The Days of War (standard:drama, 1590 words)
Author: stanley mcqueen kentucky backwoods writer	Added: May 14 2009	Views/Reads: 2856/1957	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
backwood man serves his country, coming home to find his parent dead and would have took his own life , but was saved by his brothers wife .. talking a evening walk in the woods

Days of War It was evening when me and paw and little Lester was taking
a rest after we had plowed corn grown all day, getting ready for the 
spring planting, paw was setting in a straight back chair that he had 
made himself, he has reared back against the big oak tree that stands 
in our small yard, Paw is the kind of fellow that don't like township, 
he told me and Lester that he needed room to breathe, I guess that is 
why we are living about four miles from the little township that is 
called Muddy Fork, paw worked this land out by the sweat of his brow, 
digging coal out the underground coal mine just about broke paw down, 
and he is a little crippled up and walks sort of strange like, guess 
you could say he limps a bit. He moved us from Virginia to Kentucky 
with enough money in his pocket to buy the hundred acres in the middle 
of nowhere really, we hardly see a soul out here in these woods, we 
cleared  nearly ten acres of grown to grow corn on, and to raise us a 
garden , we don't  go into Muddy fork but two times a year and that is 
to haul our corn crops to the rail head  where it is loaded on a train 
and shipped to where ever the corn merchant   see fit to send it.,. 
Paws” name is Frank and maws' is Mary and I am called Frankie after 
paw, and then my little brother who just turned fifteen last month this 
name is little Lester, our last name is Bishops, most of our relatives 
are up in Virginia where our roots started, paw said “he was glad to 
get out of Virginia because it was getting thicker settled and that he 
don't aim to stay were a heap of people are. Our shack was made out of 
logs it had four rooms paw is a good builder and is handy with building 
things, paw loves work better than anyone, and he is doing something 
all day as long as his eyes is seeing daylight,  in the summer we have 
the corn crops to tend and they get weeds in them and we have  use our 
goose neck hoe to chop weeds out of the corn, It sure get hot around 
about July and that when our work increases,  maw she pitches in and 
help us with the hoeing she is like paw she is bound to be working at 
something all the time saved when she is sleeping. It was on Thursday 
that a man come riding to our place on a find horse. He come for a 
reason and that was to tell paw that I was old enough to be in the army 
and that a war had broke out and they the government was needing men to 
fight and me being nineteen years old that it put me in the spot to 
have to go fight to help the government out, paw told the man he needed 
me to help around the place and that Lester was too young yet to do 
much work, but the man said you have no choice , and it was the 
government that made then law that ever available man had to go if he 
was able to fight, 

I sure hated to leave my home and go to the army but paw rode me to the
rail head and put me on a train that took me to be examined by some 
doctor that said I was fit to serve, from their I went and trained to 
fight at a training camp in Kentucky, after that I was shipped to a big 
ocean and loaded aboard a ship that took me to France and from there, 
to the war zone, the big rifle they give me was a good one I had learn 
to shoot a mouse eye out at three hundred yard, the enemy was them japs 
 they had funny cut eyes and look to me a strange sort of folks, well I 
killed as many as I got my site on and they give me a shiny badge to 
wear on my breast , that really  was not worth a thing, but just a 
speck of weight wearing it on the uniform they give to wear, paw and 
maw never could learn to read or write and I had no knowledge that they 
were ever alive or well or anything, , some of my army buddies lost 
their arms and legs and some lost their lives, it was to terrible to 
mention  , by the time the war was over and I got to go home I found 
paw and mammy both had died by a fever that hit the mountain, and 
Lester was gone off somewhere and none of the folks around my home knew 
what had become of Lester after paw and maw had died, I was left with a 
hundred acres of paw land and some money that I had saved while I 
served by army time I hadn't come home to a pleasant thing, it was sad 
seeing the markers that were drove in the grown where maw and paw now 
laid and I set and cried over them , and never eat a bite of food for 
three days, because of the sadness of my heart,  what was I going to do 
without my maw and paw, and why had I had to go and be separated 
without a notice that they had both passed on , life never seen fair at 
all , and I could see all those jap men faces that I had killed in my 
mind , they come back to haunt me at this awful time in my life, I was 
just about to put a hole in my brain to stop all this  grief that had 
stricken me till I hear a voice from a distance , Mr. Bishop a voice 
said what are you about to do to yourself with that pistol aimed at you 
temple, I lowered the pistol and look to where the voice had come from 
, and it was a young pretty woman , with coal black hair she was pretty 
standing there in the sun light, who are you and where did you come 
from I asked”? I live about a mile over to the south of here she 


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