I learned to smoke weak homegrown weed behind
a giant boxwood hedge at the base of the grey-green

cast bronze statue of Robert E. Lee, astride Traveller,
the one in Charlottesville, that horse and rider almost

twice life-size above my crouching adolescent head.
They’ve cut those bushes down but Lee’s still there.

We should have been inside the columned library,
writing high school World War II essays, instead,

beneath the deep carved letters of Lee’s name,
backs against his marble pedestal, my friends and I

exhaled into glossy leaves, gazed up at Lee’s gigantic
boots and stirrups, his huge hat easy in his huge

right hand, at Traveller’s massive belly, four cast bronze
hooves solid on the cast bronze earth above us.

I’d been taught the language of statues: hooves
on the ground meant the rider went unharmed

in war. But that’s not true. What statues mean.
Back in fifth grade, my class had visited Traveller’s bones

on view in Lexington, Virginia, we’d seen the ragged
red-brown hide of Stonewall Jackson’s warhorse,

Little Sorrel, sewn to an equine form in a museum case,
ghoulish skin and bones behind smudged glass

among glittery gold braid uniforms, hoop skirts,
silken sashes, polished swords and bayonets

of the Lost Cause— so romantic. How did my teacher,
who was black, how did she bear it? How did Charlotte,

Sharon, Elliot, Deborah, Rodney, classmates who knew
a different history? We saw no evidence of slavery,

no auction blocks, no shackles, whips, no photographs
of lynchings on that Virginia History trip. Or any.

But good god, there were statues. Statues everywhere.
And every year, we leapt from Civil War to Civil Rights,

skipped over Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Massive Resistance,
our hands and history clean, our future bright, our past

behind us, white and sanitized. From where we hunkered
underneath him, Lee looked east toward Stonewall Jackson’s

statue by the courthouse, where Little Sorrel’s hooves
were lifted in a canter, meaning Jackson died of battle

wounds, in the language of statues. But that’s not true.
What statues mean. They mean who puts them where

and why and when and how some speak a language taught
by daily fear. But what had we to fear? Beneath Lee,

under cover of thick hedges, only Traveller, nostrils
flared, head reined back, looked down to see us pass

a joint from hand to hand, white, white, black,
white but underneath that statue, we were almost

always white. Unschooled in half our history;
ignorant of half our daily lives. Face it, no one

followed us through Woolworth’s, no one locked
car doors when we walked past, no one demanded

we lie face down on the pavement, then or now.
Besides, if someone caught us, someone’s dad would

no doubt get us off. I learned to smoke weed
in the boxwoods beneath Lee and I remember feeling

blissful on that soft-buzzed evening, how I made it
home untroubled, unharrassed, protected, and with ample

time to finish up my extra credit essay on how ludicrous
it was to think the German people did not know.

Hayden Saunier

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