Last of the Dixie Heroes Read online

  Sonny made a roaring sound, tried to bull his way up. Roy didn’t really see what happened to Sonny after that because he was up too, butting at Vandam like an animal. Then there was blue everywhere and he was back down. Blue turned to red. Roy stared up at Vandam through a red haze.

  Vandam was watching him, seemed to watch him for a long time. Roy could see Vandam making the prisoner decision in his eyes, knew he was going to get his way, that he would be the one; a decision Vandam would regret. Vandam gave him a little smile, turned, and said: “We’ll take the kid.”

  “The kid?” Peterschmidt said.

  Roy wasn’t sure he’d heard right until he noticed everyone looking at Rhett. Rhett’s eyes were on only one person, his father. He was trying not to speak, trying to keep something inside, but he couldn’t.

  “Dad,” he said.

  Roy strained against the rope, useless.

  A mocking voice rose from the Yankees in the shade: “Da-ad.” It was the other boy, Vandam’s son.

  Rhett’s head whipped around. The boys’ gazes locked on each other. Vandam’s son got up, came out of the shade, stopped a few feet from Rhett.

  “Da-ad.”

  “Captain Peterschmidt,” Jesse said, “control this boy.”

  “I take no orders from you,” Peterschmidt said.

  “Your drummer boy’s our prisoner,” said Vandam.

  Gordo spoke up. “Ever heard of kidnapping?”

  Vandam gave Gordo a kick on the sole of his boot, very light. “No one mentioned kidnapping,” he said. “We’re taking a prisoner, as we got every right to do.”

  Roy knew he was right; he just wanted it to be him, and Rhett last of all. Gordo hung his head. Vandam gave him another kick, even lighter.

  Peterschmidt licked his lips. He glanced at Gordo, then Rhett, motioned for Vandam. They moved away together, Peterschmidt saying something that made Vandam scowl at first but smile by the time he finished. They came back.

  “We’ll offer you an alternative, Lieutenant,” Peterschmidt said.

  “To what?” said Jesse.

  “To taking the boy prisoner, taking anyone prisoner,” said Peterschmidt. “Instead we’ll settle this once and for all, agreeing to abide by the result whatever it is and cease all hostilities after.”

  “Settle how?” said Jesse.

  “In unarmed hand-to-hand combat between champions from each side.”

  “I’ll take any three of you,” Sonny Junior said.

  “And since there’s no point in anyone getting hurt, now that the campaign is nearly over,” Peterschmidt said, “we’ll elect the drummer boys as champions.”

  “Out of the question,” Jesse said.

  “Then you force us back to the prisoner alternative,” said Peterschmidt.

  “Let the boy fight,” Sonny Junior said. “He’ll beat him good for us.”

  “Something like this happened,” Peterschmidt said.

  Jesse, about to repeat what he’d said, paused. “Spotsylvania Courthouse,” he said. “But it wasn’t drummer boys.”

  “Close enough,” Peterschmidt said.

  Jesse was silent. Roy thought he heard the beating of heavy wings. Jesse turned to him. “What about it?”

  There were three possible answers: no; it’s up to Rhett; yes. Roy said, “Yes.”

  “Yes?” said Jesse.

  “You heard right, rabbi,” Sonny said.

  “Shut up, Sonny,” Roy said.

  “I’ll deal with you later,” Jesse said.

  “How?” said Sonny.

  Jesse ignored him. “We agree,” he said to Peterschmidt.

  “And you’ll abide by the result, as an officer and a gentleman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Lee said.

  Everyone looked puzzled.

  “You haven’t asked the boy,” Lee said.

  Rhett stood up. “I’ll fight,” he said, eyes on Roy.

  A Yankee cut the rope binding Rhett’s wrists. A strange moment for the memory that came then to Roy: the hospital bracelet around one of those wrists, the day Rhett was born.

