Chickamauga by Shelby Foote Read Free Book Online Page B

the army, but I said you can search me. All I wanted was my little old room and my little old bed. I never been treated like that in my life. One of the girls said she was going to write to President Lincoln about it.
    And in the papers next day they never said anything about how our train got attacked or about us girls at all! Can you beat it?

Chickamauga
THOMAS WOLFE

    On the seventh day of August, 1861, I was nineteen years of age. If I live to the seventh day of August this year I’ll be ninety-five years old. And the way I feel this mornin’ I intend to live. Now I guess you’ll have to admit that that’s goin’ a good ways back.
    I was born up at the Forks of the Toe River in 1842. Your grandpaw, boy, was born at the same place in 1828. His father, and mine, too, Bill Pentland—your great-grandfather, boy—moved into that region way back right after the Revolutionary War and settled at the Forks of Toe. The real Indian name fer hit was Estatoe, but the white men shortened hit to Toe, and hit’s been known as Toe River ever since.
    Of course hit was all Indian country in those days. I’ve heared that the Cherokees helped Bill Pentland’s father build the first house he lived in, where some of us was born. I’ve heared, too, that Bill Pentland’s grandfather came from Scotland back before the Revolution, and that thar was three brothers. That’s all the Pentland’s that I ever heared of in this country. If you ever meet a Pentland anywheres you can rest assured he’s descended from one of those three.
    Well, now, as I was tellin’ you, upon the seventh day of August, 1861, I was nineteen years of age. At seven-thirty in the mornin’ of that day I started out from home and walked the whole way in to Clingman. Jim Weaver had come over from Big Hickory where he lived the night before and stayed with me. And now hewent along with me. He was the best friend I had. We had growed up alongside of each other: now we was to march alongside of each other fer many a long and weary mile—how many neither of us knowed that mornin’ when we started out.
    Hit was a good twenty mile away from where we lived to Clingman, and I reckon young folks nowadays would consider twenty mile a right smart walk. But fer people in those days hit wasn’t anything at all. All of us was good walkers. Why Jim Weaver could keep goin’ without stoppin’ all day long.
    Jim was big and I was little, about the way you see me now, except that I’ve shrunk up a bit, but I could keep up with him anywhere he went. We made hit into Clingman before twelve o’clock—hit was a hot day, too—and by three o’clock that afternoon we had both joined up with the Twenty-ninth. That was my regiment from then on, right on to the end of the war. Anyways, I was an enlisted man that night, the day that I was nineteen years of age, and I didn’t see my home again fer four long years.
    Your Uncle Bacchus, boy, was already in Virginny: we knowed he was thar because we’d had a letter from him. He joined up right at the start with the Fourteenth. He’d already been at First Manassas and I reckon from then on he didn’t miss a big fight in Virginny fer the next four years, except after Antietam where he got wounded and was laid up fer four months.
    Even way back in those days your Uncle Bacchus had those queer religious notions that you’ve heared about. The Pentlands are good people, but everyone who ever knowed ’em knows they can go queer on religion now and then. That’s the reputation that they’ve always had. And that’s the way Back was. He was a Russellite even in those days: accordin’ to his notionsthe world was comin’ to an end and he was goin’ to be right in on hit when hit happened. That was the way he had hit figgered out. He was always prophesyin’ and predictin’ even back before the war, and when the war came, why Back just knowed that this was hit.
    Why law! He wouldn’t have missed that war fer anything. Back didn’t go