Tishomingo Blues (2002)

  He nodded again.

  She looked away, toward the ladder, before turning to him again. "I don't understand. Why you're telling me now."

  "I don't know either. You asked.... If you hadn't I probably wouldn't have said anything."

  "You needed to tell somebody."

  "Who doesn't know? It's not like getting something off my chest and now I feel better. But you're the one to tell-maybe that's it-the TV lady, if I'm gonna tell anybody. Outside of a lawyer. But don't put it on the air yet, I won't admit it. You have to wait."

  "Until what happens?"

  "Till you see how it ends."

  "What do you think will happen?"

  "I haven't any idea."

  It was only a few minutes later Robert showed up.

  He said, "You all like to be alone?"

  In that moment Dennis had to make up his mind. If he said yes, they'd like to be alone, he risked Diane bugging him until he told her everything that was going on. But if he said no, they wouldn't, he might never get to Memphis. All that in his mind when Diane said she had to go get ready for the eleven o'clock news. So Dennis said he was tired, he'd find Charlie and go on home. Robert said he'd drive him, but why didn't they relax and have a drink first. "There's something I want to tell you."

  Now Dennis sat staring at the ladder with another vodka collins and Robert instead of Diane.

  "You haven't made up your mind yet, have you?"

  "To sell my soul? No, I haven't."

  "You can't beat the deal."

  "I don't have any offers to compare it to."

  "There's poverty. What you gonna do when you can't dive no more? Listen, I'll answer any your questions and I'll be honest with you. What we in is a dirty business, but it's where the money's at. I want you in so I'm upping the pay schedule. Twofifty the first year. Five the second. We jump now like Regis does on his show to one million the third year. Also bonuses, also what you make off your Dive-O-Rama. Wuz wrong with that?" Robert grinned and sipped his drink. "How MilesDavis says it. 'Wuz wrong with that?' In his voice."

  "What about Jerry?"

  "Yeah, what?"

  "What's he do? You said he use to be into arson."

  "And high explosives, he learned about in the Nam. Jerry shipped home a footlocker full of C4 when he got out and was in business."

  "With the Mafia?"

  "Detroit, they call it the Outfit. Jerry did some work for them till they got involved with his brother. Two of the Outfit dudes wanted a cut of the land development business, the manufactured homes? The next time they went to see Jerry's brother, they come out of the office, get in their car and it blows up. From then on Jerry had an understanding with the wiseguys. Leave him and his brother alone and he won't blow up any more their cars."

  "How'd he get away with it?"

  "Jerry's a hard-on, doesn't give an inch. Also he was related, like a second cousin, to the guy running the Outfit at the time. One of those blood things where they have to get along. The way I met him," Robert said, "I'm running Young Dogs and there's a rival gang, the Cash Flow Posse, giving us trouble. I hire Jerry-this was back ten years-to throw some pipe bombs in their crack houses. Worked better than a drive-by, it put 'em out of business. So then I bring Jerry in as the muscle. You know what I'm saying? The enforcer, keep the Young Dogs in line, thinking straight. Pretty soon we partners. Then he steps up another level saying he's the boss, gonna run the show. He's the fivehundred-pound gorilla and what am I gonna fuckin do about it? But I owed him, 'cause he set up how to maintain the money, ways he learned from his brother to keep it away from the tax people. He did take a fall, went to Milan for a couple of years and that's where he got his master's degree. Learned from the big boys, the Wall Street types, how to hide money without leaving tracks."

  Dennis said, "That's why he's the boss?"

  "He's the boss 'cause he says he is."

  "You're smarter than he is."

  "I know that."

  "Does he?"

  "Yeah, he knows it."

  "It must piss him off."

  "Uh-unh, 'cause he knows he can beat me up."

  "But he needs you to run things."

  "Yes, he does."

  "Do you need him?"

  "We all answer to a higher Dower. Dennis."

  "One that blows up cars and makes pipe bombs?"

  "That kind you answer on the double."

  "What're you telling me?"

  "I'm not around, watch out for him."

  Chapter 18

  SATURDAY MORNING DENNIS GOT UP at seven-thirty. He put on his corporal's uniform-Vernice had sewed the chevrons on for him, the bugle insignia on the kepi-set the cap straight over his eyes, and looked at himself this way and that in the fulllength mirror on the closet door. He said to himself, Is that you?

