Last of the Dixie Heroes (21 page)

“Not so’s I know,” said Tyla. “You never mentioned him is all. I can see you’re cousins with my own eyes.”

“You can?” said Sonny.

“Which one’s better looking, Ton?” said Tyla.

“They’re both pretty good-lookin’,” said Tonya. “But we all know Sonny Junior, and this one’s”—she patted Roy’s knee—“an unknown quantity.”

Tyla laughed, spraying just a little beer. “Unknown quantity—no such animal in a man.”

Tonya kept her hand on Roy’s knee, under the table; gave him a little squeeze, in fact. This was not the first knee she’d squeezed: there was something expert in her touch, sending a message that she already knew more than he did about his every bodily urge. He considered moving his knee away, but did nothing. “Got any tattoos on you, Roy?” she said.

“No.”

“I do.”

“If you say so.”

“If I say so? You blind or somethin’? Can’t you see this?” She thrust her breast at him.

“I can just make it out,” Roy said.

“And that’s only the half of it,” said Tonya.

“Give him a peek at the rest,” said Tyla.

“Want a peek, Roy?” said Tonya.

“Don’t go to a lot of trouble on my . . .”

Tonya, one hand on Roy’s knee, leaned toward him. He felt her weight. At that moment he thought of the emeralds, green like her tattoo, and everything started to go sour. But then her breasts rose up out of the halter top, and a little scene of a man and a woman—possibly two women—began to take shape. “Can you see right down to the bottom, Roy?” said Tonya, leaning forward more, her hand sliding up Roy’s thigh to support herself, her breast just inches from his nose. “That’s the best part.”

“It is,” he said, and heard the thickness in his voice. He foresaw a night with Old Grand-Dad and this woman’s flesh and no need to think a moment past that; a wild night with a stranger, the kind of night he’d never actually had, except maybe that once camping on Crystal Creek, and that was not a stranger but his wife-to-be.

“Don’t be shy,” said Tonya. “It’s art. Feast your eyes.”

Roy probably would have, suddenly seeing a night like this, or maybe many of them, as a way to get past the emeralds, past Marcia, past everything once and for all, to fuck his brains out, an expression he now understood, but at that moment the door opened and in walked Lee. Lee saw Roy right away, took in everything, went still.

TWENTY-TWO

”Does this look like a gay bar?” said Sonny Junior, not loud, but it didn’t have to be loud for everyone to hear in a little place like that.

“Easy, Sonny,” Roy said. His voice didn’t sound quite right. There was a strange undertone, almost a buzz, the threatening kind. Roy didn’t think: Must be the booze doing that; or stress; or booze on top of stress. It was much deeper than that: The gene is in me.

The room was quiet, the men at the bar watching. Tyla’s and Tonya’s eyes were open wide in alarm; their eyelashes were coated thick with makeup, their eyebrows plucked almost all away. Sonny Junior said, “Anything you say, cuz.”

Roy rose and went over to Lee.

“I’m interrupting something,” Lee said.

“Probably a good thing,” said Roy.

“I saw your car outside,” Lee said.

“Just passing by?”

Lee reddened. “I called your place again, heard the message on the machine, and came up here.”

“So it must be important,” Roy said, “whatever’s on your mind.”

“I wanted to thank you, that’s all.”

“For what?”

“The other night.”

“Comrades in arms,” Roy said. “No thanks necessary.” He glanced around, saw everyone watching. “Come meet my cousin.”

Roy took Lee over to the table, got an extra glass, introduced everybody. Lee nodded to the women, shook hands with Sonny. Sonny didn’t squeeze hard, Roy was watching, but all he saw was orange Cheetos powder spreading from Sonny’s fingers to Lee’s. Lee sat down between Roy and Tonya. Someone poured. Someone poured some more.

“Is that your bike outside?” said Tyla.

“Yes,” said Lee.

“Looks like a nice bike.”

“Thanks.”

“What kind is it?”

“Harley Sportster.”

“Oh yeah?” said Tonya, swinging around toward Lee. “Eight eighty-three or twelve hundred?”

“Twelve hundred.”

“Take me for a ride?” said Tonya.

“Sometime.”

“I like that name—Lee,” said Tonya. “Where you from?”

“Atlanta.”

“That how you know Roy?”

“We’re in the same regiment.”

“Regiment? Wouldn’ta taken you for military,” said Tonya.

“Civil War regiment,” Lee said.

“That sounds cool,” said Tonya. “Got any tattoos on you, Lee?”

“No.”

“I do.” She stuck her breast out at Lee.

Lee did something Roy wouldn’t have expected then, extending a finger, touching Tonya’s breast, tracing the beginning of the tattoo design, carefully, as though carrying out scientific fieldwork. Tonya’s mouth opened and stayed open, revealing crooked teeth with one or two gaps.

“Did it hurt?” Lee said, looking up at Tonya’s face.

