Lookaway, Lookaway

by Barnhardt, Wilton

  —Women may portray combatants with the approval of their immediate commanders. Every reasonable effort must be made to disguise their gender.

  “Some of us,” said Dorrie, “won’t have to work that hard on our disguise.”

  She was still on for going in drag as a Confederate soldier; Duke Johnston was contributing the uniform, scabbard, powder horn, and the insignia of a North Carolina unit that had black Confederate soldiers. “I’m nervous now,” she told Josh. “I’ll be traipsing around in a thousand dollars’ worth of museum antiquities. Not much time for rape and pillage of the local white women.”

  —Modern eyeglasses will not be tolerated on the battlefield. Those needing period eyewear should make the needed arrangements prior to the event to acquire same.

  —All uniforms should be constructed of natural fiber materials. Uniforms should also be of a proper design or style.

  —Shoes and boots must be of the proper construction. Jefferson boots, brogans, and period cut boots are highly recommended. Modern military combat boots, cowboy or work boots will not be allowed. All re-enactors will wear shoes of an acceptable fashion.

  —Bayonets must remain sheathed at all times.

  —No horses will be ridden through camps or sutlers’ areas at any time during the event. Riders are asked to be particularly careful around the large number of spectators expected for this event.

  —All horses/mules will be properly groomed and shod.

  —Horsemen will maintain control of their animals at all times.

  —Horsemen will bring their own feed and provender.

  Provender, thought Josh, reading his father’s notes. Sutlers. Even the words were romantically archaic and exciting.

  Dorrie and Josh were spending every weekend at the Johnston house in the month leading up to the Skirmish. Getting the credit card PayPal hooked up to the website was proving an ordeal, so Josh left Dorrie and his dad at the downstairs computer and went up to his childhood room again. He lay on his short, teenager’s bed, stared at the shelves and the way the streetlight projected a shadow of the window frames on the far wall, squares stretched to rhombuses. In a year or so this room of secrets that, somehow, had not incinerated from all the adolescent longing would belong to some other person.

  Mom and Dad, Josh understood, were going to sell this home (had to sell it, given their finances) and move to the new gated community on the Catawba, when it was finished being built. The developers would start construction on the site the Monday after the Skirmish re-enactment. Going to visit Mom and Dad in some South Carolina faux-antebellum-themed enclave, Josh thought, would be different, though, and a little sad.

  He remembered coming back, a decade ago, to this house after five years at Chapel Hill. This was the beginning of his year and a half separation from Dorcas Jourdain as constant companion and adviser. To leave gay-friendly Chapel Hill was to be shown the door of Paradise by the flaming sword, condemned to his room in his mom and dad’s house where loneliness had been practiced and perfected. Joshua dutifully had carried the box of college artifacts up to his room but his photo album was too incendiary for prying eyes, so he deconstructed it, peeling out the more salacious photos. Birthday parties where cute boys made out with him in the coat room, amateur theater openings and the endless post-performance parties, weekends at some rich boy’s parents’ house at Wrightsville Beach, where he sat until three A.M. on the cottage’s steps with his arm around Alex Blayton, the only black guy on the UNC tennis team that year, talking about whether Alex might be gay or not. They ended up kissing, so you’d think that would have constituted an answer, but Alex was ignorant of what he wanted to an unusual depth. And that shot of him tongue-kissing Sanjay Patel on his birthday. Very shy and self-effacing and barely speaking above a whisper, a painfully thin boy whose effect was dependent upon his large liquid brown eyes and tremendous eyelashes that, Joshua thought, you could hang Christmas ornaments from. Well, at least the Patels were loaded, his dad one of the richest surgeons in North Carolina. See, Mom? Only the queers of “quality”!

  Where had those photos gone? For years he would give the search one more try, hoping under some desk drawer or in the back of some closet the too-well-hidden envelope would miraculously show itself. Maybe Alma found the photos and destroyed them so his mother would never see them. Alma always stiffened when Josh asked about her son Jeffrey and how he was getting on, always was quick to mention how much he was dating, dating all those women, so many girls. Josh once asked for Jeffrey’s e-mail address or phone number so these childhood friends could be in touch and Alma affected not to know it. Yeah, Alma threw those pictures away.

