Peter Abrahams: Last of the Dixie Heroes

Roy thought he heard his son crying in the night. He got up, went down the hall, opened Rhett’s door, smelled the emptiness inside.

And woke up. Must have been asleep until that moment. How else to explain it? Roy didn’t turn on the light.

Must have been sleepwalking, or something close to it, and dreaming uneasy dreams, because first, Rhett had never done much crying in the night, not even as a baby, and now he was eleven years old; and second, his empty bedroom had been empty for more than six months-Roy could probably have calculated the exact duration if he’d had a mind to. No need to turn on the light, no need to see last year’s posters left behind, outgrown clothes in the closet, how neat everything was. No one had switched off the air conditioner in the window. Cold air followed Roy back to his room.

Roy awoke for good a few hours later, alone in a bed meant for two. There’d been a time in his life, back when he himself was a boy and even after, when he’d awakened every morning with a bubble of happiness in his chest, when he’d actually jumped out of bed. He could remember that feeling; not bring it back, just remember.

Roy found an inch of coffee in the pot, left over from the day before, or maybe the day before that. Heated it up, drank it down. Alone in a bed made for two: a weepy kind of line that could have come straight from a country song, and not even a good one. Roy’s mother had loved country, he’d practically been raised on country, but Roy didn’t like it anymore. The truth was he’d begun listening to gospel when no one was around, a bit funny maybe, since he didn’t believe in God.

Six months, two weeks, seven hours. It was easy to calculate, because Marcia had walked out late on a Sunday night.

“What’s the meaning of this?” said Roy, climbing into the passenger seat of Gordo’s Altima. They took turns driving each other to work.

“Meaning of what, good buddy?”

Roy’s beeper went off; then Gordo’s. They checked the numbers.

“Do Mondays suck enough?” said Gordo. 6:09-not light, not dark, not warm, not cold. They pulled away from Roy’s house, drove a few quick blocks, hit traffic.

“The stuff in the back,” Roy said.

“Oh, that,” said Gordo; but he didn’t go on.

“Funny look on your face,” Roy said.

“Just the teensiest bit hungover.”

“Besides that,” Roy said. Gordo was the teensiest bit hungover most Monday mornings. “Kind of sheepish,” Roy said.

“Sheepish?”

Roy twisted around, had a good look in back.

What Roy saw: a strange-colored jacket, not yellow, not brown, something in between, with wood buttons; heavy gray wool trousers with yellow suspenders; a funny little cap, like the cops wore in those Inspector Clouseau movies Rhett liked, but gray; a belt with a big metal buckle and a black pouch hanging off it; and a long rifle with one of those tamping-down things at the end, Roy couldn’t think of the name. With some difficulty-it was much heavier than he’d expected and too long for the car-he wrestled the rifle into the front seat. A kid stared down from the back of a Range Rover. The kid’s lips moved. Her mother, talking on a cell phone at the wheel, turned to look down too. The light changed to green and the Range Rover turned up Peachtree; Gordo continued straight ahead.

“It’s just a reproduction,” Gordo said. “You have no idea what the real ones go for.”

“The real what?” said Roy.

“Enfield muskets. That’s an exact reproduction of the 1853 fifty-eight caliber. Made in London, Roy. London, England.”

“It was?”

“The originals,” Gordo said. “This is from Italy.”

Roy sniffed the muzzle. “Is it loaded?”

“Course not. We don’t fire bullets anyway. Just black powder cartridges.”

“Who’s we?”

Gordo glanced at him, still sheepish, but smiling now. “Seventh Tennessee Cavalry.”

Roy didn’t get it.

“CSA.”

“CSA?”

“For Christ sake, Roy-the Confederacy.”

Roy looked at Gordo: sheepish, hungover, sleepless. Despite all that, he seemed pretty cheerful, which wasn’t like Gordo on the morning commute. Cheerful, and unaware of the blood seeping from a shaving cut on his neck, forming a tiny bubble that would soon overflow and stain the white collar of his shirt.

Gordo took the northbound 75/85 ramp, nosed his way into the mass of cars, all poised to move but none moving, like grains of sand in the upper half of a blocked hourglass. Roy checked his watch. It was going to be close. It was always close. The sky was getting lighter, light enough to see there wasn’t a cloud in it. Not a cloud in the sky, but it wasn’t blue, more like the color of brass, one of those red brass alloys with a high copper content. Roy felt that tightness in his chest and throat, realized he wasn’t getting enough air. Headlights blinked out, first two by two, then by the hundreds, thousands. But no one moved. This was the moment Gordo would say Monday sucked again, or work sucked, or life sucked; but he didn’t.

“Ever been up to Kennesaw, Roy?”

“Sure. With you-that charity golf thing. It was only last-”

“I mean the battlefield.”

Roy thought, Was there a high school trip? He had a clear memory of Mrs. Sangster, the history teacher, asleep on the bus, head back, mouth open, bad teeth; and a vague memory of headstones. Roy himself had good teeth. He brushed twice a day and flossed once. That had been one of his mother’s rules: Don’t you go ruinin’ that smile on me now. “Maybe,” Roy told Gordo.

“They had a reenactment up there this weekend,” Gordo said.

“Reenactment of what?” Roy’s mind had wandered: the thought of high school had brought Rhett to mind, Rhett who’d be getting ready for school at that moment. Roy could picture him getting dressed-it still took him a while to tie the laces of his sneakers, and there’d be that little shock of hair standing up at the back of his head no matter what he did.

“Not the real battle,” Gordo said. “There weren’t any Union men, not this time of year. It was more like educational-drilling, firing the artillery, that kind of thing. Anyway, it being Sunday, with Brenda’s ma in town-”

“Meaning church,” Roy said.

“Right. So I kind of drove myself on up to Kennesaw. And before you’d know it-boom.”

“Boom what?”

“I’m enlisted.”

“Enlisted?”

“In the Seventh Tennessee. You’re not listening, Roy.”

“It’s real?”

“The Seventh Tennessee? Fought at Chickamauga-what’s realer than that?”

“I meant now.”

“Course we’re not at 1863 strength, nowhere near, but everything’s as close to the same as it can be. Check out that shell jacket-identical down to the thread count. Just there’s no bullets and no horses, excepting the colonel’s.”

“And they gave you all this stuff?”

“Gave? You have to buy it off the sutler.”

“What’s that?”

“Like a store, but in a tent.”

“How much?”

“Eleven hundred.”

“Dollars?”

“Plus tax.”

“You were carrying that kind of cash?”

“Don’t be dumb, Roy. They take Visa.”

“The official card of the Civil War?” Roy said; wouldn’t ordinarily have said that aloud, but he wasn’t dumb.

Gordo looked at him from the corner of his eye, then laughed. “I’ll have to pass that on.”

“To who?”

“The boys in the unit. They’ve got a good sense of humor about all this.”

“Does Brenda?”

“She doesn’t exactly know yet.”

Gordo didn’t look quite so cheerful anymore. Roy knew Gordo couldn’t afford that kind of money for funny-looking clothes and a reproduction musket. No more than he could. They worked the same job, made the same money: $42,975 a year. Roy tried to figure in his head what percentage 1,100 was of 42,975. That kind of thing didn’t come naturally to him, but it was good practice. He’d noticed that people who got promoted at work always had a head for figures. Traffic started moving. Gordo picked that moment to honk in frustration, so it must have been at Brenda, or something like that. Roy came up with a figure around four percent, but that didn’t seem right.