- A Tale of Fightin’ Blue Coats
- (poem-civil war-recollection)
- By: M L Wehunt
- July 9, 2012
- He sat near the open hearth
- reminiscing of the past and recollecting
- when he was nearer beginnings than endings
- before he was caught with his pants down.
- Eyes sullen he strokes at his salt & pepper hair
- pushing it backward over his forehead;
- it spitefully falls forward as if to say,
- I know what I am, leave me be — let me hang
- And likewise he knew what he was too –
- for sure and for certain he knew;
- he spoke it out-loud to the woman with the tablet in her hands
- who’d come to hear his words —
- He spoke with a natural southern softness and in the dialect of native region,
- but he spoke out the words with edged wit, even a hint of humor
- Them men in Blue coats never were to my liken;
- ne’er a truer thing have I spoken in all my sixty-two year,
- No, I never did like the color blue on a fight-‘en man –
- While I was in the fields being drug behind an ole mule, Sally was her name;
- Suspenders holding my trousers and sweat dripping off my brow
- like my Pa – beside me, who’d learnt me to cultivate the land proper;
- I saw them devils in blue coming over the ridge to the south of us,
- Them ill-desposed and ill-advised ilk of men, each one!
- Proud, those blue coats marched in as if they owned us
- and took all the eggs, even all the chickens they wanted
- and then they took stored bags of wheat and corn – they did this
- without a fight – ’cause that day we weren’t fighters;
- At nights fall that changed in me; after super filled my belly –
- Somewhere deep inside me the fight-en stirred and it came out
- like a balled up fist, lightening fast and bull strong and I swore no more;
- So in the dead of night I chased them chicken’s down!
- On a Sunday no less – and brought half back for our table.
- No other way to see that; no other way to react,
- Those good-old boys in gray never did pick us clean of wheat or corn
- and nary-a-one took a chicken egg unless offered to them and we did offer;
- seeing that they asked nice-like for what we could spare.
- After them blue coats had come; after that night I’d took them chickens back;
- That next day – I swore I’d walk away from all I know-ed
- and my Momma’s plea did not stop me for my head was fixed
- on what I was to do and what I was to do was fight them ilk of men
- who’d been take-one-more-step away from my fist two days before.
- So – at first light I left and joined up and the rest is history in the telling.
- He took breath into his lungs, a breath as deep as the sea past Pamlico Sound,
- past the sand dunes to the east, far to the east from where he sat; expelled it
- in one long stream of air coming from his nostrils; head bent, shoulders straight
- to the back of the solid beach-wood spindled rocking-chair in which he sat –
- MAMA always said Sundays are for church and little else;
- that didn’t stopped me from turning heathen, anyway, after
- I found the feel of a gray coat to my liken; but that was ’cause
- I found I like things my comrades taught me about;
- He spoke of liquor moistened lips and strong scented breath
- I run-ed through those woods caring this here muzzle I’m showing you
- and fled from all I know-ed that was right by Mama’s standards
- and shot straight and true at anything blue and I was nearly always dead on.
- He smiled – but that was a long time ago and I kept my stories silent until her passing.
- Near-do-good my Mama would have said had she know-ed of my heathen ways;
- which I held from her for near on forty years now; she never knew those
- men in blue had done more to that boy of hers than taking away her chicken eggs.
- But, she’s at rest now so let the telling begin; only once and then we’ll let it be.
- I was partial to the sweet smell of fresh pine saplings in the spring time
- and worked along side my Pa like a good boy should until them Yanks came calling
- then I found myself in a predicament of momentous proportions given that I acted
- like a fool of a sapling boy, not like those pine saplings that a strong wind could bend!
- I just could not bend and I couldn’t take it either and I wasn’t goin’-a neither!
- I was bent in all different directions, at any one’s will it seemed, other than mine.
- It was my sixteenth year and I was doing my will by God Almighty; although I did not know
- what it was I was to do at first so they put me to cleaning stuff and shoveling stuff
- and such as that; but that didn’t last long for before long I was in the thick of things –
- Shots all around me and nowhere to duck I landed face down in a thicket not padded for landing –
- and wishing I’d found another place to dive into but there I was, face down, shots all around and
- with only a shovel as a weapon I was no match for those blue coats who were hell bent
- on pick-en us off one by one which I was not all that abiding about doing – not one bit.
- Then off to the northeast I spotted them – coming through the musket powder fog; our men!
- And all hell broke loose, first I saw one, then two, then I don’t know how many that fell
- the day I saw a real battle of wills and when it was all over we all – all that was left –
- blue and grey got to yelling at each other across the field about exchanging coffee for tobacco.
- That’s when it got to hit me like a shipwreck straight ahead – I was not a any truer fight-en
- man than those other fellows across the field – both were dug in alike – and there was no
- grey or blue difference twixt us but where we came from and that got me thinking real clear
- of what I was going to do next and what I was going to do next was unfitting a fight-em man.
- The last thing my Pa said to me was if I was to do this thing I was not to bring shame –
- And I was to come home alive or he’d kill me again, he said this with a slight chuckled serious nature;
- as my Pa would do, then she noted as much with pencil working hard on tablet — to capture all that was said.
- I found myself with some apples some old lady had gave me the day before and I yelled out
- “apples for coffee” and was taken up on the offer before I could blink twice, straight away it was;
- And all that was left was to figure out how the swap was going to happen – this was not too clear to me
- but the other feller must have spotted a tree stump and yelled it out and said ‘you go first’ and I did.
- That was the best cup of coffee I’d ever had in all my up to then years and it was due to one of those men in blue;
- He chuckled – can’t tell you why I yelled out coffee except-en it sounded better than yelling out tobacco for apple.
- But, the fellers I was with was glad for it ’cause they hadn’t taken a liken to tobacco then either;
- that came later – a lot of things came later.
- He became quiet. The reminiscing seemed over so she placed the tablet down and they sat for a while, in silence.
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