He was sleepy. Something was making him sleepy.

Whiff righted his feet, getting the pressure off the side of his neck.

After a moment or many of this type of critical reflection, which had been his habit, as an inwardly criticizing type of thinker, Whiff finally reached that calm place in his mind. And the calm place in Whiff’s mind always invoked his Daddy, a big, smart, well-respected man of imposing bearing. Unfortunately Whiff had not inherited the imposing portion of his Daddy’s gift for an impression, and only the wide half of the big part. But that was ‘neither here nor where else’, as his Daddy would have said.

The terrible men yet sat their ugly seat, drinking their foul swill, but had abated in their torments for the moment. So Whiff drifted within, to that time when the white-as-snow glasses-wearing Yankee from way up North came a calling. Whiff was tiny, but wide already, and sneaking and peaking about from behind couch, chair, curio and radio, spying on the strange man, who hauled a massive briefcase [a longcase more like] of maps, manuscripts, photos, old drawing and what-have-you, all of which he spread out on Big Daddy Gleason’s coffee table like a homework assignment for a particularly cruel teacher. However, this particular teacher seemed to be the man himself, driven as if by some madness, to discover things little known and curious.

A mere six years old Whiff was, when he heard for the first time the complete secret story of Uncle Ben Samson. Whiff had already known about Uncle Ben saving the Yankee-killing white hero-general way back when, this being the reason why Uncle Jude had recently disowned Daddy and parted ways. Uncle Jude had ‘headed North for a Union Man’ as Daddy stood in the doorway, watching the last of his kin walk off over this sore family spot, into a wide world where they could forget that the cruel Confederacy that ruled them with a heavy uneven hand, had been preserved against all odds by the intercession of their hard-headed ancestor.

The man had a name—the interviewing man—but to little Whiff, who was so caught up in the details of their great and tragic family tale, he could not remember being able to hold onto the man’s name, just his questions, asked in his precise voice:

“Mister Gleason, the stories passed down by your folk, did any include a hear-tell of a lightning strike; of a strange-dressed man; of this man’s claim to be a soothsayer of some kind…with a premonition that General Jackson was riding to his death?”

For evidence the interviewing man presented various proofs: drawings; stories from almanac’s; letters from eye-witnesses; deathbed confessions of distant relations; and even colored photos of locations. The last was the most amazing aspect of this array of evidential inquiry into their famous ancestor; a color photograph, not black and white like politics and winter, but in living color like the natural world through the good seasons, way back in 1971.

Then the thing that most influenced Whiff throughout the rest of his life happened in the form of a question for Daddy, to which Whiff had the answer, “Mister Gleason” said the Yankee, tapping to a picture of a curiously but familiarly shaped tunnel, drawn in a somewhat fanciful manner, “have any of your elder kin, particularly the Samson’s, ever spoken of a wormhole, or something appearing as such in the atmosphere during or after the appearance of this strange man?”

Daddy was way out of his element, here, did not even know how to consider such a question, or a concept. But not little Whiff. Thinking it was finally time to take the stage Whiff popped up, “Yes sir I have. And I know what a wormhole is because I collect worms for bait all the time.”

Daddy said, “Boy, you have been cruising for a bruising all day, and now you just earned yourself one.”

Whiff stood at attention, knowing full well that Daddy would make good on the promise of a hiding with his razor strop and did not want the promise to be improved upon, and a promise it was. Despite his young years and excitement it occurred to him then that he had violated a great taboo. It was bad enough to speak up among conversating adults unbidden, but to a Whiteman—Good Lord he had messed up!

Now a Southern Whiteman would, and had, ignored him, and just judged his Daddy the harsher in his heart. But this big-questioning Yankee smiled kindly down at Whiff, “Young man” said he, with a tap of his pencil on the sketch, “have you ever seen this shape above ground?”

Daddy would just have to improve on the beating, “Yes Sir Mister Yank! On a windy day, when big ole Miss Moore hangs out her drawers to dry, the wind sometimes takes them just right, and makes a wormhole in the wind!”

