Last of the Dixie Heroes

by Peter Abrahams

  “I’m not going back to school.”

  “Got to go to school, Rhett.”

  “Why?”

  “If kids don’t go, the whole system falls apart. Then where would we be?”

  “Is that meant to be funny?”

  “Guess not, if you have to ask.”

  Rhett smiled, not much of one and quickly erased, but a smile. He got off the bed. Roy walked him down the hall.

  “We’ll be at my place,” Roy said as they passed the master bedroom.

  Hunched over his computer, Barry made no reply. Roy was getting plenty of air now, his lungs working effortlessly. Maybe the Buckhead atmosphere agreed with him.

  THREE

  Rhett loved Monopoly. Roy ordered pizza, got out the board. Rhett chose the cannon, Roy the top hat. Pizza came. Rhett picked the pepperoni off his slices and laid them aside. They polished off a family-size Coke. Roy landed on North Carolina with a hotel, rolled snake eyes on his next turn, hitting Pennsylvania, also with a hotel, to end the game. Rhett counted his winnings to the last dollar, brandished the wad of play money, and said, “I’m the man.”

  After that, they watched a sitcom that Roy had never seen and didn’t find funny. It was about a group of people in their twenties sharing an apartment in a big city and putting each other down.

  “You like this?”

  “It’s cool.”

  Rhett’s swollen eye started seeping a little. He got tired, went to bed in his old bedroom. Roy thought of tucking him in, even reading him a story, but did none of that. The boy was going on twelve. “ ’Night,” he said from in front of the TV; and turned it off the moment Rhett was gone.

  Roy called Gordo at home.

  “He’s out drilling,” Brenda said.

  “Drilling?”

  “With the regiment. It’s part of the initiation.”

  Roy felt the weight of the oxidized lead bullet against his thigh.

  “Didn’t he tell you about the regiment?” Brenda said.

  “He told me.”

  “Pretty stupid, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t know,” Roy said, although he thought it was.

  “Do you realize he may even have to pay for some kind of uniform? What army makes you do that? He said it could cost three or four hundred dollars.”

  Roy said nothing.

  “It’s even more, isn’t it?” Brenda said. Brenda was quick; there were women like that all over the place these days.

  “Did he mention anything about a train?” Roy said.

  “What’s a train got to do with it?”

  “Just tell him I called,” Roy said.

  “A model train? ‘The General,’ or something like that?”

  Roy sat down at the kitchen table. He had a stack of bills, not like Barry’s-Barry’s and Marcia’s-but big for him. A legal bill-divorce was expensive; the counselor’s bill; the mortgage, all his now; the home equity line; the car payment-two, in fact, since he’d missed last month; the two credit cards, both near their limits; utilities, phones, property tax. He wrote the checks he could cover, then sorted the remaining bills into immediate and less-immediate categories. There may be a few things opening up soon. Nice things, Roy. He considered calling Mr. Pegram at home. A promotion would sure be nice, Mr. Pegram. He didn’t know how to put that in a businesslike way. Job, salary, payments, money in and out-it was a little like Monopoly, but no fun at all. Roy corrected that thought right away-he wasn’t complaining. He liked the job, he liked the house, and his car, an Altima like Gordo’s, but a little older, was all right too.

  Roy got up, walked around the house-a small house, and a fixer-upper, but solid, and built of brick just like Marcia’s, meaning no termites. He hadn’t done much fixing up-any, in fact-since Marcia left. There were tools and a workbench in the cellar, his housewarming present from the Irregulars. Roy went downstairs.

  He hadn’t been in the cellar in months. A box of square tiles-not marble but something that looked like marble-sat on the workbench. Marcia had wanted him to replace the linoleum in the downstairs bathroom. A long two-by-two was clamped in the vise. It took Roy a moment to recall what he’d been building when he’d left off: shelves for Rhett’s room. Measurements were penciled on the two-by-two. Roy plugged in his Black amp; Decker and started sawing.

