practically the whole South? Were the copper pits in danger? He would do his duty.
Roy put the inside of the hat to his face. He smelled sweat; sweat and the strawberry aroma of Aussie Mega Shampoo, familiar because he used it himself. He got confused.
Roy walked down the path, the blue kepi in his hand, rounded a bend and came to an opening in the trees. A beautiful sight unfolded in the east, must have been east because the horizon was a band of fire, the dome of the sky turning mother-of-pearl as he watched. Down below lay the beautiful state of Tennessee, just as Ezekiel had said, soft as Eden. A pink mist was rising from the upper meadow, flowing over onto the plateau, several hundred feet below him. The mist blurred the ruination of the Mountain House, made it rosy, made everything right. Roy gazed down on the sleeping camp, the tents still and pink-edged, the flag drooped comfortably on its pole, and came close to tears. This was earthly glory, the end of a journey through time to make things right. Stop here. Time stopped, stopped at this red-banded sunrise on a day in the spring of 1863. Roy knew it for a fact. He felt no need to breathe. Poised on the trail above the plateau, his gun at his side, Roy felt inner peace at last. There was no need for the clock to tick one more second.
The moment Roy had that thought, time started up again. First came movement down in the slave quarters, hard for Roy to make out because the treetops blocked his view. But human movement, he was sure of that, and blue: he was sure of the blue part too. Roy flung the blue kepi aside and set off down the slope, each step quicker and more careless than the one before, as he thought, so late and stupid: License plates, kepi, blue. The woods blocked his view at every turn.
But sounds got through, muffled, urgent, rising off the plateau. Running, grunting, crashing: now Roy was running too, and might have been making all the sounds himself. He was wondering about that, wondering how much was imagining, how much of what he thought of as his life he had imagined, back and back to two little boys in that cantilevered barn, when he slipped on a tree root. Roy fell hard on his back, slid, tumbled down a steep rise, cracked his head, rolled to a stop under a cloud of rising dust. As it cleared slowly in the still air, he found himself on a ledge fifty or sixty feet above the plateau. The peaceful scene below was gone, replaced by something close to its opposite, hard for a civilian to take in.
But Roy wasn’t a civilian, and it all came together in his mind in a crisp and military way: an attack by a superior force on a sleeping camp. Roy counted ten figures in blue-didn’t have to count, the number coming automatically-some active in the Mountain House, the rest running crouched toward the tents. Then metal flashed in the hands of some of them, and the tents all started collapsing, forms struggling under the canvas. The Yankees laughed, the sound rising almost undetectable up to Roy, but their laughing posture very clear. He hated that laughing. It stopped abruptly; the postures all stiffened. Roy followed the Yankees’ gaze to a lone gray-clad figure popping free from a pile of canvas, springing to his feet, long hair wild and whipping in the first rays of the sun: Sonny Junior.
Some of the Yankees raised their hands as though in explanation, which Roy didn’t get at all, this being war. Sonny Junior didn’t wait to hear. The next moment, he had something in his hand too, not metal, not a knife or bayonet, but a long wooden pole-a tent pole. He swung it, faster than Roy would have thought possible, and a Yankee went down. Then another, on the backhand side, still falling when Sonny lowered the pole, jabbed it into someone’s gut-cry of pain rising clear up to Roy, like it came from right beside him-and wheeled to get at someone else. That wheeling was why Sonny didn’t see a big man-bearded, sergeant’s stripes, Vandam-coming from behind. Vandam raised his musket like a club, cracked it down on Sonny’s head, just as he’d done to Roy. But Sonny didn’t go down. He staggered a little, recovered, started to turn, the tent pole still in his grip. Vandam hit him again, same place.