Tonya licked her lips. “Did it hurt?” Another pitcher of beer appeared, and two fresh glasses of Old Grand-Dad. “No guy’s ever asked me that before. Nah, it didn’t hurt—I was so loaded I couldn’t feel a thing.” Tonya’s gaze rested on Lee’s face. “Know something? You’re the best-looking one of the bunch.”

“I second that emotion,” said Tyla, raising her glass, downing half of it.

“Isn’t he a mite scrawny for two big babes like you?” said Sonny.

“Scrawny?” said Tyla.

“Big difference between scrawny and lean,” said Tonya.

Sonny smiled at Lee across the table. “How tall are you, little buddy?”

“Five feet four inches,” said Lee.

“What do you weigh?”

“One hundred twenty-five pounds.”

“I’ve taken shits bigger’n that,” said Sonny.

It was quiet in the bar, and Lee spoke quietly. “That just makes you an especially big asshole.”

Sonny Junior went rigid: Roy could feel it, as though some powerful current had been switched on in the room. Then Sonny was up and on the move, brushing past Roy, keg chair topping backward. But not quite past Roy: Roy was up too, in his path. “Easy, Sonny,” Roy said.

Sonny grabbed Roy, lifted him right off the floor. “Three times now you’ve told me that,” Sonny said.

Roy looked in Sonny’s eyes—Sonny had pale eyes with red flecks in the blue—knew Sonny’d had him helpless like this once before, long ago in the barn. Eyes don’t change. As the memory stirred Roy went off, but inside, capped down tight; so tight that his voice sounded close to normal when he spoke: “I’ve got the gene too.”

“Huh?” said Sonny.

Roy drove his elbow down into Sonny’s shoulder, right where it meets the neck. Sonny made some bellowing noise, let him go. Then Tonya or Tyla spilled her beer, glass shattered, the bartender straightened behind the bar, a ball bat in his hands. Sonny tilted his head back a little, the angle somehow murderous. Did Roy look the same? He knew it was possible. What wasn’t, now?

Lee stepped between them.

“That’s enough.”

Roy and Sonny looked down at Lee. Sonny was the first to find it amusing. As he started to laugh, Lee put a hand on each of their chests and pushed them apart. Sonny took a few exaggerated steps backward.

“No offense, tough guy,” said Sonny.

“None taken,” said Lee.

“I just didn’t like the way you copped a feel of Tyla’s tit back then.”

“It was Tonya’s tit,” Lee said.

“I didn’t mind, Sonny, honest,” said Tonya.

“That’s not the way we cop a feel around these parts,” Sonny said.

Lee gazed up at him. “My apologies.”

“It was a nice way of copping a feel,” Tonya said. “Why doesn’t anybody understand me?”

Lee dropped a few bills on the table, took Roy by the arm, walked him outside.

The moon was up, not quite full. And two moons, again, which Roy had to work down to one and a half, and one.

“That’s the second time you’ve rescued me,” Lee said. “I’ve decided I don’t like it.”

“It won’t happen again,” Roy said; and knew at that moment that despite the copping of feels and the breaking up of fights, his eyes hadn’t deceived him at Chickamauga: no man would have said that.

“Did I mention we’ve got a little group inside the regiment?” Lee said. “More hard-core?”

“Something about it,” Roy said.

“Interested?”

“What’s it about?”

“Tacticals. Behind the lines kind of stuff. Basically live in 1863.”

“When the water was good,” Roy said.

Lee looked up at him. “Was it, Roy?”

“I can prove it,” Roy said.

Two cars with New Jersey plates turned into the lot as Roy and Lee pulled out.

Roy drove up to where the last dirt lane petered out, Lee following on the bike. Lee kicked down the stand, glanced inside the Altima, saw the uniform.

“Why not put that on, Roy?”

Roy nodded.

“Mine’s in the saddlebag,” Lee said.

A cloud shaped like a slender bird slid over the moon. They changed into their uniforms in darkness.

“Got your weapon?” Lee said.

“In the trunk.”

“Bring it.”

Roy heard a muffled clink, knew it was the sound of bullets, heavy bullets, dropping into Lee’s cartridge pouch. Then the moon came out and there was Lee, the most natural sight in the world, in full uniform with an Enfield muzzleloader like Gordo’s, much longer than Roy’s carbine, held over one shoulder in marching position, a mule collar supply roll over the other. Roy got the carbine out of the trunk and started up the mountain. Behind him, Lee moved so quietly Roy had to glance back in the moonlit patches—the sunny patches of daytime—to see if they were still together. They were every time.

The ridge appeared, a black bulge in the night that seemed to be falling slowly toward them. Roy heard water bubbling up above, the source of Crystal Creek, climbed toward it. The ridge stopped falling, now backed away, retreating with every step. This sudden elasticity of the physical world could have been unsettling, but wasn’t, might even have led to air supply problems, but didn’t. Roy kept going, almost as quickly as he had by day, breathing evenly. He listened for the sound of Lee breathing, heard nothing. They were good. This was the way to move behind enemy lines, to enter their camp by night, spike the guns, run off the horses, blow up the powder. He rounded the head of the ridge; the moonlight caught the water pouring from the rocks—the sound was frothing water but the sight was diamonds spraying from the earth.

