Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 (15 page)

“Do you need any help, Corporal?” The grizzled sergeant had finished laying out the food
and wandered over to observe the cartridge-making.

“Nice of you to ask, now that I'm about finished. Think we'll need more than that?”

“Depends on what transpires this afternoon. If nobody shows up, one of us may have to galvanize. Unless you want to sit around all afternoon and bake in that wool uniform.”

“How about galvanizing Randy? He's been on guard duty for a good while. He deserves a little excitement.”

“Okay. We'll see. It's early yet. Might as well wait a while.”

“Are you expecting any action, Sergeant Jennings?”

“Maybe. The 15th U.S. knows we're here.” From the edge of the hill, he looked out across the little town of Radford, where all was quiet on the summer afternoon.

Suddenly the sentry shouted, “Company coming!” and they all looked down toward the bottom of the hill, where a white Ford Tempo was pulling into the municipal parking lot.

“Places everybody!” yelled the red-bearded officer. “Civilians on the way!”

The civilians, a yuppie family with two small children, got out and made their way up the hill. The little boy, a sturdy blond who looked about four, ran over to inspect the cannon from a cautious distance, while his parents and older sister looked at the food display under the tarpaulin.
“But Arby's is just across the street,” said the little girl, a prim nine-year-old firmly in the bossy stage of childhood.

“Arby's?” echoed Sergeant Jennings in tones of complete bewilderment. “What's that, little lady?”

The child pointed to the fast-food place beyond the parking lot and across the street. “That restaurant. We just had lunch there.”

“All I see are some houses,” said the sergeant peering out in the direction of her pointing. “And if one of them is owned by a Mr. Arby, we'd sure be happy if he'd bring us some grub, but we haven't heard tell of him.”

“They have to stay in character, Megan,” said the little girl's mother. “Remember it's supposed to be 1862 for them.”

“1864, ma'am,” Jennings replied.

The little girl looked at the sergeant's uniform and wrinkled her freckled nose. “There's a dry cleaner's over there across the road, too, mister.”

After a few moments of silence the little boy ventured to speak to the corporal, who was still sitting near the cannon. “Hey, is that thing real?”

“Sure is,” the corporal replied. “We might fire in a couple of minutes, in case you're interested. What's your name?”

“Josh. You gonna shoot anything?”

“Not with cannon balls, but it'll make a loud booming noise. You'll like it.”

Josh considered this for a moment, and then turned his attention to the corporal. “Those are funny shoes.”

“They're Jefferson brogans. That's what you wear if you're a Confederate soldier.”

“Is that a real gun?”

“It sure is. It's an 1841 Springfield smoothbore musket. I was just making cartridges for it. See?”

“Did you ever kill anybody?”

“Umm. In a battle it's hard to tell,” said the corporal, and the little boy wandered away.

After a few more minutes of inspection and explanation, followed by the firing of the small cannon, a Yankee sniper (Randy, the sentry, now wearing a blue uniform) appeared. He fired blanks at the Rebel encampment and was chased around the old house for a tree-to-tree shoot-out. Finally, the young corporal took aim and brought down the sniper, who died dramatically and at great length near the visitors.

That little boy said, “Can I have his hat?”

Two of the soldiers carried the body behind the house, to change clothes and return to sentry duty, and the family left. The lanky soldier who had been cleaning his gun walked over to talk to the corporal.

“That little girl was tough,” he laughed. “She kept trying to trip us up by asking about current
events. Captain Nance handled her pretty well, though. I like talking to kids. The ones I hate are the know-it-alls.” He assumed a pompous facial expression and mimicked such a civilian. “Soldier, that is a
navy
Colt pistol that you are wearing, not an army one!”

“I can usually come up with a plausible story,” said the corporal. “There was all kinds of scrounging going on during the war. Hardly anybody was regulation past '63. The ones I hate are the people who assume that because we're Confederate reenactors we're redneck racists.”

“Just remind them that it was Philip Sheridan, the
Union
general, who said, ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian,' when the army sent him out West after the war.”

“I'm not supposed to know that,” said the corporal. “It hasn't happened yet!”

“Oh, that's right. Well, you could go into a long explanation about states' rights and representative voting by population and import tariffs, but people have never found those explanations very glamorous. That's why the North always claimed the war was a crusade, even though the Emancipation Proclamation wasn't issued until halfway through the war. People like easy, flashy answers to complicated issues.”

“I know, Ken. Usually, I just say I'm a corporal
from the mountains, and that I don't know anything about politics.”

Ken shook his head. “You're a corporal. Boy, is that ironic.”

“You think I should be playing my own great-grandfather like you're doing, right? Well, I can't do that. I would be way too conspicuous. And the Silverbacks would never stand for it.”

“The what?”

“The good old boys who run things. They may not be racists, but they sure as hell can be chauvinists. That's why I keep a low profile. And that's why you can't tell anybody who I am.”

“But you're a good reenactor,” said Ken Filban. “Do you really think they'd mind?”

“Mind?” said A. P. Hill. “They'd go ballistic.”

