Last of the Dixie Heroes

by Peter Abrahams

  A flask went around again. Gordo, Dibrell, and Sonny drank; the others did not.

  “I mean it,” Roy said.

  “Me too,” said Sonny, taking a second hit, then another.

  “Hey, new guy,” said Dibrell. “Save some of that for your superiors.”

  Sonny gazed at Dibrell on the other side of the fire. He took one more swallow, longer than the others. “Superiors?” he said. “Way I count, you and me got the same number of stripes on our arm.” He flipped the flask through the flames to Dibrell, who made no attempt to catch it.

  “You going to straighten him out, Lieutenant?” Dibrell said.

  “It’s not a question of straightening out,” Jesse said. “There’s no way Sonny could know that changes in rank are voted on by the full regiment, and all recruits enter as privates, barring the odd exception.”

  “I’m a private?” said Sonny Junior.

  “Like Roy and Gordo,” Jesse said.

  “And the little guy here?”

  “Lee’s a corporal.”

  “And I’m a private?”

  “For the time being.”

  “That sucks.”

  “War means sacrifice,” Jesse said. His jacket was unbuttoned and the Star of David had worked free and now hung on the outside, picking up the fire’s glow. It caught Sonny’s eye. Roy saw he was about to say something, but at that moment Rhett slumped sideways, in Roy’s direction, fast asleep. Roy caught him, picked him up, carried him into the Mountain House.

  An owl hooted, somewhere above. Roy laid Rhett on his blanket, covered him up with an extra blanket someone had brought, watched him sleep for a while. The owl hooted again, a long oo-oo-ooo that mixed in with the rat-a-tat-tat drumming that was going on in Roy’s mind, making a kind of song. Roy took off his hat, belt, brogans, lay down beside his son. The sound of voices came from the fire, but Roy couldn’t make out the words. After a while he couldn’t hear the sounds either. Rhett sighed in his sleep.

  “Everything’s all right,” Roy said.

  Rhett turned over. His hand brushed Roy’s shoulder, went still, gave it one little press, as though testing something. He was quiet after that.

  Lying on his back, Roy saw the Milky Way. Something slid along it, blotting out stars in bird-shaped patterns that kept changing, wings going up and down. The song in his mind took up the beat. The words and melody leaked in from “Milky White Way.” Everything came together. The song was about a journey through time to put things right. That explained why it was so happy. Made perfect sense. He was happy too.

  Roy heard feet running in the night. He may have been no more than a private, but he knew at once what was happening: Yankees come to take his son away. Hadn’t they already made off with his wife? He felt Rhett still beside him as he opened his eyes. A dark form loomed over him. They weren’t getting Rhett. Roy kicked out, heard a grunt of pain, rolled, came up with the carbine in his hands.

  A man lay on the ground. “Don’ shoot,” he said. An unarmed man, not a Yankee, not in uniform at all, but Ezekiel, in his Bob Marley T-shirt and jeans.

  Roy lowered the gun, felt the murderous urge within him subside, but slowly, as though there’d been a contest of wills inside his own head.

  “I keep on havin’ to tell you not to shoot me,” Ezekiel said, “like one of them dreams happens over and over.”

  “No one’s going to shoot anybody,” Roy said, his voice low. “What are you doing here?”

  “You hurt my knee.”

  “What do you expect, breaking into someone’s house in the middle of the night?”

  “You calling this a house? You calling this breaking in when there’s hardly no walls?”

  “Yes.”

  “An’ how’s it your house? You said you was from Atlanta, hung with Ted Turner.”

  Roy didn’t reply.

  Ezekiel got up with another little grunt of pain.

  “Quiet,” Roy said.

  “Your roots is up here, ain’t they? What I thought from the very start.”

  Roy nodded: he was home, no denying that.

  “You and me needs to talk,” Ezekiel said.

  “About what?”

  “Oral traditions,” Ezekiel said.

  “Some other time.”

  “Has to be now,” Ezekiel said. “Forces is on the move.”

  Rhett made a high-pitched little sound in his sleep, almost a whimper.

  “What forces?” Roy said, lowering his voice still more.

  Ezekiel glanced down at Rhett, spoke softly too. “In the mountain. Who’s more in touch with the forces in the mountain than me, smokin’ it every day in my own lungs, tastin’ it on my own tongue?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “About me tastin’ the mountain?”

