Spinning Dixie (20 page)

Tommy Rawls had been retired from the Franklin Police Department for fifteen years. He had always been a night owl, but his proclivities had intensified since his wife of more than fifty years died last year. Rawls didn't need the money he made working security at Hilliard Valley Energy, but he enjoyed the spare change because it helped finance vacations with his grandchildren, not to mention the beginnings of a college education fund for them.

Rawls's nightly ritual at Hilliard began with the retrieval of the latest magazines from the reception area. He would sit here beginning now, 7:00
P.M
., until the following morning. Next, he would get settled in his chair and flick on the twelve-inch television that was on the reception desktop. He used the remote to tune into Fox News, where he would watch
The O'Reilly Factor
for an hour before switching to ESPN to watch basketball.

All of these things were eminently observable by a combination of visual surveillance and heightened sensitivity to local gossip.

At 8:10, an odd thing happened on
The O'Reilly Factor.
O'Reilly was replaced by the moaning face of a peroxide blonde who, were it not for her shiny hair, would have been considered funny looking. Rawls shook his head as if trying to defuse an antihistamine buzz. The next thing he saw was the quivering upper lip of an Asian woman who was sharing a mutually beneficial encounter with the peroxide blonde.

Tommy Rawls craned his head around to confirm that he was alone. He was. So he kept watching the Spice Channel, which had been piped into the cable system of Hilliard Valley Energy courtesy of intelligence operatives underwritten by the American taxpayer.

While the two moaners lit up the screen, the Panamanian opened a rear door in the wing that housed J.T.'s office. A maintenance man had been kind enough to tape down the bolt of this particular door for one hundred dollars. Marcus was inside of J.T.'s office within forty-five seconds. First, he tapped J.T.'s computer mouse, which brought his screen alive. Marcus scrolled through J.T.'s e-mails and his list of logged calls. Then he played J.T.'s voice messages. Most were innocuous, but one stood out. The caller's name was Sam Platt. He worked at Boston Capital Holdings. He said they were “getting close.”

 

Along with the rise of twenty-four-hour cable news there came a new strain of media personality: the Filler. The Filler's job was not to report news, it was to make news by “posing questions,” an intellectual prophylactic device that freed him from factual obligation. If anyone impugned the Filler's journalistic credibility, he could simply remind the uptight prig that he was an entertainer. Lighten up, folks.

The leading on-air Filler of the moment was Enoch Squibbes of Global News Network. Squibbes was legendary for his helicopter jones. Publicists were known to commence their pitches to Squibbes by assuring him that the story would involve something to circle and land on. Most of his “stories” captured something from above, occasionally with a night-vision lens to make it look extra stealthy (even if it was a flock of geese unloading their bowels on an Oldsmobile). Of course, Squibbes himself would narrate the alleged action from his perch in the helicopter, which gave the whole thing a paramilitary whiff.

Today's filler involved a series of holes that had been found in the earth, often beside mountains, throughout the South. Of varying diameters, the man-made holes were large enough to fit a human being. Particularly interesting were the satellite photos that Squibbes displayed on a computerized screen. The most recent photos showed the excavations that Squibbes was tracking, while those taken of the same locations one month earlier displayed unblemished terrain.

The camera cut to a bearded man from Stone Mountain Agricultural College in Georgia who studied both the satellite images and photos that Squibbes had taken when surveying the excavations from a helicopter. Historian Ian Holloway Craven explained, “There have been legends since the final days of the Civil War about Confederate radicals stockpiling huge quantities of gold for an eventual reengagement with the Union. That gold was supposedly stored in mountain caves, accessible through man-made tunnels.”

Squibbes pressed his subject: “How would stockpiling gold have helped the Confederacy resume the war?”

“The theories about how this might have happened have changed over the years. During the war and Reconstruction, the gold would have been used to finance militias, such as Nathan Bedford Forrest's band. In the twentieth century, a new theory emerged: The gold would be used to destabilize the U.S. monetary system, throw the economy into chaos. Economic terrorism.”

“What kind of quantities of gold are we talking about?” Squibbes asked.

“No one knows for sure, but anecdotal reports have put estimates as high as several hundred tons.”

“In other words, potentially billions of dollars' worth?”

“If we are to believe the legends,” the professor qualified.