  He said, The hell are you getting into?

  He said, Nothing. I'm not.

  He said, But it could work, couldn't it?

  He saw in the mirror the impression of a Union soldier 140 years ago while his mind played with Robert's proposal. He would put it out of his mind. There, I'm not doing it. But it kept coming up again and again. The idea that it could work: he could run an international diving show that as far as he was concerned had nothing to do with the sale of drugs. Or, was related to it, but in a very minor way. Robert had asked him what was the problem.

  "You can smoke it but can't sell it?"

  "I don't do cocaine, any of that other stuff." Robert said he didn't either. Robert said, "We don't force anybody to use it."

  "You get them hooked."

  "They get themselves hooked. Like alcoholics who can't drink without making a mess."

  "Come on-it's against the law."

  "So was booze at one time. Nobody stopped drinking."

  "You can go to prison."

  "You can go off the ladder wrong and break your back."

  There were ways to look at it and it was okay. He'd be doing something with his life. He'd be offering steady jobs to high divers looking for gigs. He could help out his mother, seventy-two years old, living in a dump on Magazine Street with his sister the alcoholic, a disease inherited from their dad, who drank till he died of it. He could get his mom a house out in the Garden District. Look at all the good he could do. Spread it around. Help the needy.

  Pay off his conscience.

  Shit.

  He told himself he had made up his mind, so forget it. Don't think about it anymore. He went out to the kitchen.

  Charlie, wearing one of his LET'S SEE YOUR ARM T-shirts, was having toast and a cup of coffee.

  Dennis said, "I thought we were going early."

  "A reenactment being put on for the first time," Charlie said, "on a location never used for it before, you get there anytime before noon, or even a little after, you're early. You want to be put to work driving tent stakes? I do my bit later on this afternoon, make announcements, then tomorrow I tell what's going on when they do the battle."

  "Who asked you?"

  The committee, who you think?

  "They want to hear baseball stories?"

  "I've been reenacting nine years, Dennis, I know what it's about. Doing a battle play-by-play isn't like calling dives." He said, "Step back, lemme look at you," and began nodding his head. "You'll pass muster, you look good. How the shoes feel?"

  "Stiff, but they're okay."

  "You said the other night they were tight on you."

  "I put on lighter socks."

  "You can pull the socks up over the bottom of your pants if you want. Some argue whether blousing is authentic or not. You'll hear serious discussions about such things. Are your buttonholes hand-stitched? They say if you're Confederate you don't have to be so goddamn hardcore. Somebody else says they were as GI as any Federal troops. You know what, though? They say most girls go for farbs, guys who don't give a shit."

  Vernice came in ready for work in her fringed cocktail waitress uniform, the feather sticking straight up behind her head
. She said, "Well, look at my soldier boy. Honey, don't get hurt, okay?"

  Charlie said, "You know how many was killed in that war, both sides? Six hundred twenty thousand."

  "I'm coming out after I get off," Vernice said. "Have to serve the early crowd their Bloody Marys. What's on later, the battle?"

  "This afternoon you can watch 'em drill," Charlie said. "If there's a skirmish they didn't tell me. There's a ladies' tea if you're dressed for it, period dance instructions and tonight a military ball."

  "You're kidding," Vernice said.

  "I make an announcement that cavalrymen are to remove their spurs."

  "What's on tomorrow?"

  "Period church service, some more marching, a pie-baking contest, and the Battle of Brice's Cross Roads."

  "I may wait for tomorrow," Vernice said. "It's gonna be hot out." She turned to Dennis again. "You look so cute in your uniform. You gonna camp out or come home tonight?"

  Dennis said he hadn't made up his mind. "I'11 have to see how it goes."

  "I don't sleep outside," Charlie said. "I don't eat sowbelly either. I asked Vernice how in the hell you make hardtack. She said buy some rolls and let 'em sit out on the counter a few days."

  "I'm going," Vernice said, but then picked up the latest Enquirer from the counter. "Another reason Tom might've dumped Nicole? She's so full of herself. It says she'd go in a Ben and Jerry's for an icecream cone and walk right up to the front of the line."

