Last of the Dixie Heroes

SEVEN

”Funny, the golf joke,” Gordo said, coming into Roy’s cubicle. “Everybody got a kick out of it.”

”Even Earl?” Roy said.

“Especially. Don’t sell old Earl short. The dealership? Built from nothing, and that’s not the only iron he’s got in the fire.”

“No?”

“Fact is”-Gordo took a step closer, which brought him up against the desk, and lowered his voice-“if things weren’t all of a sudden so promising for me around here, I might be looking to hook up with Earl in one enterprise or another.”

“Enterprise,” said Roy. “That sounds good.”

“Want me to put in a word?”

“No.”

Gordo seemed a little surprised that Roy didn’t even think it over. “How come?”

“What do you mean?”

Gordo opened his mouth, closed it.

“What’s the big secret?” Roy said.

“I’m probably out of line.”

“Go on.”

“The thing is, Roy, realistically speaking…”

“What?”

“I really shouldn’t.”

“Talk.”

“It’s just that sometimes you come to a dead end in life.”

Their eyes met. Gordo had deep, dark circles under his; Roy wondered if his own were the same way.

“Know what I mean?” Gordo said.

“Not exactly.”

There must have been something in Roy’s tone, some edge that made Gordo hold up his hand and say, “Correction, not life. I’m talking about the job, that’s all. Don’t you ever ask yourself-Where is this job taking me? Not me, Roy, you. I’m in the process of lucking out, which just goes to show, because in terms of job performance, the truth is there’s not all that much to choose between us.”

Roy’s turn to say something, but what? No, Gordo, you do a much better job. Couldn’t say that, not with what was coming down. Roy settled for: “I’ll be okay.” Right away, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. How would that little sentence strike Gordo in retrospect, the day they announced the job was Roy’s?

“Course you’ll be okay,” Gordo said. “Didn’t mean to horn in.”

“You’re not horning in.”

Gordo leaned over, squeezed Roy’s shoulder. “No offense?”

“None.”

Gordo’s face was close to Roy’s. “You’re a good buddy,” he said, then thought of something and smothered a little laugh. “Poor Brenda.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She’s embarrassed.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Gordo smiled, a confidential sort of smile. Roy smelled tooth decay. “You know what they don’t tell you about life back then?” Gordo said.

“What?”

Gordo’s eyes shifted. Curtis was walking by. Gordo straightened, said, “Thanks for the help,” a little too loudly, slipped a manila envelope onto Roy’s desk in what he must have considered a deft maneuver, and left the cubicle, knocking against the padded wall on his way out. Roy recalled how he’d moved in uniform, only the day before.

He opened the envelope. Inside were two black-and-white photographs and a two-page computer printout entitled “Roy Singleton Hill-A Biographical Sketch.” The attached Post-it read: “Dug this up last night. Enjoy-J. Moses.”

The first photograph: Roy and Earl posing by the cannon. Was this like a real Civil War photograph by Matthew whatever his name was? Not to Roy. He and Earl looked silly, that was all. But the second photograph, the one with Lee, was different. Roy and Lee stood side by side with their arms around each other, the way the photographer said the soldiers often posed. For some reason, this one wasn’t silly, not the photograph as a whole, not Lee, and not Roy, even though he was wearing exactly what he’d worn in the first shot, snapped only a minute or two before.

Roy dug out a magnifying glass he had in the drawer, left over from when they dealt in printed labels. His own expression was the same in both pictures, that face he always wore in photographs, angled toward the camera like a cooperative subject, but uneasy. Roy was surprised to see that Earl looked fierce, his eyes hooded under the shadow of the huge brim of his hat, as though sending the signal-to Sherman? Grant? — that he was not to be messed with. Only Lee seemed unaware of the camera; his eyes gazed into the farthest distance, and as Roy examined them, he thought he detected something like battle weariness, as though Lee were a veteran of bloody campaigns that had changed him forever.

“What have you got there?” Curtis, in the cubicle. For a moment Roy thought Curtis might have been talking into his headset; but Curtis’s eyes were on the pictures. Roy noticed for the first time the Confederate flag flying over a tent on the far side of the cannon.

“That you, Roy?” He tapped a pencil on one of the photographs.

“Not really.”

