by Brian Adams
One of the other reenactment nurses in Sadie’s posse was getting married that weekend. Sadie said she had no one else but me to staff her stupid Civil War operating room.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” I laughed when Sadie asked if I’d sub in.
“Please!” Sadie begged. “I’m desperate!”
“You want me to wear a Civil War hoop skirt?”
“Liza has a perfect one you can borrow. She’s just your size. You’ll look beautiful!”
“Yeah, right!” I scoffed. “I’ll look like one of the lunatics from the asylum. And I’m supposed to do what?”
“Play the part of a nurse in camp. You’ll have fun!” Sadie said.
“Fun?” I grumbled. “Fun? How about torture! Just the thought of this makes me want to stab myself in the boobs with a bayonet. Oh my God, Sadie, what if someone saw me?”
Auntie Sadie, teary-eyed, got all pouty and laid down the guilt trip, droning on and on about “all the things I do for you” and “since your mother died” and “I ask this one tiny little favor, but no. . . .”
Eventually I caved. I had no choice. I begged and pleaded for Ashley to go with me, but she refused.
“You know I’d take a bullet for you,” she said. “A real bullet. Not some lame Civil War reenactment thingy. I’d lay down my life for you. I’d do anything. You know I would. Just not this!”
“Thanks a bunch, Ash.”
So I went. Not willingly, but I went.
The hoop skirt she made me wear was far from sweet. It took a series of gymnastic moves to get into and it looked totally absurd. It consisted of an actual bunch of different-sized hoops fastened together with the skirt on top. The hoops were smaller at the hips and got progressively bigger and bigger as they descended down to the ground like an upside-down ice cream cone. Evidently it was all the rage back in the day. I couldn’t fathom why. I felt like a manikin in a cage.
And it wasn’t even historically accurate. Auntie Sadie was fond of telling the tourists a gruesome story about why Civil War nurses didn’t wear hoop skirts like most of the other fashionable women. Hospital aisles were evidently so narrow that women wearing those skirts couldn’t walk without catching their hoops on all sorts of things. One nurse who didn’t get the hoop skirt memo caught hers on the bed of one poor, wounded soldier. The sudden jolt ripped open his wound and he bled to death. Imagine that! You survive four years of the bloody hell of the Civil War only to die from some nurse’s hoop skirt! Bummer.
Anyway, the grounds of the haunted lunatic asylum were packed. There were thousands of folks crawling all over the place. Tourists from across the country were taking selfies next to their snotty, whiny kids. I spent most of the time sitting in a big tent that was supposed to be a battlefield operating room, bored out of my skull, scratching and fanning myself because my hoop skirt was so damn hot and uncomfortable. Endlessly answering questions about Civil War surgical procedures, which I knew absolutely nothing about. Sadie had given me a tutorial but, frankly, I couldn’t give a damn. Whenever Sadie wasn’t around I’d just make crap up.
“Jahoobie,” I replied, answering a tourist’s question about anesthesia, using the lame slang word that Ashley and I used to call our boobs. I emphasized my point by emphatically waving around a fake wooden leg that would be strapped to an amputee’s knee.
“They’d give them Jahoobie and WHACK, off they’d go amputating an arm or a leg or whatever they felt like without even a whimper from the dude on the table. Not a whimper! WHACK!”
“Jahoobie?” the tourist asked again, his eyebrows arching up.
“Google it!” I answered, brandishing the wooden leg menacingly, knowing I’d never see him again. “WHACK!”
The Saturday afternoon of the big event there was a mock battle in “Asylum Field” behind the historic buildings. My father was in a wicked foul mood. Stonewall Jackson, the general in charge, had demoted him from a brigadier general to a lowly cadet, one step below a private, and put someone else in command of his division. This was the result of an unfortunate episode a month and a half earlier when my father, caught up in the heat of the battle and the thrill of the charge, had screwed everything up royally during another reenactment.