The question man smiled kindly even as Big Daddy Gleason groaned in embarrassment. The Northern Man, rather than ignore his childish outburst, reached into his shirt pocket and produced what Whiff had always thought of as his Little Gray Man Card. It was a business card with a picture of a little big-headed gray man with almond eyes; that Whiff, to this day, forty-two years on, kept laminated in his pocket for luck. The card had been read innumerable times though its owner never invoked by phone, for fear really that he would not answer on the other end. The card that would go on to represent all of Whiff’s childish hopes was preserved as a good luck totem as the empty years wore on, read: Mike Trummel, Paranormal Investigator, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, P.O. Box 15301-89, Telephone 310-1826.

The Interviewing Man would now have a name, for so long as Whiff could dream.

Mister Trummel then looked him in his eyes like he was an entire full grown person of no particular demeaning color or low station in life, such as being a disruptive child, and said with all seriousness, “That was very observant young man. The effect you witnessed on the clothesline caused by the wind, I am interested in being formed by air turbulence made visible by particulate accumulation, and caused by a magnetic force. You will make a good investigator someday, and I would like you to have my card. So long as you have permission from your father, you may contact me without fear of being judged a nuisance.”

Although Whiff was only six, and one would have thought that the subsequent wild stories, and ten-plus-eight strop-hiding delivered by Daddy’s big hand before bedtime, might have driven these words from his mind or muddled them, they had been etched forever. Mister Trummel had given Whiff a mantra to live by, and had become the only Northern ideal that Whiff as a man would ever hold in high regard.

Mister Trummel had given the gift of the question, a thing of power if used with care. Those deep questions, and those remarkable proofs, that had led this questioning Yankee to Daddy’s door, and to Whiff lurking below the arm of Daddy’s chair, ears perked up like never before, would come back to guide him in times of doubt and downcast spirit in the years to come.

When Big Daddy Gleason began to spin a tale his voice sounded like God speaking to Moses on the mountain from the Easter Radio Plays. One of the best things about being the remaining Gleason—Daddy having driven the rest off in shame and bitterness from his adherence to the virtues of Uncle Ben—was the fact that all you needed was Daddy, and you had your very own radio show.

Big Daddy Gleason’s voice had always been of the deepest timbre, and had the most soothing quality, which he attributed to his morning drought of Kentucky whiskey, a daily ritual that was.

“Ben Luther was his name, after his master Captain Jonah Luther. In prewar days Ben would ride a big draft horse when he went along on errands about plantation and town with his owner. You see, The Captain rode everywhere—a skinny narrow-shouldered Whiteman he was.

Come the war, the Captain, a man of learning, and slight constitution, gave all but one of his horses to the Confederate cause, and began serving with that horse, as a messenger. The Captain would relay supply concerns whenever his portion of The Old Dominion was assailed by the Yankee hordes.

“Ben still came jogging along on the great ham hocks he had for legs. Ben Luther, nick-named Samson by The Captain’s wife, would always be there in case The Captain, a sickly man, had a faint spell, or the old horse flagged. Legend had it, in fact, that Ben Samson once carried that tired old horse home on his shoulders, like a redskin hauling a deer in olden times—while he towed The Captain behind him, who sat the saddle on the dirt track like a child on a Christmas sled! No fooling.

“Well, one night, as the Rebel Yell rang out in the nighted groves around Chancellorsville, and Yankee ghosts by the thousands fled to the darker regions of eternity, The Captain got word of some concern that might prove noteworthy to General Stonewall Jackson. Along with Ben Samson they went off into the night, to search for their hero.

“Then lo-and-behold, there came a dark light into the worry pale night. The terrible ghost like occurrence spooked that old horse Missy, and she threw poor Captain Luther. Ben Samson caught The Captain in one hand like a doll, and steadied Missy with the other, like she was an unruly hound, using the reigns like a dog collar.