They knelt by the stream and drank. Then something strange happened: without a word, and as one, they dipped their faces in the water. Pure, cold, savage water: it went right through Roy’s skin, into his blood, readied him for anything. He opened his eyes underwater, watched the diamonds flowing by. He turned his head and saw Lee’s eyes open too—silver ovals black at the core.

They climbed around the ridge, up through the sloping meadow, the moon bright enough to bring out colors now, the silver-green of the tall grass, gray-green of the flower stalks, charcoal-gray of the white petals, beet-red of the red ones. Only the distant trees remained black, and even they flashed silver in their crowns when a breeze passed by. Lee came up beside him. Roy smelled fresh sweat and hot wool, in no way unpleasant.

To the top of the meadow, into the apple trees on the plateau, and didn’t the moon, lower now, shine through that same rough stone rectangle that had once been a window, turning the complex spiderweb silver? The web trembled slightly, like a tiny trampoline under a tiny athlete. Roy heard Lee take a deep breath.

“The Mountain House of Roy Singleton Hill,” he said.

Lee went inside, looked around, then leaned the Enfield against the wall, took off the mule collar roll, laid it on the ground.

“Hungry?”

“A little.”

Lee reached in the roll, handed Roy a small, dense square.

“What’s this?”

“Hardtack.”

Roy bit into it. “Is it food?”

“You can live on it indefinitely.”

“I like your muffins better.”

They stood in the Mountain House, moonlight on the metal of their weapons and buckles, the spiderweb, Lee’s eyes. “The muffins aren’t authentic,” Lee said.

Lee bent down, spread the roll on the ground: a wool blanket with hardtack inside, a canteen, a candle, and a few smaller things Roy couldn’t identify.

“The blanket’s authentic,” Lee said, “but not as authentic as no blanket at all.”

Lee pushed the hardtack, the canteen, the candle, the other things to the side, lay down on the blanket, gazing up at Roy.

“We’re sleeping here?” Roy said.

“Got a better idea?”

Roy shook his head. “But I don’t have a blanket of my own.”

“That’s authentic too.”

Roy sat down on Lee’s blanket. He smelled wool, fresh sweat, and mint. The air was rich with mint. He filled his lungs with it, glanced over at Lee. Lee’s eyes were closed. Roy lay down on the far side of the blanket.

The moon sank below the treetops, and in a way that made no sense the air got colder, as though there was some kind of celestial confusion. Stars popped out all over the sky, more than Roy had ever seen, and not just white, but blue, red, yellow. This was reality, Roy realized, all those stars were present all the time, blazed away all the time, didn’t go anywhere. The daytime part was false.

Lying on his back, watching that distant reality, Roy cooled down from the climb. For a while he felt just right. But his sweat soaked into the wool uniform, kept him from drying off completely, and he started to shiver. Had Roy Singleton Hill shivered too, in this uniform, on this mountain, in 1863? Roy doubted only the shivering part.

“Is there a blanket for on top?” he said, not sure Lee was awake.

“Almost never happened,” Lee said, from closer than he thought. “They spooned on cold nights.”

“Spooned?” said Roy.

“Roll over,” Lee said.

Roy rolled on his side. From there he could see the spiderweb, no longer moonlit, just a faint pattern in the night, still trembling. He felt Lee slide in against him, adapting to his shape, front to back.

“Nothing more authentic than this,” Lee said, voice close to Roy’s ear. Roy shivered, maybe because of the cold, maybe because of the voice in his ear. He smelled Lee’s breath, the same minty smell of the night, shivered more.

“You’re cold,” Lee said.

Roy felt a hand, a small hand, touch his side, move around to his chest, press him gently. What he had to go on—that one female remark about not wanting to be rescued, plus the image he’d glimpsed after Sergeant Vandam’s tackle had popped the buttons of Lee’s jacket—didn’t seem very substantial at the moment. Remarks were open to interpretation and he’d never been better than average at that sort of thing, usually worse; and a nighttime image could be mistaken, or nothing more than wishful thinking.

Roy rolled back over. Lee was watching him, mouth slightly open, small even teeth lit by the stars. Roy slipped his hand under the high waistband of Lee’s pants, forced it down below, eliminated all doubt.

“Authentic,” Lee said.

Roy shifted his hand up, under Lee’s jacket.

“If it’s Tyla’s and Tonya’s tits that heated you up,” Lee said, “then these are going to be a disappointment.”

“You don’t know me,” Roy said.

He kissed her mouth. They moved together, half in, half out of their rough wool uniforms. Whatever he’d imagined happening with Tonya, or that real time with Marcia farther down Crystal Creek? They didn’t compare. The daytime part was false.