Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

“Correct.”

“What happened after that?”

“They took the fort. I don’t know the details.” Roy found himself gazing at Curtis’s dark hand on the last remaining page of the diary. “Do you?”

“I’m not an expert,” Curtis said. He closed the book. “And I didn’t come to talk about this.”

“You came about career counseling,” Roy said. “And I told you-I’m all set.”

“There’s one other thing, some potential good news that I’m not really authorized to discuss.”

“Then don’t.”

“Concerning new developments at Globax.”

Roy shrugged.

“I understand your being bitter, Roy, but it won’t help to-”

“I’m not bitter. Quite the opposite.”

Curtis put the diary on the table. “The plan is to spin off a few of the less profitable divisions in the next few months, perhaps involving employee ownership, but you can’t breathe a word.”

Spin-offs, Globax-these were nonsense words to Roy, scarcely words at all. “No problem,” he said. He just wanted Curtis to leave.

Curtis was looking at him, as though trying to convey some message. Whatever it was didn’t arrive. He pushed the diary away.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Roy said.

Curtis rose. A moment for handshaking came and went. Roy walked Curtis to the door, Curtis sniffing a couple of times on the way. “Stay in touch,” Curtis said.

“Bye,” said Roy. He noticed it was night again, or still.

Roy went into the living room, stamped out the fires. After that, knowing he must be tired, he lay down on his bed, that bed made for two. He thought about calling Lee again, now that he was in uniform, but did not. He wasn’t going to beg, was all through with begging or anything close. Did Roy Singleton Hill beg? No. Roy Singleton Hill yelled that rebel yell, fired the Sharps carbine, used his finger to plug the bullet hole in his horse while he rode on and on, attacking all the time.

So he wouldn’t beg, or anything close. That would be a disgrace to the uniform. This basic understanding settled him down a bit, but failed to bring sleep, no matter how tired he must have been. He tried putting on “Milky White Way,” but the player in the bedroom wouldn’t work. None of the players were working; in fact, there was no electricity in general. Roy packed up his Confederate kit-gun, diary, canteen-went into the tiny backyard, lay down under the stars.

Except there were no stars, and nothing that resembled the night sky in any way. The city made noises all around him, Yankee noises. The air above seethed with them. Plus those brown heads waited down below. Roy knew what Lee would say: They occupied your dreams.

Roy got up. He went out to the street, put his Confederate things in the trunk of the Altima, drove away. A tiny flame burned in the rearview mirror. Later there were distant sirens. Roy didn’t have to listen to them or any other bothersome sounds. “Milky White Way” still worked fine in the car.

Roy came up through the high meadow, the Sharps carbine with death on the stock over one shoulder, word carved there by Roy Singleton Hill, and thus part of his inheritance, although the exact message was still unclear. Roy also wore the mule collar with everything he needed rolled up inside. From a long way off, but very clearly, his eyes working the way they worked when sighting through the V, he saw something new. Red background, blue bars, white stars: the flag now flew above the apple trees around the Mountain House.

Wasn’t a flag a signal, a code? This flag spoke to him and he understood every syllable: Unconquered, unoccupied, waiting. The sight of it fluttering in the breeze puffed Roy up inside his uniform. He felt strong, stronger than on his strongest day and much stronger than normal men, his lungs powerful, bathing every cell in his body with oxygen, clean and pure. He breathed that unspoiled air, felt the lovely wildflowers brush against his legs. Tennessee wildflowers: no need to pick these flowers, to take possession of them-weren’t they already his in every way that counted? He’d been born not far from here, had owned this land, this very corner of Tennessee, now lost; lost in a narrow sense because of Bragg’s failure to pursue after Chickamauga, lost in a broader sense because of broader things he probably wasn’t smart enough to understand. Lost, no doubt about that, but here he was anyway, still in uniform, still armed, still marching toward that flag, that flag still flying.

Three tents now stood on the flat ground between the Mountain House and the slave quarters. Over to one side, at the edge of the plateau where the downward slope resumed, Lee and Jesse were digging a trench, Jesse with his shirt off, that silver Star of David glistening on his chest, Lee buttoned up to the neck. They both looked up, both gazed at Roy. Lee gave him a nod, maybe even more distant than it had to be, went back to digging. Roy heard her little grunt- his little grunt, he corrected himself. It would have to be that way in camp, must have been that way then if no one knew until it came time for the dead and wounded. Jesse jumped out of the trench, hurried over, shook hands.

“I want to thank you, Roy.”

“What for?”

“Offering your place like this. We’re digging the latrines down there, right where the original ones must have been, judging by how thick the vegetation grows. Hope that’s all right.”

Roy took a quick glance at his hand, slightly soiled from the handshake. “It’s not really my place,” he said.

“Yours and Sonny’s,” Jesse said.

“Sonny’s here?”

“Gone down for a few things. He’ll be back soon.”

Roy glanced at the meadow. The wildflowers all bent suddenly in the same direction, blown by a gust that didn’t reach the plateau. “What kind of things?” Roy said.

“Sonny didn’t specify,” Jesse said. “He’s going to be a big help, your cousin.”

“At what?”

“All the things we can do now, Roy. We’re taking this to a whole new level and you’re a big part of it.”

“It’s not my land,” Roy said. “Not Sonny’s neither.” Did he say that: Not Sonny’s neither? Couldn’t have, wasn’t the way he talked. Did he even know anyone who talked like that?

“As far as I’m concerned,” Jesse was saying, “personally and as the ranking officer of this subgroup, it is your land.”

Roy looked up at the mountaintop, rising behind the slave quarters. He didn’t argue, didn’t say anything. He didn’t know how it would come out, him or this other voice.

“We’ve got the men,” Jesse said, rubbing his hands together in a way that reminded Roy of primitive people starting fires. “We’ve got the site. All we need now is a name.”

“A name?”

“Can’t call ourselves a subgroup,” Jesse said. “They didn’t talk like that.”

“How about the Irregulars?” Roy said.

“They talked like that.”

The name: Irregulars.

The site: Mountain House.

The soldiers (no civilians allowed in a hard-core camp): Jesse, lieutenant in command. Sergeant Dibrell, ranking noncommissioned officer. Lee, the corporal. And three privates, Roy, Sonny, and Gordo; Gordo with the chance to try it for the long weekend, Brenda helping with the new baby at her sister’s. Gordo mentioning weekend was how Roy found out what day it was.

Latrines dug, supplies stored under a shelter they’d built in a corner of the Mountain House, the Irregulars sat outside in the shade of a tree now past blooming, all but Sonny, still absent with leave. They drank the creek water from their canteens and gnawed on Slim Jims, which substituted for beef jerky.

“These are disgusting,” said Gordo. “I’ll be farting all night.”