Tishomingo Blues

  “We using the battle reenactment to put the rednecks out of business. Draw the motherfuckers into the woods and shoot ’em.”

  “But you’ll be with them, playing a Confederate.”

  “So I can be close,” Robert said. “I’m the spotter. I point out which ones to shoot.”

  16

  THEY HAD CHOSEN THIS ABANDONED farmland for the site and stood in the opening of a barn loft looking out at what would be the battlefield: John Rau, Walter Kirkbride and Charlie Hoke representing Billy Darwin, who couldn’t make it: all three in shirtsleeves this sunny afternoon, at least ninety degrees out in that empty pasture.

  Charlie listened to them deal with the weather first, Walter saying they’d sweat to death in their wool uniforms. John Rau saying it wouldn’t be any hotter than it was June 10, 1864, at Brice’s. Walter saying he would leave his longjohns at home if John Rau would and they’d keep it between them. John Rau said, “I didn’t hear you say that, Walter.” Charlie didn’t own a pair of longjohns and kept it to himself. He saw Walter now gazing out at the pasture again.

  “You think it looks like Brice’s?”

  “A big open field,” John Rau said, “mostly, I believe, blackjack oak on one side, that old orchard on the other. Not as wide as Brice’s but it’ll do.”

  Walter said, “You don’t know blackjack from a trash berry thicket and box elders. That’s all that cover is, till you get toward the levee. It isn’t nothing like Brice’s. All you have is a field.”

  “In this case it’s all we need,” John Rau said. “Walter, you know it has to be in plain view of the spectators. They’ll be down right in front of the barn where the ground slopes. We have a good two hundred yards out there to play with. You send your Third, Seventh and Eighth Kentucky Mounted Infantry out of the orchard over there and charge them straight across the pasture. I’m over in the thicket with the Seventh Indiana Cavalry and my own Second New Jersey shooting you down with our Spencers. You fall back and regroup and come at us again, and that’s the Sunday-afternoon show.”

  Sounding to Charlie like they were going to actually refight the battle.

  “We stop there,” Walter said, “it looks like the Federals won at Brice’s.”

  “Charlie will be making the announcements”—John Rau turning to him as he said it—“right?”

  “Yes sir, I’ll be happy to.”

  “And describe the action, who’s who.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Charlie’ll tell the crowd who won.”

  “I’ll send skirmishers out first,” Walter said, “and draw fire.”

  John Rau said, “Don’t you have those fellas that like to take hits with canister?”

  “Some of Arlen’s bunch. Yeah, they practice all of ’em going down together.”

  “Best diers,” Charlie said, “I ever saw.”

  John Rau said, “I hope that woman brings her cannon. I don’t know her name. Wears the big straw, kinda fat?”

  “Kinda?” Charlie said. “She’s got a butt on her like a mule in a pair of bluejeans.”

  John Rau said, “She’d have to be Federal to keep it authentic. Forrest didn’t have cannon to bring up till late in the day.”

  Charlie said, “Who’s gonna know that?”

  And got a stern look from John Rau saying, “Walter and I know it.”

  “When we did bring ’em up,” Walter said, “we rode the limbers in close and raked you with grape.”

  Listen to him, like he was there. Charlie saw John Rau nodding.

  “That young cannoneer—what was his name?”

  “John Morton, my artillery commander, twenty-one years old.”

  Now John Rau was saying, “Did you know there was a woman fought at Brice’s?”

  “She the one went by Albert something?”

  “Private Albert Cashier, Ninety-fifth Illinois, her real name was Jenny Hodges. Everyone thought she was a man,” John Rau said, “till she was run over by a car in 1911.”

  Walter said, “It’s too bad we can’t put on a show in the thicket, along the Federal line there.”

  “The spectators wouldn’t see anything.”

  “I know, but that’s my favorite action in the battle. I send Tyree Bell’s troopers charging in there firing their Colt Navies. John, they had extra cylinders capped and loaded in their pockets. More firepower’n even your Spencer repeaters.”

