Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run (10 page)

Now I know why I got so angry seeing him go over that hill. Whatever Dupree's plans, that's one part of history that I don't want to happen.

I don't want Cyrus to die. I want him to live.

 

“I was born in Big Lick, Virginia, on a bend in the Roanoke River that's about the prettiest place on earth.”

For a second, I wonder if Cyrus is daydreaming. Lying on his back and looking up at the sky, Cyrus seems like he's talking more to himself than to me. His voice is faraway, like he's in shock from a wound. I quickly scan his body for blood. I almost ask him to roll over so I can look at his butt, but given my performance so far today, I don't think he'd react too well.

He turns his head to me. His eyes are clear and look right into mine. He's not hurt. He just feels like talking. Maybe it's starting to sink in that he almost got himself killed. I see Big Jim give Elmer a look and the two of them go off to get more ammunition.

But I'm more than happy to listen. Anything to steer the conversation away from me.

“I grew up on a farm with my daddy and brother Joshua. Joshua was about ten years older than me and I sometimes thought of him more like an uncle than my big brother. He was tall and real friendly with bushy blond hair and a toothy smile, unlike my daddy, who was built low and gnarled like a scrub bush.”

Cyrus pauses. He wrinkles his forehead and mutters, “Like a scrub bush . . . that's pretty good too. Lordy, I'm getting all kinds of inspiration on this here field. Whether I'm going to be able to remember it all to write down is another thing.”

He shrugs. “Anyway, Momma died when I was born, so it was just the three of us working the land. Sometimes I'd hike the ridge that rose up across the river and stand on this high rock outcropping and pretend I was seeing the end of the world. 'Course it wasn't the end of the world, just more and more of those blue mountains stretching off into forever. And seeing that that was all to the world made me feel just fine living on the banks of the Roanoke River in Big Lick, Virginia.

“But it never seemed to Joshua's liking. He was always coming up with these get-rich ideas. Like when I was about eleven years old, he marched into the house smacking his fist into his palm. It was a Sunday afternoon and Daddy was smoking his pipe by the fireplace and Joshua says, ‘Daddy, Cyrus, it's time to seek our fortune.' This was what he always said before landing one of his tall ones on us.”

If I understand my family tree right, Joshua was actually my great-great-great-grandfather. Or something like that.

Hearing Cyrus talk about Joshua, I can't help but think ADD has been in the family a long, long time. “Maybe that's where you got it from,” I murmur, a bit too loud.

“Got what?” Cyrus says.

“Oh . . . uh, telling stories,” I say.

Cyrus stares at me and suddenly this smile bursts on his face. “I'd never thought of that.”

“So what was his fortune?”

Cyrus leans back. “He says in this real grand sort of way, ‘I've been surveying our estate and the holdings of our esteemed neighbors and I've discovered that what our community needs is a mill.' Now Daddy takes the pipe from his mouth and says, ‘What's wrong with the one we've got in Tinker?' Joshua says, ‘Tinker may be just a half-day's journey for us, but plenty of folks have to travel even further and they're going right by us to get there.'”

A half-day's journey? In a wagon down some bumpy dirt road? Just to get flour made?
Sounds like reason enough for me to build anything. Thank God for Food Lion.

Cyrus continues. “Seeing that Daddy had started smoking again, Joshua turned his attention to me. As always, his scheming hooked my interest. ‘I still say we need a mill!' he declared. ‘And I'm going to build it!' And so he did. He bought an acre of land from Daddy and on that one acre built his mill right on the river. Seemed like right away he was making money hand over fist. First off he would grind anybody's crop. Tinker wouldn't deal with the handful of free colored families who live in the county. But Joshua would. ‘Their money's the same color as a white man's,' he'd say.”

Free blacks? In Virginia? And Joshua treated them the same as whites?
I look hard at Cyrus to see if he's joking. I always think of all blacks in the South as slaves and all whites as slave-owners, but it was a lot more complicated than that. Joshua seems like one of the complicated parts.

Cyrus is still gazing at the sky and talking away.