  There hadn’t been any tools in the series of small apartments he’d grown up in with his mother. This was Roy’s first set. He liked using them. Sawdust sprayed in gold arcs lit by the hanging overhead bulb. Roy sawed, sanded, drilled, screwed the frame together, then started cutting the shelves from long pine boards. He lost himself in the sound of the saw, the grain patterns in the wood, the smell of cut pine. Especially the smell: it brought back memories, not specific memories, more the feeling, of when he was very young and they-ma, pappy, Roy-were all together, up in Tennessee.

  A hand touched his shoulder.

  Roy jumped inside his skin, spun around, his finger still on the trigger of the saw, and there was Marcia, the blade buzzing between them. He shut the thing off, got ready for her to be angry about something-the school, Rhett, his visit to her house. But Marcia didn’t look angry. Neither did she look sick or hurt; if she’d been in the hospital, it couldn’t have been serious. Marcia looked great-was still the best-looking woman he’d ever seen. That was his honest reaction. Roy tried to suppress it stillborn, but it popped to life in his head anyway.

  Marcia looked up at him. “Thanks for handling everything today, Roy.”

  In the silence-a special silence in the aftermath of the sawing and what with being down below street level-Roy heard every subtlety in Marcia’s voice, all the tones, all the vibrations, as though he could see the sound being produced by her throat, mouth, tongue. She had a beautiful voice. He started having the air supply problem again, bad enough for the inhaler this time, but he wouldn’t reach for it with Marcia there.

  “How is he?” she said.

  “Sleeping.”

  “I looked in,” Marcia said. “But I didn’t want to turn on the light.”

  “He’s got a black eye, is all.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Some schoolyard thing,” Roy said.

  They looked at each other. “I guess Barry didn’t hear the phone,” Marcia said.

  “Too busy making money.”

  “That’s a good one.”

  Roy didn’t get that. Wasn’t busy or wasn’t making money? Couldn’t be the latter: Roy had seen the brand-new Benz with the BARRY vanity plate, and more than that, he could tell that Barry was the moneymaking type, just from the way he pointed his chin at you when he was talking.

  Marcia was looking at Rhett’s shelves, coming together on the workbench. “Roy?”

  “Yeah?”

  She started to say something, changed her mind. “Got anything to drink?”

  “Coke?”

  “A grown-up drink, Roy.”

  “Have to look.”

  They went upstairs, Marcia leading, Roy trying to keep his eyes off her body. Marcia was in better shape than ever. How amazing that there’d been a time when a woman with a body like that had shared his bed.

  Roy opened the fridge. He had a six-pack of Bud, one bottle gone.

  “Any Chardonnay?” Marcia said.

  “Sorry.” Roy wasn’t much of a drinker. Not that he didn’t like booze: he knew that he liked it a little too much. His father had gone that route.

  Roy opened two bottles of Bud, poured one into a glass for Marcia. She drained half of it in one gulp.

  “Barry said you were in the hospital.”

  She nodded.

  “You okay?”

  “Just having my lips done, Roy.”

  He didn’t understand.

  “My lips. It’s something I’ve always wanted.”

  Roy hadn’t known; hadn’t known she’d been dissatisfied with her lips, hadn’t known what bothered her about them, didn’t see anything different now.

  “What do y
ou think?” she said, smacking them together, sticking them out at him.

  Roy studied her lips.

  Marcia laughed. “You’re hopeless,” she said. “Don’t you see how much fuller they are? Not those pencil-thin little miss priss things anymore. Full, Roy. Generous.”

  “Generous,” Roy said. The word seemed strange in the context of lips, but it got him thinking.

  Marcia laughed again. “You’re something, Roy. You surely are.” Meaning something stupid, he thought, ignorant when it came to changing lips, shorting Yahoo, all that. But then her foot touched his under the kitchen table.

  Just for a moment.

  He took a sip of beer, glanced at her over the bottle. Couldn’t tell anything about the lips, but now that he thought about it, her hair seemed a little different, kind of copper-colored in a way that reminded him of the sky on the way to work that morning.

