Last of the Dixie Heroes

by Peter Abrahams

  Roy went over, picked it up: a kepi, one of the common styles of Civil War soldier hats, the same style he wore, but with the silver horn on top denoting infantry. Otherwise the same in every way, except this one was blue.

  Roy tried to get things straight in his mind: was there a battle here, up on his mountain? Did the Yankees pass this way on the retreat from Chickamauga to Chattanooga? Or had Sherman later come marching through from the other direction? Did it have anything to do with the copper pits, not far away, source of the percussion caps for practically the whole South? Were the copper pits in danger? He would do his duty.

  Roy put the inside of the hat to his face. He smelled sweat; sweat and the strawberry aroma of Aussie Mega Shampoo, familiar because he used it himself. He got confused.

  Roy walked down the path, the blue kepi in his hand, rounded a bend and came to an opening in the trees. A beautiful sight unfolded in the east, must have been east because the horizon was a band of fire, the dome of the sky turning mother-of-pearl as he watched. Down below lay the beautiful state of Tennessee, just as Ezekiel had said, soft as Eden. A pink mist was rising from the upper meadow, flowing over onto the plateau, several hundred feet below him. The mist blurred the ruination of the Mountain House, made it rosy, made everything right. Roy gazed down on the sleeping camp, the tents still and pink-edged, the flag drooped comfortably on its pole, and came close to tears. This was earthly glory, the end of a journey through time to make things right. Stop here. Time stopped, stopped at this red-banded sunrise on a day in the spring of 1863. Roy knew it for a fact. He felt no need to breathe. Poised on the trail above the plateau, his gun at his side, Roy felt inner peace at last. There was no need for the clock to tick one more second.

  The moment Roy had that thought, time started up again. First came movement down in the slave quarters, hard for Roy to make out because the treetops blocked his view. But human movement, he was sure of that, and blue: he was sure of the blue part too. Roy flung the blue kepi aside and set off down the slope, each step quicker and more careless than the one before, as he thought, so late and stupid: License plates, kepi, blue. The woods blocked his view at every turn.

  But sounds got through, muffled, urgent, rising off the plateau. Running, grunting, crashing: now Roy was running too, and might have been making all the sounds himself. He was wondering about that, wondering how much was imagining, how much of what he thought of as his life he had imagined, back and back to two little boys in that cantilevered barn, when he slipped on a tree root. Roy fell hard on his back, slid, tumbled down a steep rise, cracked his head, rolled to a stop under a cloud of rising dust. As it cleared slowly in the still air, he found himself on a ledge fifty or sixty feet above the plateau. The peaceful scene below was gone, replaced by something close to its opposite, hard for a civilian to take in.

  But Roy wasn’t a civilian, and it all came together in his mind in a crisp and military way: an attack by a superior force on a sleeping camp. Roy counted ten figures in blue-didn’t have to count, the number coming automatically-some active in the Mountain House, the rest running crouched toward the tents. Then metal flashed in the hands of some of them, and the tents all started collapsing, forms struggling under the canvas. The Yankees laughed, the sound rising almost undetectable up to Roy, but their laughing posture very clear. He hated that laughing. It stopped abruptly; the postures all stiffened. Roy followed the Yankees’ gaze to a lone gray-clad figure popping free from a pile of canvas, springing to his feet, long hair wild and whipping in the first rays of the sun: Sonny Junior.

  Some of the Yankees raised their hands as though in explanation, which Roy didn’t get at all, this being war. Sonny Junior didn’t wait to hear. The next moment, he had something in his hand too, not metal, not a knife or bayonet, but a long wooden pole-a tent pole. He swung it, faster than Roy would have thought possible, and a Yankee went down. Then another, on the backhand side, still falling when Sonny lowered the pole, jabbed it into someone’s gut-cry of pain rising clear up to Roy, like it came from right beside him-and wheeled to get at someone else. That wheeling was why Sonny didn’t see a big man-bearded, sergeant’s stripes, Vandam-coming from behind. Vandam raised his musket like a club, cracked it down on Sonny’s head, just as he’d done to Roy. But Sonny didn’t go down. He staggered a little, recovered, started to turn, the tent pole still in his grip. Vandam hit him again, same place.

