Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

“You’re cold,” Lee said.

Roy felt a hand, a small hand, touch his side, move around to his chest, press him gently. What he had to go on-that one female remark about not wanting to be rescued, plus the image he’d glimpsed after Sergeant Vandam’s tackle had popped the buttons of Lee’s jacket-didn’t seem very substantial at the moment. Remarks were open to interpretation and he’d never been better than average at that sort of thing, usually worse; and a nighttime image could be mistaken, or nothing more than wishful thinking.

Roy rolled back over. Lee was watching him, mouth slightly open, small even teeth lit by the stars. Roy slipped his hand under the high waistband of Lee’s pants, forced it down below, eliminated all doubt.

“Authentic,” Lee said.

Roy shifted his hand up, under Lee’s jacket.

“If it’s Tyla’s and Tonya’s tits that heated you up,” Lee said, “then these are going to be a disappointment.”

“You don’t know me,” Roy said.

He kissed her mouth. They moved together, half in, half out of their rough wool uniforms. Whatever he’d imagined happening with Tonya, or that real time with Marcia farther down Crystal Creek? They didn’t compare. The daytime part was false.

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.