Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

Roy didn’t answer.

“Seein’ as Schwarzenegger ain’t exactly a common name. That’s the joke. Course you got to explain a joke, it’s not funny.” He glanced at his wrist; there was no watch on it. “No escapin’ work ethics, is there, Roy?” He picked up the machete. “Don’ suppose you’d be wantin’ to make a bulk purchase at a surprisin’ discount?”

Roy shook his head.

“Then I guess it’s hasta la vista,” Ezekiel said. “Careful on the way down, now. On the way down’s where ninety point nine percent of accidents happen.”

Clouds came, first small and fluffy, then big and dark. Lee buckled her belt, straightened her hair, picked up her gun, looked more like a man. They started down the mountain. It was raining as they crossed the creek, raining harder as they descended though the thick woods, the path now sometimes a stream. There was nothing to hear but the rain and the squishing of their boots.

“This is what it was like,” Lee said.

“Not so bad,” said Roy.

After that it really poured. An hour or so later, they stopped by a boulder twice their size to drink from the canteen. As Lee passed it to him, Roy took her wrist, thinking of pulling her closer for a kiss, thinking if not now, when? When would the next one be? At that moment they heard a squishing sound like the ones they’d been making, and Sonny Junior came around the boulder, almost at a jogging pace. Roy jumped a little; so did Lee, or maybe that was just the force she used to jerk her hand free.

“Hey,” said Sonny Junior, his eyes going from Roy to Lee, back to Roy. “You scared me.” He didn’t look scared. “Saw your car, Roy, and thought I’d spring this surprise. How do I look?”

Sonny did a little pirouette, which could have made a man his size look silly, but didn’t. He was in full Confederate uniform, with sergeant stripes on the sleeve.

“What’s this all about?” Roy said.

“That’s what I’m gonna find out,” Sonny said. “I’m signing up.”

“Where’d you get the rig?” Lee said.

Sonny smiled down at her. “Hopin’ we can be friends, little guy,” he said. “Specially now that I outrank you. Bought it off a buddy of mine who’s goin’ away for a spell and won’t be needin’ it.”

“It looks all right,” Lee said, “except for the weapon.”

“The AK?” said Sonny. “Hell, I know that. My buddy’s bringing his musket around tomorrow. But meanwhile I didn’t want to come up here with nothin’. What kind of soldierin’ would that be?”

“We have to clear all new recruits with the commander,” Lee said, “but I’m sure there won’t be a problem. Welcome to the Seventh Tennessee Cavalry.”

“Much obliged,” said Sonny, rain dripping off his slouch hat. “The fireworks, the snake show, even the demolition derby-all nothin’ compared to this. I know that already.”

“You had a snake show?” Roy said.

“Did I leave that out?”

They walked down together. Sonny Junior had bagged a deer on the way in. They found it strung up on a branch, dripping blood that the rain pinkened and washed away.

“I’m totally psyched,” Sonny Junior said. “This time we’re gonna win.”

Back home, Roy couldn’t sleep when he was in bed, couldn’t sit still when he was up, couldn’t drink the water from the tap, couldn’t eat the food from the cupboard. And home was a misnomer.

He walked from room to room in his underwear, didn’t shave, didn’t shower. The mail that came all had messages on the envelopes like final notice, immediate reply required, and do not ignore. Roy tossed it all into a trash bag, swept the mail from the kitchen table into it too, flung the bag into the alley out back. That left the kitchen table nice and clear, except for the diary, the Old Grand-Dad bottle, and the Old Grand-Dad bottle that came next.

The air? He couldn’t breathe it. He used his inhaler, first a little, then a lot. After a few days, he went to the drugstore to get more. The clerk came back with his credit card.

“Sorry, sir. Better call Visa.”

“Keep it,” Roy said, and walked out.

He made calls: to Lee, and got no answer; to Gordo, and got the machine; to Rhett, and got some woman with an accent.

“They gone,” she said.

“Gone? Rhett’s gone?”

“Bermuda cruise,” she said. “Back soon.”

Bermuda cruise. Roy couldn’t get the phrase to make sense in his mind. He said something, something that probably didn’t make sense either.

“I can put you to his voice mail,” the woman said.

“Whose voice mail?”

Beep. “Hi, this is Rhett Hill. Can’t take your call right now, but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you.” Beep.

Roy opened his mouth to leave a message. The message was: I miss you. He didn’t say it, didn’t say anything. He did call back a few minutes later, maybe just one minute, to get into the voice mail again. Not that he said anything this time either; he wanted to hear Rhett’s voice. It wasn’t for the way he sounded so grown-up all of a sudden-that was a negative, if anything. It was to hear him say: “Rhett Hill.”

Roy almost did it again.

He walked around the house, the bottle of Old Grand-Dad dangling from his hand. He opened some drawers, found a sewing kit, a hair dryer, the wedding album. She’d left it behind. But why not? Made more sense to wonder why she’d left the sewing kit and the hair dryer. Roy turned a page or two of the wedding album, stared at a few pictures, opened the nearest window, threw it out. What was it, day or night?

Night.

Night was a good time for watching the Pop Warner tape, over and over. Fifty-six did all the things he did: ran into the huddle at full speed, helped chase down the ball carrier, picked up the fumble, took it in for six, felt joy. The man on the sideline watched with no expression on his face. He did shout, “Run,” that one time, but the camera wasn’t on him then so there was no telling how he looked. Stupid, probably-the man knowing better than most that the players couldn’t hear a thing outside the game.

Over and over.

Then it was day. How long did Bermuda cruises last? No harm in seeing if Rhett was back. Roy picked up the phone, dialed the number unsuccessfully several times before realizing that the line was dead. He tried the other phones in the house: all dead too. On his cell phone, he called the phone company and reported service problems. Then he used it to try Rhett. No one answered this time. A recorded voice told him to press one for Grant, two for Marcia, three for Rhett. He pressed three, or maybe not, because the next voice he heard was Marcia’s:

“You’ve reached Marcia. Please leave a message.”

Nothing unusual about that, except for the way she pronounced her name. Now it had three syllables instead of two-Mar-see-ah-and sounded European, or like something from MTV or maybe Hollywood, Roy couldn’t think what.

“Where are you?” he said; and angrily, when he hadn’t meant to leave a message at all. Maybe not angrily, he hoped not angrily, called once more to check. But of course he didn’t hear his own voice, couldn’t hear messages in someone else’s voice mail, that wasn’t the way it worked. He’d got all mixed up about voice mail there for a second. He paced around the basement-what was he doing down there? — trying to get the elements of voice mail straight in his mind. There was voice mail, voice recognition, email, e-commerce, digital, analog, broadband, viruses, spam, and the little bulging trash barrel in the bottom corner of the screen. They were all the same, just a bunch of electrons, organized by a bunch of electron organizers who knew all the things he didn’t. Roy was sick of electrons. That was the good thing about Old Grand-Dad, no electrons. He drank some to make sure; only a test. No doubt about it: they’d stripped the electrons away, probably the secret to the entire distillation process, right there.