Curtis looked down at him, his eyes narrowing. Curtis had this sense of dignity, didn’t like anyone jerking him around, even when sometimes they weren’t. But Roy wasn’t thinking about that: he was noticing the way Curtis’s narrowed-eye expression resembled Earl’s hooded eyes in the picture.

“Not the real you?” Curtis said.

“I was just visiting,” Roy said.

“Like in Monopoly?”

“It was one of those reenactment camps. I guess you could say a kind of a game.”

“And?” Curtis said.

Roy sensed he was being asked to say something negative about the reenactors, or the camp, or that stupid flag. He did think the whole thing was pretty stupid but he said nothing. He just wasn’t going to do it.

“Kind of a game,” Curtis said. “Did you know they’ve got World War Two reenactors now? Some of the participants dress up in black SS uniforms.”

“That’s weird.”

“Is it?” Curtis said. His eyes shifted. He listened to something coming over his headset, pressed the button, said, “Malabar,” clicked off. He focused on Roy. “Heard of slave reenactors?” he said.

“No.”

“They’re out there too.”

“Doing what?”

“Playing the slave game. Would that be the term, Roy? Supposed to be a big contingent of slave reenactors going up to Chattanooga for some Lookout Mountain event. Never used to see the point of it myself.”

“But now?”

“Now?” Curtis said, and seemed about to go on when another call came over the headset. He nodded at whatever was being said, started backing out of the cubicle, then remembered something, came back, and handed an audiocassette across the desk.

He’d been gone for ten seconds when Gordo looked over the wall. “What was that all about?”

“Did you know there were slave reenactors?”

“Don’t start.”

“Don’t start what?”

“The war had nothing to do with slavery, Roy. Everyone knows that.”

“Like who?”

“Historians. Ask any reenactor, North or South. Talk to Jesse. Or Lee. He’s just as sharp, you get to know him.”

“You’re telling me that if there’d been no slavery, there still would have been a war?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re starting to scare me, Gordo.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Gordo’s face, hanging over the partition, was flushed. “Got to get back to work,” Roy said.

Gordo didn’t move. “What’s that tape Curtis gave you?”

Roy glanced at the label: Managing in a Complex World: The Acclaimed Five-Step Program for Managers in the New Millennium, with Workbook, Internet Support and 24-Hour Hotline.

“No idea.”

“What’s it say?”

There was nothing to do but hand Gordo the tape.

Gordo read the label. “Why’d he be giving you this?” The accent was on you.

“No idea,” Roy said again, but maybe not as convincingly this time.

Roy popped the tape in the car player on the way home.

Why don’t you like filling out the new weekly activity report, Jerry?

Well, Carol, it takes too much time, and who reads it anyway?

I read all the reports, Jerry, and so do the people at headquarters. How much time does it take?

Half an hour, Carol, and that’s time I really can’t spare if I’m going to be a productive member of the team.

In this interchange between Carol and Jerry, we see a common reaction to change, one you’ll probably be faced with sooner or later in your managerial career. What are Carol’s choices? The most common response is what we call the Roy’s mind wandered from the little office drama. His managerial career. Curtis wanted him to know something about handling people, to be ready. The promotion was real, and was coming soon: the tape was tangible proof. Knowing for sure that the future would be better than the present: what a feeling! The next thing Roy knew, he was on the cell phone calling Marcia’s home number.

“Hello?” she said; her voice subdued, even tentative, not like her.

“Doing anything special for supper?”

She perked up right away. That was a good feeling too. “Why, no, Roy.”

“How about I’ll get three steaks, throw them on the grill?”

“Three?”

“You, me, and Rhett.”

Pause. “Right. Sounds good.”

“Give me an hour,” Roy said.

He stopped at the market on the way, bought three sirloin strips, a box of frozen French fries, a bottle of Chardonnay. He knew that Chardonnay didn’t go with steak, but Chardonnay was what she’d wanted the last time.

“What’s your best steak sauce?”

“This here Creole one. Can’t hardly keep it in stock.”

“I’ll take two,” Roy said.

