Fire On The Mountain (Spectacular Fiction) by Terry Bisson

Author:Terry Bisson [Bisson, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: FIC040000
ISBN: 9781604860870
Publisher: Turnaround
Published: 2010-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

After the Battle of Quarry Road, as we called it (the white folks called it the Quarry Road Massacre), Wise and Buchanan apparently settled their differences, for two days later a train filled with marines and horses came from Washington, D.C., across the newly repaired railroad bridge, through Harper’s Ferry, heading for Charles Town to occupy the lower Shenandoah. Another column came marching from Eagle, through the Gap, and a detachment stayed in the Ferry. Drums rolled and flags flew and horses and cannon marched by all day; and all the boys in the town turned out, colored and white as well. But things were changing. I had never had any problem with the local white boys, perhaps because Charles Town was a railroad town and there were so many ‘shanty Irish’ and Germans, making it far different from the farm country to the south. Harper’s Ferry was even more of a railroad town, with almost half of its population ‘free colored,’ so even the white boys who were inclined to mess with us didn’t. I wasn’t until much later to know what an unusual situation that was in the South. Brown, of course, had known it all along. Cricket had derided me for these white friends, finding it childish (on the plantations slaves had friends among the white children only up until age seven or eight); and perhaps Cricket was right and I was hanging on to being a kid, even at twelve, through my Merican friends. At any rate, all that was changing: changing like the seasons as war, like winter, rolled in and we watched, shivering inside. Like an iron frost. You could have seen my breath that day, standing on the street watching the troops and cannons fill the town. I was very aware that the army was here to kill something hiding out (and I think the other black folks felt this as well) not only on the mountain, but inside my heart as well. So I was quiet; I feared it. The grown-ups cheered, but at first, for a time, the white boys were as silent as I was. It was strange how quiet they were, considering how much boys like soldiers. I think boys have more sense than they get credit for: I believe, great-grandson, they understood, for a moment, anyway, that with this war their childhood, like mine, was over with, and the season coming would be long and cold and mean. They got over it, though, and soon joined the grownups, who think about the future less clearly and less often: they all whooped and cheered and cast dark looks about at the few black faces, as if we were burned biscuits disgracing their table; I withdrew as soon as I could with honor, to watch the rest from the loft of Doug Bean’s store. We Africans had an army too; I had even seen it. It seemed unfair that we couldn’t have our own parade with drums and cannons and flags and horses rearing about.

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