Tishomingo Blues (2002)

by Elmore Leonard

"Your grandfather," Dennis said, "got in an argument with Kirkbride's grandfather, and?"

  "Was my great-grandfather. They have a disagreement over shares and the man tells my great granddaddy to get off the property."

  "With his pickaninnies," Dennis said.

  "That's right. Only he didn't feel he should take this shit off the man. Where they suppose to go? He's got his wife and seven children to feed. What he does, he takes a drink of corn and goes up to the house, see if he can reason with the man. Goes to the back door. The man ain't home, but his woman is and maybe RobertTaylor gets ugly with her. You know what I'm saying? Ugly meaning disrespectful, like he raises his voice. The woman becomes hysterical a nigga would talk to her like that. Keeps screaming at him till RobertTaylor says fuck it and walks away. Goes home. He believes that's the end of it, they may as well pack up the few things they own and go on down the road. Except that night men come with torches and set his house on fire, his shack, with his family inside."

  Dennis said, "Jesus." No longer looking at the black Dodge or Vernice's house.

  "He gets his wife and the kids out, the little children screaming scared to death. Can you see it?"

  Dennis said, "That kind of thing happened, didn't it?"

  Robert said, "Few thousand times is all. They told my great-granddaddy this is what you get for molesting a white woman. That's the word they used, molesting. Like he'd want any of that grandma. They stripped him naked, tied him to a tree and whipped him, cut him up, cut his dick off and left him tied there through the night. In the morning they lynched him."

  Dennis said, "Jesus-Kirkbride did it?"

  "Kirkbride, men that worked for him, people from town, anybody wanted to see a lynching. But you know why they waited till morning? See, they didn't lynch him right there." Robert stopped. His gaze moved, inched away, and Dennis turned his head to look toward the house, Robert saying, "I believe that's the cowboy."

  It was, coming down the walk from the house, Vernice by the front door holding it open.

  "One of the dudes," Robert said, "wanted a free show."

  Dennis said, "It could be, but I don't know him."

  "He knows your landlady, if that's her."

  "Vernice," Dennis said.

  The one in the cowboy hat looked back at the house and waved as he reached his car and Vernice went inside, Dennis noticing she didn't wave back. The one in the cowboy hat glanced this way as he opened the door of his car, stared a moment, got in and drove away.

  "Man would like to know who the fuck around here owns a Jag-u-ar."

  Dennis watched the taillights going away.

  "I don't have any idea who it is."

  "You keep reminding me of that," Robert said, "in case I forget."

  "It doesn't matter," Dennis said. "I know he didn't come by to see me."

  Robert said, "Dennis?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Look over here at me."

  Dennis turned his head.

  "What?"

  "That man gives you any shit, tell me."

  Dennis almost said it again, insisting he did not know the man. But he saw Robert's expression, Robert's cool showing, his confidence, Robert knowing things he didn't have to be told, and it was strange, the feeling it gave him, that he could rely on this guy, the guy maybe drawing him into something, using him, but so what; he liked the feeling of not being on his own-standing exposed on the perch, the two rednecks looking up at him. Dennis said, "They waited till morning to lynch your great-granddaddy."

  "You know why?"

  Dennis shook his head saying no.

  "So a man from the newspaper could take pictures. Get all these white trash people standing there, some with grins on their ignorant faces, alongside RobertTaylor hanging from a tree, the way it's mostly done. Can you see it?"

  Dennis nodded.

  "But then the photographer had an idea-the way photographers to this day fuck with you taking your picture, put you in poses that don't make any sense. What they did, they took RobertTaylor down to a bridge over the Hatchie, the river east of here some, tied one end of the rope around his neck, the other end to the iron rail, and lifted him over the side. He's hanging there in the picture naked, his neck broken, a bunch of people lining the rail."

  Dennis said, "You have the picture?"

  "The one took it had postcards made and sold 'em for a penny apiece. Yeah, I have one."

  "You brought it with you?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "You're gonna show it to Mr. Kirkbride?"

  There was Robert's smile again, in the dark.

  "Yes, I am."

  Chapter 5

  DENNIS ASKED IF CHARLIE HAD CALLED and Vernice said, "He hardly ever does. I don't have to worry about meals for him, so he comes and goes when he wants." She said, "You're hungry, aren't you? There some Uncle Ben's rice bowls in the fridge. There's Teriyaki Chicken and some Lean Cuisines, different ones. The Chicken l'Orange's my favorite."

