Ron Reads Boring Books

Echoes of War

• Ron

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A deaf-mute child plays soldier in the woods during the Civil War, encountering wounded men crawling back from battle without understanding the horror surrounding him, only to discover his home burned and his mother dead from an artillery shell.

• A six-year-old boy, son of a former soldier, wanders into the forest with his toy wooden sword
• The child falls asleep in the woods, unaware that a battle rages around him
• Upon waking, he encounters wounded soldiers crawling through the forest but perceives them as strange playmates
• The boy follows the injured men toward a red glow in the distance, becoming their "leader"
• He discovers the red light is his own home in flames and finds his mother's body with a horrific head wound
• The final revelation that the child is deaf-mute explains his inability to hear the battle or understand what he witnessed

Please give me a five-star rating and a good review if you enjoyed this short story.


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Speaker 1:

Hello, are you tired? You will be, because this is Ron Reads and today we're reading a story called Chickamauga by Andros Ambrose Bierce. One sunny autumn afternoon, a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure, for this child's spirit and bodies of its ancestors had, for thousands of years, been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest, victories and battles whose critical moments were for centuries, whose victors' camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its race, it had conquered its way through two continents and, passing a great sea, had penetrated a third there, to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.

Speaker 1:

The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In his younger manhood, the father had been a soldier, had fought against the naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a civilized race to the far south. In the peaceful life of a planter, the warrior fire survived. Once kindled, it was never extinguished. The man loved military books and pictures, and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father, would hardly have known it for what it was. The weapon he now bore bravely as, became the son of an heroic race, became the son of an heroic race and, pausing now and again in the sunny space of the forest, assumed with some exaggeration the postures of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver's art, made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes. Attempting to stay his advance, he committed to the common enough military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook whose rapid waters barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with illogical ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled. The spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned. Unconquerable in that small breast and would not be denied. Conquerable in that small breast and would not be denied Finding a place where some boulders in the bed of the stream lay. But a step or leap apart, he made his way across and fell again upon the rear guard of his imaginary foe, putting all to the sword.

Speaker 1:

Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to his base of operations. Alas, like many a mightier conqueror, and like one the mightiest, he could not curb the lust for war, nor learn that tempted fate will leave the loftiest star. Fate will leave the loftiest star. Advancing from the bank of the creek, he suddenly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy In the path that he was following, sat Bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, a rabbit With a startled cry, cry. The child turned and fled, he knew not in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, his little heart beating hard with terror, breathless, blind, with tears, lost in the forest. Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet through the tangled undergrowth till, at last, overcome by fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the stream, and, still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above his head, the squirrels whisking their bravery of tail, bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, unconscious of the piety of it, and somewhere far away was a strange muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little plantation where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm. A mother's heart was breaking for her missing child.

Speaker 1:

Hours passed and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of evening was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he had rested and he no longer wept, with some blind instinct which impelled to action. He struggled through the undergrowth about him and came to a more open ground On his right, the brook. To the left, a gentle acclivity, studded with infrequent trees. Over all the gathering gloom of twilight, a thin, ghostly mist rose along the water. It frightened and repelled him.

Speaker 1:

Instead of recrossing in the direction whence he came, he turned his back upon it and went forward toward the dark and closing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal, a dog, a pig. He could not name it. Perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears but knew nothing to their discredit and had vaguely wished to meet one. But something in form or movement of this object, something in the awkwardness of its approach, told him that it was not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and, as it came slowly on, gained courage every moment, for he saw that at last it had not the long, menacing ears of a rabbit. Possibly his impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait. Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts, he saw that it was followed by another and another.

Speaker 1:

To the right and to the left were many more. The whole open space about him were alive, with them all moving toward the brook. They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only dragging their legs as they used their knees. They used their knees, only their arms, hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing, naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction, singly, in pairs and in little groups. They came through the gloom, some halting out and again, while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds, as far on either hand as one could see. In the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. Occasionally, one who had paused, did not again go on but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads, spread their palms upwards, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer.

Speaker 1:

Not all of this did the child note. It is what we would have noted by an elder observer. He saw little but that these were men, yet crept like babies being men. They were not terrible. Though unfamiliarly clad, he moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this, something too perhaps in their grotesque attitudes and movements, reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them.

