Marshall Ramsey

The sign read, “Welcome to Possum Lick.”  The BMW’s driver, a high-powered lawyer from Jackson,  laughed and thought, “Don’t want to know where this town got its name. And besides, it’s opossum.”  His foot pressed the gas pedal, making all 560 horses under the hood come alive.

He looked at the clock on his dashboard. He was running late.  Very late.

The sun was peeking over the Mississippi pines. It was 7 a.m. and he had an hour to get to the trial in Jackson.  He looked down at the climbing speedometer. “C’mon car. Go.”

His hand reached over and grabbed his cell phone to send a text. Suddenly he looked up to see that a car in front of him had stopped.

Brakes squealed and a right front tire blew.  A mean piece of driving sent him into the bushes of Myrtle Jones’ front yard instead of the back of the Preacher Johnson’s wife’s Nova.  Dirt flew and steam poured from under the red BMW’s hood. Airbags kissed the lawyer’s face.

A proper Possum Lick lady would not say what lawyer said next.

“You aw-right Mister?”

The lawyer looked up, groggily at a tall, thin man in gray coveralls.  Oil stains covered him from head to toe.

“#$%$.” The lawyer cussed again.

“I take that to mean, ‘no.’  My name is Gabriel Johnson.  I’m here to help you.”

The town’s only police car pulled up.  A chubby, young policeman got out with his ticket book. He observed the damage to the widow Jone’s yard with disgust and started shaking his head.

“You boys from the big city think you can just blow right through our little down.  Trust me, you can’t.”

“Sorry Officer,” the lawyer honestly said as he rubbed his forehead. Where the airbag had impacted was now bright red and very sore.

“Sorry won’t cut it, boy.  We don’t tolerate this sorta stuff in Possum Lick.” The officer began writing a ticket.

The morning had gone from bad to worse.  The lawyer looked around in his car for his cell phone. It was broken in the floorboard. OK, it just went from bad to worse to bad to worse worse.

“You’ll get one phone call at the station. Maybe. If the phone works. You wanna hear your Miranda Rights?”  The lawyer couldn’t believe his ears. He needed help, not jail.  What kind of weird town was Possum Lick?

“I’ll get your car fixed up for you, Mr. Lawyer!” the Gabriel the mechanic said as the lawyer’s head was being pushed down into the patrol car.  Myrtle Jones was being consoled over the death of her rose bushes.

The premature death of those rose bushes was the biggest tragedy to hit the town since the tornado of 1967.

The grand courthouse in Possum Lick was built right after the Civil War.  General William T. Sherman had used their old one as a bun warmer and the good people of Beauregard County had decided to build a new county seat instead of feeding the widows and orphans. It was a brick structure with a broken clock.  The lawyer noticed that it had stopped at the same time as his broken watch had stopped. Weird. But what do you expect from a town that has “Possum” and “lick” in its name.

The officer led him up the steps into the courthouse.  What the lawyer saw when they entered the giant oak doors was nothing like he had ever seen before.  He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.

For a building that was nearly 150-years-old, it was surprisingly modern.  While most courthouses from that era were dark and dank, this one was light and airy. There was minimal clutter and it was accented with marble and what looked like gold.  “You guys must write a lot of speeding tickets in this town,” the lawyer quipped.  The police officer ignored him.

They entered a second set of doors which entered into the giant courtroom.  This was the central room of the courthouse and was equally as modern as the rest of the building.  The officer led the lawyer up to front of the courtroom and uncuffed him.  “The Judge ain’t going to be happy with you. He was out painting landscapes on the Ross Barnett Reservoir and had to rush back to deal with you.”

“Great,” the lawyer thought. “Trumped up charges in a  small town AND a pissed-off judge.”

A third man entered the room from the back door. He was in a black suit and had slicked-back black hair to match.  His coal-like eyes pierced the lawyer’s soul when he looked at him and his voice could be best described as serpent-like.  “Good morning. My named is Lucien Deveraux. I’m the District Attorney in this county.”  His handshake was uncomfortably clammy and cold.