  They stood in a circle on the plateau, blue with their backs to the sun, gray, hands still bound behind their backs, with the sun in their eyes. The two boys, stripped to the waist, faced each other inside the circle. Roy forgot about his thirst and the pain in his head, was barely aware of the faces, sweating and intense, of the watching soldiers, had eyes only for the two boys. He saw things he didn’t like, some of them things he maybe should have seen before: how Vandam’s boy was a head taller than his, perhaps an inch or two more than that; how Vandam’s boy had a thick neck, thick wrists, muscles under his baby fat; how he might even have been a little older, certainly more developed, with hair under his arms and a few sprigs already showing on his chest. Rhett looked scrawny, as though he’d actually lost weight since moving up north, what with his ribs showing, and those knuckle-shaped bones in his shoulders more prominent than before. Vandam’s son’s hands were already curled into fists; Rhett’s hung stiffly at his sides, shaking slightly. All he had going for him was that wild tuft of hair sticking straight up.

  “Get this over with, Griff,” Vandam said.

  His son nodded and swung his fist, a long, slow, looping punch that Rhett had plenty of time to block or sidestep or lean away from, but he did none of those things, didn’t move at all, not even raising one of those shaking hands. The blow caught him flush on the side of the head, made a sound like a fastball smacking into a catcher’s mitt.

  “Yeah,” Vandam said, and so did someone else.

  Rhett still didn’t move. Vandam’s son took a step forward, upper teeth showing now, and hit Rhett again, same way, same spot. Smack.

  “Yeah,” Vandam said again, louder now, and there were other voices: “Go get ’im, Griff. Get ’im again.”

  Griff got him again, a little higher up this time, no way to tell if he was trying to hit the same spot or not. This one, or the cumulative effect, split Rhett’s cheek open, but not too bad. Not too bad, Roy told himself; maybe said it out loud, hard to tell with all the other voices rising.

  “Yeah.”

  “Again.”

  “Get ’im.”

  “Again.”

  And Lee looking white, and Jesse looking sick, and Sonny: “Remember what I told you, for fuck sake.”

  Roy glanced at Sonny. What struck him wasn’t so much the blood trickling from Sonny’s ear, or his split lip, or the muscles and veins popping up all over the place, but the way his hair being chopped off made the facial resemblance to Roy’s father suddenly obvious. He took that for a good thing, that they were practically brothers, all in this together, and therefore Rhett would come through. He had to.

  Remember what Sonny told you, for fuck sake. Meant that to be a silent thought, but maybe it got out, and if it did this wasn’t like football where the players couldn’t hear, because Rhett looked his way, an expression in his eyes that Roy found hard to bear, and while he was looking his way, got popped again, in the mouth this time, bang on.

  Rhett staggered.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Smack in the fuckin’ face.”

  “You got ’im now.”

  “Again, again.”

  Rhett’s lip was split now too. He spat, and out came a little white tooth, might have been a baby tooth, Roy thought. It made him mad. He took a step forward and shouted: “Fight, boy. Fight like a son of a bitch.”

  But Rhett did nothing. Vandam’s son, Griff, threw another one of those heavy slow rights, and Rhett just let it hit him, side of the face again, split that split a little wider. Blood poured freely now, and Rhett’s legs went wobbly. He fell, almost melted, in the dust, lying at Sonny’s feet.

  “Atta boy, Griff.”

  “In the fuckin’ face.”

  Sonny dropped to his knees, leaned over Rhett, spoke to him. Roy couldn’t hear much of what he was saying, caught only “sack of shit” and “piss pot,�
�� but he saw, everyone saw, what Sonny did next: he licked the blood off the split in Rhett’s face. What else could he do, hands tied behind his back?

  Rhett got up. He spat out another tooth, this one trailing a pink plume in the dusty air. Then he looked up at the bigger boy and said: “I’m gonna kill you.”

  “Yeah?” said Griff, and he hit him again, same place, must have been his natural angle or something, opening the split wider than ever. “Yeah?” he said, higher-pitched this time, his mouth in a frozen grin but his eyes savage, and did it one more time.

  “Again.”

  “In the fuckin’-”

  Rhett stepped inside and bounced a quick left jab off Griff’s nose, every muscle in his little arm showing. Griff leaned back, surprised. Rhett seemed to inflate; everything about him changed, his stance, his bearing, but most of all his eyes, suddenly fearless-and frightening in a way that Griff’s, no matter how savage, were not, Rhett’s being so much colder. He had the gene.

  “You gonna let him do that to you, boy?” said Vandam. “Split his fuckin’ face in two.”

