Fiction: Gray and fading

This is the photo on which this story is based. It is part of Scott Butki's Last Fiction Writer Standing project. This is a preliminary round, decribed here.

Tiny was fiddling with the microphone, leaning back in the molded plastic deck chair, his glasses pushed all the way down on his nose so he could focus on inserting the plug into its proper receptacle. Finding an appropriate connection, he thumbed the power switch on the mike to the "on" position. When the red power light began glowing, his white-bearded face displayed his triumph over his own obsolescence. The meter needles began jiggling with the faraway noises of the kids in the field picking up uniform buttons, paper wads from blank shells, chewing gum wrappers and soda cans -- all the detritus of the great battle re-enacted that afternoon.

Tiny tapped the mike, then said, "Testing, testing, one, two, three." He repeated it several more times, evidently pleased with the way the needles moved in response to his deep voice.

"It was my grandson's idea," he said to Ronnie, who was sitting straight up in his chair, the strict discipline of his posture contrasting with the dishevelment of the un-tucked and un-buttoned Confederate Army colonel's uniform he wore. "It's for a 'podcast' they call it," Tiny continued. "Like a radio show but on the computer. And better! You don't have to wade through crap to find something worth your time. You only listen to what you want to listen to." Ronnie nodded as if he heard his friend, then Tiny leaned back in his chair, comfortable as if he were on his own porch, and after a nicotine-thickened cough began narrating the details of the day and of the day 140 years earlier they'd been playacting.

Two scenes unfolded in Ronnie's head as he twirled his cigar and fell into a thousand-mile stare. The first was Korea. He always thought of the real thing after one of these fake wars. And he always thought of his last night on the battle-lines.

There was a black guy in their unit, thanks to Truman's integrating the military a couple of years earlier. His name was Kidd and so they called him "the Kid." He was from Florida like Ronnie and he was as black as the rest of them were white. Ronnie himself felt the initial disgust, but the Kidd was strong and speedy and fearless, and better with a gun than any of them. "It's good to have him on our side here," some of the guys said, "but it's not a good situation if he gets to using them skills back home."

He and Ronnie were in the same bunker, a 12'x12' hole dug in the side of a hill that was home for six guys, connected by trenches to the other bunkers. They were charged with defending that small mound as if all of their ancestors were buried there. The enemy lines on the next hill were so close, that on many nights they could smell the garlic in the Chinese soldiers' kim chee rations.

Nights were ideal for stealth, so they slept during the day and two nights out of three, either they patrolled the minefields and looked for weapon emplacements, traded gunfire, and tossed grenades into enemy trenches, or they guarded their own trenches from enemies using the same tactics. Every third night they rested, read, wrote letters, cleaned their weapons, or fought domestic battles against the omnipresent mud and rats.

On one of those rest nights, Ronnie and the Kid were alone in the bunker. They'd been getting along very well, finding plenty of things in common and one big difference they never talked about. Through the constant April drizzle of that night, they heard the crack of a gunshot close by in the trench, followed by a man's deep scream of "No!" and then the sound of a body collapsing in mud. They each had their weapons out immediately and when the canvas flap opened, the Kid put bullets through the heads of two Chinese soldiers before Ronnie had even registered whether they were friendlies or not. As they hit the ground dead, two primed grenades rolled into the center of the bunker, between them and the exit.

There was no shelter in the room and they couldn't toss them back out because they could hear their platoon-mates coming down the trenches to investigate. With no other choice, they each dove for the closest grenade, separated by only a foot or two. But when Ronnie landed on the ground, expecting to feel the steel lump pressing against his belly, he instead felt the Kid's hand clutching the bomb and dragging it out from under him. The Kid was scuttling backwards in the room, back towards the beds. When the explosions came, Ronnie was almost through the canvas flap. The concussion slammed him against the opposite wall of the trench.

Ronnie always meant to visit Kidd's people and tell them how he died, but he was never sure how he'd hold up under their stares, under their questioning of what they got out of the deal.