  She was looking at him too.

  “Did it hurt?” Roy said.

  “Hurt?”

  “The lip implant.”

  She laughed, spraying Bud across the table. “Implants are for tits, Roy. This was just an injection.”

  “Of what?” Roy said.

  Marcia shrugged. “Something they shoot in there.”

  Tits: he remembered the ugly thing he’d said to Barry but the truth was he’d forgotten what Marcia’s breasts looked like. Not that he wouldn’t recognize them, he just couldn’t picture them. Funny thing, though, he could recall the springy feel of them with a precision that made him uncomfortable.

  “Another beer?” he said.

  “You’re not drinking.”

  “I am.” He took a sip, fetched another bottle, refilled Marcia’s glass. His forearm happened to brush her shoulder. She didn’t shy away; the opposite, if anything.

  He sat down.

  “How’s work?” she said.

  “Work?” said Roy. “Not bad.” He was tempted to tell her about being in line for a promotion. That awkward moment or two in Curtis’s office, the mix-up with the train, none of that would add up to much. The important things were that Rhett was home safe in bed, and here was Marcia sitting around having a beer. “How’s yours?” he asked.

  She made that contemptuous little upper-lip movement of hers. Roy noticed the change then. “Busy,” she said.

  Marcia took a big drink, her lips a double crescent on the rim of the glass. Yes, they’d changed: sexy lips, no doubt about it. Her new lips reminded him a little of the lips of Curtis’s girlfriend, who worked in the mayor’s office and had once been on the cover of Ebony; maybe not the kind of thought you were supposed to have.

  “I was in your house today,” Roy said.

  Marcia paused, eyeing him over the glass. “I’m sorry if there was a scene.”

  “No scene,” Roy said, “but it’s pretty impressive,” and when she didn’t reply, added, “your house in Buckhead.”

  “Buckhead,” she said, almost like she now had some problem with it. Was it possible that she’d changed, that she’d come around to thinking that some simpler place was just as good? He took a close look at her, thought he detected changes other than the lips, internal ones.

  “You lost some weight, Roy,” she said.

  He knew that wasn’t true.

  “Working out some?”

  “Not much.” Not at all-he’d let his gym membership lapse, was getting soft around the middle, didn’t care. Maybe he seemed in shape compared to Bar “I’m of a mind to do something pretty crazy right now, Roy,” she said, draining her glass.

  “Like what?” Roy said. He thought: She’s going to give me custody of Rhett.

  Marcia reached across the table, laid her hand on his. Roy felt a jolt right through his body. The fact that she wasn’t wearing the wedding ring he’d given her, had a big green stone, a real emerald, maybe, in its place, did nothing to lessen his reaction, possibly increased it. He gazed into her eyes, tried to stop, couldn’t.

  “Remember that time up in Tennessee?” she said.

  He did, just from that.

  “What was the name of that crick?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Yeah,” she said, getting up and coming over to him, standing behind his chair, close. “Crystal. I’ve been thinking about Crystal Crick lately.” She touched him, very light, on the back of the neck, sent another jolt through him, this one with cold tingles at the end.

  “What are you doing, Marcia?”

  “What I want,” she said, her fingers trailing down under his shirt collar. “What you want too, I hope.”

  He turned and stood up, breaking contact. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  She raised her hand, as though she were about to lay it on his chest, but didn’t. “You took over today.”

  “I’m his father.” Roy would have stepped back, but the table was there.

  “He’s a lucky boy.” Marcia’s hand came down on his chest, her fingertips twisting around a button.

  What was going on? Roy looked in her eyes, learned nothing. All he knew was that she’d met Barry at a conference seven months ago, left Roy a few weeks later, and their divorce had come through last week. She’d always been decisive, long as he’d known her.

  Marcia tilted up her face. “Give me a kiss, Roy.”

  “Why?” Roy said.

  She paused. “Why?” she said. “Don’t you want to?”

  “But what’s it for?” Roy said.

