Tishomingo Blues (2002)

  "Help yourself." JohnRau gestured and looked out at Dennis' setup. "I was telling Mr. Darwin the investigation could help your show."

  Now Dennis turned enough to look over his shoulder. Billy Darwin was still out there with the electrician.

  "He seemed to agree. He sees the local people as your main audience." He waited for Dennis to turn to the table again. "What time was it you left here last night?"

  "Going on seven."

  "Showers was still working."

  "Checking the pressure on the guy wires."

  "You trusted him to do that? Wasn't Showers a rummy?"

  "He knew what he was doing," Dennis said, looking at the American flag on JohnRau's necktie. There was something wrong with it.

  "He tell you he was a confidential informant?"

  "No, he didn't. He barely spoke to me."

  Dennis reached for the mixed nuts and JohnRau pushed the dish closer. He looked in it to see cashews, peanuts, almonds, one pecan ... Dennis came away with a fistful of nuts.

  JohnRau saying, "You know about his background?"

  "I know he was in prison. And from what I've heard, talking to people, Floyd was in the Dixie Mafia and they didn't trust him."

  "Who were you talking to?" "Charlie Hoke and our landlady." "They said he was in the Dixie Mafia?"

  Dennis watched JohnRau pick out a single nut, the pecan, and put it in his mouth. "I guess I just assumed it."

  "What do you know about this Dixie Mafia?"

  "Nothing. The first time I heard of them was in Panama City, Florida. Maybe a couple years ago."

  JohnRau took a little round hazelnut. "They're not like the organized crime families. There's a bunch right here that deals drugs. There's a bunch that hijack trucks and commit armed robberies. A bunch in prison who extort money from homosexuals on the outside. There're moonshiners, bootleggers, methamphetamine manufacturers ... they're not associated with each other. The only thing they have in common, they're all violent criminals."

  "Was Floyd one of them?"

  "You saw the type of person he was. Can you see him pulling any kind of rough stuff? Showers said if we'd reduce his sentence to time served he'd work for us, keep us informed."

  Dennis said, "I wouldn't think he was that smart."

  "He wasn't. I had him down as an idiot. It turned out he wasn't even close to what was going on. He'd tell us things were already common knowledge, in the newspaper, or he'd make something up. I don't know why they shot him. Five times, as a matter of fact. The medical examiner said, `This man was harder to kill than a cockroach.' "

  Dennis was staring at JohnRau's tie again. He said, "I think there's something wrong with your flag but I don't know what it is."

  JohnRau smiled. "You count the stars?"

  "I tried, they're too small."

  JohnRau picked up the wide part of the tie and looked down at it. "There are only thirty-five stars, the number of states in the Union by 1863. Even though we were now at war with the states that seceded, Lincoln would not allow the stars representing those states to be removed."

  There was something wrong with that, too.

  Dennis scooped another handful of nuts, craving them, but held off stuffing them in his mouth. "You said the states we were at war with, sounding like a Yankee."

  JohnRau said, "You know what it is? Whenever a reenactment's coming up I begin to assume the attitude of the side I'll be on. This first Tunica Muster won't be a major one, Yankees'll be in short supply. Since I can go either way, I'll wear Federal blue this time. Probably represent the Second New Jersey Mounted Infantry. They were at Brice's."

  "Brice's Cross Roads," Dennis said.

  And JohnRau's eyebrows raised. "You're taking part?"

  "No, but CharlieHoke is, and I hear Mr. Kirkbride's gonna be Nathan Bedford Forrest."

  JohnRau was smiling again. "Walter loves old Bedford. Yeah, it was Walter and I put this one together. I happened to mention there's terrain east of here reminds me of Brice's, full of that scrub oak they call blackjack. I'd see it driving up from Batesville. Walter) umped on it. He said, `You want to do Brice's?' I hesitated because we have the Battle of Corinth coming up in September, one we do over there. Usually we feature the assault of Battery Robinett, which most every Southerner knows about. You've heard of it?"

  Dennis said, "Battery Robinett?"

  "It was a Confederate assault on a Federal gun position. One of the heroes was a colonel of the Second Texas, WilliamRogers, KIA, shot seven times as he stormed the redan."

  "Who won?"

