Ain't Virgil's Theory (Ghostwritten)
By ice rivers
- 442 reads
Virgil Kane ain't my name but it's close enough.
Ya see, Kane wasn't the only one hungry and barely alive after Richmond fell in the winter of '65. I was more than hungry and less than barely alive when I passed away that very same winter in Roanoke. That's the year they drove ol' Dixie down when all the people were sangin'. Course y'all know that tune dontcha. I hear Kane even got a chance to see Robert E. Lee. Damned if I ever did.
Ya know the Yanks wanted to make Bobby Lee their commanding offisuh but Bobby din't want no hand in that shuffle. He had to choose between the "republic" and our home state of Virginia. Bobby decided to stand up and fight for his home. If his country was comin' after his home, Bobby would have to beg to differ.
So did I..right up until the time I died.
Now the day I died, I had one last dream left to me that I nevergot aroun' to dreamin'. I figgered I was jes goin' to sleep on that last afternoon. That sleep turned out to be no sleep at all but instead sumpin' deeper that I ain't come out of yet. I ended up here which is pretty much nowhere.
My dream or at least parts of it survived. Every so often that restless dream will settle down near a Yankee flag. When it does, some folk think they've seen a ghost.
I guess they have those great, great, great grandsons and daughters of the Union. My dream catches 'em sayin' that pledge to the enemy flag. My leftover dream makes 'em shiver, maybe even contemplate a little what departed Johnny's like me might be feelin' bout those words they mouthin'.
Damn recitin' makes me so sick to my empty stomick that I jes cain't rest. Sometimes I wonder if those folk pay any attention to what it is they sayin'.
I pledge alleginace to the flag of the United States of America
Now, why they makin' these folk pledge allegiance to anything much less a flag. I guess the thing they pledgin' themselves to is the United States itself. That pledge don't say much for our attempts to divide the states, under ol Jeff Davis. We'd a done just that if we'd a won. We'd have separated the states while strengthening each of 'emĀ so that none of 'em got swallowed up and spat out by the big, old, crooked federal guvment.
AND TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS
What's a republic? A republic is a politicl unit. Now UNIT fer as I know is one thang. We was talkin' about two thangs. Two republics livin' side by side in harmony. Not jes one.
ONE NATION
One agin' and ya know what that nation is? It's the one that the war between the States forged out of the blood and bone uh men like me and Kane.
UNDER GOD
No hol' on raht theyah. This things that's so called pledge ain't jes a patriotic oath now, is it? Tarnation, it's a public prayer. Damn, I thought separation of shurch and state was one of the things, we was fighting for...all of us.
INDIVISIBLE
Don't that mean cain't be divided. Hell that's exactly what we gve our lives for; the right to divide the damned pie if the citizens saw fit. "Indivisble" that sounds like ol' Abraham hisself, speakin rousin' those yanks up to come on down and take our land and our wimmen.
WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FO ALL
Now that's all left over from the French revoulution and their slogan, lberty, equality and fraternity that they was yellin' when they weren't choppin' off the heads of each and other. It also a way to remind the South that some few of us was slave owners which meant we didn't believe in universal liberty as strong as ol' Tom Jefferson. Guess they think it took the Yankee Emancipation Proclamation to smarten us folk up regardin our brothers.
Hell, we knew slavery was a dyin' horsethat we wasn't goin' to be ridin' much longer. We stubborn, hell yeah, but slavery ain'y sumpin' we goona give up our civilization and our lives for. Don't y'all bhelieve for one minute this conflick was all about slavery. Slavery was nuttin' but the tail at the end of the hog.
Granted, all a what I'm harpin' bout happened a long time ago because I passed before I finished with dreamin'. I'm still stuck here which is lie I already said pretty much nowhere today.
My ghostwalkin' dream has been noticing some further splits in this country, this here so-called United States in 2018. Pretty soon somebody gonna add "born and unborn" after liberty for all. Thos three words jist might get that ol hog walkin' through the slop again once peeple start philosophizin' and choosin' side tryin' to make America great again.
Don't nobody try to add living and dead to that liberty and justice for all stuff. We dead ain't gonna buy it. Not as long as every day the living take a pledge against the memory of a whole bunch of us who up and went with the wind...makin' villains of us all.
If you read this heah ghostwritin', may y'all feel a bit of a shiver next time you start sayin' these words;
I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE
If you do tremble a bit, dontcha fret none, that shiver's caused by that old rebel ghost which is nuthin more or less but what's left of my dream. I don't mean ya no harm. I ain't nevah meant nobody no harm lessen they harm one a mine first. Even then, I might turn a cheek fer a spell. Glory be I'm about as much trouble as a theory.
I declare, on my tombstone, if ah had a tombstone, somebody should have writ " Died of a theory". That's what it about amounts to and that's what I become.
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