At the “Battle of the Pines,” tourists had paid five bucks each to watch a mock battle. It was staged to sway this way and that with heavy losses on each side. It was to last about an hour, which was just about the attention span of most tourists. They wanted their money’s worth, but nothing more.
At the time, my father was the commanding officer of the 4th Division, 6th Regiment of the Army of Northern Virginia. His detachment was supposed to creep around the edge of the woods, get ambushed by a Union regiment, and retreat into the orchard. Then the battle was to continue with a Union charge.
Yeah, right. As if that was really going to happen.
Stonewall Jackson obviously did not know my father.
Lapsing into one of his time-warp-seizure-thingies, there was no way Dad was going to fall for this ambush crap. Fifteen minutes before the battle was even supposed to begin, my father came charging with his troops out of the forest.
“Yee-haw!” he screamed, forgetting his officer status and unleashing the infamous rebel yell.
The Union troops were totally unprepared. They were sitting around chatting it up and hadn’t even picked up their guns. They were stunned when my father’s regiment came bursting through, taking no prisoners, shooting them down as they sat. Within five minutes the battle—or rather, the massacre—was over.
Stonewall Jackson was pissed. Really pissed.
“Damn it, General!” Jackson railed. “I told you to sit tight! You were supposed to be the ambushee, not the ambusher!”
“Sir!” my father said saluting him. He was sopping wet with perspiration and still had a wild look in his eyes. “With all due respect, I saw an opening and I took it! I had a responsibility to my troops!”
“Sir!” barked Stonewall, saluting back. “Are you a total and complete moron? The battle was over in five minutes. Five minutes! The damn Yankees hadn’t even loaded their rifles. None of the artillery even got off a shot! People have been waiting on lawn chairs for hours and most of them missed the entire thing because they were either at the concession stand getting a damn beer or waiting in line at the Porta-Potties to take a piss. We do not have a bunch of happy campers out there! They want their damn money back!”
Poor dad. Not a great day on the battlefield. He won the battle but kind of lost the war.
•
Anyway, back to the lunatic asylum.
Saturday afternoon was beautiful. The sky was a deep Union blue with a couple of sweet Confederate gray clouds marching in and out like puffs of cannon smoke. Behind the fields, the lunatic asylum’s turrets and cupolas and spires and towers stared down approvingly. I could just imagine the ghosts of crazed inmates peering through the ancient windows, cheering on the Blue or the Gray or whoever. I imagined those ghosts didn’t really give a crap who won, as long as there was plenty of action with a healthy dose of total insanity thrown in. I imagined they were sitting around chuckling to themselves: “And they locked me up for being a lunatic? Seriously?”
With Auntie Sadie’s blessing, I was allowed temporary reprieve from my post as lame nursing assistant to watch, along with a gazillion other tourists, the action on the battlefield. Not that I gave a crap, but if I had to spend another moment in the nurses’ tent I was going to go as crazy as the lunatics. I borrowed a chair and sat up front with the rest of the crowd.
Reenacted battles are lightly choreographed. Generally speaking, the reenactors are given instructions by their commanding officers as to who is attacking whom when and from where and what the general flow of events is going to be. Regular soldiers are pretty much told to go with the flow.
And, of course, some of them have to make-believe die. Reenactment or not, it is, after all, war. The crowd demands it. And what is a battle without blood and guts and gore a
nd the tragic death of young studs in the prime of their life?
There are three reasons soldiers die in a reenactment:
It is totally obvious. There are ten soldiers shooting right at you from point-blank range and, duh, your ass is dead. End of story.
You’re told you’ll fall at a certain place and at a certain time. Your commanding officer deals out cards to his troops and all the hearts have to stop beating at the first major volley at the ravine or at the line of trees or wherever. It’s the luck of the draw. Wrong suit and sorry, Charlie—you’re dead!
You’re tired or you’re hot or you tripped or the blisters from your boots are really bugging you or, if you’re an old fart like most of the reenacting lunatics are, you’re out of breath or sweating up a storm or your artificial hip or knee or name-another-part-of-your-body is acting up so why not just be dead? Why not just lie down in the comfort of the grass and look up at the beautiful blue and gray sky and thank your lucky stars that this is only a reenactment and not the horrible, bloody, insane shit-show that the American Civil War actually was.
