Tishomingo Blues (2002)

by Elmore Leonard

  Dennis said to Robert aside, each taking a shrimp on a toothpick, "What's going on?"

  "It's lunchtime," Robert said. "Don't you eat lunch?"

  "Come on."

  "They're my friends and you're my friend."

  Anne got around to asking about high diving and Acapulco, standing close to him with her scent, bikini under the beach cover hanging open, saying it must be harrowing and Dennis telling her the rush was worth it. "Every day," she said, "living on the edge." Dennis shrugged. "It's dive or get a job."

  She looked right into his eyes, making him wonder if it was there for him. He wasn't sure how to handle it. He asked if she and Jerry had any childrenstupid, trying to think of something to say-and it turned off the look she was giving him. She said, "Jerry and I aren't into children."

  He wanted to ask what Jerry did for a livingJerry on the balcony now with a plate of calamari. But Robert came over with a vodka tonic for Anne, saying to Dennis, "You might want to thank Jerry for getting you off to play war."

  Anne said, "I'm going as a camp follower," looking right at him again, "but no hoopskirts."

  "A quadroon," Robert said, "so I won't be the only darky."

  Dennis watched Robert give her a look, part smile, part something else going on between them. "What's Jerry gonna be?"

  "A Yankee," Robert said, "who gets his ass whipped. Remember I told you, Forrest put the skeer in the Yankees, chased 'em all the way back to Memphis?"

  Dennis had his next question ready and asked it. "What kind of business is Jerry in?"

  Anne said, "Land development."

  Robert said, "Big projects, all over the Midwest. And you know what kind? Manufactured home communities." Robert waited, looking at Dennis like he was giving him time to decide on the next question, how to put it.

  "Jerry knows Kirkbride?"

  "Knows of him."

  "But if they're in the same business-"

  "I'm out of this," Anne said, and walked away.

  Dennis watched her go in the bedroom, Robert saying to him, "It's Jerry's brother runs the business. Jerry's made his, he's semiretired, consults is all." Robert said, "You gonna ask me a lot of questions now, aren't you? All right, what's the name of Kirkbride's company? Was on the sign in the village he's doing."

  "I don't remember."

  "American Dream, Incorporated. Kirkbride makes 'em in Corinth and sells 'em all over the country. Jerry's brother looked into American Dream as a source. You know, to buy from. One reason or another it didn't work out. They deal with the same kind of company up by Detroit makes homes you put together."

  "You didn't mention this to Kirkbride."

  "Why would I? Jerry's not dealing with him."

  "But they're in the same business."

  "Jerry's like Anne, he's down here to have some fun, not talk business-shit. I'm the one, I told you, looked up Kirkbride, see what he's like, what else he might be into."

  "Like playing war," Dennis said, "and now you and Jerry want to get in on it."

  "And Anne. She's nice, huh?"

  "But you don't want Kirkbride to know any thing about you, or what Jerry does."

  Robert said, "There's no reason for him to. Man, you know there's always more to what you see going on than meets the eye. Be patient." "But why bring me along?"

  "You're my straightman, Dennis. Come on, have some of this lunch."

  They stood around the two room-service tables pushed together picking at the lunch. Dennis made himself say to Jerry, "Hey, thanks for getting me off."

  "You ever reenact before?"

  "No, but I can't wait."

  Robert said, "Don't overdo it."

  Anne said, "These two haven't either."

  Jerry said to Anne, "But we know all about the war, Queenie. You don't know shit."

  "I'm looking forward to the sowbelly," Robert said. "The hardtack."

  The phone rang.

  Jerry stepped over to the counter and picked it up saying to Robert, "We're getting around that, don't worry," and said into the phone, "Yeah? ... Send him up." Coming back to the table Jerry said, "Tonto's here."

  Robert went to the door saying to Dennis, "His real name's AntonioRey, but Jerry calls him Tonto, so that's what it is now." Robert opened the door and stood waiting, telling Dennis, "He's part Tonto-Mojave but related to Geronimo going way back to when Geronimo raped his great-greatgrandma, in Oklahoma. Tonto's part MexicanAmerican, too, from Tucson, Arizona."

