Brian Yotch is torn. The College Park resident agrees with Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton that it’s time for the body of Confederate General and former Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest to be removed from its place of honor in Health Sciences Park. On the other hand, Yotch worries that the Grand Wizard’s exhumation will result in deadly paranormal activity.
“There is an army of mostly decomposed confederates buried in Elmwood just looking for a reason to rise up and kill the living,” Yotch said at an impromptu neighborhood watch meeting. “Nobody seems to care about what will happen if they move Forrest’s bones out of the the medical district. They don’t think twice about putting our neighborhood on the front line of the coming war where the veil between reality and unreality will be ripped asunder.
“When the dead rise up to march, they’re marching toward Midtown,” Yotch said, cautioning civic leaders to be reasonable. “Don’t think I’m saying it’s okay for Memphis to honor a guy who made his fortune selling slaves and rebelling against America. Because it’s not okay. I just think we need to consider what can happen when you go messing with forces you shouldn’t be messing with.”
Yotch’s neighbor Dick Holiday disagrees and hopes Forrest’s remains will eventually be returned to Elmwood, where the Southern General was previously interred. “What the history-hating idiot next door needs to do is shut his pie hole and open up a donut shop or something,” Holiday said. “As soon as they move Forrest to Elmwood our neighborhood becomes the number one tourist destination in America for racists. That guy’s like Klan Elvis, am I right?”
Holiday says that, while he’s not personally a racist, he sees no reason why the area shouldn’t benefit economically by a sudden influx of hater money. “If I had financial backing I’d open a Civil War-themed cupcake shop. Or Rebel Yell SnoCones. Maybe a gun store and shooting range,” Holiday said. “You get Forrest, you get that tourist opportunity.”
“Yeah, I totally want that racist money too,” Yotch said, answering his neighbor’s complaint. “Who wouldn’t want a bunch of heavily armed peckerwoods with disposable income parking on their street? But as good as that sounds, I don’t want it at the expense of a dark reckoning. It’s like in the movie Jaws when the town leaders knew there was a killer shark out there in the water eating people, but were afraid of losing business over the fourth of July. Only instead of a killer shark it’s a bunch of undead soldiers with bayonets and battle flags.”
“It’s nothing like Jaws,” Holiday countered, shrugging off his neighbor’s concerns. “That whole rebel graveyard thing is more like The Walking Dead.”
“More like Poltergeist,” Yotch shouted over his fence. “People died after shooting that movie,” he warned portentously. “And now they’re rebooting the whole franchise. This stuff never goes away. It comes back. It always comes back.”
