Elmore Leonard - Tishomingo Blues

Dennis said, "That's why he's the boss?"

"He's the boss 'cause he says he is."

"You're smarter than he is."

"I know that."

"Does he?"

"Yeah, he knows it."

"It must piss him off."

"Uh-unh, 'cause he knows he can beat me up."

"But he needs you to run things."

"Yes, he does."

"Do you need him?"

"We all answer to a higher Dower. Dennis."

"One that blows up cars and makes pipe bombs?"

"That kind you answer on the double."

"What're you telling me?"

"I'm not around, watch out for him."

SATURDAY MORNING DENNIS GOT UPat seven-thirty. He put on his corporal's uniform-Vernice had sewed the chevrons on for him, the bugle insignia on the kepi-set the cap straight over his eyes, and looked at himself this way and that in the fulllength mirror on the closet door. He said to himself, Is that you?

He said, The hell are you getting into?

He said, Nothing. I'm not.

He said, But it could work, couldn't it?

He saw in the mirror the impression of a Union soldier 140 years ago while his mind played with Robert's proposal. He would put it out of his mind. There, I'm not doing it. But it kept coming up again and again. The idea that it could work: he could run an international diving show that as far as he was concerned had nothing to do with the sale of drugs. Or, was related to it, but in a very minor way. Robert had asked him what was the problem.

"You can smoke it but can't sell it?"

"I don't do cocaine, any of that other stuff." Robert said he didn't either. Robert said, "We don't force anybody to use it."

"You get them hooked."

"They get themselves hooked. Like alcoholics who can't drink without making a mess."

"Come on-it's against the law."

"So was booze at one time. Nobody stopped drinking."

"You can go to prison."

"You can go off the ladder wrong and break your back."

There were ways to look at it and it was okay. He'd be doing something with his life. He'd be offering steady jobs to high divers looking for gigs. He could help out his mother, seventy-two years old, living in a dump on Magazine Street with his sister the alcoholic, a disease inherited from their dad, who drank till he died of it. He could get his mom a house out in the Garden District. Look at all the good he could do. Spread it around. Help the needy.

Pay off his conscience.

Shit.

He told himself he had made up his mind, so forget it. Don't think about it anymore. He went out to the kitchen.

Charlie, wearing one of his LET'S SEE YOUR ARM T-shirts, was having toast and a cup of coffee.

Dennis said, "I thought we were going early."

"A reenactment being put on for the first time," Charlie said, "on a location never used for it before, you get there anytime before noon, or even a little after, you're early. You want to be put to work driving tent stakes? I do my bit later on this afternoon, make announcements, then tomorrow I tell what's going on when they do the battle."

"Who asked you?"

“The committee, who you think?”

"They want to hear baseball stories?"

"I've been reenacting nine years, Dennis, I know what it's about. Doing a battle play-by-play isn't like calling dives." He said, "Step back, lemme look at you," and began nodding his head. "You'll pass muster, you look good. How the shoes feel?"

"Stiff, but they're okay."

"You said the other night they were tight on you."

"I put on lighter socks."

"You can pull the socks up over the bottom of your pants if you want. Some argue whether blousing is authentic or not. You'll hear serious discussions about such things. Are your buttonholes hand-stitched? They say if you're Confederate you don't have to be so goddamn hardcore. Somebody else says they were as GI as any Federal troops. You know what, though? They say most girls go for farbs, guys who don't give a shit."

Vernice came in ready for work in her fringed cocktail waitress uniform, the feather sticking straight up behind her head. She said, "Well, look at my soldier boy. Honey, don't get hurt, okay?"

Charlie said, "You know how many was killed in that war, both sides? Six hundred twenty thousand."

"I'm coming out after I get off," Vernice said. "Have to serve the early crowd their Bloody Marys. What's on later, the battle?"