“Amidst the thanks that usually came from nice Captain Luther, for saving his fragile form from a fall once again, a man of strange, even womanish, aspect, stepped before them. This man was dressed in soft clothes, blue coalminer’s drawers, useless looking slipper shoes, and a dainty looking jacket made of some silk-like substance that felt like good wax paper to the touch.

“After many pleasantries and questions back-and-forth between the two white men, it was discovered that this man made claim to some form of sorcery that permitted him to live his life at some time ahead, and read about man’s many misfortunes from the regrettable vantage of tomorrow. It pained this magician to no end that General Stonewall Jackson himself was to be shot that very night. The fellow wished to stop The General from scouting tonight, on account of danger posed by their own Confederate pickets, who might shoot him dead.

“Now, that last part there, about being shot by his own men, was left out by most re-teller’s of the tale, since it brought the claims of the fabulous magician into question in the eyes of Southern Manhood. That little bit is just being told here as a might-have-been-said. The long and the short of the tale is that Captain Luther was faint, and that the magician claimed to have never mounted a horse, despite being a man of means, if you can believe that! Now that is the tall part of the tale if you ask me.

“It came to pass that the white men, the Good Captain and the Mysterious Magician, elected Ben to ride old Missy in search of The General, to ride through the woods like a big black ghost, to that place in Time where the magician claimed Stonewall Jackson would lose his life!

“Now Uncle Ben, being a man of compassion-to-animal kind, and possessing the largest frame known to man, did not wish to injure poor old Missy and asked if he could run the message along. The Captain would not hear of it, saying that old Missy had to do her part in this war as well, to keep her kind out of them Yankee glue factories.

“So off Uncle Ben rode into the night. As soon as he got out of hearing—being that old Missy was already laboring under his weight—he got off and ran, dragging the old mare behind him by the reigns, leaping over the wreckage of war that littered the darkened trails, calling out to all that might hear, “Message from Captain Luther for The General” every tenth step, so he did not end up shot like the General had been in the weird Whiteman’s dream.

“After many adventures, including righting an overturned supply wagon; saving a casualty wagon loaded with moaning soldiers that was foundering in a creek; fixing the snapped axel of another wagon by twisting the steel shaft together like a double-switch fishing rod; and dragging a mired officer’s horse out of a mud sink; Ben Samson was struck by luck. The grateful cavalry officer, endeared by Ben’s heroics, traded his fine warhorse for old Missy, and Ben rose up in the saddle, minding the officer’s directive to call out loudly the entire way, so he would not be shot for a runaway. And off Ben Samson rode, into the gathering night, on that spirited warhorse!

“But, don’t you know, that a saddle crafted to seat some narrow-assed Whiteman who grew up drinking milk from a glass, will not do for the seat of the biggest butt in all the South, that belonged to the hard-working-boy-become-a-man who hauled that milk by the bucket from milking shed to house! So, imagine if you will, as Big Ben bellowed out into the night, “Message from Captain Luther for The General”, scaring that spirited cavalry horse all the more, how hard it was, for Big Ben Samson to keep that seat, horseman though he might have been!

“He leaped that horse over a breastwork of North Carolina boys from behind, scaring the be-Jesus out of them as he yelled for The General. The boys behind were arguing about whether or not to fire on him, to waste mini-balls on a runaway with Yankees about, when he saw The General come around the bend ahead.

“Now, moving at this speed, and keeping his seat by the strength of his hands, Uncle Ben bore down on The General, sitting tall in his saddle, advancing towards the guns of his own men in the gathering dark. So Ben, bellowing his news, went riding down the road barely in the saddle, at one point with the pummel uncomfortably wedged you-know-where. And, lo-and-behold, by the time Ben came up on The General and his staff he had lost all control and he and that hero horse went bowling through those officers like a bowling ball through pins!

“This mess came to pass precisely as the North Carolina pickets opened fire. However, thanks to being unhorsed and nearly crushed on the ground under Big Ben’s weight, Stonewall Jackson would live to fight another day.

