all.”
“I couldn’t care less,” Roy said.
They went outside. Sonny looked around. “Where’s Gordo?”
No Gordo. They found his uniform near the drum kit, neatly folded.
“So we shoot the lieutenant and hit the road?” Sonny said.
“Very funny,” said Roy.
They left Jesse sitting comfortably in the barn, as comfortable as he could be with his shoulder the way it was and his leg attached to the ball and chain, a spike driven through one of the links deep into the floor. He had a big pail of water in reach and all the hardtack that was left.
“See you tonight,” Roy said.
Jesse said nothing, gave Roy a look that Roy told himself had no effect at all.
They hit the road in Sonny’s pickup, rolling through a narrow tunnel of fog, seeing almost nothing. Down on the highway to Chattanooga, they did catch a glimpse of two cars coming the other way, Tennessee State Police first, Georgia State Police right behind. A woman’s face in the back of the second car seemed familiar to Roy. After a few miles, he realized it was Marcia.
Signs at Lookout Mountain read battle above the clouds, pointed blue one way, gray the other, but you had to be close to see them on account of the fog, everything off the road-houses, garages, cars in the driveways-invisible. Soldiers were on the march, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, blue and gray, slipping in and out of the mist as the Irregulars drove up. They parked in a Confederate lot partway up the mountain, finding a space between two tailgate parties. Lee portioned out the ammunition, one round each. Roy loaded his carbine.
They got out of the car. A general with a lot of gold on his hat glanced up from his wicker picnic hamper.
“You guys look great,” he said. “Who are you with?”
“We’re irregulars,” Roy said.
“The Irregulars,” said Sonny. “I’m the sergeant.”
“I see that,” said the general. “Great, just great. You hard-cores really show us how it’s done. Be honored to have you march with us. We’re shaping up over at the Craven House, assault on the summit scheduled for eleven, special NPS dispensation.”
“They’re on the summit already?” Lee said.
“The Park Service?” said the general.
“The Yankees,” said Lee.
“Oh, right, the Yankees. I see where you’re coming from. We’re doing things a little in reverse, Corporal, a kind of what-if-there’d-been-a-rebel-counterattack scenario.”
“Exactly right,” said Roy.
“You can say that again,” said the general. “With this fog and all-who could ask for more?” It thickened even as he spoke, dissolving the general’s image. A cork popped in the mist.
The rebel brigades trod in double file along the path that wound up Lookout Mountain from the Craven House. A huge force, but Roy could see only a few soldiers in front and behind, all the rest hidden in the fog. Perhaps that was why he took no comfort in their numbers, even felt strangely alone.
Roy heard labored breathing all around him, but it was an easy climb for him, ambling along inside a cloud, the carbine almost weightless on his shoulder. Feeling those letters carved into the stock made him impatient, made him want to run up to the summit full speed, which he knew he could have done almost effortlessly, what with how strong he’d become.
A hiker with a fanny pack stepped out from behind a tree, said, “Cheese,” and snapped their picture. Lee, marching at Roy’s side, turned away.
“Go shoot us some bluebellies, now,” said the hiker.
Sonny Junior, just in front, turned for a longer look at her bare legs.
The rebels rounded a switchback bend, climbed a long diagonal, crisscrossing higher up the wooded slope. The fog turned golden all around them, like childhood heaven. Then from up ahead came the crack of a musket, and another.
“Yankee snipers,” someone yelled.
Not far up the line, a rebel grunted and fell, rolling to the side of the trail. “I’m hit,” he moaned, “I’m hit. Tell my darling wife.. ”
Roy spotted one of the snipers, somehow knew where to find him right away: a green-clad figure on a low tree branch, almost lost in the golden haze. He pointed him out to Sonny. Sonny raised his musket, took aim.
“For God’s sake,” Roy said, jerking the barrel down.
“Huh?” said Sonny.
“Not now,” Roy said.
Sonny nodded, shouldered his weapon.
“You don’t want him, I do,” said someone behind them. Then came a musket blast, and the sniper cried out, slid carefully down out of the tree, and lay still.
The gray column marched past the dying rebel, beyond the writhing stage now and preparing to meet his maker.
“Croak now and you’ll miss all the fun up top,” someone told him.
His eyes opened. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Then I’m not hit either,” called the sniper, sitting up in the woods.
More musket fire up ahead now, at first sporadic, then almost steady. The fog grew more golden, the men marched faster and faster, at the double-quick now, although Roy hadn’t heard a command, just did what all around him were doing, and suddenly he stepped into sunshine, dazzled above the clouds. Roy could no longer hold himself back, started running in daylight so bright it hurt his eyes. He crested the summit, Sonny on one side, Lee on the other. The Yankees had beaten the shit out of him just yesterday, and look at him now. Rebel yells rose all around. The long roll started playing, didn’t stop.
The Union army waited on the battlefield: a strange battlefield, more like a park, with gravel walkways, benches, information plaques, even a tall monument in the center. None of that added up for Roy, but there was no time to figure it out. The Yankees were ready, a vast blue army in perfect order, ranks square, muskets all pointed at the same angle, a single blue machine of countless parts. The rebel army didn’t look like that. The men straggled breathlessly up from the trail in twos and threes, glancing around in the sudden glare, distracted by things Roy hadn’t seen until he followed their gazes: spectators sitting on bleachers lining the field, photographers in cherry pickers high above, pushcarts selling ice cream, hot dogs, tacos.
Roy saw all that now, but it didn’t really penetrate. He found a place in the front line, scanned the Yankee ranks, could easily distinguish individual faces, recognized none.
Help me, father.
The Confederates formed ranks. The musket firing, somewhere down the slope, died out. The drumming ceased. The armies faced each other in silence. Generals rode up and down, waving their splendid hats, the horses’ hooves the only sound, an earthly heartbeat. Then Roy heard a voice.
“Massah.”
He looked down the line, saw a man, woman, and child approaching. Barefoot, all of them, and in tatters. The man carried a pole over his shoulders, two big tin buckets on either end, heavy enough to bend the pole, bend the man. The woman bore another bucket on her head. The child, not much more than a toddler, held a tin dipper.
“Thirsty, massah?”
They came closer, doling out water every ten yards or so, the man lowering the buckets to the ground, the child handing over the dipper, the man struggling to get the weight back up without spilling after the soldiers had drunk. Roy realized he was thirsty. He reached back for his canteen. Not there. He thought back, remembered last having it in the Mountain House, filled to the brim with water from the creek. Would he never taste that water again? His thirst rose very fast, as though some dam for holding back dryness had burst inside him.
“Water, massah?”
Now they were directly in front of him, the man and woman sweating under their burdens, the child’s eyes wide with fear.