Speaker 1:

But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father's negroes creep upon their hands and knees, for his amusement had ridden them so, making believe they were his horses. He now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and, with an agile movement, mounted it astride. The man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung the small boy fiercely to the ground, as an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw. From the upper teeth to the throat it was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. The unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes gave this man the appearance of a great bird of prey, crimsoned in throat and breast by the blood of its quarry. The man rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The man shook his fist at the child. The man shook his fist at the child.

Speaker 1:

The child, terrified, at last ran to a tree nearby, like a swarm of great black beetles, with never a sound of going and silence, profound and absolute. Instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. Through the belt of trees beyond the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks and branches of the trees making a black lacework against it. It struck the creeping figures and gave them monstrous shadows which caricatured their movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, touching their whiteness with a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with which so many of them were freaked and maculated. It sparkled on buttons and bits of metal in their clothing. Indistinctively, the child turned toward the growing splendor and moved down the slope with his horrible companions.

Speaker 1:

In a few moments had passed the foremost of the throng. Not much of a feat, considering his advantages. He placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march, conforming his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that his forces did not strangle. Surely such a leader never before had such a following scattered upon the ground. Now slowly narrowing the encroachment of this awful march to water, were certain articles to which, in the leader's mind, were coupled no significant associations, doubled and the ends bound together with a string, a heavy knapsack, here and there a broken rifle, such things in short, as are found in the rear of retreating troops, the spore of men flying from their hunters. Everywhere near the creek, which here had a margin of low land, the earth was trodden into mud by the feet of men and horses. An observer of better experience in use of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both directions. The ground had been twice passed over in advance and retreat A few hours before these desperate, stricken men with their more fortunate and now distant comrades had penetrated the forest in thousands.

Speaker 1:

Their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and reforming in lines, had passed. The child on every side had almost trodden on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not awakened him. Almost within a stone's throw of where he lay, they had fought a battle, but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, the thunder of captains and the shouting. He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter clutch, in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead who had died to make the glory.

Speaker 1:

The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke and now, suffusing the whole landscape, it transformed the sinuous line of mists to the vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red too were many of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood. The less desperately wounded had stained them in crossing On them too. The child now crossed with eager steps. He was going to the fire. As he stood upon the farther bank. He turned about to look at the companions of his march, the advances.

Speaker 1:

The advance was arriving at the creek. The stronger had already drawn themselves to the brink and plunged their faces into the flood without motion, appeared to have no heads, as the child's eyes expanded with wonder. Even his hospitable understanding could not accept a phenomenon implying such vitality as that, after slaking their thirst, these men had not had the strength to go back from the water, nor keep their heads above it. They were drowned In rear of these, the open spaces of the direction, of the guiding light, a pillar of fire to this strange exodus.

Speaker 1:

Confident in the fidelity of his forces, he now entered the belt of woods, passing through it easily on the red illumination, climbed a fence, ran across the field, nation climbed a fence, ran across the field, turning now and again to co-quit with his responsive shadow, and so approaching the blazing ruin of a dwelling desolation. Everywhere, and all the wide glare, not a living thing was visible. He cared nothing for that. The spectacle pleased and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flame. He ran about collecting fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. In despair, he flung his sword, a surrender to the superior forces of nature. His military career was at an end.

Speaker 1:

Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood considering them with wonder when suddenly the entire plantation with its enclosing forest forest seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little sword swung half around. The points of the compass were reversed. He recognized the blazing building as his own home. For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation. Then ran with stumbling feet, making a half-circuit of the ruin there conspicuous in the light of the conflagration.

Speaker 1:

He laid the dead body of a woman, the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched, full of grass. The clothing deranged, the long dark hair entangled and full of grass. The clothing deranged, the long dark hair, entangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple. A frothy mass of gray crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles. Gray crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles, the work of a shell. The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries, something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey, a startling, soulllless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute. He stood motionless with quivering lips looking down upon the wreck. This has been Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce. Please give me a five-star rating and a good review if you enjoyed this short story. This has been Ron Reeds.