Shades of Grey

[Will Dearborn]

(This is a non-interactive story.  It’ll be like those serials we all grew up on.  If anyone is interested, I’ll keep writing it.  Mostly fictitious, but you’ll find a lot of historical fact buried in it.  Irish Brigade stuff.  The history of the little town I live in – Waverly, Missouri, and the surrounding area  If it really drives ya nuts, drop me a line and I’ll tell you what really happened and what I’m lying about.).

Will Dearborn was drunk.  Very.  The jug lay empty, tossed aside as he raged at the imaginary specters of Cameron Highlanders as they fled from the carnage atop Henry Hill in the hot summer of ’61. 
“GO ON!  Skedaddle, ye pack of skirts!  Faugh an Ballagh!”
He would later fall over it as he followed the memory of Meagher down blood muddied Sunken Road.  On cold days, the old wound would still bother him.
Soon, Will Dearborn would curl around the jug as he had curled around the frozen ground at the foot of Marye’s Heights as the reb artillery rained death into their frozen ranks.
Let us leave the old soldier, for now.  We will chance upon him later, when he is sober and the ghosts of the past have left him, for a time, in peace.

-(============================================)-
   

   Will Dearborn opened a bloodshot eye and quickly closed it against the mid-morning glare.  The pounding on the oak of the door sounded like cannonfire in his tender, aching head.  He tried to ignore the noise, pushed the empty jug under his head for a pillow, and sighed.
   The frantic knocking continued.  Anger flared in Dearborn.  What sort of damnfool would arouse a sleeping man so! He lurched to his feet, irritation making his blue eyes flash like sapphires under saloon light.  A wave of nausea rippled through him and he steadied himself against the rough wall of his office.
   He tried to answer the insistent thumping at his door to be thwarted by a throat drier than the street outside.  On the third try he finally managed to bark something commandingly enough to cease the dreadful noise.  He raked a trembling hand through his hair, found his hat and forced it onto his throbbing head.
   All the movement dislodged the pistol from his holster and it thumped onto the floorboards.  He growled at it as he picked it up and shoved it back into the leather.  Fool! he harangued himself.  If you’d bothered to load the damned thing in the last month, you could have killed yourself just now!
   “And wouldn’t THAT be the pity, lad?” he mumbled.  He smoothed his mustaches and jerked the door open.  “WHAT!?” he barked at the bespeckled man standing there.
   The man, J.T. Nelson, looked startled then sighed.  “Another ‘late night’, Marshall?”
   “Ye have three heartbeats t’ tell me what’s so hanged important to come beatin’ doon mah door, boyo.  What I do in th’ privacy of me own office dinna hae shite to do wi’ you.”  Marshall Dearborn drew himself up to his full height, pulling his coat back a bit to expose the tarnished star pined to his vest.   
   The little man before him glanced sadly at it and nodded.  “Too right, Sir.  Ever since you stopped shooting up the jail every three nights there ain’t been no complaints.”
   “Nelson…  Yer wastin’ prescious time, boyo…”
   The little man swallowed and met the dreadful, red-rimmed eyes of the Marshall. 
   He swallowed twice.  He knew Will Dearborn was a man of quick temper.  He’s seen the hair-trigger go off more than a few times.  But like all the citizens of Waverly, the owner of the dry goods store had seen how Dearborn handled things and forgave him his little… foibles.  The Marshall had been elected after several notable actions.  Will Dearborn, former soldier and now only a wounded older man, had happened upon two former rebs on a hill just west of the neighboring town of Dover.  The two men in question were literally up in arms over a local Waverly girl.
   When Will Dearborn rode upon the scene, the two gentlemen from Shelby’s Company were putting shot down the barrels of their shotgun in preparation of settling their little love triangle in the local Waverly manner.  Shotguns and shouted words.  The crowd that had gathered to watch, including a battle scarred and blood-stained ambulance from the War, mistook the 69th’s insignia on Dearborn’s hat for some badge of law.
   Several weeks after that, Will would reflect that, yes, the wolfhounds supporting a quartered shield, coupled with the sunburst, tower, and stars and striped could be deceptive.  Add into it, the eagle and the sigil 69.  Sure and the thirteen gold stars atop the whole mess dinna help it any.  Even the banner along the bottom: Gentle When Stroked, Fierce When Provoked MIGHT look like law dog’s pennant.
   At any rate, when he’d got down from his horse and began to speak, they had listened.  When he motioned the tool amorous fools to the side to palaver in private, they had come.  J.T. Nelson didn’t know what the Marshall said to them fellas, but they dumped out the shot and went back home. 
   And then there was… the other thing, not too long after….

[Will Dearborn]

It had been about three weeks since Will Dearborn had drifted into Waverly.  Of all the nation, it seemed, this little pocket of people was largely untouched by the war.  Oh, there were veterans here and a great many of them CSA.  That didn’t matter to Will.  As long as a man stood for something.  It was the folks who stood idly by and watched the world burn that got Dearborn’s anger riled.  Will Dearborn had even been told tales of General Shelby’s hemp factory down the road before the man led the Iron Brigade on its rampage across these green hills.

Again, Will Dearborn didn’t care one way or the other.  He proudly wore his brigade crest on his hat.  He’d left a lot of friends dead and wounded in a wide, bloody path across this new country he’d crossed the water for.  WIll had earned the right to wear the 69th Volunteers badge.  All the Irishmen he’d served with and under had paid for their citizenship in this new land with blood and sweat and tears and gunpowder.  He’d volunteered for Meagher’s 69th shortly after arrival in these new lands.  He’d left a land riddled with hunger, where a man worked his sweat and blood into soil owned by an oppressive landlord.  A land where no one was allowed to arm themselves against marauders and brigands.  PErhaps the fact that most of the brigands and marauders were the landlords and agents of the Crown added weight. 