  "The Federals pushed them back. I reminded Walter of Corinth. Also the fact that Brice's Cross Roads was two years after Shiloh and Corinth. Not that it matters, but I felt I should mention it. Well, then Billy Darwin heard about it. Right away he saw it as a promotion, a minor reenactment but a major annual tourist attraction. The crowd gets tired of standing in the hot sun and comes in the casinos to play the slots."

  JohnRau stopped, his gaze raising, squinting as he said, "Is that Darwin up there?"

  Dennis looked around and the next moment was on his feet because it was, Billy Darwin standing on the top perch of the ladder. Dennis watched the way he was holding on with both hands looking up at the sky. "I think he froze," Dennis said. "I'll have to bring him down."

  "That fella by the tank," JohnRau said, "he's shining the spotlight on him, but you can't see it."

  "I gotta go," Dennis said.

  "Mr. Lenahan, one more question."

  Dennis stopped and looked back. "Yeah?"

  "If you were to think of Floyd Showers as an animal, what kind would he be?"

  Was he serious? Dennis said, "I don't know," and took off across the lawn, a picture popping into his mind now, too late to tell the CIB man: some kind of roadkill out on a highway, brown fur that looked like Floyd's suitcoat.

  He kept his gaze on Billy Darwin up there in shorts and a T-shirt, holding on to the ladder with one hand now, looking down, waving. Dennis reached the hotel electrician hunched over a spotlight mounted on the ground, aiming it toward Billy Darwin.

  "The hell you doing?"

  The electrician, bib overalls and a hunk of snuff behind his lower lip, said, "You tell me and I'll know."

  "I told you I set the spots."

  "You the boss or him?"

  "You think he's gonna place the ones up on the ladder, forty feet and at the top?"

  "What do you want 'em up there for?"

  "To light the pool. So I can see the goddamn water. I told him, I light the show. And I do it when it's dark, not in bright sunlight."

  Dennis stood looking up at the top perch again. "You think he can get down?" "He went up there like a monkey."

  "Coming down," Dennis said, "isn't the same as going up."

  Not more than a few minutes later Dennis was watching Billy Darwin start down: careful at first, both feet on the same rung before taking the next step, descending a whole section of the ladder this way. But then he seemed to have the feel of it and the goddamn wavy-haired show-off was coming down one rung after another, his hands sliding down the outer sides of the ladder. Dennis waited for him to come over.

  "You made it."

  "I had to see what it was like," Billy Darwin said. "A great view of the river, all the bends in it. But you know, I think the tank looks bigger than a half dollar. More like a teacup."

  "You have to see it at night," Dennis said, "after somebody climbs up there one-handed carrying spotlights."

  The son of a bitch said, "Oh? I thought you'd use a hoist. What do you call it? That thing you hauled up the ladder sections with-a gin pole?"

  By two o'clockDennis had counted thirty-eight people gathered on the lawn, some with plastic chairs they'd brought from home. These would be local residents, Dennis believed, though they didn't look much different from the hotel guests who wandered out. He spotted RobertTaylor and Billy Darwin standing together, a couple of dudes in sporty summer apparel.

  Vernice was suppos
ed to be here-see for the first time what high diving was all about-but she was home studying the script for tonight. CharlieHoke would call the dives. He'd stand on the plywood deck below the three-meter board, no mike, he'd announce through a bullhorn he used to attract contestants to his pitching cage. Dennis said that each time he came out of the water he'd tell him what the next dive would be and Charlie would announce it. "Be sure to tell them," Dennis said, "this will be my first performance in over a month and it's only a warm-up for the show at nine-fifteen tonight. You'll have to ad-lib, too, use some of the information that's on the poster. `From the Cliffs of Acapulco,' ABC Wide World of Sports world champion, I'm good to my mother ... Tell them not to applaud until I'm out of the water or I won't hear it. Also, not to get within ten feet of the tank. That's the splash zone."

  Charlie introduced Dennis and he opened with a flying one and a half somersault from the forty-foot perch to get the crowd's attention.

  "Remember," Charlie told all the faces looking up at him, "Dennis is only warming up, keeping his best stuff for the big show tonight."

  Dennis did a triple somersault from the threemeter board, and Charlie said, "I can tell you personally, having pitched eighteen years in organized baseball, that you better take enough time to warm up before you go in there to face some of the sluggers I've pitched to. Wasn't that a beauty? A triple somersault. Come on, let Dennis hear it."

