Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

An owl hooted, somewhere above. Roy laid Rhett on his blanket, covered him up with an extra blanket someone had brought, watched him sleep for a while. The owl hooted again, a long oo-oo-ooo that mixed in with the rat-a-tat-tat drumming that was going on in Roy’s mind, making a kind of song. Roy took off his hat, belt, brogans, lay down beside his son. The sound of voices came from the fire, but Roy couldn’t make out the words. After a while he couldn’t hear the sounds either. Rhett sighed in his sleep.

“Everything’s all right,” Roy said.

Rhett turned over. His hand brushed Roy’s shoulder, went still, gave it one little press, as though testing something. He was quiet after that.

Lying on his back, Roy saw the Milky Way. Something slid along it, blotting out stars in bird-shaped patterns that kept changing, wings going up and down. The song in his mind took up the beat. The words and melody leaked in from “Milky White Way.” Everything came together. The song was about a journey through time to put things right. That explained why it was so happy. Made perfect sense. He was happy too.

Roy heard feet running in the night. He may have been no more than a private, but he knew at once what was happening: Yankees come to take his son away. Hadn’t they already made off with his wife? He felt Rhett still beside him as he opened his eyes. A dark form loomed over him. They weren’t getting Rhett. Roy kicked out, heard a grunt of pain, rolled, came up with the carbine in his hands.

A man lay on the ground. “Don’ shoot,” he said. An unarmed man, not a Yankee, not in uniform at all, but Ezekiel, in his Bob Marley T-shirt and jeans.

Roy lowered the gun, felt the murderous urge within him subside, but slowly, as though there’d been a contest of wills inside his own head.

“I keep on havin’ to tell you not to shoot me,” Ezekiel said, “like one of them dreams happens over and over.”

“No one’s going to shoot anybody,” Roy said, his voice low. “What are you doing here?”

“You hurt my knee.”

“What do you expect, breaking into someone’s house in the middle of the night?”

“You calling this a house? You calling this breaking in when there’s hardly no walls?”

“Yes.”

“An’ how’s it your house? You said you was from Atlanta, hung with Ted Turner.”

Roy didn’t reply.

Ezekiel got up with another little grunt of pain.

“Quiet,” Roy said.

“Your roots is up here, ain’t they? What I thought from the very start.”

Roy nodded: he was home, no denying that.

“You and me needs to talk,” Ezekiel said.

“About what?”

“Oral traditions,” Ezekiel said.

“Some other time.”

“Has to be now,” Ezekiel said. “Forces is on the move.”

Rhett made a high-pitched little sound in his sleep, almost a whimper.

“What forces?” Roy said, lowering his voice still more.

Ezekiel glanced down at Rhett, spoke softly too. “In the mountain. Who’s more in touch with the forces in the mountain than me, smokin’ it every day in my own lungs, tastin’ it on my own tongue?”

“I don’t understand.”

“About me tastin’ the mountain?”

“I get that part.”

“You do?”

“I don’t understand what you want to talk about.”

“Your name and my name,” said Ezekiel. “Roy and Zeke. Must be the starting place.”

“Zeke?”

“To all my friends. An’ I got lots of friends, Roy, what with my hobby and such.”

Ezekiel took Roy by the arm, led him out the back of the Mountain House. Roy didn’t want to leave Rhett, and Ezekiel’s grip was light, easily resistible, but Roy didn’t resist. They stepped between the sagging slats of the slave quarters, went inside.

“Make yourself at home,” Ezekiel said, sitting on the floor. Roy sat too. Ezekiel lit a candle, twisted it into the hard-packed earth. The candle illuminated a box lying next to it, a casket, leather-bound and shaped like Roy’s inherited chest, but tiny, almost pocket-size.

“Roy Hill and Zeke Hill,” said Zeke, “if you see the direction ahead.”

“What’s in the box?” Roy said.

“Family ashes, brother,” Ezekiel said.

“Are you stoned?”

“Needless to ask. Care to partake of a small sample, on the house?”

“No.”

“I’ll join you in that,” said Ezekiel. “Partakin’ of nothin’.” He glanced down at the casket. “Roy and Zeke. Know where we’s sittin’, this very moment in time?”

“The old slave quarters.”

Ezekiel nodded. “Slave quarter to the Mountain House, where the ol’ massah-you know that word, massah? — like to come on up Sundays, spend some social time, accordin’ to the oral traditions. With me so far, or you gonna object to oral traditions bein’ history?”

“I’m not,” Roy said.

“Then how about if I told you these family ashes was the earthly remains of my great-great-grandfather Roy Singleton Hill?”

“I’d say you’re full of shit.”

Ezekiel didn’t seem to hear that. “Roy Singleton Hill, Confederate hero, best of the good ol’ boys,” he said. “His earthly remains passed on down in my family-my side of the family-from one generation to the next.”

“Maybe you passed on the box,” Roy said. “But what makes you think his ashes are inside?”

“Oral traditions,” Ezekiel said. “What you already agreed was history. Got to pay more attention, Roy. Forces is on the move.”

“I’m not saying there’s no ashes,” Roy said. “Just that they’re not his.”

Ezekiel shook his head. “You people in denial,” he said.

“What people is that?”

“The kind of people that denies.” Ezekiel extended his bare arm toward Roy, inches above the candle flame. “You see this?”

“The heart with the arrow?”

“Not the tattoo, man. I’m talkin’ about the color of my skin.”

“What about it?”

“How would you-what’s the word we needin’ here? describe-describe my skin?”

“Describe it?” said Roy. “Human skin.”

Ezekiel’s eyes met his. “You a good man,” he said. “You jus’ be careful now not to let the goodness get in the way of seein’ right.”

“You’re losing me.”

“Last thing I want,” said Ezekiel. “What I’m tryin’ to get across-does this look to you in your eyes like black skin?”

“Well,” said Roy, “you’re black.”

“I’m black, but this ain’t the color black. Ever go to kindergarten, Roy? Ever be mixin’ up the paints? How would you come to a color like this, startin’ with pure Dahomey black?”

Roy thought of Mrs. Hardaway tracing his schoolboy drawing with her coffee-bean-colored finger, polished red at the end, didn’t answer.

Ezekiel shook his head. “You in bad denial, man. Mix in the white-any kindergarten kid tell you that.”

“I’m not denying it,” Roy said. “I’m saying his ashes aren’t in there.”

“That’s the arrogance part goes hand in hand with the denial.”

“If I showed you where he was buried,” Roy said, “would that be arrogant too?”

A quiet night in the cemetery, the mountain rising dark on one side, the silhouette of the cross over the chapel on the other. Ezekiel drove his pickup along the cart path the hearses used, past all the gravestones, growing smaller and more worn, to the woods at the foot of the mountain.

“Stop,” Roy said.

Ezekiel stopped. His headlights shone on the stone:

Roy Singleton Hill

1831–1865

Hero

Ezekiel went still.

“You’ve never seen this?” Roy said.

“How would I ever be doin’ that? We in the white graveyard, man.”

They got out of the pickup, walked to the stone. Ezekiel knelt, ran his fingertips over the sunken lettering.