Notes on an Imagined Plaque to Be Added to the Statue of General Nathan Bedford Forrest

FIRST, IT SHOULD BE BIG, the plaque. Not necessarily because there is so much to say, though there is so much to say, but big enough to be noticed on the side of this rather grand monument, after they move it and the bodies beneath it across town to the cemetery. And not just big for the sake of bigness. It should stick out as something off, something that disrupts the admirable balance of the statue, currently so tasteful, regal even. This bronze man on this bronze horse. Goatee. Square jaw. You get it. You’ve seen it before, even if you haven’t seen it before.

Anyway, the plaque has to be big enough to catch your eye when you’re checking your cellphone or walking your dog or eating a chicken Caesar salad from a plastic box on a bench, or whatever people are doing there in the cemetery, and whatever they might do there in the future, because that’s why we make these things, right? Plaques? Bronze men on bronze horses? We want people in the future to remember.