"This afternoon you can watch 'em drill," Charlie said. "If there's a skirmish they didn't tell me. There's a ladies' tea if you're dressed for it, period dance instructions and tonight a military ball."

"You're kidding," Vernice said.

"I make an announcement that cavalrymen are to remove their spurs."

"What's on tomorrow?"

"Period church service, some more marching, a pie-baking contest, and the Battle of Brice's Cross Roads."

"I may wait for tomorrow," Vernice said. "It's gonna be hot out." She turned to Dennis again. "You look so cute in your uniform. You gonna camp out or come home tonight?"

Dennis said he hadn't made up his mind. "I'11 have to see how it goes."

"I don't sleep outside," Charlie said. "I don't eat sowbelly either. I asked Vernice how in the hell you make hardtack. She said buy some rolls and let 'em sit out on the counter a few days."

"I'm going," Vernice said, but then picked up the latest Enquirer from the counter. "Another reason Tom might've dumped Nicole? She's so full of herself. It says she'd go in a Ben and Jerry's for an icecream cone and walk right up to the front of the line."

Charlie said, "And I bet nobody cared, either. You're a movie star, you don't have to stand in line." He looked at Dennis. "You stand in line?"

"I see a line," Dennis said, "I keep walking."

Charlie said, "I can't think of the last time I stood in line."

Vernice dropped the Enquirer on the breakfast table. She said, "I'll see you movie stars later," and left.

Dennis had an egg and onion sandwich while Charlie was getting dressed. When he came in the kitchen again he was wearing a black slouch hat and a uniform John Rau had given him and Vernice had let out. Charlie still talking.

"You know what Arlen's people will be doing at this thing? Drinking. I never was at a reenactment with 'em they didn't get smashed. Then what'd they do is take a hit early in the skirmish, pre fer ably in the shade, else they'd crawl to a tree and snooze till it's over. You watch 'em. They put a lot into dying, making it look real. You want to stop and get some breakfast?"

"I just had a sandwich."

"I mean some real breakfast."

"We got us a good crowd," Charlie said, steering his Cadillac past a quarter mile of cars and pickups parked along both sides of the county road. The field across from the farm property, reserved for reenactors, was full of cars, trucks, motor homes, even a few horse trailers. They turned into the barn lot, reserved for VIP parking, and stopped so Charlie could show his pass to the security people. Dennis spotted Robert Taylor's Jaguar in a row of cars by the barn and said to Charlie, "Look who's a VIP "

Charlie said, "Wouldn't you know," and asked Dennis if he was registered.

"I didn't know I had to."

Charlie said, "Go on over to that table sitting just inside the barn. Give the girl ten bucks and you're a reenactor, you can sleep outside with the bugs tonight." He told Dennis the battlefield was on the other side of the barn, the military camps over there on opposite sides of the field. It was north. The civilian campsites and stores were over there to the east. He said, "Start that way to look around and you'll be back in Civil War times before you know it." Charlie would catch up with him later; he had to hang around, find out when he'd be making announcements.

Dennis walked off among spectators and reenactors arriving, a Confederate shouldering a musket asking him who he was with and Dennis told him the Second New Jersey Mounted Infantry, and felt himself beginning to play the part. He came to a row of food vendors along the edge of the barn lot, the sides of their cooking trailers open to offer fried chicken, catfish, hot dogs and hamburgers, different kinds of sausage, popcorn, soft drinks. He came to a row of blue portable toilets and was approaching tent stores now and the civilian campsites, grouped about to form a semblance of streets in the shade of old, shaggy oaks. He began to see more uniforms, mostly Confederate, a grungy-looking bunch in mismatched uniforms, different shades of gray, a few wearing kepis but most of them favoring slouch hats, some black ones, no shape to them. They stood around talking, their rifles in several tepeed stacks. One of them called to him, "Hey, Yank, who you with?" and it gave Dennis kind of a thrill. That's what he was, a Yank, and told them Second New Jersey as he walked past.