Last of the Dixie Heroes

by Peter Abrahams

  Roy could also hear popping sounds from the fire and a much fainter crackle that he took to be incinerating pine needles, heard too the shuffling of cards as he circled the clearing and entered enemy territory; and yes, heard the beating of heavy wings, high above. He got the idea that this was the way Roy Singleton Hill had heard, so clearly, so precisely, and felt a bit chilly. But it was a chilly night, had to be: why else would the pickets have covered themselves with blankets?

  Roy came out of the woods. Ahead lay the Yankee camp, a second convoy in the moonlight, bigger by a row or two than his own. Roy passed right by the tents, within feet of them, the light so strong he could read the words stitched on a regimental flag: Wilderness, Antietam, Stone’s River, Chancellorsville, Bull Run, Gettysburg, Chickamauga. He was awake and in their sleeping camp. It was thrilling: had he ever been thrilled like this in his life? Had Roy Singleton Hill? Many times, for sure: many, many, riding with Forrest on nights just like this. A little breeze sprang up and the flag came to life, brushing against his arm. Roy moved on.

  He picked up that silver flash from the far end of camp, saw Lee gliding toward the outermost tent. Moon, tent, guy ropes, knife-all silver, all connected in a way that made sense, so he knew what was going to happen before it did, very unusual, maybe unique, for him. Lee stepped up to the nearest guy rope of the outermost tent, slashed it through in a single motion, then scrambled around the tent very fast, slashing, slashing. The tent subsided, sank to the ground, revealing the Porta Potti eight or ten yards beyond. A voice rose from inside the fallen tent, a boy’s voice, disoriented, scared. Lee paused, perhaps surprised, his back to the Porta Potti. And out from behind the Porta Potti stepped Sergeant Vandam in his underwear, the moon shining on his round white belly, his navel like a crater.

  Roy knew just what to do: raise his gun and shoot Sergeant Vandam; the instructions, he realized, his instructions, were carved into the wood of the stock. But he hadn’t brought his gun, and there were no bullets, just blank cartridges. Roy did the next best thing, did it without thinking: he clapped his hands, just once, like a gunshot but softer.

  That got their attention: first Vandam, whose eyes were on him right away, then Lee, not quite as quick, who looked first at Roy, then spun around and saw Vandam. Vandam was already moving, but Roy had seen the way Lee could run and knew Vandam would never catch him. At that moment, the boy’s voice came from inside the collapsed tent again: “Dad! Dad!” And Lee, half turning, about to take that first running step in Roy’s direction, froze instead.

  Froze: because this was all pretend, all make-believe, and Lee hadn’t known there’d be a boy in that tent. It was just a prank. Roy understood what was going on in Lee’s mind, and also learned something about Lee: he didn’t quite have it.

  Vandam hit Lee from behind-airborne, fully laid out, his shoulder ramming the middle of Lee’s spine. Lee bent backward, doubling in the wrong direction like a contortionist, his butternut jacket ripping open in front from the force of the blow. The knife spun in the moonlight. Lee went down hard, Vandam on top of him. By that time, Roy was right there, although he had no recollection of how. He spoke, a rough, raw voice that wasn’t his: “Let him go.” But actually: “Le’ ’im go,” closer to backwoods than he’d ever spoken.

  “I’ll get to you,” Vandam said, barely glancing at him, and drew back his fist a foot above Lee’s ear. Roy grabbed Vandam’s wrist, hauled him off. Just that easy, the way an actor handles a suitcase from the prop department. Vandam didn’t like it. He aimed the punch he’d prepared for Lee at Roy instead, a punch that landed in Roy’s middle, made him feel sick. But it could have been worse, could have been to the head, and Roy was landing one of his own at the same time, the first punch he’d thrown since childhood.

  Vandam’s nose made a crunching sound, or maybe Roy just felt the crunch in his hand. Then came blood, black in the moonlight, and Vandam staggered back.

  “Enemy in camp,” he called. “Enemy in camp.”

  Roy snatched Lee off the ground, flung him over his shoulder, took off for the woods. A man with muttonchop sideburns-Captain Peterschmidt-stepped out of a tent, in Roy’s path.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he said, fumbling a set of earphones off his head.

