The Big Bang

My name is Paul.  I am a soldier.  I am a Yankee.  And I am proud.1

Currently, I reside in a makeshift hospital on the hills of the South.  The nurses are trying to keep it as clean as possible, but with a dirt floorin' with weeds poking their eyes in for a view, not that great.  2

There's only 'bout ten of us wounded in here right now.  Sometimes there's more, sometimes there's less.  I been here for thirteen days now.  Ya'll are probably wonder'n why I'm here.  Welp, got my arm blown off by a musket!  Odd things them weapons are, bullet pellets fly out everywhere! Can't just stay in one piece, like a cannon ball, now can they?  3

Anyway, so I was shootin... and runnin... and shootin some more and I went to duck down into a ditch behind a lil' mound of dirt, and whadda know? My brother is standing over yander!  Now, i haddn't seen him since the war started, he joined them Northern folk we been fighting, idiot for doing that.  Seein him though caused me to pause and not duck right away.  He wasn't more then eighty feet from me.  I smiled and wonder'd if he recognized me.  He did.  He smiled back then that son of a bitch raised his musket and shot at me!  4

When we was kids, we would shoot at the pigeon and crows, I had better aim then Billy.  He's gotten better I see.5

When he shot me, I fell over 'course and I was in shock, my own flesh and blood shot me.  I looked up, somehow gazin over that dirt and looked in his eyes.  This was all a game to him.  He didn't know better.  Shootin me was like shootin the neighborhood cat, only I lost my arm. Ol' One Eye only lost, welp, an eye, but that twasn't our doin', naw, that was the kid accross the way, Jim.  Matter-o-fact, i saw him yesterday laying face down in a ditch, shot in the chest, shitty way to die in my view.   Guess Ol' One Eye would be happy.6

So now here I lay, in a crappy hospital wing, on a make-shift bed with sheets reddened by others blood.  At first I was upset they had to amputate my arm but I realized, I haven't lost an arm, I grew a wing.7