Tishomingo Blues

  “I thought it might be a Confederate raiding party,” Dennis said, “looking to take prisoners.”

  John Rau said, “Corporal—”

  But Dennis was already saying, “Get shipped off to Andersonville to die of dysentery.”

  “Corporal?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You’ve been gone over an hour.”

  “Colonel, you want to know the truth?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m not a reenactor. I don’t feel it in me.”

  “Are you quitting?”

  “When this is over. I doubt I’ll ever do it again.”

  “But you’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Yes sir, for the battle.”

  “And you know Arlen Novis will be coming out of the orchard over there with his boys. I can’t say they’re Dixie Mafia, that name doesn’t mean anything to me. I do know they’re thugs, they’re vicious, and as soon as they wake up in the morning they’ll be drinking again. By the time they cross this field they will have worked themselves up, they’ll come with that Rebel yell like they’re ready to kill. During battle reenactments they get into fistfights with Union soldiers all the time. They’re warned beforehand, they still do it, ’cause they become out of control. I remember both at Franklin and at Corinth last year they met our line swinging rifle butts at us. My impression at those events, I was a captain with the Ninety-fifth Ohio, acting as an infantry officer for a change. Though I prefer cavalry. I was Stuart at Yellow Tavern when I lost my horse, a beautiful mare.” John Rau paused to look for the point he was making. “You understand, Arlen and his fellas could come tomorrow with every intention of taking you out of the picture, for good.”

  Dennis was ready. He said, “If I told you right now I saw them murder Floyd Showers, would you go over there and arrest him?”

  John Rau took a moment before saying, “He’ll still be around Monday.”

  Here was a chance to play Robert with him. Say something like, Oh, are you sure? Or, You sure about that? But in Dennis’ head it didn’t sound anything like Robert. Jesus, trying to be clever. What he said was, “So you’re giving Arlen a chance to take me out of the picture, as you say.”

  John Rau shook his head. “Don’t report for tomorrow’s muster.”

  “I know a person,” Dennis said, “Arlen told they killed Floyd, and wants him put away.”

  John Rau said, “I have Loretta Novis. She’ll tell it if my eyewitness testifies. But if he does, I don’t need her, do I?”

  Dennis said, “I’ll talk to you Monday.”

  John Rau said, “You know I can have you subpoenaed and put on the stand under oath.”

  Dennis said, “Sir, I have to get back to my post.”

  Thinking he was smart. But John Rau had the last word.

  He said, “You take part tomorrow, I don’t want to see you wearing those chevrons, private.”

  They had it worked out that Arlen would come up from one end of the tent street and Fish and Newton would approach from the other end. He’d picked Newton ’cause he was the one had sassed this Robert when he was with the girl showing some of her tit, and would have gone after him he didn’t have a goddamn sword in his hand. Newton’d worked the wad around in his mouth, messy as hell, beard all stained, and said he would settle with the nigger, don’t worry.

  They’d meet at General Grant’s tent and see what was doing. See if they could stick a gun in the man’s mouth, this Caesar German-o, and tell him to go on home. It gave Arlen a chance to stop and see his wife. If he saw any green tomatoes it’d mean she never made the goddamn pie she burned.

  The first thing he said to her was, “Jesus Christ, is that a roach on the table?”

  Loretta looked over from her sling chair. “It looks like a roach to me. Doesn’t it look like one to you?”

  “I know what it is.”

  “Then what’re you asking me for?”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I told you, don’t ever bring none from home. Have these women sniffing the air, saying things about you.”

  “They’re so scared of you they don’t come near me. I wasn’t even invited to the tea. I wouldn’t have gone, but they could’ve asked.”

  Arlen said, “You disobeyed me.”

  “I didn’t bring the pot, sweetheart. A soldier boy came by, a Yankee, and left it for me.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t want to get you upset.”

  “I’m asking you who it was.”

  “And I’m not telling, so go fuck yourself.”

  This was not the girl used to write sweet letters to him in the joint. They changed on you, all of ’em. Set ’em up with a nice house and a car and turned into alligators.