  Charlie said, "And I bet nobody cared, either. You're a movie star, you don't have to stand in line." He looked at Dennis. "You stand in line?"

  "I see a line," Dennis said, "I keep walking."

  Charlie said, "I can't think of the last time I stood in line."

  Vernice dropped the Enquirer on the breakfast table. She said, "I'll see you movie stars later," and left.

  Dennis had an egg and onion sandwich while Charlie was getting dressed. When he came in the kitchen again he was wearing a black slouch hat and a uniform JohnRau had given him and Vernice had let out. Charlie still talking.

  "You know what Arlen's people will be doing at this thing? Drinking. I never was at a reenactment with 'em they didn't get smashed. Then what'd they do is take a hit early in the skirmish, preferably in the shade, else they'd crawl to a tree and snooze till it's over. You watch 'em. They put a lot into dying, making it look real. You want to stop and get some breakfast?"

  "I just had a sandwich."

  "I mean some real breakfast."

  "We got us a good crowd," Charlie said, steering his Cadillac past a quarter mile of cars and pickups parked along both sides of the county road. The field across from the farm property, reserved for reenactors, was full of cars, trucks, motor homes, even a few horse trailers. They turned into the barn lot, reserved for VIP parking, and stopped so Charlie could show his pass to the security people. Dennis spotted RobertTaylor's Jaguar in a row of cars by the barn and said to Charlie, "Look who's a VIP "

  Charlie said, "Wouldn't you know," and asked Dennis if he was registered.

  "I didn't know I had to."

  Charlie said, "Go on over to that table sitting just inside the barn. Give the girl ten bucks and you're a reenactor, you can sleep outside with the bugs tonight." He told Dennis the battlefield was on the other side of the barn, the military camps over there on opposite sides of the field. It was north. The civilian campsites and stores were over there to the east. He said, "Start that way to look around and you'll be back in Civil War times before you know it." Charlie would catch up with him later; he had to hang around, find out when he'd be making announcements.

  Dennis walked off among spectators and reenactors arriving, a Confederate shouldering a musket asking him who he was with and Dennis told him the Second New Jersey Mounted Infantry, and felt himself beginning to play the part. He came to a row of food vendors along the edge of the barn lot, the sides of their cooking trailers open to offer fried chicken, catfish, hot dogs and hamburgers, different kinds of sausage, popcorn, soft drinks. He came to a row of blue portable toilets and was approaching tent stores now and the civilian campsites, grouped about to form a semblance of streets in the shade of old, shaggy oaks. He began to see more uniforms, mostly Confederate, a grungy-looking bunch in mismatched uniforms, different shades of gray, a few wearing kepis but most of them favoring slouch hats, some black ones, no shape to them. They stood around talking, their rifles in several tepeed stacks. One of them called to him, "Hey, Yank, who you with?" and it gave Dennis kind of a thrill. That's what he was, a Yank, and told them Second New Jersey as he walked past.

  He came to a sutler's tent, a big one with the front flaps tied back, a military store that offered uniforms and arms and everything that went with them, insignia, belts, cartridge boxes, canteens, a sign that offered BLACK POWDER RELOADING SUPPLIES. Next to the sutler's place was a tent store that sold Confederate battle flags and bumper stickers, statuettes of JeffersonDavis and the more famous Confederate generals; RobertE. Lee and Stonewall Jackson salt and pepper shakers. There was a photographer's tent with backgrounds to choose from, flags, cannon, palm trees. And a shelter tent with a sign that said ENLIST NOW! FIFTH TEXAS VOL. INF. CO. E, DIXIE BLUES.

  Union soldiers were wheeling a cannon through the shaggy oaks.

  Dennis came to Diane, the TV lady, and her crew interviewing a couple in mid-nineteenth-century civilian dress: the woman holding a parasol that matched her light-blue dress with its hoopskirt; she wore a little peaked hat with a snood, and sunglasses; the man with a cane, white gloves and tall beaver hat. They played their part with dignity, walking around the grounds, stopping to be photographed, interviewed, Dennis wondering why they went to the trouble. He could listen to the interview and maybe find out. Hang around and talk to Diane. He decided to catch up with her later and moved on.