  * * *

  “I’d a been here sooner,” Josh told Dorrie, “but I got the good-for-nothing black girl at the Wilco, talking on her cell, not knowing how to work the credit card swipe.”

  “Why can’t it be ‘a good-for-nothing girl’? Why does it have to be ‘the good-for-nothing black girl’?”

  “Because when I say ‘good-for-nothing black girl’ you know just what I’m talking about. Long enamel fingernails painted fuchsia, crazy hair straightened and then molded into something that looks like a melted black ice-cream cone, talking on the cell to Shenequah or Lakeesha. You said one of those last week.”

  “When?”

  “When I asked you why it took so long for you to come over, you said that you got behind a ‘slow-ass old white man’ on Tyvola Road. Why not just say ‘slow-ass old man’?”

  “Because it was a slow-ass old white man, in an old 1970s junk car and there he is wearing his hat to drive—you know what I’m talking about.”

  “And you know what I’m talking about when I talk about the good-for-nothing black girl behind the counter.”

  “Speaking of. When you gonna throw good-for-nothing Calvin out of the apartment?” Dorrie followed with. “Gettin’ sick of his sorry, sorry ass being around all the muthafuckin’ time.”

  “He’ll be moving on soon. My porn collection is, strangely, not to his taste.”

  Dorrie and Joshua would drive to the mixed neighborhoods of Charlotte when they were bored and play black-house/white-house.

  “Oh this ain’t even close,” Dorrie would say, waving it away. “Black house. Yard looks like shit, grills on the windows, porch railing painted black. A white person would have painted it white.”

  And down the block, Josh’s turn: “It’s a white house. Appliance on the porch—never fails. Black people would worry about it being ripped off, or they’d take the old non-working washer out to the country and dump it—”

  “Next to one of those NO DUMPING ALLOWED signs,” Dorrie concurred. In North Carolina, that particular sign had an opposite effect on the population.

  “But an old white man,” Josh went on, “thinks he’s gonna fix that piece of junk one day and so it stays on the porch. He thinks it’s valuable.”

  But there was a several-years-old black Cadillac in the drive. “Not so sure now,” said Dorrie. “No white people drive black Cadillacs.”

  “I think it depends on the interior.”

  Dorrie hopped out of their car and ran over to the Cadillac in the drive.

  “Don’t get shot,” Josh called to her, listlessly.

  She cupped her hands to the glass, peeked inside and hopped back to the car. “Maroon and velvety.”

  “Black house!” they called out in unison.

  * * *

  Dorrie was laughing at a profile:

  LET ME SAY SOMETHING TO ALL YOU PEOPLE THAT HIT ME UP AND ACT LIKE YOUR ASS CANT SPEAK TO A NIGGA AFTER WE MEET WHEN YOU PLAINLY SAID YOU WANTED TO BE CHILL AND HANG OUT AND BE FRIENDS AND SHIT. NOTHER THING. THIS SITE IS BOUT 5% TOP AND 95% BOTTOM, AND HALF OF THEM TOPS, YOU GET THEM HOME, THEY BOTTOMS TOO.

  “Don’t get me started,” Dorrie began, “on straight black women and what shit they’ll put up with. The blindness. Oh Oprah and Maury and Jerry Springer, everybody can do a show on down-low brothers but nobody thinks it’s their man.”<
br />
  “Send those sex-starved women to me,” called out Calvin, stretched out on the couch before the TV, in T-shirt and sweatpants, the same ones worn yesterday. “I’ll make up for all that faggot dick.”

  Dorrie called back, “Uh, Calvin, I think these women are looking for a dick that can get hard.”

  “I’m hard right now, Carpetmunch. Whyn’t you come sit on some’n that isn’t plastic for a change?”

  “Triflin’ ass-under-indictment waste of space,” she uttered under her breath. Back to charlottedownlow. “Hm, Josh, he’s cute. Might have to get in that stream.”

  “Yum,” he said, looking at a handsome thirty-two-year-old man, who was brave enough to post a face picture. “Oh I’d get in the stream.”

  Calvin interrupted: “What’s all this ‘stream’ business you guys keep saying? ‘Oh I’d get in the stream.’ What’s up with that?”

