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“So your dad was on the Union side, and Brick’s dad was the Confederate side. That wasn't a problem?”
“I’ve got no problem with the boys in Gray.” Rufus chuckled. “My daddy’s a funeral director, not a slave. And Brick's dad wasn't a slave owner. It's re-enacting. It's a great way for kids to learn about history. We had to research everything, from all the different reasons men fought on either side, to what daily life was like in both armies.”
He looked toward the storage shed, where Brick was stacking up the boxes. “My man there liked the letters the soldiers wrote home. He even made copies of some the re-enactors had from their own collections. His favorites were the ones the soldiers wrote home to their girls. Still got those love letters, you big softy?”
“Fuck you,” Brick said mildly. He’d returned to the truck to pull out the stack of chairs.
“His interest in all that made his daddy hope he’d be a history teacher, too,” Rufus told her.
“Until I torpedoed it by joining the fire department.” Brick hefted the chairs and headed back toward the shed.
“You had a hero complex,” Rufus called after him.
“Oh.” Les started as something wet poked her. She looked down—not far—to see a giant, wrinkle-faced bloodhound nosing her hand.
“That’s Nose,” Rufus said. “Served with distinction in law enforcement, and now enjoys his retirement at my five-star assisted living facility here.”
Her family had always had a dog or two, and plenty of barn cats growing up. Except for the occasional community cat, there was a shortage of pets in her life right now. The condo’s pet restrictions aside, med students had no time to care for them properly. Delighted to have the chance to connect with a canine, Les rubbed the long, floppy ears.
“Do you have time to tell me more?” she asked Rufus. His uniform suggested he was going to work soon.
“Sure. I set aside the time for…your visit.”
Her brows rose at the hesitation, but he covered it with a cough and moved over on the stoop, patting the open spot so she could sit next to him.
Nose laid down next to her with a groan that earned him a belly rub with the toe of her shoe. With the truck empty and the tie-downs stored, Brick propped his hips against the front grill of the truck. His arms were crossed in a relaxed manner over his chest, his bill cap pulled down to shade his eyes, but Les could see the gray gaze trained on her.
There was more to this visit than furniture and friendly conversation, but until the ulterior motive revealed itself, she was content to let Rufus feed her desire for more stories about him and Brick.
“One summer, during his college break, Brick and I did a road trip to see what footprints had been left by our ancestors who fought in the Civil War. His roots took us to the Appalachians in North Carolina. Mine were near Gulfport, Mississippi.” He looked toward Brick again. “How’s Tish’s momma, by the way? Still as hot as her daughter?”
“Still married to the Venezuelan who will cut your throat if you get near her.”
Rufus grinned and jerked a thumb at Brick. “His multi-great grandaddy, Waylon McGuire, fought for the Grays. He was a farmer whose momma taught him to read from the family Bible.”
At her lifted brow, Rufus nodded. “Yeah, that surprises a lot of people. Most of the boys in Confederate graves weren't big slave owner Ashley Wilkes types. A lot of them weren’t slave owners at all. Men fought in that war for a lot of reasons. The spectrum, from state sovereignty to slavery, had a lot of personal perspectives resting along it, and a lot of tributaries running out from those.” Rufus swatted absently at a fly. “Part of what’s interesting about digging into history is learning how many answers there are to the same question.”
“You would have made a good history teacher,” Brick told him.
“Why do you think your daddy told my daddy he thought we were swapped in the nursery at birth?” Rufus nudged Les. “From the information me and Brick found, Waylon didn’t see himself, way up in the Appalachians, as having much of a dog in either fight, but he was drafted by the Confederate army. Died on the field at twenty-two, but managed to leave behind two kids. Brick’s damn lucky he got busy with Mrs. Waylon early.”
“How about your ancestor?” she asked.
“Josiah belonged to a Quaker businessman in Mississippi. The man wanted to free his handful of slaves, all kin to one another, but the structure wasn’t there yet, not in Mississippi. There were a few Southern states that allowed blacks to be legally freed and own property, at least up until the war, but that wasn’t one of them. So his ‘owner’ treated him free in every way possible, while keeping him a slave on paper, under his protection, such as it was.”
Rufus glanced at the first photo, his father in the line of Union soldiers. “When that Quaker went north for business, he took Josiah and his family with him. He left them up there to ‘represent his interests,’ which allowed them to live as freedmen until it could become official on paper. George Washington did something similar with his personal aide, after the American Revolution. Anyhow, when the War Between the States came, my ancestor joined up with the Union.”
“This is the kind of stuff your dad used to tell us,” Les told Brick. “The little behind-the-scenes things.”
Brick smiled fondly. “It frustrates the shit out of him, having to cover all of American history in one school year, when he could spend the same amount of time on any pivotal part of it, including the Civil War. But he likes teaching middle school, planting that spark of interest.”
“He used to dress up and do reenactments in the classroom,” Rufus recalled. “I was a shit student in most subjects, but I aced history.”
“That was because you copied off your girlfriend's paper,” Brick observed.
“That’s beside the point, and hurtful of you to bring up.” Rufus sent Les a droll look. "Don't mind him. He gives me shit because we kicked his department's ass on the Uptown Funk competition."
Brick straightened from the truck and leveled a warning finger at his friend. “You say another word, I’ll feed you that coffee cup.”
