The Mockingbird

by Ambrose Bierce

The time, a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the early autumn of 1861. The
place, a forest's heart in the mountain region of southwestern Virginia.
Private Grayrock of the Federal Army is discovered seated comfortably at the
root of a great pine tree, against which he leans, his legs extended straight
along the ground, his rifle lying across his thighs, his hands (clasped in order
that they may not fall away to his sides) resting upon the barrel of the
weapon. The contact of the back of his head with the tree has pushed his cap
downward over his eyes, almost concealing them; one seeing him would say
that he slept.

Private Grayrock did not sleep; to have done so would have imperiled the
interests of the United States, for he was a long way outside the lines and
subject to capture or death at the hands of the enemy. Moreover, he was in a
frame of mind unfavorable to repose. The cause of his perturbation of spirit
was this: during the previous night he had served on the picket-guard, and
had been posted as a sentinel in this very forest. The night was clear, though
moonless, but in the gloom of the wood the darkness was deep. Grayrock's
post was at a considerable distance from those to right and left, for the
pickets had been thrown out a needless distance from the camp, making the
line too long for the force detailed to occupy it. The war was young, and
military camps entertained the error that while sleeping they were better
protected by thin lines a long way out toward the enemy than by thicker
ones close in. And surely they needed as long notice as possible of an
enemy's approach, for they were at that time addicted to the practice of
undressing--than which nothing could be more unsoldierly. On the morning of
the memorable 6th of April, at Shiloh, many of Grant's men when spitted on
Confederate bayonets were as naked as civilians; but it should be allowed
that this was not because of any defect in their picket line. Their error was of
another sort: they had no pickets. This is perhaps a vain digression. I should
not care to undertake to interest the reader in the fate of an army; what we
have here to consider is that of Private Grayrock.

For two hours after he had been left at his lonely post that Saturday night he
stood stock-still, leaning against the trunk of a large tree, staring into the
darkness in his front and trying to recognize known objects; for he had been
posted at the same spot during the day. But all was now different; he saw
nothing in detail, but only groups of things, whose shapes, not observed
when there was something more of them to observe, were now unfamiliar.
They seemed not to have been there before. A landscape that is all trees and
undergrowth, moreover, lacks definition, is confused and without
accentuated points upon which attention can gain a foothold. Add the gloom
of a moonless night, and something more than great natural intelligence and
a city education is required to preserve one's knowledge of direction. And
that is how it occurred that Private Grayrock, after vigilantly watching the
spaces in his front and then imprudently executing a circumspection of his
whole dimly visible environment (silently walking around his tree to
accomplish it) lost his bearings and seriously impaired his usefulness as a
sentinel. Lost at his post--unable to say in which direction to look for an
enemy's approach, and in which lay the sleeping camp for whose security he
was accountable with his life--conscious, too, of many another awkward
feature of the situation and of considerations affecting his own safety,
Private Grayrock was profoundly disquieted. Nor was he given time to
recover his tranquillity, for almost at the moment that he realized his
awkward predicament he heard a stir of leaves and a snap of fallen twigs,
and turning with a stilled heart in the direction whence it came, saw in the
gloom the indistinct outlines of a human figure.

"Halt!" shouted Private Grayrock, peremptorily as in duty bound, backing up

the command with the sharp metallic snap of his cocking rifle--"who goes
there?"

There was no answer; at least there was an instant's hesitation, and the
answer, if it came, was lost in the report of the sentinel's rifle. In the silence
of the night and the forest the sound was deafening, and hardly had it died
away when it was repeated by the pieces of the pickets to right and left, a
sympathetic fusillade. For two hours every unconverted civilian of them had
been evolving enemies from his imagination, and peopling the woods in his
front with them, and Grayrock's shot had started the whole encroaching host
into visible existence. Having fired, all retreated, breathless, to the reserves--
all but Grayrock, who did not know in what direction to retreat. When, no
enemy appearing, the roused camp two miles away had undressed and got
itself into bed again, and the picket line was cautiously re-established, he
was discovered bravely holding his ground, and was complimented by the
officer of the guard as the one soldier of that devoted band who could rightly
be considered the moral equivalent of that uncommon unit of value, "a
whoop in hell."
In the mean time, however, Grayrock had made a close but unavailing
search for the mortal part of the intruder at whom he had fired, and whom he
had a marksman's intuitive sense of having hit; for he was one of those born
experts who shoot without aim by an instinctive sense of direction, and are
nearly as dangerous by night as by day. During a full half of his twenty-four
years he had been a terror to the targets of all the shooting-galleries in three
cities. Unable now to produce his dead game he had the discretion to hold
his tongue, and was glad to observe in his officer and comrades the natural
assumption that not having run away he had seen nothing hostile. His
"honorable mention" had been earned by not running away anyhow.

Nevertheless, Private Grayrock was far from satisfied with the night's
adventure, and when the next day he made some fair enough pretext to
apply for a pass to go outside the lines, and the general commanding
promptly granted it in recognition of his bravery the night before, he passed
out at the point where that had been displayed. Telling the sentinel then on
duty there that he had lost something,--which was true enough--he renewed
the search for the person whom he supposed himself to have shot, and
whom if only wounded he hoped to trail by the blood. He was no more
successful by daylight than he had been in the darkness, and after covering
a wide area and boldly penetrating a long distance into "the Confederacy" he
gave up the search, somewhat fatigued, seated himself at the root of the
great pine tree, where we have seen him, and indulged his disappointment.

