“Keep digging,” Roy said.
Ezekiel shook his head. “Gotta accept things the way they is, Roy.”
Roy stepped down into the hole, gripped the spade. Ezekiel didn’t let go right away. In that moment, Roy and Ezekiel holding on to the long wooden handle, the headlights shining on their two hands, yellowing them both-more than yellowing, really, almost gilding-Roy thought he noticed an odd similarity in their size and shape, Zeke’s hand and his. Zeke was staring at their hands too; he let go, climbed out of the hole.
Roy was prepared to dig all night, but he struck something on the very first plunge of the spade, something that gave with a soft splintering sound. Roy reached down in the darkness, felt through rotting wood that came apart like thick wet paper, touched a solid form, round and hard. He got a grip on it, sticking his fingers into two convenient holes like on a bowling ball, raised a human skull into the swirling light.
Ezekiel took a quick step back, almost fell. “What kind of trick you tryin’ to pull?” he said.
His gaze wasn’t on Roy when he asked that; it was on the skull. So was Roy’s. He took his fingers out of the eye sockets-that didn’t seem right-laid the skull on the piled earth beside the grave. Did any sign of a man’s character cling to his remains? Would even a saint’s skull seem anything less than threatening? Probably not; so the menace rising off this one-Roy could feel it-didn’t mean anything.
“Somebody else, maybe?” Ezekiel said.
“Like who?” Roy said.
Ezekiel thought that over. “Then what’s in my box, handed down from one generation to the next?”
“Your real great-great-grandfather,” Roy said.
Ezekiel was silent for a moment or two. “Truth is,” he said, “I never looked with my own eyes.”
“What are you saying?”
“I never opened the box.”
“Then how do you know there are ashes inside?”
“Oral traditions,” Ezekiel said.
“Why not open it now?”
“No key,” Ezekiel said. “Wouldn’t be right to break in with violence, would it?”
Roy didn’t say anything.
“You disagree about the violence part?” Ezekiel said.
But it wasn’t that. Roy walked back to Ezekiel’s truck. The little casket lay on the center console, Roy’s gun on the shelf behind the seats. He opened the filigreed patch box in the butt of the gun, took out the brass key. Much too big to fit in the keyhole of Ezekiel’s little casket, nothing to worry about on that score.
But the key did fit, fit perfectly, slid in like the box got opened every day. Roy glanced over at Ezekiel, still by the open grave, maybe working up the nerve to actually pick up the skull. Roy turned the key, felt the lock give, snapped open the lid.
No ashes, nothing in the box but a single brittle sheet of paper, the left edge torn and jagged. Roy recognized the writing on the page, stuffed it in his pocket, closed the box.
“What you got there?” said Ezekiel, suddenly beside the truck.
“Your box.” Roy handed it to Ezekiel.
“Any harm in breaking in with violence now?” Ezekiel said. “Yes or no?”
“No.”
Ezekiel put the box on the hood of the truck, struck the lid with the edge of his hand. It split apart, popped open. There was nothing inside.
Ezekiel stared into the box for a long time. He even picked it up, turned it upside down, shook it. Nothing fell out.
“I don’t get this kind of joke,” Ezekiel said. His eyes were damp, maybe on account of all the dust they’d raised.
They reburied the remains of Roy Singleton Hill and stood the gravestone back in its place, left everything just as they’d found it.
Roy Singleton Hill
1831–1865
Hero
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ezekiel knew an old logging trail up the back side of the mountain that would leave Roy with a shorter climb to the Mountain House. The old logging trail-just wide enough for the pickup, the forest scratching away at the paintwork like fingernails all the last part-ended in a small clearing. Ezekiel’s headlights swept past three cars already parked there, two with New Jersey plates, one from Connecticut.
“Tourists,” said Ezekiel, “come to hike up an’ down the beautiful state of Tennessee, keepin’ the economy strong.”
He offered Roy his hand; an arm-wrestling-style shake, exactly like Sonny Junior’s. That was one thing. Then their hands, Ezekiel’s and Roy’s, so similar-that was another. “Still a lot of mystery in my mind,” Ezekiel said, “but that could be sidewash from my hobby. You been straight up with me, Roy. Many thanks. You always got a friend on this here mountain.”
Roy felt Ezekiel’s headlights on his back as he walked across the clearing, up into the woods, trees closing around him. Ahead, his shadow-head, body, arms, legs, gun-got longer and longer, and finally glided off into darkness, Roy following. In darkness, in the woods at night and invisible: but Roy felt Ezekiel’s headlights on his back for a long, long time.
Roy climbed the back side of the mountain, as steep or steeper than the front, the trees as thick or thicker, but he knew the way, knew it without having to think or even pay much attention. He knew when he’d be having to go down on all fours to keep his feet from losing their grip, knew when he’d be coming to an open spot and seeing the stars, knew when the slope would level out and bring him into Ezekiel’s marijuana patch. He even knew that his owl was flying overhead, long before he heard the beating of its heavy wings, like carpet thumping, high above. It was only for the weekend, or a little longer. Everything was going to be all right. Apple trees grew on the mountain, fat brown fish swam in the creek, deer roamed the forest; there was hardtack, Slim Jims, the water itself, heavenly: a person-especially a strong person, and now he was that, stronger than he’d ever been, even stronger than he’d have been if everything in his life had been golden all the way-could live here forever.
The owl hooted. “Don’t have to do that,” Roy said. “I know you’re there.” It hooted again, louder, sounding a little displeased, even angry, maybe at not being included in Roy’s mental list of the mountain’s bounty. But of course the owl, descendant of the owls of 1863, was included. Roy looked up, tried to find its outline against the night sky. But even with his new hyperclear vision, he couldn’t, and besides, the night sky was gone all of a sudden and with it the stars and the Milky Way. Through the leaves above, still black, Roy saw that the sky was no color at all, just a faint canopy of untinted light, but growing more intense, as though someone was slowly turning up a dial. He listened for the owl, its beating wings, its call, and heard nothing.
Roy made his way through Ezekiel’s marijuana patch, took his first steps down the slope that led to the back of the plateau. “Milky White Way” started up in his head. He was happy, so happy, except for one nagging thing. What was it? The brittle page in his pocket, last page of the diary of Roy Singleton Hill. Enough light for reading now, no excuse not to; or he could just rip it up and scatter the shreds unread, without an excuse, to silence that nagging. Roy paused on the wooded hill over the plateau, his hand in his pocket, fingertips rubbing the old paper, feeling for some premonition. At that moment, while he was trying to come to a decision, something lying by the side of the trail, partially hidden by a tree root, caught his eye.
Roy went over, picked it up: a kepi, one of the common styles of Civil War soldier hats, the same style he wore, but with the silver horn on top denoting infantry. Otherwise the same in every way, except this one was blue.
Roy tried to get things straight in his mind: was there a battle here, up on his mountain? Did the Yankees pass this way on the retreat from Chickamauga to Chattanooga? Or had Sherman later come marching through from the other direction? Did it have anything to do with the copper pits, not far away, source of the percussion caps for