  Griff bent his knees, drew back his fist, grunted, threw another of those looping right hands, this one the heaviest of all. But it didn’t land. Rhett ducked, moved in, tilted Griff’s face back with another left jab and then did something whether on purpose or not, Roy couldn’t tell: with his right fist, Rhett punched Griff on his exposed neck, square on the Adam’s apple.

  Griff went down writhing, clutched his throat.

  “Yeah.”

  “Got ’im, Rhett, you got ’im.”

  And Sonny said: “Now finish him off.”

  Rhett fell on Griff, punching, punching, punching. Red welts popped up all over Griff’s face, red blood soaked into blue and gray, Griff cried out something about breathing or not breathing, Roy didn’t care. He was just screaming, they all were, all the Irregulars, all the Confederates, screaming over their fighting hero.

  Then Peterschmidt, Vandam, other Yankees were in the circle, not a circle now, too crowded, pulling Rhett off, Rhett, still punching as Vandam lifted him in the air. One of his punches caught Vandam in the gut. Vandam made a little oof sound. Then he hit Rhett in the head, very hard. Rhett fell to the ground, lay still.

  Roy went wild after that. They all did, blue and gray, both sides kicking, spitting, butting, kneeing, the Yankees using their fists and rifle butts too. Wild: like snakes, bears, hyenas, but more dangerous; and they made wild sounds, wordless but human. One by one the Confederates, hands still tied behind their backs, went down, only Roy and Sonny standing; Lee down, jacket off, hands pawing at her, the noise rising louder and louder, now no longer completely human, beyond endurance, and then a helicopter shot up over the ridge.

  Roy didn’t even know what it was at first, could make no sense of the writing on its side: National Weather Service. The machine threw up a blinding cloud of dust, soared on up the mountain. Roy couldn’t see a thing. He felt a glancing blow on the back of his head, not much, but that was all it took.

  Adept little fingers were working at his wrists. Roy opened his eyes, saw an apple lying in the grass, a foot or so away. A tiny, perfect red apple; as he watched, an ugly bug crept around from the other side, like a destroyer coming over the horizon.

  Lee untied him. Roy got up. The Yankees were gone and so was Rhett.

  Lee, all buttoned up now, but the collar not high quite enough to hide the bruise on her neck, said: “They took him anyway.”

  “Said we cheated,” Dibrell said.

  They were all-Roy, Sonny, Lee, Jesse, Gordo, Dibrell-beaten and bloody.

  “It’s my fault, Roy,” Gordo said. “Them finding us up here.”

  “No, it’s not,” Roy said; what connection could there be between Gordo and Ezekiel?

  “It is,” Gordo said, starting to cry. Combat fatigue, Roy thought-nothing to be ashamed of. “I told Earl we’d be up here,” Gordo said, “asking for the extra time off and all.”

  “So?” said Roy. “What’s Earl got to do with it?”

  “Peterschmidt bought a car off him,” Gordo said, wiping his eyes. “An LX, with the comfort and convenience package, loaded. Earl must of told him.”

  Roy didn’t quite get it, but he felt those headlights on his back again.

  Machine noise came drifting down from the mountaintop.

  “Let’s go,” Jesse said.

  Roy shouldered his gun.

  TWENTY-NINE

  By the time night fell, the Irregulars were safe in Sonny Junior’s barn, patching themselves up. Roy had a bad, bad feeling that he wouldn’t see his son again. He also had a feeling that he would never return to the Mountain House.

  They drank water, not the heavenly water from the creek, but rusty water from the pump in the yard. They ate hardtack, the Slim Jims all gone. The sun set, but left an orange glow on the windowpanes; inside, two or three candles spread golden holes in the murk, not quite reaching the tilted tractor, Sonny’s drum kit, the demolition derby car. High up on the walls, ember-colored tints showed here and there on a scythe, a rake, the ball and chain.

  Dibrell took off his uniform, torn and bloody, put on jeans and a T-shirt.

  “What the hell are you doing?” said Sonny.

  “I’m out of here,” said Dibrell.

  “Say again?” said Roy.

  “Can’t be here when the cops come,” Dibrell said. “You know my situation.”