  He saw drummer boys in gray kepis and remembered Robert talking about the one at Battery Robinett who picked up a pistol and shot the Rebel officer. He could not imagine kids this age, twelve years old, in combat. But they were. He saw a squad of Union soldiers, all in the same dark blue except for the three in Zouave uniforms, the red fez and the blousy red trousers tucked into pure-white puttees. He'd have to ask JohnRau about Zouaves. Or Robert, who knew everything. Where was he?

  Dennis came to the civilian campsites, a street of wall tents with awnings, canvas chairs sitting in front by grills set up with cooking irons, coffeepots hanging from the crossbars over the fires. There were camp tables of utensils, tinware, tin candle lanterns, wooden buckets, the women all in long skirts and aprons, some with hoops underneath, some wearing sunbonnets, Dennis again wondering why they would go to all the trouble. Unpack all this stuff, lay it out for two days, pack it up again and go home.

  He saw the women as womenfolk off farms or from small towns doing chores and having a good time with each other, enjoying what they were doing. He came to a woman rolling out dough on a camp table: dark-haired, her face drawn, no makeup but nice-looking, thin compared to most of them.

  "What're you making?"

  Her head raised and she took time to look at him.

  "Naughty Child Pie."

  "Yeah? What's in it?"

  She said, "Green tomatoes," picking up her apron to wipe her hands.

  "Why's it called Naughty Child?"

  "You find out, let me know. I never made one before."

  Dennis started to ask her why, if this was her first try at it ...

  She told him it was her husband's favorite, the woman bringing a pack of cigarettes and lighter from the pocket of her apron. "His ex-wife use to win all the big pie-making contests with Naughty Child. Till she left him."

  "He's hardcore, huh?"

  "To the bone." She lit a cigarette and looked at him again. "Brand-new uniform-this must be your first muster."

  "First and last."

  She said, "Mine, too. I'm Loretta."

  "I'm Dennis. Who's your husband with?"

  "Seventh Tennessee."

&nbsp
; "Does he like to sleep out in the field?"

  "Loves it. He prays for rain so he can have the experience. Do you sleep out?"

  "I haven't yet."

  She said, "Stop by tonight, I may have a piece of Naughty Child for you."

  He found General Grant's headquarters, three wall tents with awnings in the shade, Jerry sitting in a striped canvas beach chair smoking a cigar. He was in shirtsleeves but wore his general's hat with the gold braid. Standing near him were Tonto and a Latin-looking guy Dennis believed would be Hector Diaz, and two black guys he'd never seen before, all in Federal blue.

  Dennis walked up to GermanoMularoni feeling for the first time in his life an urge to salute, and he did, he saluted.

  Jerry said, "Jesus Christ, you too? I've worn out my arm saluting. These people I never fuckin saw before in my life, they come by throwing me salutes. Where's Robert?"

  "I just got here," Dennis said.

  The one he believed was Hector Diaz said, "There," looking off. "He's with Missus. By those guys out there. Now they coming."

  A group of mangy-looking Confederates, seven of them, were standing out in the open in sunlight with their rifles, some with their arms resting on the upright muzzles, all watching Robert and Anne walking away from them.

  Robert in gray, Anne in black, the skirt, the shirt unbuttoned in front, her streaked hair coming out of a red bandanna. She wore sunglasses. And now Dennis saw a Colt pistol holstered on her hip. They were closer now, Robert showing a checkered shirt under his open shell jacket. He was holding a cavalry saber, now and again swiping at clumps of brush with it. Walking up to them he said, "Hey, my man Dennis, you made it. I was afraid maybe you deserted and we have to hunt you down and shoot you."

  Jerry said, "Where you been?"

  "I saw those Johnnies going by, I wanted to know was Arlen with them. The Fish was there but no Arlen. Me and Annabanana are being sociable till this one says to me, `Who's you-all's hero, MartinLutherCoon?' This primitive one with tobacco juice in his beard. I said, `No, my hero's MuhammadAli, asshole.' He wants to know what did I just say? So I had to repeat it. 'Muhammad All, asshole. You don't hear so good?' Then he says he's gonna take my head off."

  "And stick it up your black ass," Anne said.