Preface.

Stonewall Confederate Cemetery, Winchester, VA., is in the area where much of the action in this manuscript takes place. Thomas Jonathan Jackson himself said If this Valley is lost, Virginia is lost. It has a quiet all its own, this resting place of 2,575 Rebels. Engraved in the pedestal to the main statue dedicated to the unknown buried here:

“WHO THEY WERE, NONE KNOW: WHAT THEY WERE, ALL KNOW.”

***

And for now, 1862, all streak north; they all streak south. They go out in blurred sunlight & a valley laid under. Ride trains from Richmond to D.C., a 100 mile thin eclipse to learn their lines & hit their marks. They are an American Eagle making a fist. They hide in corn & wheat & tall grass & short, behind earthworks, on rooftops, in saloons. They have a snifter of whiskey. All for one and one for all. They are a large ensemble cast, they are a half-dead man. They are a line of carpenter ants, a raw black thread strung out across the atmosphere. They are in extreme centrifugal situations. They are vaporized. In the background, in the foreground, they watch a massive arc of blood become too far gone to get back in the body. They stand twitching at the ready for their one cannonball signal. They know not who fires it nor why. They yell “Hurry up boys!” They march on the double-quick, out on a dark night. So many stars & then none. They move supernaturally through the oaks & pines. Wait for it to get light out. They ride thoroughbreds in front of the action like they can cross the bridge between life & death at will on a trick horse. They’re game pieces. They walk right up to someone. They get in lines, flanks, or they get alone. They charge through corn stalks half again as tall as them. They watch the swaying backs of men disappear into Earth right in front of them like a comet down a road, its white dust tail, the red sodium coming off it but now it’s making a strange howling noise. Screaming & more screaming &c. They carry a cartridge box the size of a big fist. They look for the first place to tie off their justification. Don’t let the flag touch ground no matter what. It’s all about the flag. They take shelter or they line people up, shoot, then call it a firefight. They blindfold ’em & shoot, they tie ’em to trees in a copse of woods & fire, swear on a mother’s grave not to pull the trigger, then do. And do again. Shot and reloaded and shot again. They use primitive primate defense tactics. They get reptilian. When the moon is darkest they go on CNN. The BBC. Al Jazeera. When Venus starts up in the west sky they get on a Western. They get on COPS then fight to the death for public entertainment. They seize a fallen flag, take it out a man’s hand & continue on in that direction. Leave the dead leaned with their backs up to each other like taking five, like taking tea under unresolved clouds, skeletons of trees leaned into one another. They cross their arms over their chests, sink them down out of sight for good. They keep the revolver downrange. Then they aim low because the rifle pulls up. They glide horizontally like cruising sharks. They crawl along the edge of the world, berserk. They get behind stumps. They get behind cars. They get on a slope. They go out on the offensive, they go on the defensive, they get on both, they move in one rhythm, they go with the ground cover, they go with the camo & the face paint, & they go without. They go out in the middle of a street in broad daylight in front of 100 witnesses. They point. They scope. They play a fortune telling game. They play a fortune hunting game. Approach in good order & bad. Ridge, ravine, bluff. They move tentatively, rustling as soft as moth wings. They have premonitions. They just know. They stand to their guns, they hold them to heads. They make gestures to save themselves. They veer into pageantry. They know no one will stand on ceremony. On code of conduct. They crouch holding wounds shut trying to help them. A deep gash to the neck. They know you have to put the silencer on the gun. You have to think it out. They put the silencer on the gun. They think it out. They place their rounds. They place their bets. They hang themselves with a knot shaped like an ancient Viking symbol. They achieve escape velocity. They pick them off as they run out the only exit. They present them, capture them, hold them in hands, at sides, in the air, or parallel to the ground. They lay ’em down when cornered. They leap through the air in synchronous motion as if carried by a thunderstorm wind updraft. They are something stuck in the sky’s eye, or black, low to the ground like Mammatus clouds. An atmosphere of simultaneous day and night. Jumbo pupils. Incoming. Or a vertical slit like a cat pupil. They are three blind mice then are none. See how they run. They are a huge throng suddenly immobilized. Waiting in the tall grass for as long as it takes, they know the moment. They know how light has a smell to it the way a wind does coming. It’s high summer. It’s low winter. They undergo gravitational collapse. They are hunched, out of ammo. They all carry branches, a way to go on. Defend to the end. They are lying in wait, they are luring you to your death. They move a ¼ turn westerly. They can feel what has been, what is about to be. They are a young round bloated face, a femoral venous line cut. They are yelling raspy things out their mouths. The downy young. They are animals with pointed tones calling out their open mouths. They have a Constitution. Smoke down to the ground. Flames yellow, orange, & red for redemption. They wait for the ground to thaw. The shiny glass to go. For heat to dissipate. For rain to stop. The strange dark orb to move along. They are down for the count. They leave a line broken up. They leave a flank in the air. They are circling each other. They are burying each other. They are just one bullet away. They can be a few hundredths of a second off. They are those who are in a covenant. They are bright & twisted. They cut all the carotid arteries of a soft throat. All the telegraph wires. They sink in mud never to be seen again. They explode in too many pieces to count, become something you can no longer imagine. Gone, just gone. Blood pudding. They die by timber splinter. A shell fragment. A flying arm, boot, head that rose in the sky where it was not supposed to ever end up but did, a film noir punchline, bone on bone, bone off bone, detached heads, 46: miles of nerves in a human body. They are the bones jutting out of human skulls under humus. Skeleton face. Several lower jaws of small animals. They are the calvariums of the cavalry. There, in an instant, is the mouth. The lower jaw falling open. The weight of a human head far lighter than you’d think. 