, close kin.”
I wipe my own eyes. “How about another song?”
He chucks me under my chin and trades the toothpick for the harmonica. He commences to play The Bonnie Blue Flag, tapping his foot with the tune.
I sit and smile. I’m sure he reckons my smile is for his music, but I’m smiling for the freedom I feel, the freedom from those waves of anger that no longer lap inside me.
