The rebel charges forward on his dark horse, barreling between two stone monuments, the stark, silent gatekeepers of a withering world. Backward dreams, perverse and illusionary stare him down like ghosts on the edge. The Emancipation Proclamation has been signed. The war may even be over. But the shackles of bondage are barely undone. The black slave’s dream of freedom rings like an empty promise on a white man’s road to nowhere. The union black soldier, in particular, ironically seems to not care which way the rebel may fire his pistol. The latent spirit in their stride will take time. For now, all in the scene seem simply “vacant”- the slaves, the soldier, the rebel, and most certainly the dream, winding backwards down the road to where no doubt stands a hauntingly vacant home.
