was a difficult life. I was born in the house we lived in. When I grew older, I trained as a carpenter and made decent money for the family making furniture and repairing things for the people in our village.
“I started playing music when I was a child,” he continued. “There was a man in town with a guitar and he taught me how to play in the spare moments when I wasn’t helping my mother tend to my brothers and sisters. I made my first guitar myself out of some extra wood I was given for a job. I carried that guitar with me everywhere. In fact, it was with me in Louisiana when I died.”
Once again I heard William make a noise that sounded similar to breathing. He was occupied with the past now, and I could feel his emotions becoming more intense. “When the war broke out, there was no question whose side I would be on. I served in the nineteenth Tennessee Infantry. By then, I had moved to Knoxville, where there was more work. I joined in the spring of 1861.”
While I found his story captivating, I was also doing the math in my head. We were sitting in William’s living room in late September of 2011, which meant I was sharing a couch with a 181 year-old vampire. There was no doubt, I mused silently, that I was making the moves on a much older man.
“One year later I was dead,” William continued. “I died in Louisiana at the Battle of Baton Rouge.”
“You don’t have to tell me any more,” I said taking his hand in mine. “At least not tonight.”
“Actually I’m fine,” he said, looking intently at me with his mossy green eyes. “I haven’t told anyone the story of my life for a very long time. Truthfully, it’s nice that you want to know.”
“I do, very much,” I said.
“So, we were in Baton Rouge. We had started with 1,000 strong men, but by the time we arrived, there were barely 100 healthy souls remaining in the division. We arrived with no tents and little gear. Many of the men had neither coat nor shoes. Imagine, walking for days on end, your feet bloody and raw. There was no food, and our bellies ached with hunger. Many were ill with dysentery. The filth and disease were overwhelming. The horror of watching your brothers, cousins and friends killed or maimed. I think for some it was probably a blessing to be killed.
“Did you feel that way?”
William shook his head. “No. After all the death and destruction I’d seen, I didn’t care much about winning or honor, but I didn’t want to die. I wanted to survive and go back home to my family.”
“Did you? Survive the war?”
“Sadly, no,” William replied. “I remember the day of the battle very clearly. It was very humid and also foggy. The air was heavy and wet and I couldn’t make out the landscape beyond my feet. It was a bloodbath; almost five hundred men were killed on the battlefield, out of two thousand, maybe three thousand soldiers. I remember lying on the ground, listening to the screams of the wounded, while civilians from town ran their hands through my pockets looking for valuables. There I was, 32 years old, miles away from my family, and I had never even kissed a girl.”
“Wait. What do you mean, you’d never kissed a girl?”
William chuckled. “Women were not quite so fast as they are today. And I was too shy to say anything. And then there was the fact that I was too poor to offer for a lady’s hand anyway. What would I have given her? I had barely enough money for the roof over my head. In those days there were few women from good families who would have consented to marry me.”
It was a shocking story, but did make sense. It also made my kisses all the more intriguing. “I guess you learned to kiss after you became a vampire,” I said, hoping for more of his story.
“I did, but I haven’t had the wild life you may imagine. Anyway, I was turned right there on the battlefield. I had been lying on the ground for a while, having been shot several times in my leg. It must have hit an artery because I started to bleed out. There was no doctor in the camp and no medics to come and help me. Believe me, as bad as