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Literary Contributions A Fight In The Bloody Angle
While I Do Dishes (For Mother)
My parents
had 3rd great uncles in the Civil War who fought at places like Antietam,
Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania. While I do the laundry, dishes, or bag
up garbage, I find myself in a Forty Acre Cornfield with Maxcy Gregg's
Brigade at the battle of Antietam, or I cross the Emmitsburg Road at
Gettysburg with some grisly looking mountain man named Lafayette McLaws,
or I might lead my Brigade into the Mule Shoe, or the Bloody Angle as
it was known, at Spotsylvania just as General Lee had done for Nathaniel
Harris' Brigade. I carry clothes to wash in a garbage bag because I
have trouble walking. I use a walker which can be a nuisance in public. A big bag
of clothes is placed on top of the walker basket and I am off to the
washroom ready to start my day. Ready, set, GO! I wonder if Lafayette
McLaws had so much trouble. I literally have to fling my full bag across
the floor at times to move forward. I wonder if Lafayette McLaws had
so much trouble as he made his way across the Emmitsburg Road. He did,
according to Longstreet's Report of the ensuing battle which came to
be known as Gettysburg. He told how McLaws had spotted Union troops
along his right flank, and how he delayed in order to attempt a surprise
attack. There was no surprise. My surprise is found amidst the wet towels
still in the dryer. I sometimes see Union troops hide behind the washing
machine. A garbage
bag full of clean clothes is slung across the garage floor as I come
into the house. Our washroom is almost two garages away. It is the sling
motion of a Samurai warrior or, perhaps, an Angola prisoner on the chain
gang. Heave Ho! Heave Ho! I sling my bag full of clothes across the
garage floor with Sam Cooke's song in my head. It keeps me going. "That's
the sound of the men working on the chain gang." I am endlessly
haunted by garbage. Our black and white Shih Tzu Stormy barks at something,
or someone, lurching down 4th Avenue. It is a ghost. I try to imagine
it as it carries a bag of garbage, our garbage, down the street. If
the garbage becomes too full, I find myself seated on my rump in the
middle of our granite floor in an attempt to tie it up. Maxcy Gregg
found himself in the middle of a field picking daisies at the Civil
War Battle of 2nd Bull Run. He was not worried as his ammunition and
men ran out. He hollered out to survivors: "Let us die here like
men!" Often, I find myself on the granite floor with a bag of garbage
as I say: "Let us die here like men!" With a severe attack of hypoglycemia on the way, I quickly measure my English peas out and start to season them as my mother asks me what Roman emperor fiddled while Rome burned. "Julius Caesar. Why?" "Why
did he play fiddle while Rome burned?" My mother curiously asks
as she chops an onion. I open the jar of Cayenne pepper and pour it
by the teaspoon. I answer:
"Because he was mad." It is obvious. He used too much cayenne
pepper. Stonewall
Jackson was a deeply religious man who never seasoned his food with
pepper because it made his left leg ache. My left leg aches profoundly
after I drink rum. It swells from a disease Civil War soldiers called
Dropsy. If a soldier was diagnosed with Dropsy, he was sent home, incapable
of active duty, unable to wash his own clothes. My mother made flour
gravy before my father dumped a can of stewed tomatoes in it. Often
one will pour ketchup on eggs to make them taste better. Daddy pours
ketchup on everything he eats. Even when away from home, he looks for
a ketchup bottle. A nice meal can program one to do certain things.
I wonder why. When you pour a can of stewed tomatoes over flour gravy,
the gravy becomes hard to remove once it dries and cakes on in the fry
pan. Imagine tomato paste coagulating blood. It bleeds for air outside
the flour. Some nights, my mother will blend together ground beef with
tomato sauce and make a spaghetti sauce pate. Imagine spaghetti sauce
pate as it coagulates into something that looks like blood. It bleeds
for air outside the blender. I think of
Gettysburg and blood. Lafayette McLaws and blood. Let's talk. Lafayette
McLaws was obviously not a vegetarian as I view a picture of him taken
around the time of Gettysburg. He was a large man. I would not say obese.
It sounds as though he could not get around. He could. He made his way
through Gettysburg and later retired to a quiet life as postmaster general
in the state of Georgia. He wrote about the war just as my ancestor
John Crawford had done. John Crawford,
my paternal 3rd great uncle, served in the 16th Mississippi Infantry.
