‘Warring’

Rollin Jewett’s varied past includes acting stints in The Bodyguard, Unsolved Mysteries, Miami Vice and others, penning Carmen Electra’s first film (cult classic American Vampire with Adam West), and being a contestant on Jeopardy. Rollin is also an award winning off-Broadway playwright with plays produced all over the US as well as internationally. As an author, Rollin’s short stories and poetry have appeared in various magazines, journals and anthologies, including the Night Picnic Journal, Aphotic Realm, Door is a Jar, Coffin Bell, Gathering Storm, and Gravitas, among others.

Warring

Sgt. Edwin Stahl carefully edges forward, crawling to the edge of a granite outcrop overlooking Cochran Shoals along the Chattahoochee River, east of Vinings, Georgia. He grunts, wallowing upon protrusions of scrub brush and weathered rock. The heady incrustation of sweat and dirt imbedded in the reeking wool of his uniform render him an easy target for horseflies and sweat bees. Sgt. Stahl is unaccompanied. Loneliness has clouded his thirty-three years, like southern summer storms batter resilient trees during prolonged downpours. Never fulfilling his unending yearning for affection, he remains in watchful anticipation. An aching combat injury compounds his desolation.

Applying highly honed surveillance skills, the stocky and swarthy Union soldier expertly slithers forward, scrutinizing the rapids below and the ridges opposite. As a Harvey Scout, Edwin forges ahead of the Union Army’s southerly trajectory, seeking tactical information on enemy position and strength. Having, for decades, successfully camouflaged his secret desires and deflected revelations of his true nature, he is adept in clandestine operations as a prized Union scout. Under the anxious command of Union General George Thomas, Stahl’s keen observational prowess is crucial to the impending siege of Atlanta, following the Confederate rout at Kennesaw Mountain to the north.

The river below, with its shallow cascades and deep emerald-green pools, appears free of human presence, though life’s experience has taught him to avoid assumptions. The clues, such as suddenly silent birds, chattering squirrels, abrupt river splashes, distant puffs of smoke, neighing horses, far-off bells, yells and cries, scents of burnt gunpowder, cooking odors, rattle of wagon wheels, unexpected movements in the corners of his eyes, snaps of twigs and rustling of leaves, horse dung, human stink, resonant rumblings of ground, metallic taste, and even the sense of being watched, all appear absent. He tentatively concludes that the Rebs have assumed fallback positions miles south near Atlanta and that the river can be crossed without resistance.

Briefly standing, Edwin abruptly dives onto his hardened belly, detecting sudden movement along the river below. His pulse races … armpit stench arrays a betrayal of budding fear. Easing up, he gently removes his hat as he again scans the scene below: he spots a lone figure casually splashing within a quiet river pool several hundred feet below.

Mid-day July Georgia heat stifles Stahl with its heady humidity, burdening his breath. Edwin notes a strange stillness surrounding him … nearby yellow pines fail in their usual whispering, revealing only sounds of persistently battering and gurgling water flow, falling and colliding with rock protrusions. Cautiously creeping ahead, he spies the bleached body of a lanky young man, naked save for a crumpled gray felt hat.

The man is taut-skinned and lean, likely from persistent dietary deficiencies. Save for an outcrop of dark brown hair protruding the decrepit hat, the young man displays pasty white skin that heartily reflects the harsh sunlight. On a granite jut near the man rests a disheveled pile of filthy gray wool clothing, a pair of partially disintegrated boots, and a single rifle awkwardly perched beyond the owner’s reach. Spooked by his earlier observational failure, Edwin watches and waits predatorily.

At length, Edwin reckons that the youth is isolated and unaided, yet he maintains caution. Assuming a motionless position, he studies the river scene patiently. No unexpected sights are evident save for the unclothed and seemingly lost lad. Stahl is puzzled: the young man should have fled the approaching Union Army but seems oblivious to his surroundings and as well as the looming peril.

