Last of the Dixie Heroes

TWENTY-THREE

Roy smelled smoke, thought the Mountain House was on fire and everyone in it would die. He opened his eyes: daytime, and alone; in uniform, lying on his side on the blanket, a lone spoon in a drawer. On Lee’s half of the blanket lay the two guns, side by side.

Roy got up, followed the burning smell out the back of the house, found a small fire pit dug in the ground, with a rusted grill over it and wood burning underneath. Not far away stood another ruin he hadn’t noticed before, this one made of faded barnwood slats, most of them gone. Roy went closer, called, “Lee.” No response. He peered inside, saw weeds sprouting through a dirt floor, and what he thought at first was a blackened basketball, then realized was the ball part, flaked and rusted, of a ball and chain.

Roy went back through the Mountain House, past the apple grove, to the edge of the plateau. He saw Lee, or at least someone in a rebel uniform, at the distant end of the sloping meadow, waving flowers marking the route like a sailboat’s wake. Not long after, the figure, tiny now, disappeared over the top of the ridge. Roy started down across the meadow. An electric-blue dragonfly buzzed up from under his feet and got lost in the sky.

Roy went through the meadow, cut across the face of the ridge, came to the hole in the rocks where the creek poured out. He scanned the mountain for signs of movement, saw nothing through the trees. Something splashed in the creek, not far away. Roy walked over, looked down, saw a small fish making no headway against the current. He began following the creek.

It led him around the side of the mountain, away from the ridge. He soon heard a sound like the wind, faint at first, then louder, although the air was still. Roy struggled through a thicket, came out on a rocky shelf: a cliff, actually, with the creek falling off it, straight down.

Roy stood at the top. He’d never stood at the top of a waterfall, didn’t know whether everyone who did had to fight the urge he was fighting now. Down below lay a pool, frothy under the waterfall, placid at the other end where it narrowed, the creek continuing down the mountain. Flat rocks lined the narrow opening, and on one of them lay Lee, in uniform with sleeves rolled up, hands in the water, motionless.

Roy watched. He was beginning to think that Lee was daydreaming, meditating, perhaps even asleep, when there was a sudden movement and Lee sprang up, a fish in his hands. In her hands. A big brown fish: it wriggled frantically for a second or two and then went still. The look on Lee’s face when that happened scared Roy a little. He started back up to the Mountain House.

Trout: with clear brown eyes, fins and tail still pink at the edges, no sign of injury. Lee cooked it whole over the fire pit.

“Where’d you find the grill?” Roy said.

“Out back,” Lee said, nodding toward the remains of the barnwood shack.

“Where the slaves lived,” Roy said.

Lee, squatting by the fire, gazed at Roy sitting cross-legged on the other side, heat shimmering in the air between them. “Slavery was just about universal throughout human history.”

“So?”

“So you’ve got to decide if you’re going to let that ruin everything.”

“What do you mean by everything?”

Lee took out a knife, sliced up the trout, put some pieces on a broad leaf and brought them to Roy. “Us, for starters.”

“Us?”

She knelt in front of him, trout steaming on the leaf. “Do you care about me at all, Roy?”

“Yes.”

“I’m in love with you,” Lee said. Her face glowed, perhaps from the heat of the fire.

Was this the moment he had to make some similar statement? Roy knew something big was happening between them but wasn’t ready to call it love. “I don’t know what Gordo’s told you, but I’ve just been through-”

She cut him off. “None of that matters.”

“None of what?”

“I don’t need to know about your situation. Don’t need to, don’t want to.”

“What’s that mean, my situation?”

“Your present life, Roy.” Lee rose. “Eat up.”

Roy ate. The glistening flesh of the fish, its saltiness, its heat-he’d never tasted anything like this. Saying grace, a habit his mother had fallen out of when he was still very young: all at once, he understood where the idea came from; answer to a question he’d never even considered.

“You like?” Lee said.

“Yes.”

She took something from the pocket of her butternut jacket, held it up. “Know what this is?”