  Das right bitches all u fuckin fem sissiboys, throwback looking, fat stank ass cheese puff niggas need NOT apply because aint shit yall can do fo me aiight Wit dat said all da niggas who got a bit of morality get at me. i dont kno wat to think … tried to be serious wit 2 many guys … and got thrown out like dirty drawrs … im sick and tired of bein sick and tired of all the games and gameplayas … DO I LOOK LIKE A MONOPLY BOARD … if u real and serious bout wat u want get at me baby

  Josh was touched by the plaintive “baby” at the end of it. Alas, the guy had checked the “married” box so that ruled him out. “What does ‘cheese puff nigga’ mean?” he asked Dorrie.

  “No idea, but I’m gonna start using it. Hey Calvin!”

  Dorrie let loose a string of insults culminating in the new one, and she was repaid in kind. Josh decided it was as good a time as any to go to the toilet. His friends continued to squabble, and he lingered a bit in the hallway to monitor the exchange of abuse. But from his vantage point in the hallway, he could watch Dorrie snooping; he saw that she clicked on a box called MESSAGE HISTORY which would let you see your correspondence over the last three months. Her click would reveal a few pages of his back-and-forth chat with Nonso, endearments and sex talk, talk of Nonso applying to a Charlotte-area school, talk of them being together.

  Dorrie turned around to see if Joshua had caught her snooping; they looked at each other. Rather than act sheepish and apologize, she was stern. “What did I tell you about this project?”

  * * *

  Joshua had seen dawn a few times staying out late in the clubs—well, not Charlotte’s clubs, but New York and Fort Lauderdale—but he had rarely woken up for dawn. Freeways empty, the drive-thru espresso place not even open yet, streetlights still on, the Charlotte skyline still glowing like Christmas for no one to see it, except himself on this Saturday morning, the only person awake in the whole world.

  From Friday afternoon, the banks of the Catawba had become populated with campers and re-enactors; cars parked on both sides of the narrow U.S. 21, RVs and trailers were installed on the Rock Hill riverbank, the people with tents made their way down a red-clay path half a mile downstream on the Fort Mill–Charlotte shore, away from the busy U.S. route. Josh turned his car into the dirt road leading to the riverbank (newly bulldozed by the developers), he checked in with the two martinet parking managers who needed to see ID and “proof of uniform”—no one got in the historic zone without authentic period attire. Josh let them inspect the dry-cleaning bag lying on the seat with its gray woolen Rebel uniform; his being Duke Johnston’s son counted for nothing. These re-enactors were serious folk.

  Once the car was committed to the nearly hidden parking area deep in the trees (ah, there’s the ambulance), he began his search for his father. Throughout this swath of Piedmont deciduous forest sloping down to the Catawba were lean-tos and campsites, campfires, murmured morning conversations. Howdys were exchanged with men with chest-length beards, men smoking long-stemmed pipes, men shaving with a straight razor by lantern light, one man gently playing an old melody on a harmonica; the smell of wood smoke and rashers of bacon permeated the woods.

  “Good show,” said his father, in full military regalia, looking like he walked out of a tintype. Duke clapped his son’s shoulder. “Today’s the day!” A tin cup of ink-black coffee was pressed into his hand.

  Around eleven A.M., Dorrie arrived—with Manuel, or, more precisely, Manuel in drag. Manuel was in a long blue house-servant dress, his wig neatly arranged under the do-rag. Josh pointed out that the eye makeup was a little too fabulous and Dorrie took to the mascara with a tissue.

  “Manuel?” he accused Dorrie.

  “Calvin isn’t coming, so I didn’t want the ticket to go to waste. How do I look? This takes my being a race traitor to a whole new fucking stratospheric level, you think?” Dorrie had cropped her hair quite close for the occasion and ran an Ace bandage around her breasts. She looked magnificent in the Rebel gray uniform.

  “I’m almost turned on,” Josh said. “Shame you didn’t have a gay little brother.”

  Manuel broke in: “You two could get married and have a baby … but … but Massa, I don’t know nuthin ’bout birthin’ no babies!”

  Josh: “Manuel. Any other time, I would be for camping it up and having some fun with the crackers, but this is my dad’s big day, so please—”

  “Okay Josh, don’t worry, baby. Let’s go to the big gathering over thataway. Idn’t no shortage of hot white daddies up in here.”

  As they walked to the sutlers’ fair, Josh asked Dorrie, “Calvin sitting on my couch watching sports instead?”

