Robert came through brush strung along a dry creek bed that separated the main Confederate camp from a gathering of hillbilly-looking rednecks with beards and black hillbilly hats that put Robert in mind of a biker gang without their leathers. He believed he was getting close to Kirkbride’s outfit and identified himself to a group passing around a jar of shine.
“How you doing? I’m Forrest’s chief scout, looking to report to the general.”
What they did was stare with dumb, serious faces, looking at him with the kind of stares Robert was used to. First the sizing up, then the remarks to put him in his place, have some fun with him. Robert didn’t let them get to that part. He said, “You fuck with me, I’ll bring Arlen over to get on your ass. I laid in the thicket all night spying on the Federal camp and the general’s waiting for my report.”
Sounding official to confuse them, remind them of what they were doing here. It got him pointed to Kirkbride’s tent, over there in that cottonwood shade: Walter Kirkbride with Arlen and his people and their fruit jar, Arlen looking this way and now all of them looking, Walter saying something, and now he was coming away from them, by himself.
Good. It told Robert Walter had been looking at his crossroads and was keeping Arlen out of it, the man cautious now, not wanting to get himself in the middle of any gangsta business. Still, Robert intended to hook him, show the man he wasn’t home free.
Walter walked up looking like a general and Robert said, “How you doing? I understand you got little Traci in camp with you.”
Stopped the man cold, whatever it was he might’ve had ready to say now gone.
“That cute girl has the trailer behind Junebug’s? My man Tonto saw her walking around the camp. But was Wesley told me she’s your sweetheart. Wesley, the bartender out there wears the undershirt?”
The man stood motionless in his officer’s uniform, his hat on, his eyes sad, like a general tired of war and about to offer his sword. Bobby Lee at Appomattox.
Robert said, “Listen to me, Walter, I ain’t holding Traci over your head, that ain’t my business. You go on have your fun. What I’m saying to you, I realize the kind of mental defectives you have to associate with, and I know you’re better than having to do that. I maybe even could use you in my business. You understand what I’m saying?”
Walter said, “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” his voice showing some life.
“You don’t deserve to go down with Arlen and his people. And they going down,” Robert said, looking past Walter, “all of them watching us right now, wanting to know what I’m saying to you, they going down.”
“Whatever happens—” Walter started to say.
Robert cut him off with, “Arlen’s coming.” Walter turned and they watched Arlen coming with his rifle, Arlen looking like a Confederate from out of the past in his uniform, his pistol, sword, pouches and canteen hanging from his belt, straps crisscrossing his chest, all the way hardcore except the cowboy boots.
“Arlen, you looking fierce,” Robert said, “like you want to get you some Yankees.”
Arlen didn’t look at Walter, only Robert.
“Where they gonna be?”
“Up on the north side of the field. The idea is like you drive ’em into the woods and go in after ’em to finish the job.”
“Like Tyree Bell’s brigade,” Walter said. “Though technically he flanked the other end of the Federal line.”
“That’s right,” Robert said, glad to see Walter getting into it again.
Arlen said, “The one that thinks he’s General Grant gonna be there, German-o?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“And that diver?”
“He’ll be there.”
“Who else?”
“The two you saw last night.”
“The greasers,” Arlen said.
“Yeah, call ’em that we get out in the woods.”
“How they gonna keep John Rau out of it?”
“You gonna do that,” Robert said. “Take the man prisoner and tie him to a tree.”
Arlen reset his hat thinking about it. “I never saw that done.”
“It happened at Brice’s,” Walter said. “Old Bedford took hundreds of prisoners. Hell, most of the eighteen hundred the Yankees listed as missing.”
Robert said, “You don’t want him watching, do you? Those fellas over there look like hillbilly bikers—get them to do it. Bring him back here and tie him up, a sack over his head. Have some fun with him.”
Arlen didn’t say if he would or not. He said, “Where you gonna be?”
“Right around here. Take a stroll through the camp, look at those cannons. I’ll be back.”
“Ain’t gonna stroll off, are you?”