I can almost recite bits and pieces from his letters written back home
the way my psychiatrist would recite passages from the Koran. He, a
Confederate soldier, fishes on one side of the Rappahannock, while a
Yankee fishes the other side, always with one eye on the pole and the
other on him. In his letter,
Uncle John says: "We fish together." Somewhere amidst the
spilt blood of Chancellorsville and Spotsylvania, there's always time
to fish. I got the
food put up, but I still do not know how to clean the stove top. It
is one of those $10,000 Wolf stoves, too complex to clean with simple
water. That will wait for mother. I don't want to be blamed if some
intrinsic part turns green. A storm howls
outside. I can hear it from the kitchen window while I wash dishes and
place them in one of our two dish washers. My father
rides the John Deere mower after the storm. Earlier, as a strong rainstorm
approached, the siren from the top of the police station screamed out
a tornado warning. Here, tornadoes rip tin roofs off of Fred's Dollar
Store and spin the Sonic sign topsy-turvy. Where do they come from in
their darkened fury except Kansas? Three of my mother's Bloody Marys
will bring tornadoes and my father's John Deere mower. You are not supposed
to cut grass after a storm, but after three Bloody Marys, who cares?
Let's ride. I'll play my Wilbur Harrison CD and do dishes. I will go
to Kansas City, but I don't want a tornado to take me there. Five years
ago, I sat with my psychiatrist, a short bald man fascinated with reciting
passages from the Koran. He immediately diagnosed me as paranoid schizophrenic
after I compared washing clothes with being lost in the Mule Shoe Salient
at Spotsylvania. When our session ended, he rubbed his bald head dry
of oil and worry. I looked for a basket of clothes to wash and asked:
"Where is my underwear?" We fight
our "Bloody Angles" here between the kitchen and the washroom.
Somehow, the vortex of all this chaos is always found when my mother
cooks. Perhaps Stonewall Jackson, Maxcy Gregg, Lafayette McLaws, or
even General Lee himself will come to dinner one night. I will pray
for them all. The Mule
Shoe Salient, also called the Bloody Angle, was one of the bloodiest
battles fought in the Civil War on May 12, 1864. I had five great great
great uncles there. Twenty hours of ferocious combat between Confederate
and Union soldiers proved to be inconclusive for Grant. He moved on
to Cold Harbor. Somewhere
trapped in the Salient, a thought of home hits a lost soldier like lightning.
Did you know lightning struck an oak tree the day after the battle was
fought May 12, 1864? Jeb Stuart had been killed the day before, pursuing
General Phil Sheridan's men at a place called Yellow Tavern. At the end
of the day, I want to go to bed the way you do. Don't I have a right?
I want to sleep and smell deep rich Maxwell House in the morning. What
I want is a pillow against my head and not the sink. Nor do I want the
toilet. I'm tired of holding on to counters in order to pre-make coffee.
I'm tired of you and I'm tired of me. I washed your clothes and your
dishes, threw out the garbage for the 7:00 a.m. truck, provided the
cats don't look for chicken bones hidden inside the garbage. I will
pull a wish bone with the cats and wish for them to go away. Go away! Tomorrow,
I will follow Jeb Stuart and his cavalry into Spotsylvania in pursuit
of Phil Sheridan at Yellow Tavern. I may find time to go into the tavern
and have a drink. I may die of some rare disease caused by too much
clothes detergent or I may be shot and killed by some of Sheridan's
men. In either case, I itch constantly. Tonight, I do dishes. Tomorrow,
I will meet you for drinks at the Yellow Tavern. Postscript from the Salient or the Kitchen. I don't know which.
We will follow A.P. Hill out of Harper's Ferry, rushing through the South Mountains to the battle of Antietam. Along the Mountains we may stop awhile. There, I will hire a teamster to haul to the battlefield the hundreds of cans of bologna I have fed to you throughout this story. C.H. Allen Clark is an American writer from Morton, Mississippi. The Most Remote Prison in the World By George Moore The young guide says he’s slipped out a few times, he’s probably twenty-two or three, made his way across the high routes the Dalai Lama himself once took into northern India, through the impassable Himalayas, “the top of the world,” out of Chinese hands. But he has nowhere to go, he says, he is trapped in a neighboring country just as much as at home. His vision of the modern world is Srinagar and once, Delhi. He smiles and says he would like to see it all, the world, would learn to speak in many languages. He is hungry for my English, does not want me to practice my Chinese, does not want even his own Tibetan, has come to see his homeland as a prison. I think of the Buddhist travelers to Tibet, the tourists who come to find some spiritual truth, who buy and trade and learn to speak Chinese, and perhaps forget the pilgrimage Buddhism itself made up from the Ganges river valley over the high plateaus into the minds of this country of lamas. It’s often forgotten that Tibet once ruled China, on and off for centuries. But some also forget that we live in a shrinking world where to stay ignorant on command means a prison sure as the ones of thick mud walls and iron bars that are sustained today throughout the sacred land. ~ Teak ~ |