As a scout, Edwin is prohibited from contacting the enemy or, if encountering a rebel soldier, to take prisoners … gathering military intelligence is his sole objective. Avoiding assumptions serves as his leading principle, but he reasons that a lone naked man with an out-of-reach rifle is of negligible threat … he cautiously advances. Fixated on the detached figure, Stahl carefully scales the granite overhangs to confront the mystery man below.

Though violating his orders in confronting an enemy agent, Stahl justifies his actions by promising himself extraction of key enemy information. But his motivations stealthily outflank his conscious pretenses: his mind denies that his eyes are infatuated with the nakedness before him.

“Stand up and hold your hands way high, soldier, so I can see them plain and good,” Edwin commands the startled young man as he springs around a large boulder. As the youth jerks about facing Stahl’s loaded pistol, terror etches his dirt-smeared face. The soldier momentarily stumbles.

“I said stand up, damned it; and I mean it now … toe the mark!” As the lad apprehensively stands and extends his arms into the air, Edwin notes tears streaming down the lad’s face. Stahl kicks the enemy rifle away from the grubby pile of clothes and unintentionally ejects the weapon into a nearby blackened pool. The gun rapidly sinks.

“What’s your name and rank, son, and why the jezus are you sitting out here by yourself with na’er a stitch of clothes on your hide?”

Edwin searches a pale and angular face spotted by a scrappy beard and patches of grime rubbed into the pores of still pimply skin. Surmising his shivering prisoner more a boy than grown man, he guesses the lad no more than eighteen years. Boy soldiers are plentiful among the Fed bluecoat army … he suspects the Rebs have even more. Pity for this disheveled excuse for a warrior surges through Stahl, who reluctantly recognizes the ongoing duel between duty and desire.

“Private Callander Hill of the 2nd Kentuck Infantry, sir; an’ please don’ be shootin’ me as I’m a far fetch from my unit,” the youth spouts anxiously, his quaking unrestrained.

“Where you from in Kentucky, private, and why’re not fighting for the Union?”

“I hail from Scott County, Kentuck, sir, and folks thereabouts don’ think too highly of the Fed’rals, not like those bushwhackers in them Appalchin’ hills east-wise. Me, I don’ care much for one side nor the other, but pa and my brothers all signed for the Johnny Rebs. Kinda’ did what I wuz supposed to, I guess.”

“You on French leave then, Private? Damned coward then … gonna’ absquatulate, I suspect! Then where hell’s your others, then? Takes more than one boy ta’ make a regiment, soldier.” Edwin quizzes his charge while continuously scanning his surroundings for others, chiefly enemy agents. His scouting acumen signals alarm … he senses the presence of an unaccounted party. He critically doubts himself.

“Guess I kinda’ got loss from my unit a time back … then I don’ recall more. Things kinda got confusin’ up there at Kennesaw way with hard fightin’ and all, and I skedaddled from where you Fed’rals were a comin’ … thought I wuz’ with my own, but it turned out otherwise. All I know is that I’m afar fetch from my own and don’ know where they is.”

“ Guess I kinda got lost; well ain’t that a sorry excuse for a soldier. How the jesuz do you get lost when there’s a swarm of troops all around you? Don’t make much sense to me. But I guess that’s how a Reb does his fighting, as y’all appear losing all the way to Atlanta town.”

Looking at the stark and submissive figure standing before him, Edwin perceives the lad’s past, a likely bleak life. Maybe three quarters a foot more than 5, the boy tips little more than 130 pounds. His ribs are menacing protrusions, and the caps of his hips extend outward from his thighs like tabletop edges. Isolated patches of dark hair sprout from his chest in sparseness that matches his meager beard. Hill’s prominent genitals, crowned by a thick patch of pubic hair, sway above two slender and hairy legs. Stahl’s prurient gaze is unstoppable. He has spied upon many an unclothed lad, most far cleaner and better fed than this specimen; however, secluded opportunity bolsters his calculating interest. Edwin is progressively gripped by longing and fantasy that shatters his otherwise cautious nature.

