Last of the Dixie Heroes

by Peter Abrahams

  “Give me some help here, boy,” he said.

  “Me?” said Rhett, looking at Roy.

  Roy nodded. Rhett knelt by the preacher. They clawed the dirt away, moist brown earth, easily clawed.

  “That’s the spirit,” said the preacher. He scraped a few clods off the stone with his fingernails. It read:

  Roy Singleton Hill

  1831–1865

  Hero

  “You can read that, boy?” the preacher said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Rhett.

  “Read it out loud.”

  “Roy Singleton Hill,” said Rhett. “Eighteen thirty-one dash eighteen sixty-five. Hero.”

  “Dash?” said Sonny Junior.

  “Very nice,” said the preacher, ignoring Sonny Junior. “That’s your great-great-great-grandfather what’s laying there in his eternal peace.”

  “Why was he a hero?” Rhett said.

  The preacher smiled at Rhett, revealing a mouthful of brown-edged teeth. “A bright youngster,” he said, tousling Rhett’s hair, leaving a few particles of earth behind. “He fought for his people,” the preacher said. “Gave his last full measure. That’s what makes a hero.”

  “So he’d be my what, exactly?” said Sonny Junior.

  “Great-great-grandfather, of course,” said the preacher, “same as his.” He nodded at Roy. “A crying shame, you fellows not knowing that. Who are you, anyways, if you don’t know your own past?”

  “Never thought of that,” said Sonny Junior. “True he owned a lot of land around here?”

  “The very ground we’re standing on,” said the preacher. “All the way down to the crick. And back up”-he pointed into the woods-“past the old cart path, the copper works, on up to what they called the Mountain House.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Sonny Junior. The preacher’s eyes, narrow to begin with, narrowed more. Sonny Junior gazed down at the gravestone. “Kind of makes you reverent,” he said. A crow cawed, somewhere up the hill.

  “Nothing more to see,” said the preacher. “Just remember what they say about the past-whosoever forgets it is condemned to repeat it.”

  “Is that from the Bible?” said Sonny Junior.

  “Might as well be,” said the preacher. “Donation box is on the left side as you go in, hard by the door.”

  The distant crow cawed again. This time another crow responded, much closer, possibly in the very tree under which they stood.

  Roy had an appointment with the attorney.

  “How about I take Rhett back to the place?” said Sonny Junior. “We can meet up later.”

  “Rhett?” Roy said, figuring Rhett would want to stay with him.

  “Okay with me,” Rhett said.

  The attorney had a one-room office in a strip mall off the Cleveland ring road. When Roy walked in, he was alone inside, smoking a pipe and working on a newspaper puzzle.

  “My condolences,” said the attorney, waving Roy into a chair. “Last time I saw you, you were this high. Your father and I went to high school together, or maybe you knew that already.”

  “No.” The room was hazy with pipe smoke. Roy started having air supply problems.

  “Course he was a popular kid-do you believe I still remember that powder-blue Chevy he had? Whitewalls. And a big old bull horn mounted on the hood. Not a loudspeaker-I mean a real horn from a bull. Whereas I was what they’d probably call a nerd nowadays, ’cept there was no word for it then. Like a lot of things.”

  He sucked on his pipe, waited for Roy to say something, maybe ask some questions about his father. When Roy did not, he picked up the will.

  “All pretty straightforward,” he said. “He really didn’t have a whole lot at the end, enough to pay the funeral expenses, my fee, sundries. And the place, of course, but it’s got a mortgage.”

  “I’m going to sell it anyway,” Roy said.

  The lawyer gazed into the glowing bowl of the pipe. “Mind a personal question?”

  “Go on.”

  “You paid him a visit over at Ocoee Regional the other day.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Anything unusual happen?”

  “Like what?”

  “I know he could be a mite cantankerous. Specially when he was hitting the bottle.”

  “He was all right.”

  “Would you say he was of sound mind when you saw him?”

  “Sound mind?”

  “Not crazy.”

  “He didn’t seem crazy. I wasn’t there long. I drove up to the place for a few things, ran into Sonny, and he took the stuff back.”