  “I get that part.”

  “You do?”

  “I don’t understand what you want to talk about.”

  “Your name and my name,” said Ezekiel. “Roy and Zeke. Must be the starting place.”

  “Zeke?”

  “To all my friends. An’ I got lots of friends, Roy, what with my hobby and such.”

  Ezekiel took Roy by the arm, led him out the back of the Mountain House. Roy didn’t want to leave Rhett, and Ezekiel’s grip was light, easily resistible, but Roy didn’t resist. They stepped between the sagging slats of the slave quarters, went inside.

  “Make yourself at home,” Ezekiel said, sitting on the floor. Roy sat too. Ezekiel lit a candle, twisted it into the hard-packed earth. The candle illuminated a box lying next to it, a casket, leather-bound and shaped like Roy’s inherited chest, but tiny, almost pocket-size.

  “Roy Hill and Zeke Hill,” said Zeke, “if you see the direction ahead.”

  “What’s in the box?” Roy said.

  “Family ashes, brother,” Ezekiel said.

  “Are you stoned?”

  “Needless to ask. Care to partake of a small sample, on the house?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll join you in that,” said Ezekiel. “Partakin’ of nothin’.” He glanced down at the casket. “Roy and Zeke. Know where we’s sittin’, this very moment in time?”

  “The old slave quarters.”

  Ezekiel nodded. “Slave quarter to the Mountain House, where the ol’ massah-you know that word, massah? — like to come on up Sundays, spend some social time, accordin’ to the oral traditions. With me so far, or you gonna object to oral traditions bein’ history?”

  “I’m not,” Roy said.

  “Then how about if I told you these family ashes was the earthly remains of my great-great-grandfather Roy Singleton Hill?”

  “I’d say you’re full of shit.”

  Ezekiel didn’t seem to hear that. “Roy Singleton Hill, Confederate hero, best of the good ol’ boys,” he said. “His earthly remains passed on down in my family-my side of the family-from one generation to the next.”

  “Maybe you passed on the box,” Roy said. “But what makes you think his ashes are inside?”

  “Oral traditions,” Ezekiel said. “What you already agreed was history. Got to pay more attention, Roy. Forces is on the move.”

  “I’m not saying there’s no ashes,” Roy said. “Just that they’re not his.”

  Ezekiel shook his head. “You people in denial,” he said.

  “What people is that?”

  “The kind of people that denies.” Ezekiel extended his bare arm toward Roy, inches above the candle flame. “You see this?”

  “The heart with the arrow?”

  “Not the tattoo, man. I’m talkin’ about the color of my skin.”

  “What about it?”

  “How would you-what’s the word we needin’ here? describe-describe my skin?”

  “Describe it?” said Roy. “Human skin.”

  Ezekiel’s eyes met his. “You a good man,” he said. “You jus’ be careful now not to let the goodness get in the way of seein’ right.”

  “You’re losing me.”

&
nbsp; “Last thing I want,” said Ezekiel. “What I’m tryin’ to get across-does this look to you in your eyes like black skin?”

  “Well,” said Roy, “you’re black.”

  “I’m black, but this ain’t the color black. Ever go to kindergarten, Roy? Ever be mixin’ up the paints? How would you come to a color like this, startin’ with pure Dahomey black?”

  Roy thought of Mrs. Hardaway tracing his schoolboy drawing with her coffee-bean-colored finger, polished red at the end, didn’t answer.

  Ezekiel shook his head. “You in bad denial, man. Mix in the white-any kindergarten kid tell you that.”

  “I’m not denying it,” Roy said. “I’m saying his ashes aren’t in there.”

  “That’s the arrogance part goes hand in hand with the denial.”

  “If I showed you where he was buried,” Roy said, “would that be arrogant too?”

  A quiet night in the cemetery, the mountain rising dark on one side, the silhouette of the cross over the chapel on the other. Ezekiel drove his pickup along the cart path the hearses used, past all the gravestones, growing smaller and more worn, to the woods at the foot of the mountain.

  “Stop,” Roy said.

  Ezekiel stopped. His headlights shone on the stone:

  Roy Singleton Hill

  1831–1865

  Hero

  Ezekiel went still.