  “Calvin has left the building.”

  “He’s gone?” Joshua stopped walking. “What did you do?”

  Dorrie’s face was lamb-innocent. “Let’s face it. There wasn’t room in that apartment for the both of our black asses so I requested il se déplace loin de chez nous. C’mon, Josh. He wasn’t going to give that ass up again, so good riddance.”

  The sutlers (merchants who followed the battles) were amazing. There was a booth for the sale of Civil War–era jewelry, glassware, hip flasks, photos and pendants and lockets, hats—my God, the hats!

  “Mm, baby,” said Manuel, at a millinery stand, “I’ve got to have one of them belle-of-the-ball cotillion ladies’ hats! For my whole Scarlett O. Horror routine.” Manuel then ran a hand over a top hat while the haberdasher gave him an evil look.

  “That’s real beaver,” said the hatmaker.

  Manuel gave an exaggerated glance to Dorrie.

  Dorrie raised her eyebrows in a warning that whatever Manuel was about to say better not find voice.

  Amid the carnival atmosphere, Duke Johnston spotted Josh and Dorrie and waved from afar. Josh’s Uncle Gaston, in a double-breasted suit that would not have looked out of place on Cornelius Vanderbilt, was with his father, walking to a booth where he would sign autographs for his Cordelia Florabloom novels. Another Norma inspiration. A crowd was already gathered so perhaps Uncle Gaston would really cash in today.

  “Hey, look at Robert E. Lee,” said Josh. “Near Uncle Gaston’s booth.”

  “Damn, he does look like Robert E.,” said Dorrie.

  “This guy lately shows up to every Gaston Jarvis signing. My uncle hates him.”

  “That’s Ted,” said Manuel, nodding.

  Both Dorrie and Josh stared at Manuel.

  “He’s a regular at the Eagle,” Manuel continued. “He’s got a cop uniform, a German Nazi uniform. I’m into silver daddies but I’m not into uniform-play. Child, I’m the only one allowed to play dress-up. Still, he’s a good-looking ol’ white man, yes he is.”

  Dorrie watched a group of four women, all in nineteenth-century dress with bonnets, carrying a loom, walking it slowly to their booth. All the women were in their forties or fifties, laughing, attractive … and another middle-aged woman brought up the rear with some fine woven blankets and scarves, presumably made on the loom and for sale, in a pull cart. “I do declayuh,” Dorrie said in her plummiest white Deep South, closer to Foghorn Leghorn than Shelby Foote, “these f
lowers of Southern femininity may need an assurance of the manly protection that I intend to provide for them.”

  Josh: “They might actually think you’re a guy.”

  Dorrie pointed to the one in the dark gold skirt. “She’s looking a little dykey to me.”

  “You gonna go get in the stream?”

  “I aver, upon alllll my Southrin’ honor, that I shall go down to the rivuh, and get into the stream.”

  Manuel: “What you two always talking about? ‘Get in the stream.’ You call up at the store and he gets on the phone with you and all I ever hear is ‘get in the stream, girl.’”

  Neither said anything for a minute. And since Manuel pressed and the topic was before them, Dorrie told her story:

  Dorrie had an older, rich white lady friend, Mrs. Spangler, who was the chief patron of a series of women’s halfway houses, including one for women who had been prostitutes. Helping them to leave that life, escape their pimps, get some different life skills and a bus ticket to somewhere else, et cetera. The women and their counselors uproariously traded stories and Mrs. Spangler, without too much cajoling, could give chapter and verse of who among Charlotte’s elite frequented prostitutes. It was often what you imagined—the ministers with high-priced call girls, the politicians who felt there’d be less chance of detection by frequenting prostitutes working a street corner, rich men, rich men and their wives cruising in their BMWs along the industrial zones aside I-85 which became makeshift red-light areas. Anyway, there was this one rich white man with lots of prostate and circulation issues beyond the reach of Viagra, but he would call an elite call-girl service when he felt he could manage an uninterrupted flow of urination—preferring women of color, by the way—and would pay a generous rate for a girl to bask there in his weak stream, writhing in pretend ecstasy. He was in his late fifties, and a writer, living on the edge of Myers Park.

  Manuel smirked, casting a glance at Gaston Jarvis’s booth. “You mean…”