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Johnny had been being an absolute prick all day, so Billy knocked the fence down.
It didn't solve anything. It just meant they were going to have to put the fence up again. Sorry Billy was going to have to put the fence up again. Johnny didn't see why he should have to.
‘Fine!’ he said, hand on hip. ‘Fine! You knock the fence down! It's you who needs it! Living on vegetables!’ He made this sound utterly contemptible. ‘Any animals get into our garden now I'll just shoot them and eat them. You can starve!’ And he went back into the house, slamming the door.
Billy pulled the shattered fence posts out of the ground and tried to figure out what to do with them. Well, we've established that neither of us knows how to put a fence up but I think we already knew that.
Right, rotten wood, swampy ground…
The thing is…
The thing is…
The thing is, thought Billy, I didn't expect Johnny to be all that sympathetic or sensitive about Mr Lincoln's death. I wouldn't really have wanted him to. It would have been insincere, and whatever else you can say about Johnny, he's never insincere. He always means whatever insane shit he comes out with, even if it completely contradicts the insane shit he came out with not ten seconds ago. It was just the callousness.
‘Oh horseshit,’ Johnny had said, when Billy was trying to get him to imagine what Mrs Lincoln had gone through, ‘I've been next to people while they were shot in the head, you've been next to people while they were shot in the head, anyone would think no one had ever been shot in the head before…’
‘That was in a war that we both signed up to fight in! We weren't sitting in a theatre!’ And he was going to add “and we weren't next to someone we loved,” but it was possible that Johnny was. He often wondered if Johnny had had a lover before him. Not that he cared. He wasn't going to get jealous of some inbred racist Johnny fought alongside in a war his side lost humiliatingly. So what if he'd been in love with another Johnny Reb before he met Billy? (In Billy's mind all of Johnny's comrades were also called Johnny Reb, and they all looked exactly like him.) It wouldn't have been surprising. Johnny was an attractive and almost bizarrely charismatic man. People liked him. OK, it would make it slightly more galling that Billy hadn't got any of that kind of attention *at all* from his fellow soldiers, particularly considering he'd served in a much larger army. Then again, Johnny's comrades would have had far fewer options. Yeah, that was probably it. The other Billy Yanks probably weren't ignoring Billy, they'd just had a lot more of each other to choose from.
‘Plus there's other forms of love,’ said the glowing Jewish guy Billy refused to look at. ‘Johnny could just be legitimately missing a friend. He wasn't necessarily splattered by someone he'd previously been splattered by, if you know what I mean.’
‘Go away,’ said Billy, ‘I still don't believe in You.’
‘Yep,’ said Jesus, ‘most people said that to Me. They were wrong.’ He sat down beside Billy. ‘Look, I get it. A great man's just been murdered and your boyfriend is being an absolute dick about it. And it's nearly a century until you'll get to hear Judy Garland’s version of Battle Hymn of the Republic, even though absolutely everyone needs to hear it right now. It's John's favourite version. She's the only person in the universe more dramatic than him. We were at the recording of it, you know. Well we would have been, security threw us out. He kept standing up on his seat going, ‘She gets it! She gets it!’ I said look, he's just emotional about JFK, he'll calm down, but he didn't calm down.’
‘None of that means anything to me, and You are a hallucination.’
‘There were very nearly two great men murdered, you know,’ said Jesus. ‘Ulysses S Grant was going to go to the theatre with the Lincolns. Mrs Grant and Mrs Lincoln don't get on, apparently. What am I saying apparently for? I'm omniscient. There's no apparently about it. They don't. Grant’s related to Judy Garland. I know you don't care but John does. Says he could see the resemblance straight away.’
Billy Yank didn't think he would get on with Mrs Grant either. He didn't like that side of himself but it was there. He knew he could show her husband a better time than she could. And in his dreams, he already had.‘Look,’ said Billy. ‘I don't care if Johnny had a boyfriend before me. Well I probably do, but I know I shouldn't. I know the harm all these male insecurities do. You know what I don't want to know about Johnny.’
‘You already know the worst thing. He chose to join that army. He didn't choose to have a family who owned slaves. If he did.’
Yeah, that was true.
He always imagined Johnny's family being rich or poor, nothing in between. He never considered the possibility that Johnny was from a nice middle class household like his own. A nice middle class family who didn't own slaves, but didn't have any of the excuses you could (arguably) make for a poor family. Of course if they were a nice middle class family they'd have still been tied up in the slave economy. If Johnny's dad was a doctor or lawyer or something (God… who would employ any relative of Johnny's as a doctor or lawyer?) he'd still need a lot of (mainly) slave owners to hire him.