  Dennis did a back one and a half pike from the forty-foot perch. "That was a back dive with a flip," Charlie said. "I knew I was in shape the times I faced legendary hitters like Don Mattingly, MikeSchmidt, and was fortunate enough on occasion to put 'em down swinging. Let's hear it, folks, for world champion Dennis Lenahan."

  Dennis came up to him pushing his hair back. "Whose show is this, yours or fuckin mine? I'm going off the top."

  Charlie said, "And now world champion Dennis Lenahan, a man with a lot of character, folks, is going for the fence with a flying backward reverse pike from the top of that eighty-foot ladder. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, you want, you could say a little prayer for Dennis, going off from a perch that's higher'n the cliffs of Acapulco, where he dove one time and broke his nose. And please hold your applause till we see Dennis come out of the tank in one piece."

  Charlie said, after, "How was l?"

  Robert said, "They love you, man."

  Billy Darwin said, "That's the show?"

  Dennis said, "You might've caught from the commentary it was a warm-up."

  Billy Darwin had his assistant, Carla, with him, Carla a knockout, tan, dark hair, Carla in a slim brown sundress. He said to her, "What do you think?"

  Carla said, "It was cool," looking at Dennis.

  Billy Darwin said, "Okay," and they left.

  Robert said, "Time to go see Massa Kirkbride."

  Chapter 7

  THE BLACK MAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH was hanging naked less than ten feet above the river. Lining the rail of the bridge above him were fifty-six people. Dennis counted them-more than he got for his diving exhibition-women in sun hats, children, men in overalls and felt hats, one man in a dark suit of clothes with his arm raised, holding on to a support strut, his other hand in his pocket. The banks of the river were thick with old trees and scrub, the water motionless. The tone of the photograph had turned sepia and there were a few cracks. Handprinted across the bottom were the words HE MOLESTED A WHITE WOMAN-TIPPAH COUNTY, MISS-1915

  It was lying on the seat when Dennis got in the car and he studied the eight-by-ten all the way to Old 61, where Robert made the turn south toward Tunica. Blues came out of the speakers turned low, "Background music for the picture," Robert said. "Robert Johnson doing `I Believe I'll Dust My Broom' first, and now Elmore James dusting his broom, a heavier beat working, electrified, Elmore riding on Robert Johnson's back, plugs in the Broom and has a hit. Then you gonna hear JimmyReed riding on Elmore's back to get where he got. It's how you do it. Later on we'll catch Sonny Boy Williamson II, and the poet of the blues, WillieDixon."

  "There little children in the picture," Dennis said.

  "A bunch of 'em. Couple of dogs, too, wondering what the fuck everybody's doing out on the bridge."

  Dennis held up the photo. "Where should I put it?

  "In my case, on the backseat."

  Dennis reached around for it, laid the darkbrown attache case on his lap and snapped it open. The black checkered butt of a pistol showed beneath a file folder.

  "You're not gonna shoot him, are you?"

  Robert glanced over. "Nooo, we gonna talk is all."

  "What is it?"

  "Walther PPK, the kind JamesBond packs. No, it's just-you know, in case. Like I find myself in the kind of situation you find yourself in."

  They turned into Southern Living Village to Sonny Boy doing "Don't Start Me Talking" past a billboard that showed what the village would look like finished: one-story homes with peaked roofs on winding streets lined with trees, that didn't look much at all like the models they came to on bare plots of ground. Dennis said, "They're like regular houses."

  "Sonny Boy's gonna tell everything he knows. Yeah, once they get the garages and shit added on. Bring 'em here in big pieces and nail 'em together. See up ahead, the transit mixer? Pouring a slab, what the houses sit on."

  Signs in front of the models they passed identified the VICKSBURG, the BILOXI, the GREENVILLE. "The Yazoo," Robert said. "That's my dream, live in a house called the Yazoo."

  The big manufactured log cabin with no name turned out to be the office of American Dream, Inc., Kirkbride's manufacturing company. They angle-parked in front.

  WalterKirkbride stood by his desk wearing a Confederate officer's coat, gold buttons, gold braid on the collar, over a pair of khakis. They took him by surprise coming in unannounced-no one in the front display room-but within a moment the man was in charge.

