The image of a tall rider sitting proudly on a great steed gradually appeared. He wore a plumed hat and the gray-caped dress-coat of a Confederate general. Dustin thought he lifted a hand, almost as if in warning. Then the sun blazed brightly, coming from behind a white cloud, and the general was gone.
“Hey, Liv, you’re coming on the camping trip tomorrow night, aren’t you?” Joey said, unaware.
“Pardon?” Olivia brought her attention back to the boy.
“The camping trip. You’re coming, right?”
“Uh, yes. I suppose so,” Olivia said.
“And you’re coming, too,” Joey looked at Dustin. “You said you would.”
“Yes, sounds like fun. I used to go on camping trips around here years ago,” Dustin told him.
“Mariah’s going to tell ghost stories,” Joey said.
“She’s good at talking about history, too,” Olivia added a little sharply.
“Yes, but you can only have a ghost if you have the history of someone who lived,” Joey said reasonably.
“Yes, of course, but...history is important, Joey,” Olivia said. “There was a famous philosopher named George Santayana who explained why it’s so important to understand history. His words are often quoted. ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ We need to learn from all the things that came before. It’s a good thing that we remember the American Civil War—especially when we see politics get heated today. Tennessee was the last state to secede from the Union, and the people were split on their beliefs throughout the war. East Tennessee actually tried to secede from Tennessee when it left the Union, but troops were sent in. The state was truly divided. The east was for the North, the west for the South—and the middle of the state cast the deciding ballot. It was horribly sad and tragic here. Only the state of Virginia saw more battles. The Battle of Shiloh was, at the time, the bloodiest in the nation’s history. But we learned from the war, Joey.”
“In many ways,” Dustin murmured.
Joey turned to face him, “Yeah, I know,” he said dryly. “My dad told me they still study Civil War strategy. Like today, you wouldn’t fight the same—we have automatic weapons and bombs and drones and stuff. But the military today can still learn from the strategies they used back then.”
“We also learned about compromise and holding a country together,” Dustin said, hoping he didn’t sound too much as though he was lecturing. “It’s easy to be harsh now when we look at the past. Sometimes you have to wonder what the hell were they thinking, and you have to try to understand the context and the reasons—and the mistakes. That’s history, and that’s why it’s important.”
“And why we get ghosts!” Joey threw in cheerfully.
“But ghosts are good, too,” Olivia said. “For instance, General Rufus Cunningham is a famous ghost around here, and he tells us a lot about humanity. He was a leader, but he didn’t consider any of his men expendable. And he valued human life even when that life belonged to the enemy.”
“Yeah, and he died. ‘No good deed goes unpunished,’” Joey blurted out, grinning.
Olivia groaned. “Oh, I give up!”
“Kidding, just kidding!” Joey said. “I love the stories about the general. Are we going to ride? Or are we going to just sit here?”
“We’ll take the forest trail to the curve, come back around and let them run again for a few minutes. It’s beautiful riding through the trees,” Olivia said.
She led the way. Trickster tried to stop for grass, but Olivia reminded Joey that the horse shouldn’t be calling the shots; he could give Trickster an apple back at the stables. Joey regained control, grinning at her proudly as he did.
Olivia rode on, and the others followed. She reined in at a copse, and they paused behind her. A doe and her young fawn were nibbling on short grasses near the edge, barely visible beneath the canopy of the trees.
“Wow!” Joey whispered.
“Let’s go around. Maybe they won’t bolt,” Olivia said.
They skirted the high pines, giving the doe and her fawn a wide berth. The doe looked up and stared at them. For a moment, her instinct and fear were visible. But she didn’t move. She studied them, then went back to her nibbling. They guided their horses around her.
Dustin didn’t see exactly what happened next. He heard something—a whizzing sound in the air.
Shiloh let out a snort of terror and reared up. Olivia calmed him quickly, and turned to look at Dustin and Joey.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” Joey said. “What was that?”