Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by The Penguin Group

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  Copyright © 2009 by Michael Hemphill and Tom Angleberger

  All rights reserved

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  .S.A.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hemphill, Michael.

  Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run / by Michael Hemphill

  and Sam Riddleburger.

  p. cm.

  Summary: While participating in a reenactment of the Battle of Bull

  Run, twelve-year-old Stonewall Hinkleman is transported back to the

  actual Civil War battle by means of a magic bugle.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-01488-2

  1. Bull Run, 1st Battle of, Va., 1861—Juvenile fiction.

  [1. Bull Run, 1st Battle of, Va., 1861—Fiction. 2. United States—History—Civil War,

  1861-1865—Fiction. 3. Time travel—Fiction.] I. Riddleburger, Sam. II.

  Title.

  PZ7.H37747St 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to Civil War buffs, historians,

  scholars and re-enactors. Forgive us . . .

  we couldn’t control

  Stonewall Hinkleman’s big mouth.

  Special thanks to Caryn, Liz, Nancy, Tuesday, Jasmin, Jeanine, Julia,

  Cece, Naomi, Emily, Meg, Mary Ann, Wayne,

  Charlie, Oscar, Babs, Madge, Cindy, Lolly, Chip, Linda,

  Fun Teachers, Cool Librarians, Kind Booksellers, Kidlit Bloggers,

  and Civil War Journey tour guide Robert Freis

  for his expert advice on the Battle of Bull Run.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ALL RIGHT, let’s get the whole name thing out of the way quickly.

  My name is Stonewall Hinkleman.

  No, it’s not a nickname. It’s my real name. Like I tell my parents—even Stonewall Jackson’s real name wasn’t Stonewall. But they don’t listen and it’s too late now anyway. I’m stuck with it.

  So, you’d think I could at least go by my middle name, right? It’s Traveler, after Robert E. Lee’s horse. Yeah, that’s right, a horse!

  I’m Stonewall Traveler Hinkleman and if you think that’s as bad as it gets, you haven’t heard the worst part.

  You see, both of my parents are Civil War reenactors. This means my dad—who’s really a geeky computer tech—dresses up in a uniform and runs around in fields with a bunch of other boring guys who are all pretending they are in the Civil War. My mother pretends she’s a nurse, even though in real life she barfs at the sight of blood.

  Going to reenactments is my life almost every weekend. I have fought, I have cried, I have argued, I have resisted, but they make me go too. I am twelve years old and I am the bugle boy, probably the dorkiest thing you can be. Even if I wanted to—and I don’t—I’m not old enough to march with the troops and shoot a gun. And I’m too old to still think watching all of this is cool. So no gun, no bayonet, just stand around blowing a horn.

  Dad says I should be proud that I’m the one who calls the soldiers to action.

  “Someday, Stonewall,” he says in his real high, nasally voice, “you’ll begin to appreciate your heritage and the history of the American event that pitted brother against brother in a battle of wills over the very fate of our nation.”

  He runs on like that all the time. I have to listen to hours of it every weekend while we drive to one stupid reenactment after another.

  “You are named after a great general, a great scholar and a great man,” my father likes to say.

  Whatever, Dad. Did I mention that Stonewall Jackson was shot by HIS OWN MEN?!?!

  This particular weekend we’re heading to the reenactment that’s not only boring like all the others but personally embarrassing.

  We’ll be reenacting a battle called Manassas. First Manassas, that is, not Second Manassas. It’s also called Bull Run, as in First Bull Run and Second Bull Run. That’s how stupid all this really is. Not only are there different names for the same battle, but some battles were fought in the same place twice. Get it right the first time already!

  First Bull Run was the first real battle of the war. But the reason it’s embarrassing is that’s where my great-great-great-great-uncle Cyrus Hinkleman was wounded.

  Did a cannonball blast off Uncle Cyrus’s leg as he bravely charged over the field? Was he stabbed by a bayonet while trying to capture a flag, which for some reason was real important back then? Was he shot as he leaped over a fence and into the enemy lines?

  Oh no. He was shot in the butt.

  That’s right, he got the bum rush, the stuck butt, the flank attack, the sheared rear. Which can only mean one thing. He was running away when he was shot. No brave charge for Uncle Cyrus. He turned chicken and fled.

  At the hospital, his butt wound got infected. For a lot of soldiers in the war, an infection meant amputation. A bullet in the knee could lead to the doctor cutting off your leg so that the infection wouldn’t spread to the rest of your body.

  But how do you amputate a butt?

  So Uncle Cyrus lay on his stomach in a hospital bed for a couple of weeks until the infection killed him. This was my family’s great contribution to the Civil War. One bullet. One butt.