“I had that in mind I wouldn’t have strolled over here, would I?”
They watched Robert walk off through the orchard, Walter waiting for whatever Arlen would have to say now, get Arlen’s take on the uppity colored fella.
What he said, his gaze still following Robert, “That smoke’s got some kind of scheme in mind. I can feel it.”
“It’s your business,” Walter said, “not mine. I don’t want to know anything about it, whatever happens.”
“I think he’s trying to set me up.”
“Arlen, it was your idea to get him in the woods. I can hear you saying it, in my office. Shoot ’em and after dark bury ’em. That still your plan?”
“We was talking about the nigger and the diver. Now they’s four five of ’em.”
“Well, just shoot the ones you want,” Walter said.
It got Arlen to turn and put his dirty look on him.
“You think you’re out of it? You’re gonna be there with me, partner, loads in your pistol. I tell you to shoot, you better start shootin’.”
Robert roamed through the camps getting looks, inspected the cannons, went up to the edge of the woods, came back thinking the battle was about to begin—uh-unh. What they said about being in the army all hurry up and wait? It was even true pretending to be in the army. He hung around the edge of Arlen’s people now, not wanting to push any more of their buttons. They were all juiced and seeing how ugly they could act.
Two of them, Fish and the one they called Eugene, kept yelling at each other about what happened to Rose, whoever Rose was, sounding like it was somebody the Fish had shot and killed. Man, these people. Eugene having a fit, getting into a high-blood-pressure kind of rage over it, the Fish raging back at him to defend himself, saying he had to do it. Next thing they were shoving each other and throwing punches—the one called Newton egging them on—till pretty soon they were both sitting on the ground trying to catch their breath in the heat, close on to a hundred degrees.
Robert asked Walter who Rose was and Walter said Eugene’s dog. Robert said, “They trying to kill each other over a dog?”
Walter had his own problems, telling Robert that Arlen was making him go with them, saying they would have loaded guns when they went in the woods.
Robert said, “You didn’t know that?” He said, “Don’t shoot me, Walter, and I won’t shoot you.”
It didn’t help. Walter’s stunned expression remained set, the man appearing lost.
Robert kept a close eye on Newton, the dedicated racist with tobacco stains in his beard. His brother, Bob Hoon, was the one ran the methamphetamine lab Robert had spoken to about future business and seemed to have a larger-size brain than these other peckerwoods. They’d wonder out loud where Bob Hoon was today and ask Newton and Newton would shake his head and say he was suppose to be here. Robert took Bob Hoon’s absence to mean he was interested in a future deal, didn’t care who he sold his meth to or what happened to Newton, maybe even glad to be rid of him, Newton the kind of person should have a bounty on him.
Right before they finally went up on the line and the show got started, Arlen brought Newton over to where Robert was waiting.
“Newton don’t understand,” Arlen said, “what you’re doing here on our side.”
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“Tell him I’m a freed slave, can do what I want.”
“Newton says shit, you’re the nigger we’re after and you’re standing right there. Why don’t we hit you over the head and string you up?”
“Tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself.”
“No, I said there’d be a time for it,” Arlen said. “See, there’s a bridge right over here on the Coldwater? The river’s a mud puddle this time a year, but the bridge has a good height to it.” Arlen said, “You ever thought you’d be hanging from one like your old grampa?”
“My great-grampa,” Robert said.
“And I’ll be standing on the bridge in the pitcher. I imagine, though,” Arlen said, “one of us’ll shoot you first.” He nodded toward Robert’s holster. “That gun loaded?”
Robert shook his head. “Not yet.”
“It better not be. Weapons are checked before we go out there and put on the show. You know how to load it, you get in the woods?”
“I practiced,” Robert said, “how you do it.”
It got Arlen staring at him, Arlen rigged for war, that salty hat curling toward his eyes.
“You practiced. Have you fired it?”
“Couple of times.”
Arlen squinted at him. “You lying to me?”
“No, I’m fuckin with you,” Robert said. “You want to know can I shoot, come on out to the woods.”
