Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run (2 page)

But, no. Once again, I'm hauling the uniform and a bunch of other fake Civil War junk about a mile from the parking lot to our campsite. We stop every two seconds because my dad sees someone he knows and has to talk to them.

Worse, since my name is so stupid, every single one of these guys remembers it.

“Hey, Stonewall!” they yell, or, “How are the troops, Stonewall?”

I fake a smile. My dad gets really mad if I “embarrass” him in front of his friends. He doesn't seem to mind that he's embarrassing me all weekend.

 

Okay, I admit that I
may
have once found reenactments cool . . . when I was six years old. Pitching our canvas tent in a grassy field, or on nice nights just sleeping outside under the stars. Staying up late cooking stew over a campfire. Watching my dad and his buds march off with their shiny muskets and sharp bayonets—hearing their Rebel yells and gunfire—and really being able to pretend they were soldiers in a war.

But that was before Dad turned me into a bugle boy. And before I'd seen each reenactment like five times already. Sometimes I feel like we're reenacting reenactments. And I'm starting to worry that what I'm really reenacting out here is the dorkiness of my father's life.

“I just wish I had had these opportunities at your age,” he'll often say.

Which makes me think that if he's turned out the way he has while NOT going to reenactments as a kid, what chance do I have?

Sometimes when I'm complaining about my crappy life, some kid at school will say, “What's the big deal? Reenactments sound cool and it's got to be better than sitting at home all weekend.”

Wrong! Sitting at home all weekend rocks compared to going to a reenactment. Think about all the things that are good in life: DVDs, TV, PlayStation, Dr Pepper, ice cream, french fries, YouTube and MySpace, Taco Bell, comfortable chairs, sleeping late, mattresses, flush toilets, Reese's Puffs cereal, Lego robots, Japanese comic books, and clothing that doesn't itch like holy heck.

None of those had been invented yet when the Civil War happened. Or even if they had you couldn't get them while fighting the Civil War. So that's why you can't have them at a reenactment.

Now, that's a great lesson to learn once. Whew, old-timey folks had it hard and we just take modern stuff for granted. Yay! Great lesson! I'm a better person now!

But like I said: You only need to do it once. They've been dragging me to these things since I was six. So that's six years times at least ten reenactments a year. That's at least sixty times I've learned the stupid lesson already!

 

Welcome to my luxury accommodations. I take the bed-roll off my back, roll it out on the ground, and presto! Room for one at the Bull Run Hilton. Only a quarter mile to the nearest Porta-John.

At least I don't have to sleep in the tent with my parents anymore. It's an authentic historical genuine reproduction tent, which means it's totally worthless, unwaterproofed, and tiny. It's just a piece of canvas held up by three poles and staked to the ground. But it does provide some cover. While they go off to chat with friends, I dive into their tent and pull out my Game Boy.

The only problem is I forget to hit MUTE first. The start-up
squelch
sends my mom running.

“Stonewall, put down that video game. You know I don't like you playing that in camp,” says my mom. “Plus, those games are too violent.”

Too violent? We're here reenacting a freaking war, Mom! Dad can shoot reenactors, but I can't kill orcs on my Game Boy?

Dad rushes in to back her up. “I've told you about bringing anything
farby
to our reenactments. A successful weekend is . . .”

“An authentic weekend,” I say, finishing the cliché that has been my life.

Farby, in case you haven't figured it out yet, is anything “not authentic to the period.” (Don't ask me where they got the word
farby
from, because I don't know or care.) I've tried pointing out before that everyone here is farby since none of us were here during “the period,” but they don't listen.

Dad says, “I'm going to clean my musket now. Stonewall, why don't you come over here and polish your bugle?”

“Because I don't want to?”

“I'm not going to listen to backtalk all weekend,” my mother says. “Now put that game down before I take it away.”

It goes on like this, until I finally yell “All right already” loud enough for nearby campsites to hear.

