FREDERICKSBURG, Va.—A lively troupe of Civil War reenactors reported last week to prepare for what some in their fanbase are calling “the next big one”. Hype surrounding a possible reboot of the war between the states has roused the company to make camp at a pickleball court near Chatham as they await further announcements.
“Now if only that damned Congress would make up its mind,” commented Andrew McDouglass, a Confederate UX developer from Roanoke. “But that’s Virginians for you, stuck as molasses.”
McDouglass is one of eighty men thus far to be called up amid growing speculation over what surprises the upcoming installment may have in store.
“Nowadays, it ain’t how it was back before, with bayonets,” McDouglass added, biting into some hardtack. “But it’s brewin’. There’s not been this many rainbow flags and plastic fetuses flyin’ around since Chattanoogee.”
“Here’s hoping they don’t retcon in a bunch of new stuff and woke everything to [expletive],” one fan of the first war tweeted. “If General ‘Roberta E. Lee’ shows up and conquers Maryland in the first five minutes, I’m out.”
Another responded: “Don’t you mean Roberta E. Palpatine?”
For now, members will continue practicing drills and flank formations every day except Fridays, when Cub Scouts in the area gather at the pickleball court for their weekly pack night.
“Snake wakers be dratted,” said company leader Seymour DuPont, peering out through his spyglass toward a Chili’s on the distant horizon. “With food stores in handsome supply, I do intend that we’ll be fit as a fiddle when our hour comes.”
“They actually go pretty fast on the monkey bars when there’s no children,” said an attendant at the adjacent playground.
“I’m surprised the reenactors are rehearsing so early when a start date for the war hasn’t even been released yet,” YouTube personality “Greyback” Greg Sawyer commented. “No leaks or teasers or anything.”
Absent of spoilers, it’s this uncertain timeline that has many in the troupe already bracing for a long encampment. “My dearest Clara,” company member Bruce Calhoun texted his wife Skye, “just as I am certain the Almighty hath sworn baleful oaths against this contumacious land for the strife that now rises like the dawn, so too am I certain I must hence abjure the joys of our nuptial bower ‘til at last His Judgment is spent.”
Wrote one marketing analyst in a PTO request: “We shall, by Providence, see the elephant afore we again see our homesteads, nor shall we relent without first quelling the scourge brought upon our country by the tyrant Lincoln.”
Abraham Lincoln was previously a president of the United States.