Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller (10 page)

Books with leather-bound covers, many of them rare and fragile, lined shelves covering one side of the room. Among his dad’s collection were one-of-a-kind personal items like diaries and letters, as well as history books and biographies with low print runs. An autographed copy of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir, one of the first tell-all celebrity bios ever published, was also in the collection, sealed behind a sheet of Plexiglas. The aging paper gave The Room an aroma of decay and must, much like what Vernon Ray imagined Grant’s Tomb smelled like.

Vernon Ray had read many of the books. Not from Dad’s collection, of course, but modern reprinted copies he’d found in the public library or public-domain scans posted on the Internet. Vernon Ray ran the soft light over the shelves, but he wasn’t interested in two-dimensional history at the moment. He took a few steps deeper into The Room, careful not to step on anything fragile.

An obstacle course of period antiques covered the floor: hand-hewn chairs, a maple church pew, blacksmith’s and furrier’s benches. A saddle rode the blacksmith’s bench, moth-eaten wool blankets and rusty cast-iron tools stacked beside it. The other furniture was parted to make way for a black cherry roll-top writing desk that his dad used for the sole purpose of penning out marching orders for the N.C. 26th Living History Regiment. It was as if his dad’s fantasy life intersected with these solid relics only when vital to the mission, an act of discipline that proved Capt. Jefferson Davis was the only man fit to command the regiment.

The smell of old wood and leather blended with that of the paper, but it aroused nothing in Vernon Ray. Instead, he navigated between the pieces of furniture and reached the Grail. He tilted the light up so that it glinted off the muskets, revolvers, bugles, medals, insignia, and a cavalry sword with an ornate brass handle.

Several of the pieces were replica, but one of the medals bore the deep dent of a musket ball, suggesting it might have once saved the life of the wearer. Powder horns and sheathed Bowie knives dangled from rawhide strings. A tin canteen in a canvas satchel hung by a strap, and underneath it a mess kit, coffee pot, and other steel cookware were arrayed as if readied for breakfast.

A card table bore a
papier-mâché
diorama designed to mimic Titusville, complete with the surrounding mountains carefully labeled with their traditional names: Cracker Knob, Eggers Ridge, Calloway Mountain, Tater Hill, The Balds, and, rising over the valley like a tsunami wave, Mulatto Mountain. A tiny white flag, bearing a meticulously rendered image of the Home Guard’s insignia and glued to a toothpick, was poked into the highest point of Mulatto Mountain, in the approximate location of The Jangling Hole. His dad had invested six silent months working on the diorama, alone with the door closed.

The last two months had been spent arranging lead-cast miniature soldiers, ordered through collector’s catalogs. An HO-scale train track ran through the valley to mark the narrow-gauge tracks that had once carried Tweetsie into town. The real rails were still there, running along the foot of Mulatto and parallel with the back street of downtown and an old creek, but the last train had run in 1931, when the dwindling profits of timber clear-cutting collided with the Great Depression.

Vernon Ray had learned about that in the Pickett County history book his dad had written and self-published. All of Dad’s remaining copies were tucked away on the top shelf of The Room, pages still pristine and spines intact. Vernon Ray had borrowed his reading copy from a school teacher. Dad had made a few grammatical errors but overall the prose was pretty solid.

In the diorama, the Home Guard was divided into two platoons. One small group of gray-painted soldiers was huddled in a camp in a field near the old courthouse, the building indicated only by a painted cardboard box. Other small boxes marked the downtown area, though Titusville during the war had been little more than a couple of banks, a mercantile, a tobacco warehouse, a train station, and a jail. The camp had been designed to protect the train station, and in that mission, the real troops had succeeded, though the courthouse had eventually been burned by Yankees and the jail used to secure their Confederate prisoners.

The second platoon of cast-lead Confederates was spread across the face of Mulatto Mountain, recreating the position the real troops had taken above the narrow pass that provided the easiest access into the valley from the West. From there, the troops had hoped to surprise Gen. Bill Stoneman and his marauding Bluebellies. They had obviously failed, though historians disagreed on the reasons.