  Marcia wrinkled her forehead in a way that was new, made him wonder if confusing things were happening in her life, made him feel a little sorry for her. “What’s a kiss for?” she said. “Is that what you’re asking?”

  “What’s this kiss for?” Roy said.

  She stepped back. “You don’t like me much anymore, do you?”

  “It’s not that,” Roy said. “But what about Barry?” And a hundred other things, but that one came first.

  “Do we have to talk about him?” Marcia said.

  Roy didn’t understand. In this very room, at almost the same time of night, she’d said: I never dreamed I could feel this way about a person. Meaning about Barry: that was the night Roy had first heard of him.

  “We do,” Roy said.

  Marcia’s eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t a crier. “No one can ever make a mistake in your world, is that it?”

  A mistake? Had it all been a mistake? “What kind of mistake?”

  “Oh, Roy, don’t badger me. I’m so tired I can’t hardly think right now.”

  “Does this mean you and Barry aren’t getting-”

  Marcia started crying, just as he was thinking, She doesn’t look tired, she looks great. But then she didn’t look great anymore, with the tears, and her face all blotchy.

  “I deserve this, you not caring anymore,” she said, or something like that, it was hard to distinguish the words.

  Roy’s arms came up. His hands opened. They curled around her upper arms. He pulled her in.

  Marcia cried against Roy’s chest. Maybe it would have been all right if they’d left it at that, but one thing led to another.

  Something buzzed in the night. Roy woke, turned on the light. Marcia was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to him, bent over, fumbling through clothes on the floor. She straightened, put her cell phone to her ear. The buzzing stopped.

  “Hello?” she said.

  She listened. “I don’t know any Grant-” she began, stopped. “Oh, I didn’t recognize you without the doctor part. Why, yes, thank you, I’m fine.” She listened some more, said, “Same to you,” clicked off.

  Marcia turned to Roy. For a moment her eyes didn’t appear to be seeing him at all; then they did, although the look in them seemed a little funny, maybe too thoughtful for the middle of the night.

  “Barry?” Roy said.

  “Don’t be silly, Roy. That was the doctor.”

  “What doctor?”

  “Why, Dr. Nordman, the lip doctor. Doing his post-op check.”

  “Isn’t it a b
it late?”

  “He just got out of surgery.”

  They looked at each other. He waited for the return of the expression he’d seen in her eyes before they fell asleep, a look not unlike the one she’d had on that trip down Crystal Creek. It didn’t come back.

  “Who’s Grant?” he said.

  “Dr. Nordman’s Christian name. That’s why I didn’t recognize him at first.”

  She picked up her bra, slipped a strap over her shoulder, shrugged one of her breasts-he’d be able to picture them now-inside.

  “You going?” Roy said.

  She turned, smiled. “Can’t very well stay all night, now can I?” She laughed. “Isn’t this the craziest thing?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Like an affair, or something.” Shrug, and her other breast disappeared from view.

  “What happens next?” Roy said.

  She leaned forward, patted his arm. He could smell her; she smelled good. “We go from here,” she said.

  “How, exactly?”

  “We’ll think of something.” She kissed him on the mouth, but quick, and turned off the light on her way out.

  Roy thought he heard Rhett crying in the night. He got up, went down the hall, looked in Rhett’s room. Rhett was in his bed, crying in the night. Roy lay down beside him.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. He felt hope inside him, a good feeling, almost like happiness.

  The crying stopped soon after.

  Peter Abrahams

  Last of the Dixie Heroes

  FOUR

  Rhett’s eye looked a little better when Roy woke him in the morning, a lighter shade of purple and not so swollen.

  ”Not going to school,” he said.

  “Got to,” Roy said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re eleven. Going to school’s what you do on school days.”

  “That’s the reason?”

  “Yeah. What else are you going to do?”

  “Hang out.”

  “And go back to school when?”

  Rhett shrugged, one shoulder slipping out of the neck of his T-shirt, those knuckle-shaped bones on top almost sticking through his skin.