“A religious woman,” Walter said, strapping on his sword. He picked up his hat and a voice came from outside the tent.
“Walter, goddamn it, you coming?”
He opened the tent flap a few inches to see Arlen’s dirty look, one that seemed imprinted on the man’s features.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was thinking,” Arlen said, “it was time we set our minds on what we’re doing here. Except you’re with your whore, Eugene and Fish are fighting over a dead dog, and all Newton wants to do is lynch the nigger.”
It was in Walter’s mind that he might not have to listen to this man, this lout, ever again after today. And to make it come true he should help Robert any way he could.
Arlen said, “The hell’re you looking at?”
It brought Walter back. He turned his head to Traci on the cot. “See you later, Barbie honey.”
She lifted her head from the pillow. “Okay, Kin.”
Walter stepped outside.
Arlen said, “You got a new one in there?”
Anne got up from the room-service table to answer the door. Jerry didn’t move, looking at the Sunday paper, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, as he ate his breakfast.
Robert was in uniform. Coming in he said, “That was me called.” Anne opened the door all the way and now he saw Jerry at the table. “And you two were sound asleep, huh? I’m sorry I woke you up.”
Jerry said, “How was it?” dipping his spoon into a soup bowl of soft-boiled eggs.
Robert estimating there were three eggs in the bowl, runny, maybe four when Jerry started eating. That took up part of a moment in Robert’s mind, the rest of it was thinking, How was what? And realized Jerry meant sleeping in a tent. “We missed you, Jer. Yeah, that camping out’s fun. We built a fire, sat around it and told ghost stories.”
Anne said, “Did you sing camp songs?”
She stood with her orange juice now by the open doors to the balcony.
“We didn’t know any. Tonto did sixty days in one of those tent jails that’s like a camp, in Texas? But he said they didn’t sing any songs.”
Jerry said, “What time’s this thing today, the battle?”
“Two o’clock. You muster at the Union camp no later than one-thirty.”
“Or what,” Jerry said, “they don’t let you play? How we gonna work it?”
Hector had phoned this morning, so Robert was able to say, “Hector talked to Arlen. He says they’ll go fists, knives, anything . . . rocks. Hector says even swords. There four of them counting Arlen, not counting Mr. Kirkbride. We might want to use him, and this other one, Bob Hoon, runs the meth lab. I drove out and spoke to him a few days ago, gave him some what-ifs, told him he ought to stay loose. So it’s their four against us four, us being me and you, Hector and Tonto.”
“And the two spades,” Jerry said.
“You mean,” Robert said, “Groove and Cedric? I told you where they gonna be.”
“Yeah, I forgot,” Jerry said, getting up from the table with the paper. “That’s what I have you for, the details.”
Robert watched him go into the bedroom and heard the bathroom door close. Now he saw Anne drilling him with her look and knew he was about to get yelled at through clenched teeth.
“I told you he’d come back. I walk in the room—what am I supposed to tell him?”
“Baby, I’m sorry. He was awake?”
“He was asleep.”
“Then you had time to make something up.”
“How do I know when he got back? I had to find that out first.”
Robert moved toward her now saying, “Baby, what’d you tell him? It must’ve been good.” He would have to take her in his arms now while her husband was in there taking a dump, give her some comfort, ready to, but then saw the ladder out there past her against the sky, and saw a figure standing on the top perch.
Now Anne turned to follow his gaze and said, “Is that Dennis?”
“It’s Billy Darwin,” Robert said. “He climbed up there once before. And climbed down,” Robert’s voice drifting with a thoughtful sound to it. “The cool hotel manager gonna find out if he’s all the way cool. See Carla down there? By the tank with Charlie Hoke in his uniform. But the man is not doing it for them or anybody watching. I see Billy Darwin up there for his own knowledge of himself. He wants to know can he do it from the height of cool, eighty feet up. He’s gonna do it, too. See him on the edge? The man’s gonna do it.”
