Chapter XIV
7:20 pm
I left Ben and slowly walked toward a campfire burning just beyond the perimeter of the outer circle of tents. There were at least ten men seated around the fire. I wasn’t sure if I should approach, but before I had a chance to decide someone said, “Take a seat, stranger.”
Realizing I’d been spotted, I stepped forward and said, “Sorry to bother you.”
A softly smiling man, sitting on the other side of the fire said, “Forget it. Have a seat if you like.”
The two men seated just in front of me shifted, making ample room between them for me to sit in front of the fire. Someone else rolled a log into the open space and the man who had first spoken to me said, “That one looks comfortable.”
“Thanks,” I said and sat down. Two sizable logs had just been added to the burning remains of many other pieces of wood that radiated heat from the fire.
“Haven’t seen you around here,” said the smiling man.
“No, just got here today.”
“Ever been here before?”
“No, not in this lifetime anyway,” I answered. I was trying to be funny but my response was met with blank stares.
“So, what brings you here?” the smiling man asked.
“Well –” I hesitated. “Curiosity – more than anything else.”
Another reenactor spoke out. “Curiosity,” he said as though he didn’t trust me.
“Lighten up,” said the smiling man. “Don’t mind Dexter, he comes off like he don’t like no one.” I looked at Dexter and he reacted with a toothy grin.
I nodded and said, “Dexter,” trying to sound respectful.
Others that were sitting around the fire laughed until Dexter leaned to the side and farted. The man sitting next to him stood up and said, “Dexter, you stinking moron, this is a Civil War reenactment. If you want’a do Blazing Saddles, go somewhere else.”
“My name’s Bob,” said the smiling man. I assumed he was some kind of leader within the group. “You’ve got to forgive my brother. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was a little touched.” Bob then introduced me to other men sitting around the campfire. “Course you won’t remember their names,” he said, “but it don’t matter no how. So, what’s your name?”
“Ian.”
“Are you with a regiment, Ian?” asked Bob.
“Ah, no. No I’m not.”
“Well, don’t let that bother you,” he replied. “There’s others like you hanging around. Sometimes it takes a while to find a group of guys you’re comfortable with.”
I nodded and said, “Sounds reasonable.”
The man sitting next to me tapped me on the arm and asked, “Care for some jerky?”
“No thanks,” I replied.
“Good stuff,” he said. “Dried venison.” He waggled a piece of meat in my face.
“Sure, why not?” I took the jerky and bit off a piece. I was pleasantly surprised by the sweet flavor.
Bob spoke again, “We represent the Virginia 1202nd. There’s about twenty more of us.” He motioned toward the other camp. “Some of them are serving the Union army this weekend. Others couldn’t make it.”
I turned my head toward the Union camp and could see the flickering light of scattered campfires. “So reenactors will, shall I say, cross over to the other side?”
“Only the traitors,” said Dexter.
Bob added, “We wouldn’t have reenactments in the South if it wasn’t for the guys from our side willing to put on a Union uniform. Not all reenactors will do it, but we don’t mind.”
“So, how many reenactments do you get to in a year?”
“Go to as many as we can – usually two or three. Good chance to hop on our hogs and get away from it all for a weekend. Life kinda slows down, you know – no TV, no traffic, not much in the way of modern distractions, good company to sit around and chat with – kind of lifestyle that’s fast becoming a thing of the past.”
“You guys own Harleys?”
“Most of us do,” said Bob.
“How about you?” Dexter asked.
“No, no motorcycle, just a good pair of hiking boots.”
“Reminds me of what goes on at night in a huntin cabin,” said the man seated to the right of me. His name was Flapp; I presumed it was because his ears were extraordinarily large. One couldn’t help but notice the three studded earrings in his left ear. “Fellas just sittin around shootin the breeze, ya know.”
Another man added, “If this was hunting season, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here.”
“Me either,” said Dexter.
I glanced around at each of the men’s faces. Dexter was still looking at me as though he wished I would go away. “Do you ever bring your families?” I asked.
A few men nodded. One said, “Hell no.”
“How about you,” asked Flapp, “your family here?”
“Just my brother; he’s visiting with a friend right now, though.”
“Where you from?” Bob asked.
“I grew up in Tidewater. Lived in South Carolina and other places, but I consider myself a Virginian.”
“Good choice,” said Dexter.
Bob added, “See, he ain’t so bad.” I didn’t know if he was talking to me or Dexter.
Dexter asked, “How long you been workin on that there beard?”
“A few months,” I replied.
“Damn good beard. Good outfit too. If’n you was a more wiry sort of guy I’d say you was a hardcore.”
“Hardcore,” I repeated, recalling Ms. Thompson’s description.
“Do you know what a hardcore is?” asked Dexter.
“Yeah, sort of.” I said.
