Tishomingo Blues (2002)

  "Good up to nine hundred yards," Groove said. "What the man said taught me all this shit. You hit your enemy up to that distance with the fifty-eight slug? The motherfucker is dead."

  Robert said, "We gonna keep this rifle and give you another one you load how Groove showed you only without the bullet. So you don't shoot somebody during the reenacting part." Robert said, "Don't move." He went in the tent and came out with a joint and a drugstore lighter he placed next to Dennis' plate.

  "I'm on picket duty tonight."

  "Then you got what you need. You want, I could bring you a cold beer later on."

  "I don't know where I'll be. I might as well sleep out there when I get off, in the camp."

  "Don't let nobody spoon on you."

  "Rau said something about spooning. I didn't know what he was talking about."

  "It's what it sounds like. What they use to do. Cold night, a bunch of 'em would sleep fitting against each other on their sides. Nobody's washed or brushed their teeth in a month. Imagine the stinky smell. Like swamp gas hanging over you. Imagine some dude's bone sticking in your back all night."

  Dennis said, "You're going back to the hotel, aren't you?"

  "I may as well," Robert said, "I don't plan to see General Kirkbride-" He stopped and said, "Hey, shit, I forgot to mention, he came by here a while ago on his horse. Jerry was gone by then. He wants to know where I'm at. Groove and Cedric tell him they haven't seen me. Walter says, `Soon as you do, send him down to my camp. I finish my ride, I want him to rub down my horse.'"

  "Where were you?"

  "In the tent having a smoke. But then later I'm thinking: he didn't come to get his horse rubbed down, that was his excuse to get next to me. The man's nervous from the bug I put in his ear and wants to talk."

  "What'd you tell him?"

  "Was out here, the day before this got going. I told him I knew he was in the drug business. See, then I put the bug to him. `Where you want to be when Arlen goes down?' The man's the only one we met isn't all the way stupid."

  "JohnRau isn't either," Dennis said, "and he'll be there when you pull your stunt."

  "That's what I said before, I have to think about."

  Dennis said, "Why don't you take him prisoner?"

  Robert's smile took a few moments coming, and when it did it wasn't much of a smile, just enough to let Dennis know he was looking at the idea. He said, "Out in front of everybody." He said, "Yeah, I wonder could that be done."

  The bivouac area looked more lived in when Dennis got back with his rifle, a cartridge box, cap pouch, canteen and bayonet hanging from his belt and a sling over his shoulder. There was smoke from cook fires, more gear lying around, clothes hanging from stacked rifles, and civilians roaming through the camp, people in shorts and T-shirts among the blue uniforms, though not much visiting going on.

  The first sergeant, giving Dennis a couple of blankets and his rations in a paper sack, did not hold with spectators hanging around a military camp. "God almighty, people walking by with Confederate flags on their T-shirts. It disturbs the mood. Makes it hard to maintain the right attitude of being in the field."

  Dennis said, "Colonel Rau's over there telling a group how to cure salt pork."

  "He's a detail man," the first sergeant said. "He means well, and he's a dandy battalion commander in the field, but he tries too hard to be helpful. Like the tents. We were out on an actual campaign, you wouldn't see any tents. You wanted some cover you built yourself a shebang. You know what I mean by shebang?" Dennis shook his head. "Like a lean-to, the weather side made of brush. I been out with old-timers all you saw in camp were shebangs, most of the boys sleeping in the open, the way they actually did. You think we had tents at Brice's Cross Roads? Hell, we're on the line, the supply wagons are still a day's haul to the rear. There'd been a lot of rain all week and it was slow going through the mud, engineers laying down timber all the way. No sir, you traveled light in that war, threw away everything but your musket and a blanket."

  Dennis said, "You ever spoon?"

  "If we're going by the book and are told not to keep the fires stoked? Hell yes. Hell, Virginia one time in May, you spooned or you froze." He said to Dennis, "You don't need a tent. You want shelter, go on over to that fella with the First Iowa. He's looking for a pard."

  The fella with the First Iowa, in limp and graying longjohns, told Dennis sure, he could bunk with him.

  Dennis said, "You don't spoon, do you?"

  The First Iowan said, "Not in this weather." He said, "I don't snore or let farts either, if I can help it."

  Dennis said he'd leave his gear, but was thinking of sleeping outside.

  He'd done it enough times between gigs, always a sleeping bag in the setup truck, the last time on his way to Panama City and the Miracle Strip amusement park. That hot sun all day long and not much to do but go to movies. The nights weren't bad. Put on his show and then hang with people who liked to party. It could get old, but then he'd move on and look for the same people at the next stop. There were the good-time girls who loved daredevils, and there were more serious ones, divorced, trying to get by with a couple of little kids, young girls in their thirties starting to fade, not having the time to be themselves. They would invite him to dinner. They would put on makeup and music and open the door in their coolest outfit and sit across from him in candlelight and there it was, a chance to fall in love, and every once in a while he was tempted. But what would happen to the daredevil?

