Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

“It’s true.”

Lee shook his head. “I can tell, just by the way you stand.”

Roy looked down at his feet; he hadn’t been aware of standing in any particular way. “I know nothing about guns,” he said.

Lee looked at him, eyes sharp and intent behind the small lenses of his glasses. His gaze shifted again to Roy’s cheek. “Whatever you say,” Lee said. He reloaded the gun.

The scratches, her new lips, Dr. Nordman. His whole body started to shake. Roy knew he wouldn’t hit another bottle. He tried to take aim at the next one on the left, trembling in the V, forgot everything Lee had told him, thought only about Dr. Nordman sitting on the edge of the bed. How was anyone going to make that right? The next bottle on the left shattered, glass bits like sparks in the sunlight, although Roy wasn’t aware of pulling the trigger.

Area managing. Shatter.

Regional supervising. Shatter.

Ferrucci. Shatter.

Rhett in New York.

One bottle left. Roy became aware of that, also became aware of a big problem, which was the tears pooling in his eyes, rolling down his face. The bottle went blurry in the V.

Rhett in New York: living in a fancy kind of building Roy couldn’t visualize, in an expensive part of a city he’d never seen, growing up in a life he didn’t know. There were forces out there. Some people knew how to use them: Curtis was probably one of those. Some people didn’t: Marcia, most likely. And the rest were barely aware of the forces at all: that was him.

Rhett in New York.

Shatter: the glass bits making a strange golden explosion this time because of the wetness in his eyes. Lee looked away, said nothing. He walked slowly toward the riding fence, moving through the shade of the trees and into the patch of light, staring down at all the glittering in the grass.

Roy didn’t remember his career counseling appointment until it was too late.

Roy turned over the sheet of paper on which he’d written the headings House Projects, Budget (w/new salary), Managerial Skills. On the blank side, he wrote: Bills. Then he wrote: $. He sat there. The stack of mail on the table had an unsettling personality of its own.

Roy admitted something to himself: he wasn’t good with money. Money had rhythms that he didn’t get. Some people heard the beat: Barry, for example, watching money move on his screen, shorting Yahoo, all that. Barry, hunched over, ass hanging out of his briefs, felt the rhythm. Roy closed his eyes, tried to think of some moneymaking idea. Nothing came.

He needed a moneymaking idea. While he was admitting things, why not admit the truth about his finances since the divorce and the loss of Marcia’s income? The house was all his now, but the equity was tapped out and the full mortgage payment was now all his too. Seventy-two seven, plus bonuses. He never wanted that number in his head again. It was the very next thing he thought of.

After that came the emerald necklace. Six grand on the home equity, two thousand on his credit cards, now maxed out. It can go back? He remembered her saying that. Didn’t it mean she would be sending it over any day now? Roy looked out the window, saw a UPS truck coming slowly down the street. It went slowly by and slowly disappeared around the corner. Could he call her and ask for it? He turned the sheet back over. Under House Projects, he read bathroom, and under that tiles, mirror, little lightbulbs. He wrote: Hello, M., I was wondering about that necklace. He scratched that out and tried: Now that things turned out the way they did. And: Maybe it slipped your mind but. He couldn’t do it.

Roy reached out toward the pile of bills. His hand hovered above the top one, moved to a manila envelope lying on the other side. Roy had forgotten all about it. He took out the two old-style photographs-he and Earl, he and Lee-and the computer printout: “Roy Singleton Hill-A Biographical Sketch.” He removed the Post-it-“Dug this up last night. Enjoy-J. Moses”-and started reading.

From the Nathan Bedford Forrest Homepage: NBF called Roy Singleton Hill his “Angel of Death.” Hill’s forebears came to east Tennessee from North Carolina in the early 1800s, not later than 1813 when the marriage of Robert Hill to Elizabeth Singleton is recorded at the Church of the Savior in Ducktown, Tennessee. The Singletons owned land in what is now Cherokee National Forest, but they didn’t become prosperous until Robert Hill’s decision to build a lumber mill on a stream that passed through their property, sometime in the 1820s. RSH was born in December of 1831 or January of 1832, third of six children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Little is known of his early life or education (if any). He met NBF on a trip to Memphis in the mid-1850s, perhaps as a customer. RSH joined the 7th Tennessee Cavalry in February 1862, just before the retreat from Fort Donelson. He served in all Forrest’s major campaigns and had a noted reputation as a horseman and marksman, being mentioned in dispatches after the battles of Spring Hill, Brice’s Crossroads, and Chickamauga. His feat on the morning of the second day of Chickamauga, when he single-handedly took a Yankee battery before turning the cannon and firing it into the Union ranks, became legendary in CSA annals. He was also present at the capture of Fort Pillow, April 12, 1864, but his role, if any, in that controversial action is unknown. RSH married in the early 1850s and had one son, who may have died in infancy. RSH himself was killed at the end of the war or shortly after, possibly while defending the mill from an attack by renegade Yankee deserters and freed slaves.

Roy read it again. He knew little of Chickamauga, had never heard of Spring Hill, Brice’s Crossroads, Fort Pillow. All he knew was that Roy Singleton Hill’s only son couldn’t have died in infancy, not with him sitting here reading this. He picked up the pen, the pen he’d used to write Bills, $, and those preambles to Marcia, crossed all that out, and in the empty space below began to draw. Roy hadn’t drawn anything for a long time, not since grade school, probably around Rhett’s age: he remembered Mrs. Hardaway standing by his desk, her finger following the line of some picture he had drawn. He could even remember the drawing-a foot-ball player, diving for a loose ball-and Mrs. Hardaway’s finger-skin the color of coffee beans, her nail bright red. Mrs. Hardaway had had a funny laugh that got more and more high-pitched until it went inaudible and left her shaking silently; he’d liked Mrs. Hardaway.

The drawing he was making came into focus. Scribbles, really: they showed a uniformed man, his face still blank, gun butt raised high. There was a cannon in the background and the sketchy beginning of a body at his feet. A flag-the rebel flag-hung in the sky, suspended like a religious vision.

Night fell. His drawing, the bio, the stack of bills all faded away. Roy didn’t turn on the lights. He didn’t hear the key in the lock and the front door opening, didn’t hear footsteps in the hall. A form materialized in the kitchen.

“I’m not going,” Rhett said.

Roy snapped out of it: Rhett, appearing like this to remind him of what he should be doing instead of zoning out in the dark. He rose. “Son,” he said. “Your ma-your mother bring you?”

“No.”

“How did you get here then?” Roy switched on the lights.

“I’m not going.” Rhett wore new clothes, or at least clothes Roy hadn’t seen on him before, a polo shirt and khakis with cargo pockets; his hair was cut short and the unruly tuft of stick-up hair was gone.

“Not going where?” Roy said, peering out the window, failing to see Marcia’s car, or the Porsche, or any car parked in front of the house.

“Fucking New York,” Rhett said.