“A bird feather.”

“Quail feather, specifically. I found it on the ridge. Saw deer tracks too. And the creek’s full of trout. Throw in a few chickens and you could live here forever.”

A crazy idea: the list of objections so long it was pointless even to itemize them. Roy had a crack at itemizing anyway. First there was Rhett, of course. And next? And after that? Nothing jumped out at him.

“We’ve been searching for a place like this,” Lee said.

“Who?”

“The progressive element in the regiment, I’ve been telling you about. Hope I’m not being too forward, Roy, but would it be all right with you if a few of them came up for a look?”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“It just feels right, Roy, asking you.”

This line of talk put Roy in mind of Sonny Junior and their lost lands, but he didn’t think it was a good time for mentioning Sonny, so he ate the trout in silence, washed it down with creek water Lee had brought back in her canteen. A bumblebee the size of one of those fifty-eight-caliber rounds flew by, not very fast. Then another, even slower, and a yellow butterfly, slower than that.

“Sleepy?” Lee said.

“Now that you mention it.” But he wasn’t.

They lay on the blanket.

“Does Jesse know?” Roy said.

“Know what?”

“Or any of the others-about you?”

“Of course not,” Lee said. “How authentic would that be?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Women fought in disguise-horrible word-but no one ever knew until they got them to the surgeon’s tent or the burial pit. Therefore telling people isn’t authentic.”

“What about me?”

“You,” said Lee.

She put her arms around him, kissed his mouth. He’d always loved Marcia’s kisses, but this was different: he got the feeling that Lee was giving every little bit of herself in this kiss, like there was no before and after. Made him want to do the same back, but still, with the sun up and him being sober, Roy knew he had no right to expect anything like last night. But it was like last night, or better; and therefore if not a right, what? A privilege? He thought about that after, sweat running off him, eyes closed, the day hot pink through his eyelids.

“You must have happened sometimes,” she said.

“So I’m authentic too?”

“Oh, yes,” Lee said. He felt her lips on his cheek, the side of his neck, against his ear. “That’s the whole point.”

Roy cooled off. Heat must have been shimmering up from their bodies. He thought he could hear the waterfall.

When Roy awoke, Lee was sitting in one of the window spaces, reading the diary. “Fell out of your pocket,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Roy didn’t mind. “Who’s Zeke?” he said.

“His body man-doesn’t he say that somewhere?” Lee turned the pages.

“Is that like a bodyguard?”

Lee looked at him over the diary. “Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“More like a personal servant.”

“A paid servant?”

“No.”

Roy went over, read: takin Zeke bac fer boddyman sed godbis an wen up to th montan Hows fer godbis up thar.

“The standard of literacy is pretty typical of the period,” Lee said.

Roy didn’t care about that. Zeke wen asckulcin but I larnt him difernt.

He could feel Lee’s eyes tracking along with his. This time she had nothing to say. Roy walked out the back of the Mountain House, past the fire pit, still smoking, and into the slave quarters. He had a careful look around, saw what he’d already seen, the rusted iron ball lying in the weeds that overgrew the dirt floor; the plant world reclaiming everything, but maybe not fast enough.

A crow cawed, rose up out of the woods behind the slave quarters, hunched over, wings beating furiously. Roy went outside, crossed to the back of the plateau where the mountain began rising again, found what might have been a trail, might have been a chance series of openings between the trees, started up. The air was still and warm, full of insect sounds. Roy was sweating and a little thirsty by the time the ground leveled and he stepped into a clearing the size of a baseball infield.

Roy thought of it as a clearing because there were no trees, but chest-high plants grew everywhere. A man with his back to Roy was hard at work chopping them down with a machete and stuffing them into a plastic trash bag. His tightly curled hair gleamed with sweat and his T-shirt, with a picture of Bob Marley on the back, was soaked through. He was singing a song under his breath, but Roy was close enough to catch it.

“Yes I’m gonna walk that Milky White Way

Oh Lord, some of these days.”