Vernon Ray’s dad said the troops had been poorly commanded, but most people believed the ragtag platoon had simply turned chicken and scattered in the woods without a fight. Some of the deserters had joined the renegade band led by Col. George Kirk, and Kirk’s Raiders had hidden away in the Hole, waiting for Stoneman to leave so Kirk could impose his own law on Titusville. According to legend, the raiders had refused to surrender and Stoneman’s cannon had blasted their cave into a tomb, but historians had never presented a convincing case for the unofficial court martial and death sentence.

Jefferson Jackson Davis, Captain of the 26th North Carolina Troops Living History Society, known to his friends as “Jeff” and his wife as “Hon” (except on those special occasions when she called him “a carpet-bagging asshole”), had arranged the toy Confederate troops in defense of a town lost in time.

And Vernon Ray had lost his father to that time, a casualty that bled as deeply as any victim of Bull Run or Gettysburg. The war’s outcome would never change, only spawn more revisionist histories until the truth no longer mattered. And while winners usually wrote the history books, plenty of Southerners felt their side had never lost, merely run out of time, money, and men.

Vernon Ray was in the mood for a little revisionist history of his own. He touched the nearest of the toy soldiers on Mulatto Mountain and moved it closer to the road in the pass, near where Stoneman’s mounted cavalry were poised for a make-believe ride into Titusville. No doubt Dad had memorized the positions in which he had placed the troops, but Vernon Ray had spent almost as much time himself studying the battle lines.

“Private Joshua Ames,” Vernon Ray whispered, picking a name at random from the muster rolls. “This is Capt. Davis. Hold your position down by the road and don’t let any Yankees in. You know what they’ll do to your wife and kids if they get a chance.”

The darkness seemed to press against the windows of the room, like black water kissing the side of an aquarium. A little bit of orange streetlight leaked between the curtains, just enough to give the impression of a false dawn. Vernon Ray propped his reading lamp over the tableau so he could maneuver the troops with both hands.

He dropped into a deep Southern accent, drawing in breath to hit the lowest registers of his adolescent bass. “Aye-aye, sir, them devils will even rape the sheep if they got the chance, and God help the guilty if they break through.”

Vernon Ray went back to his normal Captain voice, almost unconsciously imitating his father. “I’ll get Squire Taylor to cover your flank, and Dooley Eggers will take the other side of the road. Got it, men?”

He moved two more of the soldiers away from the Hole, placing them as sentries against the approaching cavalry troop. With nimble fingers, he positioned a line of the in-town platoon across Main Street, placing the rest on the tops of the buildings. The men were frozen in an assortment of poses, some of them poised in a bayonet charge while others stood at attention with their rifles on their shoulders.

Now Vernon Ray was falling into the fantasy, becoming as self-absorbed as his father, only dimly aware that this was both the closest emotionally he’d ever get to his father and, in an odd way, the best way to get revenge for the years of neglect-he was overriding his father’s orders. He commanded three more soldiers off Mulatto Mountain, chiding them for nearly missing the action to come.

“Do you gentlemen want to live forever, or do you want to be laid out in glory with your brothers?” No good officer ever asked his men to tackle any danger or hardship he wouldn’t face himself, and Vernon Ray knew when Gen. Stoneman came thundering through the pass, he’d be standing in the dirt road himself, pistol in hand, a wide-open target. Vernon Ray could almost smell the dust, the rot of the oak leaves, the horse manure, the sulfuric tang of fresh gunpowder, the faint coal smoke of the last steam locomotive.

“Sgt. Childers, take three men and cover the west side of the mountain so they don’t dismount and follow Skin Creek into town,” he said, snapping off the palm-up salute in response to his sergeant’s salute. A few more orders and the remaining men had advanced down the slopes of the mountain and into harm’s way.

“Capt. Davis,” said Sgt. McGregor, his most trusted noncom. “If enemy troop strength matches the reconnoiters, we’re set up for a slaughter.”

Capt. Davis gave a grave nod of his head. “War is hell, Sergeant.”

“If we fall, we lose the town.”

Vernon Ray nudged the toy sergeant toward the fence line, where he would die shortly after his captain. “We don’t get to win this time. Our job is to slow them down.”

“The men are sticking with you, sir. Even the conscripts.”

“Good. That will be all, Sergeant.”

“Aye-aye,” the soldier said. He was Scottish, and such men were foolhardy and brave as long as you kept them sober. Leadership came with its own worries, and though Capt. Davis had already accepted his fate, the certainty of his followers’ deaths weighed on him, making him feel much older than his 13 years.