Arlen turned his head to look at Newton standing by, Newton’s eyes glazed from the shine. Arlen turned to Robert again and for a moment looked like he might smile, wanting to. But he didn’t, he stared and finally said, “You’re pulling some kind of scheme on me, aren’t you? Acting dumb like that.”
Robert said, “You coming or not?”
All he wanted to know.
“You take off,” Arlen said, “we gonna be after you.”
25
“AND THE FIRST PRIZE,” CHARLIE announced over the PA system, “goes to Miz Mary Jane Ivory for her Yankee Doodle double-crust Concord grape pie. Nice going, Mary Jane. Save me a piece if you can and I’ll be around later to have a taste.”
Charlie sat at a table with his papers in the barn’s upstairs loading bay. Most of the spectators were spread over the slope directly below him, facing the battlefield. He tried to think of a segue from Yankee Doodle to the New York Yankees, but nothing came to mind that wasn’t awkward. He settled on telling the folks there were plenty of Yankees here today, not in pinstripes—the kind he was used to facing during his eighteen years of organized baseball—but wearing Federal blue.
“They’ve come to what we’re calling Brice’s Cross Roads,” Charlie’s voice announced to the spectators, “to put Nathan Bedford Forrest out of action and keep open the Federal supply lines to their army in the east. Hear the drums? . . . Those are Federal troops moving up. And across the field comes General Forrest’s cavalry, scouting ahead of his army.”
The six Confederate cavalrymen had come out of the orchard to the right and were starting across the field.
Now Union soldiers were appearing out of the thicket to the left, firing puffs of white smoke at the cavalrymen, forcing them to wheel their mounts and head for cover.
“The Yankees’ advance guard stops them. But now you’re gonna hear the famous Rebel yell as the main body of Forrest’s brigades charge the Federal line. You see the Yankees bringing up their cannon to meet the charge. Get ready. And here they come.”
Charlie took the mike off its stand and walked around the desk to stand in the loading bay. He watched the reenactors out there in the hot sun giving it their all.
The Federal line along the thicket were now firing at will, the sound of their rifles coming in hard pops, and the powder shooting out to become a wispy white cloud in front of them.
The advancing line of yelling Rebels stopped now to return fire, covering themselves in the smoke. And now cannon were firing from both sides of the field.
Charlie raised the mike. “Those are six-pounders out there making that serious racket and raising all kind of smoke. Imagine you’re down there in a real battle, you see the cannon fire and you know this big goddamn iron ball’s coming at you. Excuse my language, but it’s a frightening situation to think about.”
Charlie looked out at the field. All the shooting and not one on either side had taken a hit.
He looked for Dennis along the blue line, but he could be any one of those guys firing and loading. The one with the sword, out in front a few yards, looked like John Rau, a little more than halfway up the line. He was looking across at the Rebs falling back, leaving only a few skirmishers out in the field, all of them down on one knee to fire and staying down to reload.
And now Rau, yeah, it was John, with the sword, looked like he was yelling encouragement to his troopers.
Charlie raised the mike. “Well, the Rebels got turned back. But if you know what happened at Brice’s, you know Old Bedford kept coming back—you wait and see—till he broke the Federal line. But listen, lemme tell you an interesting fact while both sides are regrouping. There was a Union soldier fought at Second Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg. And you know what he did some twenty years before the war started? His name was Abner Doubleday and he invented the game of baseball—a sport I gave eighteen years of my life to, in my prime able to throw a fastball ninety-nine miles an hour. Any you young boys out there think you can throw that hard, come on over to the Tishomingo Lodge and LET’S SEE YOUR ARM. We’ll measure your throw with a radar gun. If you can trun a ball a hundred miles an hour we’ll give you ten thousand dollars on the spot. Well, now I see General Forrest himself out there on his horse, riding up and down the line encouraging his boys to give those Yankees hell. That’s Walter Kirkbride of Southern Living Village doing his impression of Old Bedford. . . . And now here they come again charging headlong into those Yankee guns, the Yankees coming out to meet them.”
