Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

“How? Watertight’s in the specs. I double-checked.”

“Over there they say it wasn’t. Some scene went down-rain clouds rolling in, train off on a siding, coolies, tarps, the first drops coming out of the sky-you get the picture.”

Roy got the picture. It took away his air supply, tinged everything yellow, like he was going to faint. He watched his yellow fingers, as though from far away, tapping on the keys. The ammonium nitrate order popped up on the screen, the letters all yellow. He didn’t get it: there it was, beyond doubt, the water-reactive codes in place. Roy read the order three times before he glanced up at the dateline and caught the mistake: BEI. BEI was Beijing. The nitrate was sent from Shanghai-SHA-but his order had gone to Beijing. A mistake, big, undeniable, unaccountable. How had they even cleared the shipment, gotten it on the train? Just don’t tell me it’s a big bang somewhere. Roy dug out the inhaler, squeezed a shot down his throat. In front of Gordo: but he had to. Promotion? Forget the job he had now.

“But hey,” said Gordo. “He didn’t get wind of it, not to worry. It’s all taken care of.”

“All taken care of?”

“I’m a pro, Roy. Who taught you the goddamn ropes? And that K. C. Chen guy, subagent in Shanghai? No problems there. He’s not even upset. Turns out he’s even got a sense of humor. I emailed him that parrot joke.”

“What parrot joke?”

“The one about the Viagra Olympics.”

“K. C. Chen’s a woman,” Roy said, starting to feel better.

“A woman, huh?” said Gordo: drinks after work at Sportz. “She emailed me back one of those sideways smiley faces.”

“I hate all that Internet shit,” said P.J., going to the can.

Roy ordered another round, paid the waitress.

“Wasn’t that my turn?” Gordo said.

“Not today.”

“Hey,” said Gordo. “You’d of done the same for me.”

Roy clinked glasses, his beer against Gordo’s JD on the rocks. “I owe you.”

“No owing,” Gordo said, downing half his drink. “I’m having a pretty good week, is all.”

“How’s that?” said Roy.

“First of all, I save your ass. Second-just between us-I think something good’s about to happen careerwise. Can’t tell you how I know, so don’t ask. Third, Brenda’s not so ticked off about the regiment anymore. Fact is, she’s spending Saturday night in camp.”

“Camp?” said P.J., sitting back down beside Roy. The air in the bench cushion went hissing out.

“With the regiment,” Gordo said.

“They have women?” said P.J.

“Civilian reenactors. A whole ’nother thing. The women wear long skirts and bonnets, cook over wood fire pits. But it’s authentic-they had wives in the camps, especially at the start of the war.”

“Brenda’s going to wear a bonnet and cook over a wood fire pit?” P.J. said.

Gordo leaned forward. “One of the guys-an old guy, been married thirty years-told me things get pretty hot in those tents. Like some kind of transformation takes place.”

“Any single women?” P.J. said.

“Come and see.” Gordo looked at Roy. “The both of you.”

“My great-great-great-can’t remember how many greats-grandfather fought at Chattanooga,” P.J. said.

“So did mine,” said Roy.

Gordo paused, drink halfway to his lips. “You never told me that.”

Roy shrugged.

“What was his name?”

“Same as mine,” Roy said. “Roy Singleton Hill.”

“Singleton?” said P.J. “What the hell is that?”

“I don’t know,” said Roy.

“But you’re named after him,” Gordo said.

“My old man was too,” Roy said. “It’s just kind of a family-”

“Tradition,” Gordo said.

“Yeah.” He’d been about to say thing.

Roy drank four beers, more than he’d had at one sitting in years. He felt pretty good on the way home: Seventy-two seven. Before bonuses. That crazy emerald idea took hold again, and half an hour later he was in Phipps Plaza, the kind of place he never went, gazing through a jewelry store window. Then he was inside. Then someone was saying, “These are really quite special,” and Roy was examining a necklace that didn’t even look like emeralds.

“Tumbled emeralds, sir, unfaceted, graduated, really rather special. I assume this is a gift.”

“Yes.”

“For someone who appreciates quality, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“And would take pleasure in wearing something that I might say is a cut or two above?”

“Yes.”

Roy put down a deposit-$2,000-maxing out his credit cards. The remaining $6,000 he could cover by topping out the home equity loan in the morning. What did it matter now? Seventy-two seven, plus bonuses.

He went home happy. No one there, of course, too quiet, too lonely, but tonight it didn’t bother him. He was on his way down to the cellar to work on Rhett’s shelves when the phone rang.

Gordo. “You didn’t tell me he was some kind of hero.”

“Who?”

“Roy Singleton Hill.”

“I don’t know much about him.”

“The colonel does.”

“What colonel?”

“My colonel. In the regiment. He wants to meet you, Roy. He’s invited you up for the weekend.”

“Up where?”

“We’ve got the Girl Scout camp, out seventy-eight.”

“Saturday’s my day with Rhett.”

“Sunday, then.”

Roy thought about that goddamn ammonium nitrate. The goddamn ammonium nitrate and the job Gordo believed was his. How could he say no?

Ma said things like Don’t you go ruinin’ that smile on me now and Don’t you be gettin’ ahead of yourself and Will you look at that sky, Roy-blue as your eyes and not a cloud in it! When Roy was three or four, after her marriage broke up, the two of them had come down from Tennessee, staying first with a cousin or acquaintance of some kind-Roy had almost no memories of this period-and then in places of their own. Neither did Roy remember all the jobs his mother had worked-in a Hardee’s kitchen, then a bakery in Five Points, a flower shop, receptionist in a doctor’s office, assistant manager of another flower shop, a few other things, then back at reception for Dr. Moore again, a good thing because he looked after her care personally when she got sick. First they’d thought it was one thing, then another; it had ended up being a combination.

Roy had expected to bury her back in Tennessee, but in her will she specified Atlanta, didn’t matter what cemetery long as it was Atlanta. She lay under a small white stone in the Oakland cemetery, about fifteen minutes from Roy’s house. He’d visited once or twice the first few years, but whatever calming spiritual thing that was supposed to happen hadn’t happened for him. Saturday, driving north to Buckhead to pick up Rhett, he’d thought of paying another visit. Seventy-two seven. To tell her that-not for his pleasure, for hers. He’d say, Before bonuses, Ma, and she’d start laughing and repeat it a few times, stressing the different syllables in bonuses. Bonuses, Roy. Like it was the most outlandish concept in the world. And the look on her face. Roy actually tried to imagine it. He was able to visualize several different looks: on the breathing machine at the end, scared eyes trying to tell him something, but what?; home after spending all day on her feet at one of the flower shops, sitting on her velveteen couch, trying to keep her eyes open; and years and years earlier, picking up the phone to hear his father on the other end, the only time Roy remembered him calling, and how all sorts of strange lines appeared in her forehead, lines he didn’t see again until a few months before the end. Roy could picture all those looks on her face, but how would she have looked when he told her seventy-two seven before bonuses? That he couldn’t see at all.