  They were in the kitchen, Dennis at the table where she told him to sit down after working on his ladder all day. Vernice's Georgia accent was slowpaced, but the words full and rich the way she rolled them out. Dennis at the table and Vernice with her back to him making toddies-Early Times over crushed ice and a sprinkle of sugar on top-in her Isle of Capri uniform, its short skirt tight around her rear end, which Dennis was staring at no more than three feet in front of him.

  He wanted to know if Charlie had called Vernice and told her what happened. He wanted to know who the cowboy was and why he was here. And he wanted to know if Vernice and Charlie were old friends or if they were getting it on.

  "He calls if he wants me to do something for him. Throw his T-shirts in the washer. He'll wear ten'r twelve of those let's-see-your-arm T-shirts before he thinks to wash 'em. I don't ordinarily bother with him."

  "I thought you two were close."

  "Two months in a trailer, that was close encounters with a man never shuts up. Three months in this house I bought with my own money. I get tired of hearing him talk's the thing. Couldn't stand it in that little trailer, so I told him he had to go. It was at one of those Kirkbride Trailer Havens. Mr. Kirkbride's making prefabs now, or whatever they are."

  Manufactured homes, Dennis said.

  "You see 'em on the highway," Vernice said, "they have that sign, `Extra Wide Load,' on the back end? He's putting up a mess of 'em right over here, calls it Southern Living Village. They're not too bad. Dishwasher and microwave in the kitchen."

  "You know Kirkbride?"

  "I've met him. He has an office at the Village, but he's mostly in Corinth. I gave Charlie the end of the month to move out. He was broke, had no job or place to live, and I didn't care."

  "Couldn't stand him talking all the time."

  "Telling baseball stories if he didn't have nothing else. What a star he was. All the big-name hitters he'd struck out. I said, `Honey, who gives a shit.' " Vernice turned from the counter with a drink in each hand. "Here, sweetheart, sip it, do you good. Let the bourbon work its way down your tired young body."

  Dennis took a sip and made a sound, Mmmmm, to show he liked it. He said, "I bet I'm older'n you are."

  Vernice said, "Well, of course you are," sitting down at the table. "I tell Charlie he has to leave? This is when we're living in the trailer. He says there's a job waiting he knows he's gonna get. Celebrity host at the Tishomingo. Oh? I said, `What qualifies you, being a relative of Big Chief Tishomingo, or a onetime famous ballplayer no one's ever heard of?' Charlie says he can go either way, talk the talk. I said, `Charlie, you ever get hired as a celebrity host, I'll lose twenty pounds and get a job as a keno runner.' You know what he said? `Better make it forty pounds.' " Vernice got up and went over to the counter to get her cigarettes. "I've always been full-figured, it runs in my family." She came back to the table patting her tummy, holding it in. "Since then I've lost almost thirty pounds. I started out on what they call the JennyCrank diet? If you know what I mean."

  "You're on s
peed?"

  "I said I started out on it. One weekend I painted every room in the house without stopping, day and night till it was done. I knew you could get hooked, so I quit."

  "Don't lose any more," Dennis said. "You look great."

  She said, "I do?"

  He watched her sit at the table sideways to face him and cross her legs, showing him the whitest thighs he had ever seen. Just about any time he looked at Vernice he'd try to picture her naked.

  "So Charlie talked his way into the job?"

  "He goes to see Mr. Darwin and starts bragging how he can still pitch. Mr. Darwin says, `Okay, if you can strike me out you got the job.' Charlie says he'll do it on three pitches. Mr. Darwin says he'll give him four. They get a kid to bring a ball and bat, meet at a field . . ." Vernice paused to light a cigarette.

  "Charlie struck him out?"

  "He threw one at him, trying to come inside? And Mr. Darwin had to hit the dirt to save his life." "He got the job anyway?"

  "That's what I asked him. `He hired you even though you knocked him down?' You know what Charlie said? `Honey, it's part of the game.' He let Mr. Darwin hit one and got hired."

  Dennis said, "He's a character."

