Sightings (17 page)

“Forward, march!”

The Confederate smiled as his son responded to each and every command. He knew he could continue the orders for the remainder of the morning without complaint, that his son was a good and loyal soldier.

Much to his father's surprise, Junior's small frame managed the weight of the gun quite nicely. His childish chest carved hollows along the ridge of his stomach each time he inhaled, the gun fitting neatly in the space.

After drill, the pair collapsed beneath an oak in the backyard, sipping orange Gatorade, cooling their bodies and restoring their electrolytes in the swelter of the shade. The Confederate had a stick in his left hand and busied himself drawing schematics in the dirt for the benefit of his son. Junior nodded attentively, though he'd heard them all before. There were only so many battles worth remembering.

“So what that ol' rascal Beauregard did was, he moved his troops
north
of Shiloh, like this,” The Confederate explained, drawing various x's into the dirt. “You see, what Beauregard knew that Grant didn't was that the terrain was highly vulnerable to sneak attacks. And he exploited that knowledge. Old Beauregard pushed the Yanks all the way back to the Tennessee River, right here, when all of the sudden . . .”

“We won.”

“Jesus, kid, I'm trying to tell you the story.”

“But we did win, right? Because of Beauregard's fine leadership and the cowardice of the Union army? That's what you told me, isn't it?”

“Well, that's how it
should've
happened. Most historians chalked it up as a loss for the good guys, but most of those historians are piss poor Northerners anyway so you kind of have to take what they say with a grain of . . .”

“Dad,” Junior squinted, picking dirt from beneath his nails. “Did we really win
any
of those battles?”

“Well, sure! Ever hear of a little something called The Battle of Chickamauga? Fort Pillow? Paducah and Petersburg? And then you got your Battle of Poison Spring, of course . . .”

“So why didn't we win the war?”

“Christ, don't they teach you anything in school?”

He shrugged.

The Confederate brushed the dirt from his pants and began pacing.

“It's like this,” he sighed, motioning with his hands. “The winners and losers all depend on who the hell's telling the story. Make sense?”

Shrugging, Junior stood, then moved toward the kitchen to refill his glass with Gatorade. Along the way, his foot clipped the
WELCOME
mat and “Dixie” began humming throughout the yard.

“And just wait till your mother wraps up work on her time machine,” The Confederate called after him. “Then we'll see who won.”

As the summer wound down – after their talk beneath the shady oak – The Confederate found his son's zeal for southern independence beginning to wane.

“Want to drill?” he'd ask, and by mid-September, Junior's shrugs had turned into no's.

“Well why the hell not?”

“Homework,” he'd explain. “Ms. Henson's sort of a bear about it.”

The Confederate tried hard not to take the rebuffs personally. Homework was important, after all. Occasionally, he'd catch Lynda nodding at Junior's response, as if approving his responsible decision.

“You don't have to encourage him, you know,” he told her one night in bed.

“Encourage him to do what?”

“Not to drill with me.”

Lynda's eyes were closed, her hands on the cool side of the pillow.

“Honey, I just think that maybe your . . . reverence for the past hasn't quite rubbed him the same way.”

“Sometimes I don't think it's rubbed him at all.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Cuz he figures we're a bunch of stuffy-britches-wearing losers.”

“Why would he think that?”

“Well, because the britches are stuffy, for one. Plus, he thinks all we ever do is lose battles.”

“Well, the Confederacy did lose quite a few . . .”

“We,”
he pressed, rocking her shoulder,
“we
lost quite a few, Lynda.”

“I didn't lose anything.”

The Confederate changed the subject.

“Anything new with the time machine?”

“A bit.”

“Anything I'd understand?” She shrugged.

“That's okay,” he nodded, tucking himself beneath the covers and flicking off the light. “Just don't forget to carry the one, huh?”

He kissed her cheek, and they turned quiet together.

A moment later, he broke the silence.

“But it's going to work, right?” he asked. “I mean, one of these days.”

“Sure, Charlie, one of these days.”

“And it's going to show us a bright future?”

She paused, turning to face the window.

“If I can get there first.”

That night, The Confederate dreamed of bugles and drum lines and an entire cavalry of sneering, dust-clouded warhorses. The men atop them were painted gray, swords drawn, glistening. One of them, a ghost soldier, cantered away from the others, pulling his reins just inches from The Confederate's dreaming face.