This fence was incredibly easy to knock down, thought Billy Yank. Almost as if it wasn't worth putting up in the first place.
I shouldn't make assumptions as to why Johnny can't fix a fence. Could just be simple incompetence. I can't fix a fence and my family didn't own slaves. Uh, not within living memory anyway. I've definitely never *met* a family member who owned slaves. And I'm sure that's not just because of the law! I'm sure my family *chose* to stop having slaves, if any of us ever did.
Johnny and I were so proud of ourselves after we put this fence back up, last time it fell down. I don't think we cared whether we did a good job or not. We laughed a lot and found a lot of reasons to argue about the war. And it wasn't even our fault it fell down that time.
Jesus put his arm around Billy, which Billy found he really liked. ‘Look, if you want My opinion not as your lord and saviour but merely as a professional carpenter…’
‘Did You actually do much carpentry?’
‘What?’
‘I don't remember there being much carpentry in the Bible.’
‘Well how long has it been since you last read it?’
‘I used to read it every night,’ said Billy, even though he now found that very hard to believe.
‘Look, I was the eldest son, I had to earn a living, OK? Yes I did do a lot of carpentry. The Gospels just aren't about that. And if you want My opinion as a professional carpenter, you and Johnny actually did a *better* job than the people who originally put this fence up, which is doubly impressive when you consider that not only did those people actually *know* how to put a fence up, but were also sober when they did it.’
‘Really? Whoah.’
‘On the other hand, they weren't getting paid, they didn't want to be here, they hated the guy they were working for and they ran away as soon as they possibly could.’
‘Were they doing a deliberately shitty job, then, like when my grandpa would play the piano?’
‘No, Billy, your grandfather genuinely was terrible at playing the piano. He was just funny generally so he got away with it. Also, if you remember, he only did his comedy piano-playing when most people in the room were already drunk. The people who erected this fence though,’ He shook His head, ‘they… they were artists, Billy Yank. It takes real skill to do as bad a job as they did. Only a true carpenter could have done it.’
‘OK… But they did basically do a deliberately shitty job?’ said Billy, who was still getting over the shock of his grandfather. He had always assumed grandpa could play the piano properly but chose not to for some reason.
‘Shitty? The guy they did this for literally owned them. He had the power of life and death over these people. What they did was heroic. In a petty kind of way.’
Billy hadn't really thought of it like that. He tried not to think about the enslaved people who lived in the house much because… Well he just tried not to think about them. ‘Should I honour their legacy by not fixing the fence, then?’
‘Probably, in the sense that you absolutely can't fix a fence and shouldn't try. Also it would be just freaking awesome if you would sell all your possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. I keep telling people to do that. They very rarely do, but I tell them anyway. Goodbye, Billy Yank. I sometimes wish I had just written a book on carpentry. Would've been useful for you.’
Billy went back inside and resolved to make things up with Johnny. And also to get over his petty resentment of Mrs Ulysses S Grant. He was sure she and the General were very happy together.
‘Johnny?’ he began, and didn't get any further because… What the hell was going on?
Johnny looked up at him sheepishly. ‘Oh hello Billy. I know this looks bad, but I'm only breaking up the chairs we don't use.’
But we don't use any of the chairs, except the one I sit in and the one you sit in. The thought of other people coming round is terrifying to both of us. ‘Are you breaking them up for firewood?’
‘No, I'm breaking them up to be a fence. These chairs are made of cedar wood. It's very water resistant. Although I won't say how I know that because I know you don't want to know. This is only a temporary measure.’
Billy squatted down and looked at what Johnny had done from as many angles as he could. ‘I don't see how this can be turned into a fence.’
‘Neither can I! I just had to do something because you smashed our fence up.’
‘I know, and I was wrong, I don't know what I thought I was achieving there.’
‘You probably didn't think you were achieving anything. You were just angry and scared and grieving.’
‘Yeah, and I was right to be and you're wrong not to be. I'm not going to budge on that.’
Johnny stopped what he was doing and turned a chair leg over and over in his hand. ‘Billy,’ he said, ‘if Mrs *Davis* was ever forced to watch as her husband was murdered, would you feel sad about it?’
‘Mrs Davis?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mrs Jefferson Davis?’
‘What other Mrs Davis would we be talking about?’
Billy sighed and tried to think of the most tactful way of putting it. ‘Well…’ he began, ‘I can see how that would be awful for her…’
‘Yes?’
‘And if she was here straight after it happened I'd be as kind to her as I could. But as for it being an actual sad event if that happened... Could I act like that was an objectively bad thing...’ his voice trailed away.
'I understand,' said Johnny. ‘It's a sin to tell a lie.’