  “You’ve never seen this?” Roy said.

  “How would I ever be doin’ that? We in the white graveyard, man.”

  They got out of the pickup, walked to the stone. Ezekiel knelt, ran his fingertips over the sunken lettering.

  “I see a stone,” he said. “I read the writing. Don’ mean he’s down there.”

  “Now who’s in denial?” Roy said.

  “Not me, man. The history of conspiracy is on our side.”

  Roy missed that one. “Why would you want him anyway?” he said.

  “Want him?”

  “If he slept with women who had no choice?”

  “Funny way of sayin’ rape,” Ezekiel said. “I don’ want him, Roy. It’s just the fact-him and the slave women, all my ancestors.” Ezekiel went to the pickup, came back with a long-handled spade.

  “Why would I let you do this?” Roy said.

  Ezekiel paused, gazed at Roy, the two of them standing over the gravestone. “You a good man,” Ezekiel said. He pushed on the stone, grunted, toppled it over. The stone fell with a thump and the earth trembled, very slightly. Roy felt it in the soles of his feet.

  Ezekiel drove the spade into the middle of the bare blackened rectangle where the stone had stood. It sank in easily, came up easily with a clump of earth that Zeke flung to the side. He dug for a while, fast in the beginning, then slower, the digging and flinging growing more labored, sweat dripping off his chin. Ezekiel got down only two or three feet, hard to tell because the sides kept caving in on him, before he leaned on the spade and said: “Satisfied?”

  “Satisfied?” said Roy, looking down at him. Dust from the grave boiled in the headlight beams. An image took shape in Roy’s mind, a crazy one, of Ezekiel lying in the hole he’d just dug.

  “That he ain’t here,” said Ezekiel.

  “Keep digging,” Roy said.

  Ezekiel shook his head. “Gotta accept things the way they is, Roy.”

  Roy stepped down into the hole, gripped the spade. Ezekiel didn’t let go right away. In that moment, Roy and Ezekiel holding on to the long wooden handle, the headlights shining on their two hands, yellowing them both-more than yellowing, really, almost gilding-Roy thought he noticed an odd similarity in their size and shape, Zeke’s hand and his. Zeke was staring at their hands too; he let go, climbed out of the hole.

  Roy was prepared to dig all night, but he struck something on the very first plunge of the spade, something that gave with a soft splintering sound. Roy reached down in the darkness, felt through rotting wood that came apart like thick wet paper, touched a solid form, round and hard. He got a grip on it, sticking his fingers into two convenient holes like on a bowling ball, raised a human skull into the swirling light.

  Ezekiel took a quick step back, almost fell. “What kind of trick you tryin’ to pull?” he said.

  His gaze wasn’t on Roy when he asked that; it was on the skull. So was Roy’s. He took his fingers out of the eye sockets-that didn’t seem right-laid the skull on the piled earth beside the grave. Did any sign of a man’s character cling to his remains? Would even a saint’s skull seem anything less than threatening? Probably not; so the menace rising off this one-Roy could feel it-didn’t mean anything.

  “Somebody else, maybe?” Ezekiel said.

  “Like who?” Roy said.

  Ezekiel thought that over. “Then what’s in my box, handed down from one generation to the next?”

  “Your real great-great-grandfather,” Roy said.

  Ezekiel was silent for a moment or two. “Truth is,” he said, “I never looked with my own eyes.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I never opened the box.”

  “Then how do you know there are ashes inside?”

  “Oral traditions,” Ezekiel said.

  “Why not open it now?”

  “No key,” Ezekiel said. “Wouldn’t be right to break in with violence, would it?”

  Roy didn’t say anything.

  “You disagree about the violence part?” Ezekiel said.

  But it wasn’t that. Roy walked back to Ezekiel’s truck. The little casket lay on the center console, Roy’s gun on the shelf behind the seats. He opened the filigreed patch box in the butt of the gun, took out the brass key. Much too big to fit in the keyhole of Ezekiel’s little casket, nothing to worry about on that score.

  But the key did fit, fit perfectly, slid in like the box got opened every day. Roy glanced over at Ezekiel, still by the open grave, maybe working up the nerve to actually pick up the skull. Roy turned the key, felt the lock give, snapped open the lid.