This makes my mother extra-mad and, realizing that I've gone a little too far, I get up to get the bugle from my pack.

Only it's not there. I know I didn't leave it in the car. I must have left it at home.

My father goes ballistic. He doesn't want to shout at me because then I would be “embarrassing him.” So there's a lot of hissing from my mother and low growling threats from my father.

“How could you have left your bugle at home?” he rumbles.

“I don't know,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

“Stonewall,” my mother chimes in, “if you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it. You've got to stop being so irresponsible.”

I shrug. “Must be the ADD.”

This is my favorite all-purpose excuse.

Earlier this year I got diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. At school in history class, I'd get to gazing out the window at the janitors and cafeteria ladies tossing garbage into some Dumpsters, and only the third “Stonewall!” from Ms. Sherk would snap me back into class to face her glare and the snickers of the other kids. It's weird because I do actually like history—as long as I'm not reenacting it—but somehow every little thing distracts me.

A few weeks of this, and my grades slipping from B- to C to D, and I found myself one day in the guidance counselor's office. Then a session with the counselor
and
my parents. Then a visit to this kooky psychiatrist. A few stupid tests and presto, I've got ADD and a prescription for Ritalin.

I mostly think it's all crap. Who isn't bored with seventh grade? But ADD does have its advantages. Like now I have an excuse when I don't want to do homework. Or when I “forget” to do something like mow the yard. Or when I forget to bring something. Like today.

“I didn't mean to forget it,” I sigh, and look to the ground.

Just when I think they may go for it, my father grunts. “I notice you didn't
forget
your Game Boy.”

Hearing this, I know I've lost the battle, but I'm going to go down swinging. “Priorities, I guess.”

“Well, you're going to have a bugle for tomorrow. You'll have to go see if you can get one from the sutlers.” He gets his wallet and pulls out three twenty-dollar bills. “And you WILL pay me back. You're buying this with your own money.”

“But—”

“No, no buts,” Dad snarls. “You'd better march yourself down there and you'd better hope you can get one.”

I grab the money and stomp out of the tent toward Sutler's Row because I'm so mad, I have to stomp off somewhere. I wish there was a door to slam. I've been saving my money for a long time to buy my own TV and DVD player so I don't have to watch the History Channel with my parents every single night. Now I'm going to have to blow most of it on a stupid bugle, which, by the way, I hardly know how to play anyway.

SUTLER'S
ROW sits on a small hill next to the field where my parents and the other reenactors have pitched their tents. The row is actually two lines of large canvas tents separated by a grassy lane, and it's where the sutlers (the Civil War name for salesmen) set up to sell a bunch of crap to idiots like my parents.

Sutler's Row is also the only place where
civilians
are allowed, as in normal people wearing normal clothes who come to reenactments for a couple of hours to “experience history” before going back to their air-conditioned homes and real food and TV.

Up ahead of me is one family whose mother is fingering a quilt for sale while the father nudges a kid my age and points at me and my uniform. Like I'm some history lesson. The kid stares at me, I stare back, and I know both of us are thinking the same thing: Get me back to my PlayStation.

I duck into the nearest tent. The name of the place is Millie's Mercantile, even though some annoying guy in a beard and black hat works the cash register. The place sells all sorts of shirts, uniforms, and hats that, according to a sign over the counter, are “microscopically indistinguishable from the original items worn by the soldiers themselves!”

Whatever. No bugles.

The next tent has got the real touristy stuff. T-shirts with Rebel flags, muskets, pistols and cheap-looking swords, a bunch of knives, and some Civil War books. Gee, I'm surprised they don't have the Civil War chess set from the Franklin Mint!

No luck with the next sutler or the next, and I'm starting to wonder which would be worse, finding a bugle and wasting my money on it or not finding one and getting another round of crap from my parents.

