Just as McCain ambled into its circle of light, Jenkins spit into the campfire and didn’t look up as he said, “Ya heerd about ol’ Stonewall?”
McCain poured steaming chicory coffee into his tin cup and said, “’Course, after the accident where some of our boys mistook his party in the dark for Yanks, tragic misunderstanding, an’ sawbones hadda take his right arm and I heerd he’s doin’ some better.”
“Well I jest heerd ol’ Blue Light took a turn Saturday an’ died of the pee-numonia this afternoon,” Jenkins said, still staring into the flames.
“Lord, no…that such a gallant man who pushed our asses to those great victories in the Valley—Front Royal, Winchester, Cross Keys and Port Republic, all in jus’ two weeks–should be kilt accidently by his own boys who thought his party was Yanks!”
“Yep,” McCain said, sending another sizzling spit into the fire, “an’ I was there at Front Royal, where my brother lost a leg, an’ at Winchester, where I was nipped in the ribs, an’ at Cross Keys, where Lanny Beachem jus’ disappeared, and at Port Republic where the Federals killed my pa, and there in the moonlight at Chancellorsville…and whadda ya mean ax-ee-dintly?”
Dipping into my penchant for American history again, and maybe a little conspiracy, in response to Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction prompt, Misunderstanding.