  No ashes, nothing in the box but a single brittle sheet of paper, the left edge torn and jagged. Roy recognized the writing on the page, stuffed it in his pocket, closed the box.

  “What you got there?” said Ezekiel, suddenly beside the truck.

  “Your box.” Roy handed it to Ezekiel.

  “Any harm in breaking in with violence now?” Ezekiel said. “Yes or no?”

  “No.”

  Ezekiel put the box on the hood of the truck, struck the lid with the edge of his hand. It split apart, popped open. There was nothing inside.

  Ezekiel stared into the box for a long time. He even picked it up, turned it upside down, shook it. Nothing fell out.

  “I don’t get this kind of joke,” Ezekiel said. His eyes were damp, maybe on account of all the dust they’d raised.

  They reburied the remains of Roy Singleton Hill and stood the gravestone back in its place, left everything just as they’d found it.

  Roy Singleton Hill

  1831–1865

  Hero

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Ezekiel knew an old logging trail up the back side of the mountain that would leave Roy with a shorter climb to the Mountain House. The old logging trail-just wide enough for the pickup, the forest scratching away at the paintwork like fingernails all the last part-ended in a small clearing. Ezekiel’s headlights swept past three cars already parked there, two with New Jersey plates, one from Connecticut.

  “Tourists,” said Ezekiel, “come to hike up an’ down the beautiful state of Tennessee, keepin’ the economy strong.”

  He offered Roy his hand; an arm-wrestling-style shake, exactly like Sonny Junior’s. That was one thing. Then their hands, Ezekiel’s and Roy’s, so similar-that was another. “Still a lot of mystery in my mind,” Ezekiel said, “but that could be sidewash from my hobby. You been straight up with me, Roy. Many thanks. You always got a friend on this here mountain.”

  Roy felt Ezekiel’s headlights on his back as he walked across the clearing, up into the woods
, trees closing around him. Ahead, his shadow-head, body, arms, legs, gun-got longer and longer, and finally glided off into darkness, Roy following. In darkness, in the woods at night and invisible: but Roy felt Ezekiel’s headlights on his back for a long, long time.

  Roy climbed the back side of the mountain, as steep or steeper than the front, the trees as thick or thicker, but he knew the way, knew it without having to think or even pay much attention. He knew when he’d be having to go down on all fours to keep his feet from losing their grip, knew when he’d be coming to an open spot and seeing the stars, knew when the slope would level out and bring him into Ezekiel’s marijuana patch. He even knew that his owl was flying overhead, long before he heard the beating of its heavy wings, like carpet thumping, high above. It was only for the weekend, or a little longer. Everything was going to be all right. Apple trees grew on the mountain, fat brown fish swam in the creek, deer roamed the forest; there was hardtack, Slim Jims, the water itself, heavenly: a person-especially a strong person, and now he was that, stronger than he’d ever been, even stronger than he’d have been if everything in his life had been golden all the way-could live here forever.

  The owl hooted. “Don’t have to do that,” Roy said. “I know you’re there.” It hooted again, louder, sounding a little displeased, even angry, maybe at not being included in Roy’s mental list of the mountain’s bounty. But of course the owl, descendant of the owls of 1863, was included. Roy looked up, tried to find its outline against the night sky. But even with his new hyperclear vision, he couldn’t, and besides, the night sky was gone all of a sudden and with it the stars and the Milky Way. Through the leaves above, still black, Roy saw that the sky was no color at all, just a faint canopy of untinted light, but growing more intense, as though someone was slowly turning up a dial. He listened for the owl, its beating wings, its call, and heard nothing.

  Roy made his way through Ezekiel’s marijuana patch, took his first steps down the slope that led to the back of the plateau. “Milky White Way” started up in his head. He was happy, so happy, except for one nagging thing. What was it? The brittle page in his pocket, last page of the diary of Roy Singleton Hill. Enough light for reading now, no excuse not to; or he could just rip it up and scatter the shreds unread, without an excuse, to silence that nagging. Roy paused on the wooded hill over the plateau, his hand in his pocket, fingertips rubbing the old paper, feeling for some premonition. At that moment, while he was trying to come to a decision, something lying by the side of the trail, partially hidden by a tree root, caught his eye.