“Well, after about three years, Joshua comes marching into the house again on a Sunday and says, ‘Gentlemen, it's time to seek our fame and fortune.' Daddy says, ‘Ain't you got enough fortune already?' Joshua says, ‘No such thing as enough.' He hooked his thumbs into the lapels of his coat. ‘You heard of a place called Harpers Ferry?' If Daddy had, he didn't let on. Joshua knew I hadn't, so he began to tell me how Harpers Ferry is a town way far away from us. Hundreds of miles. To get there you go down the Shenandoah Valley along a road that ain't made of dirt but is actually paved with stones! And in Harpers Ferry there are hotels with fancy restaurants and stores that sell candy canes and boots and silver watches and knives. And wouldn't you know it but Harpers Ferry has got not one, but two rivers flowing by, and each one could swallow twenty Roanoke Rivers. And do you know what they make in Harpers Ferry? Guns. Lots of guns. They got whole big factories that make guns for the U.S. government. And do you know what runs them factories? You got it. Mills. Big huge ones that you could fit ten of Joshua's inside. And do you know what runs the mills? Men, that's who. Men who get paid fifty cents a day. Fifty cents! Why, a man would make more there in a week than he would two months in Big Lick. A man could be rich!”

Whoopee! Fifty cents! I guess that was a lot back then . . . I mean, now. But there's something about Cyrus's story that sounds familiar. Something about Harpers Ferry that I'm supposed to know but can't remember. One of my dad's stories that I ignored.

Cyrus says, “Daddy didn't understand why getting rich was so important to Joshua. Said all the fortune he ever wanted was right at home. I don't think Joshua really cared about the money either. He just wanted more to life, so a month later he left. After he was gone, my view of the world suddenly seemed pretty small. I'd always figured everything I ever needed was on that farm, but now I knew there was a whole lot more out there. I just didn't know if I'd ever get the chance to see it. Or if I had the guts to go see it for myself.”

The words just pop out of my mouth. “I can't imagine you not having guts for anything.”

I feel my face go red at sounding so gushy. Cyrus looks embarrassed too, but pleased at the same time. It takes him a few seconds to continue with his story.

“What I also didn't know then was that I'd never see Joshua again. We got a package from him a couple of months after he left. Inside was this book of Shakespeare plays and these knives . . .” Cyrus pats the hilts on his hips. “One for me and one for Daddy, though Daddy sent his with me when I joined up. Joshua wrote about how big and busy Harpers Ferry was. How the streets were all paved and trains come and go just about every hour. He also told us about a woman he met, Miss Jenny Richmond, and that they were getting married and he looked forward to us meeting his bride.

“But the next letter we got from Harpers Ferry was in a different handwriting. Envelope said it was from Mrs. Joshua Hinkleman. Daddy opened it and started reading it aloud to me, but he stopped after the first sentence. He kept reading it quiet. Halfway through, he started crying. I'd never seen him do that before. When he finished, he slumped into his rocking chair. All he said was, ‘Joshua is dead.' Joshua's wife didn't have many facts in her letter. What she said was there was this crazy white man named John Brown—an abolitionist, she called him—who rounded up a bunch of slaves and went to Harpers Ferry and took over one of the gun arsenals. They killed a bunch of folks. Joshua and some others tried to stop them and Joshua was shot and died the next day.”

“Whoa!” I shout. “John Brown?
The
John Brown? John Brown killed Joshua?”

Cyrus looks at me strange and slowly nods. He says something that I don't hear because my heart is pumping so hard in my head.

John Brown killed Cyrus's brother, my great-great-great-grandfather! Now I remember why Harpers Ferry is important—John Brown's raid in 1859 caused even more friction between the North and South and led to the South's decision to secede. And the Civil War to start.

I ask Cyrus if there was a baby and he says, “Yep, a baby without a father.”

