“Hey,” Buck said. I ain’t even finished my tale about ole Hunt Morgan, and his rip roaring raiders. Would you believe that he escaped from those Yankees that put him in jail?”
“Escaped?”
“Bet your butt. See, what those Yankees didn’t figure on was the copper-heads, and they be the ones that got him out, and got him, and all his men down to the river, and across right around Bel Pre.
“Hold on a second. What the heck is a copperhead?” I asked.
“I done forgot that you’re a stranger here. A Copperhead is a guy that didn’t believe in the war. That don’t mean they loved niggers. They were just plumb dead set against killing their relatives. A whole hell of a lot of them had kinfolk living in the South. On top of that, we all knew how niggers like to rape white ladies and we were against that too.”
“I’m getting the idea that you’re a copperhead,” I said, and I made sure I was grinning when I said it.”
“Bet your butt. Ain’t no secret about it. Now I wasn’t here back then, but it’s still the same, only now the darkies want to be white. Damn fools detest their own skin so much, that they got to turn it white, only now, they don’t have to rape so many white girls cause the bible toters and Jesus junkies got everybody believing that those niggers ain’t animals.”
“You’d have made a good rebel general,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, you can bet your butt on that one,” Buck agreed.
I was still curious. I hadn’t been in this burg long enough to know anything about it. All I’d seen was the railroad, a bunch of rubbers, and the police station. Still, I could see that the town was in two separate parts separated by the railroad. How did it happen? Since Buck seemed to be the local historian, I just asked him.
“How long has the railroad separated this town in half?”
“Huh. Since long before the Civil War. Back then, from everything I’ve read, the railroads, ‘cause they were all big money men, had the government by the ass and did just about anything they wanted to.
“From Turner Avenue to Wills Creek was one big hill, just like all the other hills in Guernsey County. Right next to Turner Avenue was our first graveyard, where all the old folks that started this county are laid.
“Well, that fuckin railroad came in here with a god dammed steam shovel, and chopped down that hill and damn near ruined the graveyard until the locals got to raising too much hell about it. They just needed the extra tracks for a siding, but they built a station house, where a guy can buy a ticket on their passenger trains, and I’ve heard it said that they also built the viaduct over the tracks and the creek.
“Only thing good about it I remember is that back during the 1929 depression people could go along the tracks and pick up pieces of spilled coal that fell off the railroad cars.”
Chapter 7
Over the space of my sentence, I became fond of Buck and his stories. Then one day he got back on the Copperhead thing.
“You know,” he said. “I don’t think you fully understood what I was talking about, when I mentioned that I was a copperhead, the other day. I also think you might have got distracted about the things I said about the darkies, so let me tell you this.
“The copperheads were definitely not in the minority. More people were against war, than there were for it.
“It was those damn Jesus junkies, that pushed it through. Long before the war ever got started, they had a whole string of people that were using their houses to shelter runaway slaves.
“Old Abe Lincoln done crapped all over the people when he put an end to slavery. Just think about it for a minute.
“In opposition to what ole Abe did, a sitting president today, would not focus on only one part of the constitution. He would take it all into consideration. The first damn thing he would do, is haul those plantation owners into federal court, and convict them of slavery.
“Then before those suckers could even blink their eye, he would have had a truckload of U.S. Marshals swoop down on that plantation, and capture all the slaves, and then send them back to their own country.
“Abe and that bunch of bible toters did just the opposite. He gave them forty acres and a mule.
“He killed three hundred and sixty-thousand yankee soldiers, and two hundred and fifty-thousand rebels to free a bunch of illegal immigrants, and that’s sure as hell what they were.
“Those southern plantation owners had them kidnapped out of Africa, and then illegally imported into this country.
“Then to top it all off, they built a giant statue of that murdering bastard up there in Washington.
“Now in just a minute I will be done. But before I quit, I want to ask everyone this one question. Has anybody ever heard one of the children of those illegal immigrants offer a toast to all those Yankee soldiers, who died to free their black butts? Do you think one of them ever said a prayer for them?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. What could I say? I sure as heck didn’t want to argue with him. I hadn’t read the same books that he had, and I didn’t want to dispute a darn thing he said, anyway. He just forgot to tell me to “bet my butt on it.”
The days passed... slow...real slow...in time we ran out of things to talk about. Cards? We got sick of casino and gin, but still, the days passed. At night we dealt with our own demons. We fought the nightmares and tried to forget the erotic dreams. One day Buck brought up the darkie question again.
“One of these fine days,” he started out, “it’ll be all over. Long ago, they swore they’d put us in chains the same as we did to them, and I got to admit that if I was a nigger, I’d be just the same. I’d want to mess up every white man I could find, and you can bet your butt on that.”
That was worth a chuckle. The darkies were a minority. They just couldn’t do it. Nearly every house in America has a gun. No foreign power could ever occupy us. Americans are as stubborn as the Russians who said way back in April of 1242: “You come to us with a sword, then you will die by the sword.”
All those winters spent in the libraries weren’t wasted. But I don’t think anyone would ever win a discussion with Buck.
He was sure enough a copperhead, and as he liked to say. You could bet your butt on that. And so... the days rolled on. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and some days new guys would come in, nearly all with the mandatory ten-day sentence. Old Charlie and Willy hit the bricks on a Wednesday and finally, after years passed, my day came and they let me out.
I damn near froze. They’d mislaid my jacket, might even have given it to someone else, so when I hit the streets I had nothing on my back except my shirt. Cold? Man, a cold front must have moved in while I was eating county food, and brought a west wind with it.
It was like a whole gang of knives slamming into my body. I mean, it was so damn cold that it actually hurt. After going about a block, I just ducked into a doorway of a store, but it wasn’t open yet, and the doorway broke the thrust of the wind. It didn’t stop the cold. I was about to get the shakes. Suddenly I saw a guy hurrying up the street, and I yelled at him.
“Hey mister,” I said. “Is there a goodwill store on this street?”
He stopped and looked just a little startled because maybe I didn’t look too good with my week-old beard and my arms crossed over my chest like I was trying to hug myself, and then he shouted back.
“Down at the end of Main Street. Right side. Can’t miss it,” and just like that he was gone.
“Thanks,”