  “You’re trying to get me to smack you,” Arlen said, “so you can scream and get people looking out their tents. I’ll ask you again we get home, you can scream all you want.”

  Now she was giving him her sleepy-eyed reefer grin, like she knew something about him he didn’t. She did it all the time and it liked to drive him crazy.

  Arlen said to her as he always did, hoping for an answer but never getting one, “What is wrong with you?”

  An hour or so before this, in General Grant’s camp, Germano had come out of his tent sweating in his underwear, growling, telling Hector and Tonto, “That’s it, fuck it. I can’t sleep in there, I’m going back to the hotel.”

  There was no way to argue with him if that’s what he wanted to do. Hector said, “Of course,” and said he would get Groove and Cedric to take him. It didn’t matter to Germano who drove him, but it did to Hector; he wanted to be here if the Confederates came to visit.

  Germano asked if Robert was sleeping. Hector said no, but he was around someplace. Germano said, “Tell him I’ve gone back.”

  When they had left, Hector said to Tonto, “There was no way to stop him. Now, what if he finds Robert in bed with his missus?”

  Tonto took time to think about it, but all he said was, “I don’t know. I guess we have to wait to find out.”

  They were sitting by the table in front of Germano’s tent now, the lantern hanging above them from the awning. Both Hector and Tonto, when they thought of Jerry or would mention him, it was always as Germano. They couldn’t understand why Robert allowed him to be the boss. They would protect the man’s life, not having much respect for him, but because Robert would say to do it, okay? You mind? Not the way Germano the hard-on said to do something. Robert made you feel close to him. “Working for Robert,” Hector said, “was like being in the fucking movies.” Robert had imagination. Go on down to Mississippi and take over a deal from the Dixie Mafia. What? First get you some Civil War uniforms. What? And Civil War guns. Yeah? And you get to play war like when you were kids. Yeah? No kidding.

  Sitting in the lantern light, Hector said, “He could have been a killer of bulls, a good one with his own style. But I believe he would have someone else plant the sticks.

  “You know why? Because he likes to have people with him who know what they’re doing. Planting the sticks looks difficult, but requires far less nerve than to go over the horns with the sword. I believe he can be anything he wants that catches his eye.”

  “Don’t you know what he wants to do?” Tonto said. “He wants to dive off that ladder.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No, but he would like to.”

  “How do you know?”

  “See the way he watches that quiet guy dive off the ladder, that Dennis. Look at Robert’s eyes, man, when he says ‘Hey, shit,’ and shakes his head. He would give up something to do it. The guy high in the air, twisting and turning, is in control of himself, showing how cool he is. And Robert’s cool. He keeps Dennis around because he respects him as a man.”

  “You believe he wants to,” Hector said, “but you don’t know it.”

  Tonto said, “No, not the same way I know that guy down the street, the Confedera
te guy, is coming here. But the feeling I have about Robert is that I know it.”

  “From the other way also,” Hector said, “two of them coming.”

  Jim Rein, the Fish, saw the two sitting in the lantern light. The one behind the table had the pigtail in his hair. The one at this end of the table had the bandanna covering his. He was looking this way. Jim Rein said to Newton, “That one there was at Junebug’s with the general and the nigger.” Meaning Robert, the one Newton was looking for.

  Newton said, “Ain’t those two niggers?”

  Jim Rein said, “I think they’s Mexicans.”

  Newton said, “What’s the difference? They look like smokes to me.”

  They saw Arlen, who’d come from the opposite end of the tent street, facing them now, Arlen’s Navy Colt stuck in his belt near to the front. Jim Rein and Newton wore their revolvers in military holsters with the flaps cut off. Jim Rein saw the one wearing the bandanna staring at him the same way he’d stared at Junebug’s without ever saying a word. As Jim Rein and Newton came up to Arlen, Jim Rein saw the two Mexicans or whatever they were bring out their own Colt revolvers from wherever they kept them and lay them on the table—at the same time without saying anything or nudging each other.

