This is an excerpt from a story in the upcoming Love Stories for Wilkes Ferry: The Star-Shaped Scar. The person talking is Jesse McPherson, my great, great uncle who brought the Confederate uniform of my great, great grandfather (Jubel Jake McPherson)home from the war.

They thought it was going be one grand adventure. And I went along, like a damn fool, just like all the rest of them. Oh, I stood on the street and watched them, like I wasn’t just like them. I watched them whoop and holler and show off their costumes for each other. But, I was not that much different from ‘em. I had a little thrill in my heart too, then. That was before, when I ‘as still able to thrill over anything.

It’s always thrilling before. It ain’t so thrilling afterward though, but a lot of ‘em wouldn’t even find that out. They would die in the glory of the first charge, if they didn’t die of shitting themselves to death or throwing up their guts beforehand. That was the way I didn’t want to die, at first. I thought to myself, God, if I have to die, let me die fighting, doing something brave, not wallowing in my own shit and moaning for my mamma.

I’d seen them like that, and I didn’t want to be them, before they’d ever been close to a battle.

But all that was to come later. At the beginning, it was all fluster and partying. Oh, they partied and drank and the women just hung off ‘em like they was already heroes. Everybody was heroes then. That was before they found out what it took to be a hero and then, after that, they weren’t so damn ready to be heroes.

Oh, they knew everything, including Jake. They knew everything about war and soldiering and Yankees. The war was going to be over in a month. They was crawling all over each other to join up ‘fraid they was going to miss the damn thing, like it was a big circus they was afraid was gonna leave town before they got tickets. What fools they were, we were.

And then when we came back, there weren’t nothing. Just nothing to come back to. We was beat, that was one thing. Ain’t the same coming home when you’re coming home whupped. I don’t know what it’d be like coming home a winner, but coming home a loser, it wasn’t worth it.

From then on, wasn’t nothing that could really please me. I didn’t never get one feeling like that first thrill I felt standing in the court house yard watching ‘em hoot and holler and look for costumes. Even though I knew it was damn tom foolery, I still got a little thrill, something I ain’t had since.