Free State of Jones vs Aim Small, Shoot Small

Last night my son and I went to see The Free State of Jones movie. I wrote about the upcoming film on another post back in March. We went to the late showing, so I went to bed at 1 am with images of the movie dancing around in my head. I probably dreamed about it, but really can’t remember this morning if I did.

I’ll say unequivocally say that fellow Texan Matthew McConaughey did one hell of a job portraying the complex and compelling man who the main character, Newton Knight, must have been. Either you like actor MM, or you don’t, when he gets deep into a character. I’d put his  performance in The Free State of Jones up there with his role in The Dallas Buyers Club. In both he portrays a man who is quiet most of the time, but utterly intense all the time. Driven. Going against those in control and helping others who are also under the thumb of an unreasoning and abusive authority. Yeah, a Robin Hood character, sort of. Maybe. And look at those eyes.

The Civil War aspect of the movie seems pretty well done. There’s a lot of grit and ill-fitting, rumpled, dirty uniforms on the Mississippi Confederates. The early battle scenes were bloody and filled with gore, reminding us that men don’t die cleanly when hit by a cannon ball. The field hospital scenes were bloody and pitiful. The scenes in the swamp made me utter a prayer of thanks for air-conditioning, while I sat in the really frosty theater.

Linking to my own Civil War stories, I’ve been anxious that my three main women characters are over-the-top in their propensity for violence, since all three of them finally use guns to dispatch bad men.

Boy, do I feel better about my Faith, Elizabeth and Edwina characters. after watching those Mississippi gals last night whip out their muskatoons, shotguns, and pistols and go about some serious getting even. No Mild Molly’s in my McBee novels or The Free State of Jones film.

Tens of thousands of farm women in the Civil War South were left alone and isolated to make do and keep the farm going without their menfolk who’d gone to soldiers. Many of those left-behind women lived in war zones. Did those real women often, or ever, finally get pushed to the point of gun violence to protect their homes and families from foraging soldiers from either army, or hungry deserters, or outlaws intent on rape? It’s not something you read about in period memoirs.

Son Todd and I expected the film to have clearer distinctions between the good guys and the bad guys, like Mel Gibson’s The Patriot movie about the American Revolution. (Aim small, shoot small, one of the great father-to-son instructions I haven’t forgotten from that film.) Not so for McConaughey’s new film, and that’s a compliment. Newton Knight and the others display lots of human flaws, unlike Gibson’s true-blue father-patriot character.

WARNING: BEGINNING PREACHING PARAGRAPH

In real life, we know when an act is right or wrong.  But…We’re people, and people can muddy the water very damned quickly, can’t we? We all get caught in circumstances where the contradictory commitments in our lives make it tough to do the right thing—even though we know which thing that is. It’s the hard choice, the choice we just don’t want to make because of uncomfortable consequences. Granted, we all have our moments of doing the right thing, and feel really good about doing so, smug even. And we all have moments of doing the other-easier- thing, or doing nothing, which is the same. All too often we choose not to rock the boat.  END OF PREACHING PARAGRAPH

Another personal sidebar about The Free State of Jones is that an ancestor, my great great great grandfather William Gill served as a private in the 6^th Mississippi Regiment. That’s the outfit featured in the film as the Confederate regiment sent to eliminate Newton Knight’s band of Unionists, deserters, and runaway slaves. And grandpa William would have been one of those dirt poor Rebel soldiers like Newton Knight had once been. Gramps Gill had a family and farm in Mississippi, and was drafted into the army, but he didn’t walk away like Newton Knight. Instead, whatever he thought about being a soldier, he stayed and soon got wounded and died.

On the surface, The Free State of Jones film appears to be a true history-based tale to illustrate that the Civil War in the South was a rich man’s war and poor man’s fight, exacerbated through military conscription laws that exempted sons of wealthy slave owners. The film clearly shows that slavery was brutal and bad and that reconstruction was brutal and bad. It even follows a plot thread of Newton Knight’s true-life grandson to underline that race relations between black and whites in Mississippi, until at least 1948, didn’t get much better.