  “Isn’t this on the schedule?” Roy said, and went right by him, past the tents, across the open field, into the trees, stronger than he’d ever been, dizziness gone, head pain gone, vision restored to its new hyperclarity.

  “I’m okay,” Lee said when they were safely in the woods, his lips close to Roy’s ear. “You can put me down.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.”

  Roy put Lee down. The crowns of the trees blocked the moonlight. There was no sound of anyone following them, no sound at all but the very soft one of fingertip ridges on rough wool. Roy knew what that had to be: Lee buttoning up his jacket. That brought back to Roy’s mind an image he’d seen for only an instant, an image his mind might not have registered, what with all the commotion. What had he seen when Vandam’s tackle from behind had popped open Lee’s jacket? Only a moonlit glimpse, but the memory was clear in Roy’s mind, he had it now: breasts; soft, pale, unmistakable.

  Was Lee waiting for him to say something? He said nothing. There was no more talk. Roy and Lee walked in single file through the woods, Roy leading. They rounded the campfire, now dying, the two pickets asleep side by side, wrapped in their blankets, just touching. Roy heard the beating of heavy wings overhead.

  TWENTY

  The first thing Roy did when he got home Sunday morning-the commanders on both sides sending all the offenders out of camp for violating USV safety regulations-was check the machine for messages from Rhett. Four-oh-four: Rhett had written the area code on his hand. But there were no messages, none from Rhett, none from anyone else. After that, Roy sat at the kitchen table. For company he had the stack of bills he couldn’t pay, a critical mass ticking silently away, getting ready to blow up house, car, all his material things. He also had the sheet of paper with House Projects on one side and Bills and $ on the other. After a while, he crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. He noticed a Popsicle stick in there, down at the bottom. Roy didn’t eat Popsicles; Rhett did. Roy reached in, took out the Popsicle stick. There were teeth marks on the end, not big. Roy put the stick in a coffee mug on the shelf.

  He took off his uniform, folded it, laid it on the bed, went into the shower. He didn’t shave. Why bother? He opened his closet, the closet he’d shared with Marcia, now three-quarters empty, looked for something to wear. Nothing appealed; not that Roy wanted something new, more fashionable-he’d never been like that-but these clothes, the cotton shirts from the Gap, the khakis from some catalog, the jeans from another, didn’t quite seem like his. In some way, they weren’t even clothes, more like costumes from a play, a drab one he wouldn’t want to see. Roy took a few aspirin for his headache, pulled the shades, and got into bed.

  He dreamed he was reading the war diary of Roy Singleton Hill, the cracked leather one with 1861–1865 burned into the cover. There was no writing in it, not even the dates, only red fingerprints, the whorls and ridges sharp and defined, page after page.

  Roy woke up in his darkened room. The first thing on his mind was the missed career counseling session. The thought was accompanied by a little spasm of anxiety that got him up and out of bed. He raised the shades to let light into the room, to get him started on making plans. But no light came in-it was night, as dark outside as in. What night? It took him a minute or so to straighten the time out in his mind.

  Roy gazed out at the houses, the street, the traffic. All those people, watching TV, talking on their cell phones, doing the things everybody did-he was losing his feel for them. For example, the term career counseling: why didn’t it make them sick, the way it was making him?

  No answer to that one. Then came another question: Anything left in the Old Grand-Dad bottle? There was. Roy poured himself some, then made the mistake of letti
ng his gaze wander to the fridge, more specifically to Rhett’s football paintings taped on the door. Number fifty-six in his big helmet: the next thing Roy knew, he was up in Rhett’s room, making an even bigger mistake.

  Rhett’s room, with the new shelves, still smelling slightly of varnish, and the Pop Warner trophy with the hard-charging plated figure on top. Roy left it there. He wasn’t after the trophy, just the highlight tape lying next to it. He went

  downstairs, stuck it in the VCR.

  Music: the theme from Rocky.

  The Renegades, at home, wearing their red jerseys and green pants. Number fifty-six, at outside linebacker, takes two steps to his right, falls down, and the ball carrier falls over him. Fifty-six, on the sideline, listens to the coach, who stands over him, hand on his shoulder pads, then turns and runs at full speed into the huddle.

