Last of the Dixie Heroes Page 5

  Roy walked up to Marcia’s door. A red flower torn from one of the planters lay on the welcome mat, roots and all. Roy bent down to pick it up, and was still straightening when the door opened. He recalled how things had gone with Barry the last time, wished he wasn’t holding the flower.

  But it was Marcia who looked out, not Barry. Her eyes went to him, the flower, back to him. “Why, Roy,” she said.

  “Saturday,” he said, interpreting the expression on her face as puzzlement. “Collecting Rhett.”

  “Come on in,” Marcia said, turning to call, “Rhett. Your daddy’s here.”

  Roy stepped into the big square entrance hall. It was empty, as before, except for the chandelier still tilted in one corner of the floor, in a little sea of broken crystals. Then he saw something new, a red stain on the creamy wall. Alarming, until he realized it was the purple red of wine, not the bright red of blood.

  “What have you got there?” Marcia said.

  The flower. An explanation formed in his mind about how he hadn’t brought it for her, simply found it on the step, but all he ended up doing was making some kind of sound and handing it over, a tiny clod of earth coming loose from the roots and falling on the polished oak floor. That was when Rhett appeared-at the moment Roy and Marcia were facing each other, both with a hand on the flower-Rhett, walking in through the door that led to the living room, picking his nose.

  There was a silence. Roy imagined he could feel all sorts of forces in the room, invisible but physical, tugging here and there. He and Marcia backed a little away from each other; she held on to the flower.

  “All set?” Roy said.

  Rhett took his finger out of his nose, nodded. His eye looked a lot better, swelling all gone, the discoloration now the muted shades of Easter.

  “What are you guys going to do?” Marcia said. She’d never asked that before, seldom even appeared on changeover day. “If I’m not being too nosy,” she added.

  “I joined this new gym near my- in the Highlands,” Roy said. “Thought Rhett and I would have a workout, sit in the whirlpool, then get some lunch, maybe see a movie if it keeps raining like this. How’s that sound?”

  “Workout?” Rhett said. They’d never had a workout before. Roy’d been thinking a little physical training might help the boy the next time he ran into a bully; he also felt like a workout himself, a feeling he hadn’t had in some time.

  “Why not?” Roy said.

  “Sounds good.” Which is what he’d hoped to hear, except it was Marcia saying it, not Rhett.

  “Then get your stuff,” Roy said. Which is what he would have said to Rhett, except his eyes were on Marcia when he said it.

  “Yes, sir,” said Marcia, turning and leaving the room. Rhett stood there with his mouth open. His gaze met Roy’s. Roy came very close to shooting him a wink.

  They got in Roy’s car-the Altima, with 103,000 miles on it, dust on the dashboard, empty coffee cups here and there, nothing to be done about it-Roy and Marcia in front, Rhett in the back. Roy turned the key. Music came blasting out of the speakers: Yes I’m going to walk that milky white way, oh Lord, some of these days. “Milky White Way,” one of Roy’s favorites. He snapped it off.

  “What was that?” Marcia said.

  “Uh,” Roy said.

  “Sounded like gospel.” Marcia popped the CD out of the slot, examined the label. “You going religious on me, Roy?” she said.

  “No.”

  “But?”

  “It’s music.”

  “Just music, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’re you guys talking about?” said Rhett from the backseat.

  “Big ears,” Marcia said.

  Roy laughed. He felt good: loose, natural, at ease. And in his pocket-in his pocket because he’d never owned an object so valuable that didn’t come with a steering wheel and he was afraid to leave it behind-was the emerald necklace, like an ace in the hole.

  They went to Roy’s gym. Roy paid two guest fees. “Depending on how much you all are going to use this, you might consider a family membership,” the girl behind the counter told Roy, handing out towels.

  They did ten minutes on the stationary bikes, Marcia on one side, leafing through a magazine, Rhett in the middle, watching VH1, and Roy on the other side, sweating almost at once and trying not to huff and puff. Trying not to huff and puff interfered with his air supply. He huffed and puffed, glanced furtively at himself in the mirror from time to time, seeing how out of shape he was, making resolutions. Once Marcia’s eyes met his in the mirror. She smiled at him. Because of the mirror-that was the only reason Roy could think of-it was like a stranger smiling, a fit stranger in a leotard and tank top, and very exciting. Isn’t this the craziest thing? Like an affair, or something.

