15. Pickett’s Last Fence
Four years before the Charge, and on the other side of the continent, he built a fence. No one knew quite what it was supposed to keep out. The rabbits had their run of the place, and folks knew all too well what happens when you try and fence in a pig.
But, he built it anyway, sent it at right angles across the parade grounds, over the hills, through the gullies, and down toward Grandma’s Cove. Grandma used to look out at it — this was long before she was Grandma and back when she was washerwoman to the troops — and say he’d built the darn thing to keep the trees in line. The soldiers were never all that good at lining up, but those trees, by God, they were regimental.
(American Camp on San Juan Island, where George Pickett served before he became a general in the Civil War.)
