Of Love and Squirrel Hunting

The Story Behind the Story: The Battle of Hutchinson’s Crossroads.

I write contemporary novels and short stories, mostly. That “mostly” is a fairly recent development, and represents the occasional deviation I take in my writing. Such as my story in Big Pulp Magazine “The Battle of Hutchinson’s Crossroads,” which is a Civil War historical.

So what prompted this diversion from the modern-day, everyman mild tragedies I tend to gravitate towards? Squirrel hunting.

I bought a little black powder .32-caliber squirrel rifle from a pawn shop back in 1998. I had some fun with it, ruined my hearing a little more, and the furry woodland creatures slept warm and safe knowing I’d have a better chance of giving them a chest cold than shooting them. For real; I’d shoot and miss (of course), and they would sit and watch me while I frantically reloaded then miss again.

Being the poor shot I am and not into hunting anymore anyway, I decided to sell that little squirrel gun in 2011. One prospective buyer was a coworker, and as I stood in his office while he hemmed and hawed about whether or not he was interested, a story idea came to me: a young man in a Civil War battle fires his first shot. What was he thinking as he pulled the trigger? Was it a planned shot? Or was he caught up in the moment and didn’t recognize what he’d done until later?

I tried to put myself in young Stretch’s position. Having never been in combat myself, there is a large mental disconnect between my trigger finger and a man dying across a field. I imagine this isn’t quite so disconnected in real life. Or is it? I don’t know, but I imagined my character wondering if he would know which man he had shot once the battle was over. I imagined what would happen if he had the chance to find out.

I am a fan of old-school twist endings. Hopefully the story stands on its own without the twist, but the story felt incomplete without it. Twists are hard to pull off, and I’ve gotten mixed reviews on this one.

“Hutchinson” is the maiden name of the woman I was dating when I wrote the story. Yes, I wanted to do the lovestruck puppy-dog thing and dedicate a story to her. Hey, just be glad I didn’t try to write a poem. [There once was a girl from West Yorkshire/ and being without her was torture/ So I wrote her a tale/ it published without fail/ she’s marrying another for sure.]  [Yeah, good thing I didn’t write a poem, huh?] Living in Mississippi at the time, the Civil War is never far from collective memory. Brice’s Crossroads was a small battle north of Tupelo, and was a sound defeat for the North. So, the name of the battle was not hard to come up with.

One final little extra. In my novel Paper Thin, go to the scene with Phil’s funeral and pay attention to the names on the stones in the graveyard.