Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 9
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
We arrived none too soon. As we approached the watering hole, we saw that Albert was already there, skimming a rock across the pond.
“Why does he do that?” Drako asked. “That’s dumb.”
“You’re just jealous, Drako,” Ooga said. “Skipping rocks is fun. Watch!”
Ooga hopped, skipped, and jumped over to the edge of the pond, picked up a handful of stones, and began slinging them sidearm. Apparently he had natural talent, as Albert stopped skipping once he saw Ooga count 23 skips on his third try.
“All right,” Albert said to us, as he turned his back on the small lake and faced us. “What have you come up with?”
But then, as a couple of us had just opened our mouths to speak, Albert continued speaking without pausing long enough for us to make a reply to his question.
“I want to put an end to the KKK” —
A little irritated that Albert had asked for our input and then immediately started talking about what was on his mind, Drako rather huffily interrupted: “Who or what is the KKK?”
“Racist murdering lynching cowards,” Albert said.
“Who also had atrocious fashion sense,” Alexis added. She seemed to know something about everything. And, as many of us do, has strong opinions about it.
Before anybody could ask for specifics about the KKK’s stylistic shortcomings, Albert continued.
“The Ku Klux Klan need to be stopped. Or, what I really mean is, prevented from even beginning.”
Albert then told us about a guy named Nathan Bedford Forrest who committed an atrocity during the Civil War in 1864 at Fort Pillow in Tennessee, slaughtering hundreds of black soldiers who were trying to surrender, even killing some who were lying abed in the hospital. Not only that, this villain had not even spared women and children.
“Let me at ‘im!” roared Stripes and Rory simultaneously, extending their claws and lashing out at an imaginary foe in front of them. A split second later, Marmalade let out her most fearsome hiss and puffed up her fur while imitating the big Cats by making a few exploratory stabs with her forepaws directed at the air.
“That’s terrible, and should be stopped, but what does that massacre have to do with the Kooky Klutzy Klan?” Ocero asked, deliberately mangling the name of the group.
“Nathan Bedford Forrest eventually became the ‘Grand Wizard’ of that group of slack-jawed miscreants,” Albert answered.
“So by stopping that pillow guy in 1864, we will prevent him from supporting the KKK later?” Jowls asked.
“Precisely, my friend,” said Albert.
“Were there other massacres during the Civil War, prior to that?” Rovette asked.
“Sure. Lots of them. A slew. Scads. But if both sides were massacred, the events weren’t called massacres. In that case, they were simply referred to as ‘battles’,” Albert said.
“As a good example of a bad example of a battle, take Antietam,” Alexis broke in.
“Anteater?” Chumbawumba interrupted. “You mean like the Anteaters we have back home in Africa?”
“Antietam, Chum, not Anteater,” his sister Tubthumper clarified.
“‘Ant Eat ‘Em’? Ants eat who?” Terri said. “I saw Anteaters back in prehistoric Germany, but all they ate were ants on logs.”
Albert, growing impatient with all the sidetracking and digression, made an irritated gesture. “What Alexis is talking about is a place called Antietam. That’s where a big battle took place.”
“More Americans died that day than any other time in history,” Alexis informed the group. “Twenty-three thousand humans, and even more animals.”
The African Grey Parrot let this statistic sink in.
“So let’s go to Antietam and stop that battle from happening,” I proposed.
“How would that be done? What could we do to stop it?” Rinky asked.
“Gentle persuasion,” Stripes said, with a Cat-that-ate-the-Canary look on his face (not that he would literally do that — eat a Canary, that is).
“Good idea,” I said. “We could recruit a few of the indigenous animals in the area, intimidate the soldiers, and force them to lay down their arms.”
“And their legs, too,” Terri added.
“I mean their weapons,” I explained to the Pterodactyl, “Not their literal upper extremities.”
“But it’s the generals of the armies who need to be persuaded to lay down their arms more than the rank and file among the soldiers,” Albert said. “Most of the regular soldiers would just as soon go home to their farms and their families, anyway. It’s the leaders — those little souls who thirst for fight, who were born to drill and die, who believe in the virtue of slaughter and the excellence of killing — who need to be convinced of the advantages of sparing the lives of the combatants on both sides, so that they don’t end up with a field where 23,000 human corpses lie.
“That’s a great idea, but how do we accomplish it?” Rovette asked.
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