  "And part African-American," Jerry said, "from Niggerville."

  "Be nice," Robert said, serious, like he was giving Jerry an order. His expression changed then as the guy appeared, Robert grinning now saying, "My man, Tonto."

  Dennis watched them high-five and hug each other, Tonto with dark skin, dark hair to his shoulders coming out of a bandanna he wore piratefashion, a man you had to notice and look at.

  Jerry and Anne didn't seem taken with him, though Anne said, "That's what I'm wearing with my costume, a do-rag," and Jerry raised his hand to him.

  Robert said, "Dennis? TontoRey, man."

  Dennis, holding a piece of fried chicken, gave him a nod.

  Jerry said, "How'd you do? You get everything?"

  "Some from the Dixie Gun Work," Tonto said, with an accent from down Mexico way. "Some from the place in Corint." He brought out folded sheets of paper from his denim jacket and opened them, Robert hovering, asking if, he wanted a drink, something to eat-"Yes, of course"-Robert finally getting him seated with a straight vodka and a plate of food on the table in front of the sofa. Dennis saw he was wearing scuffed brown cowboy boots. Jerry had taken a chair, Anne had gone in the bedroom and closed the door.

  Robert said, "You want to eat your lunch first?" Jerry said, "I want to know what the fuck he got, okay?"

  TontoRey took his time, looking at Jerry and then at the sheets of paper he was holding. He said, "I got everything Robert tole me. I got four Navy Colt revolvers, thirty-six-caliber, like the ones you have," looking at Jerry again.

  Jerry said, "Extra cylinders?"

  "Two for each revolver. Also I got four of the big fucking Enfield rifles, fifty-eight-caliber. I got cartridge boxes, canteens, cooking pots, the lanterns, the sacks . . ."

  "Knapsacks," Robert said.

  "Yeah, those."

  Jerry said, "The tents?"

  "I got three of the big wall tents with the awnings, and I got the stakes, the cooking irons, pots, a table that folds up."

  Robert said, "Anything you couldn't get?" "Everything you tole me. Is all in the truck." "What about Dennis' uniform?"

  "At the place in Corint. Is ready, he can pick it up.

  Dennis looked at Robert. "How's he know my size?"

  "I told him same as mine be close enough. This place in Corinth, you can pick out your hat, too.

  Have a choice, a forage cap or the kepi."

  Jerry got up from his chair saying, "I'm going to take a nap. You guys finish and get out of here." He went in the bedroom and closed the door.

  Robert said to Tonto, "You bring some good weed?"

  "Only the best."

  "What they have here's not too bad."

  "Where they get it?"

  "Mostly Virginia."

  "I hear is okay."

  "We'll go to my room," Robert said and looked at Dennis. "You want to puff some?"

  Dennis said no. He had a question, but now Robert was asking Tonto what he'd like to do after. "Get laid," Tonto said. "They any girls around here?"

  "Cute ones. They say, `You want to see my trailer?' You tell the one you want, `You betcha.' "

  He looked at Dennis. "You want to come?"

  Dennis shook his head and Robert said to Tonto, "I believe the man has all he needs. Hey, man? You can blow your whistle, you can ring your bell, but I know you want it by the way you smell. Know what I'm saying?"

  Tonto said, "I hear you, man."

  Dennis watched them grinning at each other. He said, "I know where you've got something go
ing too." Robert's grin didn't fade away, but did weaken.

  "Tell me," Dennis said, "why you need all the guns."

  "We got more reenactors coming," Robert said.

  Vernice had let him use her Honda. He pulled up to the house and saw her waiting for him at the front door, Vernice looking worried, anxious. "Your car's fine," Dennis said, "still in one piece."

  "You have a visitor."

  "Don't tell me ArlenNovis."

  "From the state police. What in the world have you been doing?"

  "I wish I knew," Dennis said. He walked through the empty living room and dining L to the kitchen.

  JohnRau, wearing his dark suit and the tie with the flag, was at the table with a cup of coffee. He said to Dennis, "Sit down." He looked past him and, in a milder tone, said, "Vernice, would you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes? Thank you."

  Dennis heard the door close as he took the chair facing JohnRau stirring his coffee but looking this way.