“Now some fanciful things have been said about this occurrence which I do not cotton to. For instance, that all of the officers were killed leaving Stonewall and Samson to walk along the country lane alone, talking of the Negro plight, and The General promising to do something about it. My favorite is the story of the hero horse who bounded off into the night, and getting the attention of hiding Yankee troopers and eagle-eye Confederate sharpshooters alike, became kind of a taxi of salvation and damnation as Yankees piled on him to hitch a ride North and Confederates emptied his saddle just as quickly, five Yankees finally making it to Washington, all piled on the mighty charger’s back, to tell Lincoln the bad news!

“The carnage and fun was not really all that. What you can believe, is that Old Stonewall Jackson adopted Big Ben Samson as his godson and good-luck manservant. And, being a pious God-fearing man, and likening the magician—who was never seen again I might add—to an Angel of the Lord, Stonewall got Ben mounted up on the biggest horse that could be found, and kept him by his side, even through his third term as CSA President. They even say that, after standing vigil at the President’s bedside for three days and three nights; that Ben keeled over from a heart attack as soon as his godfather expired.

“There you have it Mister, the most real-to-life rendition of how my Uncle Ben Luther-Samson-Jackson, saved The Man, Who Saved The South—and it were not the only time, just this being the act that bears on your magician hunt.”

Whiff remembered leaping up and clapping and hurrahing and dancing around the coffee table at the story’s end, earning another plus-eight strop-lashings.

His day-dreaming and meanderings within always seemed to become a might hazy and unclear when reflecting on hidings, whoopings, whippings and spankings dished out by Daddy. Just now, these hurtful childhood memories came into view in his mind’s eye a bit more clearly; because he was being whipped for real. Whiff looked down at the cruel form of Diddle, who had fashioned a cat-of-four-tales out of the belts that had been worn by him, Boomer, Tommy, and their weasel-faced leader. His shins were being painfully lashed by the four brass buckles, Boomers being an extra heavy football-helmet-shaped buckle, as the fiend held the ends of all four belts in one hand and whipped away. The man continued furiously even as he guzzled his beer between lashes, and finally stopped, speaking between belches, “Don’ fall…asleep at…your own lynchin’ Negra!”

Oh Lord Above, please send a sign that I have some hope; that my perseverance is not in vain?

Another lash of the buckles slashed his thick shins, his gift from Uncle Ben through Big Daddy.

My, I felt all four of those buckles. If there were another than it might tip the scale of resilience and send this foot back off the gate.

Ah, yes—thank you Lord. I was saying my prayers for a forty-seven-percent net profit to you this afternoon when I changed for dinner, and something told me to make do with the suspenders and forget that fancy Argentine belt! Thank you Lord Above! Your good taste and diversion of that greedy prayer might have saved my big behind.

The fiendish Diddle seemed as if he would never tire, guzzling his beer, as he whipped away.

By the time that beer was empty Whiff’s slacks and sock tops were shredded.

Another beer was gotten from the cooler and the whipping continued with the left hand.

By the time Diddle, wiping his sweating brow, was finished with his second ‘whipping beer’ Whiff could no longer even feel the pain, and gave thanks silently within.

Diddle, having finished that beer, returned for the cooler for another and, switching back to his strong arm, renewed his cruel efforts.

My Lord, you set a wicked man down on this earth to test me you did!

Will this fool ever tire?

Diddle focused on his knees, renewing the hurt. Now Whiff swelled with inward pride as he did not wince, not even once, when his fresh parts were assailed with the cruel device.

Surprisingly, the man’s arm never seemed to grow tired, with beer after beer seemingly used to refuel each flagging arm. What was even a greater surprise was the fact that Whiff found no difficulty in staying afoot on the gate slicked with both Diddle’s beer and his own blood. After a while the mixture grew tacky under foot, and acted almost like glue.

Lord, you work in mysterious ways indeed, like a caulker I’d say.

Whiff did make sure to put on enough of a show to seem in great pain, though he could feel nothing much any longer, nary a stroke. In this way he used his acting ability to better his chances of lasting the night.