  The First Iowa fella said, "I brought beans I cooked with the salt pork and some molasses you're welcome to."

  Dennis had a plate and another scoop of beans with a cup of coffee, but couldn't eat the hardtack; it had no taste. He stretched out on the ground to rest, using his blanket rolled up for a pillow: the daredevil camped out with a bunch of guys playing soldier as they played cards, swore a lot, told jokes, talked about guns, deer hunting, battles, reenactments of Franklin, Chickamauga, Cold Harbor, generals good and bad, sang with a harmonica about rallying 'round the flag, boys ... and Dennis dozed off.

  A brogan nudged his ribs and he looked up to see the first sergeant standing over him. Dennis sat up right away. It was dark, the camp quiet, it had to be later than eight. He said, "What time is it?" getting to his feet. The sergeant told him it was going on ten.

  "We got more people than duty time, so the colonel's cut the watches in half. You're on perimeter ten to twelve."

  "Where's my post?"

  "I'll take you. Pick up your rifle."

  He asked the first sergeant what he was supposed to do here. The sergeant said watch for Rebs sneaking up in the night to attack the camp or take prisoners. He said they liked to snatch pickets who weren't alert and ship them off to Andersonville to die of dysentery.

  Dennis stood at the edge of the scrub looking across the pasture, way over to the dark mass of trees, seeing flickering pinpoints of light in there. Confederate campfires. And the music coming from the barn up on the slope might be the military ball, though the squeaky fiddles sounded more like bluegrass.

  He had told the First Iowa soldier he had picket duty and the man said, "Good." Imagine you're at Brice's and you can feel the JohnnyRebs close by, you can smell 'em. You see something move out there, put your rifle on it. Get your mind to believe what you're doing, else why're you here. He didn't tell the soldier he didn't want to be here. The man would ask, then why was he.

  Standing here in the scrub swinging his free hand at insects buzzing around him. He took the joint from his pocket and lit it, sucked on it hard to get a good draw and blew smoke at the bugs, hoping to send them off stoned. He wondered if Civil War soldiers smoked weed, the way they did in Vietnam. He wondered if they said "this fucking war" like soldiers in war movies, more saying it in Vietnam war movies than World War Two flicks. He would have to ask Robert. Robert probably wouldn't know but would have an answer. Robert was the most in-control person he had ever met in his life. Like the way, in front of Arlen staring at him, he laid
the gun on the kitchen table without looking at it. Just something that happened to be in his briefcase. The weed had his mind flashing on Robert highlights. Robert with Walter Kirkbride, wanting to be one of his colored fellas. Robert making whatever he did look easy. Robert taking his time, days, to build toward the crossroads, what it meant, before making his offer. Robert saying, "No way could you ever be indicted on a drug charge, you'd be hidden from view. Your Dive-ORama accountant ever got picked up? You'd be shocked." Robert saying, "Man, if a daredevil couldn't handle that ..."

  The daredevil standing in the dark holding a ten-pound replica of a Civil War rifle. Not anywhere near an edge.

  He walked off with the rifle toward faint lights showing in the civilian camp.

  Chapter 21

  A LANTERN HUNG FROM THE TENT where the pie lady, smoking a cigarette, sat in a low-slung canvas chair at the edge of the awning. She watched him walk up to her, not smiling, not saying a word.

  She was wearing lipstick.

  She was wearing, he believed, eyeliner. Her hair was combed from a part and fell to her shoulders in a white shirt with a few buttons undone and a long skirt; but it didn't look period either.

  He held out the joint, half of it left, and watched her look at it and then look up at his eyes before she took it, pinched it between her fingers and leaned forward in the scoop of canvas to the flame on the lighter he offered. She inhaled and held it, her body straight, before she blew out a cloud and sank back in the chair and smiled.

  "You made it."

  "I'm on picket duty."

  "You mean right now?"

  "At this moment, in the scrub."

  She said from down in her chair, "You left your post for a piece of Naughty Child?"

  There was an answer to that and he tried hard to think of what it was while she sat waiting to hear it. Finally all he did was smile.

  She didn't, she kept looking at his eyes looking at hers.

  "How'd it turn out?"

  "The mister came up from his camp to pick up the pie and take it back. I told him it burned and I threw it away. He wanted to know where, so he could check on me, not trusting I even made the pie. I told him go on over to the Porta-Johns, it was in the second one to the left."

  "Did he check?"

  "He thought about it."

  "Did you make the pie?"

  "I rolled out the dough, got that far."

  Dennis propped his rifle against the table. He pulled a short straight camp chair over next to hers, sat down and took off his kepi, settling in with things to say to her.

  "You didn't want him to have any Naughty Child."