  That dropped Sonny, but only to his knees. Somehow he still had the pole, somehow was thrusting it at Vandam. Vandam stepped back-Roy caught the flash of his teeth in the middle of all that beard-stepped back, but right into the path of another reb diving at his legs like-like a linebacker. Vandam fell. The second reb was on him right away. Vandam threw him off easily-the second reb was very small-and was starting to rise when Sonny Junior, still on his knees, caught him a good one under the ribs. Vandam fell again. Sonny rose, rose slowly, blood all over, but rose and stood over Vandam, raising the pole like a pile driver. A Yankee captain-Peterschmidt, with the muttonchop whiskers-ran up from behind, brought the butt of his pistol down on Sonny’s head, and a second time, real quick, as Sonny subsided. Roy was so sure that Peterschmidt wouldn’t do something like that that he missed what came next.

  Something to do with another small reb, just a little bigger than the first. A blue circle was closing around them, blocking them from Roy’s view. Roy scrambled up, searched frantically for his carbine, found it wedged against a tree trunk a few yards higher up. He hurried back down the outcrop, opening the breech, checking to see if he was loaded-yes-closing up, raising the gun, looking through that V at the scene down below.

  Down below and far away. Roy had no idea of the gun’s range. In the V, he saw the blue circle part and Peterschmidt advance on the littlest reb, now lying on the ground, curled into a ball. The second reb got in between them, tried to push Peterschmidt away. Another Yankee knocked him-her, Roy knew that-to the ground.

  Now. If it could be done, Roy could do it. He was deadly, that was certain. He got Peterschmidt’s head in the center of the V, saw him clear, could even make out the cigar in his mouth, right down to the glowing end. The cigar enraged Roy. He drew a bead on Peterschmidt’s near-side eye, started to squeeze.

  “Now do you see why we keep a force in reserve?” said someone behind him.

  Roy whirled. Two Yankees stood above him on the slope, a lieutenant with a pistol and a private with a musket, both pointed at him.

  “Yes, sir,” said the private. “Very wise.”

  “Throw down your gun,” said the lieutenant. “We’re taking you prisoner.”

  Roy had had enough.

  “Fixin’ to die?” he said.

  “That’s very good,” said the lieutenant.

  Roy didn’t need to hear that: he knew it was good-that was how they talked, his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, his great-great-grandfather; and him.

  “In terms of authenticity?” said the private.

  “Did you say something, soldier?” said the lieutenant.

  “Sir. In terms of authenticity, sir, what he said being very good.”

  “More like it,” said the lieutenant. “Yes, this reb is particularly authentic. So he must know that the right response here is to throw down that gun. Meaning just lay it down gently-I know what these things cost.”

  “Out of my way,” Roy said.

  “What you forget,” said the lieutenant, “is that you’ve got one shot to our two. That’s what makes the decision easy, weapons dictating tactics.”

  “Even easy enough for a dumb reb,” said the private, adding, “sir.”

  A cry rose up from the plateau, very faint, but Roy knew whose it was. “Last chance,” he said.

  “Is this a hearing problem?” the lieutenant said. “Or ADD?”

  Roy shot him between the eyes.

  No doubt about it: Roy was deadly and how could he miss from that range? The lieutenant said, “Ow,” as the paper wad smacked his forehead with
a noise like a book sharply closed.

  Paper wad? Ow? What was this? It took Roy a moment or two to realize he’d fired a blank. But how? He knew he’d had a live round in that chamber. Roy flipped open his cartridge pouch: blanks, all blanks, where live rounds had been before. He’d been betrayed. The war was lost.

  “Jesus Christ,” the lieutenant was saying. He felt his forehead-red welt already rising-said, “Ow,” again.

  “Could of taken out his eye,” said the private. “Don’t you know the rules?”

  “And I’m a photography teacher, you asshole,” said the lieutenant, turning on Roy, “which your lawyer won’t be happy about, not one damn bit.”

