A Confederate General From Big Sur. Richard Brautigan

       A Confederate General from Big Sur

      WHEN I FIRST heard about Big Sur I didn’t know that it was a member of the Confederate States of America. I had always thought that Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Texas were the Confederacy, and let it go at that. I had no idea that Big Sur was also a member.

      Big Sur the twelfth member of the Confederate States of America? Frankly, it’s hard to believe that those lonely stark mountains and clifflike beaches of California were rebels, that the redwood trees and the ticks and the cormorants waved a rebel flag along that narrow hundred miles of land that lies between Monterey and San Luis Obispo.

      The Santa Lucia Mountains, that thousand-year-old flophouse for mountain lions and lilacs, a hotbed of Secession? The Pacific Ocean along there, that million-year-old skid row for abalone and kelp, sending representatives back to the Confederate Congress in Richmond, Virginia?

      I’ve heard that the population of Big Sur in those Civil War days was mostly just some Digger Indians. I’ve heard that the Digger Indians down there didn’t wear any clothes. They didn’t have any fire or shelter or culture. They didn’t grow anything. They didn’t hunt and they didn’t fish. They didn’t bury their dead or give birth to their children. They lived on roots and limpets and sat pleasantly out in the rain.

      I can imagine the expression on General Robert E. Lee’s face when this gang showed up, bearing strange gifts from the Pacific Ocean.

      It was during the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness. A. P. Hill’s brave but exhausted confederate troops had been hit at daybreak by Union General Hancock’s II Corps of 30,000 men. A. P. Hill’s troops were shattered by the attack and fell back in defeat and confusion along the Orange Plank Road.

      Twenty-eight-year-old Colonel William Poague, the South’s fine artillery man, waited with sixteen guns in one of the few clearings in the Wilderness, Widow Tapp’s farm. Colonel Poague had his guns loaded with antipersonnel ammunition and opened fire as soon as A. P. Hill’s men had barely fled the Orange Plank Road.

      The Union assault funneled itself right into a vision of sculptured artillery fire, and the Union troops suddenly found pieces of flying marble breaking their centers and breaking their edges. At the instant of contact, history transformed their bodies into statues. They didn’t like it, and the assault began to back up along the Orange Plank Road. What a nice name for a road.

      Colonel Poague and his men held their ground alone without any infantry support, and no way out, caring not for the name of the road. They were there forever and General Lee was right behind them in the drifting marble dust of their guns. He was waiting for General Longstreet’s arrival with reinforcements. Longstreet’s men were hours late.

      Then the first of them arrived. Hood’s old Texas Brigade led by John Gregg came on through the shattered forces of A. P. Hill, and these Texans were surprised because A. P. Hill’s men were shock troops of the Confederate Army, and here they were in full rout.

      ‘What troops are you, my boys?’ Lee said.

      ‘The Texans!’ the men yelled and quickly formed into battle lines. There were less than a thousand of them and they started forward toward that abyss of Federal troops.

      Lee was in motion with them, riding his beautiful gray horse, Traveller, a part of the wave. But they stopped him and shouted, ‘Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!’

      They turned him around and sent him back to spend the last years of his life quietly as the president of Washington College, later to be called Washington and Lee.

      Then they went forward possessed only by animal fury, without any regard now for their human shadows. It was a little late for things like that.

      The Texans suffered 50 per cent casualties in less than ten minutes, but they contained the Union. It was like putting your finger in the ocean and having it stop, but only briefly because Appomattox Court-house waited less than a year away, resting now in its gentle anonymity.

      When Lee got to the rear of the lines, there were the 8th Big Sur Volunteer Heavy Root Eaters reporting for duty. The air around them was filled with the smell of roots and limpets. The 8th Big Sur Volunteer Heavy Root Eaters reported like autumn to the Army of Northern Virginia.

      They all gathered around Lee’s horse and stared in amazement, for it was the first time that they had ever seen a horse. One of the Digger Indians offered Traveller a limpet to eat.

      When I first heard about Big Sur I didn’t know that it was part of the defunct Confederate States of America, a country that went out of style like an idea or a lampshade or some kind of food that people don’t cook any more, once the favorite dish in thousands of homes.

      It was only through a Lee-of-another-color, Lee Mellon, that I found out the truth about Big Sur. Lee Mellon who is the battle flags and the drums of this book. Lee Mellon: a Confederate General in ruins.

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