Read Online Dogfight by Michael Knight - Free Book Online

answer.
    â€œDon’t talk to me,” she said, tucking the envelopes into her purse. She stalked away, up the gently sloping driveway toward her house, swinging her arms angrily. The dog padded along in her wake.
    â€œMrs. Bishop, wait,” Reed said, putting the car in park and getting out. “Why don’t you like me? What have I ever done to you? Is this about Hi John and your rosebushes? Is this about the dogs?”
    â€œI don’t want to talk to you,” she said without looking back.
    Reed had been disconcerted by this meeting and believed it was the reason his presentation wasn’t going as well as he had hoped. He began at Shiloh with a bad imitation of A. S. Johnston saying to his officers, “Gentlemen, tonight we water our horses in the Tennessee.” It was a nice beginning, he thought, accenting both the foolish optimism of the Confederates and the poignancy of Johnston’s death in the battle. He drove the man and woman who had come this morning over the field in a golf cart, trying to conjure for them images that would be moving enough to inspire donation. The abandoned campfires, left by Union troops in the face of a surprise attack, coffeepots still warm. The small watering hole where wounded of both sides crawled for a drink, reddening the muddy water with theirblood. He showed them the place where Johnston’s officers cradled his head in death. The patch of ground where Beauregard’s tent stood, in which he wrote to Jefferson Davis, “Grant is beaten. Will mop him up in the morning.” Monuments marked each site and Reed paused a moment after he was finished to let them read. He thought if he could just get the telling right, and he told these same sad stories all the time, then they would understand the need for preservation.
    â€œDon’t you think all this glorifies the South’s participation in the war?” the man said. “We have quite a few black employees and I don’t know how happy it would make them to give money to something like this. The South was, after all, fighting to perpetuate slavery.”
    â€œWhat we are trying to glorify here, sir, is bravery,” Reed said, “on both sides. We want people to come out here and be reminded of how horrible the war was. But also, to recognize the character of the participants. We can learn quite a bit from the past.”
    The man nodded but Reed could tell he was still unconvinced. The cart whined up a hill toward a Union graveyard, showing through a knot of trees, and the family there, taking pictures, their little boy holding a souvenir Confederate flag.
    The woman said, “This isn’t what I expected. I’m having a hard time seeing the big picture. I think I was expecting a football field or something.”
    Reed said, “That’s my point. The whole thing has been trivialized by time. We need to get people out here. To sort of run the history through their fingers, if you get my meaning.”
    â€œI think someone is calling you,” the man said, pointing.
    Reed stopped the cart and all of them turned to look. They were parked on a cobbled path that divided a manicured lawn. To their right were rows of dilapidated cannon along a split rail fence and past those, a peach orchard, where pink and white petals blanketed the grass, pulled loose by their own creamy, lustrous weight. In the other direction, they could see a figure running through the trees, spindly white oaks, waving one arm wildly and shouting Reed’sname. He must have cut over from the parking lot. They waited to let him catch up and as he got closer, Reed recognized Bill Hoffman.
    â€œWe’re being charged,” the woman said.
    â€œShit,” Reed said.
    â€œExcuse me?” the man said.
    Bill Hoffman reached them, gasping, and stood a moment, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He was wearing a suit and tie and his cast jutted out from beneath his sleeve. His