  "I hope you boys have come to sign up." A Confederate battle flag filled the wall behind him. "You want a job, you got it. You want to buy a house, take your pick. Ah, but if you came in here to join Kirkbride's Brigade your timing couldn't be better, as I'm looking for a few good men. I'll commission you a lieutenant," he said to Dennis, and to Robert, after a pause, "I'll find something special for you, too."

  "Something special, huh?"

  That was all Robert said. Dennis gave Kirkbride their names. They shook hands and Dennis said, "If I didn't know he was deceased, I'd swear, Mr. Kirkbride, you were Nathan Bedford Forrest."

  "I've been the general many times," Kirkbride said. "And it's kind of you to say that. But my wife has refused to kiss me if I dye my beard again. I have a lot of nerve posing as Ole Bedford anyway. There he is," Kirkbride said, turning to a wall of paintings, "in his prime."

  Robert said, "The man that started the KKK?"

  "It wasn't as racially oriented as it is now. Oh my, no." He turned to the wall again. "Left to right you have Forrest, Jackson, JebStuart and RobertE. Lee, the most loved by his men of any general who ever lived. Outside of Ole Stonewall and maybe Napoleon."

  "Got their love," Robert said, "and then got 'em killed."

  A flush came over Kirkbride's face. "They fought and died," he said, "out of a sense of honor."

  "Six thousand killed and wounded," Robert said, "three days before the war ended. That make sense, die knowing the war's good as over?"

  "You're certain of your facts?"

  "Battle of Sayler's Creek. Had to be April '65."

  Dennis looked at Robert. Sayler's Creek? Did he pull that out of the air or ... Now Robert was saying, "Mr. Kirkbride, I have something I'd like to show you, if I may."

  The man was still flushed, but saw Robert raising his attache case and said, "Here, use the desk." He looked at Dennis as he moved aside. "You probably wonder what I'm doing in uniform, or half in and half out, but I swear to you I am not a farb. I'm as hardcore as JohnRau, if you happen to know him from reenactments. John's a Yankee at heart, even though he got his law degree from Ole Miss. I think he's originall
y from somewhere in Kentucky. No-what I'm doing, the reenactment coming up, I'm getting used to wearing wool on a summer day. It's not bad in here with the AC on, but I go outside-man. Do it right, I should also be wearing my longjohns."

  Robert had the photo out of his case. He said, "Mr. Kirkbride?" Handed him the eight-by-ten and waited until he was looking at it. "That's my great-grandfather hanging from the HatchieBridge, August 30th, 1915."

  WalterKirkbride said, "Oh my God."

  "And that's your grampa up there," Robert said, "in the dark suit, his arm raised?"

  Kirkbride stared at the photo. He took it around to his desk, brought a magnifying glass out of the middle drawer and studied the picture now through the glass.

  He said, "How do you know it's my grandfather?"

  "I have what you'd call circumstantial evidence," Robert said, "that my great-granddaddy sharecropped on your family's plantation in TippahCounty and the dates. I have the newspaper account of his murder. I expect you know they didn't call it that. They said lynching was sometimes necessary when the authorities failed to maintain law and order. I have birth records, including your grampa's, his age at the time."

  Kirkbride said, "That doesn't prove anything to me."

  "And I have the eyewitness account of my own grandfather, DouglasTaylor," Robert said, "who was there."

  He let that settle on WalterKirkbride, giving Dennis a deadpan look, before he said, "You might've heard of my old grampa. He was a famous Delta bluesman, went by the name of Broom, Broom Taylor. Played in juke joints all around here and down to Greenville. Moved to Detroit and cut his big record, 'Tishomingo Blues.' Was at the same time JohnLeeHooker moved there."

  Dennis listened. He saw Robert pulling Broom Taylor out of the same hat where he had Sayler's Creek and all kinds of unexpected things stored. If he didn't make them up on the spot.

  "Mr. Kirkbride," Robert was saying, "my grandfather was in the shack they called their home when your people came and burned it down-just a little boy then, the youngest of seven children. He was present when they beat his daddy with clubs and cut his dick off. He was at the bridge-not on it, you won't see Douglas among all those people. He was hiding in the bushes, 'cause his mama forbid him to go. But he was there when they threw his daddy over the rail on the end of that rope and it broke his neck. See how his head is cocked almost to his shoulder? He heard people calling that man in the dark suit Mr. Kirkbride. `There, Mr. Kirkbride, we punished the nigga molested your missus.' You understand the woman they talking about was your grandma."