“Even if rebels had hidden billions of dollars in gold, the U.S. abandoned the gold standard in the early nineteen seventies,” Squibbes said, self-satisfied (a risk taker
and
smart). “So, the whole conspiracy sounds rather far-fetched.”

“That's true, sir. The conspiracy as initially conceived is utter foolishness. But you may be forgetting a much more practical question.”

“And what is that, Professor?”

“Even if there's only a fraction of this gold cache out there, to whom does the gold belong?”

The GNN report triggered a round of on-air punditry. Gordon Kinney of GraftNet had as his guest another historian, this one an expert on government policy during the Reconstruction era, from George Mason University. Kinney said, “Let me give you the question point-blank: If I dig up my backyard and I find Confederate gold, can I keep it?”

“I'm afraid not, Gordon. Any property that once belonged to the Confederacy now belongs to Uncle Sam.”

“Even if it's in my own backyard?”

“If it was placed there by agents of the Confederacy, it can be seized by the federal government.”

“Now, wait a minute. My backyard is my property, and anything I find—”

“Mr. Kinney, you are touching off the question that lies at the very foundation of America.”

Kinney, outraged: “And what is that, sir?”

“Who owns what?”

 

The cable shows were ablaze with odd couplings, including property rights attorneys and Civil War experts.

Lee Woodruff, the sultry anchor of the network program
America Betrayed,
had snagged the cycle's big “get,” Stone Mountain's Professor Craven. “The Civil War has been over for one hundred and forty years, Professor. Why all the fuss over it now? After all, nobody's finding gold in these excavations.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

“I understand, sir, but why the fuss
now?
”

“First, there are the satellite photos of the holes. Then there are other strange things kindling interest. For example, didn't you try to reach another historian to come on the program with me? Independence Polk?”

“We tried, I think,” Woodruff said.

“Well, Lee, Indy Polk the Sixth—called Six by his friends and family—who has been tracking Confederate gold for decades, has turned up missing. Nobody can find him.”

“Who is he exactly?”

“He is the only living scion of arguably the mightiest Confederate family America has ever known, the Polks of Tennessee. He has a sister, I believe, but Six Polk is the leading expert on Confederate gold. There's a legend that his family's mansion, Rattle & Snap, had gold hidden in its columns.”

“But, as you said yourself, this could just be folklore.”

“It probably is, Lee, but it would certainly give a young man who grew up in that mansion incentive to go looking, wouldn't it now?”

 

Professor Craven's final appearance that day came as Enoch Squibbes emerged from an excavation in the Ozarks holding a moldy slice of parchment with elaborate handwriting. There was no treasure in this crater, but there was an intriguing relic. Craven, having been read the text over the telephone, suggested an interpretation of the clue: When Union general William Tecumseh Sherman pillaged the South, Confederate gentry, afraid that their wealth would be seized, began hiding it. The possible location of key valuables could be imputed from the clue, along with a call to arms to retrieve it when the time was right. Squibbes again read into the camera the words written on the parchment, which had been encased in a small music box that had been buried long ago:

It began to get weird. They came in the night, mostly in sport-utility vehicles. Some arrived in vans. There were a few campers. And then there were the motorcycles. I never would have made a connection between Confederate reenactors and motorcycles. As Deedee would have said, Who knew?

But they came. The media bitch goddess had stepped upon the live wire of Red State America—the unconscious notion that
they
were coming.
They
were a shadowy cabal on the precipice of seizing control. Who were
they?
Who knows, but whoever
they
(a.k.a. “them”) were, it warranted protest. It warranted gun ownership. It warranted the freedom that our beloved motorized vehicles provided us, fossil fuel be damned. We wanted to be hair-trigger ready to haul ass from
them
. If you were a liberal, they were right-wing Christian fundamentalists; if you were a conservative, they were feminazi one-world pansies. It was wise to keep an eye open because you never were sure who
they
were—
they
had people everywhere. That was the secret that made America work: With all the talk about Civil War and culture conflict, we were a nation perpetually united against
they
and
them.

I needed to step away from the gathering reenactors for a moment. The Panamanian caught me on my way to the icehouse.

“I've got good news and bad news,” Marcus said.

“Bad news first.”

