Excerpt From Tour Stop 13

April 1988: Gettysburg, PA

 Driving through downtown Gettysburg on the way back from the Harrisburg mall, where Dan has taken me to look for prom dresses; we have to stop for the soldiers marching across Lincoln Street.
 Dan bangs the flat of his palms on the steering wheel, turns his head toward me and half-smiles.  I half-smile back.
 After the soldiers pass, Dan turns on to Second Street where we’re forced to wait again because an old-time buggy, carrying two women dressed up as Confederate widows, has lost its wheel.  The asshole driving them around has to call AAA from a pay phone because he doesn’t have a spare wooden wheel and the whole contraption needs to be towed to some guy’s farm.  We hear all this through the open window of Dan’s pickup truck.
 I wish I could see the look on the AAA mechanic’s face when he sees this scene.
 Dan turns the car around, his face red and eyes squinty.  He doubles back, makes a few tight turns, honks the horn at a man dressed like Abraham Lincoln who is waving at tourists from the middle of the street and we finally get on Emmitsburg Road.  The guy doesn’t even really look like Abe at all, and I should know.
 We are just about to pass the Soldier’s Cemetery when a cop struts out into the road and puts up his big meaty hand at us.  Dan jams on the breaks and the man driving behind him, who’s dressed in a Union Calvary outfit and driving a Pontiac Firebird, yells, “You dumbass!”
 Dan’s already red face boils with anger and I can tell it takes all of his willpower not to jump out of the truck and beat the guy behind us senseless.
 A funeral procession passes in front of us.  They’re reenacting some Union general’s funeral, but when I ask the cop he doesn’t know which one.  The funeral procession crosses the street where they disperse into the Holiday Inn for beef ribs and beer.  The reenactors give each other high fives for doing such a great job.
 By this point, Dan’s face is purple and his knuckles are white on the wheel.  He floors it as soon as the last War Dick puts his foot on the curb and we speed down Emmitsburg Road toward home.  Reenactors on horseback along the side of the road make their horses trot quickly into the fields when they first hear, then see, Dan driving the pickup at sixty-five miles per hour in a thirty-miles-per-hour zone.
 I clutch the passenger side door and stare at the side of his face.  I can’t get over how maniacal he looks.  His brown hair sticks up at all angles because he’s been tugging at it while we’ve been stuck in traffic.  Sweat beads his forehead and his teeth are gritted so hard that his bearded jaw line bulges with the effort.
 Dan pushes a tape into the pick-ups tape player and The O’Jays’ “Love Train” blasts from the speakers.  I’m a little shocked at his musical taste, but then he turns to me, eyes spinning in their sockets, and says, “Your mother loved this song.”
 And then he sort of shrugs.
 Dan cranks it up even higher and smiles from ear to ear.  He drives us right pass our house and turns left down Peach Orchard Road.  On both sides of us a reenactment is well in progress and the men in blue and gray sweat in the heat, their horses standing beneath the few trees big enough to provide shade.
 “We’ve passed the house, Dan.  Maybe you should turn around.”
 “I’m sick to death of this shit,” he says.
 Get on board, sing the O’Jays, the Love Train. Love Train, baby, ooh ooh.
  “I’m sick of it too, but we’re not supposed to be driving around like this when they’re playing war, or reenacting or whatever.”
 When I say that it seems to push him over the edge and he turns the pickup’s wheel sharply to the right and we are suddenly driving right smack on the battlefield.  Dan maneuvers past cannon and monuments, past tired horses and dumbstruck reenactors.  Cannons boom and guns pop all around us.  I am nervous.
 Dan keeps driving.
 We plow through the Union troop line with men smacking the side of the truck angrily.  I roll up the window.
 Dan says, “Roll it back down, Annie, so they can hear the song.” 
 I roll the window down a few inches, just in time to see a fake general growling at me.
 “Flank them!” he yells.
 Dan screams, “Asshole!”
 “Jesus Christ, Dan,” I scream, “You’re pissing them off!”
 Dan parks the truck directly in-between the Confederate and Union troop lines.  The cannon have stopped exploding and only a few guns still go off here and there.  All that really can be heard is “Love Train.”
 Dan lays on the horn.
 Men circle the car.
 Dan closes his eyes.  I close my eyes.  We sit in the truck and listen to The O’Jays and the car horn.
 When I open my eyes, the men have dispersed.  Some sit on rocks and stare into the barrels of their guns.  Some lay under trees, hats tilted over their eyes and arms folded across their chests.  Some men have disappeared over the hill. 
 It’s hard to wage war with a truck and two crazy people in the way.
 Dan’s head leans back against the seat and his eyes remain closed.
 He says, “I think it’s time you visited your mother’s grave.”
 “What?” I ask.
 He opens his eyes and looks over at me.
 “It’s time,” he says, “We need to visit her.”
 I don’t need to visit her. I really don’t.  I mean, visiting a grave doesn’t mean anything.  It doesn’t help anybody and it’s not like she’d even care. Dan and I were doing just fine before he brought this shit up and it makes me mad that he can’t just let it lie.
 “Who told you I needed to do that?” I ask, “That lady counselor maybe?  Maybe she said it’s supposed to be some big healing event or some crap like that?”
 “Maybe,” says Dan, “Maybe that’s exactly what happened, Annie.  Goddammit, I reckon you just know about every damn thing in the world there is to know.”
 And then he stops and just stares at me.
 He sighs, “Like it or not, you’re my daughter and I love you.  When are you just gonna start listening to me?”
 I want to say, maybe when it doesn’t hurt so much to feel loved, but I don’t.
 Instead I try to act cool.
 “Fine,” I say, “I’ll go.  I don’t care anyway. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
 Dan puts the truck into gear and drives us back on the road, but before he’s just out of earshot, he yells, “ASSHOLES!” at the top of his lungs.