  John Rau said, “I did get hold of some Second New Jersey fellas, they’re coming with their Spencers. I hope to have a couple of Illinois groups, the Eighty-first and One-oh-eighth Infantry. I talked to a fella may bring as many as fifty. He said, ‘You want Ninth Kentucky or First Iowa?’ They do it either way. I said, ‘First Iowa, we’re gonna need Yankees.’ I told Billy Darwin about the Fifty-fifth and Fifty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry. He said he’d dress as many of the hotel help as volunteers. And there’s a fella staying at the hotel wants to be General Grant. Has never reenacted, though he does look like him.”

  “Grant wasn’t at Brice’s.”

  “Everybody knows that, Walter. I don’t like it either, but you know people’ll want to have their pictures taken with him. Is Lee coming—that fella always plays him?”

  “I believe he died. I haven’t seen him since Chickamauga. I got hold of the Seventh Tennessee and the Eighteenth Mississippi Cavalry. Some are coming, but hardly anybody’s bringing horses. We let Billy Darwin rush us into this,” Walter said. “We got started too late.”

  Charlie said to John Rau, “I recall you lost a horse at one of these.”

  “Yellow Tavern.”

  “I’ll be astride King Philip,” Walter said. “Parade around on my sorrel and let the kids pet him. I never feel so alive as when I’m Old Bedford.”

  Charlie said, “I hear Robert Taylor wants to be in your escort.”

  “If he’ll feed and wipe down King Philip,” Walter said, and then to John Rau, “Have you met this Robert Taylor? Colored fella from Detroit.”

  “Yeah, with General Grant.” John Rau looking surprised. “I assumed he’d be a Yankee. Why’s he want to wear gray?”

  “He heard Forrest had colored fellas in his escort,” Walter said. “He seemed to know what he was talking about, but he’s slippery. I don’t know what exactly to think about this Robert Taylor.”

  “Arlen met him,” Charlie said. “He tell you?”

  Now Walter looked surprised. He said no, and seemed ready to ask about it, but then John Rau was speaking.

  “You know there were African Confederates. Not only slaves brought along by officers and put in uniform, but volunteers, too.” He said to Walter, “Arlen’s coming?”

  “He wouldn’t miss it.”

  “He will if he’s in jail.”

  “For what, Floyd Showers? Everybody knows Junebug shot Floyd, and then one of Floyd’s friends must’ve shot Junebug. It makes sense.”

  “Walter, do you actually believe Floyd Showers had a friend?”

  “It’s none of my business,” Walter said. “What I’m concerned with is bringing off this event, making it work. How many you think we’ll have altogether, counting women, children and dogs?”

  “Our first muster?” John Rau said. “I’m hoping for as many as four hundred. Maybe fifty or so women and children dressed the part. Half-dressed anyway, little boys running around in kepis. I’m afraid the majority of the reenactors though will be UOs.”

  This was one Charlie hadn’t heard of. “What’re UOs?”

  “Unorganized Others. We’ll assign them regiments, so when you’re telling the crowd who’s who out in the field, they’ll be accounted for. We’ll do that Saturday morning.”

  Walter said, “How do we handle farbs?”

  “With patience,” John Rau said. “All we can do is point out the error of their ways. And I will be wearing longjohns, Walter.” He looked at his watch saying, “I have to go,” but lingered to mention the Porta-Johns were coming Friday afternoon, food vendors Saturday morning. Moving tow
ard the ladder he said something about a sutler’s store, drums and bugles . . . Walter behind him saying he’d wait for the crew coming to stake out the areas where the camps, the civilian tents and stores would set up, something about parking across the road . . . Charlie waited for them to go down the rickety ladder ahead of him.

  Out in the barn lot John Rau was looking up at the weathered side of the old barn saying, “We’ll have a banner up there, ‘First Annual Tunica Muster’ and so on.” He turned to the farmhouse rotting away across the yard. “I wish we didn’t have that eyesore.” Walter said he’d have his crew clean up around it. Charlie said, “I’ll see you,” and walked over to his Cadillac.

  By the time he’d turned out of the barn lot and was heading west on the county road, he saw in his mirror John Rau’s maroon Buick Regal swing out of the lot behind him. Charlie was coming onto 61 when he saw a car approaching, a black one as it whipped past him and then past John Rau in the mirror, a black Jaguar—Robert Taylor heading toward the site.