Eventually, even this tireless fiend grew weary. But such a fiend he was he wanted to renew the pain, and knew somehow that Whiff was not feeling it enough. Diddle then turned to his audience—Boomer yawning, and Weasel calculating and re-calculating Whiff’s odds—and said with some wit, “Now for my Captain Bligh imitation.”

With those words the cruel man threw the belts into the truck bed, a truck that still idled, like a distant thunder into the night, with its rude glaring beam lighting the woods behind like a backlit stage. Boomer, a lazy soul to be sure, applauded this change of play as Diddle scaled the side of the truck bed.

But now his drink showed up as drunkenness when before for this past hour or so of brutality, it had poured out as sweat. Diddle fell flat on his back to the laughter of his mean fellows. Whiff did not dare laugh for fear of bringing on the flung bottles.

Seemingly for hours on end the tireless fiend Diddle refueled himself with beer, apparently incapable of drinking himself senseless, and renewed his uproarious efforts to climb. At length even Tommy joined in the laughter—to his woe. Diddle turned on poor Tommy and beat him to the ground, then kicked him, with every kick falling flat or tumbling on his face. He would then rise again and kick, and fall, and on it went.

Eventually, his anger at Tommy submerged with more beer, Diddle made Tommy hunch by the wheel of the massive industrial monstrosity that was this truck, and attempted to use him as a footstool. This just heightened the entertainment of his friends, as the falls became greater and accompanied by more rage, and more beer, and more curses from the rabid Diddle.

More than a few times Diddle would fall and pass out. Then Boomer and Weasel would play cards and drink. Then, seemingly in the space of time that it took Weasel, a slow drinker, to down one beer, Diddle would rise from his horrid nap, tormented by whatever demons lurked in the shadows of such a man’s mind. He would then journey to the cooler in long halting strides, like a man risen from the dead; chug a beer and stagger on over to his sobbing human footstool, to renew his attempts to climb this ever more inaccessible vehicular Everest.

Whiff, like a plant hypnotized by the rise and fall of the sun, no longer even thought to himself, just stood, waiting with the deepest most resigned patience for the morning son, which he knew with certainty, would come.

Still the hideous play continued in the night; Diddle rising from the dead with each of Weasel’s emptied beers, while Boomer lost hand after hand of some wretched version of Yankee poker they called Chicago Hold-em. It got to the point that merely by counting cards in the lurid glow of the taillights that Whiff knew exactly when Boomer made each and every fatal decision that led inevitably to his defeat. In this way, not even curious about the increasingly sorry-climbing Diddle, Whiff seemed to evolve in his mind from stoic plant waiting on the dawn, to tireless rock, observing man’s folly, as fool upon fool paraded by harboring his baseless hopes. For Boomer, as improbable as it was, somehow believed at some point in every hand played that he had a chance to win!

“Oh, that big fool is a more absolute moron than he first appeared!”

Who said that?

I was thinking it, but could not, would not—Oh Lord bite my tongue!

Boomer then turned to Whiff, who he had seemingly forgotten in his hopeless quest to win a single hand of fools’ poker, and said, “What Negra? What!”

Diddle was now stirring and lurching for another beer, Tommy was crying, and Weasel evidenced a new found interest in Whiff, who he had apparently become bored with. The most chilling thing about this new version of Weasel, was that he now—having put aside the game of sounding like poor Southern trash, and having sobered up—spoke with the accented tone of an educated Manhattan-style Whiteman, the kind that spoke on the Monday morning radio about Wall Street, and worldwide financial matters, “You have done it now colored man, have called down the wrath of mediocrity upon yourself. I like you for it all the more.”

Then came the bottles, a great pile of which had collected by now, thrown with venom. Though stupid he was, Boomer possessed an arm that could have taken to the Union League pitcher’s mound.

Give me strength Lord—please.

Whiff was soon bruised, and cut and bloodied by the hail of bottles, having his brow slashed open and his lip swelled up. But, after taking note of Weasel’s comment that a missed head shot could break his own cab window, the vehicle belonging to Boomer’s famous brewery owning father, the big man confined his projectile vented rage to lumping up Whiff’s well padded body, nigh impenetrable to a mere bottle.