  Hector Diaz looked at the three Confederate soldiers in their hats with no style to them, no personality, three guys, Hector believed, who were used to scaring people by the way they looked at you. But now the expression on the face of the leader changed. This was the one called Arlen. He said, “How you boys doing this evening?”

  Hector looked up at him. Tonto looked at the other two.

  “Getting yourselves some air?”

  They didn’t answer that one either.

  “Can’t get you boys to say nothing,” Arlen said. “How about your general, Mr. German-o? How’s he doing?”

  Hector smiled a little; he couldn’t help it. He said, “Our general is asleep.”

  “You his guard dogs?”

  “No, what you said, we getting the air.”

  “Ask him to come out here,” Arlen said, “so I can speak to him. Or I can step inside the tent.”

  “I tole you,” Hector said, “he sleeping.”

  Arlen nodded at the table. “Those pistols loaded?”

  “Yes, they are,” Hector said.

  “You know you’re not suppose to put loads in your guns?”

  “Yes, we know it,” Hector said, “the same as you know it.”

  Arlen said, “What’re we getting to here?”

  Hector turned his head to Tonto. “Fucking High Noon, man.”

  Arlen said, “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I tole him,” Hector said, “you want to pull your guns, but you don’t have the nerve.”

  The one with the tobacco stains in his beard said, “What’d he say?”

  But the one, Arlen, was louder, telling them, “You think that’s what we come here for? To shoot you? Jesus Christ.”

  “Our Lord and Savior,” Hector said. “No, I don’t think to shoot us. Maybe scare us so we go home.”

  “We gonna see you tomorrow,” Arlen said, “when we do Brice’s, and run you off with rifle butts and bayonets.”

  Hector said, “And swords?”

  “You want to sword-fight?” Arlen said. “I got a sword. Shit, we’ll do ‘er any way you want, Pancho.”

  Hector turned to Tonto again. “You hear this guy?”

  Tonto only shrugged.

  But then the one with the stained beard said, “Where’s the nigger at?”

  Tonto looked at him and said, “He left. He went to fuck your wife.”

  Hector could see the guy with the beard was about to go crazy, but Arlen stopped him, took the hand reaching for the pistol and twisted it behind him the way cops know how to do it, and that was the end of the visit. Arlen said one word to them before they marched off with the one still on the edge of being crazy. He said, “Tomorrow.”

  Hector looked at Tonto. “Tomorrow okay with you?”

  22

  A FEW MINUTES PAST SIX the next morning, Sunday, the big day, Anne left Robert’s suite to go down the hall sleepy-eyed to get in her own bed.

  The one—Oh, shit—Jerry was in.

  Jerry snoring away, the sound, that drone, coming from the bedroom. It stopped Anne in her slides as she entered the suite and got her thinking, Quick, where were you?

  But first she’d have to know what time Jerry got back. Now she was saying things to herself like, Are you out of your mind? You actually believed he’d sleep in a fucking tent? She should never have listened to Robert with that baby, it’s cool, nothing to worry about. “You don’t want him walking in on us, we do it in my bed.” Anne saying, “But if he comes back and I’m not in my bed—” Robert saying, “Come on, baby, have us a quickie and call it a night.” Except that Robert was a slowpoke making love, kept slow-poking till they both fell asleep for almost six hours.

  Fooling around could have its hair-raising moments, especially cheating on a gangster, and she’d tell herself it wasn’t worth it. But then Robert would give her the look and she’d give him the look and they’d be back fooling around again. She slipped into the kingsize bed next to Jerry to lie there waiting for him to wake up.

  The phone rang at eight, the phone on Jerry’s side of the bed.

  Anne reached across him, stretching, for a moment her face close to his, lifted the receiver before it rang again and laid it back in its cradle. Slipping back across Jerry she came to his face, his eyes, inches away, open, looking at her. She kissed him on the mouth, a peck, and rolled back onto her pillow.

  “Who was that?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Why’d you hang up?”

