The Mockingbird's Ballad

Fell out of a damned sycamore near Brotherton Road, up from Chickamauga Creek. Busted the blasted hand trying to break my fall. Dropped about fifteen feet into a damned heap of bramble bush. Got some bruises, but this hand took the weight. If it ain't broke, it's good busted."

"John Norman, you're home now, let go of that Army language," Mary chided.

"Yes, home," J. N. thought as he took a long deep breath. His soul and belly shared a feeling he'd long forgotten was available. He smiled first into his mother's eyes and then his father's as he scratched Scout behind the ears.

"Cap'n said, 'Get home, Corporal, before all hell breaks loose here 'bouts.' Mother, those were his words, now, not mine. 'You'll just be in the way with that busted firing hand. In the way and another hurt soldier I've got to find vittles for; go home. Heal up over the winter. 'Spect we'll have a place for you come spring. Look for us down in South Kara-line or over in Tex-us!'"

Mary reached across the table and patted his unharmed right hand. "Good, Brother, good. Mama and I'll fix it good as new." J. N. drew his hand from under her warm patting after letting her briefly give him her gentle laying on of hands. That simple unconscious act had been her blessing to him as long as he could remember. His now freed hand went to his vest pocket. He brought out a beat up pipe.

"Dad, you got any Burley stashed somewhere?"

Rummaging in his unbuttoned breast pocket, Joe T. said, "Always, boy, always." Mary hopped up and went to the shelf above the cast iron cooking stove to snatch a long locofoco from her supply in an old broken clay pot and strike it on the stove side. Returning, shielding it from the quick movement, she offered it to her son's pipe. He craned his head forward like a robin taking its mother's offering and puffed a couple three times. The dark brown crushed tobacco fired and its aroma invoked benediction to his late meal. Wisps of gray smoke rose from the pipe's bowl; his grandfather, John L., had given him the briar when he left for war.

J. N. was ready to talk now. "There's something big going on over at that creek, really big! It's rough territory over there, and Blues everywhere. They keep coming into Chattanooga and have started to march south. I heard artillery fire day and night as I traveled down along the east side of the Lookout. I crossed the mountain the second morning, turned west and then north, and finally late that day I couldn't hear it anymore."