Will Dearborn had fled hunger and strife for a new land of promised bounty.  Where, if a man dug in and held on, he could keep whatever he could claim and defend.  Never mind the songs coming back across the water telling of the Troubles in America.  A popular one around Dublin had a chorus which ran through Dearborn’s mind a lot in the years after he’d volunteered.  “Paddy’s Lamentation” warned: 

   “ANd here’s to you boys,
              Do take my advice.
              For Americay I’ll have yas not be goin’
              For there’s nothing here but war,
              Where the murderin’ cannons roar
              And I wish I was back home in dear old Ireland!”


 Will Dearborn had intended to keep himself out of any such troubles.  That is, until he landed in New York and learned what the fighting was over.  And how this question of human dignity had ripped his Promised Land asunder.  Our Mr. Dearborn knew all about working for another man for little or no pay and having the best taken while the rotten, ragged leavings were hurled to the workers like one hurled scraps to a mongrel dog.  Slavery of a sort was practiced upon the Irish people by the Crown of England.  Will’s blood had began to boil almost before his stomach had settled from the voyage.

In the struggles for freedom in his own land, Will Dearborn had read of a great man who spoke for every angry Irishman – Thomas Francis Meagher.  The man’s bold words “Abhor the sword - stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for at its blow, a giant nation was started across the waters of the Atlantic, … the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic - prosperous, limitless, and invincible!"  His poetic use of the image of a sword as the need for the people to fight English oppression stirred the Irish and founded Young Ireland.  Will Dearborn remembered Meagher of the Sword well.

"It is not only our duty to America, but also to Ireland. We could not hope to succeed in our effort to make Ireland a Republic without the moral and material support of the liberty-loving citizens of these United States."  So spoke Meagher after Fort Sumter.  And those simple words spoke to Will Dearborn’s heart.  He’d come to see these dark-skinned men as brothers of a sort with his Irishmen at home.  He’d gotten in line after a month of signs reading “HELP WANTED:  No Irish need apply”.  Here was a job he COULD do.  And hundreds of his countrymen before him had done.

That was all in the past, now.  Today, Will Dearborn stepped from the porch of the Waverly Hotel, not into the tromped mud of a Brigade encampment.  Will adjusted the hat on his head and looked down Main Street.  The Middleton Bank was just opening its doors for the day.  Down at the Gem Drug Store, Fagan was soaping his windows.  It must be Riley’s day off.  The partners alternated mixing up their snake oil to keep the faro tables filled with coins and cards.  A wagon rolled slowly by, loaded with grain for H.J. Gordon at the Feed and Livery down on Broad Street.

In short, this morning was the same as the twenty others Will Dearborn had spent in this town.  Later this day, that would change.  But right now it was peaceful and blessedly the same as all before it.
Dearborn ran a hand over the stubble on his cheeks as his pale blue eyes roamed the street.  John Shoody stepped from the Barber Shop, shaking out his cape, sending a cloud of hair into the morning wind.  Will stepped into the hard-packed dirt of the street and made his way to the Barber.  He’d have Shoody shave him and tame the hair at the nape of his neck before finally looking for work.  His last four months pay from the Army was finally gone.  He’d have to find something that paid soon if he intended to stay around here.  The locals were firm on the fact that a man in these parts either worked for his living or he moved on down the road.  That was just fine with Will Dearborn.

Shoody nodded at him and gestured to the chair.  Will hung his hat on the tree just inside the door and took his seat.    Shoody immediately began to regale Will with the new arrivals at Gordon’s Store.  A half-dozen new Colt pistols has arrived by the W.S. Express just this morning.  Shoody hadn’t had time to go look them over, but had heard they were fine examples of modern artistry.  Will grunted non-committal and fingered the hammer on his converted Remington.  Sam Colt could make all the pistols he wanted to, in Dearborn’s opinion.  The one at his hip under the barber’s apron had more than proved itself over the last few years.  Unlike the reb ones he’d seen around here, his was NOT a pretty, shiny brass thing.  Good gunmetal and dark as the long night.

Shoody pointed to his hat with his comb.  “That shiny bit on your hat, there, Mister…  Is that some kinda Marshal badge?”

WIll nodded as the barber dipped his brush into hot water to lather the cup.  “Sure an it is.  An’ me name’s Dearborn.  Will Dearborn, if it do ya.”  Will had heard “martial” not “Marshal” and answered accordingly.  It was indeed a martial thing.  Army all the way.  Faugh an Ballagh and clear the way!

That little verbal misunderstanding led to what came later and much afterwards.  Shoody, like all of his trade, talked and talked.  Who needed the Saturday Morning Visitor?  The barber usually beat the paper on news by at least five hours.  The Sheriff came here for his news and so did the editor of the  Visitor. 

At any rate, later that day as Will sat down to his supper at the Hotel, Sheriff Stevens sat opposite him and looked furtively about.  Waverly was fairly lawless in parts and the violence was growing worse.  The sexton had threatened to quit digging graves for free, there was so much business for him lately.  And now, some of the roughest men around had threatened the Mayor.  In no uncertain terms, they’d said openly that, should they be arrested it would be the Mayor’s last living act.  The Sheriff could no longer look the other way.  But he’d be damned if he’d do it alone.  Stevens saw it as almost divine intervention that a Marshal had been sent here and intended to hand jurisdiction over to the U.S. in this matter.

It might have been more to his liking if the Marshal wasn’t a Paddy and a foreign Yankee at that, but… who was he to judge the Almighty?  Noah had been a drunk after all.  Here sat the end to all his problems, sitting right here drinking coffe.  Stevens glanced at Dearborn’s “badge” and then made his speech.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)