“What . . . what do you want?” The Confederate mumbled in his sleep.

The ghost soldier cleared his throat and then, quite robustly, broke into song:

O, I wish I was in Dixie!

Hooray! Hooray!

In Dixie Land I'll take my stand,

To Live and Die in Dixie!

He saluted – trotting off into somebody else's dream – and in the morning, when The Confederate woke, he found himself humming the tune.

After breakfast, father and son went into the woods just like father and son. There were no Confederates – no army grays or C.S.A. buckles or anything.

“It's kind of nice,” Junior admitted, revisiting a familiar complaint, “not having to wear those stuffy, old uniforms. It's a lot cooler without the britches.”

The Confederate stayed silent, staring down at his chicken legs lost in his rarely worn cargo shorts.

All around them, the woods were alive with animals. Already, they'd spotted two white-tailed deer and a fox, and each time, instinctually, The Confederate lifted his arms as if attempting to fire a gun he wasn't holding.

“Affix bayonet?” Junior joked, and they shared a good laugh from the old days.

That morning, they viewed nature in a different way – something to treasure, something worth preserving. They even paid notice to the mockingbirds and irises that followed them along their path. The Confederate identified all that he could – coralberry, bluebells, Virginia willows – and much to his surprise, Junior seemed enraptured by his knowledge.

“So can you just plant them anywhere?” he asked of the wood sunflower, to which his father replied, “Well, they tend to flourish best in damp climates. Need a helluva lot of rain and sun to make it much past August . . .”

In the dead of September, most of the flowers had already sunk their heavy heads. But The Confederate and Junior paid closest attention to the few that remained, brushing their fingertips atop the petals as if renewing them with life.

“Noodling?” Junior suggested upon reaching the river. The Confederate was only too happy to oblige.

Several weeks had passed since their last attempt, and while Junior had yet to receive so much as a nibble, The Confederate had felt the sinking teeth dig into his flesh on more than a few occasions.

The Confederate lay belly down along the bank and rolled up his sleeve.

“Shall we?”

Junior smiled, matching his father's motions.

They lay there, their backs warming in sunlight, the trees gathering shadows and cooling them in the dark, dappled patches of skin.

As they noodled, they discussed Ms. Henson's insistence on weekly vocabulary tests, how she deemed reading, writing, and mathematics far more important than social studies.

“But social studies is the key to everything!” The Confederate argued. “Jesus Christ! Who in their right mind would choose, actually
choose,
to gloss over the events that made our country what it is today? Take the War of Northern Aggression, for instance . . .”

“I know! That's what I told her!” Junior argued, “But she said . . .”

In mid-sentence, the fish rose up and latched onto Junior's arm. Junior screamed, helpless, as the gigantic golden-flecked beast dragged the boy into the river, down the river, and within moments, beneath the river, too.

“Son!” The Confederate called, jumping to his feet. “Junior!”

He dove into the cool current, eyes wide.

But ten minutes later, his frantic searching yielded little: driftwood, a rusted bobber, some tangled fishing line. And twenty minutes later, when he discovered his son's weed-wrapped body clinging to the shore – bite marks beyond the elbow – the search abruptly ended. Junior's t-shirt ballooned the way his lungs wouldn't, his shorts stuck tight to his knees.

The Confederate called for help. Only his echo called back.

They buried what they couldn't bring back. Buried him deep, in a coffin, in the ground, in the cemetery.

To the outside world, their grief appeared surprisingly shortlived: the result of propelling themselves headlong into their respective professional lives. Lynda's time travel productivity increased two-fold, and when The Confederate woke in the morning, he found the bed empty and cooling beside him. And at the end of the day, after brushing his teeth and returning once more to the bed, still, her space retained the empty shape she left him.

Almost nightly, he heard her clomping up the stairs – sometimes in the purple dawn of the morning – her face red, her hair clumped and matted.

Her hands were often stained chalk white from calculations, and when he asked about her findings, she'd pinch the top of her nose and close her eyes tight and say she had a terrible headache.

“What smells like burning?” he once asked and was surprised by her reply.

“My mind is.”