Boomer, like Diddle, still climbing his Everest and refueling at the cooler, continued in his pursuit for what seemed like hours. But being a beer lover, and having but a limited supply, took time to drain each vessel before casting it.

At last, after what seemed like many hours survived deep into the dark morning, the cooler was empty, and all three were standing there before him: Diddle’s hands in his underwear fumbling aimlessly, Boomer’s hands on his hips; and Weasel’s finger to his chin, the other arm crossed under his elbow. Then Weasel dragged Tommy, all dirty from his time as a footstool, to his feet, and checked the young man’s watch. He then came between Whiff’s feet and the other three and spread his hands, “Okay boys, Mister Colored Carney here has an hour to live before we cut him down and see if his neck snaps. What now?”

Diddle intoned soullessly, “A theme, we need a theme.”

Boomer answered with a question, “Like killing the hooker in the motel bed?”

Weasel patted the big dummy on the shoulder in a fatherly way, “That’s it rich boy.”

He then turned and looked up at Whiff, then looked above the tree line toward the distant Eastern sky for some sign of the coming day, “By God boys, its Sunday! You ready Diddle?”

Diddle answered tonelessly as if to an off asked question, “Ready Mack” he said as he drew his terrible butcher’s knife and licked the flat of the blade.

“So the Devil’s name is Mack!” Whiff blurted.

Mack just smiled up at him and said with some solemnity, “Today it is.”

Mack then turned to his two men and said imperiously, “Our colored carney sings a song, a Sunday-go-to-church song, and he stays the knife. Then he sings a different song…and, if it does not sound different enough for us pious churchgoers, he takes a cut, one cut, and only one cut.”

Diddle seemed to become animated, with a steely gleam to his eyes. Then, without even turning back around, Mack raised his hands like an orchestra conductor, and then dropped them and began to prance in a slow languid dance. Boomer grinned vacantly, Tommy groaned, and Diddle fingered his knife.

Mack then looked up at Whiff, without halting his sickening dance, “That Maestro, was your cue. Don’t miss it again. Now, and again before each new rendition, you must give out the title of the song—by way of an education for us godless heathens, or suffer the cut.”

Mack then paused in his weird dance and raised his hands like a conductor again.

Whiff did not need to be told about consequences more than once. He gathered his voice, and decided to give it his best go, and imagined himself singing to the ghosts of Uncle Ben Samson and Big Daddy Gleason, singing loud and proud enough for his words to drift up to heaven, which, he believed had been mankind’s first purpose in giving voice to song, “’Come to Me Sunrise, With Song’, composed by Sammy Toefield, on May Day, Eighteen-and-ninety-nine, performed by Whiff Ben Gleason, on this here bloody stage!”

Mack clapped, and rejoined his unsightly dance, even as Whiff drew his first breath and sang the song he hoped that the Good Lord Above would hear, and then hurry things up just a little bit if you please!

July 1: Lee Demonstrates against the outworks at Washington D.C. while Jackson crosses the Potomac by night.

July 2: Meade moves south from Hanover to stop Jackson from cutting supply to D.C.

July 3: Jackson and Meade clash at Sykesville. Meade is slain and his beaten force falls back on Baltimore, where it is pursued and remains besieged by Early’s command.

July 4: Grant takes Vicksburg.

July 5: Lincoln refuses to evacuate The Capitol.

July 6: Lee bombards The Capitol, and is gravely wounded by counter-battery fire.

July 7: Jackson launches a night attack and achieves total surprise. Before the morning of the 8th Lee’s vengeful army, under Longstreet, has breached the outworks as Jackson’s command rampages across the city.

July 8: Lincoln is brought before Jackson, who demands The President repeal the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln refuses, and is hanged. The Union garrison is paroled to Philadelphia along with the remaining members of Congress. The cabinet and Vice President are jailed.

-Marsden Wills, Eight Days in July: The Fate of Lee and Lincoln, from the back matter, Detroit Free Press, Second Edition, 1997