  The Renegades, on the road, in their white jerseys with the green pants. Fifty-six, after a twenty-five-yard run, helps chase down the opposing running back, is second or third on the tackle. The running back, getting up, says something to fifty-six that fifty-six doesn’t like. Roy can tell by the way fifty-six goes still for a moment before joining the defensive huddle; he hadn’t noticed that the only other time he’d seen the tape, a few weeks after the season.

  The Renegades, at home against a team in brown and gold. The brown-and-golds have the ball on their own six- or seven-yard line. Some mix-up between the center and the guard and then the quarterback fumbles the snap. Fifty-six, at outside linebacker, although he’s lined up wrong, pinched in too close to the middle-in fact, Roy remembered thinking Get outside, get outside, they’re going to burn you because he’d seen the guard starting to pull-grabs the ball on one hop. More accurately, it jumps right into his arms. There’s a pause, a pause that feels very long, none of the players reacting, including fifty-six. Then-another thing Roy hadn’t caught before-comes a voice from the sideline, very faint: “Run.” Fifty-six comes to life, runs into the end zone, runs right through it actually, as though not quite sure where he is, almost collides with a woman walking by with a hot dog, then slowly turns just in time to be mobbed by his celebrating teammates. They all fall down. The camera makes a wild sideways and up move toward the scoreboard, briefly catching Roy on the sidelines. The theme from Rocky comes to its climax, the screen goes blank.

  Roy rewound the tape to that shot of his own face, froze it there. There was absolutely no expression on his face, which couldn’t be right-he remembered what he’d been feeling inside. He remembered that, although he didn’t remember shouting Run even though that was his own voice on the tape. His voice beyond doubt, despite the thing he had about parents who shouted instructions to their kids on the field. Roy turned off the sound, watched the tape again, from the start.

  And again. Once more. And once more after that. The best part was the moment fifty-six, football in both hands like something precious, begins to turn at the back of the end zone. The woman with the hot dog is off balance, the hot dog raised high, a blob of relish flying away, and the sun penetrates the shade of fifty-six’s oversize helmet enough to reveal the beginning of a smile. I picked up that fumble. Roy froze the smile right there, went closer to the screen to check it out. The smile turned into an arrangement of pixels.

  Later, the Old Grand-Dad gone, Roy went back to bed. Sleep wouldn’t come, not close. No sleep, but a dream began anyway, the dream of red fingerprints in a diary, page after page. Roy didn’t like that, sleepless dreaming. That wasn’t him. He got up, went into the kitchen, drank water. The wonderful water he’d drunk from a canteen at Chickamauga, almost like a food, the water of 1863? This wasn’t like that at all. He opened the trunk, rooted around for the diary, opened it.

  The diary was damaged, the leather cracked and flaking, the stitched binding loose in places. Now that he looked closely, Roy saw that a number of pages in the front seemed to have come loose and fallen out in their entirety; at the back, the last page had been torn out, leaving a narrow blank margin still attached to the binding. The paper itself was brittle and yellow, the ink faded to brown. The writing began in midsentence on the first remaining page.

  Zeke says but I larnt him difernt. Rainin an no foder fer Thunder went foragin.

  3 days latter home on ferlow rainin

  23 januree las day on Ferlo rainin. takin Zeke bac fer boddyman sed godbis an wen up to th montan Hows fer godbis up thar. filld up canteens from the crik.

  14 febwaree fitin in the mornin shot too mebbe 3. Zeke very hapy with my ol red shirt.

  2 days latter surendin of ft. Donelson but Forest took us crost the rivver at nit Zeke wen asckulcin but I larnt him difernt

  3 martch rainin an no foder fer The phone rang. Rhett, at this hour, whatever that was? Roy snatched it up.

  “Cuz?” said Sonny Junior. “Too late to be phonin’?”

  “I’m up.”

  “Me too,” said Sonny.

  “Funny you should call now,” Roy said, thinking of the Mountain House.

  “Funny? I been calling you all weekend.”