I reach the end of the row and am about to cross the lane to go down the other side when I hear a whoop of applause from a group of reenactors about twenty yards away to my left. They're gathered under a dead, rotted-out oak tree. At first I can't see what they're clapping about because their backs are to me. But rising just above their heads, I see a Confederate battle flag and a wide-brimmed black hat.

Now I hear the voice—low and shrill at the same time somehow. It can only be one man—Nathan Bedford Dupree.

“Seven score years ago, our forefathers fought a brave and glorious fight to preserve a cherished way of life,” Dupree rumbles over the murmuring crowd. “It is fitting that we gather here today to pay homage to their struggle.”

“Senator” Dupree, as a lot of reenactors call him, is this tall, sunburned lawyer who made a bundle suing my favorite restaurant, Burger Boy, because some loser (probably a reenactor) says he got fat from eating five Bonanza Burgers a week.

Then he used that money to run two million annoying commercials on TV because he was trying to get elected to the state senate. Thankfully, he lost big-time.

But my parents think he's this great man who sticks up for the little guy even though it's Dupree, not “the little guy,” driving the Mercedes.

I should say
drove
the Mercedes, since he lost it all last year after the IRS busted him for tax fraud. These days, Dupree drives an old Ford pickup from one reenactment to the next saying the same nonsense every time about the evils of the federal government and the glory of the South while trying to raise money to run for office again.

I've heard this speech a thousand times already. He starts it softly, sounding like your grandfather, making you listen hard to hear him. Not that I still do.

“And yet I wonder what would have happened had our forefathers prevailed,” Dupree whispers loudly to the hushed crowd. “If instead of being forced at gunpoint back into that melting pot—
boiling pot,
if you ask me—of the United States of America, a new nation had been forged that shared a common language, faith, and heritage.”

Here it comes—when the kind grandfather becomes the fiery preacher. I still can't see him, but I know his red face turns to blood, and he's about to pull out his latest prop. Sure enough, I see his black sleeve shoot up over the crowd. It's holding a tattered Bible.

“A country of decency, courtesy, and respect. Where our children had two parents—one man and one woman. Where they didn't walk around in gangs with their baggy pants and rap music and bad morals.

“But you and I, friends, we may come from all walks of life, but we are bound by a brotherhood. By the same proud heritage. We are a people of honor, our destinies bound to God and home and history. Yes, brothers. It is time to rise up. The fight for our heritage is upon us!”

The crowd goes nuts, but I'm not impressed.
What heritage?
Uncle Cyrus got shot in the butt! And the history's over, pal. And your side lost.

Dupree continues, “I have several books and brochures for sale, including my recent
The South is Rising Again!
which irrefutably proves . . .”

I turn away in disgust and walk right into someone who knocks my kepi over my eyes. All I see is the hem of a dress and a white apron. Right away I say, “Pardon, ma'am,” which I know sounds real corny, but now that the reenactment has officially started I've got to talk period-style too. Sound like fun yet?

“It's cool,” I hear. “No big deal.”

I push my cap up to see who's the farby. Standing there is a girl about my age with a Confederate nurse's hat covering her bushy brown hair. She has these dark brown eyes, a lot of freckles, and a big smile. Oh crap, it's
the
girl! The one I've been talking about, the one I'm afraid to talk to.

I feel a nervous twist in my stomach. She is by far the coolest thing I've seen at a reenactment in a long time. And so what do I say to her?

“Sorry, I was looking for a place to puke,” I mutter.

It was on the tip of my tongue. I couldn't help it. But she doesn't seem to mind.

“You mean because of that guy?”

“Yeah, I hate him,” I whisper.

“At least you're not related to him,” she says. “Like I am.”

“You don't mean you're related to Dupree,” I say.

She nods. “Yep, that's my dad, the Rebel without a brain.”

And I thought my dad was bad. We watch as the crowd presses in on Dupree to buy his booklets.

“He hasn't always been this bad,” the girl says quietly to me. She unties and ties the apron strings around her waist. “You've read all the stuff about him in the papers?”