Chapter XII
6:40 pm
“Lover boy,” Max said to me as I stepped inside the RV. “Anna looks great, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, she does,” I said half-heartedly.
“That was enthusiastic,” said Max. When I did not respond, he said, “right,” and changed the subject. “So, the Foxhartes own this land?”
“Yes,” I said. “You should see their house.”
“Nice, huh?”
“It’s a renovated old brick home. Beautiful place.”
“By the way,” said Max, “your clothes are dry and folded.” He pointed to a stack of clothes lying on the dinette.
“Thanks, but I won’t be needing those just now. I’m joining the Confederate Army.”
“Confederate Army.” After a lengthy pause, Max asked, “Was this your idea or Anna’s?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It sounds like her,” he answered.
“It was our idea, I guess. She said she’d like to do it herself; that’s how I got the idea. There seems to be different opinions about reenacting. So, I thought I’d see for myself.”
Max smirked and shook his head, making it clear that he’d heard enough. Then he said, “Owen said we can sleep here tonight.”
“You sure that’s okay? I mean, he was really tying one on.”
“It’s okay. He didn’t drink any more after you and Anna left.”
“Where is he now?”
“Junior showed up and they went to the grocery store.”
“How long have they been gone?”
“I don’t know. Long enough that they could be back any minute.”
“I’ve got to hurry then. I’d prefer not to see Owen’s son, especially after I get this uniform on.” I held up the jacket and other clothes that Anna had given me. “I’m afraid I’d have a hard time answering any questions he might ask.”
“Perhaps he’d show you around,” Max said sarcastically.
“Funny – I think I’d rather go by myself. I’m less likely to get stuck with people I’d rather not be stuck with.”
“I see,” Max said as if he doubted my logic. “Where’d you get the uniform?”
“The Foxhartes.”
“The Foxhartes?”
“Yeah, it seems people leave them behind all the time.”
“Oh.”
“I’m going to change.” I walked back to the bathroom.
When I returned Max was still sitting and watching television. “Hooked again, Max?”
“I haven’t watched television in weeks.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Owen has over three hundred channels,” he said.
“I suppose you’re going to watch them all before we leave tomorrow.” Max’s silence made my remark feel like a cheap shot. “I better go.”
“Don’t get caught,” he said, still staring at the television. “They hang spies.”
“That’s what Anna said.”
Max looked up and said, “Then I suppose you better listen – Billy Yank.”
“Want to come with me?” I asked.
“No,” he said emphatically.
I started for the door but stopped short, troubled by an uneasy feeling. I suspected that I was about to enter into an almost sacred place where, if others understood how I came to be there, I might not be welcome. Perhaps as an attempt to find a way to justify what I was about to do, I asked, “Max, what do you think I’ll find out – out there?”
Max looked up from the television and said, “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“And?”
“Oh, you may learn a little history, but other than that, I don’t think you’ll find out much more than you already know.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“You’ll only be there for a few hours. What can you really learn in a few hours? People out there are like people anywhere else; they say ‘Hi, how are you?’ and engage in small talk but you won’t learn much from them.”
“What am I trying to learn?”
“You tell me?” said Max.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “For one thing, I’m just curious. I mean the whole idea of people coming together to reenact Civil War battles is intriguing – the history, I guess.” I could not think of anything better to say.
“The history.” Max made me feel like he wasn’t satisfied with my answer.
I shrugged and added, “I don’t know. Some things just don’t seem to add up.”
He cut his eyes at me, “Like what?”
“Well, on the one hand, it just looks like a celebration – a fad – that will lose popularity in a few years. But when I look at those newspaper clippings sitting over there,” I pointed to the stack of papers setting in the kitchen, “and when I look at some of the books in Ms. Thompson’s little bookstore, I start to wonder. Then I ride out into the valley with Anna, and I see Confederate flags all over the place – I find it even more troubling. On the other hand, knowing that there’s a Union army and several black reenactors makes me think that my first impression is the right one – it’s all just a way to get away for a while, like a hobby.” I stood silent for a moment, before I added, “So, I guess I’m really just curious.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” said Max. “But, like I said, don’t expect to learn much. People often hide their motives, especially when they’re involved in something controversial.”
“Controversial? Come on, Max. What are you hiding?”
Max continued, “You’re probably too young to remember this, but there was a lot of heavy stuff that went down in Charleston when we lived there in the ’60s.”
“Like what?”
“Like the Civil Rights movement, integration, riots, you name it,” Max answered. “I don’t remember all the details, but a judge who lived on our street was presiding over a court case that had something to do with desegregation. What I do remember is that he had National Guard soldiers camped out at his house for weeks. It seemed like everyday, late in the afternoon, a line of cars would parade by his house with people hanging out the windows cursing, some of them waving Confederate flags.”
“You know, I remember that,” I said, wondering whether or not my memories of standing outside the judge’s home listening to his son talk about the National Guard soldiers were real. “Did he have children?”
“Huh,” replied Max.
“Did his son knife the tires on the National Guard’s Jeep?”