  Vernice said, "He's a pain in the butt. He comes in my bedroom asking can he use the treadmill you might've noticed in there? Before I know it he's sitting on the side of my bed with his beer gut. You're lucky, you have a nice trim body from swimming."

  "Divers don't have to swim much."

  "You still have a nice physique." She said, "Oh. I'll be there to see you-I forgot to tell you, I start working at Tishomingo next week. Charlie put in a good word with the human resources guy. Don't you hate that, calling personnel human resources?"

  "I think of bodies laid out in a stockroom," Dennis said.

  Vernice drew on her cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. "I start as a cocktail waitress. The outfit's real skimpy-you've seen it-it looks like buckskin only it's polyester with fringe. And you wear the headband with the feather sticking up? It's cute."

  Dennis said, "If you're gonna be there every day ... I was thinking, how'd you like to be in my show?"

  "You don't mean dive."

  "Call the dives. You have a mike and you tell the audience what dive I'm gonna do next."

  "I'd have them, like on a sheet of paper?"

  "Yeah, and things you can say to the crowd. Like, `You have to clap real hard if you want Dennis to hear you, way up there eighty feet in the air.' "

  "What do I wear?"

  "Whatever you want."

  "When would I start?"

  "Tomorrow night. They're gonna televise it."

  "Really?"

  "It's in the local paper and there're posters around town."

  "I know, `From the Cliffs of Acapulco to Tunica . . .' But tomorrow night, you're not giving me much time."

  "Charlie said he'd do it if I don't find a goodlooking girl. You want to think about it?"

  Vernice sipped her drink and smoked.

  "I have to let Charlie know," Dennis said. "Give him time to look at the script. Shouldn't he be back pretty soon?"

  "He sees any new faces in the bar, he'll hang around to tell baseball stories."

  "I got a ride," Dennis said. "We pulled up, I saw a car drive away. I thought Charlie might've come and gone."

  "No, it was that shitbird ArlenNovis stopped by to see Charlie."

  "A friend of Charlie's?"

  "Maybe at one time. Arlen was a sheriff's deputy till he went to prison for extortion. He'd make bail bondsmen give him a cut of their fee or he wouldn't okay the bond. They also had him for accepting payoffs from drug dealers. I don't know, either they couldn't make a case or it was part of a deal he made. Plead guilty to the extortion and testify against the sheriff, he'd only do a couple years. The sheriff's doing thirty years on those same charges."

  "What's Alvin do now?"

  "Arlen. Walks around in his cowboy hat like he's a country-music star, Dwight Yoakam or somebody. Ask him what he does, he's head of security at Southern Living Village they're putting up over here. Mr. Kirkbride hires a criminal to see none of his building supplies get stolen."

  Dennis said, "Yeah ...?" knowing there was more.

  "But what he really is, Arlen's a gangster. He got into disorganized crime with the Dixie Mafia and pretty soon he's in charge. Some call it the Cornbread Cosa Nostra, making it sound cute, but they're all dirty dogs."

  "You get this from Charlie?"

  "The talker."

  "What's Arlen's name?"

  "ArlenNovis. There was another Tunica deputy at Parchman the same time as Arlen. JimRein, he was in there for assaulting prisoners. He'd beat 'em with a nightstick for no reason other'n they were colored. You'd never think JimRein to look at him would do that. He's a good-looking young man with quite a nice physique on him. They call him Big Fish or just Fish, but I don't know why."

  "He's in the Dixie Mafia, too?"

  "Works for Arlen. They took over from the ones had the drug business. Charlie says just like in the regular Mafia. Arlen had JimRein shoot some of 'em and the rest they run off."

  "That's where you get your speed?"

  "Crystal meth-I told you, it was just for a while. They sell it to the casino crowd, people that stay up all night trying to win their money back. There's a honky-tonk called Junebug's? Down by Dubbs, just south of here. Arlen took it over along with the drug business. You go to Junebug's you can get all the uppers or downers you want. Speed, crack cocaine, marijuana. They have illegal gambling there, prostitutes, girls in trailers out back of the place."

  "Why hasn't it been shut down?"

  "Well, you know they're paying off somebody. There's a raid, Arlen gets word of it and they close for alterations. Honey, people come to Tunica for fun, all kinds of it, and spend their money. Like I read a billion dollars a year right in this county. That's what it's all about, money. Drugs are sold, casinos are robbed, people are shot ... Last year a waitress from Harrah's was stabbed to death in her trailer, up in Robinsonville. I've thought seriously of moving back to Atlanta, but you know what? I love it here, something always going on."