  “But not the crime that got you into it,” Gordo said; he had purpling rings around both eyes, one puffier than the other.

  “All a misunderstanding,” said Dibrell, “meaning they could misunderstand again, easy.”

  “What makes you think the cops are coming?” Lee said.

  “The lieutenant says we’re gonna call them.”

  “I said we’d discuss it,” Jesse said.

  They all looked at Jesse. His face wasn’t too bad but his left shoulder seemed to be hanging lower than the right; he hunched forward on a stool, pushing up on his left elbow with his free hand.

  “Discuss what?” said Sonny Junior.

  “Calling the cops to get Rhett back,” Jesse said.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Sonny said. He turned on Dibrell. “Put that uniform back on.”

  Dibrell shook his head, inched toward the big barn doors.

  Roy rose. He was all right, seeing just one of whatever there was supposed to be one of, even though everything trembled at the edges. Roy had never been a leader, hadn’t really known what it was a leader did. Now he put his hand on Dibrell’s biceps. “You can go,” he said. “But your uniform stays here.”

  Dibrell shook himself free, or tried to. “You’re out of line, Private.”

  Roy gave Dibrell’s muscle a little squeeze, just to show him what was what. “One or the other,” Roy said.

  Dibrell looked to Jesse. Jesse said nothing. “That uniform cost me three hundred bucks,” Dibrell said.

  Roy released Dibrell. “Doesn’t make it yours,” he said.

  Dibrell was a big man, almost Sonny’s size. He deflated under Roy’s gaze, turned and walked out of the barn, leaving the uniform behind.

  “Cops,” Sonny Junior said.

  “We’ll talk about it, that’s all,” said Jesse.

  “No harm in talking,” Gordo said. “Don’t guess there’d be such a thing as an ice pack around here?”

  “What do you mean, no harm in talking?” said Sonny.

  Gordo licked his lips a couple times. “How are we supposed to find him by ourselves?”

  Sonny frowned, didn’t answer.

  “Good question,” said Jesse.

  “Is it?” Roy said.

  “I don’t get you,” said Jesse.

  “I think you do, Lieutenant,” Roy said.

  Lee came over, stood behind him, put her hands on his shoulders. They all saw, but only Gordo raised his eyebrows, meaning Sonny and Jesse knew.

  “Go on,” Jesse said.

  “The Yankees are on a campai
gn, said so themselves,” Roy said. “Only one campaign it can be.”

  “What’s that?” said Jesse.

  “The Chickamauga campaign,” Roy said. “All we need to know is what happens next.”

  “After the battle of Chickamauga?” Jesse said.

  Roy nodded. That brought a bit of pain, a bit of dizziness, but he was learning big things, and very fast. Learning to lead, that was one. Learning that the battle of Chickamauga was the turning point of his life, 1863 the most important year, those were others. Been no year like it, before or since. Who had told him that? Earl? Earl. He glanced at Jesse. Was it possible they’d have been better off under Earl’s command?

  “Bragg failed to pursue, as you know,” said Jesse. “And quite possibly the right decision considering his losses. The Yankees retreated to Chattanooga, ended up taking Lookout Mountain in the Battle Above the Clouds. Sherman used Chattanooga as his base for the march to the sea.”

  “So Bragg was wrong,” Roy said.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” said Jesse.

  “Don’t know what all this bullshit’s about,” said Sonny, “ ’cept it seems like they got Rhett up on Lookout Mountain. That it, cuz?”

  “Yeah,” Roy said. “I’m just wondering if the lieutenant was going to tell us, if we hadn’t figured it out for ourselves.”

  “Isn’t there a big event going on up there?” Gordo said.

  “Just one more reason to bring in the authorities,” Jesse said.

  “What did you say?” Roy said.

  “Because of the reenactment, Lookout Mountain now being a suburb of Chattanooga, for God’s sake, we should bring in the police.”

  “No,” Roy said. “That word.”

  Lee’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

  “Authorities?” said Jesse.

  “Don’t like that word,” Roy said.

  “Fuckin’ right,” said Sonny.

  “So are you in or out?” Roy said.

  “That’s not a question you can ask the ranking officer,” Jesse said.

  “Irregulars do things a little different,” Roy said. “I’ll ask one last time.”