Everything made sense. You worked all day, put good food on the table, sat down together, drank a little wine, the kid said something cute that made you smile at each other over his head, you relaxed, body and soul. Driving up to the house, he began to think about Marcia’s return, her actual moving back in. Should he suggest it, or wait till she brought it up herself? Roy had a funny thought-what would Carol do? Maybe better to think of her as “Carol.” Carrying the grocery bag into the house, Roy decided that this was probably one of those problems that solves itself: step six of the five-step managerial program. He was almost laughing to himself when he went into the kitchen.

The answering machine was beeping. Roy let it beep while he put the wine in the icebox, turned on the oven for the fries, went out back and scraped the grill, rubbing it after with butter, a trick he’d learned from his mother. Then, putting the steaks on a plate and pouring on the Creole sauce, one whole bottle, he reached over and hit the playback button.

“Message for Mr. Hill. This is Mrs. Searle, social services up at Ocoee Regional. We’ve got your father in here quite sick, Mr. Hill, maybe not expected to last the night, according to the chief resident, and your name is on the next of kin form. Our number here is-”

She gave the number up in Tennessee. Roy called. Mrs. Searle repeated what she’d said.

“What’s wrong with him?” Roy said.

“I believe it’s his liver, sir.”

Roy believed it too. He called Marcia, postponed dinner.

“What’s wrong, Roy?”

“Something’s come up.” He didn’t want to get into it, not with the way things were starting to go between them-maybe better than ever, that was his secret thought-and not with the weird scene his father had pulled the only time he and Marcia had met.

“Too bad,” Marcia said.

“Yeah,” Roy said. “Maybe we could-”

“Oops, I’ve got a beep,” Marcia said. “Bye, Roy.”

He put the steaks in the fridge, turned off the oven, got back in the car.

Roy drove north on 75.

It just seems like I’m taking all the risks and getting none of the rewards.

Believe me, Jerry, I’ll do everything I can to make sure your efforts are appreciated. How would you like a special mention in next month’s newsletter?

Jerry said something neutral but Roy could tell from his tone that he was starting to come around. The narrator came on and made some important points about managing, but Roy didn’t catch them all because he was wondering about that next of kin thing. He and his father hadn’t seen each other or spoken in ten years, and there was an even longer gap the time before, their relationship being mostly gaps. Maybe his father had simply written his name because it was the correct answer, him never remarrying, so far as Roy knew, and Roy being the only child. Otherwise-what? Some kind of deep-rooted guilt rising up in a dying man? Roy had seen things like that on TV but didn’t know if they happened in real life.

He took the 411 exit, crossed the state line an hour later. Jerry caved in on the activity reports. Carol got him mentioned in the newsletter, page one. Jerry thanked her for everything she’d taught him. The narrator summarized what that was. There were seven points in all, subpoints really, since this all appeared to be part of the second step of the five-step program, but the narrator was still discussing the third subpoint-how to enlist the help of your biggest opponent-when Roy pulled into the visitors lot at Ocoee Regional.

“Patient’s name?”

“Hill.”

“That would be three twenty-seven. You can go on up.”

“I can?”

Roy went up, walked along a wide hall, all harsh blue from the fluorescent strips overhead. Doors were open on both sides. Roy didn’t like what he saw: a man reading from a Bible to a bald kid, an old toothless woman with her mouth wide open, a man with something hard to describe covering half his face. Roy began having problems with his air supply, felt in his pocket, wrapped his hand around the inhaler, held on.

The door to room three twenty-seven was closed. A transparent plastic bag full of dirty linen lay on the floor outside. Roy could see blood on the rolled-up sheets, lots of it. He glanced up and down the hall, looking for someone to ask a question he hadn’t quite formulated, but there was no one. He turned the handle, pushed the door open.

A room for two, but an old shirtless guy had it to himself. The old shirtless guy had little stick arms, a hollow chest, a hard potbelly, a few long strands of rust-colored hair crisscrossing his bald head. He was spooning Jell-O into his mouth and watching Roy with pissed-off eyes. Pissed-off eyes: that was the giveaway.

“You don’t look like you’re dying,” Roy said. That just came out. Sounded pretty bad, but he didn’t wish for it back.

“I’m a fucking medical miracle is what they say.” A blob of Jell-O-the green kind-quivered on his lower lip and dropped to the bedding. “Maybe if your ma had learned you some manners you’d know enough to hide your disappointment a touch better.”

The deep-rooted guilt thing was out.