And then a fourth person came in from behind.  “Got yer car settled. Parts are on the way. Will get you fixed up as soon as I’m done representin’ you here today.”

The lawyer’s stomach dropped.

“Uh, I’m a lawyer. I can handle this.”

“Don’t be silly. You know the cliche: He who is his own counseller will often have a fool for his client.”

Today had gone from worse worse to worse worse worser.

And then, the back doors swung open, revealing a bright light from the judge’s chambers.  An older man, in white robes (not black) entered the courtroom. The police officer snapped. “All rise.”

“Uh, we’re already standing,” the lawyer said.

“SHHH,” the mechanic said.

“This morning we’re hearing the case of one Jackson Douglas III.”

“I know Judge, I was speeding and I took out the rose bushes. I’ll pay for it all.”

“SILENCE!!!!” the Judge bellowed. The lawyer wasn’t even sure his mouth moved when he said it.

“Deveraux, prepare the evidence against the defendant.”

A giant screen appeared and floated freely in the space between the Judge and everyone else.

Images started playing on the screen. Not images of the crash, but of the lawyer’s life.  And they weren’t pleasant images.  Every slight against another person were painful replayed. Scorned girlfriends. Crying children with special needs. The poor who went unfed. Talent wasted. Time wasted.  Scrooge himself did not have to go through so torture.

The lawyer started to speak but found he had lost the ability. His tongue had fallen silent.

The District Attorney spoke and said, “Your honor, as you can see, this man’s life is not worth sparing.  He has wasted it in the pursuit of money and flesh.  He deserves the maximum punishment.”

The day had gone from worse worse worser to devastating.

The judge rubbed his short beard and said, “Defendant, how do you respond to this charge?”

For the first time in his life, Jackson Douglas III was speechless.

The Gabrielle the mechanic, however, wasn’t.  He started to speak and said, “Um, your honor, I’d like to say a word in his defense.”

The lawyer knew he was doomed.

But at that moment, the mechanic’s oily coveralls began to rip away. Giant white wings appeared and a white robe covered the man’s body.

“OK, Gabrielle,” the Judge spoke. “You may have the floor.”

“You believe in second chances.  And of forgiveness.  I’ve read the Good Book. No, this man doesn’t deserve Your mercy. But what man does?  Send him back and give him one more chance.  See what he does with the rest of his life from what he’s learned from this experience.  Deveraux gets plenty of customers.  He can live without one more.”

The Judge rubbed his beard.  His eyes pierced the lawyer’s eyes. “OK.  You get a second chance. I’ll release you with a warning.”

Even the lawyer recognized a good piece of lawyering when he saw it.  “Thank you, Gabrielle. ”  The District Attorney walked over and shook his hand. “Congratulations.  I had big plans for you.” The lawyer realized at that moment how close to damnation he had come.

The Judge banged his gavel repeatedly and bellowed, “CASE DISMISSED.”

The sound of the gavel was replaced with the sound of beeping machines.

“Doctor, he’s awake!”  The voice belonged to an I.C.U. nurse.

“Why hello there.  We thought we had lost you a couple of times.  Don’t try to talk. You’ve been in a coma for a few days since the wreck.  You tore up your BMW pretty good.  Funny, they say you never saw that parked car.  You’re one lucky man, Mr. Douglas.”

Only the lawyer knew how lucky he truly was.  He looked around the room at all the flowers and balloons. And there on his nightstand was a lone post card.  On it was a picture of an old courthouse and some writing that read, “Greetings from your friends at Possum Lick.”

Bullets whizzed over his head, sounding like a million angry hornets.

“Sergeant! WHAT DO I DO NOW?!? SERGEANT?”

The sergeant, a burly man Irish man from northern Illinois, stared back at him blankly. The young drummer boy looked closer at his head. A bullet had hit him cleanly in the forehead, killing him instantly.

That’s how the day had gone so far. Badly.