  Robert saw one car in the lot, some kind of big SUV, and Kirkbride shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, watching him drive in. Robert got out and walked toward him noticing the man hadn’t dyed his beard.

  “Mr. Kirkbride, how you doing? I called your office, the young lady said you were out here.”

  The man stood there squinting in the sun.

  “Hot enough for you?” Robert giving him white talk. “I sure hope it lets up some by the weekend. I was wondering, it rains, we postpone the battle or what?”

  “It rained the entire week leading up to Brice’s,” Kirkbride said. “You don’t mind getting wet, do you?”

  Giving him some hardcore reenactor shit without answering the question. Robert said, “No, I like to get wet,” and heard the rest of it, you dumb fuck, in his head. “I been out driving around the area, see what’s over the other side of the woods. Not much, a farm road . . .”

  “The levee road,” Kirkbride said. “There’s canebrakes back there, cottonwood and willow oak. It’s too bad we have to keep the battle out in the open. I think it would be interesting, at least for the reenactors, to put on a fight in the woods.”

  Robert said, “They any snakes back there?”

  “Cottonmouth’s the poisonous one to look out for, the one you see the most of. The worst things are the ticks and the red bugs.”

  Robert said, “Ticks and red bugs.”

  “And mosquitoes,” Kirkbride said. “Did you know Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, came here and studied this battle? Impressed by the way Old Bedford put it to the Yankees?”

  “Yeah, I read that. But I wondered did either of ’em know Hannibal pulled the same kind of shit on the Romans back in the b.c.s. Jammed ’em in a pincer move till they were stumbling all over each other. With their spears and shit.”

  It didn’t look as if Kirkbride knew it either, standing there squinting at him. He said, “I’ve got a crew coming.”

  Making it sound like reinforcements.

  Robert wasn’t sure what he meant and said, “I got one coming, too. Or I should say my buddy General Grant has, since we gonna be fighting against each other.”

  “I mean this afternoon,” Kirkbride said, and looked toward the road. “They’ll stake out the Union and Confederate camps and what’ll be in other areas.”

  “Arlen coming?”

  Kirkbride said, “I understand you two have met,” still not answering questions.

  “He tell you?”

  “I believe was Charlie Hoke mentioned it.”

  “Yeah, I met Arlen the first time with Charlie and the diver, where they’re staying. Then I brought General Grant out to Junebug’s to meet him. He didn’t tell you about it?”

  “Why would he?”

  “You know the man’s a criminal to look at him, huh?”

  Kirkbride only stared, not biting on that one, or interested in who General Grant was.

  So Robert said, “I know it’s hard to tell, gangstas down here not looking much like gangstas in the movies. You know what I’m saying? Your gangstas all have that Jimmy Dean country way about them.” Robert zinged one in now saying, “I asked Arlen were you in business with him. He tried not to say but told me yeah, you were, whether he knows it or not.” Robert paused to see what that would get him. Nothing. He said, “Mr. Kirkbride, am I going too fast for you?”

  The man said, “Maybe if you told me what the hell you’re talking about—”

  “The drug business. All that shit you move through Junebug’s into the countryside. You the drug czar of Tunica County, man. What surprises me is nobody seems to know it.”

  Now the man took his time, not saying shit as he walked toward him, Robert believing the man was thinking if he should explode with some Southron indignation. Like, did he know who he was speaking to? No, the man walked up till they were looking each other in the eye, the man doing all right so far, the way he was handling it.

  Robert said, “You haven’t dyed your beard.”

  And that threw him off some.

  He regrouped and said, “No, I haven’t, and I don’t intend to.”

  “You playing Forrest, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. But I don’t want to dye my beard, so I’m not gonna dye it.” Going with a tone of voice that was straight on, like he was his own man and had nothing to hide. He said, “You talked to Arlen about me, and you think you found out something?”

  Like what would Arlen know.

  “Ain’t he head of your security?”

  “That’s all he is.”

  “I asked him did he want to sell any your materials, supplies, out the back door.”

  “My security man.”

