The Late Matthew Brown. Paul Ketzle

just want to believe the story they liked best.”

      The battle was starting. The blue coats had retreated across to the far side of the field, to the south, and the ragtag Confederates stepped behind a line of trees to wait.

      “There wasn’t even a ferry,” Janice added.

      A whistle sounded somewhere behind us.

      “How do you remake history?” Janice was saying. “You can’t recapture the essence of a battle. The fear. The unknown. All you can get is choreography.”

      “Maybe they’re frustrated dancers,” I said.

      Hero stepped hard on my toe. “Do you two mind? I’m trying to watch a war.”

      The Union troops were coming into view. They were running across the field, screaming at who knows what. The Southerners behind the trees were having trouble keeping from laughing. Soon, the pop of blanks exploded, and a half-dozen figures running across the field simultaneously clutched their chests, spun around and fell to the ground. A moment later, a few of those dead stood up, apparently loath to be dead so soon, and continued the charge.

      Meanwhile, the Southern conscripts were obviously getting anxious waiting for their counterparts to arrive. One older soldier let out a hoarse yell and raced out of the trees to meet the oncoming troops. I saw three bluecoats take shots directly at him, and when he didn’t slow, they threw their arms up in disgust. When he reached the Union troops, he shot at a couple point blank. No one fell. In the middle of the battlefield, a brief debate began. A few errant blanks fired here and there, but the overall battle had come to a sputtering halt. Some just stood shaking their heads, leaning against the support of the rifles. The organizer in the white dandy suit had slipped through the trees and joined in the discussion.

      The quiet conversation soon became more intense and evolved into an argument, with pointing and shouting and arms thrown up in frustration. Finally, one blue coat raised the butt of his rifle and smacked the lone Confederate in the face, knocking him to the ground.

      The remaining line of Southerners charged out of the undergrowth in response, no longer firing shots, but hurling rocks and swinging their guns like clubs. The line of spectators took a step back as the playacting transformed into actual violence. One family rushed off toward the cars, the father with two kids saddling his shoulders. A band of Confederates separated from the melee and raced into the dense brush, immediately chased by four beefy Northern corporals. The lines were completely blurred now, as both sides became enmeshed in their individual fights. Large out-of-shape middle-agers wrestling around in the wet grass with energetic twenty-somethings.

      We took cover behind a low hedge, nearer to the fighting, but clearly out of bounds.

      “You know, this is a little bit more realistic than I’d expected,” Hero observed.

      Janice pulled out a cigarette. “It’s human nature. In the pitch of battle, when things get really intense, who’s there to keep people in line? Once you’re up close, there’s very little to do but try to beat the crap out of someone else.”

      By the time we’d had enough and were ready to leave, after nearly half an hour and innumerable counts of assault, the police had arrived, as well as the absent choreographer, who was still trying to salvage something of the original battle’s history by coaxing the Northern troops to retreat toward the east again, and convincing most of the remaining Southern troops to lie still upon the ground long enough to be reasonably considered dead.

      “Don’t get the wrong idea about Southerners,” I said to Hero on the ride home. “We’re a laid-back people, mostly. We don’t like to rock the boat.”

      She propped her elbows on my seat back. Our eyes met in the rearview mirror. “I thought this was the land of Rebels, stuff like that.”

      “That’s propaganda,” Janice said, gunning the engine as the light turned green. “Honestly. We’re harmless.”

      We drove past three billboards in close succession—two of them told us we should repent our sins; the other advertised discounts for laser corrective eye surgery.

      “Didn’t you start a war or something?” Hero asked. “I think I read that somewhere.”

      “What choice did we have?” I said. “They invaded us. You can look it up.”

      “I also read somewhere that you might have deserved it. But really, I just want to know what it is with you people and living in the past. Can’t you just let it go and get on with things?”

      “That’s the old South. This is the new one.”

      Hero leaned back in her seat. “I’m still trying to figure out the difference.”

      six

      The ground beneath our feet was collapsing. This was the summer of sinkholes, and they were ubiquitous, popping up everywhere unexpectedly and with a seemingly intentional flair for the dramatic. Despite the brief and torrential afternoon rains, the water tables were running low after years of below-average precipitation and our thin aquifer ceiling was brittle and crumbling. With the slightest weight or pressure, it could break. There was no telling where or when it would strike.

      It began one afternoon when a section of the Augustus Highway caved in during the height of rush hour, taking out a semi at full stop and sending the trailer-load of pigs squealing into a twelve-foot-wide crater. Most of the pigs survived the fall, however, miraculously pulling their chubby bodies onto the highway—and right into the oncoming traffic. Cars everywhere braking, suddenly swerving, piling and compounding.

      A few days later, a much larger disaster, also miraculously without fatality (human, at least). A trailer park, three homes sucked underground. Every last bit obliterated—trailer, lawn gnomes, plastro-turf, large-bulb outdoor Christmas lights. Neighbors hovered together around the pit, thanking God that no one had been at home, placing arms around the returned families grieving and staring blankly down into the disaster, the sudden loss beyond their comprehension. The assembled memorabilia, the private stashes, custom-groomed suburban front facades, crumbled and scattered. Once, a row of homes overflowing with life. Now—

      A week later, a man died while waiting at a bus stop. Witnesses said it was as if the earth just swallowed him up.

      There was no way to know what might go next. Watch your children, authorities said. Drive with caution. Pay your premiums and make sure all of your affairs are in order. Downtown among the semi-high high-rises, few dawdled or loitered. We walked with lighter steps, slipping into our buildings, fully aware that it might be for the last time. I eyed the long shadow of the new capitol building with appropriate distrust.

      In my office, I found two men waiting, neither of whom I knew. The younger of the two was looking at the picture frames lining my wall. They were old photographs I had collected of the capital’s downtown over the decades—horse and buggy streets, unique building architecture and signage, the sparseness of a small town that had since overrun itself. The man was leaning in close, lifting up his thick-framed, heavily tinted lenses.

      “These are some crazy pictures,” he said, without looking over as I came in. “I don’t think I’ve seen ones like them.”

      “Thanks,” I said, walking over to my desk. Another man, gray fraying about his temple, sat in front of my desk in the leather chair, wordlessly tapping a pencil on the leather molding.

      “Old pictures like this,” said the man by the frames, “I’m always curious to see what I can recognize. It’s not discovering what’s missing that is so fascinating, but seeing that something has endured after all these years.”

      “The more things change, as they say,” I mumbled, not sure what else to say. I shuffled uneasily, waiting for either of my visitors to get to the point, any point at all having to do with me. “Can I help you gentlemen with something?”

      “Bill Stanton,” the younger man said, stepping away from the pictures and toward the desk; but rather than hold out his hand, he reached into his jacket and pulled out