Free Chickamauga by Shelby Foote Page A

dream. And if she failed to write he’d jest go off somers and set down by himself: he’d be in such a state of misery he didn’t want to talk to no one. He got the reputation with the fellers fer bein’ queer—unsociable—always a-broodin’ and a-frettin’ about somethin’ and a-wantin’ to be left alone. And so, after a time, they let him be. He wasn’t popular with most of them—but they never knowed what was wrong, they never knowed that he wasn’t really the way they thought he was at all. Hit was jest that he was hit so desperate hard, the worst-in-love man that I ever seed. But law! I knowed what was the trouble from the start.
    Hit’s funny how war took a feller. Before the war I was the serious one, and Jim had been the one to play.
    I reckon that I’d had to work too hard. We was so poor. Before the war hit almost seemed I never knowed the time I didn’t have to work. And when the war came, why I only thought of all the fun and frolic I was goin’ to have; and then at last, when I knowed what hit was like, why I was used to hit and didn’t care.
    I always could git used to things. And I reckon maybe that’s the reason that I’m here. I wasn’t one to worry much, and no matter how rough the goin’ got I always figgered I could hold out if the others could. I let termorrer look out fer hitself. I reckon that you’d have to say I was an optimist. If things got bad, well, I always figgered that they could be worse; and if they got so bad they couldn’t be no worse, why then I’d figger that they couldn’t last this way ferever, they’d have to git some better sometime later on.
    I reckon toward the end thar, when they got so bad we didn’t think they’d ever git no better, I’d reached the place where I jest didn’t care. I could still lay down and go to sleep and not worry over what was goin’ to come termorrer, because I never knowed what was to come and so I didn’t let hit worry me. I reckon you’d have to say that was the Pentland in me—our belief in what we call predestination.
    Now, Jim was jest the other way. Before the war he was happy as a lark and thought of nothin’ except havin’ fun. But then the war came and hit changed him so you wouldn’t a-knowed he was the same man.
    And, as I say, hit didn’t happen all at once. Jim was the happiest man I ever seed that mornin’ that we started out from home. I reckon he thought of the war as we all did, as a big frolic. We gave hit jest about six months. We figgered we’d be back by then, and ofcourse all that jest suited Jim. I reckon that suited all of us. It would give us all a chance to wear a uniform and to see the world, to shoot some Yankees and to run ’em north, and then to come back home and lord it over those who hadn’t been and be a hero and court the gals.
    That was the way hit looked to us when we set out from Zebulon. We never thought about the winter. We never thought about the mud and cold and rain. We never knowed what hit would be to have to march on an empty belly, to have to march barefoot with frozen feet and with no coat upon your back, to have to lay down on bare ground and try to sleep with no coverin’ above you, and thankful half the time if you could find dry ground to sleep upon, and too tard the rest of hit to care. We never knowed or thought about such things as these. We never knowed how hit would be there in the cedar thickets beside Chickamauga Creek. And if we had a-knowed, if someone had a-told us, why I reckon that none of us would a-cared. We was too young and ignorant to care. And as fer knowin’t—law! The only trouble about knowin’ is that you’ve got to know what knowin’s like before you know what knowin’ is. Thar’s no one that can tell you. You’ve got to know hit fer yourself.
    Well, like I say, we’d been fightin’ all this time and still thar was no sign of the war endin’. Old Rosey jest kept a-follerin’ us and—“Lord!” Jim would say, “will it never