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“What way?”
“This way. ” He waved his hand in a circle big enough to encompass the living room, the house, the town, the whole state. The whole South.
“It’s not so bad,” Pete almost whined. “The house needs some work, I guess, but we’ll fix it up now that I’m back. ”
Rudy snorted.
“There shouldn’t be any need for it. We ought to still be living off money from our great-great-grandparents. We should’ve been richer than those bastards who waited out the war on top of the mountains in Chattanooga. ”
“They got hit up on the mountains too, though. ” Pete thought he remembered something from school, a trip to a house on Lookout. A guide had told him a story about the way both sides had fought, back and forth, using the house as a point of reference to gauge their progress.
“I guess. ”
Pete crooked his head. “Well, what do you mean, then? When was anyone in our family rich?”
“Never. ” Rudy reached like he meant to turn the TV back on, then changed his mind. “But we were close. And we almost had…it was something like an inheritance. It should’ve been ours. ”
“An inheritance? From who?”
“From Jefferson Davis himself. ” Rudy said it with finality, but he stood by the kitchen door and clutched at the frame like he might say more if Pete waited long enough.
“You never said we were related to him,” he offered weakly. He knew there wasn’t any relation, but he wanted to say something anyway. In general, if Rudy wanted you to know something, he told it to you without leaving you to wonder; so Pete didn’t want to ask any questions. But Jefferson Davis? That wasn’t the sort of name you dropped if you didn’t want someone else to pick it up.
“You heard me. It was a trust—between the people of the South and the men who tried to set her free. And we were in on it. We should’ve reaped those rewards, even after. ”
“After? Oh. ”
“Yeah, you know what I mean. After. ”
Pete shifted himself and stood. “I guess I’ll get another Coke. ”
“I’ll get it for you; I’m going back in there anyway. What kind you want?”
“Do we have any Mountain Dew left?”
Rudy bobbed his head. “A couple. Hang on. ”
A minute later Pete heard the click and fizz of a tab being pulled. He probably didn’t need the caffeine so late at night, but he didn’t let that stop him. He took the can when his uncle brought it out.
“There’s a story to it,” Rudy said simply, taking a swig off his own can of soda. He glanced down at his nephew’s Mountain Dew and added, “You won’t be sleeping for a while. You want to hear it?”
“I think I do, yeah. ”
“I can’t believe your mother never told you. Well, then again, I don’t know how much she ever knew about it. But they were her kin too. My own mother used to tell me about them before bedtime at night, on Fridays when we didn’t have to get up and go to school the next day. ”
“Them who, Uncle Rudy?”
He took another swig and came back into the living room, sitting himself down into the chair opposite the couch. The elderly springs groaned beneath his weight, and a small puff of polyfoam filler escaped the armrest.
“The brothers. ”
8
The Midnight Run
“I thought you didn’t want to go,” Jamie reminded me. He pursed his lips prettily and blew on the froth of his half-fat soy latte, not because it was hot, but because he was flirting with a girl who was standing in line at the coffee bar. He was in full on, loose-bloused Casanova mode, and it would have been amusing if I didn’t need his attention.
I flicked my middle finger at his elbow. “I didn’t. But now I think I do. ”
