Horrible Harvest

Another gunshot rung out and one of the men guarding Charles and Douglas collapsed to his knees. A Minie ball hit him square in the neck. He cried out for his Momma. Least-wise that’s what it sounded most like. His throat was half tore away, so him letting loose an actual word was near impossible. It was just a mumble of a sound of a crow-like cry. He fell face first into the dirt, but shit-luck for him, he weren’t dead. That wouldn’t come for another ten minutes or so.  He just lay there. Breathing with a wheeze and gurgle.

The men of Company K dove to the ground in this direction and that, struggling mightily to catch their bearings. They was panicked and confused by the sneak attack. Two out of every ten men from Company K was felled by a barrage of bullets

Charles took off in a sprint towards Mr. Miller, and Douglas found cover behind the captain’s fallen horse.

The captain yelled out, “Ambush! Secure the prisoner! Mr. Tennyson, the General is under your watch! Turn about, men! Fire at the halt! Do not give ground!”

The night sky burst into a mess of musket fire. The flashes of gunpowder from the iron muzzles lit up like hordes of fireflies. The clack-thuds from the hammer to explosion rattled the nerves and bones of every man steeling themselves against an urge to run that turnt to a near boil with each passing second.

But they didn’t. Not a one of ‘em. They did as ordered by their captain and formed two lines. The front ranks returned fire, then knelt to reload, while the rear ranks fired. This repeated again and again. The lot of ‘em moving together, like a machine. Tree branches and trunks took near all the damage, but on occasion, a fella or two from the Miller brigade would cry out in utter agony. The men of Company K whooped with satisfaction that they’d gun down the cowardly sumbitches that’d open fire on their backs.

Me and Kenneth quick secured Mr. Miller and wrestled control of him, dragging him back towards the burning house. Not a single gunshot chased after us. We rounded the right corner of the farmhouse and continued on to the back, staying as close to the flames as we could without getting burnt, hoping the heatwaves and smoke would give us cover until we was out the battle’s reach.

Didn’t neither of us know Charles was on our heels.

When the sound of gunfire grew enough in distance, we give pause and Mr. Miller grumbled and groused. “I will go no further.”

Kenneth told his daddy to shut his pie hole and then give him a wallop on the ear.  

Mr. Miller laughed and said, “Your mother has hit me harder.”

Kenneth planted the barrel of his gun to his daddy’s forehead.

I stepped forward. “Can’t be you.”

He pressed the barrel harder against his daddy’s forehead.

“It won’t give you nothing. Killing him. It’ll give him everything. It can’t be you. It can’t.”

He looked at me. “Why not?”

“A daddy kilt by a son, there’s too much honor in that. It makes too much sense. You’re to amount to something in this world. His killing will become legend ‘cause you done it. Now if a dirt-poor shitkicker rice farmer’s boy was to kill him, wouldn’t a soul remember that. They’d think that shit funny.”

Charles jumped out of the darkness with a tree-limb in hand. He cracked Kenneth across the arm, knocking the pistol from his hand, and sending me in a tumble into a tangle of brush. ‘Fore I could right myself, Charles set to wailing on Kenneth two-three more times.

I scrambled to get free from the brush when my brother turnt his attack on me. He give me a whack to the temple with the tree limb and then another across the jaw. The world went bright as the sun before it went all the way dark.