“J.T.'s doing a little lobbying. His phone records tell me he's been in touch with Senator Hunter.”

“Makes sense. Republican from Tennessee, supportive of the president in sensitive fights. J.T. gets the senator to rattle the president. Prez gets cold feet, lets me twist in the wind. J.T. keeps all his winnings and gets to see me tossed out of the casino.”

“That's the goal. J.T. has already hit the high notes with Hunter.”

“Did you intercept?”

“Yeah. There's a voice mail from one of Hunter's aides who promised to check into it.”

“Which could mean anything. These politicians are all full of crap. The senator isn't going to go barging into the Oval Office and chew out the president.”

“Still, it's not easy to neutralize a United States senator, Jonah.”

“Think small, Marcus. If we can't neutralize him, can we piss him off? I'm talking pedestrian, getting the short ball in the pocket. What's the good news?”

“Did you ever hear of Boston Capital Holdings?”

“Big holding company, right?”

“Yes. Looks like J.T's in talks with them to sell his company.”

“Wants to play some more golf, huh?”

“Right. Would be a shame if something screwed the deal, you know?”

“Or
almost
screwed the deal,” I corrected. “Sometimes the threat is more effective. I'm going to find myself a horse and think about it a bit.”

I turned to go. “Jonah,” Marcus said. “Costume, please.”

 

I returned to the mansion. I advised Claudine to have a word with Pepper, who had recognized me. I affixed my General Custer mustache and hairpiece. Claudine loaned me a Confederate uniform—gray top with gold buttons running parallel from the shoulder blades to the waist. Then she handed me the cap, which I donned with considerable charm, grace, and panache. Rhett Putzler. Claudine laughed in a familiar way that made me wonder for a moment if we might not have made it together after all. It's incredible how we can mistake tiny movements for love.

I put my sunglasses on, mounted on impulse an old quarter horse roped to a tree, and trotted across the theater of battle to the ice-house. Pockets of Confederates dotted the landscape setting up tents and sleeping bags. The men (and a few women) were exuberant, greeting each other with embraces and unfamiliar battle cries. There was an odd diversity to the assembled—old, young, businesslike, hippie. There were also black Confederates, as there had been during the real Civil War. It was something I had never quite understood, but the political curveballs of America never ceased to keep me off balance. All in all, it was beginning to look like Woodstock.

I tied the rope to a post, climbed onto the low-slung roof of the icehouse, and scrolled through the songs in my little radio. As a rebel fired up a barbecue, my song piped into my earphones: Kinky Friedman's “Ride 'Em Jewboy.”

I lay back, sunlight settling in on my cheeks. As Kinky twanged, I conjured up 1980, and how we all used to bake our skin “down the shore” without sunscreen. It was as if skin cancer had not existed until the new millennium. “They” didn't just invent the disease, did they? People must have gotten it back then. Not me, baby. I'd bring out that U-shaped piece of cardboard with tinfoil slapped on it, and prop it up against my face. I didn't want to miss one ultraviolet ray, lest Claudine sense something slightly unradiant about me.

I wondered how many people who owned these music machines stocked them up with the sound track of their lives. The narcissism of retreating to one's own planet with one's own score was staggering, but irresistible. I felt myself on Shpilkes jumping the gate.

I felt moisture beneath my eyes, perhaps effluent from squinting into the light. On the other hand, it could be straight grief for: one, a grown daughter I never knew; two, an old love lost in the hills of time; three, Edie, Ricky, and Lily, who were impossibly far away; four, ancestors who I sensed were searching for me; five, a career devoted to legerdemain.

An image of myself carrying Sallie as an infant across Dartmouth's green to class. And where was Claudine in this image? At Vanderbilt? Did we swap her semester to semester? Were Claudine and I married? If not, what did I do during college about women? What does a pledge with a baby do at a frat house on Hell Night? I couldn't get out of my mental maze. What a mess! No wonder Claudine didn't tell me. I should be
thanking
her.

Despite my eyes being closed, I felt the sky grow dark. A cloud, I thought. But when I opened my eyes, I let out an unmanly gasp when I saw a giant looming above me in front of the sun. His hands were enormous, his mane of hair leonine.
All footsteps turn back upon themselves,
I thought, as the great ghost extended his hand, and citing Devo asked, “Are we not men?”