Wings to the Kingdom

by Cherie Priest

Page 25

 

  “Got it. ”

  “Or shoot somebody with. ”

  “Not a problem. ”

  “Or bludgeon somebody with. ”

  “No blunt objects. I get it. ”

  “I’m not kidding, Benny. If we get caught it’ll be bad enough without any illegal accoutrements. ”

  “But”—he raised his fork on high again, jabbing it in the air for punctuation purposes—“consider this, my friend: Now we know that somebody else is out there on that battlefield, and he—or, for all I know, they—are not following your rules. ”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right. ”

  “And something tells me that he or they will shoot at us as easily as they shot at the Marshalls. ”

  “This is true. However, if there’s a gun-toting maniac roaming the battlefield, a couple of knives aren’t going to help us much anyway, are they? If someone is shooting at us in the dark and we get hit, a knife is going to serve no purpose at all except to leave us as a pair of very sharp corpses. ”

  “I can live with that. ”

  “No, you can’t—which is the point. ”

  “No pun intended?”

  “Oh shut up, Benny. ”

  11

  Digging for More

  SAND MOUNTAIN, ALABAMA, SIX WEEKS EARLIER

  Rudy went into town for some reason or another, and while he was gone Pete snuck into his mother’s old room. He didn’t know why he was sneaking, but he felt like sneaking was called for. The room was not his—it had never been his. Now it wasn’t even his mother’s.

  Pete didn’t know where Rudy kept the letters, but a few minutes of digging through cedar-scented drawers turned up a likely-looking manila envelope. Inside he found the aging photocopies of dirty paper covered with chicken-scratch handwriting.

  He sat down on the ugly, patchwork comforter that covered his mother’s old bed, and he began to read.

  The reading was slow going at first. Reading had never been Pete’s best subject, and the dead Confederate’s tiny, slanted script was difficult to make out in some parts, nearly impossible in others.

  He needed more information.

  Down the road within walking distance there was a library, but it wasn’t much of one—a little branch that consisted of one big room, two smaller ones, and a couple of reference desks. But the librarian was a helpful woman—a pretty, younger woman with long brown hair clipped back in a barrette. Her round face was all smiles when he showed her the old letters. She walked him over to the computers and helped him with a search engine.

  “Genealogy is such a popular thing these days,” she said, pointing and clicking with dexterity that Pete could only dream about. He couldn’t even type beyond the two-finger hunt-and-peck method. “And that’s real interesting, about your family. Lots of people around here had family in the war, of course, but that you’ve still got record of this stuff, that’s neat. Do you know where the original documents came from?”

  “No,” Pete admitted, watching her long white hands palm the mouse around the worn red pad. “Well, then again, I think my uncle said something about a museum. One for the battlefield. ”

  “The one at the visitors’ center there? Out at Chickamauga?”

  “I think so, but I don’t really know. That’s where my uncle thinks it went, anyhow. ”

  “That could be. It’s a nice setup out there. ” She brushed her hair off her shoulders and squinted at the monitor, and Pete thought about how the library’s setup wasn’t half bad either.

  “You’ve been out there?”

  “Once or twice. Hasn’t everybody within a hundred miles?”

  “Probably. But the museum there, it’s a good one?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not bad. It’s not like something you’d find in Atlanta or anything, but there’s more there than you’d expect. And some old nut donated his antique gun collection, so the museum has a big wing dedicated to that, too. ”

  Pete turned the photocopy over in his hands. “Do you think they’d have something like this out on display? So I could look at the original?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t see why not. And if it’s not out on display, there are rangers who work there that could tell you about it if you asked. A bunch of the collection objects are kept down in the basement, I hear. ”

  “In the basement?”

  “I guess they don’t have room for it all out in the open. I bet they switch it around from time to time, changing out the exhibits for people who come by regularly. So that way, it’s not the same thing every time they visit. You should take this out there. I bet the folks who work there would love to see it, and they’d know a whole lot more about it than I would. ”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Pete said, rising from the uncomfortable plastic chair. “I may just do that. I appreciate your time. ”

  “That’s what I’m here for. ” She smiled up at him, and he almost blushed as he hurried his way out.

  When Rudy got home from wherever he’d been, Pete asked if he could borrow the car. Rudy rubbed the keys between his thumb and forefinger, worrying them thoughtfully.