  In the weight room, Marcia did squats, not with a lot of iron on her shoulders, but real squats with good form. When had she learned that? And her form: good in both senses of the word.

  “Let’s see those push-ups,” Rhett said.

  “What push-ups?” said Marcia.

  “Dad said he could do twenty.”

  “Fifteen,” Roy said.

  “Twenty,” Rhett said.

  “All right,” Roy said. “But you first.”

  Rhett got down on the floor, started doing push-ups.

  “Back straight,” Roy said, and: “You going to count that one?”

  Rhett did nine; seven real ones. “Now you.”

  Marcia lowered her bar back onto the rack. Roy said: “Who’s getting hungry?”

  “He’s chickening out, Mom. Don’t let him chicken out.”

  Marcia raised her eyebrows at Roy, made a clucking sound like a chicken asking a question. She was fun: what with how she looked, and how things had been in bed, and how he’d like to be there right now, he’d let that slip his mind, the fun part.

  He got down on the floor. Fifteen? Twenty? Who was he kidding? Rhett stood over him. “One, two, three, back straight, four, five, you going to count that one?”

  Six, seven, what the hell had happened to him? Had there really been a time he’d been able to do a hundred, win free beer at parties? Hard to believe. At eleven, he’d had enough, was about to stop, just flop down there on the mat and make some light remark, although he didn’t know what, when he thought: How many could Barry do?

  Roy did twenty-nine.

  “Dad!” said Rhett.

  “Let’s feel that muscle,” said Marcia, or something like that, the words fuzzy with Roy feeling a little faint the way he did. But Marcia’s hand squeezing his biceps-no doubt about that.

  They sat in the whirlpool together, Marcia’s foot touching Roy’s once underwater, maybe by accident, then showered, changed, went to lunch. “I’ve never been this hungry in my life,” Marcia said. She ordered barbecue, Rhett a burger and fries, Roy a tuna sandwich even though the barbecue looked pretty good. The three of them ate lunch in almost complete silence, their heads quite close together over the table. Rain ran down the windows of the cafe.

  The waitress brought a newspaper from the bar. They opened it to the movie page. “Oh, let’s see this,” said Marcia, pointing to an ad. “Barry’s friends with one of the producers.”

  That changed the mood a little bit.

  “More of a business associate,” Marcia said.

  Barry’s business associate’s movie was about a nun given a month to live; she leaves the convent and winds up at a Club Med. Marcia laughed a lot. Rhett ate a jumbo popcorn and drank a jumbo Coke. Roy couldn’t get into it, passed the time watching little things in the background of the scenes and wondering about Barry.

  “Enjoy it?” Roy said, as they walked back to the car.

  “Pretty cool,” Rhett said. “Do a lot of nuns have tattoos like that?”

  Roy parked in front of Marcia’s house. Rhett got out, walked to the door without waiting for Marcia, as though leaving them alone on purpose. Marcia turned to Roy.

  “Thanks for a very nice
day.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow what?”

  “We could do something.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t, Roy.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Let’s just take our time, that’s all.”

  “Take our time for what? Getting to know each other?”

  “In a way,” Marcia said. She laid her hand on his. Her skin was cold. “You’re a good man, Roy. Even I can see that.”

  “But?”

  “No buts.”

  In the rearview mirror, Roy saw the Mercedes coming up the street. “Was it the truth, Marcia? When you said you’d made a mistake about Barry.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Marcia. “I made a mistake about Barry. A doozie.”

  That was that. What else was there to know? Roy couldn’t imagine any other impediment he couldn’t handle. He reached into his pocket. “Here,” he said.

  “What’s this?”

  “For you.”

  “These are beautiful.”

  “A kind of emerald.”

  “I know that, Roy. But I just couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t, that’s all.” She rolled the emeralds gently in her fingers.

