When he’d idly watched the practice of the reenactment, there had only been Wilfred Ohmerson banging the drum. Wilfred was a high school senior who went to marching band camp every summer. But there was more than one drum banging away as he strode up. As he hit the rise he had a full view over the battlefield, and he saw what could have been a scene from a historical TV series about the Revolutionary War, if you deducted a few decades off most of the reenactors. He was impressed at the level of detail in the costumes, the props, and most of all the guns.
He walked down the hill to find Harold offering a demonstration of how to load and shoot a flintlock. A small crowd had already gathered and he could see that Harold was in his element. He was dressed as a general. No surprise there. He doubted that George Washington himself had looked as good.
As he grew closer, he could hear the words. “British had the Brown Bess. Later in the war the French supplied the Charleville musket. It’s a front loader with a range of a hundred and fifty yards.”
He could see that a few gun enthusiasts and young boys were hanging on every word. “The musket weighs fourteen pounds.” Harold hefted it a few times, “Then you add in five pounds of ammunition plus gun powder, it gets pretty heavy.”
“What’s the fastest you can load a musket?” asked a boy in the crowd.
Harold lit up at the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s find out. Have you got a stop watch?”
The kid looked at him like he really was more than two hundred and fifty years old. “Yeah. On my phone.”
“Right. Of course. Well, you say ‘Go,’ and then time me.”
The kid pressed a couple of buttons then nodded. “Go,” he said, and pressed start.
Harold grabbed a paper cone from his leather pouch, tore it open with his teeth, and followed all the instructions he’d given them earlier. James had to hand it to him, he really was pretty fast. When he drew the gun to the firing position, he commanded, “Stop.” Then to the kid, “How long?”
“Twenty-seven seconds.”
Harold shook his head. “A good rifleman can do it faster. Let’s go again.”
He placed the rifle beside him, leaning against a rail where a series of muskets were stored, and grabbed a second musket. “Okay, tell me when.”
This time, his record was nineteen seconds. He nodded as his small audience clapped and continued to answer questions.
He pulled out a period-perfect pocket watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to war.”
The group clapped and then followed him as he strode purposefully to where the two sides were setting up for battle.
James wished he could rid himself of the feeling of unease that gripped him. He’d watched footage of other re-enactments and knew that the black powder would go ‘bang’ but without a musket ball there was no danger of anyone getting hurt. He was more worried about heart attacks and strokes and had made sure that the first aid van was close by.
The red and blue coats were as bright as children’s toys, and the buff pantaloons gleamed in the sun so James reached for his sunglasses. The faces of the warriors were earnest and eager. These were not battle-hardened campaigners. They were accountants and dentists, desk jockeys, bored retirees and young men who looked as though they’d never had a date. The drummers rehearsed beside a rest station with lawn chairs and a big blue plastic cooler.
His eyes scanned the area and he spotted Loreen and her cameraman setting up. Charlie, the mayor, thought the reenactment was such a good idea that he’d asked for extra footage for the town’s archives.
As James watched, orders were shouted, drummers drummed, the chairs and coolers were pushed behind a stand of trees and suddenly he felt like he was watching a PBS documentary. The two sides lined up, closer than he’d imagined opposing armies would, but of course the old muskets wouldn’t have much of a firing range.
He’d been briefed about what would happen. The riflemen would pack only a small amount of gunpowder into the muzzles, not the lead musket balls that would make the antique flintlocks dangerous. The gunpowder would flash and bang and emit a puff of smoke. The redcoats would pretend to be routed and the crowd would cheer.
The spectators were staying at a safe range as they’d been instructed. Harold was at the head of his army. An unknown player from Ohio led the Brits. He had to hand it to Harold. The turnout was the best they’d had in years.
Soldiers moved into formation. These guys had obviously been practicing. They pulled paper cones from leather pouches, as he’d seen Harold do in his demonstration. They tore them open with their teeth, poured black powder into the muzzles of their flintlocks, detached the ramrods and pounded the powder into the barrels, then they cocked the muskets. The first line of Brits fell to its knees and assumed the firing position. There was a moment of utter silence as everyone waited for the order to fire.
One older man to Harold’s left was still fumbling with his gun and it took James a minute to comprehend why. “No!” he yelled, already moving toward the battle lines.
The older gentleman seemed to be under the impression he was in an actual battle and the thing he was fumbling with was a paper wrapped object about the size of a marble. He could be going for the ultimate in verisimilitude, pushing a fake ball into the barrel of his musket along with gunpowder; or the old crackpot was going to murder a guy who woke up this morning thinking he was going to play at soldiers and could well end the day six feet under.
James was running before he’d finished the thought. “Stop!” he yelled, his feet hurdling over the lumpy grass, his arms wind-milling. “Stop!”
In the heat of battle, no one heard him. He crashed through the gaggle of spectators, threw himself between the the two lines. The red and blue blurred in his peripheral vision. He yelled, “Hold your—”
“Fire!” commanded Harold.
He could see the old guy’s rifle aimed at a young man with troubling acne. As guns began to explode all around him, sending puffs of acrid smoke into the air, he threw himself at the clueless fake British soldier. The kid yelped as he knocked into him and they both went flying, along with an authentic Brown Bess, smoke trailing from it like a doomed aircraft. The airborne nanosecond during which James thought he’d made a complete fool of himself was followed by a moment of pure agony as he felt the impact of the musket ball tearing through his flesh.
With a roar he fell to the ground. For minutes he was aware of nothing but searing pain, people running, staring faces, a man dressed in regimentals saying in a voice as crisp as a starched bed sheet, “Back up, please, I’m a GP.”
“Is he dead?”
And then Loreen’s cameraman, from much too close. “Thank God, we got it all on video!”
The doctor made a swift, painful examination. He glanced up and saw his mom looking frantic. “James. Are you all right?”
The doctor said, “He’s very lucky. The ball grazed his gluteus maximus and he’s—”
Loreen Ludlow held out a microphone. He felt the huge eye of the camera staring at him in his most humiliating moment. “Gluteus maximus? Are you saying the sheriff got shot in the butt?”
His ass was on fire, and James thought the pain from this day had just begun.