The Mockingbird's Ballad

"Damn, damn, damn and tarnation! You two are crazy fools. Kids, and one a girl, wanting to go to that hell," J. N. grieved.

"Not wanting, J. N., going," Lou said, as she looked J. N. in the eyes with a power he'd never seen before.

"Please, Lou. Please, Alex. You all listen to me! If you ain't cold and miserable, you're melting in the heat. And hungry, hungry most of the time and bone tired all the time. You're always dirty with your body aching in places you never knew were there," J. N. pleaded.

J. N. was conflicted about how his grandfather would respond to this madness. He pondered what would happen - their grandfather would be fitting to die when he learned of Lou's plans, that was for sure. Lou was the apple of that old man's eye. She'd walked thousands of miles in his shadow since she could waddle. She had been his attentive apprentice in life, soaking in his storied opinions and musings. Her mother, Nancy Bird, had been more like a companion and patient teacher of the domestic skills, for which Lou had little interest or talent. Her grandmother, Sarah Bear, 'Mama Bear,' had been her mentor in the healing medicine. Grand John L., her muse.

Their grandfather cared about all his grandchildren. He was stern but fair and generous of spirit. Lou was the special one - the only girl since J. N.'s twin sisters had died. The boys were his prizes, for sure, and he treated them as an extension of himself, but Lou had a different significance to him; she was the weekend, they the weekdays. The boy cousins didn't resent it; it was just the way it was.

J. N. thought, "He'll let her go. Damn, she has power over him and it's heart power, not head power. That's mighty strong. Maybe, just maybe, he won't give in to her. He hates this war so; maybe he'll stop her, maybe." They had to go see him, especially since Lou and Alex were leaving. It was not so much to get permission as to show the due respect. Blessing was impossible, knowing Grandfather's feeling about the war. But reporting the plan was necessary; they had to do right by their family elders. It would be hard to tell their grandparents and Mother what they were up to, but unthinkable to go without doing just that.

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John Longstreet Fields had come to the valley in 1818 when he was twenty. He had been 65 years old in September 1863. His father, William, and mother, Hannah, had died when he was sixteen. He, an only child, had been on his own ever since. He said his father had come to America from north of Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood's country, in 1773. Lots of folks who heard his assertion easily accepted that his father, William, came to America in 1773, but doubted the Robin Hood part of his biography. His four grandchildren never doubted it. As kids, they'd liked the idea that their forebears had maybe been outlaws with Robin Hood. John L.'s mother was the orphaned daughter of a seaman, a pirate maybe, who came to Wilmington, North Carolina. William married her when she was seventeen and he nineteen. A pirate up the family tree was also an exciting notion for John L.'s grandchildren.