The Atlanta library reading on Thursday went much better than I expected (although I forgot to wear a belt and my jeans were saggier than is appropriate for a serious author). James Taylor (the librarian who did a great job marketing and who once scrimmaged with Dr. J at UMass Amherst) and I were both surprised to see about 20 people in the audience. Twenty might not seem like a huge number, but 20 people at 1:00 p.m. on a Thursday is pretty huge. It was also the most entertaining crowd I’ve ever read to. They all talked to the characters and to me while I was reading, kind of reaffirming what the narrator was saying. It was jarring at first, but I got used to it after the first couple pages. It made me feel like a preacher. I also appreciated that they weren’t afraid to laugh out loud at the funny parts. Most people at my readings are reluctant to laugh at the first chapter of DMR for fear of being viewed as politically incorrect (I’m sure it’s not because they don’t think it’s funny).
Among the folks who showed up were Joe Byrd (a guy from my upstate New York writing group who drove 40 miles to be in Atlanta) and his wife. After the reading, they took me out for lunch at a diner around the corner. They insisted on paying and on ordering me grits with my eggs and steak-like meat.
After eating and saying my goodbyes to Joe and his wife, I walked around Atlanta for about an hour. I would’ve liked to spend more time there (Atlanta is huge!) but the van was in a parking garage and if I’d left it there for more than four hours I would’ve had to pay like $1,000.
As I’ve stressed before, I don’t really know any of these cities, and after a few turns, I found myself in what appeared to be a slightly rough section of Atlanta. While snapping pictures, I walked directly through a group of about 20 thuggish looking individuals. There wasn’t really any way I could’ve walked around them without stepping out into traffic. I overheard some unkind comments about my fanny pack, but decided against defending it.
When I returned to my campsite in Cartersville, GA, a new person had set up a camper in the site next to mine. The camper was small and looked homemade. Hand painted Yankee logos covered all four walls of the contraption. As I got out of my van, the owner popped out from behind the camper where he was busy setting up. I asked him if he was from New York (his diesel, dually truck had no front license plate). As soon as he opened his mouth I realized he wasn’t from New York. His accent was very southern.
He told me he was from North Carolina. I went over and shook his hand. I didn’t realize how small he was until I got up right next to him. He couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall. He told me his favorite player growing up was Mickey Mantle. He said he went to a Yankee game in NYC when he was very young, a game in which Mantle played, and had been a Yankees fan ever since. He told me he was sixty-five and that his son was there camping with him, but his son was off at the moment and wouldn’t be back until later that night. He also told me that his daddy (he talked about his daddy a lot) had played minor league baseball years ago and that his favorite team is the Braves. The man (whose name I never caught, let’s call him M) told me he can tolerate the Braves because he’d never disrespect his daddy, but he really only likes the Yankees. M also hates basketball because he can’t dunk. And he thinks he should get his haircuts for only half price because he only has half his hair left. During all this being talked at, I managed to squeeze in the fact that I was on a cross-country road trip. After some more being talked at I told M that I had to set up my tent and build a fire before dark. As I was walking to my site, I said kind of casually that I was a Red Sox fan. At this, he said, “Oh, so that’s why you don’t wanna stay and talk with me.”
Was the man insane? I’d just talked with him for nearly a half-hour.
In M’s defense, when I first went up to talk to him, he warned me that he’d talk my ear off.
After setting everything up, I read a new book by my friend Dave Daniel until it was too dark to read. By that time M had gone to bed. I never did see his son arrive.
In the starlight I examined his camper from where I sat. The sides were made of plywood, and two of the sides were panels that could be propped up. One propped up side revealed a kitchen (with the words Kountry Kitchen stenciled onto the front) and the other side revealed a window into a small sleeping area. The sleeping area didn’t seem big enough for more than one small person, but I didn’t think much of it. The kitchen area was very awesome. Everything in it was miniature and it was pretty fully equipped. It had a small sink that had been hooked up to the campgrounds water supply. Above the sink was a paper towel dispenser and next to it were a tiny microwave and a tiny fridge. Crammed in there were a couple cabinets where he kept his diet, caffeine-free Pepsi and canned goods. I was pretty envious of his setup. His sleeping area even had a tiny air conditioner and a television (I could hear it) with a UHF antenna.