The ground shook with the distant rumble of a hundred hoof beats. The Room fell away, and it was 1864, October, birds taking wing as they sensed the coming calamity. The dirt roads of Titusville would be stained red before this day was done. Capt. Davis was almost ready to take up his position in the pass.

But there was one more soldier, a special volunteer, who was awaiting orders.

“Vernon Ray, you can’t sit out on the side forever,” Capt. Davis said. “You’ve got to join the dance sooner or later.”

He fondled the toy drummer boy, the one he’d touched so often that its lead was shinier and less tarnished than the other pieces. It was half the height of the other soldiers, his little kepi askew, head bent down to his instrument. The snare was cocked on his right thigh, angling the drumhead so his dull gray wrists could roll out the signals.

“I’m ready, Dad,” the drummer boy said in a small voice.

“Might get dangerous, son. Keep your head low.”

“I won’t blink an eye, no matter what. I’ll make you proud.”

“I know you will. You already make me proud.”

The drummer boy smiled at this, at least in that autumnal fantasy land, though the grim lead face stayed as set as it had been since the day it was cast. He’d drum even if he lost his sticks, even if a cannon blast took his hands. He’d beat his splintered bones against the leather head of the snare, pound until his sinews and ragged flesh fell off, he’d roll reveille until the gates of Hades opened up and the soldiers followed his cadence into the pits of Gen. Grant’s infernal prison.

Because Daddy had given him a duty.

Vernon Ray was lost in the imaginary battle, the sun filtering through the yellow-and-red forest, the wind running soft through the meadows, the creek tinkling between slick stones, the hoof beats getting louder, the whinny of horses and the clanking of harness growing louder in the narrow pass. They’d be coming around the bend any minute, horses and riders alike breathing fire, red eyes promising a swift punishment for rebellion.

And Vernon Ray found himself before the open closet, where his dad’s uniforms hung. The captain’s crisp wool uniform with its braids and epaulets, the coarse tow-linen shirts for period civilization reenactments, the white cotton blouses, the regular gray buck private’s outfit with its frayed cuffs and bullet holes. At the end of the row was the one that would soon be too small for Vernon Ray, the drummer boy’s suit with its bone buttons and knickers. As he had many times before, he touched the scratchy fabric of its sleeve.

“I’ll make you proud,” he whispered, and it was neither the captain’s nor the toy soldier’s voice, but his own.

He slipped out of his Incredible Hulk T-shirt, the cool air of the room sharpening his nipples to tiny purple points. He kicked off his bedroom slippers and shucked down his pants. The underwear would have to go, because though the briefs were cotton, the waistband was a synthetic blend covering rubberized elastic, neither of which was extant during the War.

With trembling fingers, he wrested the uniform from its hanger. It smelled of campfire smoke and cobwebs. He slid his one bare arm into the woolen sleeve, enjoying the delicious scraping inflicted by the fabric. It was a little tight in the shoulders, but he shrugged into it until it rested comfortably. He was aware of his runaway heartbeat-

ratta-tat-tat

-as he buttoned up the front of the coat. Next he stepped into the matching knickers, sliding them up until the cloth tickled his penis. All the leather boots were adult size, and most rural children in those days wore no shoes anyway. He took the small kepi from its place on the rack, where it was tucked between a grandiose French cavalry hat and a felt fedora. He perched the slanted Rebel cap on his head, the brim tipped low just the way the toy soldier wore it.

Vernon Ray stood at attention for a moment, as if undergoing the captain’s inspection. Then he gave the Confederate Army salute and opened the cedar cupboard.

The snare drum was on the middle shelf, the largest object in the collection. The horsehide head was girded in place by a steel band, which itself was attached to the wooden shell by neat rows of brass tacks. A series of pig-gut strings held the head tight and could be adjusted to change the tone of the snare. A bridge of woven steel ran just beneath the head, designed to give off the signature rattling sound as the drumhead vibrated.

He lifted the drum carefully by its canvas strap, slinging the strap around his neck and almost knocking off his cap in the process. The drum’s weight felt comforting against his abdomen. He collected the hand-carved drumsticks and gave them an experimental twirl. He had his own drumsticks, rubber-tipped ones bought in the music store at the mall, but these had an entirely different balance and feel.