  These Yankees were all red-faced and furious, but about what Roy wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter: whack, whack, and they were both on the ground, Roy racing down the slope to the plateau.

  And yes, the rebel yell, so huge it could have been the voice of the mountain itself.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Roy had a gun but no bullets, no bayonet neither- neither, there was his ancestor thinking now, right with him in his head. No bayonet because his weapon, ancestral instructions carved on the stock, was a carbine; he knew that now, wouldn’t let the cause down through ignorance again. No shooting or stabbing possible, but Roy did have his strong body, even stronger with these fresh new springs of ferocity rising up within him, and he had the knowledge, so late arriving, of what he was born, if not bred, to be: a fighting man.

  He came down off the slope, tore down it really, his speed almost sickening although strangely silent, all nature covering for him, and into the apple trees in back of the plateau, trees planted by his ancestor for the comfort of his descending line, their nourishment, even their concealment, if necessary. The clear dawn light made the tiny new apples gleam like hard painted decorations, bright red. The color encouraged him.

  Roy ran through the slave quarters, into the Mountain House. Through the hole in the wall where the front door had stood, Roy caught sight of the Yankees beyond the collapsed tents, standing over the Confederates, Confederates on their knees. On their knees!

  No one saw Roy. That meant he had not only his raw strength, but the element of surprise as well, an element he hadn’t considered much in his life, knew only from the receiving end. This was going to be much better. He burst out of the Mountain House, his gun gripped by the barrel, death on its stock, so ready, so able, never more so, felt a sudden sharp pain across one shin, and went spinning through the air. Then came a tumbling glimpse of two Yankees crouched behind him, holding a thin line across the doorway, and the ground rose fast to meet him, like the beginning of some explosion from deep down, one of Ezekiel’s mountain forces on the move. Roy tried to get his hands out front, protect his head, but couldn’t, what with trying to protect the gun too. Then he was seeing two moons again. Before he could work them back down to one, or none since it was daylight, blue bodies were swarming over him.

  Roy made them pay, one with his elbow, another with his fist, and then he was on his feet, swinging his weapon so hard it whistled in the air like a whip. The Yankees all backed off, eyes widening-Vandam too, his nose swollen and discolored from Chickamauga-as Roy stood on the threshold of the Mountain House.

  “Get off my land,” he said. His voice echoed off the mountain. At least, he thought it did, and was listening so intently to the echo, like another one of those forces on the loose, the mountain and he speaking as one, that he almost missed softer sounds behind him. He started to turn, heard a bad noise inside his skull.

  They sat outside the Mountain House, blue and gray together, except blue sat in the shade of the apple trees and gray in the sun; a hot white sun, the first real hot one of the year, directly overhead. Roy was very thirsty, conscious at first only of that and the sun sucking him dry, his body the water supply for a demanding master; then, after a while, conscious of blue and gray together, outside the Mountain House. He was wondering whether the war was over when he noticed that everyone in gray was tied up, arms behind the back, him included.

  Roy looked around. Things came into focus: the stubborn little tuft of hair, already growing back on Rhett’s head; a drying-up trickle of blood running from one of Sonny’s ears down his neck; Lee’s jacket, the top two or three buttons dangerously open; a variety of expressions on the faces of the Irregulars, all of which Roy had seen before at halftime in football locker rooms whenever they were getting their asses whipped. He knew that was where he had seen these looks, but that world was distant, as though he’d come across it only in books. This was the real thing, when you started to realize you might lose not a game, but everything, when the enemy wasn’t the Gators or the Yellowjackets, but Sherman and Grant. When that happened, some realized and quit, like Dibrell; some got bewildered, like Gordo; some kept calculating odds and strategies, like Jesse; some couldn’t be read, like Lee; some didn’t bother to realize and wouldn’t quit, like Sonny Junior; some did realize and wouldn’t quit, like himself.

  Captain Peterschmidt came forward, crossing the line between shadow and sun. His muttonchops had a rusty tinge in the light. “Chickamauga was a fluke,” he said, hand on his sword. “Guess you rebs know that by now.” Was he talking about Lee’s successful tent attack and Roy’s subsequent rescue, or Longstreet’s breakthrough at the Brotherton cabin? Made no difference to Roy: either way, this Yankee was saying they couldn’t fight, and that was a damned lie. Roy tested the rope binding his wrists, a thick, bristly rope, the knots tight, and got nowhere.