I barely hear what Cyrus says next. “So when Virginia declared, I told Daddy I was going to join up with the army. He didn't try to talk me out of it, but he wouldn't come with me. Said it would end up being a rich man's war but a poor man's fight. He said the plantation men with all the money and slaves were the only ones who wanted to secede, but they weren't the ones who'd do the fighting. But the way I see it, the North is full of men like John Brown. Men who killed my brother and now want to come down here and tell us how to live. Daddy may be right about the plantation men, but some things are worth fighting for. Like family and home.”

“But John Brown was trying to free slaves,” I say, more to myself. “I mean, that's what the war was all about.”

I look up at Cyrus. He's got a scowl on his face and he says real low, “Joshua didn't have no durn slaves. Daddy and me don't have no durn slaves. This ain't about the slaves. This is about us being free.”

“Oh I know, I know,” I say, trying quick to calm him down. “I'm sorry. I just . . . well . . . I didn't know so many Southerners didn't feel free. Is that really why you're fighting? Freedom?”

It takes Cyrus a second to cool off. Finally, he says, “Mostly . . . well, partly . . .”

He looks down our line to the left and away to the west. I look too. Way in the distance, over all the soldiers and horses and wagon trains and artillery, the mountains are just visible.

“Partly it's also about those blue mountains,” he says. “Like I said, after Joshua left Big Lick, I got to wondering where those mountains lead . . . what's at the end of them . . . and beyond. I figured if there was ever a chance to see the world . . . experience it, if you know what I mean . . . really have an adventure, then this was it. So I signed up to join, and Big Jim and Elmer signed up too, though I think they did it in part to keep an eye out for me. And here we are.”

EVERYTHING'S CALM on the battlefield, but I'm blown away by Cyrus's story. I thought I had this Civil War stuff down cold. The South just wanted to keep slavery alive and my ancestors were a bunch of wussies too afraid to fight.

“But why are you so reckless?” I ask again.

“You mean gallant, don't you?” he asks. I thought I'd made him mad, but he looks over at me with a wild grin.

The shriek of a cannonball cuts through the quiet. It doesn't land close, but it looks like the fighting is starting back up again. I just have a minute or two to make Cyrus understand what is really going on here. I take a deep breath again and let the words tumble out.

“Cyrus, it's not a coincidence that we have the same last name. We really are related. We're kin. Only I'm from, like, a hundred and fifty years in the future. Somehow I've come back in time. I think it has to do with this bugle.”

I hold the bugle out to him. “Anyway, sometime today you're supposed to get shot in the butt. But that's not the important part. Well, it is important . . .
you'll
think it's important and I bet it'll hurt a lot . . . but that's not why I'm telling you all . . . though you really need to stop doing the stuff that you're doing so you won't get shot. But the real reason I'm telling you all this is because there's another guy who's come back in time with me and he's trying to . . .”

My voice trails off. He's not listening to me. He's looking at my bugle, which still gleams like new. Cyrus eyes it a moment and looks up at me real slow and says, “Okay, let's see it do some magic.”

“Well . . . uh . . . it won't work right now,” I say. “I've got to wait for . . . uh . . . a temporal juncture.”

“Stonewall,” he begins, “maybe you really
should
head to the rear. I think you've got battle fever. I mean, I know I'm weird sometimes, but your actions show much like to madness: pray heaven your—”

Before Cyrus can finish, a feeble cheer goes up from the men lying around us. We turn and see General Jackson on his horse emerging from the woods and back into our ranks. With him are two other officers—the two officers that Dupree has been talking to! They seem to be plotting strategy, but before they're within earshot, they salute General Jackson and gallop away.

But no one watches them go. All eyes are on General Jackson as he canters by. He looks beyond us to the line of Union soldiers stretching from either side of Mrs. Henry's house. Their line seems to lengthen every minute as more reinforcements extend it.

As if he's solved a puzzle, General Jackson nods and turns his attention to us. He scans every soldier in his sight. His eyes hit mine and a chill rushes over me. With his fierce blue eyes and wild black beard, he's so scary I can't believe he's somehow going to become the hippy dude I met last night.

He wheels his horse around.

“Men!” he cries. “The fate of our new nation hangs on this hill! If we lose this hill, we lose our country! If we hold it, we gain our freedom!”