Tishomingo Blues (2002)

by Elmore Leonard

  There was no showroom or retail shop here. Dennis stood before the mirror in Jarnagin's stockroom wearing a Federal infantry shell jacket, the one with sky-blue piping on the stand-up collar and the cuffs, nine buttons down the front, the jacket Robert had ordered for him. The sky-blue trousers were a disappointment-Dennis staring at the almost shapeless cut-but good enough for a couple of days. He tried on a kepi. Yeah ... ? Then a forage cap, like the kepi but with a higher crown that DavidJarnagin told him was worn with the crown falling forward on the leather bill. Dennis put on the kepi again. DavidJarnagin said that regulars in the Union Army normally wore the forage cap. Dennis said, "If I have a choice . . . " and went with the kepi, seeing himself in the mirror 140 years ago. He liked the look and tried the kepi a bit closer on his eyes. Yeah. The shoes were something else, plain black ankle-high brogans with blunt toes, four holes for the shoelaces; they were called bootees. DavidJarnagin told Dennis they'd soften with shoe oil; but don't put them close to a fire, the soles would dry up and crack. Dennis picked out a belt, a bugle infantry insignia for the cap, sky-blue corporal chevrons to add some color. He looked at the Civil War underwear, flannel longjohns, told himself he could always cut the legs off, looked at Robert, Robert shrugged, and Dennis said he'd skip the official underwear. He didn't think DavidJarnagin cared one way or the other; he put Dennis' uniform in a box and said, "Thanks for your business," as Robert wrote the check.

  Outside, Dennis asked him how much it cost.

  "Don't worry your head about it."

  "I know the shell jacket was one-twenty, the shoes around a hundred."

  "You get a present from somebody, you ask how much they spent on you?"

  "This isn't a present. How much?"

  "Little under four bills."

  They were in the Jaguar now going back to Tunica by way of Memphis, into the sun, both wearing their shades.

  "You understand," Robert said, "reenactors are serious people. I mean whether they all the way hardcore or not. They go to the trouble to get to the place, put their uniform on, sleep in a tent on the ground, cook their food over a fire, they're serious people do that. They have no patience with farbs wearing Speedo skivvies under their wool pants. You know what I'm saying?"

  "They're serious."

  "They are ser-i-ous."

  "Not just about reenacting."

  "About everything."

  "Like you and Jerry. And Anne."

  "Going as a quadroon hooker-shit, huh?" Robert grinning. "She walk down that row of tents you see the heads come popping out."

  "And she's serious."

  "Me and Jerry and Anne-hey, and you-we all part of this agenda."

  Dennis said, "I'm not gonna ask what it is, so fuck you."

  Robert glanced over. "You don't like me playing with your head. But you're cool, you can handle it." He said, "Listen, what I was saying about these people ... I went to two different reenactments up in Michigan. One near Flint, a small one, only a couple hundred people dressed up, one cannon. And the other reenactment near Jackson, home of America's biggest walled lockup, five thousand inmates in there messing with each other. This Jackson reenactment had a couple of thousand counting people dressed as civilians, women and children, General Grant, Robert E. Lee, the cavalry, lot of cannons, people selling Civil War memorabilia, kielbasa and grilled Italian sausage, and all the people I spoke to, man, were serious."

  "So you were serious, too," Dennis said.

  "Yes, I was."

  "They didn't know you were only acting serious."

  "No. I was. I found myself being serious with them and it was a strange experience."

  "Being in the real world for a change."

  Robert said, "Yeaaah," in a dreamy tone of voice. "That's what it's like, huh?"

  Dennis fell asleep. He missed going through Memphis, opened his eyes to see they were in the country going south, blues coming out of the speakers.

  "RobertJohnson," Dennis said.

  "You passed the test. EricClapton will speak to you."

  They went by a US 61 road sign and Dennis said, "Do we come to 49?"

  "Other side of Tunica, down by Clarksdale, the most famous crossroads in the history of blues. Shit, in the history of music."

  "Where RobertJohnson sold his soul to the devil."

  "You remember-that's good."

  "But I don't know what it means."

