The Mockingbird's Ballad

His mother's voice was steady and her sentences short, unembellished, "The Yankees out of Nashville, under Crittenden, your father says, moved through here after the mess at Tullahoma. They were after every horse, team of mules, hog, chicken and sack of corn they could drive or tote off. They missed several other folks in this hollow and us, but they come up on Johnny in their barn lot, eight of them. He had just put the mules in their stalls, about 3 in the afternoon, after lightning had stirred them up. The talking one of the gang told Johnny to bring those 'run-down Tennessee hybrid nags' out. He said he wanted to see if they were fit to pull good, strong South Bend wagons and haul loyal American supplies. Johnny cussed them and told them he'd send his stock to the hereafter before giving them over to Yankees or anyone, Rebels too. Three of them pulled their side arms and some their rifles. Johnny cussed them some more. As he moved across the lot with a halter rope, they shot him five times, head to gut." Her voice was cold and hard. "His daddy, Norman, was down at the foot log across the branch, shoring it up. It had washed out bad awhile back."

Joe cleared his throat. He'd come into the house and hung his things up, and had walked over to the table without the two taking notice. He put his big hand on his little wife's thin shoulder, cold from the night chill. Mary looked up at him, then down at her lap.

After a struggle she continued, "Brother came running, skirting toward their back porch. Your Uncle Norman must have been going for the shotgun. The soldiers shot him down, in the back, twenty feet from the back porch steps." J. N. blinked and blinked again. Mary stopped taking a long breath, her cheeks wet with tears.

J. N. whispered, as if in prayer, "What about Alex, Lou and Aunt Nancy?"

"The twins were in the back of the loft moving some hay. They saw it all through the front cracks. That's how we know what happened. They saw it, J. N., they saw it all. Thank the good Lord Alex had hold of Lou and kept her quiet or there would have been four buryings last Sunday." Mary stopped as though she had chopped a row of corn in the summer sun, exhausted.

"Aunt Nancy?" J. N. reminded her "She was up here with me working apples. I'm not sure whether that was a blessing or not."