  Yet, somehow it’s enough to get my father misty-eyed.

  As we walk across the field to where we’ll pitch our tent, Dad babbles on and on about sacrifice and resolve and our family’s proud heritage.

  “Proud heritage? Dad, he got shot in the butt!”

  I shouldn’t have said that out loud.

  The dreamy look on my father’s face fades. He slings his musket to his other shoulder and tells me to shut up. My mother, wearing a white shawl over a long blue dress, gives me her I’m-very-disappointed look.

  But it’s true and they know it, and that’s the only reason they’re
mad. Our proud heritage is nothing more than one scared uncle running for his life.

  We never seem to reenact that.

  You want to know what a reenactment is really like? It doesn’t matter which battle it is, because they’re all the same.

  A big bunch of guys wearing blue Yankee costumes come huffing up the hill. Waiting for them are my dad’s friends—a big bunch of guys in gray Confederate costumes. We jump out and we charge. I have to blow my bugle and everybody else fires their guns, which don’t have ammo but are still ridiculously loud. About half of them fall down and pretend to be dead. They roll around with these hilarious grimaces on their faces. Then they’re still for a while, probably taking a nap or eating a candy bar, until the “battle” moves somewhere else and they get back up and rejoin the “fight.”

  Whoopee! And I’ll give you three good reasons why it’s worse than just boring.

  First, it’s hot. Second, we’re wearing wool outfits, because you’ve got to be “authentic” at reenactments and that’s supposedly what the real soldiers wore. Third, I’m missing Emagination Camp to be here. It’s basically two weeks of building Lego robots, which I personally consider the best possible use of summer.

  But once again, it conflicts with this stupid reenactment. And God forbid I should miss even one weekend of magic with my father and his special friends.

  The really sad thing about all this is that I’ve also come to the realization that camp is my one and only chance of getting a girlfriend. The girls at my school have pretty much made it clear that they’d rather die than be seen talking to me. I can hardly blame them. I’m not real tall, my red hair never sits still, and my teeth stick out “six ways to Sunday,” as my dentist says. (I’m getting braces before the summer’s done . . . another big score for Stonewall!) And the girls have seen me at my worst—whining, being a nerd, getting pushed around, and, most recently, getting a wedgie from Cal Small-wood on the last day of school.

  There is one really cool girl who has just starting coming to the reenactments. She’s amazingly cute even in a nurse’s uniform that’s 150 years out of style. She’s got a lot of bushy brown hair and big brown eyes, and Mom is always trying to get me to talk to her, but there’s no way that’s going to happen with me dressed like a dorky bugle boy.

  So, camp would be a chance to start with a clean slate—no prior embarrassments and no uniform.

  But, no. Once again, I’m hauling the uniform and a bunch of other fake Civil War junk about a mile from the parking lot to our campsite. We stop every two seconds because my dad sees someone he knows and has to talk to them.

  Worse, since my name is so stupid, every single one of these guys remembers it.

  “Hey, Stonewall!” they yell, or, “How are the troops, Stonewall?”

  I fake a smile. My dad gets really mad if I “embarrass” him in front of his friends. He doesn’t seem to mind that he’s embarrassing me all weekend.

  Okay, I admit that I may have once found reenactments cool . . . when I was six years old. Pitching our canvas tent in a grassy field, or on nice nights just sleeping outside under the stars. Staying up late cooking stew over a campfire. Watching my dad and his buds march off with their shiny muskets and sharp bayonets—hearing their Rebel yells and gunfire—and really being able to pretend they were soldiers in a war.

  But that was before Dad turned me into a bugle boy. And before I’d seen each reenactment like five times already. Sometimes I feel like we’re reenacting reenactments. And I’m starting to worry that what I’m really reenacting out here is the dorkiness of my father’s life.

  “I just wish I had had these opportunities at your age,” he’ll often say.

  Which makes me think that if he’s turned out the way he has while NOT going to reenactments as a kid, what chance do I have?

  Sometimes when I’m complaining about my crappy life, some kid at school will say, “What’s the big deal? Reenactments sound cool and it’s got to be better than sitting at home all weekend.”

  Wrong! Sitting at home all weekend rocks compared to going to a reenactment. Think about all the things that are good in life: DVDs, TV, PlayStation, Dr Pepper, ice cream, french fries, YouTube and MySpace, Taco Bell, comfortable chairs, sleeping late, mattresses, flush toilets, Reese’s Puffs cereal, Lego robots, Japanese comic books, and clothing that doesn’t itch like holy heck.

  None of those had been invented yet when the Civil War happened. Or even if they had you couldn’t get them while fighting the Civil War. So that’s why you can’t have them at a reenactment.

