skipping time real person.

"Well… I know who I was, before the war. Born here, but I served in Kentucky. Went there to get out of the fighting… but it went and followed me from my front porch, to my farm. Don't remember much, besides my mother and father. I joined up in April, 1864. I got to live in hellish barracks for months, training with the most damned son-of-a-bitch officers this side of the Mississippi. And for what? I got to be the first casualty in my regiment."

The grinding intensifies. "I used to be bitter, but… not worth being mad, when the poor bastard who shot me got hisself killed sometime. All of his friends, too."

He chuckles a little, deep from his hollow stone body. "Sorry, I occasionally become slightly morbid about these matters."

I try to laugh with him, keep things casual. "I understand, friend. What happened after that?"

"It was dark, for quite some time. Stiff, too. It was very uncomfortable, to feel myself falling away… from myself. It was a confusing feeling, being so stiff, and yet so loose. Thankfully, it only took about a hundred years for some nice young men to make me this statue, which I now inhabit."

Before I can say another word, he chuckles.

"I got to go from being rotted and stiff and on my back below the earth, to being above it, but in the same state."