J
OHN
H
UFF STOOD
in the front hall of his newly purchased home, savoring the emptiness and the echoes of his own footsteps. The old ladies were gone, taking with them all their furniture and knickknacks, but leaving a tantalizing collection of trunks and boxes in the basement. He'd already checked. It was the first place he went. Well, not the
first
place; it had been a long drive out from the airport and he'd had two whiskey sodas on the plane; but after that, it was his first concern. He could examine the papers themselves later. The electricity was still on and the house's water supply came from a well, so there was no billing problem to interrupt service there either. It was only three o'clock; the moving van should be arriving any minute with his furniture. With any luck and a little hustle on the part of the movers (which he would see to personally) he would be able to spend the night in his new residence. He had got a good deal on the house, he thought for the
hundredth time. These Southern yokels were no match for a businessman of his caliber.

Apart from his other interests in Danville, he thought that the house might make a very nice vacation home; perhaps even a place to retire to. He was bored with the usual vacation spots frequented by his acquaintances. He was getting a little old for skiing, and thoughts of skin cancer dimmed his enjoyment of the beach. He had been divorced for years, and there were no children to consider in his vacation preferences. He could please himself. Perhaps a graceful Victorian mansion was the perfect retreat for a gentleman of his age and income. He might even take up fox hunting. After the completion of his current project, that is.

He looked appraisingly at the silent rooms, with sunlight filtering through the curtainless windows making dust motes dance above the oak plank floors. There was no sensation of the lingering dead haunting the empty halls. Too bad, thought Huff with a wry smile; he would have welcomed a couple of ghosts. He would have had questions to pose to them.

After a last look around, while he mentally arranged his furniture in these graceful rooms, John Huff sat down on the stairs to wait for the moving van.

   For perhaps the fiftieth time since he began his law practice, Bill MacPherson considered
the idea of raising sheep. Sheep were so restful. So pleasantly bland. They just stood around all day not arguing with anybody, not asking silly questions, and not minding that a dozen ewes all had to share the same ram. You never heard of a sheep filing for divorce; no sirree bob. They just stood around in their fields, placidly content with whatever mate was provided for them. Sheep never went off to find themselves. Bill pictured himself out on a green hillside with a clever collie (sort of a canine A. P. Hill), communing with nature, soaking up sunshine, and counting his lamb chops.

He was jerked back to fluorescent reality by the sound of his mother's voice, containing all the warmth of an injured timber wolf. “He's driving me crazy!” she wailed.

Bill closed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair, wondering whether he was supposed to respond as a son or as a lawyer. He opted for the second choice, thinking that the emotional distance of the attorney-client relationship might make for a calmer discussion. “All right, Mother,” he said gently. “Take it easy. What has Dad done now?”

“He keeps coming back to the house, saying he forgot something. Last week he took the road atlas, the flashlight, and the sea-shell ashtray you made at 4-H camp.”

“What did he want that for? I thought he quit smoking.”

“I don't know. Maybe he's too cheap to buy cereal bowls. What does it matter? I don't want him wandering in and out of the house. And that's not the worst of it! He's killing the fish.”

“The fish?”

“The goldfish. Doug used to always accuse me of forgetting to feed the goldfish, and now he is convinced that they'll starve unless he dumps food into the tank. But since I feed them every morning, the food he adds is more than they need. I can always tell when he's been in the house—even before I look to see what's missing—because there's a little bloated body floating on top of the water.”

“Okay,” sighed Bill. “So you want him to stay away from the house. Have you told him?”

“Yes. He always says it's the last time. He says he just forgot one little thing. And then three days later he's back. Sometimes he comes when I'm out, and I panic and think a burglar has broken in, but the dead fish give him away.”

“What does he say about killing the fish?”

“Natural causes. He suggests an autopsy.”

“Do you want me to talk to him?”

Margaret MacPherson hesitated. “Can I have him arrested for trespassing?”

“No, Mother, you cannot have him arrested. Why don't you just change the locks?”

“Because I can't remember who all has keys! Elizabeth does, and you do, and I think Robert and Amanda have one set. Oh, it would be too
much trouble to change all the locks and redistribute keys. Besides, why should I have to go to all that trouble and expense? Can't I just have your father arrested?”

Bill closed his eyes and thought about fields of cloudlike sheep. “Okay,” he said at last, “if you insist on indulging in legal carpet bombing, I will handle it. We will file a restraining order against Dad, specifying that he cannot come into the house to retrieve anything without your express permission, and that he cannot enter the premises unless you are present.” Bill was scribbling notes to himself on the yellow legal pad.

“Don't forget the fish!”

“Right. The fish. The restraining order will absolutely prohibit Douglas W. MacPherson from feeding any and all fish at his former residence at 816 Mead Lane. I'll get it typed up and formally present it to Dad's lawyer. Will that do?”

Bill's mother gave him a reproachful look. “You don't have to take that tone with me, Bill. I'll have you know that it's very stressful to have an estranged husband popping in and out of your house like Banquo's ghost, and besides, I happen to be very fond of those goldfish. We'd had the fantail moor for almost three years.”

“I'll put that in the restraining order. Maybe it will mute the hilarity.”

“Will your father and I have to go to court over this?”

“No, I don't think so,” said Bill, who hadn't filed a restraining order before. “His lawyer will have to appear, though. And I'll be there.”

“But if he ignores the restraining order and barges in anyway,
then
we can have him arrested?”

“Well, theoretically. I think if it's just a case of fish murder, the judge might let him go with a scolding. He might order Dad to replace the fish.”

“Impossible!” snapped Margaret MacPherson. “Doug can't swim.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing. It was the first symptom of sanity Bill had seen in any of his family members in weeks.

   John Huff stood on the front porch supervising the unloading of the moving van. “Be careful with that sofa!” he called out. “Don't scrape the upholstery against the door frame.”