“So, why’re you all neck’ed like that, Soldier Hill?”

“It bein’ so hot an all, I was thinkin’ a gettin’ cool and a might cleaner in this here water. This Chattahooch sure’s got some chill water likened to home.”

“My take is you’re about to run to the Bluecoats like a coward, or maybe a Secesh spy more likely, Private.”

“Kin I cover up or sumthin, sir,” Hill pleads, concerned with his captor’s ceaseless focus on his nakedness. “Don’ feel right a standin’ here all neck’ed front’a every jaybird in these here parts.”

Abruptly, the young private bends, reaching for the splayed pile of shabby clothing.

“You just keep those hands up toward high heaven and don’t make another move, damn it, ya’ dumb jackass! Ya’ hear?”

An alarmed and speedily focused Edwin methodically meanders toward his captive and quickly raises his now cocked pistol, placing the barrel at his slumping prisoner’s temple.

“Dang it, I don’t just know what you’ve got in that pile of rags now do I? Now don’t move a stitch, you hear? Your being at unease ‘cause you got no clothes ain’t exactly no fault of a soul other than yours, now is it?”

Edwin watches intensely as the young man, expecting a bullet at any moment, begins shaking wildly. Stahl’s sense of excitement flourishes. The surge of mortal power over another, especially a naked man, begins to stir other passions, none in keeping with his scouting orders. As he looms over his prisoner in a dominance-festered, life and death posture, the private begins to whimper, unable to control the stream of piss running down the bleached flesh of both legs. The sight and stench of urine edges Edwin toward a jumble of anger and remorse. He cruelly strikes the back of Hill’s skull, buckling the hapless man to a fetal position.

“Oh, for lord’s mercy; why’d you go do that? Look at what you made me do.”

“Don’ know, sir, I guessed y’all was gonin’ to shoot me as sure as the day I was birthed! I was fearin’ to die … I’m too skeered to die jus’ now. Don’ shoot me, bless no, sir!”

Tears cascading down the private’s scrawny cheeks yank Edwin from near viciousness to icy concern. His rapid emotional transitions disgust him … his embittering hidden life conceives a vein of malice that disarms his judgement. Reassessing his stance, he surmises that Callander might have been handsome had he’d been better fed … as is, even without the boy’s pitiable loss of bladder control, Stahl’s perceptions of Hill wander erratically between repugnance and overpowering carnality. Shackled by years of sexual starvation, he’s torn between mercy and retribution.

************

High above Stahl and his captive, a secluded witness to the ongoing riverside conflict prepares to intervene. His pistol is cocked, ready to fire. Corporal Aaron Resh, a fellow Union scout, has secretively trailed Stahl throughout the day … though not assigned to the sergeant, he follows without apparent motive. His fascination for the naked soldier below matches Edwin’s. Observing the commotion below, Resh is torn between protecting Stahl and savoring the struggle.

************

“Lord, ya’ stench so,” Edwin screeches. “For chrise-sake, get yourself in that water and wash the piss off yourself, Private … into that pool behind you and wash that stink before I sicken of your sorry behind. Hell, it’s like reekin’ babe nappies in this bakin’ sun right now. Come on, git down there and splash yourself off, and don’t try anything tricky when you do!”

Humiliated and terrorized, Private Hill is paralyzed by his captor’s fitful behavior. Confused, he timidly turns toward the water, feverishly anticipating a gunshot-induced demise. He accepts the old Yankee’s grip over his life but is baffled by Stahl’s intentions … he senses a man in conflict … he detects both loathing and longing. Sluggishly, he lowers himself into a seated position and immerses himself in a pool of swirling, teal-tinted water, resting with his torso above the water line.

“Sweet jesuz, ‘tis ice-cold! Jus’ let me splash a bit an’ git outta here so my privates don’ shrivel to nothin’.”

“I said get your arse full inta’ that water, Private, and I mean business on that matter, hear?”