He took a long pull on his cigar, listened to Tiny still talking about how the Yankees were devoted to the cause of changing the Southern way of life. He called it "the War of Northern Aggression." He talked about the bravery of "the Sons of the South," about how Lincoln's treachery brought about his own deserved death, about how all the problems of the nation since could be traced to the Lost Cause.

Tiny would go on for a while, Ronnie knew. It was hard to remember, but he'd once been as certain as Tiny. He'd used words like "mongrelization" and "miscegenation" in everyday talk. He'd cheered on Governor Wallace and the beatings and gassings of marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge. He'd proudly voted Republican after a lifetime where he couldn't have conceived of voting anything but Democratic.

But when was it, he tried to remember, when he first felt that acid boiling in his stomach when he saw the footage of the Selma marches again? When was it that he finally turned away, unable to bear the weight of the brutality as clubs came down on children's heads? And... for what? Drinking fountains and bus seats was all it seemed to be about by then.

This morning, after he'd taken his various pills and eaten the breakfast his granddaughter had cooked for him, he was buttoning up his Lieutenant Colonel's uniform, when his four-year-old great-grandson came into the kitchen carrying a cut-down length of broomstick which had become one of his toys. His shoes were on the opposite feet they should have been on, his pants were unbuttoned, and his shirt was inside out. He'd dressed himself, and as a crowning touch, he was wearing the cavalry officer's cowboy hat Ronnie had left on the counter by the door.

"Can I go with you, Pop-Pop?" he said, wielding the broomstick like a sword. "We'll get all the bad guys." He proceeded to run around in the kitchen, narrowly avoiding disaster with every swing of his weapon, until he was tripped up by his own shoes, teetering, then falling on his rear with the hat hiding his face. Ronnie bent down to pick him up certain he'd be met by tears, but finding a big peek-a-boo smile when he lifted off the hat and looked at the child. The boy's skin was the color of the strong coffee Ronnie drank every morning and his eyes were deep and black. The nappy hair was soft and springy against the old man's hand as he stroked the child's head, then kissed him on the cheek and set him down.

"Eze, come here," his mother said. "You can't go with Pop-Pop today. "He's going to do grownup things and it's not for you." She looked up at her grandfather and scowled as she said "grownup.," Her pale skin and unyielding blue eyes looked so much like her mother's -- his daughter's -- that he had to remind himself that his daughter had been dead since the girl was Eze's age. But that meant he'd raised her and taught her and that everything she did and believed must have somehow come from him.

"I can't go, Pop-Pop?" the boy asked, ignoring his mother.

"No, Eze," he said. "This place isn't for you."

"Someday Pop-Pop will explain to you just exactly why it isn't for you," his granddaughter said while she adjusted Eze's clothing. "I'm sure he has some good reasons," she said, her every syllable a challenge. "Don't you?" He gently took the hat from his great-grandson, kissed the girl on the top of her head, and walked out without saying another word.

Tiny was still recording, but it sounded as if he was wrapping up. When he'd shut the mike, he said, "The grandson said to keep it to about five minutes, but hell -- five minutes into this story and the @!$%#s are still in Africa! I'm gonna have to do some editing... it's gonna be a series or something."

Ronnie shook his head slowly. "I think I'm going to skip the bar tonight, Tiny. Between the heat and the sun and this new medication..." He stood up, patting his chest gently.

"Oh, sure... sure," Tiny said, very solicitously. "Gotta keep healthy, Colonel, especially since we've got the Second Manassas battle coming up this fall. That's gonna be a big one. Planning committee meeting next month, right?"

Ronnie nodded again, shook Tiny's hand and began walking to the parking lot. He took off the uniform jacket and hat and shoved them in the trunk before driving away.

This is my first entry in Scott Butki's Last Fiction Writer Standing project. The assignment was to write a story of at least 300 words based on the photo reproduced here. This story is 1,600 words.

Back To Top