The Mockingbird's Ballad

"Sir, well, General Wheeler Sir, the trouble is," he realized he was stalling by trying to find his jumbled thoughts and match them to the necessary words. "Yes. General, Private Lou Fields is a female," the major said finally, quietly and simply.

Brother Robertson jumped up, his chair bouncing against the wall. "General, beg your pardon, Sir, but this won't do, won't do at all. You're here to say, Major, that neither you nor anyone in this command noticed that this, this strumpet was not a male! Lord knows what sins she worked on your troopers. On you! It's a scandal, a sinful scandal. She's nothing better than a whore, General, a harlot of temptation, agent of Satan!" The fire of the righteous man of God unleashed a damning stare at Lou, whose eyes were on the front of the General's desk. Solon drew in a long necessary breath and caught the preacher's eyes and soul.

The chaplain drew up his most terrible sin whipping voice. "And you, Major, you lurking around to see her sinful nakedness. Why Sir, that could only mean that you are a whoremonger!"

The wolf's eyes fired gold-red and the possessed Major had the frail preacher a foot off the ground, pinning with his arm the reddened stretched "holy Joe's" throat against the rough dressed gray-brown poplar log wall.

"Major! Solon, at ease! Major?" General Wheeler had hopped up around the table, his hands on the major's rock hard shoulders. He tugged at the major's frozen back.

Sergeant Maddox had come to the general's aide. "Major, this son a bitch ain't worth the strain." He was trying to get a hold on the man and his rage. It was a formidable task.

Lou just stood at her place taking it all in. She was trembling, her eyes wide open, her heart in her throat, and her hands in white-toned fists. She felt badly sick with an anger new to her. She then realized she was in the presence of evil. Evil in the form of an agent of the Holy had condemned her and the major.

===

An hour later, two escorts aided the shaky chaplain's departure from Wheeler's headquarters. Lt. Muskgrove had told them to not harm the man but get him as far away as they could, toward the Union lines, without risk to themselves.

The major and first sergeant were beside the water trough fifty feet back of the barn headquarters. The major knelt on the smooth quarter-inch gravel around the watering place. He was pouring water from his cap over his head. Shaking the water off he said, "I would've killed him Charles. I sure would have rung his damnable pious neck."