Copperhead Page #6

you're wrong. I do think you're wrong.

But I am starting to understand how you

should believe yourself to be right.

Smoke the damned copperheads out!

I wasn't born in the woods

to be scared by an owl.

Come on out now, copperheads!

Eat up.

Hey, copperhead!

You're not being very social.

I got a nice, warm

pot of tar waiting for you.

Yeah, copperhead, it's in your honor.

Come on out.

M'rye, take Janey and Jimmy upstairs.

Stay there.

Hurley, get the ax. Stay

by the kitchen door.

I think you had ought to go home, dear.

You can leave by the back door.

Come on out!

What are you waiting for, Abner?

Why don't you join us?

Not afraid of a little fire, are you?

We've come to take you and Paddy out

for a little ride on the rail.

Hey, Mick, you wanna be a black Irishman?

Yeah, let me at him.

- A celebration.

- You know, the fire is warm.

N*ggers wanna share some tar.

Come on out, copperheads!

They're all traitors.

Come on out, copperheads.

Come on out.

Come on out, Paddy!

They're leaving.

Abner, the house is on fire!

M'rye, look what I found.

Not the fires of hell could burn that.

Jeff used to play with it for hours

at a stretch when he was a baby.

Who is it?

Where is my daughter?

Come in.

Never under your roof.

- I swore I never would, and I never will.

- Under my roof?

You'd need a crowbar to get under my roof.

What's left of it.

I haven't a house anymore, Hagadorn.

So your oath ain't binding.

The Bible says swear not at all,

so come in.

Where's my daughter?

I stand on a father's rights.

I sent Esther out to you.

Just before your redhots

lit up my house like Gomorrah!

We didn't intend for that.

Well, burning out a viper's nest

is a tricky business.

But your Esther ain't here.

Well, I been home. She's not home.

Good Lord.

Hurley, Janey, bring the lanterns, quick.

Jimmy.

Oh.

Esther! Esther!

- Esther!

- Esther!

Esther!

- Esther!

- Esther!

Esther!

Esther!

Esther!

- Esther!

- Esther!

Esther!

Well, old '76, what's the word?

Is she...?

Well, we looked and looked,

but there weren't no sign of her.

We'll look again come morning light.

Likely she just run off in the woods.

Why did they burn our house down?

War's a...

It's a fever, son.

It's a fever, and you...

You get het up, and the fever

push you out of your right mind.

You do things you wouldn't do

if you weren't sick.

You...

...kill, you maim.

You lose sight of...

...who you are, where you live.

It's like you've got no...

No kin no more.

No neighbors.

You lose...

You lose your bearings.

And you...

...ain't who you really are.

Well, well, well.

If it ain't Winfield

Scott and Robert E. Lee.

War must be over

if you boys have come home.

Why don't you come on in here

and tell me a war story?

I'm sorry, Jeff.

Others got it worse.

Tell me a good story.

Embellish it as you find necessary.

How about you hear a true tale of courage

and bravery right out of Fenimore Cooper.

That would please me very much, Ni.

Stick to the facts only

when it's convenient.

Well, uh...

...the fact is,

after taking my leave of the Corners...

...I hopped a freight train to Albany,

made it down to New York on a riverboat.

Hitched up

with the Sanitary Commission folks.

Got them to let me sail on a boat

to Annapolis.

I hung around Camp Parole,

talking with fellas...

...who'd been prisoners in Richmond

and got exchanged and sent north.

And, uh, they said there's a whole slew

of our fellas in Southern prisons...

...brought in after Antietam...

...and they was getting paroled in

exchange for the Johnny Rebs we captured.

I waited around Camp Parole.

And then, uh, one day,

along comes Mr. Blue Jay himself.

"Long way from the Corners,"

he says, I joshed him back...

...and I went to see the commissioner

about his exchange...

...got his papers fixed up,

and that's all there is to it.

Thank you.

Is that all there is to it, Jeff?

Wish I could tell you a tale, Mr. Avery...

...but there's the war you read about

in the newspaper...

...and there's the war that really is.

Me and Byron Truax was fighting in

a cornfield and got chased out.

We lost our regiment and fell in

with some stragglers from Michigan.

We waded through a creek and set our sights

on taking a battery on top of a knoll...

...but we didn't see the sharpshooters

hidden behind a rail fence.

These rebs gave it to us straight.

Pow.

Mowed us all down.

Byron got it right in the face.

Let out a kind of little

cry, and that was it.

At dusk, the rebs come out

looking for guns and blankets off the dead.

Most everybody was dead, or nearly so...

...but a few of us was playing possum...

...because it would have been a sure death

to get up.

Were you hurt?

Just a scratch on the arm.

The rebs found me and the other living ones

and marched us to the rear of the line...

...where they skinned us like bandits

and marched us off to Richmond.

Your, um...

Your arm?

It was only a scratch, really.

But it got worse on the march

and it wasn't tended to decently.

And by the time we got to Libby,

it was purple-like.

Pus was leaking from it.

Smelled awful.

I was scared to death.

I ain't ashamed to say it.

Doctor at Libby took one look at it,

said it was gangrene.

Took me in this butcher shop

they called a hospital...

...fed me some whiskey,

and cut the damn thing off.

Thomas Jefferson Beech,

the one-armed man.

Mighty glad to see you back, Jeff.

You too, Ni.

Pa!

Pa!

Esther!

M'rye.

Oh, my boy.

Jeff!

Pa!

Pa?

I fear no foe

With thee at hand

To bless

llls have no weight

And tears

No bitterness

Where is death's sting?

Where, grave

Thy victory?

Each triumphs still

If thou abide

With me

My pa was not a wishy-washy man.

No, sir.

Everything he did, he did all out.

And he did it for the Lord...

...whether he was pounding out firkins

or singing out psalms.

Some of you probably wish

he wasn't so all-out when he was singing.

He raised me and my sis all by himself.

He fed us on Bible verses

for breakfast, lunch and supper.

And I groused at that diet, but I guess some

of it stuck, and I'm grateful that it did.

Now, I ain't one for quoting chapters.

Seems to me one of the wisest things

he ever told us was this:

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

I'm gonna say that again.

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

Seems to me we do an awful poor job

of living up to that one.

Oh, we love our neighbor just fine

when the sun's out...

...and the crops are high and our

neighbor's agreeing with everything we say.

Oh, we love him just fine.

But he'll be a bit ornery...

...disagreeable...

...maybe got a different way

of looking at things.

All of a sudden, we don't love our neighbor

so much anymore.

In fact, we hate him.

And we'll call him names.

We'll burn his house down.

Maybe even kill him.

All the while we sit in church

mouthing the words...

...to pretty little hymns

that we don't mean.

When I went down to Richmond...

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