Robert watched Billy Darwin raise his arms, look down at the tank and then straight out at the sky, watched him jump into space and drop sixty miles an hour in two seconds to smack the water with a sound Robert could hear.
Robert said, “Uh-oh.”
His eyes holding on the tank, waiting for Billy Darwin to surface, as Anne told him she would never, ever, let him talk her into that kind of situation again, taking a chance that could get them killed, for Christ sake, for what? She said, “Hey, I’m talking to you. Where’re you going?” raising her voice to Robert crossing the room and going out the door.
Two figures stood on the slope not far from the barn, a Yankee and a Confederate with a sword, Dennis halfway across the field before he recognized them, Robert and Charlie, and trudged up the slope with his rifle.
Charlie said, “We saw you coming—”
Robert got right to it, telling Dennis, “Billy Darwin went off the ladder. He might’ve injured himself.”
“Bad?”
“Did something to his back. Carla went in and fished him out.”
“With her clothes on,” Charlie said. “He manages to take a few steps at a time, but stooped over. The Emergency people came, he didn’t want to go with ’em. They strapped him down and took him anyway. Said they thought he ought to be x-rayed.”
Dennis was shaking his head now. “Carla said he wanted to do it. He jumped?”
“Looked good, too,” Robert said, “till he’s almost to the tank and you see his legs go out in front of him like he’s sitting down. Made a way bigger splash than any of yours. I believe his timing was off a speck, but he was cool to try it. Have to give him that.”
Dennis said to Robert, “You’re not gonna try it, are you?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Don’t, okay?”
“No, man, I can admire it without feeling the need to do it. Listen, I told Jerry to look for you at the Federal camp. Where you going now?”
“Get my corporal stripes cut off,” Dennis said. “Or Colonel Rau won’t let me play war.”
“What you do,” Robert said, “stay close as you can to Hector and Tonto, you’ll be okay. I told them to get up close to the woods on the north side, straight out there, and I’ll give ’em the sign when to duck in.”
“I’m not getting into anything over my head.”
“That’s what I’m saying to you. They’ll see you don’t get in trouble.”
Charlie said, “The hell are you talking about?”
“I have to go,” Robert said, and went off to join his Confederates.
Charlie watched him walk off and then turned to Dennis. “What’s going on?”
“If I knew,” Dennis said, “I’d tell you.”
“Well, I gotta go study my script,” Charlie said, and headed for the barn.
And now Dennis was on his way to visit the Naughty Child woman. See if she had a pair of scissors. It was strange, he could tell Loretta was younger than he was by a few years, and yet he thought of her as a woman and not a girl. Or as Arlen’s wife.
23
SHE WASN’T OUTSIDE. SHE COULD be in the tent. And Arlen could be in there with her, but he doubted it. Dennis stepped under the awning.
“Loretta?”
“Who is it?” Her voice close.
He said, “Dennis,” not sure if that was enough.
The flap opened and there was her face, no makeup, her features clean-scrubbed, shiny. She didn’t give him much of a smile, but her eyes were calm and didn’t
leave his face.
“I need to get my stripes cut off.”
“For leaving your post last night, huh? And you didn’t even get any pie.”
“I wasn’t thinking of pie. But listen, all I need is a pair of scissors.” He heard his voice taking on a soft accent to match hers.
“Well, come on in, take your jacket off.”
Dennis laid his rifle on the table and stood by the tent flap unbuttoning the shell, got it open and took off his kepi to place it next to the rifle.
“You coming?”
He said, “What’re you doing?” opening the tent and stepping into light that had lost its brightness, filtered through the canvas. She was wearing nothing above her long skirt but a thin, flimsy bra he could see through and holding a washcloth in her hand. Loretta didn’t act surprised or self-conscious; or seductive, for that matter. She made it seem natural for him to see her this way, soaping her arm.
“Going to fight the battle?”
“I could get shot right here,” Dennis said.
It didn’t make her smile. She said, “I’ll cut off your stripes,” and held the washcloth toward him, “if you’ll wash my back.” Still natural making the offer.
