My Interview in Heaven

When I get to Heaven, should my beliefs of grace and forgiveness actually allow me to reach the Pearly Gates, I’m going to look up my old Uncle JJ McBride, the Civil War soldier-ancestor whose life inspired my Honor Trilogy of novels. Uncle JJ endured three years of arduous, and in the end, futile and tragic warring--150 years later, my wife endured three years of my writing about his three years of soldiering.

I want to ask Uncle JJ straight-up if he read the books I wrote with him in mind. If his heavenly presence tells me he has read them, he’ll likely be laughing. Here’s a possible transcript of that conversation in Heaven, starting with JJ adapting one of the best repeated lines from HBO’s Game of Thrones series.

Uncle JJ:  You seem like a pleasant enough fellow, and I do surely appreciate your remembering your old uncle. But the fact is about your books, You know nothing, Phil McBride. Things back then weren’t at all like what you wrote. All that stuff with me and Levi? He was slave. And me going to bed with a married Jewish woman? Really? Not to mention my making friends with the most famous Jew in the Confederacy. And that soldier who dressed like a man, but was really a girl. Come on, man.

Me: Well, Uncle, I was writing for an audience 150 years later in time. Things are different now. Readers expect different things from the good guy characters in the novels they read. People like a main character who has a good heart and is brave, but who also has a mischievous streak running through him. 

Uncle JJ: Well, at least you made me a good guy. Not like that Samuelson fellow. I admit you created one bad hombre there.

Me: Uncle, I’m glad you appreciate the villain. What about the battles? And camp life? Did I do better there than I did with Levi and Faith?

Uncle JJ: Not so hasty, young fellow. I didn’t say I don’t like Faith. Hell, boy, I’m flattered you put me next to such a fine woman. Too bad she’s only a character living on the pages of your books. If she were a real angel, I’d look her up. As to Levi, well, we all wish not a single African had ever been brought in chains to the New World. And it was best not to think about who begat who back in my day. Anyway, I had more pressing matters to worry over than my body servant.

Me: Like the Yankees?

Uncle JJ: “Yeah, like them. You did right well with the battles, for a guy who wasn’t there, that is.”

Me: And camp life as a Civil War soldier?

Uncle JJ: Wasn’t so bad. Of course I was an officer and had Levi taking care of my needs.

Me: What about your two battle wounds?

Uncle JJ: Hmph. I wouldn’t recommend getting shot to anybody.

Me: If you could change anything I wrote about your character in my books, what would it be?

Uncle JJ: Well, in your books you left me in the fight until the end. I’m glad you did that. I hated not to finish the thing. I owed it to the boys to have been there with them that last long year.

Me: Thank you. But what do you wish I’d written differently about you?

Uncle JJ: Well, it would have been good if we’d won after all that killing and dying.

Me: I couldn’t change the outcome of the war in my books, Uncle. That’s not historical fiction. I could only fill in gaps where there’s no record of what happened. That’s why I could create Faith and have you befriend Judah Benjamin, but I couldn’t let Lee win the war. Now, is there anything you wish I’d written differently about you?

Uncle JJ: I wish you’d made me younger. You pegged the real live me pretty good with all that bleeding blister and bloody boot stuff. I was just too danged old to be marching all those miles month after month for three years.

Me: Thanks, Uncle. Let’s talk again.

Uncle JJ: I’m sure we will since we’re both on duty here for the duration.

Me: Duration?

Uncle JJ: The duration of eternity, Nephew.

Me: So there’s time for me to write another novel?

Roses Are Red, Icebergs Are Blue

Roses are red, icebergs are blue…I think that was what my wife Nita is pointing out to me. We’re in a stretch of days which are hotter than blue blazes, every day passing the 100 degree mark. So I figure why not post a photo of a frosty Alaskan blue iceberg. It is probably making your screen cold to the touch. Enjoy. Maybe it will bring on a delightful shiver.

Extreme weather, be it hot, wet, or dry is a real deal here in Central Texas. I admit our only blizzards are at Dairy Queen, but floods are a recurring theme around these parts.  

In October of 1998, crazy heavy rains brought on record-setting floods where I live near Austin. Even the flood control dams failed to hold all that water. The normally mild Guadalupe River became a raging beast. The same thing happened to the nearby Blanco River in 2015. Vacation homes on the river became death traps in the middle of the night.

How do raging rivers connect to my new in-progress novel, A Different Country Entirely, a story about the Texas Rangers in the semi-arid regions of South Texas and Northern Mexico?

In October of 1855, 162 years ago, when there were no flood-control dams, rains along the Rio Grande River caused the river to run 15 feet higher than normal. The normally thin thread of placid water that is our border with Mexico became fast, wide, and wild.

That’s how the Rio Grande looked to Captain Callahan’s Texas Rangers. Raging. Formidable. Dangerous. And no bridge. 

The owners of the few small row boats the Rangers located refused to put their skiffs in the river for pay, and had to be forced at gunpoint to ferry the Rangers across to Mexico. Horses had to swim next to the boats. At least one man drowned and horses were lost in the swift current.

All that effort was just to get onto the forbidden Mexican side of the border. A week later when the Rangers had to re-cross the Rio Grande in a big hurry, things were even harder and hotter.

Harder because the river was still in flood stage and this time hundreds of armed Mexican soldiers were on their heels.

Hotter because the Rangers torched the town of Piedras Negras to cover their escape from Mexico. It was not a diplomatic visit.

Weather befuddles man’s best efforts. In one night, the hurricane of 1900 wiped away the city of Galveston and killed 10,000 people. The tsunami in Japan just a few years ago did the same.

In World War II, D-Day and the Battle of Bulge were greatly influenced by stormy weather.  During the American Revolution the ongoing heat-related deaths of soldiers wearing wool uniforms were a plague to the British generals. And flooding rivers have long played havoc with determined leaders like Captain Callahan.

I’d say weather probably changes history more than man does. Reckon? So when Texans or anyone talks about how bad the weather is, please don’t poo-poo them. Because we never know what tomorrow's weather will bring.