“You don’t sound too sure about that. I’ll tell ya what a hardcore is.” Dexter continued, “Hardcore’s the kinda guy who wants everything about reenactments to be authentic – right down to the dirt. Why, they’d use real bullets if’n they’d let ’em. But we don’t. Ain’t too many hardcores here this time on account so many of us brought tents. By the time this battle took place in 1865 there wasn’t many tents to be had by the Rebels. Anyway, there’s a few hardcores out yonder spoonin tonight.”
“Spooning?” I responded.
“Yeah, when it gets cold these guys kinda snuggle up to one another to keep warm. They don’t get faggy or nothin, they just do it cause they say that’s what soldiers done to survive. Wanna talk to somebody bout what it was really like in the war – talk to a hardcore. Them boys, they know things about the war no one else does. I reckon I’m right when I say they don’t like us being here cause we’re not so picky. They call people like us, farbs.”
I hesitated to ask, but I couldn’t resist, “Farb?”
“Yeah, farb,” replied Dexter. “I don’t know exactly what farb stands for, but it’s basically someone who don’t care much ’bout being authentic. People like us, we’re just here to have a good time. We don’t care nothin much about being authentic. But the hardcores, they know if it weren’t for us they wouldn’t have reenactments to come to, cause there ain’t enough of ’em. So they tolerate us.”
Flapp interrupted. “If I didn’t know better, Dexter, I’d say you’ve had too much to drink.”
“I ain’t drank nothing since dinner, Flapp. Drank water then.”
“Go on with your story, Dexter,” said Flapp.
“I ain’t telling no story, I’m just trying to tell our friend here ’bout hardcores and farbs and spoonin.”
Bob said, “I think he’s got the picture.”
“You want a story, I’ll tell you a story. But I weren’t tellin our friend here no story.”
I thought I would like Dexter to tell “a story,” although I felt that I was the only one. Before I had a chance to be disappointed, a young guy sitting next to Bob said, “Tell us a story, Dexter.”
I might have believed that the young man was just being considerate if the rest of the group hadn’t responded to his request with a simultaneous groan. I
sensed that the group had heard enough of Dexter’s stories. But it was too late. Bob tried to stop Dexter, but he insisted on telling a story.
“Well, this here story’s ’bout my great grandfather on my mama’s side, William Roe – most people called him Daddy Roe. Now, Daddy Roe, he was a hard man. Folks that knew him says that near ’bout every other word that come out’a his mouth was a curse word. G.D. this and to hell with that. I reckon he was that way cause he warn’t a big man, but he always had a big man’s job. He worked on the water all his life. Lived on Mary’s Island, which – case you don’t know – is just northeast off the mouth of the Potomac. It’s only four miles long and one mile wide; ’bout half of its marsh land, filled with skeeters in the summertime. Back in Daddy Roe’s day, the only way on and off the island was by boat or ferry.
“Anyhows, Daddy Roe, he owned a couple of work-boats – used ’em for crabbin, fishin and oysterin. He always had a bunch a fellas workin for him – big round-shouldered guys, the kinda shoulders one gets when he spends days workin with shaft tongs – these were the kinda men that wouldn’t take much crap off nobody. So Daddy Roe, he had to be a hard man to keep fellas like that from gettin out’a hand.
“Hard as he was though, he had a reputation for being fair and for standin up for what he believed in. If’n I’m not mistaken he was a deacon in the church.”
As Dexter talked he made a variety of gestures with his hands. When he described the way Daddy Roe looked, he used his hands to illustrate size or shape. He made a fist when he described a characteristic like “hard man”.
Everyone in the group looked intently at Dexter as he continued. “Well, at one time Mary’s Island was integrated – meanin both black and white folks lived there. That was way back during the first part of the 1900s, I think. As you might ’magine, back then there was lotta whites folks that didn’ care much for havin blacks livin on the island. They was always blamin anything that went wrong on the blacks. Somebody steal somethin, it was the blacks that done it; somebody get scared by somethin in the night, it was blacks trying to get ’em. Talk went on like that for years. Then one day a white man accuses a black man of cuttin him up and robbin him a few days before Christmas. The white man went around tellin other white folks his story, gettin ’em all stirred up like they was ready to lynch somebody.
“Now you’ll have to forgive me, but here’s where the story gets messed-up. For a long time, I believed that Daddy Roe rounded up all the blacks and told them that they had twenty-four hours to get off the island, and twenty-four hours later they was all gone. That’s the story my grandmother told me.
“One day, though, I come across some old newspapers in my Granddaddy’s attic. This Granddaddy was Daddy Roe’s son-in-law. When I read these newspapers, the old story about Daddy Roe runnin all the blacks off the island didn’ add up. As best I could tell a white man was cut up and a black man was later accused and put in jail for it. A paper dated some weeks later had a short article about how all the blacks had left Mary’s Island.