Dennis took the washcloth. He thought she would turn. When she didn’t he stepped around her and she lowered her head and reached back with both hands to lift her hair out of the way. He wiped the cloth across her back, trying not to touch the bra straps, smelling the soap, moving the cloth lower now and under her raised arm, the tips of his fingers coming to the slight swell of her breast.
“You have a nice touch,” Loretta said.
Dennis worked his way over to the hollow beneath her other arm.
“I can see why those girls look at you as a possible. You always this tender?”
He thought to say, Well, I’m not washing a car. And scrapped it because he did feel tender moving his hand over her small bones, her white skin—though not as white as Vernice’s, Vernice a lot rounder than Loretta, Loretta skin and bones by comparison, more athletic, that wiry type, sometimes a tiger in bed, though Vernice was active for her size.
“I said, are you always this tender?”
“I touched you,” Dennis said, “and the tender feeling came with it. I’m having trouble, though, working around these straps.”
“Why don’t you unhook me?”
He did and she pulled the bra off in front of her. By the time he came around to her breasts, not near the size of Vernice’s but a woman’s breasts all the same, he could look over her shoulder and see them, Loretta pressing herself against him. They’d be on the cot anytime now and he had to think of what he’d take off. She lifted her skirt, gathering it above her hips, and turned to him bare underneath saying, “Don’t take your clothes off. Let’s do it right now.”
Dennis said, “Just once?”
And Loretta said, “Oh, honey . . .”
They made love in the hot tent, Dennis in his wool uniform, pants around his knees, and it was like finding his match in a woman they were so natural with each other, playing, having fun, their eyes holding until first her eyes and then his squeezed closed. This time he did not think of Vernice.
She said, after, “You have a car?”
“Where do you want to go?”
She said, “Anywhere,” and said, “I could announce your dives, do that cute patter about getting splashed.”
It stopped him. “You saw my show?”
She said, “Honey, I watched you every night you dove.”
The bivouac seemed more military than it did when he left: no clothes hanging from stacked rifles, not as much gear lying around, the Yankee reenactors taking down their tents, getting ready for battle. Dennis had slept in the open last night and shared the First Iowa soldier’s breakfast this morning, fried salt pork and biscuits he’d brought from home soaked in the grease. With the coffee it went through Dennis like a fire hose.
The First Iowan said, “You missed the drill. We marched out there and showed our stuff. The colonel said we didn’t look too bad.”
Dennis, now a private, said, “I was getting my stripes cut off,” and saw her face again close in that hot tent.
The First Iowan said, “General Grant showed up and the colonel wasn’t too pleased to see him. The first sergeant says he was sore anyways ’cause of the truck still sitting in the bivouac. No keys and nobody’d come to pick it up. The colonel asked General Grant what kind of credentials he had. Who said it was okay for him to be commander in chief of the Union Army? The first sergeant said the general told him, ‘Abraham Lincoln, who the fuck do you think.’”
Jerry was sitting on the tailgate of the pickup smoking a cigar, Hector and Tonto with him, Hector holding Jerry’s sword. Dennis, approaching them, had already made up his mind he wasn’t going to salute or call him general. He saw them waiting for him, Jerry saying to him as he walked up, “Where you been?”
Dennis said, “Getting my stripes cut off,” and again saw Loretta’s face. Then saw her another time, somewhere else, Loretta saying, Feel like getting your stripes cut off?
“These guys were about to go find you,” Jerry said. “Drag you here if they had to. You understand? You got nothing to say about it.”
“He means we need you,” Hector said, “as the bait.”
“We get ’em where we want ’em,” Jerry said, “you stay close. Try to run, one of us’ll shoot you.”
They were talking about setting up Arlen and his guys, but it didn’t make sense. Dennis said, “You don’t have bullets in your guns. Nobody does.”
Hector said, “Robert didn’t tell you, uh? We trade them in, man, for loaded pistols.”
“How do we do that?”
“You see it happen.”