  "Like Faust, man. Sell your soul you get anything you want. They say RobertJohnson made that kind of deal. He didn't say it, they did. But now TomJohnson's a different story. This was when RobertJohnson was still a child. TomJohnson tells people he sold his own soul at the crossroads. I say maybe, maybe not. The man drank poison, canned heat, that Sterno. What kind of deal is that? Now RobertJohnson-one day Son House tells him he ain't gonna make it, ain't good enough. Robert goes to the crossroads-the way the story is told-meets Satan in the form of this giant black dude. Satan takes Robert's guitar and messes with it, hands it back, and from then on nobody can believe the way he plays. They say to him, `How you do that?' Robert won't tell. See, but if he didn't sell his soul, why did he write `Hell Hound on My Trail'? Why did he write `Me and the Devil Blues'? Everybody's saying he musta gone to the crossroads and made the deal, 'cause listen to him, his wailin' chords, man, crawling up your spine. No doubt about it, was the devil gave him his mojo."

  "Like a charm?"

  "Mojo-yeah, like a charm, an amulet, something you use to get what you want, or be what you want. Something that's magic for you. You keep it in your mojo bag."

  Dennis said, "It sounds like gris-gris." "How you know about gris-gris?" "New Orleans."

  "Yeah, I forgot. Voodoo City."

  "You have a mojo?"

  "Wouldn't be without it."

  "You keep it in a mojo bag?"

  "Yeah, little bag made of flannel, has a draw string. You want to see it, don't you?" "I wouldn't mind."

  "It's in the room. I'll show it to you."

  "What's the charm that's in it?"

  "Strands of Madonna's coochie mop."

  "Strands? You're kidding."

  "Am I?"

  Shit, this guy-Dennis kept his mouth shut. He swore he wouldn't get into it any deeper.

  But then Robert said, "You ever think about selling your soul?"

  And Dennis bit; couldn't help it. "How do you do that?"

  "You stand up and say, when the time comes, Enough of this shit, I'm gonna do what I want. Or I'm gonna get me what I want. It's how you turn your life around."

  "What if you don't know what you want?"

  "You have to be cool, wait for it to be offered. But when it comes, you only have the one chance to grab it. You know what I'm saying?"

  "Like a job? What I've always wanted, a regular job."

  "You're feeling edgy now, huh? You like to be eighty feet in the air about to do your number-a thousand fans watching and you know you have 'em in your hand. And for that," Robert said, "they pay you three hundred a day?" He stared at the highway now as he said, "Man, I can make you feel like you way higher than eighty feet. Up on an edge you won't believe."

  There was a silence, Dennis telling himself to leave it alone. But there was a question he had to ask.

  "How'd you get it?"

  Robert turned his head. "What?"

  "Your mojo."

  "I bought it."

  "How do you know it's the real thing?"

  "I believe it. That's enough to make it work."

  Chapter 14

  WALTER KIRKBRIDE CALLED THE MEETING, in his office at Southern Living Village, Walter in casual clothes, his beard still gray, a Cuban cigar in one hand, a Confederate cavalry saber in the other. Arlen Novis, Eugene Dean, Bob Hoon and his brother Newton filed in and took seats: Arlen wearing his slouch hat, Eugene holding a sixteen-ounce bottle of Pepsi-Cola, Bob Hoon with a cigar stub showing in the thicket of his beard, Newton showing tobacco juice in his.

  They all assumed this meeting was about the reenactment.r />
  Walter corrected that notion. He brought up the hilt of the saber even with his eyes and hacked the blade down on his oak desk, hard, and their shoulders jumped, all four of them sitting right in front of the desk. Walter said:

  "Do I have your attention?"

  Loud, as they were looking at the new scar on the desk, next to the ones that had been varnished over. Walter lowered his voice but kept grit in it saying to Arlen, "You shot Floyd telling me it was a personal thing that had to be done. You shot Junebug without telling me anything, and I want to know why."

  "Don't think I wanted to, Walter."

  "You had Fish do it?"

  "He's my shooter."

  Walter said, "Where is he?" looking beyond them, as if JimRein might be lurking back there.

  Eugene said, "He's minding my dog."