  The attorney nodded, his eyes shifting to the will. “Reason I asked is that’s grounds for breaking a will, if you can prove unsound mind.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Thing is,” said the attorney, “next morning, morning after you paid that visit, he called me in to add a codicil.”

  “I don’t know that word.”

  “Means like an amendment. Has the full force of any other clause, long as it’s drawn up right, and it was.” He handed Roy the will, open to the last page.

  Roy read the codicil:

  I replace clause 2(c) with the following:

  (c) Title to the above-mentioned item shall pass to my nephew Sonny Nevins, Jr.

  “What’s the above-mentioned item?” Roy said.

  “Just a legalism saves me retyping if changes come up,” said the attorney. “Refer back to two B.”

  Roy referred back to 2(b). The above-mentioned item was his father’s place, the house and the barn at the end of the long dirt road. His eyes moved down the page to the original 2(c): Title to the above-mentioned item shall pass to my son, Roy Singleton Hill.

  Roy looked up. The attorney was watching him through a cloud of pipe smoke. “Which is why I was wondering if anything unusual took place when you paid that last visit.”

  Wasn’t the whole thing unusual, hardly seeing your own father all your life? What would be unusual after that? “Not really,” Roy said.

  “You didn’t say anything might have pissed him off? He got pissed off kind of easy, maybe you didn’t know.”

  Roy shook his head, but at the same time he was remembering: Why’d you go and give him a name like that? Couldn’t be, could it?

  “Thought of something?” said the attorney.

  “We were estranged, I guess you’d say. That’s all.”

  “Okey-doke,” said the attorney. He opened a desk drawer, took out a key. “As for what you do got coming to you,” he said, “check two D.”

  Roy read 2(d): The old trunk under my bed, with contents, is for my son, Roy Singleton Hill. The key to the trunk will be delivered to him by my executor.

  The attorney handed Roy a key. “Any questions?”

  “Just one,” Roy said. “Does Sonny know about this?”

  “Not from me. Wanted to talk to you first, see your reaction, in terms of the sound mind part.”

  “I get the idea you kind of want me to contest the will,” Roy said.

  “I could never take a position like that,” the attorney said. “You’re a family man, that’s all. And Sonny’s… Sonny.”

  But Roy knew he wouldn’t do it. Didn’t sit right with him, contesting a will. And whatever money was involved didn’t matter-money wouldn’t be a problem, not with the new job, and Marcia and him back under one roof. Roy rose.

  “Best of luck,” said the attorney. As Roy moved to the door, he added, “Don’t suppose you can help me with vreans.”

  “Vreans?”

  “Got to rearrange it into a word for the Jumble.”

  Roy had no idea. He’d never been good at puzzles.

  Roy drove back to the place, Sonny’s place now. He kept the windows open the whole way but the pipe smell was still with him when he parked at the end of the dirt road and walked past the washer, engine block, broken TV, hubcaps, and up to the house. No one was inside. Roy started across the field to the barn, was halfway there when he heard lau
ghter. At first, he didn’t realize it was Rhett laughing, a sound he hadn’t heard for some time.

  Roy went into the barn. Rhett and Sonny Junior were way at the back, in the shadowy part where a few shafts of light crisscrossed over their heads from the windows in the loft. Roy made his way around the demolition derby car, past the drums, close enough to see that Rhett and Sonny Junior were both stripped to the waist and wearing boxing gloves. Sonny Junior threw a slow looping left a foot over Rhett’s head. Rhett stepped inside and bounced two quick left jabs and a right cross that surprised Roy with its strength off the ridges of Sonny Junior’s abs. Sonny Junior said something, of which Roy caught only one word: “pisspot.” Rhett laughed again, a real happy sound, unrestrained. While he was still laughing, Sonny Junior caught him a pretty good one upside the head, not a real punch with the force he was capable of, but real enough. Rhett blinked. Then his lower lip started to quiver, just the tiniest tremor, but Roy saw. Roy raised his hand-in fact, it came up by itself-but before he could say anything, Rhett lowered his head, stepped inside again, and hit Sonny Junior with another right cross, this one even better than the last, and a little higher up. Sonny Junior said something; Roy caught “sack of shit” and “peckerhead.” Rhett laughed again, but kept his hands up this time. Then they were both laughing. Sonny Junior saw Roy, waved.