  Now, that’s a great lesson to learn once. Whew, old-timey folks had it hard and we just take modern stuff for granted. Yay! Great lesson! I’m a better person now!

  But like I said: You only need to do it once. They’ve been dragging me to these things since I was six. So that’s six years times at least ten reenactments a year. That’s at least sixty times I’ve learned the stupid lesson already!

  Welcome to my luxury accommodations. I take the bed-roll off my back, roll it out on the ground, and presto! Room for one at the Bull Run Hilton. Only a quarter mile to the nearest Porta-John.

  At least I don’t have to sleep in the tent with my parents anymore. It’s an authentic historical genuine reproduction tent, which means it’s totally worthless, unwaterproofed, and tiny. It’s just a piece of canvas held up by three poles and staked to the ground. But it does provide some cover. While they go off to chat with friends, I dive into their tent and pull out my Game Boy.

  The only problem is I forget to hit MUTE first. The start-up squelch sends my mom running.

  “Stonewall, put down that video game. You know I don’t like you playing that in camp,” says my mom. “Plus, those games are too violent.”

  Too violent? We’re here reenacting a freaking war, Mom! Dad can shoot reenactors, but I can’t kill orcs on my Game Boy?

  Dad rushes in to back her up. “I’ve told you about bringing anything farby to our reenactments. A successful weekend is . . .”

  “An authentic weekend,” I say, finishing the cliché that has been my life.

  Farby, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, is anything “not authentic to the period.” (Don’t ask me where they got the word farby from, because I don’t know or care.) I’ve tried pointing out before that everyone here is farby since none of us were here during “the period,” but they don’t listen.

  Dad says, “I’m going to clean my musket now. Stonewall, why don’t you come over here and polish your bugle?”

  “Because I don’t want to?”

  “I’m not going to listen to backtalk all weekend,” my mother says. “Now put that game down before I take it away.”

  It goes on like this, until I finally yell “All right already” loud enough for nearby campsites to hear.

  This makes my mother extra-mad and, realizing that I’ve gone a little too far, I get up to get the bugle from my pack.

  Only it’s not there. I know I didn’t leave it in the car. I must have left it at home.

  My father goes ballistic. He doesn’t want to shout at me because then I would be “embarrassing him.” So there’s a lot of hissing from my mother and low growling threats from my father.

  “How could you have left your bugle at home?” he rumbles.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stonewall,” my mother chimes in, “if you were sorry, you wouldn’t have done it. You’ve got to stop being so irresponsible.”

  I shrug. “Must be the ADD.”

  This is my favorite all-purpose excuse.

  Earlier this year I got diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. At school in history class, I’d get to gazing out the window at the janitors and cafeteria ladies tossing garbage into some Dumpsters, and only the third “Stonewall!” from Ms. Sherk would snap me back into class to face her glare and the snickers of the other kids. It’s weird because I do actually like history—as long as I’m not reenacting it—but somehow e
very little thing distracts me.

  A few weeks of this, and my grades slipping from B- to C to D, and I found myself one day in the guidance counselor’s office. Then a session with the counselor and my parents. Then a visit to this kooky psychiatrist. A few stupid tests and presto, I’ve got ADD and a prescription for Ritalin.

  I mostly think it’s all crap. Who isn’t bored with seventh grade? But ADD does have its advantages. Like now I have an excuse when I don’t want to do homework. Or when I “forget” to do something like mow the yard. Or when I forget to bring something. Like today.

  “I didn’t mean to forget it,” I sigh, and look to the ground.

  Just when I think they may go for it, my father grunts. “I notice you didn’t forget your Game Boy.”

  Hearing this, I know I’ve lost the battle, but I’m going to go down swinging. “Priorities, I guess.”

  “Well, you’re going to have a bugle for tomorrow. You’ll have to go see if you can get one from the sutlers.” He gets his wallet and pulls out three twenty-dollar bills. “And you WILL pay me back. You’re buying this with your own money.”

  “But—”

  “No, no buts,” Dad snarls. “You’d better march yourself down there and you’d better hope you can get one.”

  I grab the money and stomp out of the tent toward Sutler’s Row because I’m so mad, I have to stomp off somewhere. I wish there was a door to slam. I’ve been saving my money for a long time to buy my own TV and DVD player so I don’t have to watch the History Channel with my parents every single night. Now I’m going to have to blow most of it on a stupid bugle, which, by the way, I hardly know how to play anyway.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SUTLER’S ROW sits on a small hill next to the field where my parents and the other reenactors have pitched their tents. The row is actually two lines of large canvas tents separated by a grassy lane, and it’s where the sutlers (the Civil War name for salesmen) set up to sell a bunch of crap to idiots like my parents.