  He said, "Guess who's dead?"

  "Do I know him?"

  "I think you do. Junior Owens."

  Dennis started to shake his head.

  "Better known as Junebug."

  "I never met him."

  "He was fished out of the river this morning."

  "He drowned?"

  "You know better than that. Cause of death, gunshot."

  "How many times?"

  "You want to know if it was the same gun that did Floyd. No, he was shot once, in the chest, looking at the man who fired a bullet that went through and through."

  "Have you talked to anybody?"

  "You're top of the list, Dennis. Like you were on top the ladder when those fellas killed Floyd. Have you heard that story?"

  "I have, yeah."

  "Is it true?"

  "I've been advised not to get involved in this."

  "By a lawyer?"

  "Or talk about it with you."

  "You've been threatened."

  "I'm not going to say anything."

  "But you want to. Don't you?"

  "How can I be involved based on a story going around, a rumor?"

  "One of the fellas that did Floyd started it. You think it was ArlenNovis or Junebug?"

  Dennis could picture them walking toward the tank, even before it was done, and he'd say the one in the hat, Arlen. That was easy. But he didn't say anything; he shook his head.

  "Can you imagine why Junebug was killed? If you were Arlen and you heard the Bug was shooting off his mouth?"

  Dennis didn't say anything.

  "You know Arlen?"

  "I met him."

  "What do you think of him?"

  "He acts like a sheriff's deputy."

  "I know what you mean. But he didn't shoot anybody till he came out of prison." JohnRau waited and then he said, "Why don't you help me put him back in?"

  Chapter 13

  THEY WENT UP TO MEMPHIS and took 72 East to Corinth, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Tunica, most of it dipping down into Mississippi and across the top of the state, the sound of blues in the car all the way. "A medley of De-troit bluesmen," Robert said. "Johnny `Yard Dog' Jones, mixing soul with his blues, Alberta Adams, been doing it seventy years. Sang with everybody who's anybody. Got RobertJones on there, he'll make you think of another Robert, the great RobertJohnson, Son House, too. And, let's see, JohnnieBassett, plays a kind of jazz blues."

  Dennis said, "Why you live in Detroit?"

  "Everybody's got to live someplace."

  "Yeah, but Detroit-"

  "It's a no-shit town, man, it jumps. Look at Motown, Kid Rock, that wigger Eminem. All kind of sounds come out of Detroit."

  "You grew up there, went to school?"

  "In my youth," Robert said, sitting low behind the wheel of the jag, "you know what I did? Worked for Young Boys, Incorporated, street-corner entrepreneurs, sell a dime bag of heroin for thirteen dollars and keep three. Started when I was twelve years old working for Mr. Jones. That was his name. He goes, `Want to make three hundred a day? Hustle you can make three thousand a week?' What do you think I said to the man? There were a couple hundred of us doing it. They give you these little envelopes marked with brand names like Murder One, Rolls-Royce, you take out to your corner, or to the projects for home delivery. Yeah, Young Boys showed how it was done, then other gangs came along, like Pony Down was one."

  Out in the country cruising past cornfields, cows in a pasture, signs on trees that said JESUS SAVES ... Dennis said, "You were twelve years old?"

  "Thirteen, I bought a Cadillac."

  "You weren't old enough to drive."

  "I drove. Got pulled over every block, so I had the car put in my mama's name. She sold it. I was fourteen I bought a Corvette, kept it to use at night till it got jacked on me. You sell over two grand a week, Christmastime they take you to Las Vegas and get you laid by your first white lady."

  "Did you use drugs?"

  "Weed is all. Look at the people you selling to; you know you don't want to get hooked on the heavy shit. No, I even put money away, bought my mama things. I was fifteen I left Young Boys to try Pony Down and got a knife put to my throat. So I retired from the business."

  "You went to school while you were doing this?"

  "A Catholic school, but they didn't have many nuns left. It was too bad, I liked the nuns. They give it to you straight, no bullshit."

  "They know what you were doing?"

  "No, man. I'd get brought up in Juvenile Court, my mama'd call the school, say I had a sore throat."

  "She didn't mind you selling drugs?"

