Tishomingo Blues (8 page)

Dennis was staring at JohnRau's tie, blue, with an American flag in the center of it. He said, "It's more of a warm-up than a show. I haven't gone off the top in more than a month." He looked at the mixed nuts now and wanted some. "Of course anybody who'd like to watch is more than welcome." He said, "Do you mind?" reaching for the nuts.

"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 supposed 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."