“I was confused, so I asked my Granddaddy ’bout it. He told a different story than grandma. He said that the trial was typical of the times. An all-white jury saw a white man who’d been cut up, tellin that he’d been knifed by the black man. Course the black man said he didn’ do it, but the all-white jury didn’ believe him. Granddaddy said that after the trial Daddy Roe overheard one of the white men talkin bout how he’d lied, that he and the other white man had been drunk and got in a fight with each other – things got a little out’a hand and one cut the other up.
“Now while the black man was in jail, some of the whites on the island started talking ’bout lynchin him when he gets out. The whole thing kinda snowballs, and the next thing you know lotta black folks on the island start gettin death threats. Meantime, the black man gets out’a jail, goes home to Mary’s Island, hears that some white folks is out to get him. So he gets drunk and runs off into the woods; scared to death I reckon.
“At some point, Daddy Roe, he gets wind of what’s goin on and meets with a group of blacks at a church. Granddaddy said that they decided that the safest thing to do was to leave the island. So that night Daddy Roe and my other great-grandfather, Granddaddy’s father, run several boatloads of black folk, with all the belongings they could carry, over to the mainland. Course the black man that’s in the most danger, he’s nowhere to be found. My great-grandfather later finds him hidin in the church attic. Granddaddy said his father had a hard time convincing the man to come with him. Seems the black man was afraid he was takin him into some kinda trap. But they finally got him on the boat and took him across to the mainland.
“I asked Granddaddy why someone didn’t just tell the law that the two white men had lied. He said that back then it wouldn’a done much good. The law weren’t often friendly to blacks.” Dexter looked around and said, “I guess that’s about it.”
Instantly, Flapp asked, “Dexter, are you proud of your great-grandfather?”
“I’m proud of all my great-grandfathers.”
“But shouldn’t they have stood up to the other whites on the island?”
“If’n you’re talkin ’bout absolute right and wrong, I suppose they could have. But the way I see it, there was many things that had to be considered.”
“What do you mean – ‘many things’?” asked Flapp.
I knew what Dexter meant by “many things” and so did everyone else sitting around the fire, including Flapp. Daddy Roe took a risk by getting involved in the first place. Perhaps his first concern was for everyone’s safety, including his own, his family’s, and that of the “blacks” and even the “whites”. Daddy Roe did his best to make sure no one got hurt – and no one did. Sure, he could have taken a stronger stand. In fact, one might argue that he should have. One might even argue that he should have disclosed the truth and been prepared to fight, literally, to bring justice to the “white” men and to uphold the rights of the “blacks” to stay on Mary’s Island, but he did act, and he acted in a sensible way. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened to all the Jewish people in Cracow if Oskar Schindler had taken the kind of absolute stand that Flapp was alluding to against the Nazis. Mary’s Island was no prison camp, but in the early twentieth century I’m sure it wasn’t above bloodshed over racial issues. I’m sure there was more to Daddy Roe than we would ever know, good and bad.
At that moment, I felt sorry for Dexter. It seemed that Flapp had backed him into a corner. But Dexter surprised me.
“Look, Flapp,” he said. “Prejudice is a lot like a flower bulb.”
“What?” asked Flapp, who, like the rest of us, had no idea what Dexter was talking about.
“Prejudice is a lot like lookin at a flower bulb – sometimes it’s hard to know what kind of flower is inside all the layers around it. The layers is things like color, like how much money or education somebody’s got, like different languages and religion. And maybe you see things like the way laborers look at the bosses or Republicans look at Democrats when they’re watching a presidential nomination – Democrats can’t say nothing right cause Republicans know they’re Democrats – how would they act if they didn’t? Works the other way around too. You guys know what I’m talkin about. Some people don’t like me, Flapp. They’re prejudiced against me cause I’m a big, goofy looking guy that talks funny. The way I see it, those things about me that’s different are just some of my layers. That’s the way people are, they can’t get past other people’s layers and see what’s inside. You can’t tell if you’re looking at a tulip or a wild onion if you look too closely at the skin.”
Flapp was shaking his head. The motion of his ears made it even more apparent why he was called Flapp. Finally he said, “You’ve been watching too many movies, Dex.”
“It don’t matter so long as I watch the right ones.”
“Dexter,” said Bob, “you’re a hell-of-a-lot smarter than I thought.”
“I’ve been tryin to tell
ya, Bob.”
“Guess I should’ve been listening,” he replied.
Dexter’s story and the friendly bantering among them made me realize that this was a group of men who enjoyed each other’s company. Perhaps it was a common interest in the Civil War that brought them together, but I sensed that could have just as easily been something else. Perhaps all that was needed was an opportunity to sit around a campfire eating jerky and sharing stories. I wondered what would happen if the popularity of reenactments began to wane – would I encounter this group of men camping next to a lake or on a mountain or in a cabin somewhere?