The next morning I was woken by my other neighbors—two families camping together. Between the two couples there must’ve been about a dozen kids, all between the ages of three and nine. All morning, all I heard, were mothers yelling things like: “Take that frog out of your mouth, Joel! Do not push your sister in the fire, Brad! Stop throwing rocks at that park ranger’s jeep! Stop eating that bush, Sue! Pull your pants up and stop waving that thing at those nice people over there!” I didn’t get much reading done that day.
After going out to check my e-mail and write some postcards, I arrived back at the campsite. M was sitting under the awning of his camper, just kind of enjoying the day. There was an empty chair next to him so I went over and sat in it. I was itching to talk with another human, and he still seemed to be short one son.
He told me all about his son, a 34-year old man. M’s son is a Civil War reenactor, a historian. He only wears authentic Civil War buttons on his wool uniform, never the reproductions, and if he’s recreating a battle in which the soldiers didn’t get to eat, then he doesn’t eat (although the other guys often sneak in candy bars, his daddy told me).
After a while of listening to various details of Civil War reenactment, I went back over to my site and tried to read over the noise of those mothers yelling things like, “We’re going home, Sean! I swear we are going home unless you stop peeing in the fire every five minutes!”
The next day, after eating some breakfast, I went back over to the small man’s campsite, where, again, there was an empty chair set up next to him.
I told him I’d been thinking about the reenactors and had some questions. I asked him why he wasn’t there watching his son. M told me that his son didn’t want his daddy following him around—he was too old for that. Then I asked why I hadn’t seen his son and he told me that he’d dropped his son off at the battlefield, where he would camp until the end of the battle, the weekend. I didn’t point out that this was contrary to what he’d told me on the first day I met him.
Then I asked, what’s the point? Why reenact an old war?
The man smiled and, for the first time in our interactions, took his time formulating an answer. He started by saying that his son was interested in history and that the history books didn’t tell the story of the Civil War correctly. He said that black people thought it was about slavery, but it was really about economics. I told him that history books had improved some since he or even his son was in school. Then I said something about how all war histories are skewed. They’re written by the winners. His eyes widened when I said this. He agreed completely. He told me that, if he was a little younger, he’d be out there on the battlefield with his son.
He went on to tell me how the South, despite lower numbers, won most of the battles in the Civil War. After saying this he thought silently for a moment with a confused look on his face. I was waiting for him to say something relating to the sum of the parts, but he didn’t.
All he said was, “I wonder what things would be like today if we had won.” Then he looked around at the forest surrounding us, as though he was imagining what our location would look like if the Confederates had won. His use of the term we kind of made me nervous.
I steered the conversation back to baseball. It was another area where we were on opposing sides, but I felt more comfortable discussing it. Of course, in reality, we weren’t Civil War soldiers any more than we were professional baseball players.
He told me he once went to a game that Jackie Robinson played in. M said he didn’t realize the significance of what he was seeing at the time. All he really remembered from it was the black man sitting next to him who was huge (at least to him) and dressed better than anyone else in their area of the stands. M could still remember the white pants and yellow jacket the black man wore.
Then M said, “I was less than ten years old then, and I spilled my orange drink all over that man’s white pants—ruined ’em. That man didn’t say a word about it. He just sat there with that orange drink soaking into those white pants.”
Later on that night I built a fire to cook on. I’ve been cooking some weird mixes of things lately, just because I have a kind of weird and limited assortment of foods with me. That night I made some macaroni and cheese with tuna and canned corn mixed in. The man walked over as I was finishing up my first bowl of the rather sloppy stuff, looked down into the pot where another bowl’s worth remained, and said, “Just once in my life, before I die, I’d like to have a real gourmet meal.”
It was then that I realized my initial suspicion was correct—he was insane. I started to wonder if he even had a son.
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