The drummer boy’s belly pressed lower against the dirt. Bullets continued to whiz over his head and a cannonball took the head off a lieutenant who had foolishly just arrived on horseback. The horse fell victim soon afterward. One minute they had been eating breakfast peacefully, the next chaos had broken loose. If the boy lived to 100, he’d never forget the sound of the Rebel yell. Or the sound of the bullets.

War had seemed so fun just a week ago. Now this. And his drum was destroyed. If he saw General Sherman again, he knew what he’d tell him — “Sir, war is Hell.”

Four hours into battle had pushed them back toward the Tennessee River. What would become known as the Battle of Shiloh had started badly for the Union Army. And it would get worse before it got better.

The drummer boy was now alone in the ravine with his dead sergeant. The fighting had passed them by. The hornets had stopped buzzing above him. The screams of dying men and exploding shells had stopped. The boy was scared and tired. He closed his eyes wishing he was somewhere else. Fear, fatigue and dust choked him. The drummer boy succumbed to his need for sleep and nodded off.

He awoke to darkness. The sun had set and the fighting had ceased for the night. Even Hell took the night off. The boy slowly got off the warm earth and quietly padded back toward to where his camp had been. He got to the edge of the tents and noticed that they were picked-over — but abandoned. He slipped into one of the officer’s tents and noticed a pen and paper sitting on the small wooden desk. The boy sat down and began to write down what he had seen that day. One word after another. And another. Soon he had written a page. He found an empty liquor bottle and rolled the paper up and put it in it. The boy found a shovel and quietly slipped out of the tent and headed back to the ravine. There he buried his sergeant and placed the bottle on top of his body.

Today’s nightmare would go in the ground with his leader’s body. The drummer boy was determined to survive this battle. As far as he was concerned, the war was over.

But the war had different plans. He fought the next day, the next month and then the next year. He followed General Sherman to Jackson and then to Vicksburg. He had drummed in Chattanooga. He witnessed the slaughter at Kennesaw Mountain and helped burn Atlanta. He then marched to the Sea, tearing up railroads along the way. He’d forever remember the sweet sounds of the church bells when the war was over. The drummer boy, older and hardened, went home. But even his mother did not recognize him. The war had claimed another casualty — the bright-eyed boy had become a cynically dark soul.

———————————–

One hundred and fifty years later, a group of Boy Scouts marched along the lip of the ravine. “Nearby was the Hornet’s Nest and Bloody Pond,” the leader in knee socks told the boys. One Scout, a boy the same age as the drummer boy, fell behind. He had seen something shiny in the ditch and climbed carefully down the bank to see what it was. He looked closely for snakes — nothing — and then headed to what looked like the top of a bottle. The Scout pulled it out of the soil and noticed a scrap of fabric under it. And then a bone.

“SCOUTMASTER!”

The Park Ranger and the Scouts stood around the table at the station. The historian, in his rubber gloves and mask, carefully pulled the paper out and unrolled it. And on the yellowed paper, a 150-year-old secret was revealed.

Today was the worst fighting I’ve ever seen. One minute we were joking in camp, the next, we were overrun by Rebels. I saw many friends die today. But the moment that broke me was death of my Sergeant — my father — Thomas Patrick O’Reily. One minute he was telling me he would keep me safe. The next, he was dead with a gunshot wound to the forehead. I buried him here, where he fell. If this bottle is found, please give him a proper burial. Thomas Patrick O’Reily Jr.

The Scout who had found the bottle began to cry. The other scouts looked at him and started to laugh. But the scoutmaster raised a hand to silence them. “What’s the matter, Tommy.”

“My great great great Grandfather fought at Shiloh as a drummer boy. His father died here but they never found his body. My great great great Grandfather came back in at the turn of the century but never could find the ravine again. I think I may have just solved one of my family’s biggest mystery.”

The earth takes in her secrets and then reveals them when she wants.

In the Shiloh National Cemetery, a soldier was laid to rest next to a family mystery. And as a bugler played taps for his great great great great grandfather, a scout named Thomas Patrick O’Reily VII swore he saw the drummer boy banging his drum in time. But it was probably just smoke from the twenty-one gun salute.