  “Ding,” he said, lowering his hands. Rhett lowered his hands too. Sonny Junior threw a savage punch, quick as the strike of some predator on top of the food chain, just past Rhett’s ear. Rhett flinched after the fact. “ ’Member to keep ’em up after the bell, case some asshole’s lookin’ to clock you by surprise,” said Sonny Junior.

  He came over to Roy. “A quick learner, my little nephew,” he said.

  “It’s cousin,” Roy said. “We discussed this.”

  “Same diff,” said Sonny Junior. “He’s a good kid, all I’m saying.”

  “Thanks,” said Roy.

  “No thanks necessary-rubs off on me too,” said Sonny Junior. “How’d it go in town?”

  Roy told him what had happened. As the story unfolded, Sonny Junior’s forehead wrinkled, then his eyes got wider, finally he shook his head.

  “That’s bullshit,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Place belongs to you, Roy. All I was hopin’ would be you’d let me stay up here, take care of it, like.”

  “Did he let on at all, when you brought him the stuff?”

  “Stuff?”

  “Briefs, Cheetos, the bottle.”

  “Shit,” said Sonny Junior, “I forgot the briefs.”

  “Did he let on?”

  “I only saw him for a minute or two. All’s he went on about was that business of the name.”

  “What name?”

  Sonny Junior glanced back-Rhett was throwing punches at one of those mote-filled rays of light-lowered his voice: “Rhett’s name.”

  That was that.

  “I’ll give it back to you if you want,” Sonny Junior said. “Say the word.”

  Roy said, “No. I would have sold it anyway.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But you’re going to live here.”

  “I just might,” said Sonny Junior. He loosened the strings of his boxing glove with his teeth. “No hard feelings?”

  “No hard feelings.”

  Sonny Junior pulled off the glove. They shook on it, arm-wrestling style.

  Rhett approached.

  “Uncle Sonny?” he said. “Can I try the drums?”

  “Can you try the drums,” said Sonny Junior. “Does the pope shit in the woods?”

  Rhett laughed. Sonny Junior helped him off with his gloves, led him toward the drum kit.

  Roy went up to the house, entered his father’s bedroom, switched on the red light. No rat on the pillow this time, but everything else was the same, crumpled Cheetos packages and an empty bottle of Old Grand-Dad on the unmade bed, plus one or two balled-up tissues that Roy hadn’t noticed before. The old trunk was underneath. Roy pulled it out, a leather-covered trunk, the leather dry and cracked, wood showing through it. The key fit. He opened the lid.

  First came thick sheets of what Roy took to be wax paper, although they were hardly waxy anymore. Roy removed them carefully. Under the bottom sheet lay a gun. An old gun, much shorter than Gordo’s reproduction musket; possibly a carbine, Roy thought, although he didn’t know much about guns. There was a word carved in the wooden stock: death.

  Under the gun was another sheet of wax paper, and under that a small leather-bound book, this leather also dry and cracked, with RSH 1861–1865 burned on the front, possibly by some sort of branding iron. Roy opened it. The yellowed corner of the first page broke off in his hands, fluttered back down in the trunk. Roy turned the brittle pages. There was a lot of writing on the first few, very small and hard to read, then less and less. The last page had been torn out.

  Roy knelt by the trunk, removed more wax paper, dug deeper. At the very bottom, he found a uniform, the gray faded almost white. It was a lot like Gordo’s uniform, or Lee’s or Earl’s or any of the others, but real. Roy couldn’t have said why. He ran his hand over the fabric of the jacket; wool, rough to the touch. The tip of his index finger caught in a frayed round hole on the left side of the chest. Roy started having air supply problems, maybe something from the wax paper. He went to the window, opened it, took a deep breath. Rhett and Sonny Junior were coming across the field, carrying fireworks.