In renewed weeping, the mortified youth edges deeper into the pool, his shoulders at river level. Whirlpools dance about his plunged body, striking the surfaces of his rapidly bluing flesh. The prisoner trembles intensely … he’s tempted to flee the stream’s biting chill.

“Deeper, Private, I say … deeper. Get into that water ‘til you can scarcely breathe, you hear?” Stahl barks as power-fueled fancies surge within, his member swelling uncontrollably.

Without alternatives, Callander aversely complies, wandering hesitantly into the pool’s depths. He briefly searches Stahl’s face for a possible stay in sentencing; however, he perceives only menacing insistence. He falteringly edges forward.

With his mouth barely above the surface, the young man’s head suddenly disappears, remaining disturbingly out-of-sight. Initially presuming an escape attempt, Edwin shortly grasps that the boulders corralling the deep pool would stymie flight. Stahl points his revolver in the direction of the private’s last sighting, yet Hill fails to resurface. Edwin’s heart trebles.

Horrified by the debacle he triggered, Edwin shrieks toward the bluffs above, crying heavenward as in desperate prayer. His Union duties are set … he fathoms that saving the Reb is forbidden. Seconds lapse. Debate roars within his soul. Like a video clip under pause, indecision freezes all motion. Two choices have governed his stifled life since puberty: hide or escape. Yet, as the seconds flee, he rejects both.

Abandoning duty, Edwin removes papers and a compass from his rank tunic, sets his revolver upon a rocky ledge, and dives, fully clothed, into the dark pool where Hill vanished. Below the surface, an overpowering current slams his skull against a submersed rocky protrusion … he retains consciousness but loses his orientation. The water’s thrust and clouds of silt steadily sap his vigor. Quickly resurfacing, he resubmerges within shimmering bands of sunlight penetrating the pool, spotting in the water’s green glow the blanched white of an arm thrashing in the torrents.

Stahl’s sodden boots stabilize movement like underwater weights, allowing him to slowly shift toward Hill. He heists the drooping and slackened shoulders but fails to eject the soldier’s slumped head toward the surface. Hill remains submerged. Though terrified of water Edwin discounts his hazard and races toward the inert soldier like an enraged bear … he grabs but fails to dislodge a slab of rock trapping Hill’s foot. He repeats his actions, but the rock remains. Stahl’s tenacity ignites unremittent rage. Rapidly resupplying his lungs, Edwin ferociously leverages the rock, adjusting it sufficiently to release the unconscious private. Grabbing the youth’s scalp, he heaves the limp body onto a nearby outcrop. Hill’s skin is ashen, devoid of life signs.

Edwin drifts within an undercurrent of denial, refusing to accept Hill’s death, but simultaneously disavowing his ongoing deviation from duty. He wreathes within waves of ill-founded affection for an enemy soldier, stinging stabs of tenderness that, in combat, warrant a firing squad. Stahl’s attentions founder within a slurry of urgency and despair … conflict reigns … warring forbids empathy, cover extended to a rebel soldier. Devotion … death … duty … desire: each muddled within a cauldron of grief.

“Please … oh please, Callander … don’t, don’t … oh dear God, don’t go this way right now … you’ve come too far in this damned war. Breathe; I said breathe ... I’m ordering you; don’t you understand?”

Edwin ragingly pounds on the youth’s rapidly bluing chest, causing the unconscious man’s ribs to forcefully heave and fall. Hill fails to breathe. Losing hope, he seizes the youth’s shoulders and hips, turns the naked frame along its side. Laying along the inert man’s length, Edwin hooks his arms around Hill’s back and squeezes mightily, chest to chest.

Callander’s life fades.

With every passing second, Stahl’s will to survive subsides, his soul fleeing inevitable suffocation. His mission abandoned in quest of unspeakable ardor, he desires only not to be.