  “That’s the one you see. ‘Specially one that makes a living as a criminal. Yeah, I believe he was ready to do business,” Robert said, “but I was jes’ messing with his head. See, I already knew he had Junebug do Floyd and then did Junebug himself or had somebody else do him, the consensus leaning toward the one you all call the Fish. See, Arlen knows I’m not gonna say nothing about it or use it on him, hold him up with it. I don’t do that.”

  Kirkbride, eye to eye, said, “What makes you think he’s involved?”

  “Come on, man, everybody knows it. The CIB man knows it. He’d be deep into the case, hounding Arlen, it wasn’t for the reenactment. Listen, by now he’d have talked to the hotel help and all the guests still around, check on anybody might’ve been looking out the window besides me. You realize I jes’ missed seeing it by a minute or two? But we talking about John Rau now, the man so deep into this Civil War gig coming up he’s already living it, can’t wait. I bet you anything you want he wears his longjohns. He won’t even cut the legs off. I’m told you can do that in the summer, it’s okay. But to John Rau, man, that would be edging toward farbness. After, though, I expect he’ll be back on the job. That is, if Arlen’s still around.”

  Kirkbride jumped on it. “Still around—where else would he be?”

  “I mean if he’s still alive,” Robert said. “Arlen has the kind of personality, there must be people would like to shoot him. You know what I’m saying?”

  It wasn’t a question the man was likely to answer, but Robert saw him looking at it.

  “The point I’m making, Mr. Kirkbride, everybody knows he did Floyd and everybody knows he deals drugs. You go out to his store, that honky-tonk, and buy all you want.”

  “You been there, huh?”

  Why did that stop him?

  “Haven’t you?”

  “Not in a while.”

  “What I’m thinking,” Robert said, “it must be easy to deal here. Pay off whoever you have to and go about your business. But it can’t be easy for Arlen Novis ’cause Arlen’s a nitwit, and that makes him dangerous. Somebody’s directing him, else he’d be living high, driving around the country in a Rolls-Royce, have all kinds of federal people checking him out. He’d hide the money someplace, like under his bed.”

  He had Kirkbr
ide listening, paying close attention, the man appearing almost to nod his head in agreement.

  “See, first I ask myself, why would you hire a man everybody knows is a criminal to run your security? It must be you don’t have nothing to say about it. Like Arlen’s got some kind of hold on you. Stays close by so he can keep an eye on you. You’re the front, you’re—” Robert stopped, a lyric coming into his head, and he said it again, “You’re the front . . . you’re the Colosseum. You’re the front, you’re the Louvre Museum.”

  Robert kept his expression deadpan.

  Now he had the man staring at him, mouth not quite open but almost. Robert believed he could fuck him up some more, tell Mr. Kirkbride he was the Nile, the Tower of Pisa. He was the smile, on the Mona Lisa.

  But the man still wouldn’t get it.

  So he said, “What you do is hide the money for him. Put it to work.” He said, “I’m telling you this for two reasons. One, so you’ll know I know what you’re doing. And two, so you’ll be ready to make a decision when the time comes.”

  The man was doing all right, listening and keeping himself in control. He said, “You want to tell me what you’re talking about?”

  “Look at it,” Robert said, “like you’re coming to a crossroads and you know you have to make a turn. You don’t decide quick enough, what happens? You end up in the ditch.”

  Robert stepped to his car and opened the door.

  “I have to make a decision about what?”

  The man wanting an answer. Robert turned to him.

  “Where you want to be,” Robert said, “when Arlen goes down.”

  17

  AS SOON AS ROBERT GOT back to his suite he called room service and asked for Xavier. He waited, punched the remote to turn the TV on and said, “My man Xavier. Dos margaritas. Ten dollars for every minute you get ’em here under fifteen. You sabe what I’m saying? . . . Then go.” He laid a fifty-dollar bill on the table and took a quick shower. Robert came out in the hotel robe to see two margaritas on the table and the fifty gone. Robert had Xavier going through his Basics with incentives, getting the waiter in the right frame of mind to deliver meals from the hotel to the campsite. There was no way they’d get Anne to cook. She had never in her life slept in a tent and knew she’d hate it. Jerry told her she was gonna sleep in the fuckin tent, so forget it. Robert didn’t believe in sleeping in tents either; he believed people who camped out must be as serious as people who put on uniforms and became Civil War soldiers, and here these people were doing both.