Roy stopped breathing. The man must have sensed that, because he immediately stopped singing and spun around. He saw Roy, dropped the machete, raised his hands high.

“Don’ shoot.”

Roy hadn’t realized he was carrying the gun, didn’t even remember picking it up off the blanket. He almost said, Don’t worry, it’s not real, but of course that wasn’t true. “Why would I do a thing like that?” he said.

“Seen you DEA types get testy after one of these long climbs,” the man said. He looked more like Chuck Berry than Bob Marley, although he was lighter skinned than either. “I would too, hot day like this’n, specially with the money they’re payin’ you.”

“I’m not a DEA type.”

“FBI? BATF?” The man squinted a little at him; Roy was still in the shade. “Can’t say as I recognize the outfit.”

“You’re safe with me,” Roy said.

“I’m not feelin’ safe, some reason,” the man said.

“Put your hands down.”

The man lowered his hands, but slowly, and kept them open toward Roy. “Couldn’t be a hunter, this not bein’ huntin’ season,” he said. “ ‘Less you’re not against bendin’ a rule or two, the kind that don’t make no sense, anyways. Which case, you and me have somethin’ in common.”

Roy moved into the clearing, glanced around, fingered a leaf of one of the plants. “How long’s all this been growing here?”

“Since’t Adam and Eve. It’s nature.”

“I meant organized like this. A plot.”

“Ain’t no plot,” said the man, his voice rising and turning a little querulous. “Thought you wasn’t law enforcement.”

“I’m not.”

The man still looked worried. “Don’t suppose you could be provin’ that somehow.”

“By flashing a badge that says ‘not the police’?” Roy said.

The man laughed, revealing a mouthful of stained teeth. “There’s the trouble with this… hobby,” he said, glancing around the clearing. “Sometimes you get to thinkin’ not quite right. It’s a relaxin’ hobby, don’t get me wrong, but the thinkin’ part can lose its straightness, you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” Roy said.

“Name’s Ezekiel, by the way.” He held out his hand.

Roy shook it. “Roy.”

“Happy to know you, Roy. Truth is, I’m feelin’ relief you turn out to be whoever you turn out to be, what with this not even really bein’ harvest time yet, and the crop off to such a promisin’ start.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Sweet,” said Ezekiel. “Sweet, sweet music to my ear.” He took out a cigar-size joint. “Hate to toot our own horn, but we make a fine produc’ here in eas’ Tennessee. You from around these parts, Roy?”

Roy shook his head. “Atlanta.”

“Sure would love to go there one day. See much of Ted Turner?”

“No,” Roy said. “You’re from around here?”

“Time immemorial,” Ezekiel said. He struck a wooden match with his thumbnail, lit the joint; a ball of smoke rose up like the first phrase in a tribal signal. Ezekiel took a big drag, passed the joint to Roy.

Roy had tried marijuana in high school, once or twice in college, not since. None of that was on his mind. His only thought was: Is it authentic? Why wouldn’t it be? Why wouldn’t there have been clearings like this, if not in the time of Adam and Eve, at least in 1863? He took a big drag and felt good right away, big and strong, at one with his uniform, comfortable in his double skin. Then he grew aware of the wooden stock of the gun in his hand, yes, a living thing, as Lee had said, the feel of it another comfort all by itself. He wanted to be shooting things with it, distant things, flying things, hiding things.

“Quality produc’, Roy?” said Ezekiel.

Roy looked at Ezekiel and all at once could not get past the otherness. Their gazes slid past each other, focused elsewhere.

But Roy heard, heard after the sound was gone, the way the y in his name came out when Ezekiel spoke it, almost like pure air, a breeze, the same as when his mother said it, or Curtis. Curtis: whom he’d almost called a dumb nigger. And so what about that almost? He’d had the thought, which was what counted, and worse, was fighting a sick desire to say the word out loud, right now. He handed back the joint.

“You say something, Roy?”