  “Just try it out for a few days. It can always go back.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  The Mercedes turned into the driveway. Barry got out, glanced at them-he didn’t look good, unshaven, shirttail hanging beneath the hem of his jacket-and hurried toward the house, carrying an armful of papers. Barry had a little trouble with the front door, dropped two or three sheets without knowing it. A rainy gust of wind whisked them away. The emeralds made a soft clicking sound.

  “It can go back?” said Marcia as the door closed behind Barry.

  “Why not?”

  “In that case.” She slipped the necklace in her purse.

  Later that night, Rhett called Roy. “Can I get a dog?”

  Roy laughed at that, laughed again when he was brushing his teeth, once more getting into bed. He slept like a baby.

  SIX

  It was still raining, or raining again, when Roy drove through the gates of the Girl Scout camp the next day. He parked in the lot beside a Porta Potti truck, put on a rain jacket, opened his umbrella, and walked toward a row of tree-sheltered cabins he could see in the distance. The cabins were padlocked, the windows boarded up. Roy kept going, beyond the cabins, up a path covered with pine needles, into deeper woods. He came to a three-pronged fork where signs on the trees pointed to nature walk, computer lab, and arts and crafts. Roy chose nature walk.

  The nature walk path led up a gradual slope lined with pines and waxy-leafed trees whose name Roy didn’t know. The rain fell harder, making percussive sounds on the waxy leaves, still bright green and shiny new. Other than the rain, it was quiet. Roy slipped on a tree root, stepped in a puddle, got his foot wet. Had no one come? Had they canceled the event? Roy was slowing down, almost ready to turn back, when he heard a voice close by.

  “No one’s worth that kind of money.”

  Another voice: “Know what your problem is? You’re living in the past.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No bullshit. Sports is entertainment now, pure and simple. Drive in a hundred and thirty runs, you write your own ticket, just like the movies, that faggy little actor, what’s his name.”

  Roy looked around, saw no one. “Anybody here?” he called.

  Silence. Then came the sound of metal clanking on rock.

  “Hey!”

  “Not ‘hey,’ for fuck sake.”

  “Oh, yeah. Who goes there?”

  Two men wearing uniforms like Gordo’s came scrambling out from behind a boulder ten or fifteen feet off the path, both of them now calling, “Who goes there?” They saw Roy. One stuck a flask in an inside pocket. The other said, “Stand and identify yourself.” A low-hanging branch knocked his hat off as he came closer.

  “I am standing,” Roy said.

  They didn’t seem to hear him. The one with the flask said, “Oops.”

  “What do you mean-oops?” said the hatless one.

  “We forgot the guns.”

  “Muskets, for Christ sake. Or weapons. Never guns. Guns are cannon.”

  “Whatever. Shouldn’t we get them?”

  They looked back toward the rock. Roy saw that they’d built a shelter behind it-plastic trash bags stretched over muskets stuck in the ground, bayonet first.

  “Probably.”

  “But then we’d have to put the whole damn thing back up again.”

  They turned to Roy, waiting under his umbrella. The hair of the hatless one was already soaked flat against his skull; the peak of the other one’s hat-kepi, was that what Gordo had called it? — was directing a tiny waterfall onto the tip of his nose.

  “I’m looking for Gord Coker,” Roy said.

  “Gordo?”

  “Correct,” said Roy.

  “He’s in camp.”

  “In a tent, nice and dry.”

  “Where is it?” Roy said.

  “Lucky son of a bitch,” said the one with the flask.

  “Third on the right,” said the other.

  “Third is Jesse,” said the one with the flask. “Gordo’s one more down.” He turned to Roy. “Fourth tent on the right.”

  “I meant the camp,” Roy said.

  “The camp?”

  “I’m sure I can find the tent on my own.”

  “Huh?”

  “After I get to the camp.”

  “You asking where the camp is?” said the hatless one.

  “I am.”

  “Thataway, quarter mile or so.”

  “Thanks.”

  Roy started down the path. He heard one of them saying, “Isn’t one of us supposed to accompany any stranger into camp?”

  And the other: “Stranger? You heard him-he’s here to see Gordo.”

  Pause. “We should have asked him to send someone back with those BLTs.”