Max laughed, “How-in-the-hell do you remember that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s what I remember most; though I do remember watching the cars go by. And, I remember seeing footage on the news. Blacks standing on one side of a fence arguing with whites that were standing on the other. They seemed almost violent.”
Max corrected me. “No, they were violent. Things got ugly. I remember it well, too well.”
“Now that I think about it, I even remember the first black student in my classroom at Harbortown Elementary. I distinctly remember the principal escorting her into the class and seating her in the back of the room.”
“A lot of silly things went on back then.”
“What else?” I asked. It was interesting to listen to Max talk about events that I could only recall in the vaguest way.
“Do you remember Queen’s Branch Academy?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “but that’s in Virginia.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Do you know why it was established?”
“No.”
“It and many others like it were started back in the ’60s. White people didn’t want their kids going to desegregated schools, so they started private schools like Queen’s Branch – no blacks allowed. In some places they even shut down the public school systems.”
“Really.”
“For several years some counties didn’t offer any kind of public education. In some places, right here in of Virginia, there are middle-aged bla
ck men and women who have very little formal education – only because the public schools in the county they grew up in were closed down.”
“For how long?”
“Five, six, seven years.”
“Queen’s Branch closed down didn’t it?”
“Not exactly – it’s now called The Blanchard School. Some guy, named Blanchard, donated thirty million dollars to keep it going forever.”
“Is it integrated?”
“Barely.” Max sat up on the edge of his seat and said, “Get this – several years ago I interviewed for a job there. I go in and the man tells me the job doesn’t pay much, but then he asks me if I have kids. I said, ‘Yes, I have two.’ Then he leans forward and asks me quietly, as though he didn’t want anyone to hear, ‘Do they go to the county school?’ I answered, ‘yes’. Then he asked in the same quiet voice, ‘Are you happy with the education they’re getting?’ Then he winked and said, ‘You do understand what I’m asking you, Mr. Hamilton.’ Now I could never prove anything by the words the man used, but it seemed obvious to me that he was a racist.”
“Seriously?” I asked Max, although I already knew the answer.
“Listen, Ian, I really don’t know what you might find out, out there. Obviously, reenactments seem tailor-made for guys like that; and, I don’t doubt that there are some like him around here.”
I nodded.
“That guy we saw when we first got here, you know, the Confederate officer. For all we know, he could be like the man I talked to at the Blanchard School. But guys like that are smart, very smart. They’re not going to walk up to you and give you an application to join a white supremacist group without knowing something about you first.”
“No, I guess not.”
A few seconds later, Max added, “To be fair, I guess we should consider the other side of this thing. The guys I know that reenact, they don’t seem prejudiced, at least not too the degree that we’ve been talking about – not even close. I work with some of them, sit with them at ballgames and go to parties at their homes. From what I’ve seen the color of a man’s skin doesn’t matter to them.
“I know one guy who’s got a room in his house filled with pictures and documents and other things that belonged to his ancestors. The room is like a museum. He’s got a letter that a woman wrote to her husband while he was off fighting in the Revolutionary War. He’s got pictures of uncles and grandparents who fought in World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, not to mention the Civil War. He’s got pieces of uniforms, discharge papers, medals and a ton of other stuff. He says that war-related artifacts are sometimes easier to come by. People write more letters, save official documents …”
Max’s words continued to pour over me as I stood by the door trying to imagine what I would encounter as I mingled among the reenactors. I shifted back and forth between two different images. In one, I was sitting in front of a small campfire where men were talking about the hardships and gruesome realities endured by their ancestors. These men spoke reverently and in great detail. In the other image, there was a raging bonfire with a rapidly rising column of red-hot embers surrounded by men pumping Confederate flags in the air and shouting slogans like “The South will rise again” and “Long live Dixie.” The second image frightened me and I considered taking the Confederate uniform off and spending the evening with Max, watching a movie.
“So,” I heard Max say, “you better hurry. Owen and Junior will be back any minute.”
I looked up and said distractedly, “I’ve got another question.”
“What’s that?”
“What’s it been like for you?”
“What do you mean?” asked Max.
“Growing up in a time when things changed so much.”
“Between the races?”
“Yeah.”
Max hesitated and his eyes shifted around, as if he was looking for an answer. Finally, he sighed and said, “Didn’t think about it so much when I was a kid. But somehow, as I’ve gotten older, it’s all seems more complicated. I wonder what it was like for Mom and Dad. It can’t be easy to put one’s experiences behind and start all over. Yet, they seemed to change with the times. Maybe they understood all along that race should never be a basis for how people are treated, despite what they might have learned as kids growing up in the South.”
“Umm,”
Suddenly agitated, Max said, “Stop asking me all these questions.”
“Just one more.”
“What now?”
“What was the name of the woman who helped Mom out around the house?”
Max pulled back. “When we lived in Charleston?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Betty,” he answered softly. He lowered his head and the same expression I had seen on his face that morning, when he was sitting by the fire whistling, returned to his face. “I didn’t think you remembered her,” he said.
“I didn’t know that I did.” I stepped out of the RV and walked toward the Confederate camp.