  Roy repacked the trunk, locked it, carried it out the front door to the car. As he put it inside, he heard a boom from the other side of the house, then another. The sound frightened the birds. They rose from their roosting places-bluejays and some small brown birds Roy didn’t know the name of-and flapped around in a circle. Then a crow flew up, a big one, and chased them out of the sky.

  Roy went around the house.

  “Time to get going,” he called.

  Out in the field, Sonny Junior lit a match. He and Rhett jumped back. Another rocket went whistling high above, exploded in a green burst that would have looked pretty good at night.

  Rhett and Sonny Junior came over, big smiles on their faces.

  “Okay if I stay overnight? Uncle Sonny says it’s okay with him.”

  “No,” Roy said.

  “But I can’t go to school anyway.”

  Roy shook his head.

  “Some other time, killer,” said Sonny Junior. “You all’ll be back here real soon.”

  Roy knew he’d never be there again.

  Sonny Junior walked them to the car. Roy saw that Rhett had a box of firecrackers, let it go. Sonny Junior opened the passenger door for the boy. Something fell out. Sonny Junior picked it up.

  “What’s this?”

  “Furniture catalog,” Roy said. “I get to choose one of those chairs for my office.”

  Sonny Junior looked them over. “Take the Cremona,” he said.

  THIRTEEN

  The phone woke Roy the next morning, before dawn.

  ”Roy?” said Marcia. “Where have you been?”

  ”Where have I been?”

  “I must have called you five times yesterday. Have you got Rhett?”

  “Of course I’ve got him. Didn’t Barry tell you?”

  “We’re not speaking.”

  “You’re not speaking?” It sounded like a line from some teenage movie.

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Roy.”

  “Rhett’s been expelled for the week-”

  “You’re joking. I can’t even go away for two days without-”

  “And my father died.” That part came out louder than Roy had intended. The silence that followed made it seem even more so.

  “I’m sorry,” Marcia said.

  “It’s all right. I took Rhett to the funeral.”

  He heard Marcia letting out her breath, a long slow sigh, and could almost feel the pressure she was under. It made him a little sorry for her. He would do his best to take that pressure off, very soon
. She and Barry not speaking was a good thing-further confirmation that they were finished. Roy checked the clock, sat up, started getting out of bed. This, he thought, the day of his promotion, could be an even bigger day than that if he handled it right.

  “Why was he expelled?” Marcia said.

  “It was partly my fault.”

  “Your fault?”

  “Why don’t I bring him over?” Roy glanced down at the bed, saw his rumpled pillow, and the other one, unused. “We can talk.”

  “Now?”

  “On my way to work.” He thought: Her head on that pillow tonight. And then some silly stuff: Champagne! The Cremona! “I’ll explain.”

  “Explain what?”

  “What I have in mind.”

  Pause. “Are you all right, Roy?”

  “Sure. Fine. Okay to stop in?”

  Another long slow breath. “Okay.”

  “Wake up, Rhett.”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “Got to. Your ma’s back. I’m taking you over to her place before work.”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “Can’t stay here by yourself all day.”

  “Don’t want to do that either.”

  “You want to go to school? That’s good. This week’ll be over before you know it.”

  “School? I’m not talking about school. Can’t I go back up there for a few days?”

  “Up where?”

  “Up at Uncle Sonny’s. He promised to let me drive the demolition derby car.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Get up, Rhett. There’s not much time.”

  Roy showered, washed his hair, shaved with a new blade, dressed, carefully knotted the tie he considered his best, the one with the little blue diamonds, drove Rhett to Marcia’s. The tuft of hair on Rhett’s uncombed head stood up like a blunt feather.

  Marcia answered the door. She didn’t look good, not good for her: face puffy, hair in disarray, a streak of blue eye makeup across her cheekbone. For some reason, the change in her lips was obvious now; they resembled Rhett’s, still swollen from his last schoolyard fight. She wore a T-shirt with a big apple on the front, just long enough to be decent. Not looking good for Marcia was still pretty good.