Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

“Still there, Roy?”

Roy thought he heard crickets. “Aren’t you a little cold?” he said.

“Got my cape.”

“Cape?”

“Regulation cape. Part of the uniform, Roy.”

“You’re wearing your uniform?”

“And bucking for corporal.”

Pause. Crickets for sure.

“Maybe there’s no thunder,” Gordo said, “but the stars part is true.”

“Must be nice,” Roy said.

“No sign of life at all, life as we know it,” Gordo said. “The sky glows over in the east-I got that right, east? — but that doesn’t have to be life as we know it. Could be a distant fire. Like… like a wooden town going up in flames.”

Roy remembered the long path up from the parking lot and past the cabins to the tents in the forest. “Got a flashlight?” he said.

“Nope. Just my musket.”

“Not loaded,” Roy said.

“We just fire the powder, Roy, you know that. Although…”

“Although what?”

“Roy?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m about to tell you something very important.”

Roy thought of the oxidized bullet from Kennesaw Mountain and got afraid. But what was there to fear from spent bullets?

“Are you listening?” Gordo said.

“Yes.”

“This is the most un-fucked-up place I’ve ever been.”

Gordo’s laugh that had wavered on the edge of something else? The something else was happening now.

“Gordo?”

“I’m not upset.”

“Does Brenda know where you are?”

“Let’s not talk about her. I’m not exactly persona whatever it is. She was going to cut back to part-time, with the p-p-promotion and all.”

Silence. Roy heard crickets, and another sound, a rumble.

“Hear that?” said Gordo. “Thunder.”

Roy listened, heard nothing this time.

“Know what it sounds like to me?” Gordo said. “The long roll.”

“The long roll?”

“What the drummer boy played, Roy-the call to battle.” Pause. “I’m gonna hold the phone up to the sky.”

Roy listened, thought he heard something.

“Well?” said Gordo.

“Most likely the overnight cargo planes coming into the long strip at Fulton County.” Roy wished he’d said something else, anything but cargo planes.

Muffled sounds. A long silence, the dead kind when a palm covers the receiver. Then Gordo said, “I want you to do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Find out if the call was what did it.”

“What call?”

“Fuck, Roy, the call to Pegram’s house. I told you the whole story.”

“It wasn’t a factor,” Roy said, and thought, Oh, Christ.

“Huh?”

Roy sat up, switched on the light. “I meant-I don’t see what difference the call could have made.” Roy saw his face in the mirror over the dresser. The expression on it-calculating, tricky, dishonest-made him turn away.

“How come?” Gordo said.

“Unless you said something.”

“I just asked him how are things coming along with the promotion.”

“And?”

“Roy? How come you said it wasn’t a factor, so sure and all?”

Roy looked at his face in the mirror again, tried to make it normal. “What was Pegram’s answer?”

“He said they’d have something for me soon.”

“That was it?”

“Pretty much.”

“So? What harm could that have done?”

“You’re confusing me, Roy. Harm got done, didn’t it?”

If there was a moment to tell Gordo the truth, it was now. Roy knew that, knew Gordo needed to know right now, would never need to know this badly again. So Roy started to tell him; the words were unreeling in his mind. Then he thought he heard that distant thunder, coming in over the phone. “Better get in your car, Gordo,” he said. “Go home.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because? What kind of reason is that? How do you know the call wasn’t a factor? What were the fucking factors if you’re so smart?”

“Just go home, Gordo.”

Roy heard another sound, the kind liquid makes coming from a bottle. “Why should I?” Gordo said. “I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder.” The s ’s were starting to get like sh ’s. The line went dead. Roy called back and was put into voice mail. He switched off the light, tried to go back to sleep, gave up trying, left the light off.

What’s the difference between the vision statement and the company plan, Carol?

An important question, Jerry. What comes to mind when you hear the word vision?

Seeing?

And what is it we’re trying to see?

The future?

Right, Jerry.

On the way to work a few hours later, Roy tried to get the difference between the vision statement and the company plan straight in his mind, rewinding passages of Curtis’s tape several times. It wouldn’t take, not this particular morning.

6:59. Roy sat at his desk. B31, Gordo’s old cubicle? There was someone in it, someone new, tapping at the keys.

P.J., hurrying in a minute or two late, struggling with his tie, saw too. “Fuck,” he said, just mouthed the word, really.

Then came DeLoach’s voice, over the wall. “Speak to him last night?”

“Yeah,” Roy said.

“How’s he doin’?”

“What you’d expect.”

“Fuck,” said DeLoach.

But that was about it. There was turnover, guys came and went, and nobody kept up with anybody after they were gone. A quiet morning, though: Roy could hear the tap-tapping in B31, lighter and faster than Gordo’s.

On his coffee break-walk to the machine, walk back, time for a quick personal call-Roy tried Gordo at home: no answer, but the machine was back on. “Gordo?” he said. “You all right?”

He went back and forth with Cesar in Miami over a container ship out of Mobile that Cesar thought was supposed to stop in Pensacola. “Any news up there?” Cesar asked at the end of his last message, when they’d finally straightened it out. What was going on with Cesar? Was this about Gordo? Gordo was just a name on the screen to Cesar. Roy was thinking of emailing back, “What kind of news?” when his phone rang.

“This is Barry.”

“Barry?”

“Yeah, Barry. Let’s try to go a little quicker. Kid’s fucked up again at the school and they want someone over there. Like you, Dad.”

“What do you mean, fucked up? Is he all right?”

“Don’t know the details. Got to run.”

“Where’s Marcia?”

A pause. Then an odd laugh, more like a little explosion of air, having nothing to do with amusement. Then click.

Roy called the school.

“We have a strict weapons policy,” said Ms. Steinwasser.

“Weapons policy?” said Roy. “Did something happen to him?”

“In the sense you mean, no.”

“What are you saying? Is he wounded? Did someone bring a gun into school?”

“Please calm down, Mr. Hill. Your son’s not hurt. But the someone you’re talking about was him.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Your son violated the weapons policy.”

“That’s not possible,” Roy said. “Rhett’s got no weapon.” Unless, he thought, unless: Barry.

“Better come down here,” said Ms. Steinwasser.

“But-” Roy checked his watch. Then he slammed down the phone, maybe not slammed, but put down hard, without saying good-bye. Not like him at all.

He crossed the floor, went up the stairs to the glassed-in office, took a deep breath; or tried to. Curtis was at his desk, writing on a legal pad. He waved Roy in with a smile.

“Things settling down?” he said.

“What I-”

“Got a second to look this over?” Curtis said, sliding a glossy magazine across his desk.

Roy picked it up: an office furniture catalog, open somewhere in the middle.

“Bottom of the right-hand page,” Curtis said.