  "I suppose."

  "I run into girls all the time," Dennis said, "feeling trapped in a situation they don't know how to get out of. They're young, they're divorced, they have kids and the former husbands are all behind in their child support. Some of 'em look at me, the girls, I can see 'em wondering if it might work this time."

  She said, "What are you wondering, how to get out?"

  "Not always." He could feel the weed and was comfortable and wanted to talk. "I've met girls-I always think of them as girls instead of young women because it's my favorite word. Girl." He smiled.

  "What's your least favorite?"

  "Snot. What's yours?"

  "Bitch. I get called it a lot."

  They could go off on that, but he wanted to make his point before he forgot what it was. "I started to say, I've met girls I feel I could marry and we'd be happy and get along."

  "How do you know?"

  "We can talk and like the same things. Being able to talk is important."

  She said, "Tell me about it," and said, "What do you do, you meet all these girls?"

  "For a living? Take a guess."

  She said, "You're not a salesman," and kept staring at him. "You're not from around here, or anywhere close by. You're not in law enforcement."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I mean like a sheriff's deputy. You seem intelligent."

  "You don't think much of cops?"

  She said, "Having known a few."

  "Why'd you marry this hardcore Confederate?"

  She said, "I was going through one of my stupid periods. I started writing to a convict-he was related to a friend of mine and she got me into it. Girls do that, you know, write to convicts. They come to believe theirs is really a nice guy-look at the letters he writes. The idea is to make him see his good side and be comfortable with it." She raised the joint to take a hit but then paused. "Well, mine doesn't have a good side, and by the time I found out it was too late, we were married."

  "Leave," Dennis said. "Walk out."

  "I'm working up my nerve to file. What I'd love to do is move to Florida. Orlando. I hear it's the place to be, a lot going on."

  She was a country girl-Loretta-trying hard not to be, but stuck with who she was. Her goal, to live where there were theme parks.

  She said, "Anyway, I'm guessing what you do, meet all these girls that fall in love with you," staring at him again, slipping back into her soft mood; but then seemed to straighten in the camp chair as she said, "You're a croupier, at one of the casinos. No, you're a professional gambler, a card counter."

  Dennis shook his head. It sounded good though. He caught a glimpse of himself at a poker table, very cool.

  "You're not a business executive."

  "Why not?"

  "Your hair."

  "I could be in the music business."

  "Yeah, you could. Are you?"

  "No."

  "Then why'd you mention it?"

  "I'm trying to help. You like blues?"

  "Yeah, I guess. You're some kind of musician?" Dennis shook his head. "How about Drug Enforcement, something like that, a federal agent?"

  Looking at him she half-closed her eyes in the lantern glow. "Yeah, you could be working undercover. But you wouldn't give me a joint, would you?"

  "What if I was a dealer?"

  She studied him again, their faces only a couple of feet apart. "I suppose. But you look too, like, clean and healthy." She narrowed her eyes now, suspicious. "You ever been to Parchman?"

  He shook his head. "That where your husband was?"

  "Two years."

  It came to Dennis all at once. He said, "Your husband was a sheriff's deputy before that and now he works for Mr. Kirkbride ..."

  She said, "Oh, my Lord."

  "And runs the drug business."

  She said, "You're the diver."

  Dennis waited.

  She said, "Why don't you tell on the son of a bitch and have him put away?"

  Everybody knew he was up on the ladder when Floyd was shot. She said it herself and Dennis asked if Arlen had told her. She heard it in a casino bar and when she asked her husband about it, yes, he told her. Loretta said he got drunk and told her all kinds of stupid things he did.

  Dennis was in the pasture now with his rifle, heading back to his post, every now and again stumbling over ruts and clods of earth in the dark.

  She wanted to know why he didn't tell. He said to her, "I'm going to next week, unless something happens I don't have to." She didn't know what he meant. "Like what?" Now he was talking the way Robert did, with no intention of spelling it out. He said to Loretta, the way Robert would keep you hanging, "Don't file yet. You may not have to." Picked up his rifle and got out of there.

  He trudged along toward the dark mass of the thicket. Finally when he was getting close he saw the figure standing in the open. Dennis thought it was another sentry and he was off course from the direction he should be heading. When he'd walked off from the post he had turned around and lined up with the round top of an oak back in the thicket. There it was, he was heading toward it. But also toward the sentry, who didn't look like he had a rifle.

  No, because it was Colonel John Rau-shit-his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  He said, "Corporal, you left your post."

  Dennis said, "Yes sir," because, well, why not.

/>   "You know you could be court-martialed and shot?"

  "Sir," Dennis said, going along with it, half turning to point toward the dark pasture, "I thought I saw something out there."

  It stopped him, JohnRau with nothing in his head ready to say.

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

  JohnRau 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 ArlenNovis 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." JohnRau 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."