It was too late now to go from Yankee guns to Yankee bats, damn it, the battle was on, a bunch of Rebels in black hats getting more than halfway across the field when the Yankee cannon blew out a cloud of smoke and every one of those black hats went down, staggering, clutching themselves, making a show of dying. Some of Arlen’s boys, the ones that practiced taking hits. Now they’d lie there sipping shine from their canteens till it was over.
Hey, but they were crawling forward on their bellies toward the Union line, getting to their feet now and rushing the officer out in front, John Rau, four of them taking him by surprise, grabbing John by his arms and legs between them, lifting him off the ground and rushing him headfirst like a battering ram through the Confederate line, the boys in gray stopping midfield to return fire. Charlie raised his mike.
“You see that, folks. The Rebs made a daring raid there and have taken a prisoner.”
They saw it, all right, the whole crowd cheering, loving it, watching the black hats running with John Rau all the way across the field and into the orchard. Now the Confederate line was falling back.
Dennis turned to Hector next to him. “You see that? They got the cop.”
“That fucking Robert,” Hector said, “he must have thought of that.”
Dennis let it go. Tonto stepped over to him saying, “How you doing? You got a load?” Dennis told him yeah, he’d only fired twice. After the first one he’d started to reload and Tonto exchanged rifles with him saying, “You shoot, I load. I don’t get nothing out of shooting black powder.”
Hector turned to Jerry staying in the thicket behind them. “The next time they come we go in the woods. You can sneak over there now, get a head start.”
Jerry’s voice came out of the thicket. “You saying I can’t keep up with you?”
Hector turned away, not answering, and said to Tonto, “I insulted him.”
“It’s easy to do,” Tonto said. “We carry him if we have to. Robert wants him there.”
“I don’t see Robert,” Dennis said, looking across the field at the Confederates getting ready, loading their rifles.
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“He took a hit,” Hector said. “See the sword stuck in the ground? That’s Robert.” He said to Dennis, “They come this time we take off. Be sure you bring the rifle.”
Dennis heard Charlie’s voice over the PA system telling the crowd about Union soldiers playing baseball between campaigns to occupy their time. “They even played ball in Confederate prison camps,” Charlie said, “and that’s how us Southerners picked up the game. Pretty soon there was games between the prisoners and the guards. Well, I see casualties out there now in the hot sun, in their wool uniforms. I hope none of ’em have come down with heatstroke, and are real casualties. You want to be sure and drink plenty of water. And here we go again, Old Bedford’s boys mounting their charge. From Brice’s, they run those Yankees all the way back to Memphis.”
Dennis brought up his Enfield and looked down the barrel at the wall of gray uniforms advancing, Dennis thinking, Pick one. He wondered if that’s what you did, or you fired into them coming three deep and were pretty sure of hitting one, or if you fired as soon as they came out of the orchard and would have time to reload, pour in the powder, the ball, ram it down the barrel, set the cap on the nipple . . .
He heard Hector say, “Let’s go,” and he fired and saw Hector and Tonto ducking into the trees, Dennis realizing there wouldn’t be time to reload. Man, it would be bayonets then, close enough to see the faces of guys trying to kill you. He followed Hector and Tonto into the gloom of the trees, holding the Enfield in front of him straight up to brush through the branches, his running steps kicking up dead leaves. He saw Jerry ahead of them with his sword hacking his way through vines hanging from the trees, Hector and Tonto darting and weaving past him, and Dennis slowed up to stay behind Jerry—but why?—and ran past him without a word and saw Hector and Tonto break out of the gloom into a clearing, a glade, a scattering of tall trees in sunlight. Now Dennis was out and running, gaining on Hector and Tonto as they reached the other side of the glade and disappeared into a dense wall of trees. Dennis followed, made his way through to come out at a ditch and a bank of coarse grass that sloped up to a road of red dirt and a truck standing there: a commercial delivery van painted white over the original white, a thin coat covering an emblem that looked like red, blue and yellow balloons and words faintly readable that said WONDER BREAD.