On this particular Saturday afternoon, Confederate troops were to burst from the edge of the woods near the asylum road and charge the Union line occupying the hill.
It was really quite a sight. Britt and I were sitting to the side of the action, where we could see and hear the Rebel troops getting pumped and psyched, waving their Rebel flags and taunting the Union troops and jumping up and down in anticipation of the imminent charge.
They even had the cutest little marching band playing and the boys in gray, totally stoked, sang along with great gusto.
Our gallant boys have marched
To the rolling of the drums,
Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!
And the leaders in charge cry out,
“Come, boys, come!”
Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!
The obvious question to ask the Confederate soldiers was “Freedom for whom?” My father wasn’t exactly marching on the side of the politically correct.
All I can say is, Thank God it was 2015!
Anyway, the big moment had finally arrived. The tourists were settled in their lawn chairs, fanning themselves and drinking soda and beer and snapping selfies and hooting and hollering like they were part of the action.
Their kids pointed fingers at each other or they waved around the toy guns they had bought in the tourist crap-trap tent, and they made “POW POW POW” sounds while running around in circles. I was still holding the wooden leg that I had been showing off to tourists, and one of the little snots actually asked to borrow it for a rifle.
“No effin way!” I said. “This is mine. Get your own damn gun!”
All the while I was thinking to myself, I missed staying over at Ashley’s and watching crap reality TV shows all day for this?
The Confederate line moved out from the row of trees and took a deafening volley from the Union troops. A bunch of the older, fatter slackers fell immediately but the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia, shoulders back, heads held high, bravely marched on.
They have laid down their lives
On the bloody battle field,
Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!
Their motto is resistance—
“To tyrants we’ll not yield!”
Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!
Suddenly Britt gave me a shove.
“Look!” she squealed.
“What?” I exclaimed, jumping back. I had been distracted by a total stud of a tourist sitting in the front row, some guy in his late teens chugging beers who looked straight out of a Hollywood action flick with his shirt off and his man on.
“It’s Kevin!” Britt whispered.
“Who?”
“Kevin! Kevin Malloy from your school!”
Oh my God! She was right! There he was, sure as shooting, just a hundred yards in front of me, marching at the head of the line singing ridiculously loud and totally off key with his gun slung loosely over his shoulder and his longish hair spilling out of his Confederate cap. It was Kevin! Kevin the god. Kevin the Untouchable!
“What’s he doing here?” I whispered back to Britt. Britt was only in the seventh grade but, as much as I couldn’t stand her, she did know everything. She had the skinny on every kid in Greenfield from K to 12. She was like a walking encyclopedia of the local who’s who. A few months earlier some highschooler had actually Facebooked her to make sure some girl was single before he asked them out.
“You didn’t know?” Britt said, rolling her eyes at me. “He joined Dad’s regiment! He’s Private Kevin.”
There was another withering volley from the Union troops, and the Confederate line staggered and fell back.
Kevin Malloy, now Private Kevin, pivoted, spun in place, groaned loud enough for the world to hear, sank to his knees, groaned once more and fell to the ground.
So young!
So brave!
So hot!
So dead!
The rest of the Confederate line reformed, and marched on to the raucous cheering of the lawn chair warriors.
Kevin was one of a dozen dead soldiers a few hundred feet away from us. I could see them breathing but doing their best not to move, although one kept sneezing and another one’s cell phone went off, much to the laughter of the crowd.
And then, all of a sudden, Private Kevin gave a rebel yell, leapt up, and began dancing in place.
“Yee-haw!” Kevin screamed.
“No fair!” Studly Man yelled, waving his bottle of Bud. “You’re dead!”
Kevin didn’t care. He was dancing. Crazy dancing. It was like an old-time fiddle tune was playing in his head. His feet were clogging every which way and his arms were slapping and flailing.