  Roy passed a tree labeled sweetgum, another labeled american sycamore, and a third, resembling the waxy-leafed one, although he wasn’t sure if it was the same species, labeled post oak. He came to a grassy clearing. There were about a dozen white tents in the clearing, arranged in two rows on either side of a black cannon. It was quiet and still: nothing to hear but rain on canvas, nothing stirring but the rebel flag on a pole above the first tent on the right. Roy paused outside.

  “Anybody home?”

  “Roy? That you?” The flap opened. Gordo appeared in his uniform, the butternut jacket, gray trousers, yellow suspenders, black half boots that conformed to no current fashion. He actually looked pretty good. “Come on in.”

  Roy folded his umbrella. Another uniformed man came up behind Gordo, peered out. “Where’s the picket?” he said.

  “What’s that?” said Roy.

  “Like a sentry,” Gordo said.

  “Supposed to be a picket escorting every visitor,” said the other man. “Standing orders.”

  “They need BLTs,” Roy said, ducking into the tent.

  “Now you know why we lost the war,” the man said; a man of about Roy’s height, but thinner, slightly stooped, balding. He reminded Roy of an English teacher he’d had in high school.

  “Roy,” said Gordo, “Jesse Moses, second lieutenant, Seventh Tennessee. Jesse, Roy Hill I was telling you about. Roy Singleton Hill.”

  They shook hands. “Gordo’s been telling me about you,” said Jesse Moses. “Welcome to the Seventh Tennessee.”

  “I’m just visiting,” Roy said.

  “Glad to have you. I’ll fetch the colonel.” He threw a gray cape over his shoulders and left the tent.

  Roy looked around, saw a rough wooden table, the kind of thing you might find at a flea market. A candle burned on the table, illuminating a map that looked yellowed with age in the dim light.

  “There were Jews in the Civil War,�
� Gordo said in a low voice. “Both sides.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s authentic.”

  “What is?”

  “For Christ sake, Roy. Jesse Moses is Jewish. We’ve got a Jew for second lieutenant.”

  “But it’s kosher.”

  Gordo gave him a look. “That’s not a reenactment kind of word.”

  “What about putz?” Roy said.

  The tent flap opened and Jesse Moses returned. He glanced at Roy, then Gordo, back to Roy, and seemed about to say something- Who said putz? Roy was sure of it-when a short round man came in behind him. His uniform bore lots of gold braid and culminated in a green plume poking up from his broad-brimmed hat.

  “Colonel,” Jesse Moses said, “Roy Hill. Roy, this is our colonel, Earl Sippens.”

  “Earl Sippens?” Roy said, shaking his hand, a small hand and damp, but that might have been the rain. “Not the Suzuki guy?”

  “Isuzu,” said Earl.

  “Isuzu,” Roy said. “Sorry.” Sippens Isuzu was one of the biggest car dealerships in Cobb County, regular sponsor of late-night movies.

  “No biggie,” said Earl. “I sold Suzukis at one time. Hell, I sold them all. Remember the DeLorean?”

  “No.”

  “Course not-too goddamn young.” Earl Sippens looked Roy up and down. “Roy Singleton Hill. I get a chill, now I really do. What was he-your great-great-grandpappy or one more greater than that?”

  “I don’t know,” Roy said.

  Earl didn’t seem to hear that. “Roy Singleton Hill,” he said, putting his hand on Roy’s back and propelling him toward the table. “This calls for a drink.”

  They sat on overturned crates. “Ah,” said Earl, glancing at the map, “Chickamauga.”

  “Jesse and I were just going over it,” Gordo said, setting down tin cups, pouring from an earthenware jug.

  “Chickamauga,” said the colonel. “What might have been, eh, boys?”

  “That’s debatable,” Jesse Moses said.

  “How so?” said Earl, his eyes getting small real quick. Roy smelled whiskey, a strong smell. All the smells-damp wool of the uniforms, canvas, grass, melting candle wax, whiskey-were suddenly strong.

  “If you’re talking about Bragg’s so-called failure to pursue,” said Jesse Moses, the candle wavering for a moment, sending a brief shadow across his face, “remember there’s a difference between winning the field and winning the battle.”