“You’re gonna shoot those guys,” Dennis said, “and then what, take off?”
“Man, Robert didn’t tell you shit,” Hector said.
“All you got to know,” Jerry said, “you run, you’re dead. By any chance you get picked up ’cause you’re stupid and the cops offer you a deal to give us up? You’re fuckin dead. You’re in it. You understand? You told Robert you’re in all the way, right?”
“He means the business part,” Hector said.
“Not yet.”
Jerry said, “There something wrong with you?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“You didn’t jump on it right away you’re not the guy. We don’t need you.” He said to Hector and Tonto, “You guys do all the work, you need him?”
“If Robert say he wants him,” Hector said, and Tonto agreed, nodding.
“That’s why I don’t ask your fuckin advice,” Jerry said, and looked at Dennis again. “You got till after we do this. But you fuck with me you know what happens.”
“You’re dead,” Hector said.
“What kind of thing would I do,” Dennis said to Jerry, “you’d think of as fuckin with you?”
“I just told you.”
“Outside of if I run or cop to a deal.”
“You’re fuckin with me right now.”
It was in his voice, the irritation.
“He means don’t piss him off,” Hector said, “that’s all,” and said to him, “Let me ask you something. You know how to fire a Colt pistol?”
“I know you have to cock it first,” Dennis said, “each time you fire. Thumb the hammer back. Or you can squeeze the trigger and fan the hammer, the way Alan Ladd did in Shane, he’s showing the kid how he shoots.”
“That was a good part,” Hector said, “before he faced Wilson, the hired gun.”
“And blew him away,” Dennis said.
“See?” Hector said to Jerry. “I told you Dennis would know how.”
Jerry was shaking his head. “You guys kill me. You’re fuckin morons, you know it?”
They stood in ranks while John Rau took them one by one through the safety drill. Each man’s rifle, with only a cap in the breech, would be aimed at the ground and fired at a leaf. The ru
sh of air moving the leaf meant the barrel was clear.
Dennis waited his turn, the clean smell of Loretta’s soap on him.
He had said to her, “If you saw me dive, why didn’t you know who I was?” Last night, when she was guessing what he did for a living. She said because she was never close enough to the tank when he came out, and because he didn’t dive in a Yankee uniform with corporal stripes on it. She said, “Let me have your jacket,” and snipped off in twenty seconds what had taken Vernice something like twenty minutes, talking the whole time, to sew on.
Yesterday, when he asked her why they called the pie Naughty Child, and she said, “You find out, let me know,” he took his first step toward her, getting the feeling they were alike and could talk, not take things too seriously. Then in the evening, thinking of her as a country girl with theme parks in her dreams, he had stepped back for a moment, the daredevil king of amusement parks passing judgment. There was nothing wrong with theme parks. Some even put on high-dive shows.
Standing in ranks at attention he said to himself, You’ll dive another three years, if that. What do you and your dive-caller do then?
He didn’t know her but he kept thinking about her, seeing her, liking the way she moved and the sound of her voice, and her eyes, the way she looked at him. What was the problem?
Outside of her being married.
For the time being. That could change in an hour.
He saw himself in a dueling pose, in the trees, aiming a Colt revolver at Arlen running toward him.
With a sword, a big cavalry saber.
Could that happen?
John Rau said, “Private, tell me what you’re waiting for?”
24
ROBERT WENT DOWN TO THE Confederate encampment in the orchard, his sword hanging at his side, his hand on the hilt to keep it from hitting his leg and tripping him up, swords not being as cool as they looked. Man, all the serious Southron types down here getting ready, Robert estimating their number at a hundred and a half easy, living in dirt and eating bad food and loving it.
He saw squads of them marching through the tangle of trees to drumbeats, some already taking their positions on the line. He saw a half-dozen cavalrymen sitting their horses, and three cannon Robert believed were six-pounders rolled out to aim across the field. There were hardcores who looked like they’d been doing this since Fort Sumter was fired on, along with farbs in half-assed outfits here to have some fun.