  “What do you want it for?” he asked.

  Pete already had his answer planned out. “Job hunting. ”

  “Dressed like that?”

  “Well, I didn’t mean right now. I was gonna clean up first. ” He wiped his hand self-consciously across his forehead and back through his hair. He was still wearing the same dirty clothes he had on when he’d walked to the library. “And besides,” he added, “I’m not trying out for a big insurance company or anything. I thought I’d drive down to St. Elmo and try my luck at the foundry. ”

  “That’s not a bad idea. ”

  “No sir, I didn’t think so either. ”

  “Well, you take it, then. Just be real careful. It’s pulling to the right. I need to get it realigned, when I get the money. ”

  And Pete went down the mountain and into the city; or rather, he went through the city and down into Rossville, just on the other side of the state line. According to the signs on the interstate, you could get to the battlefield by such a route.

  Pete took the signs at their word, and about twelve miles south of Chattanooga, he found himself driving onto park property.

  He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the rolling hills, tended grass, and paved bike trails felt anticlimactic somehow. My ancestors died here, he thought. And a whole lot of other people’s ancestors, too. It felt funny to putter through the lawns and see people with picnic gear seeking out patches of sun.

  Off to the right of the main road there was a big, antebellum-house-shaped building with cannons in front of it. Pete took a guess that this was the visitors’ center and museum. He parked the loud old car in the lot, lining up the hood with a pyramid made of stacked cannonballs.

  He got out of the car then, retrieving his yellow envelope from the passenger’s seat and tucking it under his arm.

  Up the stairs and inside, past the glass front doors, there were walls lined with paintings and photographs. Most of it was standard portraiture of long-gone generals and colonels and morbid Mathew Brady samplings; but in the panels between the displays the walls were adorned with large plaques offering episodic history lessons in a big bold font.

  Flags hung down from the ceiling like so much bunting, and a donation box asked where you were visiting from. A clear plastic sheet over the top had slots for all the states in the Union, with a change-sized hole in case you wanted to represent your home locale with a bit of cash.

  The Georgia bin was stuffed pretty full of dollars and quarters, and the Tennessee one was too. Kentucky also had a smattering of spare change, and a few Alabamans had come by as well.

  Otherwise, the pickings were slim.

  Pete shoved his hand down into his pocket and pulled out a few nickels. He pushed them through the Alabama hole and moved on t
o read the informative wall coverings.

  He walked the wall slowly, reading closely, pulling the words into his chest and feeling his ribs expand with pride. This was the first national military park in the country. Thirty-five thousand soldiers had died on these grounds, and surviving veterans of the conflict had petitioned Congress to see the land protected. Two men in particular had spearheaded the drive: General H. V. Boynton and Ferdinand Van Derveer. Together they lobbied until the funds were raised and the territory was set aside in 1890.

  He followed the script around to the left, momentarily skipping the park guide’s island at the juncture of the three main hallways.

  In the next room he found more historical graffiti, and artifacts too. A black munitions cart had been carefully restored and placed in the mini-museum, as well as a full gray uniform, some cannonballs, a journal or two, and a wealth of buttons and insignia—accompanied by historical photographs that had been blown up and posted beside them.

  “Chattanooga, as seen from Missionary Ridge,” one caption read. The city looked like a mud pit crisscrossed by railroad tracks, and Pete thought to himself that it didn’t look like something anyone in his right mind would fight over.

  But there were other notes too, about the city’s importance as a transportation hub and center for the distribution of goods. The trains that chugged through the dirty little mud pit were feeding ammunition and food to the entire South, thus the North’s interest in getting a good grip on the place.

  Once he felt like he’d absorbed everything worthwhile from the left corridor displays, Pete returned to the park ranger cube and asked if he could have a map.

  A blond lady in a beige-and-black uniform handed him a pamphlet that unfolded into a multicolored diagram of the grounds. It noted bike trails, street names, and numbered all the significant monuments, cross-referencing them on the back.

  “What does that mean, the ‘significant monuments’?” Pete asked.

  “There are too many monuments to list them all on a handout bill,” the lady told him, pointing at the map with a plastic pen. “Most of the big monuments you see along the trails were paid for by veterans of assorted regiments, or by their families. Many of the other ones are off the beaten path; some of them are even out in the middle of the woods. ”