  “Under the rules of warfare, you are all prisoners of the United States,” Peterschmidt said. “Don’t be alarmed. There are no Andersonvilles where we come from.”

  “And no Fort Pillows either,” said a Yankee corporal.

  “Maybe there should be,” said the Yankee lieutenant Roy had tangled with up the slope, his eyes, the one that was open, anyway, on Roy. The private beside him, with a bloody cloth around his head, started to nod, winced, and stopped.

  “And since transportation of prisoners would be difficult in this case,” Peterschmidt said, “it’s our intention to take only one, as insurance for your future good conduct.”

  Jesse got to his feet, not easily, his hands behind his back.

  “Who said anything about standing up?” said Vandam, coming up beside Peterschmidt.

  Jesse ignored him. “I’m the ranking officer.”

  “Speak,” said Peterschmidt.

  “What good conduct are you talking about?” said Jesse.

  Peterschmidt and Vandam towered over Jesse. “What’s your name, Lieutenant?” Peterschmidt said.

  “Lieutenant Jesse Moses, CSA,” Jesse said. “We met at Chickamauga.”

  “This is different from Chickamauga,” Peterschmidt said. “You’ve ruined it by your usual indiscipline.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When we found out about your presence here we thought it was a positive development,” Peterschmidt said. “We’ve been hoping for something like this for a long time. But you go too far.”

  “You started it.”

  “You did.”

  From where he sat, Roy could hear them pretty well, but he had trouble following, getting stuck on when we found out about your presence. He stopped right there. How did they find out? Someone must have told them, a spy or a traitor. Then Roy remembered: forces on the move. Why hadn’t he thought of military forces first thing? And like a fool he’d felt those headlights on his back, when all along Ezekiel had been working for the enemy; a spy then, and not a traitor, although Roy felt betrayed.

  “It was you,” Peterschmidt was saying.

  “You,” said Jesse.

  They glared at each other in the hot sun, patches of sweat spreading in the armpits of their uniforms. Roy thought he could hear the waterfall.

  “But now it’s over,” Peterschmidt said. “And to make sure our campaign ends without any more of this, we’ll take one prisoner with us, ensuring your good conduct, prisone
r to be released at the conclusion tomorrow night.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Jesse said. “You have my word.”

  Sonny Junior raised his bloody head. “Fuck you,” he said, looking at no one in particular.

  “Sergeant Vandam,” said Peterschmidt. “Choose a likely prisoner.”

  Choose me, you son of a bitch. That voice deep inside Roy: it had some plan already.

  Vandam walked down the Confederate line, all of them sitting in the sun by the Mountain House, hands tied behind their backs. He looked at Gordo, who tried to meet his gaze but blinked, then Dibrell, who didn’t even try; went by Rhett without looking at him; paused at Lee.

  “Here’s a pretty little reb,” Vandam said. He looked more closely, his eyes wandering down the opening at the top of the jacket. The expression on his face changed. He bent down, reached his hand in that opening, explored around. Something in Roy went boiling red; in another part of himself, the temperature was much lower. The cool part recorded the simple fact that Vandam was dead, as of that moment.

  “Vandam,” said Peterschmidt. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “He’s got-”

  “There’ll be no robbery of prisoners.”

  “But-”

  “I gave you an order.”

  “Sir.”

  Vandam moved on to Sonny. Roy had one glimpse of Lee’s face-distorted by whatever was going on inside-before Vandam blocked his view.

  “This here’s the one caused most of the trouble,” Vandam said, standing over Sonny.

  “We don’t want him.”

  “No, sir. But can I clean him up a little?”

  “If you’re quick about it.”

  “I’ll be quick.” Vandam’s voice was low and throaty, like a dog getting aroused about something. He took a knife off his belt, got hold of Sonny’s long hair, jerked it all back, hacked it off with one stroke.