  Now Walter had to stare at Eugene. He heard himself say in his head, He's minding your dog? With a tone that required an explanation. He heard himself say, Minding your dog is more important than...? What he said was, "I told all five of you to be here."

  Eugene said, "My dog don't have somebody with her she chews up the house."

  Walter had never seen this dog and was curious, but kept to his purpose. He said to Arlen, "Why Junebug?"

  Arlen said, "I had him put down 'cause he was getting drunk and talking too much."

  "But you let an eyewitness to your shooting Floyd walk down the street, do whatever he wants."

  "I set him straight. He knows what'll happen he's called and testifies."

  "And Charlie Hoke?"

  "Charlie knows better." Arlen cleared his throat and said, "I don't see this has anything to do with business. It come out of our dealing with Floyd. So I don't see it has anything to do with you?"

  "It's business," Walter said, "because it brings the police. I can say to myself there is nothing they can find that would tie me in with what you're doing, but I can never be absolutely sure, can I? What I think about is any one of you facing a convictiondoesn't matter what it is-could roll me over to get a reduced sentence. Or name all the names, all your friends and associates, to get immunity from prosecution."

  Arlen turned his head to BobHoon on one side of him and then to Eugene on the other. "Walter sounds like he's running the business."

  BobHoon said, "I thought he was," and nudged his brother, Newton.

  "As I see it," Arlen said, "we hired him."

  "At gunpoint," Walter said.

  The gun a photograph of Walter naked in color, Walter in a trailer tooting crack with a naked whore named Kikky. Some party till the camera flash went off. They showed him the photo and asked for two hundred and fifty thousand, saying they had taken over the drug business here and needed cash to buy product, buy sugar for the stills, buy the stuff you made the methamphetamines with.

  "Listen to BobHoon," Walter said. "He's our in-house manufacturer of speed, the only one of you even close to knowing anything about business. You can't be the louts you are and exercise any good sense. How long did it take me to get your cash flow set up, show you the need to run a balance sheet, how to make a steady profit and hide it? What was the first thing I told you, Arlen?"

  "I must've forgot."

  "I said get rid of your fifty-thousand-dollar automobile. You're a security stiff working for ten an hour."

  "We let you in," Arlen said, "and you felt right at home's what happened."

  "You know why?" Walter said. "Because business is business. I said to myself, If this man is forcing me to become involved, then I'll study up on his trade and see how it works. Okay, then see how my expertise can make it work even better. The first thing I look at, what to do with the profits. Okay, why not launder it through my own subsidiary, Southern Living Village, Incorporated, and pay it to suppliers who only exist on paper."

  Eugene said, "I never understood that part."

  "You don't have to," Walter said. "We have a CPA who's one of the great chefs at cooking books. He has no idea where the money's coming from and doesn't want to know. You fellas are a bigger risk than he is. Now you're shooting people, bringing the police around. Arlen, what did I say to do with the nigger, this boy Robert? I said scare him, run him off."

  "What I was thinking," Arlen said, "have a deputy stop him out on the road and find that pitcher. Bring him in and accuse him of using it to con people out of money."

  "He doesn't ask for money."

  "We can say he did."

  "You want to testify?"

  "Walter, you know it's some con he's working. The man on the bridge can't be both our grampas."

  "No, but it could be yours or mine. Didn't he know things about your family? Where your granddad worked? You said he did. What'd I tell you to do? I said run him off. You do it, not some deputy'll fuck with the nigger's civil rights."

  "Another way I was thinking," Arlen said, "shoot him accidentally during the Brice's reenactment."

  "Except he's on our side," Walter said. "Guns are inspected anyway, make sure they're not loaded."

  "But it happens," Arlen said. "Wasn't there one at Gettysburg a few years ago?"

  "During the one-thirty-fifth," Walter said, "you're right. A fella with the Seventh Virginia was shot in the neck. Doctor removed a ball from a forty-four-caliber pistol. It was ruled accidental. The ball must've been stuck in the barrel, since the pistol had been inspected, the chambers clear."

  "How about that diver," Eugene said. "Is he reenacting?"

  "There'd be an investigation," Walter said, "anybody gets killed." But now he was thinking about it.

