In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Ambrose Bierce

Author:Ambrose Bierce
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: War stories, Paranormal fiction, United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction, American, Horror tales
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2022-10-14T01:00:11+00:00

The Mockingbird

The time, a pleas­ant Sun­day af­ter­noon in the ear­ly au­tumn of 1861. The place, a for­est’s heart in the moun­tain re­gion of south­west­ern Vir­ginia. Pri­vate Gray­rock of the Fed­er­al Army is dis­cov­ered seat­ed com­fort­ably at the root of a great pine tree, against which he leans, his legs ex­tend­ed straight along the ground, his ri­fle ly­ing across his thighs, his hands (clasped in or­der that they may not fall away to his sides) rest­ing up­on the bar­rel of the weapon. The con­tact of the back of his head with the tree has pushed his cap down­ward over his eyes, al­most con­ceal­ing them; one see­ing him would say that he slept.

Pri­vate Gray­rock did not sleep; to have done so would have im­per­iled the in­ter­ests of the Unit­ed States, for he was a long way out­side the lines and sub­ject to cap­ture or death at the hands of the en­e­my. More­over, he was in a frame of mind un­fa­vor­able to re­pose. The cause of his per­tur­ba­tion of spir­it was this: dur­ing the pre­vi­ous night he had served on the pick­et-guard, and had been post­ed as a sen­tinel in this very for­est. The night was clear, though moon­less, but in the gloom of the wood the dark­ness was deep. Gray­rock’s post was at a con­sid­er­able dis­tance from those to right and left, for the pick­ets had been thrown out a need­less dis­tance from the camp, mak­ing the line too long for the force de­tailed to oc­cu­py it. The war was young, and mil­i­tary camps en­ter­tained the er­ror that while sleep­ing they were bet­ter pro­tect­ed by thin lines a long way out to­ward the en­e­my than by thick­er ones close in. And sure­ly they need­ed as long no­tice as pos­si­ble of an en­e­my’s ap­proach, for they were at that time ad­dict­ed to the prac­tice of un­dress­ing—than which noth­ing could be more un­sol­dier­ly. On the morn­ing of the mem­o­rable 6th of April, at Shiloh, many of Grant’s men when spit­ted on Con­fed­er­ate bay­o­nets were as naked as civil­ians; but it should be al­lowed that this was not be­cause of any de­fect in their pick­et line. Their er­ror was of an­oth­er sort: they had no pick­ets. This is per­haps a vain di­gres­sion. I should not care to un­der­take to in­ter­est the read­er in the fate of an army; what we have here to con­sid­er is that of Pri­vate Gray­rock.

For two hours af­ter he had been left at his lone­ly post that Sat­ur­day night he stood stock-still, lean­ing against the trunk of a large tree, star­ing in­to the dark­ness in his front and try­ing to rec­og­nize known ob­jects; for he had been post­ed at the same spot dur­ing the day. But all was now dif­fer­ent; he saw noth­ing in de­tail, but on­ly groups of things, whose shapes, not ob­served when there was some­thing more of them to ob­serve, were now un­fa­mil­iar. They seemed not to have been there be­fore. A land­scape that is all trees and un­der­growth, more­over, lacks def­i­ni­tion, is con­fused and with­out ac­cen­tu­at­ed points up­on which at­ten­tion can gain a foothold.

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