That dropped Sonny, but only to his knees. Somehow he still had the pole, somehow was thrusting it at Vandam. Vandam stepped back-Roy caught the flash of his teeth in the middle of all that beard-stepped back, but right into the path of another reb diving at his legs like-like a linebacker. Vandam fell. The second reb was on him right away. Vandam threw him off easily-the second reb was very small-and was starting to rise when Sonny Junior, still on his knees, caught him a good one under the ribs. Vandam fell again. Sonny rose, rose slowly, blood all over, but rose and stood over Vandam, raising the pole like a pile driver. A Yankee captain-Peterschmidt, with the muttonchop whiskers-ran up from behind, brought the butt of his pistol down on Sonny’s head, and a second time, real quick, as Sonny subsided. Roy was so sure that Peterschmidt wouldn’t do something like that that he missed what came next.
Something to do with another small reb, just a little bigger than the first. A blue circle was closing around them, blocking them from Roy’s view. Roy scrambled up, searched frantically for his carbine, found it wedged against a tree trunk a few yards higher up. He hurried back down the outcrop, opening the breech, checking to see if he was loaded-yes-closing up, raising the gun, looking through that V at the scene down below.
Down below and far away. Roy had no idea of the gun’s range. In the V, he saw the blue circle part and Peterschmidt advance on the littlest reb, now lying on the ground, curled into a ball. The second reb got in between them, tried to push Peterschmidt away. Another Yankee knocked him-her, Roy knew that-to the ground.
Now. If it could be done, Roy could do it. He was deadly, that was certain. He got Peterschmidt’s head in the center of the V, saw him clear, could even make out the cigar in his mouth, right down to the glowing end. The cigar enraged Roy. He drew a bead on Peterschmidt’s near-side eye, started to squeeze.
“Now do you see why we keep a force in reserve?” said someone behind him.
Roy whirled. Two Yankees stood above him on the slope, a lieutenant with a pistol and a private with a musket, both pointed at him.
“Yes, sir,” said the private. “Very wise.”
“Throw down your gun,” said the lieutenant. “We’re taking you prisoner.”
Roy had had enough.
“Fixin’ to die?” he said.
“That’s very good,” said the lieutenant.
Roy didn’t need to hear that: he knew it was good-that was how they talked, his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, his great-great-grandfather; and him.
“In terms of authenticity?” said the private.
“Did you say something, soldier?” said the lieutenant.
“Sir. In terms of authenticity, sir, what he said being very good.”
“More like it,” said the lieutenant. “Yes, this reb is particularly authentic. So he must know that the right response here is to throw down that gun. Meaning just lay it down gently-I know what these things cost.”
“Out of my way,” Roy said.
“What you forget,” said the lieutenant, “is that you’ve got one shot to our two. That’s what makes the decision easy, weapons dictating tactics.”
“Even easy enough for a dumb reb,” said the private, adding, “sir.”
A cry rose up from the plateau, very faint, but Roy knew whose it was. “Last chance,” he said.
“Is this a hearing problem?” the lieutenant said. “Or ADD?”
Roy shot him between the eyes.
No doubt about it: Roy was deadly and how could he miss from that range? The lieutenant said, “Ow,” as the paper wad smacked his forehead with a noise like a book sharply closed.
Paper wad? Ow? What was this? It took Roy a moment or two to realize he’d fired a blank. But how? He knew he’d had a live round in that chamber. Roy flipped open his cartridge pouch: blanks, all blanks, where live rounds had been before. He’d been betrayed. The war was lost.
“Jesus Christ,” the lieutenant was saying. He felt his forehead-red welt already rising-said, “Ow,” again.
“Could of taken out his eye,” said the private. “Don’t you know the rules?”
“And I’m a photography teacher, you asshole,” said the lieutenant, turning on Roy, “which your lawyer won’t be happy about, not one damn bit.”
These Yankees were all red-faced and furious, but about what Roy wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter: whack, whack, and they were both on the ground, Roy racing down the slope to the plateau.
And yes, the rebel yell, so huge it could have been the voice of the mountain itself.
TWENTY-EIGHT