  Arlen was too. Arlen saying, "Do 'em both at the reenactment, the diver and the nigger. Draw 'em off into the woods there and shoot 'em. Dump the bodies in an irrigation ditch. Come back after dark and bury 'em in the levee. Who'd miss 'em? Nobody'd know where they went or care."

  "That's how to do it," Newton said, leaning forward to look past his brother at Arlen and give him a nod. "You want, I'll do the nigger."

  Walter said to Arlen, "You're full of ideas, aren't you? What'd you say to JohnRau when he asked aboutJunebug?"

  "I said he disappeared on me, didn't know where he was at."

  "He come to the house," Eugene said, "looks around and wants to know where was the sofa. I guess on account of the coffee table was sitting there with nothing behind it. I said, `What sofa? I only board here.' "

  BobHoon said, "He asked us where we was. Newton told him, `Out in the country making speed, where you think I was?' Kidding with him. This JohnRau's a serious person. He says, `I'm gonna send the North Mississippi Narcotics Task Force after you.' I said, `What's that? I never heard of it.' Lot of those law enforcement people you can kid with, but not JohnRau, he takes it serious."

  They were winding down.

  Arlen asked Walter how come he hadn't dyed his beard. Walter said you look at photos of Old Bedford in uniform, taken during the war, his beard was black as coal. But in photos less than ten years later his beard was pure white. Walter said it led him to believe the wartime photos had been retouched to make the general look fierce, "and the beard actually wasn't any darker than mine."

  Arlen said, "Wasn't 'cause your wife'd get after you if you dyed it?"

  There was a time a remark like that would disturb Walter. Not anymore. Walter could say to Arlen, yes, his wife was recognized as a selfrighteous pain in the ass, set in her ways, two married daughters in Corinth still under her foot. If she were ever to see that photo of him tooting in the buff with Kikky, would she howl for his blood and leave him? He could say to Arlen, yes, of course she would. But so what? He could say to Arlen, show her the photo if you want. Walter had drug profits put away, scattered from Jackson to the Caymans, that Arlen and his morons would never find in a million years. Walter believed that at a moment's notice he could walk away and become someone else.

  What he did say to Arlen was, "Leave my wife out of this. Please." Keeping it light, a gesture to Henny Youngman, saying it as Jim Rein walked in. Walter said, "Fish, grab y
ourself a chair."

  And Eugene was on him. "Jesus Christ, don't tell me you left Rose alone."

  JimRein held up his hand wrapped in a dishtowel. "She bit me."

  "Fish, I told you you can't leave her. She'll tear up the curtains, the chairs, eat the carpet-" "The house is okay," Tim Rein said. "I shot her."

  Carla came out to watch him dive and they sat for a while in lawn chairs, in the shade back of the tank, talking, beginning to get to know each other.

  In the days that followed his meeting the Mularonies, Dennis was diving again in the afternoon: climbing to the perch and looking for a cowboy hat among the scattered crowd watching, doing his flying reverse pike, then wearing his shades, a towel around his neck, as he stood among girls from Tunica and told them what it was like to risk death or serious injury every day of his life. He could turn it on and the words would come out in a quiet tone of voice. But in the past week he had seen a man shot to death and had met RobertTaylor and watched him perform and the daredevil act from eighty feet had gotten old. When he was with Robert he felt like a stooge-as Robert even said, his straightman. Dennis no longer the star. But now the past couple of days he hadn't seen Robert at all, Robert out doing his act with his Indian buddy TontoRey, and that was fine, Jesus, why would he want to get close to a con artist? Even one who said he could take him higher than eighty feet, show him an edge-risk, excitement, thrills?-he wouldn't believe. And that business about selling his soulcome on. Ask him what all that meant and Robert said wait and see.

  Carla came along and the Tunica girls, no match, took off.

  She said, "You know you don't have to do a matinee." Dennis said yeah, but it was what he did, and Carla said, "We haven't talked much, have we? Hardly at all."

  Sounding as though she wanted to tell him something, confide. They moved lawn chairs into the shade of the tank, the private area where Floyd was shot, Carla wearing shorts and a loose tank top, dark blue against her slim arms and shoulders. She said, "I don't have anyone to talk to."

  Dennis offered Billy Darwin. "I thought you two were close."