Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

“What are you doing, Marcia?”

“What I want,” she said, her fingers trailing down under his shirt collar. “What you want too, I hope.”

He turned and stood up, breaking contact. “I don’t understand,” he said.

She raised her hand, as though she were about to lay it on his chest, but didn’t. “You took over today.”

“I’m his father.” Roy would have stepped back, but the table was there.

“He’s a lucky boy.” Marcia’s hand came down on his chest, her fingertips twisting around a button.

What was going on? Roy looked in her eyes, learned nothing. All he knew was that she’d met Barry at a conference seven months ago, left Roy a few weeks later, and their divorce had come through last week. She’d always been decisive, long as he’d known her.

Marcia tilted up her face. “Give me a kiss, Roy.”

“Why?” Roy said.

She paused. “Why?” she said. “Don’t you want to?”

“But what’s it for?” Roy said.

Marcia wrinkled her forehead in a way that was new, made him wonder if confusing things were happening in her life, made him feel a little sorry for her. “What’s a kiss for?” she said. “Is that what you’re asking?”

“What’s this kiss for?” Roy said.

She stepped back. “You don’t like me much anymore, do you?”

“It’s not that,” Roy said. “But what about Barry?” And a hundred other things, but that one came first.

“Do we have to talk about him?” Marcia said.

Roy didn’t understand. In this very room, at almost the same time of night, she’d said: I never dreamed I could feel this way about a person. Meaning about Barry: that was the night Roy had first heard of him.

“We do,” Roy said.

Marcia’s eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t a crier. “No one can ever make a mistake in your world, is that it?”

A mistake? Had it all been a mistake? “What kind of mistake?”

“Oh, Roy, don’t badger me. I’m so tired I can’t hardly think right now.”

“Does this mean you and Barry aren’t getting-”

Marcia started crying, just as he was thinking, She doesn’t look tired, she looks great. But then she didn’t look great anymore, with the tears, and her face all blotchy.

“I deserve this, you not caring anymore,” she said, or something like that, it was hard to distinguish the words.

Roy’s arms came up. His hands opened. They curled around her upper arms. He pulled her in.

Marcia cried against Roy’s chest. Maybe it would have been all right if they’d left it at that, but one thing led to another.

Something buzzed in the night. Roy woke, turned on the light. Marcia was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to him, bent over, fumbling through clothes on the floor. She straightened, put her cell phone to her ear. The buzzing stopped.

“Hello?” she said.

She listened. “I don’t know any Grant-” she began, stopped. “Oh, I didn’t recognize you without the doctor part. Why, yes, thank you, I’m fine.” She listened some more, said, “Same to you,” clicked off.

Marcia turned to Roy. For a moment her eyes didn’t appear to be seeing him at all; then they did, although the look in them seemed a little funny, maybe too thoughtful for the middle of the night.

“Barry?” Roy said.

“Don’t be silly, Roy. That was the doctor.”

“What doctor?”

“Why, Dr. Nordman, the lip doctor. Doing his post-op check.”

“Isn’t it a bit late?”

“He just got out of surgery.”

They looked at each other. He waited for the return of the expression he’d seen in her eyes before they fell asleep, a look not unlike the one she’d had on that trip down Crystal Creek. It didn’t come back.

“Who’s Grant?” he said.

“Dr. Nordman’s Christian name. That’s why I didn’t recognize him at first.”

She picked up her bra, slipped a strap over her shoulder, shrugged one of her breasts-he’d be able to picture them now-inside.

“You going?” Roy said.

She turned, smiled. “Can’t very well stay all night, now can I?” She laughed. “Isn’t this the craziest thing?”

“How do you mean?”

“Like an affair, or something.” Shrug, and her other breast disappeared from view.

“What happens next?” Roy said.

She leaned forward, patted his arm. He could smell her; she smelled good. “We go from here,” she said.

“How, exactly?”

“We’ll think of something.” She kissed him on the mouth, but quick, and turned off the light on her way out.

Roy thought he heard Rhett crying in the night. He got up, went down the hall, looked in Rhett’s room. Rhett was in his bed, crying in the night. Roy lay down beside him.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. He felt hope inside him, a good feeling, almost like happiness.

The crying stopped soon after.

Peter Abrahams

Last of the Dixie Heroes

Rhett’s eye looked a little better when Roy woke him in the morning, a lighter shade of purple and not so swollen.

”Not going to school,” he said.

“Got to,” Roy said.

“Why?”

“You’re eleven. Going to school’s what you do on school days.”

“That’s the reason?”

“Yeah. What else are you going to do?”

“Hang out.”

“And go back to school when?”

Rhett shrugged, one shoulder slipping out of the neck of his T-shirt, those knuckle-shaped bones on top almost sticking through his skin.

“Got to go to school,” Roy said.

“You’re an inflexible jerk,” Rhett said. “Like Barry.”

Inflexible was a favorite of Marcia’s. Roy probably should have been angry; he even wondered a bit why he was not. “Maybe a jerk,” he said. “But not like Barry.”

Rhett gave him a long look, then sat up and started getting out of bed.

In the car on the way to school, Rhett said: “How tall are you?”

Roy told him.

“What do you weigh?”

“Haven’t weighed myself lately.”

“How many push-ups can you do?”

“Not many.”

“Like what?”

“Twenty, maybe.” That seemed reasonable-in his football days, high school and that one year in Athens, he’d been able to do a hundred, winning free beers sometimes at parties. The air supply problems came later.

“That’s all? Cody can do thirty-one.”

And you? Roy thought. That’s what counts. He didn’t say it. Rhett was making his tight little fists again.

“I’ve got something for you,” Roy said, reaching into his pocket. “Something you can show the kids.” He handed Rhett the oxidized lead bullet.

“What’s this?”

“A real bullet from the battle of Kennesaw Mountain.”

Rhett gazed without much interest at the bullet resting on his palm. “It doesn’t look like a bullet.”

“It’s old,” Roy said. “You know about the battle of Kennesaw Mountain?”

“No.”

Roy tried to recall the details of the battle and failed. “They haven’t got to the Civil War yet?” he said.

“Mrs. Pullian calls it the War Between the States. That’s what she says-’the War Between the States, or as some folks like to say, the Civil War.’ “

Roy remembered he’d had one or two teachers like that too. “You like history?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Is it one of your favorites?”

“Favorite what?”

“Subjects.”

“What are the subjects?” Rhett said.

“Like math, science, reading.”

“I hate all the subjects,” Rhett said, as Roy pulled up to the school.

“But your last report wasn’t too bad.”

“So what? They give you a break for self-esteem. I suck at school.”