The heart of the film, as voiced by McConauhey-Knight in so many words, was that all sorts of people, not just African-descended slaves, are subject to caste systems and circumstances which can make a nigger out of any of us. (Sorry to use the N word, but it’s a quote from the movie that fits.)

Race or religion certainly are usually, but not always, at play, even in our informal, but well-entrenched, American class system. Sometimes it’s politics, as happened when the Confederacy started running out of soldiers, but exempted sons of slave owners from the army draft. Equal rights are rarely equal, are they? Personally, I think that’s a fair lesson for a thoughtful action movie to embed within the violence and drama.

I'm glad Todd and I saw the film. But, it's a head-scratcher, not an "aim small, shoot small" sort of tale.

Since I’m on a movie roll here, we also went to see the Independence Day sequel. Nothing like a second alien invasion twenty years later. Happy June.

Fathers Day Post, Now and Back Then

Today is Father’s Day, Hallmark’s other highly successful marketing ploy. Cynicism towards commercially inspired holidays aside—

I’m lucky that my father Frank is alive, at age 95 still living a life split between acts of service to others through church and hospital volunteerism, and mutually giving and receiving care with my step-mother Della, and taking well-deserved naps. Pop will also talk your ear off about the adventures he’s experienced in his long life. Gotta love the old guy, so, Happy Father’s Day, Pop.

I’m lucky that both our sons are now fathers, and grasp the importance of that job. So, Happy Father’s Day, Ben and Todd. Nita and I are incredibly proud of you. And thanks for the grandkids. Keep ’em coming.

To keep this a blog about my Civil War novels, I’ll mention that fatherhood is a facet of the three McBee novels, a major facet, I hope. In fact, there are two fatherhood threads running through the ongoing plot.

Early in the first book, Captain John unwittingly, but without too much protest, lets himself become a secret seed-donor for a woman desperate to become a mother after eleven years of a barren marriage. Yeah, I know that’s a tough job I wrote into the first book for the main character, but…

To be fair, neither seed-donor nor woman intend for there to be any sort of relationship once he’s made his seed delivery. Silly woman. Naïve man. Both should have known that life is never that simple. I hope you, my blog readers have, or will, read the books to see how that non-intervention plan worked out.

The other fatherhood thread in the McBee novels was one of the questions I initially imagined as a driving force in the plot: Who’s Levi’s daddy?

Since you are still reading my blog posts, (thank you for including my blog in your reading life) you have likely read Tangled Honor, the first McBee novel. If, however, you haven’t met John McBee, Faith, and Levi, I’m about to be a spoiler.

Side Note: Who’s your daddy? is a phrase that has wormed its way into our culture, likely with racist provenance, likely going back to two of the most foul aspects of the foul institution of pre-Civil War American slavery: The acceptance of white men raping young black women for pleasure, and the literal breeding of slaves to produce better, stronger workers.

Mulatto (half-white) slave Levi is a product of the first foul aspect. Who’s your daddy? plays directly into the McBee story, as 20-year-old Levi is loaned to 40-year-old Captain McBee to be his body-servant—McBee’s personal slave valet and cook for the duration of the war.

Captain John McBee naively thought his seed donation to an essentially anonymous woman would be a one-night dreamlike experience, pleasurable, but quickly over and forgotten. I've tried to create John McBee as a character with a normal man’s tendency to compartmentalize the various aspects of life, and ignore early warning signs of interesting times ahead. 

Levi started as just another servant, a way for McBee to avoid the onerous personal chores that officers in armies throughout time have passed off to others, be they squires in the days of knights, or more recently, enlisted soldiers serving as aides, or in the Confederate army, body-servants who were black slaves. McBee simply didn’t see the Who’s Your Daddy? train coming when mulatto Levi, borrowed from his own mother, became his servant, sharing daily experiences and even nursing his battle wounds.

Just as I did with the Faith and John’s early reticent relationship, I tried to fold a growing mutual respect into the Levi and John, slave and master, relationship. Enough so that the question of Who’s your daddy? is a credible one to ask.

