Uncles and Others

UNCLES AND OTHERS / George Garrett A CONFEDERATE OFFICER, himself as raggedy as a scarecrow , together with a few of his men, and most of them shoeless and all of them in tattered and torn and patched pieces of uniform, is on his hands and knees crawling down the long straight row of a cornfield. They aU go very slowly, carefuUy, as quiet as they can. Above aU they do not want the farmer in the log cabin, perhaps a quarter of a mUe away, to find them here. For what they intend to do, the farmer could have them hanged. It is a capital offense in this army, and the commanding officer of these men and this officer would do it, too. He would hang them one and aU for the sake of a discipline which has not broken yet. But, you see, they are starving. Truly. Since yesterday or perhaps the day before they have had nothing to eat and drink but a handful of acorns and muddy creek water. They have to risk hanging or die. Now, there are some skinny cows browsing a piece of pasture just beyond the edge of the cornfield. One, an old cow of not much use to anyone, is nearest the rows of corn. They plan to kiU that cow. To cut it up and carry it off into the thick woods behind them where, at a safe distance, they wiU buUd a Uttle fire and cook the meat. Young as they are— and some of these are scarcely in their teens, and the officer, my great grandfather, is not yet twenty-one—they are experienced and hardened veterans of the war. By now, fairly late in the war as it wiU prove to be, they do not pray or plan or hope any more to Uve through to the end of it. That will happen or not happen. But, among many other ways and means, they would rather not have to die hungry. You can understand that. It seems to be aU clear ahead. The old contented cow has moved even closer to the cornfield. There is not even a thin feather of white smoke coming from the cabin's chimney. No sounds. No dog around, thank God, to bark and bite. Farmer is somewhere else at work, in another direction. They are stiU crawUng along down the corn rows when they hear something. Sound, unmistakable, of metal on metal. They hear that sound again, louder and somewhat closer. They freeze in place. Very slowly, even as a puff of Ught breeze teases the half-grown corn stalks, the officer turns his head 28 · The Missouri Review to look in the direction the sounds came from. Light glints off something only a few rows away. Ifs a rifle barrel (what else?) and another one. There are armed men, uniforms of dark blue, so close by he could pick up a clod of red clay earth and chunk it and hit them. What next? Holding his breath he lowers his head and face to the earth. I lower mine, too, tasting, smelling the sweet odor of turned red clay in late springtime. I can hear the breeze rattling in the green cornstalks. What next? Autobiography, Uke any other form of confession, is finaUy, if not first and foremost, a self-serving act. And what else could it be? At its most sane and rational, that is, rarely enough, the autobiographical impulse is most often a cry for mercy concealed as a non-negotiable demand for justice. It amounts to copping a plea. And even on its other, darker side, shaped by whatever kinds of dark hungers and satisfactions, autobiography remains much closer to the rhetoric of fiction than to any objective arrangement of hard facts. And Southern autobiography has some other, special problems. It is perceived, at least by some, as consisting of more than the usual number of things to confess and to conceal. Even disaUowing that notion—as I do, now and forever, though I recognize that it is widely held by many—even ignoring that problem, there is stiU the matter of manners. It is generaUy thought, among my...