Solcar - 11. Gettysburg 1865

“Save me a spot at the bar. I need to use the bathroom. Also need to call WOOF so I’ll be back in your office―be back in fifteen.” Colton winked at Tony as he walked away.

“Kay, babe.”

“Antonio! How’s my big brother doing tonight? Did everything go okay at the auction?”

“Hey, Mario! Yeah, it went well; the neon signs get more popular each year. I think some people were Christmas shopping already. We broke the record for the highest bid. A football from last fall, the one with the Jets logo, brought in the most money ever; the snowman from December came in second. The large dinner before was a mistake, though―I’m still bloated. How’s the night here? What are you doing behind the bar?”

“Slummin’―we had a good happy hour. Bunch of guys from a convention dropped in, and there’s still a couple of them around. Here comes one now; this will be his last cocktail, cutting him off after it. What can I get for you, sir?”

“How ‘bout another Jack and coke, handsome. And I’ll buy for the stud next to me too. What’s your name, big boy?”

“Hey, I’m Tony. Nice to meet you. And thanks for the offer to buy me a drink, but all I’m having tonight is water.”

“Ahhh, come on, have one with me. Let’s relax, and maybe we can have some fun later. I love the hairy chest, sexy.”

“Colt! My man!”

“Hi, Mario, a bottle of water, please? Excuse me, sir.”

“Beat it, blondie. I saw him first. Tony and I are just getting acquainted.”

“That’s fine, sir. But I suggest you remove your hand from his butt before making an ass out of yourself.”

“Listen, pretty boy, fuck off and mind your own business. You don’t want to get into a fight with me. I may have to hurt you.”

● ● ●

My name is Stewart Hill, and over the past two years, I have become acquainted with the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I am the assistant to Sergeant John McAllister, current superintendent of these hollowed grounds. I spend most of my days working here, and many an evening I wander among the graves in silence, lost in my thoughts. At those dark times when the demons haunting me since the battle deny me the peace of sleep, I roam aimlessly― attempting to exorcise the hell-spawn from my soul.

Mother’s latest letter arrived today. It has stirred up the fiends, and I fear I will be treading upon the familiar paths many a night for the foreseeable future. My wife understands my torment and does not resent my frequent absences; tonight, she kissed me as I was ready to leave for a stroll and encouraged me to stay out as long as necessary.

Maryland was part of the South; hell, the Mason-Dixon Line was the state’s northern border. But it did not join the Confederacy during the War Between the States. Its location surrounding the Federal Capital, and the importance of the Port of Baltimore, made Lincoln threaten to turn the port city into rubble if they did.

The state may not have seceded from the Union, but it was a slave-holding state, and the sympathies of quite a few of its citizens rested with the cousins in Virginia and further south. Lots of citizens took up arms against the Union; my best friend was one of those, joining a militia aiming to defend states’ rights.

The two of us indeed made an odd couple, as plenty claimed. I was the son of middle-class merchants living in town; he would one day inherit his father’s plantation and all the wealth associated with it. My parents were abolitionists; his were slave owners. None of them encouraged our friendship, but to our surprise, they never forbid us from enjoying time together. Our early years were spent playing the usual games with other children―frontiersmen fighting Indians, sailors battling pirates, or colonists defeating the British. Our adolescence found us riding horses through the countryside, hunting, fishing, and camping. About five years ago, our friendship was tested. With war in the air, we spent many hours in taverns discussing the claims and counterclaims made by the different sides of the dispute. We parted amicably but headed in opposite directions.

The battle I alluded to before was fought during the opening days of July 1863, on these same fields I now traipse over at all hours of the day. The events I witnessed during the carnage will always haunt me. In my nightmares, I relive the worst of it―the sight of men blown to pieces, the screaming from the injured, the booming cannons, and the smell of gunpowder mixed in with the metallic aroma of spilled blood. War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing―unless you mean to line the pockets of some, advance the political agendas of others, or cut short the lives of men, too many men.

Like plenty of others, I was injured during the conflict, and spent long weeks recovering in the hospital. Unable to return to action, I was offered my current position by one of my former field commanders who felt I was qualified for it―I remained in the town.

I was here when, a few months later, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, Mr. Lincoln delivered his famous address. Those ten sentences, now known as The Gettysburg Address, reiterated our history and enshrined our nation as one for all time to come. But great oratory will never be sufficient to justify all the horrors and the deaths.

Any scabbing growing over my emotional wounds was ripped off today with savage violence. The injuries were laid bare once again, this time by my mother’s letter. She had just been informed that my dear friend, my cherished companion, my childhood chum, and the one I hoped to call my friend for the rest of my life, had lost his life in the Battle of Gettysburg.

● ● ●

“Hey, you!”

“Who, me, Officer?”

”Yeah, you. Gimme one good reason for not dragging you down the station, ya punk?”

“But officer, I’m the one who called the police. That man hit me and knocked me to the floor. I was just standing at the bar talking to my friend, and the guy became aggressive and began bothering us.”

“Which friend is it you were talkin’ to?”

“That one, the dark-haired, Italian-looking guy. His name’s Tony.”

“Yeah, I know Antonio. Everyone in Chelsea knows him; he owns this joint.”

“Owns it? He owns Prime?”

“Yup, and I’m pretty sure he’ll have a very different view of tonight's rumble. I’d suggest you head home and forget about tonight.”

“But what about the man who hit me?”

“Oh yeah, the one who hit you. That’s Colt, Tony’s boyfriend.”

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.