tiny flame burned in the rearview mirror. Later there were distant sirens. Roy didn’t have to listen to them or any other bothersome sounds. “Milky White Way” still worked fine in the car.
TWENTY-FIVE
Roy came up through the high meadow, the Sharps carbine with death on the stock over one shoulder, word carved there by Roy Singleton Hill, and thus part of his inheritance, although the exact message was still unclear. Roy also wore the mule collar with everything he needed rolled up inside. From a long way off, but very clearly, his eyes working the way they worked when sighting through the V, he saw something new. Red background, blue bars, white stars: the flag now flew above the apple trees around the Mountain House.
Wasn’t a flag a signal, a code? This flag spoke to him and he understood every syllable: Unconquered, unoccupied, waiting. The sight of it fluttering in the breeze puffed Roy up inside his uniform. He felt strong, stronger than on his strongest day and much stronger than normal men, his lungs powerful, bathing every cell in his body with oxygen, clean and pure. He breathed that unspoiled air, felt the lovely wildflowers brush against his legs. Tennessee wildflowers: no need to pick these flowers, to take possession of them-weren’t they already his in every way that counted? He’d been born not far from here, had owned this land, this very corner of Tennessee, now lost; lost in a narrow sense because of Bragg’s failure to pursue after Chickamauga, lost in a broader sense because of broader things he probably wasn’t smart enough to understand. Lost, no doubt about that, but here he was anyway, still in uniform, still armed, still marching toward that flag, that flag still flying.
Three tents now stood on the flat ground between the Mountain House and the slave quarters. Over to one side, at the edge of the plateau where the downward slope resumed, Lee and Jesse were digging a trench, Jesse with his shirt off, that silver Star of David glistening on his chest, Lee buttoned up to the neck. They both looked up, both gazed at Roy. Lee gave him a nod, maybe even more distant than it had to be, went back to digging. Roy heard her little grunt- his little grunt, he corrected himself. It would have to be that way in camp, must have been that way then if no one knew until it came time for the dead and wounded. Jesse jumped out of the trench, hurried over, shook hands.
“I want to thank you, Roy.”
“What for?”
“Offering your place like this. We’re digging the latrines down there, right where the original ones must have been, judging by how thick the vegetation grows. Hope that’s all right.”
Roy took a quick glance at his hand, slightly soiled from the handshake. “It’s not really my place,” he said.
“Yours and Sonny’s,” Jesse said.
“Sonny’s here?”
“Gone down for a few things. He’ll be back soon.”
Roy glanced at the meadow. The wildflowers all bent suddenly in the same direction, blown by a gust that didn’t reach the plateau. “What kind of things?” Roy said.
“Sonny didn’t specify,” Jesse said. “He’s going to be a big help, your cousin.”
“At what?”
“All the things we can do now, Roy. We’re taking this to a whole new level and you’re a big part of it.”
“It’s not my land,” Roy said. “Not Sonny’s neither.” Did he say that: Not Sonny’s neither? Couldn’t have, wasn’t the way he talked. Did he even know anyone who talked like that?
“As far as I’m concerned,” Jesse was saying, “personally and as the ranking officer of this subgroup, it is your land.”
Roy looked up at the mountaintop, rising behind the slave quarters. He didn’t argue, didn’t say anything. He didn’t know how it would come out, him or this other voice.
“We’ve got the men,” Jesse said, rubbing his hands together in a way that reminded Roy of primitive people starting fires. “We’ve got the site. All we need now is a name.”
“A name?”
“Can’t call ourselves a subgroup,” Jesse said. “They didn’t talk like that.”
“How about the Irregulars?” Roy said.
“They talked like that.”
The name: Irregulars.
The site: Mountain House.
The soldiers (no civilians allowed in a hard-core camp): Jesse, lieutenant in command. Sergeant Dibrell, ranking noncommissioned officer. Lee, the corporal. And three privates, Roy, Sonny, and Gordo; Gordo with the chance to try it for the long weekend, Brenda helping with the new baby at her sister’s. Gordo mentioning weekend was how Roy found out what day it was.
Latrines dug, supplies stored under a shelter they’d built in a corner of the Mountain House, the Irregulars sat outside in the shade of a tree now past blooming, all but Sonny, still absent with leave. They drank the creek water from their canteens and gnawed on Slim Jims, which substituted for beef jerky.
“These are disgusting,” said Gordo. “I’ll be farting all night.”
“An authentic touch,” said Lee.
Gordo, looking right at Lee, let loose a big fart. Lee’s face reddened, but so slightly you had to be watching closely to see it. Roy was, and wanted to smack Gordo. He liked Gordo, they were friends, but Gordo wasn’t going to make it. Funny thought: make it through what?
“Food was bad,” Jesse was saying. “We don’t complain. What I thought we’d try, after it cools down some, is an assault on a higher position. If you’ve done any reading, you know they avoided these if possible, both sides. But assaults on higher positions happened-Little Roundtop being an obvious example, Lookout Mountain another. The commanders usually sent the men up with arms at right shoulder shift, ball loaded but musket uncapped. Any idea why?” Jesse looked around. Roy realized he could listen to Jesse talk all day. He had a thought, maybe not nice: If we’d had more Jews we’d have won.
“You a teacher, Jesse?” Gordo said.
“I’m a lieutenant in the CSA,” Jesse said. “And your membership here is probationary.”
“Hell,” said Gordo, “I’m a founding member of the Irregulars. Tell him, Roy.”
Roy said nothing. Joking around was for winners, not losers. Losers had to fight back and that was all. Not only that but it was the duty of the not-so-smart ones to listen to what the smart ones had to say. The odd thing was, even though he was one of the not-so-smart ones, he had the answer to Jesse’s question. Roy’s answer was based on a mental image, the kind of mental image he usually called a memory, impossible in this case, because what memories could he have of assaulting higher positions? In this nonmemory, he was toiling up a slope with hundreds of other men. Must have been imagining it, of course, although Roy knew he didn’t have much of an imagination, had never imagined any scene at all, and this one was so clear.
“Too slow,” he said.
“What’s that, Roy?” said Jesse.
They were all watching him. Roy didn’t like it-he’d never been the type to raise his hand in class. “Can’t stop to shoot,” he said.
“Why not?” Jesse said.
The answer was obvious to Roy, down on that slope with hundreds of other men. What could be more obvious than bullets buzzing by like bees, and how hands shake and fingers fumble trying to reload. “No time,” he said, hearing his voice change a little, slowing, broadening into that voice of someone else, not too different from his own. “They’re firing down and you’re firing up. Got to get there first.”
Jesse nodded. “Pretty much it,” he said. “Firing uphill you’re more likely to hit your own men in the back than anything else. Better to keep moving quick, fight on even terms.” He looked around again. “Any questions?”
Roy had the only one. “Why are we waiting till it cools down?”
They started up the mountain on a little ribbon of packed earth that led from the back of the slave quarters and soon disappeared in thickening undergrowth. Jesse went first, hacking with the blunt edges of his bayonet, Lee right behind him, then Gordo, Roy, and Dibrell last. The climb steepened almost right away, sometimes forcing