It is not to be inferred that Grayrock's was the chagrin of a cruel nature

balked of its bloody deed. In the clear large eyes, finely wrought lips, and
broad forehead of that young man one could read quite another story, and in
point of fact his character was a singularly felicitous compound of boldness
and sensibility, courage and conscience.

"I find myself disappointed," he said to himself, sitting there at the bottom of
the golden haze submerging the forest like a subtler sea-- "disappointed in
failing to discover a fellow-man dead by my hand! Do I then really wish that I
had taken life in the performance of a duty as well performed without? What
more could I wish? If any danger threatened, my shot averted it; that is what
I was there to do. No, I am glad indeed if no human life was needlessly
extinguished by me. But I am in a false position. I have suffered myself to be
complimented by my officers and envied by my comrades. The camp is
ringing with praise of my courage. That is not just; I know myself
courageous, but this praise is for specific acts which I did not perform, or
performed--otherwise. It is believed that I remained at my post bravely,
without firing, whereas it was I who began the fusillade, and I did not retreat
in the general alarm because bewildered. What, then, shall I do? Explain that
I saw an enemy and fired? They have all said that of themselves, yet none
believes it. Shall I tell a truth which, discrediting my courage, will have the
effect of a lie? Ugh! it is an ugly business altogether. I wish to God I could
find my man!"

And so wishing, Private Grayrock, overcome at last by the languor of the

afternoon and lulled by the stilly sounds of insects droning and prosing in
certain fragrant shrubs, so far forgot the interests of the United States as to
fall asleep and expose himself to capture. And sleeping he dreamed.

He thought himself a boy, living in a far, fair land by the border of a great
river upon which the tall steamboats moved grandly up and down beneath
their towering evolutions of black smoke, which announced them long before
they had rounded the bends and marked their movements when miles out of
sight. With him always, at his side as he watched them, was one to whom he
gave his heart and soul in love--a twin brother. Together they strolled along
the banks of the stream; together explored the fields lying farther away from
it, and gathered pungent mints and sticks of fragrant sassafras in the hills
overlooking all--beyond which lay the Realm of Conjecture, and from which,
looking southward across the great river, they caught glimpses of the
Enchanted Land. Hand in hand and heart in heart they two, the only children
of a widowed mother, walked in paths of light through valleys of peace,
seeing new things under a new sun. And through all the golden days floated
one unceasing sound-- the rich, thrilling melody of a mocking-bird in a cage
by the cottage door. It pervaded and possessed all the spiritual intervals of
the dream, like a musical benediction. The joyous bird was always in song; its
infinitely various notes seemed to flow from its throat, effortless, in bubbles
and rills at each heart-beat, like the waters of a pulsing spring. That fresh,
clear melody seemed, indeed, the spirit of the scene, the meaning and
interpretation to sense of the mysteries of life and love.

But there came a time when the days of the dream grew dark with sorrow in
a rain of tears. The good mother was dead, the meadowside home by the
great river was broken up, and the brothers were parted between two of their
kinsmen. William (the dreamer) went to live in a populous city in the Realm
of Conjecture, and John, crossing the river into the Enchanted Land, was
taken to a distant region whose people in their lives and ways were said to
be strange and wicked. To him, in the distribution of the dead mother's
estate, had fallen all that they deemed of value--the mocking-bird. They
could be divided, but it could not, so it was carried away into the strange
country, and the world of William knew it no more forever. Yet still through
the aftertime of his loneliness its song filled all the dream, and seemed
always sounding in his ear and in his heart.

The kinsmen who had adopted the boys were enemies, holding no
communication. For a time letters full of boyish bravado and boastful
narratives of the new and larger experience--grotesque descriptions of their
widening lives and the new worlds they had conquered--passed between
them; but these gradually became less frequent, and with William's removal
to another and greater city ceased altogether. But ever through it all ran the
song of the mocking-bird, and when the dreamer opened his eyes and stared
through the vistas of the pine forest the cessation of its music first apprised
him that he was awake.

The sun was low and red in the west; the level rays projected from the trunk
of each giant pine a wall of shadow traversing the golden haze to eastward
until light and shade were blended in undistinguishable blue.

Private Grayrock rose to his feet, looked cautiously about him, shouldered his
rifle and set off toward camp. He had gone perhaps a half-mile, and was
passing a thicket of laurel, when a bird rose from the midst of it and perching
on the branch of a tree above, poured from its joyous breast so inexhaustible
floods of song as but one of all God's creatures can utter in His praise. There
was little in that--it was only to open the bill and breathe; yet the man
stopped as if struck --stopped and let fall his rifle, looked upward at the bird,
covered his eyes with his hands and wept like a child! For the moment he
was, indeed, a child, in spirit and in memory, dwelling again by the great
river, over-against the Enchanted Land! Then with an effort of the will he
pulled himself together, picked up his weapon and audibly damning himself
for an idiot strode on. Passing an opening that reached into the heart of the
little thicket he looked in, and there, supine upon the earth, its arms all
abroad, its gray uniform stained with a single spot of blood upon the breast,
its white face turned sharply upward and backward, lay the image of
himself!--the body of John Grayrock, dead of a gunshot wound, and still
warm! He had found his man.

As the unfortunate soldier knelt beside that masterwork of civil war the
shrilling bird upon the bough overhead stilled her song and, flushed with
sunset's crimson glory, glided silently away through the solemn spaces of the
wood. At roll-call that evening in the Federal camp the name William
Grayrock brought no response, nor ever again there-after.