29: bones in a human skull. Just that. They are tearing off uniforms to see where the hole went. They are a belt swung off fast like a snake. They are left laying there like a display of male dolls. The final repose, serial killer style. They stand in the unparaphraseable as if a piece of gravity broke loose, took all the words. They stay in the unparaphraseable because that must stand in its own stead. Like fresh soil on a grave. They are a gaze fixed post-mortem to look better for the citizens who don’t know. Who can’t know. They are patriots. They are traitors. They are neither. They are Americans. Like fragments that remain in nearby orbits & reaccrete, they are going back the way they came in, a haint reversing a curse no one can fathom what the cause of was. They are 1775, they are 1865, 2065 & we are still coming in from the North, on another trail [still not dead & still not for sale], through a timelapse mist, an ether, in a laugh track off a Western like something that forgot to scar over. Bet. They write orders, words with a stroke from left to right, put who goes where then does what. Dealer’s choice. They become gamely willing. Complicit. They say Enough Said. They say Copy That. They understand no one will know their names. Not now. Not ever. They know- somehow, some way- in their blood that any infrared glow in their eyes won’t show up in a photograph; that’s for later (there is something in that, if little). For now, winds carry the blood here in summer’s yellow cloth, Jackson’s Valley Campaign. But the arrow in the legend? That will take you here later? Where the attraction will be? They figure right that that caption will be wrong. That their world will shrink to the space between the four sides of the plaque, that the margins will never have enough room for the words that language neglects. It’s all over but the song. Spangled is gone. Pulled out like a knife. For now they are no more than stick figures walking between the worlds having just arrived. Ghosts in their blood, the off-scourings of the spangle, Petechial hemorrhages of the strangle. They are resigned that they will gradually become no more than souvenirs. A slow-motion spectacle in which they run, fall, get up again…. crawling. That it’s a kill that’s more than a kill. That they are moving from discrete points to blurs then back into pure ground. That they have no bags a body can fit into. They were us before we were us. They get Panavision. They get snake-fascinated. They get disinterred. They watch a town crumble from shells & exhaustion one brick, mortar, tibia at a time. For now, they angle off onto a tobacco plantation like a whole grazing animal, all one color like locusts, take the two foot long leaves, snap them off like firing caps, & chew. They understand the plot is preposterous. They are pale as a brass sequin. They drop belongings all over the field, at the back fence in the open field, where they torch the Great House, the fence posts to stay warm & living. Torch dead horses & mules in a pile. How wind has that smell at a time like that. The white bone of it sticking out. A white elongated driftwood piece. That this is the way the world ends. That whatever else it claimed to be, it wasn’t what it claimed to be. How fire destroys its own evidence. They do not believe what is in the archives of any government agency. They know who they are. They know what they’ve done, & sometimes why. They struggle against a bad translation always, always. That ears & noses are where blood comes from if the noise gets concussive enough, that a bruise spreads down a body more in the direction of gravity, like a star had got too low. They show us how fast it can turn & go bad. How fast it can turn. Go bad. They know that a few degrees from tonight, a few degrees from next century, it’s still tonight, it’s still blood & smoke & the cries for water. Something no longer living and not yet passed over. That it never was what you think. The vacated positions of the bodies. A gaping hole where the face was. They are denied, repudiated, shunned, repulsed, maligned, blamed, scapegoated. They are valored, adored, cherished for an eternity. Some touched by the devil. Some touched by the devil’s God. They cry for mothers in the last minutes. Heroized, sending up flares, they’re who we like to think we are. They know a state-sponsored stick-up job when they see it, that there are 293 different ways to make change for a dollar, for the dead presidents on the fronts & backs of the greenbacks. They know the rule is if the card doesn’t hit the floor, it plays. That it will always be a shadow in the palm of a hand, waiting. They look at the last thing they’ll hold in their hand. The final hand. Like hands already severed post-mortem, that these are just the things you can’t take with you. They look up at those small specks of light in the sky because that’s what bullet fragments look like, the black stars around the edges of what’s bright enough to make out. They scrape out a shallow grave until a small animal bone comes to inhere in a hollow statue. Then there is no getting it out.