Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

Still raining, but not as hard. Roy stood near the cannon, took deep breaths. He checked his watch, gave it a close look, in fact, much longer than normal. A commonplace, utilitarian watch of no great value: but digital. He felt a little better.

The rain stopped, the breeze died, but a mist thickened almost at once between the trees and down the line towardthe most distant tents. A soldier-a reenactor, Roy reminded himself-appeared out of the mist, walking briskly forward, an object under his arm.

The man nodded as he went by Roy. The nod was curtailed, military, the man young and smooth-faced with two stripes on his sleeve and a single earring in one ear. He carried a long curved sword in its scabbard.

“Colonel?” he said, standing outside the tent. “Light’s perfect.”

Earl came out of the tent, took the sword. He had trouble buckling it on. The man helped him, spinning him around once like a top, which was roughly Earl’s body shape, and getting all the belts-Earl was now wearing three-in order. The soldier wasn’t tall-perhaps not even as tall as Earl-but lean, trim, the most soldierly looking reenactor Roy had seen so far.

“Met Roy yet?” Earl said. “Roy Singleton Hill, like I was mentioning at the meeting. Roy, shake hands with Corporal Bridges. Sorry, Mr. Bridges, what with you transferring in so recently, your Christian name momentarily escapes me.”

“Lee,” said the corporal, shaking Roy’s hand. Lee’s hand was small, smaller than Earl’s, but dry, and the grip was strong.

Earl moved toward the cannon. A man dressed in jeans and a yellow slicker backed out of a tent, hunched over a camera on a tripod. Earl got ready in front of the cannon, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other inside his shirt, like Napoleon.

“Nice,” said the photographer.

Lee stood beside Roy, watching. “He does a digital thing to make his pictures come out just like Matthew Brady’s,” Lee said.

Roy was about to ask, Who’s that? when Earl said: “How about getting Roy in the picture?”

Roy got in the picture, wearing Gordo’s hat and jacket, standing so the cannon obscured the rest of him.

“Nice,” said the photographer. “Now why don’t we try just you two?”

“Me?” said Lee.

“And this gentleman,” said the photographer, nodding at Roy.

“Don’t want me there?” said Earl. “I could stand in the middle, like this.”

“How about we try that next?”

Earl stepped out of the shot, Lee stepped in, posing with Roy behind the cannon.

“They often put their arms over each other’s shoulders,” the photographer said.

Roy put his arm over Lee’s shoulder; Lee put his arm behind Roy’s back. Roy felt Lee’s hand, a small hand, on his spine.

“Yeah, just like that,” said the photographer. “Nice. Very.”

Roy gave Gordo back his hat and jacket. “Say hi to Brenda before you go?” Gordo said.

“Sure.”

Roy followed Gordo to the fifth tent on the left-both sentries had got it wrong-followed Gordo inside.

“Get your ass in here this minute, Johnny Reb,” Brenda said.

And then, from her position on some sort of low camp bed on the tent floor, she saw Roy. “Oh my God,” she said, pulling the covers up over her breasts; the rough border of the gray wool blanket snagged for an instant on one nipple.

Things get pretty hot in those tents. Some kind of transformation takes place.

A strawberry-colored nipple. Her face was the same. “Ever heard of knocking?” she said.

“Sorry,” Roy said.

“Not you, Roy. I’m talking to the oaf here.”

“How do you knock on a tent?” Gordo said.

“I’ll show myself out,” Roy said, and stepped back through the opening, lowering the flap behind him. As he walked away, he realized that Brenda had looked good, probably better than he’d ever seen her. He’d never felt a twitch of desire for Brenda, until right now. He heard her laughter through the canvas.

Roy walked back down the nature trail, past the silent sentry post-he could see the trash bag shelter still in place-and into the parking lot. The sight of his car was jarring for some reason, the sight of the Porta Potti truck even more so. Roy was opening the car door when he heard a light, muffled drumming, looked back up the path, saw a horse in full gallop, coming his way. The horse, big and black, bore down right at him, closer and closer, the rider reining in just a few feet away.

“Easy, boy,” he said. It was Lee. He handed the umbrella down to Roy. “You forgot this.”

“Thanks.”

Lee patted the horse’s neck; the horse stood still. “Enjoy your visit?” Lee said.

“Yeah,” Roy said. “Thanks.”

“What did you think?”

“It was nice.”

The horse snorted. Lee gazed down at Roy. “I mean truthfully,” he said. “I’d like to know.”

“What I really think?”

“No risk,” Lee said. “I’m a big boy.”

“It kind of reminded me of golf.”

“Golf?”

“Harmless fun in funny clothes.”

“That’s a good line,” Lee said. But he didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, showed no emotion of any kind. “Probably true given what you’ve seen. Being as it’s only the soft-core version.” Lee had the heaviest down-home accent Roy had heard in a long time.

“There’s another kind?” Roy said.

Now Lee smiled, a quick smile, a flashing display of white teeth, small and even, quickly gone. And then he was gone too, wheeling the horse around in one easy motion without a word of command, and galloping back into the woods. The mist closed around him.

Roy drove out of the lot and got back on the freeway.

”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.”