“No.”

“Didn’t catch it, anyways. See them birds up there?”

Roy looked up, saw a V-shaped formation of birds high above.

“Means rain by midnight,” Ezekiel said.

“Doesn’t feel like rain,” Roy said.

Ezekiel laughed, a laugh that got wheezy at the end. “Feel like rain,” he said. “That’s a good one. Like we’re rubbin’ up skin to skin with the weather.” He took another drag, passed the joint to Roy. Roy took one too.

“You married, Roy?”

“I was.”

“Me too. Was and was and was. You understand women, Roy?”

“I don’t even understand the question.”

Ezekiel laughed, wheezed, laughed some more. “Made my day, runnin’ into you like this,” he said, patting Roy on the back. “Never did get your last name, Roy. Should be on a last name basis, now we’s becoming friends.”

“Hill,” said Roy.

“Same as me,” said Ezekiel.

“Same as you?”

“Course, a common name,” said Ezekiel. “Now say it was Schwarzenegger, wouldn’t that be weird?”

Roy didn’t answer.

“Seein’ as Schwarzenegger ain’t exactly a common name. That’s the joke. Course you got to explain a joke, it’s not funny.” He glanced at his wrist; there was no watch on it. “No escapin’ work ethics, is there, Roy?” He picked up the machete. “Don’ suppose you’d be wantin’ to make a bulk purchase at a surprisin’ discount?”

Roy shook his head.

“Then I guess it’s hasta la vista,” Ezekiel said. “Careful on the way down, now. On the way down’s where ninety point nine percent of accidents happen.”

Clouds came, first small and fluffy, then big and dark. Lee buckled her belt, straightened her hair, picked up her gun, looked more like a man. They started down the mountain. It was raining as they crossed the creek, raining harder as they descended though the thick woods, the path now sometimes a stream. There was nothing to hear but the rain and the squishing of their boots.

“This is what it was like,” Lee said.

“Not so bad,” said Roy.

After that it really poured. An hour or so later, they stopped by a boulder twice their size to drink from the canteen. As Lee passed it to him, Roy took her wrist, thinking of pulling her closer for a kiss, thinking if not now, when? When would the next one be? At that moment they heard a squishing sound like the ones they’d been making, and Sonny Junior came around the boulder, almost at a jogging pace. Roy jumped a little; so did Lee, or maybe that was just the force she used to jerk her hand free.

“Hey,” said Sonny Junior, his eyes going from Roy to Lee, back to Roy. “You scared me.” He didn’t look scared. “Saw your car, Roy, and thought I’d spring this surprise. How do I look?”

Sonny did a little pirouette, which could have made a man his size look silly, but didn’t. He was in full Confederate uniform, with sergeant stripes on the sleeve.

“What’s this all about?” Roy said.

“That’s what I’m gonna find out,” Sonny said. “I’m signing up.”

“Where’d you get the rig?” Lee said.

Sonny smiled down at her. “Hopin’ we can be friends, little guy,” he said. “Specially now that I outrank you. Bought it off a buddy of mine who’s goin’ away for a spell and won’t be needin’ it.”

“It looks all right,” Lee said, “except for the weapon.”

“The AK?” said Sonny. “Hell, I know that. My buddy’s bringing his musket around tomorrow. But meanwhile I didn’t want to come up here with nothin’. What kind of soldierin’ would that be?”

“We have to clear all new recruits with the commander,” Lee said, “but I’m sure there won’t be a problem. Welcome to the Seventh Tennessee Cavalry.”

“Much obliged,” said Sonny, rain dripping off his slouch hat. “The fireworks, the snake show, even the demolition derby-all nothin’ compared to this. I know that already.”

“You had a snake show?” Roy said.

“Did I leave that out?”

They walked down together. Sonny Junior had bagged a deer on the way in. They found it strung up on a branch, dripping blood that the rain pinkened and washed away.

“I’m totally psyched,” Sonny Junior said. “This time we’re gonna win.”