The Truth in my Sights
“You gotta go. You gotta see him,” was what they told me, and they were right. I’m glad I went, and I would go again, though he delivered a chill like hell down my spine.
I’d never seen one. Most of us had never seen one. That was the reason we (and was the only reason we would have) broke our ranks and slipped away, one by one. We wanted to see... no pray-tell, we needed to see what it was that we were about to kill, though I might have found it easier had he remained faceless.
I actually tasted him before I noticed him; an acrid, rich, coppery, uncomfortable taste followed by the smells of perspiration, leather, dust, and stale tobacco which together created an aura of difference in the very air around him. He was right beside me before I realized. I turned my head and he was there, resting lazily atop a rail fence post, casual-like, as though he hadn’t a care in the world, his body slouched, his one boot heel hooked on the bottom rail while the other swung loose below. He had that knack that some men have of appearing comfortable no matter their situation, and had he worn blue he would have looked so much like us that I might have passed him by without even noticing, and would have anyways were it not for the hairs on my neck and arms rising up in some subconscious, preservationist warning. But that is what he did. Like evil, he sparked a fear. Once next to him I froze, sensing danger, as the deadly potential of a drawn pistol inside a crowded barroom will freeze a body to stillness.
He sat alone, without even a guard, though twenty yards away and in plain view camped a whole company of our boys; cooking their coffee, washing their socks, and pretending their best not to watch him, but he knew and I knew what would happen if he moved. His britches and jacket were cut from the same thick, butternut-colored cotton, while his wide-brimmed hat cocked back at a rakish angle which I longed for my own hat to do, though mine would never abide it and still remain in it’s place upon my head, as I never did have the talent for such showy things. As I looked, just to prove his professionalism, he spit a brown stream which arced perfectly to the ground, landing atop a small rock already slathered in tobacco juice, all of the stream finding the rock that is but for a tiny bit which caught in the beard directly below his lower lip, and which he somehow did not bother swiping away with a sleeve, a sure sign for me of the manner of heathen he was. My mother had warned me of such men.
Yet mindful of manners, and sensing my curiosity, he pulled an unused plug and penknife from his jacket pocket, cut off a rather large jaw-full, and tossed it in my direction. My hope was that he noticed the deftness with which I snagged it out from the air. The morsel looked and felt about like a piece of wood, or maybe like dried and aged leather twisted and toughened by time. I examined it dubiously, and him, but he only nodded his head and spat again, covering the poor rock afresh while eyeing me for a response. So I brushed away some lint and loaded up, pushing it in until my cheek stretched out near to splitting. Then I squatted on my haunches, arms resting on my knees, and waited.
Our questions lay muffled under tobacco juice as we watched each other chaw. I’d initially thought him older, but upon closer inspection realized that it might be so, but only by a year or two at most, though his face was already lined by a weather and worry that mine had not yet been submitted to, and his hair bleached the same. I found myself envious of his beard, of his colorful Lindsey Woolsey shirt, and of the bedroll slung haphazardly over his shoulder, all of which seemed like improvements over my shaved face, woolen blouse, and heavy knapsack with it’s thin, skin-splitting canvas straps.
I earned a cold-eyed smile as my first spit splattered fortuitously atop the rock, but then it disappeared as my sleeve swiped across my chin of it’s own volition, though I aimed to not allow the shame in the act to show through to my adversary. With my jowls so full that I was unable to speak, I nodded in appreciation of the tobacco and started back towards my own company. I had seen the prisoner, and that is what I had come for. Despite his cockiness he seemed a good-enough sort, and I thought we might have been friends in another place, but time had brought us both here, where two armies of men were currently squared off for blows; one army the sword of God, and our battles to determine which.
Tomorrow I was like to see my first of these battles. I have heard many stories around the campfires of wild-eyed rebels like banshees breaking through the smoke, seemingly fearless of our guns, and I’d wondered if it were true, but having seen the enemy I no longer doubted. He was as young, brash, and as carefree as were we. I was left with little doubt that an army of those like him would stand resolutely. I could take no pride in shooting him or his like down, and I wished for his sake that he’d been born on the right side.
But the truth is a bitter pill which sometimes goes down like a hunk of lead.
And though it would be a shame to gun down such as he, the shame would be worse were it me.
And there is the God’s honest truth of it.