  Vernice took time to smoke. Dennis sipped his drink seeing ArlenNovis by the tank, looking up at him on the perch. He wondered who the other guy was.

  "Has a nice taste, doesn't it?"

  Dennis said yeah, looked at the glass and took another sip.

  "I don't put sugar in mine no more, it's still a treat."

  "Vernice, why would Kirkbride hire a guy for security who's a known criminal?"

  "Arlen told Mr. Kirkbride it takes one to know one. Says he can spot anybody hanging around the property who's up to no good."

  "According to Charlie?"

  "Who else. He has the ear for all the dirty stuff that's going on. He talks and people talk to him. He says Arlen told Mr. Kirkbride he had been cleansed of his sins by his conscience beating on him and time served."

  "He talks like that?"

  "Arlen's a bullshitter."

  "And Kirkbride believes him?"

  "Not 'cause of anything Arlen has to offer, like drugs. The reason they're close, they both love to dress up and take part in those Civil War battle reenactments. They been doing it for years. I mean you wouldn't believe how serious they are. Mr. Kirkbride's always the general. Arlen's under him and brings along his boys, JimRein, Junebug, all these gangsters in Confederate uniforms."

  It reminded Dennis of the posters he had seen in the hotel and around town, big ones in color that announced the TUNICA CIVIL WAR MUSTER, the dates and the name of a battle they'd reenact.

  He mentioned it to Vernice and she said, "Yeah, they're thinking of making it an annual affair. This year they're doing the Battle of Brice's Cross Roads. Not on the site, but just east of here a few miles. The actual site's way over by TishomingoCounty. Charlie says Mr. Kirkbride's grown a beard so he can be Nathan Bedford Forrest. He's the general won the battle."

  "Charlie's not in
to dressing up, is he?"

  "You betcha he is. It's why Arlen was here to see him. He said he heard Charlie's gonna be a Yankee this time. Arlen comes by to threaten him out of it. Charlie says he's tired of that Confederate gray. It reminds him too much of the road uniforms he wore playing baseball. Charlie says they always look dirty."

  He came home right as Dennis finished his shower and was in his bedroom getting dressed, putting on a fresh T-shirt and jeans from the clothes Vernice had laundered for him and laid folded on the chenille bedspread-Vernice doing for him what she didn't do for Charlie, which Dennis liked to think told him something. By the time he had dressed and walked across the hall to the kitchen he could see Charlie had told Vernice what happened. They both sat at the table with their drinks, not talking, Vernice looking up with worry on her face. She said, "Dennis ...?" And Charlie said, "I'll tell him." So now he had to get ready to act surprised and then say...

  What he said was, "Why would anyone want to shoot Floyd? ... Jesus, the poor guy," and felt it, he did, seeing that pathetic figure in that mangy suitcoat too big for him.

  "You called the cops?"

  This was the part he wanted to hear, what happened after.

  Charlie said he called nine-eleven. Sheriff's deputies came in about twenty minutes. Then a couple of detectives, also from the Sheriff's Department. Then the crime-scene people arrived and the medics. They took pictures, fooled around. The medics were ready to haul Floyd away, but were told to wait. One of the detectives was chewing out a deputy for calling the state police on his own. A new guy, Charlie said, one he hadn't seen around before. They waited over an hour for the guy from the CIB-that's the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Mississippi Department of Public Safetyto come from Batesville, the closest district office, fifty-two miles away.

  "The investigator arrives," Charlie said. "He tells me he's JohnRau and starts asking the same questions the local guys asked me. How it was I found the body, all that. What Floyd was doing here. He looks over the crime scene and asks if they lifted Floyd's prints. One of the sheriff's detectives says, `We know who he is. Jesus Christ, don't you? It's Floyd Showers. He ratted somebody out and got fuckin popped for it.' This JohnRau has a suit and tie on, a nice way of handling himself. He's reserved, never raised his voice once. He said he wanted the prints sent to Jackson. Meaning the Criminal Information Center. JohnRau told me later they have a method of handling prints nowlike you put 'em in a machine and the guy's sheet comes out."