The Man That He Once Was, Part I

In better times, Anders Throne once was a good husband and loving father, married to his sweetheart, Rosie Smith, who’d grown on the Chesapeake waters. He worked as a lawyer, was well renowned, had a little boy by the name Chester, if fate were just he would’ve lived out his days and saw his happiness never perturbed. But when the war with the north broke out to his country he was compelled to stay true, he said good-bye and stole away north, marching to war with the boys in blue. His father-in-law said "Good riddance!" and moved his precious daughter away, to a big mansion deep in Richmond, where he felt she could safely stay. The war dragged on, and in the end Richmond found itself under siege, all in the city knew things were rough, that there was no real hope of relief. Day after day the big guns did roar on, a crashing hail of fire and shell, until one April day when the Union struck and the town of Petersburg fell. Unable to hold Richmond any longer General Lee led his army to the west, but Anders, arched into the fallen town, hoping somehow to find his dearest. But cannons and not the most precise of things, and when he reached her father’s home, he saw cinders scattered, shards of broken glass, from the hallway ceiling’s grand old dome. He found an old slave who explain it all, that whoever had been inside no was dead, a cannon-ball had ignited a great blaze, and they died of the smoke in their beds. Anders collapsed when he heard the news, and roared out his agony and pain. He railed at God,”I fought to free people! And as thanks you go take her away?!” Bereft of his son and his dearest love, he walked away right then and there, deserted the army and wandered off, if they hanged him he did not care. He aimlessly started heading for the west, and as he walked along he wound find the ‘truth’ of it all, so clear and so crisp, took over his grief-battered mind. God cared not for the trials of men, nor the world that he had once made. The beasts had it right, take what you can! Destroy any who gets in the way. The only rules that mattered were anarchy, laws of the jungle, ever cold and cruel. He was done pretending that there was a point, manners and honor were lies for the fools… CONTINUES IN PART II