************

From afar, a baffled Resh follows the riverside commotion from his granite bluff outpost above. While certain of Stahl’s dereliction of duty, he resists reaction … his intentions for his fellow scout are elusively complex. Edwin has been in his sight for months.

************

Without forewarning, a surge of brownish slime ousts from the young man’s mouth and nose, plastering a slippery dollop of putrid ooze onto Edwin’s face as the youth coughs and gags violently. Though nauseated by the ejected cloud of rank mist, he gleefully embraces the private with revived aspirations.

As Callander’s breathing stabilizes, Edwin sobs hysterically as he agonizingly uprights himself and positions the private’s slumping head within the hollow of his lap … rocking the private like a Madonna mourning over her beloved. The day’s life and death encounters have numbed his perceptions of existence and meaning; yet he senses a path forward … an escape. The day’s encounters are his and Callander’s alone … their survival serves as a sign of redemption. He and Callander have resurrected.

Startlingly, the young man’s eyes open, fixing on the drained face of his captor.

“Em I dead?” a disoriented Hill garbles. 

“No, you cussed fool, you ain’t dead, though it appeared you were for a stance. Oh God, dear God … I believed you were gone for certain, but you’ve come back to me bein’ alive like you were before … you’ll not be goin’ out of my sight. I’ll take care of you and make darned sure you get back to Kentucky like you want. you hear?”

Neglecting his scouting obligations, Edwin sets a new course that includes a promise without means of assurance. But promises and hopes sooth his heart … his affection-bound aims flounder in absence of his proficient reasoning skills. He neither knows nor cares that Callander may be of another mind.

Looking upward, Hill spies Edwin’s tears. Comforting conclusions embraces him … notions foreign to a middle child of eleven hard scrabble kids, more in need of food and shelter than human nurturing. His dirt-poor existence had been daunting and with few frills, particularly affection. Hugs were unknown. Reaching an additional birthday was the sole luxury for the Callander siblings … being loved and giving love were never offered nor afforded. 

Callender looks into his captor’s eyes and winces, wondering what fate has befallen him. Is the old Yank his savior or executioner?

“Did ya save me, Sir? Will ya shoot me anyways?”

“I guess I had a hand in it … I’d have done anything to see you’d come back to me. I’m gladdened to see you a’living so, no, you darned dupe, I’m shootin’ nobody today.”

Sensing Stahl’s good will and eager for a life beyond scarcity, Callander gambles his future. In tiny increments he elevates a hand toward Stahl’s dampened face, mindful of the consequences of rejection.

Delighted by the young soldier’s tepid overture, Edwin gently lowers his head toward the scrawny face of the spent youth, maintaining a watchful eye on the enfolding interaction. He hesitates as foul bodily scents confront his passions, giving him pause … he ponders his ongoing dereliction of duty. Embracing this pathetic figure constitutes shielding an enemy combatant, a court-martialing offence. Throughout his adulthood, Edwin has scorned the long-locked instincts that are ushering him toward forbidden and uncontrolled affection. But his resistance is disabled as he grasps the enfolding joy about him, undeniable happiness he has long believed unapproachable. Even the stench of festering bodily fluids fails to quench his yearnings. He presses his lips against Hill’s, preparing for a final rebuff. But Callander lovingly accepts Stahl’s advances, relishing and furthering the evolving alliance.

Wound in delight, the two cling to one another like reunited mates, separated during protracted warfare. Craving trustworthy bonds of affection, they embrace with abandon … vulnerable … untried … alone.

Like an emboldened schoolboy, Callander abruptly flips himself above his captor and, prepared to usher forth his suppressed expressions of endearment, lifts his head toward the sky in a celebratory gesture. Smiling like two children positioning for sweet treats, Stahl and Callander initiate their daring engagement.

Edwin gazes longingly upward as his unanticipated lover, fleetingly pondering the precious reality of a yearned-for soulmate. Gratefulness engulfs him.

Edwin reaches for his lover’s face when a loud crack emits from some distant and hidden point.