“You’re dead, dude!” Studly the heckler yelled out again. “You’re done!”
Then Kevin started running toward the crowd of tourists. Sprinting and yelling, still flailing and slapping. With a shock, the crowd realized the reason. He was surrounded by a swarm of yellow jackets and they were stinging the crap out of him. Private Kevin had fallen on a nest of stingers. Enough to raise him from the dead!
“Yee-haw!” Kevin yelled again, his hat off, his eyes wild, his face contorted in pain.
The audience scattered. People were screaming. Lawn chairs and coolers tipped over, beer spilled, and children were dragged away as Kevin came rip-roaring through the crowd.
Britt had split but, not the quickest in the reflex department, I remained frozen in place, glued to my chair, totally mesmerized. Kevin plowed into me, knocking me over and falling right on top of me.
Still grasping the wooden leg, I started whacking Kevin with it. I was doing my best to go after the yellow jackets, but my aim wasn’t the best and I delivered a crushing blow or two to Kevin’s eye and jaw.
WHACK WHACK WHACK! went the peg leg.
BOOM! crashed the artillery firing from Lunatic Asylum Ridge.
“Yee-haw,” Kevin cried, writhing on top of me.
It was, as they say, a rather awkward moment.
•
Smoke from the battlefield was still thick in the air, but Kevin was being brought back from the dead in Sadie’s tent. He really did look like he had been through the wars.
His uniform was ripped, the back of his neck was one mass of swollen bites, and he had a black eye and a split lip from being beaten with the wooden leg.
“Sorry about that,” I apologized for the fiftieth time. Auntie Sadie was putting some sort of salve on his bug bites.
“Apologize?” Kevin said. “No way. You saved my life!”
I blushed.
“Seriously,” he continued. “I thought I was dying for real. Those things are nasty! Did you get stung?”
“Are you kidding?” I answered. “It would take more than a yellow jacket to get into this skirt!”
Kevin squinted at me through swollen eyes.
“Wait a minute,” he asked. “Don
’t you go to my school?”
“I do,” I answered, flattered that he recognized me.
“You’re like . . . what . . . in ninth grade or something?”
“Tenth,” I said. “And you’re like . . . what . . . a senior?” As if I didn’t know. He was Kevin Malloy—Marc the Mascot’s best friend, for crying out loud. Everyone knew which grade he was in.
“Only if I survive this!” Kevin moaned as Sadie squirted salve on his neck.
“Cyndie,” Sadie said, handing me the tube of aloe cream she had been using. “Take over for me while I go get more ointment.”
Relieved that I could stand behind Kevin so he wouldn’t see even more blushing, I continued to put the cream on his neck. Even covered with stings and with his face tattered and torn, he was, as Auntie Sadie would say, definitely a looker. Blondish brown hair, a little too long, curled down over his ears. Tall, built, but not weird-body-builder-freak-show way, sparkly eyes. And fortunately, even after repeated blows with the wooden leg, all of his teeth were still there.
I did my best to manage my breath so as not to gasp or sigh or faint or do something else to further humiliate myself. There was a strong wind blowing and it threatened to lift my hoop skirt up and carry it away with me still in it. I was having a hard time keeping my feet on the ground.
Other than that one awkward incident in gym class, I had never been this close to a guy. I was literally breathing down his neck.
“It looks like there’s another bite underneath your shoulder,” I lied, hoping beyond hope he might actually take off his shirt.
Of course, wouldn’t you know it, just then Britt shows up.
“Hi Kevin,” she says, not batting an eye.
“Hey, Britt,” Kevin said. “You’re here, too?”
For goodness sake, Kevin knew my little sister?
“After how Cyndie messed you up, you’re still letting her touch you? Ewww!” Britt said, a shocked look on her ridiculous face.
I reached for the wooden leg and took a swing at her.
“Sorry!” Britt huffed. “I was just saying!”
“Don’t!” I replied, shooting her my best evil eye. “Out. Now. Go find Sadie!”