  “It’s too early to talk.”

  She waited, hoping that fucking phone would not ring.

  “Where were you?”

  Here we go.

  “Where was I? When?”

  “All fuckin night.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I come back, you’re not here.”

  “What time was it?”

  “What’s the difference—you weren’t fuckin here.”

  “Jerry. What time was it?”

  “Twelve, twelve-thirty.”

  Anne said, “Yeah . . .?” taking her time, and said, “I was out on the balcony,” adding a note of surprise to her voice. “I fell asleep on the lounge. You didn’t see me? Yeah, I came in and looked at the clock. It was one-thirty, you were asleep . . .” She said, “I knew you weren’t gonna spend the night in that tent.”

  “You were out on the balcony.”

  “Yeah, I can’t believe you didn’t see me.”

  There was a silence, Jerry lying there with nothing more to say. But now she was home free and couldn’t let it go.

  “Where did you think I was?”

  Walter Kirkbride had started to get dressed with every intention of slipping out of the tent early, unobserved, before the women in camp were out there cooking breakfast. And he would have, if he hadn’t looked over at little Traci turning onto her side on the cot, the little sweetie pulling the blanket with her to show him her bare white bummy. It lured Walter out of his longjohns to express his love. And then had to rest.

  While he was getting dressed the second time little Traci lit into him in a pouty way, moaning about being mostly all alone yesterday, and having to wear that dumb hoopskirt.

  “I walk around here, everybody looks at me.”

  “Well, sure they do, you’re cute as a bug. Aren’t you my little Barbie?” He’d call her that in the trailer and she’d call him Ken, only in her countrified way it would come out sounding like “Kin.”

  “Those fat women’d ask me who’re my people. Where was I from. Do I want to help them make johnnycake. What was I suppose to say? I told ’em I had to go to the bathroom. But you try to get in one of those little shithouses with a hoopskirt on. You have to lift it up in front real high and go in sideways. B
ut then you’re in there the skirt takes up all the room. What I did was get up on the seat and squat over it to pee.”

  Walter was pulling his boots, straining, trying to hurry. That, and hearing her talking about peeing, gave him the urge.

  “I went in that store where they have all the little statues of famous generals and stuff? I have all kinds of ashtrays with Confederate flags on ’em, so I bought a plate I thought might be used as one, had Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson on it, and the flag, of course. I use to have a G-string with a Confederate flag on it guys liked a lot when I was dancing go-go. They’d salute it. I was only fourteen but already had my tits.”

  Walter stood at the back of the tent relieving himself, feeling calmer as the flow hit the sand, not making a sound.

  “Sweetie, you get dressed, put on your bluejeans. We may leave here in a hurry.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I think today’s gonna be different than any reenactment I’ve ever been to.” He would approach it carefully, alert, keeping on the front of his mind what the colored fella Robert had said. Where you want to be when Arlen goes down? Seeing it more as a warning than a decision he had to make. Robert telling him to stay out of it and he wouldn’t get hurt. Keep to one side and maybe this Robert would come see him after about doing business. It seemed all he had to do was stay alert and not get too near to Arlen.

  “After,” Traci said, “can we get something to eat?”

  “Anything you want.”

  “You know who Arlen sent with my supper I would never’ve eaten anyway? All that pork fat? Even if he hadn’t spilt it on the ground? Newton Hoon, the stinkiest man I ever met in my life. He’d try to come in my trailer? I said, ‘You filled a tub with wash powder and soaked in it all day I still wouldn’t let you in.’”

  Walter, getting into his wool coat, said, “That’s my girl.”

  “I couldn’t buy anything for supper, I didn’t have no money with me and you didn’t give me none. I was lucky I stopped to talk to this lady down a ways smoking a cigarette? She’d snuck in some Stouffer’s frozen dinners, only defrosted, the Chicken and Vegetables Pasta Bake, threw ’em in a pot and pretended she was cooking. It was good, too. She talked funny. She said she’d been stuck in a hard life, but believed her redeemer was about to cometh.”