Fixing his gaze in the direction of the report, Stahl fails to spot a source; however, he watches, as though in slow motion, as Callander’s body sluggishly slumps aside and toward the river’s edge … a thick mist of sticky gray and pink descends upon his face. Callander’s eyes are fixed and unmoving as though suspended in eternal contemplation, but his presence slowly saps away with a blank expression.

Edwin shoves his lover’s limp body aside and leaps to his feet, his mouth formed into an unutterable scream. Panting wildly, he pounds his chest in anguish, responding in agony to the carnage before him … the emotional impact of Callander’s slaughter sidelines the immediate horror of violence. Stahl’s brain commands piercing yelps of revulsion that his voice refuses to form. He subconsciously smears the revolting film of death from his face and onto his hands, spreading it across his tunic.  Eventually Edwin slams to his knees and onto the rock prominence, staggering within sobs that stunts his breath.

************

“He was gonna slaughter you for sure, Stahl!” yells an approaching figure in blue, stepping down from a rock ledge overlooking Edwin and Callander’s corpse. “Can’t tell if that fellah was a Reb or not, nekkid and all, but he sure was fixin to pound your skull as I could tell.”

Edwin looks toward the ledge, staring at Aaron Resh, a fellow Union scout walking toward him. A still smoking pistol remains in his grip. Edwin’s visual world passes in half time, as though floating in a dream world. The immediate events remain incalculable … that which proceeded Resh’s arrival refuses to mesh with the present. Viewing Callander’s violent end cripples his mental capacities.

Within his malfunctioning memory, he recalls Resh’s jealousy of scouting skills he couldn’t match. Suspicious of the junior scout’s reticent nature, Stahl steadfastly avoided Resh’s recurring attempts to befriend him, fearing familiarity. But, in his ongoing emotional fog, Edwin identifies Resh as his sole adversary. Anger surges.

Recognizing Resh as the instrument of Callander’s death, Edwin leaps to his feet and lunges toward his adversary like a hungered leopard springing for its prey. 

 “You son of a whore, you took him … you took him away from me … why’d you do that … why?  You didn’t have to … you could have waited … see if he was hurtin’ me! He was mine … he was my prisoner, only mine!”

“But he’s just a Reb, Stahl, and a buck nekked one at that! What the b’Jesus is wrong with you … why you frettin’ for the likes of him?”

“Dammit … damn you to hell you arse … I loved him … “.

“Not by a jug full, Stahl … hell, you paid me no interest these months. Why? Since Murfreesboro I gleaned you for a possum, all for naught. Why him … what was I but hankered down to you? I’d be the Union side and a might cleaner. Ever did ya’line with me, always dodgin’my ev’ry move t’ward you and us?”

“He was all I had … you took him … I’ll not it lapse that you did.”

Abandoning lucidity, an unarmed Edwin feverishly grabs a startled Resh by the neck like a frenzied madman, without restraint … as an aggrieved Achilles seeking atonement for his lover’s slaying. As his grip on the corporal’s neck slowly restricts Resh’s windpipe, the corporal swings his still free pistol-holding right hand and, after several unsuccessful attempts, places the gun’s muzzle against Stahl’s temple and fires. Stahl’s grip ends. As he slumps, Stahl looks up and gasps, “Callander.” His breathing labors briefly and then ceases.

************

Resh inspects the grisly scene, incapable of squaring his affection for Stahl with his wretched demise. Rech grieves, the dead distorted before him.

Hours pass as the evening’s light embraces the ravine. Certain of his inability to justify Stahl’s demise and fearing retribution, Resh wearily commits the day’s relics to the river’s cascades.

“Stahl … Stahl, why this … why this way?” Resh agonizes, watching the blood-streaked contrails flowing downstream as the bodies bob over the river’s outcrops.

Shattered, he crumbles and weeps.

Michelo Isola is a gay man who has longed to write meaningful short stories, but fearful rejection because of age (76) and identity. His pen name came about as the result of significant criticism from conservative members of his family.