  "She'd look the other way taking the money. I never got sent down. I went to OaklandUniversity three years and did some dealing to pay for my tuition and books and shit, but only weed. I wouldn't sell heroin to students, fuck up their young minds. Lot of 'em were fucked up to begin with, worrying about what they gonna do when they got out."

  "You weren't worried?"

  "I took eighteen semester hours of history-ask me a question about it, anything, like the names of famous assassins in history. Who shot Lincoln, Grover Cleveland. I took history 'cause I loved it, man, not to get a job from it. I knew about the Civil War even before I saw it on TV, the one KenBurns did. I stole the entire set of videos from Blockbuster."

  Robert looked over at Dennis staring out the window.

  "You go to school to get a job?"

  "I knew the first time I saw a high diver go off that's what I wanted to do."

  "There you are. What'd you take?"

  "I quit after two years and joined the Great American High Dive Team."

  "How long can you keep doing it?"

  "I'm running out of time."

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know."

  "You ain't ever been to jail, have you?"

  "I was held one time while they searched my truck."

  "Thought you were trafficking?"

  "I wasn't."

  "The kind of nerve you have," Robert said, "when you quit diving you ought to get into something, you know, edgy."

  "When I was on the dive team, I was the edge guy "There you are."

  "But with divers," Dennis said, "they say the better the performer, the less stable the personality."

  They came to Corinth, to a wide, open area of railroad tracks on the south edge of the town's business district, and Robert stopped the car.

  "This is Civil War City, man, Corinth, the rail center all the fighting around here was about. You looking right at it. The Memphis and Charleston line went east and west, the Mobile and Ohio the other way. You listening to me?"

  Dennis said, "You came here to meet Kirkbride?"

  "To see what he had going. His plant's south of here, across 72. But he was already in Tunica putting up his Village. It wasn't a wasted trip 'cause I also came to visit Jarnagin's and look at uniforms. Can I go on?"

  "You're driving."

  "I mean with your lesson, telling you about what happened here. Musta been thirty thou
sand, at least, killed, wounded, died of cholera or the shits fighting over these railroad tracks. I'm counting Shiloh, north of here across the Tennessee line, luka, a place where they fought east of here, and the Battle of Corinth itself. Was October 1862, the Confederates trying to take it back from the Federals." Robert pointed. "Over that way not too far I'll show you where the meanest fighting was, the Confederates trying to take Battery Robinett. It's now a historical landmark, some of the earthworks still there."

  Dennis said, "Yeah, Battery Robinett. I believe one of the heroes of the assault was a Colonel Rogers of the Second Texas. Shot seven times charging up the redan."

  Robert turned his head and stared at Dennis before he said, "You sneaky, aren't you? Every now and then flash your chops at me." Robert smiled. "Shows your potential. Tells me I'm right to bring you along. But the way I heard it, was a drummer boy picked up a pistol and shot Colonel Rogers. It's a better story, the big hero getting popped by a kid. You ever imagine what it would be like?"

  "What, getting shot?"

  "No, being in a battle. Walking across a field toward a line of men shooting at you. Or charge this Battery Robinett, big Parrott guns, twentypounders, firing canister at you."

  "What's canister?"

  "I think it's like scrap metal packed together, but I'm not all the way sure. I know I wouldn't want any parts of it. Man, you have to be brave keep walking into that shit. But they did, both sides." Robert shook his head. "How, I don't know. I went up to Shiloh? This Park Service person, Ranger Diana, cute girl, took me around in her uniform and Smokey the Bear hat. Showed me the Sunken Road, the famous Hornet's Nest, like a woods. She said they fought in there for hours, the black-powder smoke so thick they shooting their own people by mistake. The trees caught fire and there's wounded in there can't get out. She said you could hear 'em screaming and smell burning flesh. Yeah, Ranger Diana, she was good, put you right there at the scene."

  For maybe a minute the air-conditioning was the only sound in the car.

  Robert said, "Right over there across the tracks was the original Tishomingo Hotel. They used it as a hospital. You can take a walking tour of historical sites, see where General Beauregard stayed, visit a war museum, or we can skip it, get your uniform and something to eat. Beer and wine, but no booze in this county. What else you want to know?"