  “There’s no message on the machine.”

  “I don’t leave messages.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t think much of putting my voice on machines. Hanging out there when I’m not around, you get what I’m saying, Roy?”

  Roy, who’d left hundreds, maybe thousands of messages on machines and in voice mails, was surprised to find he sort of did. “Never thought much about it,” he said.

  “You been drinkin’, Roy?”

  “No.”

  “I sure as shit have. How’s my little nephew?”

  “He’s gone to New York, Sonny. You knew that.”

  “I knew that. Just wondering whether you heard anything.”

  “No. Sonny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve got a beep.”

  “Maybe that’s him.”

  Roy took the other call. Not Rhett: he could tell by the intake of breath.

  “Roy?” It was Lee. “Did I wake you?”

  “I’m on another call.”

  “Should I hold?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  He went back to Sonny, heard a little gurgling sound, like someone was taking a drink.

  “That him?” said Sonny.

  “No.”

  “Who at this hour?”

  “Just someone I know.”

  “She got a name?”

  Roy didn’t answer.

  “Aren’t you the quick little worker bee?” said Sonny.

  “You’re way off track.”

  “Whatever you say.” Then came another gurgling sound. “Roy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How come it’s funny me calling now?” Sonny’s tone changed. “Someone been talking about me, is that it?”

  “I was just thinking about the Mountain House when the phone rang, that’s all.”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s it like?”

  “The Mountain House? Is that what you’re askin’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A fallin’ down ruin. I haven’t been up there in years.”

  “Describe it a little.”

  “I just did. Fallin’ down ruin.” Another gurgling sound. “Tell you what, Roy. Why don’t you come out and I’ll take you up there?”

  “When?”

  “Now’s all right. I got a little opening in my schedule.”

  “Between what and what?” Roy said.

  Pause. Then Sonny Junior laughed, a big laugh that made the phone vibrate in Roy’s ear. “Family,” he said. “What it’s all about.”

  Roy changed the greeting on his phone: “If it’s you, Rhett, I’m up at Cousin Sonny’s in Tennessee.” He gave him the number. Playing it over, Roy found he’d said uncle instead of cousin. He didn’t bother to fix it.

  Traffic was as light as it ever got. Roy rode through the nighttime sprawl, his uniform folded beside him on the seat, the carbine in the trunk. Sherman razed all
of this, down to the ground. And what else had Lee said? The soul part-unconquered, unoccupied, waiting. The meaning of that eluded him. He pressed play.

  “I’m gonna tell my mother howdy

  When I get home

  I’m gonna shake my father’s hand

  I will shake their hands that day

  When we walk that Milky White Way

  One of these days.”

  It was so loud and Roy was so caught up in it, he and his mother walking on stars, that he almost missed the fact that he was running on empty. He filled up at an all-night place near the state line. The pump rejected his credit card, so he had to go in and pay cash. The clerk couldn’t speak English. Roy did something he’d never done, bought a bumper sticker off the rack by the register. This one was the battle flag, not very big, no writing on it. He stuck it on the middle of his back bumper and drove off. In his rearview mirror he saw the clerk watching through the glass. He himself started looking at passing things-cell phone antennas, Super 8 motel signs, golden arches-the way they’d appear framed in that little V on the barrel of the Sharps fifty-two he had in the trunk.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ”Looks like you lost some weight there, cuz.”

  ”I don’t think so.”

  ”Gonna have a six-pack like mine sooner ’n you know it.” Sonny Junior tapped the hard ridges of his abdomen; muscles popped up in his chest. “Girls’ll be swarmin’ all over you, they aren’t already.”

  They stood in a patch of sunlight partway up the mountain, shirts off and tied around their waists an hour or two before on the long climb from where the last dirt lane petered out. There was no path, just trees, rocks, underbrush, the sound of running water and these occasional sunny openings, some of them, like this one, with a view.

  “And you’re not even huffin’ and puffin’ yet,” said Sonny Junior, “which is pretty strange for a city boy.”

  It was true. Not only no huffing and puffing, but Roy had the odd sensation that his lungs had plenty in reserve. He felt the weight of the inhaler in his pocket, couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it.