As the author, I’d love some feedback as to how well the first two McBee novels portrayed that growing master and slave relationship. Since I’m still writing the last novel, there is yet time to adjust, if that’s needed.

Back to Father’s Day 2016, in my real life, through volunteering with the Salvation Army, I talk to young mothers seeking financial assistance. More often than not, the father does not live with the woman and children. Not all the time, but usually, the young woman admits to not receiving child support. Reasons abound: Prison, unemployment, alcoholism, a new wife, whatever.

I view those guys with disdain. No, not disdain, I view them with anger and disgust. They have chosen to be seed-donors, but not fathers. Young unrestrained men who on a practical level, practice rape, not so much different from the white man-slave woman rapes of pre-Civil War America. 

Not all men need to be fathers. Some should never let themselves become fathers. But, if you are a father, if your seed causes a life to grow in some sweet gal, by God, be that kid’s father. It's a lifetime commitment.

OK, that’s off my chest for a while. 

Now, as I finish the third McBee book I need to make sure that my main character winds up the good father that I damn well expect him, and all of us seed-donors, to be.

To you readers who are dads--Happy Fathers Day! Hug your sweetie, spend some time with the kiddos in your life. And, by all means, have a cold beer sometime today. It’s our day.

And at 8 pm this evening, I’m going to be watching the big battle on Game of Thrones. Maybe young Bolton will find himself flayed on his own timber X. He is such a vicious villain, I can't applaud him, but I can take my hat off to the writer who thunk him up. I've learned there's an art to crafting a truly bad guy. Maybe I'll write a blog post devoted to my villains sometime soon.

Captain Levi Graybill

 I’m now writing the last half of my fourth Civil War novel. Being a Texan, all four books center on two specific Confederate regiments—the 6^th Texas Infantry in the first book, Whittled Away, and the 5^th Texas Infantry in the McBee “Honor” trilogy. In this last McBee book-in-progress, Defiant Honor, for the first time, I’m also focusing on a specific historical Union regiment—the 22^nd US Colored Troop Regiment. I wrote a blog post about the 22^nd USCT last year, but here’s a review and a little more.  

In real life on September 29, 1864, the 22^nd USCT charged the earthworks held by the 5^th Texas during Grant’s siege of Richmond, the Confederacy’s capital city. The attack was the penultimate (next to the last) battle of the war for the 5^th Texas.

As a novelist, I could not have created a better “opposition force” for Defiant Honor’s climatic near-final battle. Sometimes history fills the bill quite nicely. Just as the 5^th Texas was one of the elite regiments in Lee’s Confederate army, the 22^nd USCT became one of the most well-known regiments of African-American soldiers in Grant’s Union army.

Both regiments had literally covered themselves in glory in earlier battles, so that when they met on the earthworks that crossed New Market Road south of Richmond, it really was a confrontation between two heavy-weight champs.

Happily, I found a complete roster of the 22^nd USCT regiment online. I picked one company in the regiment to bring to life, because I needed a company for the book’s villain, murderer and turn-coat Adam Samuelson, to be assigned as a junior lieutenant.

 Because I liked the name of one captain on the roster more than the other nine captains’ names, I chose Company E, led by Captain Levi Graybill.  Then I identified half a dozen enlisted men in Company E, whose historical fates were described in the roster, and made them book characters. Two brothers named Canon die of disease as the real Canon brothers did, others are killed in battle, some live through the war.

Then, unexpectedly, I found a period daguerreotype portrait of the three officers of Company E. In the photo below, there sits the real Captain Graybill, flanked by his two lieutenants. Look at the fellow on the left. He was a lieutenant I’ll leave unnamed, because I think he is a spitting image of my fictional character, Adam Samuelson. The big sweeping hat brim of a Virginia cavalier, his long hair offsetting a tiny trimmed chin beard and heavy mustache. He fits the Adam Samuelson character I’ve sculpted through three books. Another puzzle piece falls into place.

And since I’ve drawn your attention to three men in uniforms, just for fun, here’s an image my wife took yesterday of grandson Jackson and me in our unintended “uniform of the day.” I especially like our crocs. His light up, but mine don't.