South of Shiloh (26 page)

36

THEY DROVE BACK TO TOWN NOT SAYING MUCH
until Rane got out of the police car and Beeman admonished, “Don’t go ’way. Stay on your cell and we’ll hook up a little later.” After the cop drove off, Rane got in his Jeep, wiped sweat from his eyes, reached for a bottle of water, and drank half of it in one long gulp. Then, seeing a slight prickle of red on his forearms, he dug a tube of sunscreen from the glove compartment and massaged it into his arms, neck, and face. So far so good. Or was it? He didn’t quite trust how he and Beeman went from zero to sixty so fast.

In the meantime, he wanted to have a look at this Leets bunch. So he flipped open his cell and called Anne Payton, who answered on the third ring; apparently the last living American without voice mail.

“Anne, this is John Rane. Where can I find Darl Leets?”

“Wow,” Anne said, taking a deep breath. “That’s not
exactly
my neck of the woods. I believe you’ll have to go out old 45 into Tennessee. Right over the line on the left you’ll see the ruins of the old Shamrock Motel, where Buford Pusser shot Louise Hathcock, which is the same place, incidentally, where Louise shot her ex-husband, Jack. Or, by the alternative version, where Towhead White, Louise’s boyfriend, shot Jack. A little ways up the road from there on the right side you’ll see a sign for the XTC Lounge. The letters are a play on words, like ‘ecstasy.’ That’s Darl’s beer joint. Long as you’re out that way you might as well take a drive up New Hope Road. That’s where they ambushed Buford and killed his wife, Pauline.”

“Thanks,” Rane said, rolling his eyes at the information overload and jotting notes on his pad.

“And John…” Anne said.

“Yeah?”

“It can still get kind of wild and woolly up that way. I highly suggest you don’t go out there alone.”

“I hear you, thanks,” Rane said, ending the call. Then he drove to a station up on the highway and gassed the Jeep, went in, and asked directions. A cashier with frosted hair and tanning-booth skin produced a county map and marked it for him. “Hon,” she advised, “you picked the one place that is definitely not on the Civil War tour.” She nodded at the Jeep pulled up right next to the door. “I’d lose the Minnesota plates. And maybe get a voice implant.”

Rane thanked her, paid, got back in his Jeep, and headed north out of town. After one wrong turn, he found a sign that marked old 45, and took it across State Line Road into Tennessee.

Like Anne said, right over the state line he passed a pad of cracked asphalt on the left. He met a tan-and-white police car coming in the other lane, checked the rearview, and watched the cop car swing in a U-turn and fall in behind him. Moments later he spied a burned-out neon sign, from which most of the lights had been replaced by hand-lettered plywood:
XTC
.

The cop car continued on up the road as Rane turned right up a gravel access and found the one-story building tucked in brush next to a rusted chain-link fence in which caged, cannibalized auto chassis sprouted weeds. Three trucks were parked in the gravel lot. One of them, a muddy metallic gray Ram Charger, sported vanity plates that caught Rane’s eye:
OJDIDIT
. Another “gotcha” picture.

He got out, debating which set of reflexes to wear into this place. Take his camera bag and talk the story? Or play the wandering tourist soaking up the local color?

The camera won. He tucked it in the haversack, slung it over his shoulder, and walked into the bar that smelled of sawdust and smoke and beer. The interior was one long dark room with a glow of jukebox red and green in the back. Another light hung over the bright green felt of a pool table. A cue tapped a ball, the ball clicked on another ball. The second ball dropped in a pocket with a muted leather thump. The two men at the table chalked their cues and did not look up from their game. A third man sat behind the bar, reading a newspaper. He had a cup of coffee in front of him and a cigarette burning in an ashtray.

The fourth man in the room sat on a barstool, bent over a glass of beer, thickset and whiskered, in field-dirty flannel and denim. To the right of the bar, an office door was ajar, and from inside the room Rane heard the quiet static and squelch of a police-band radio. A trinity of framed Civil War paintings decorated the brown imitation-pine-paneled walls: Lee, Jackson, and Stuart.

He walked toward the bartender, keying on the red pack of Pall Mall cigarettes lying next to his ashtray. Maybe here was a chance to gall Beeman with another amateur-detective gambit?

As Rane sat down, the guy reading the newspaper looked up. He had a long torso sheathed in a tight blue T-shirt on which white letters read:
GET-R-DONE
. If this was Leets and that was his truck outside, he had a flair for punchy abbreviations. He had smallish vigorous hands and stubby muscular arms covered in bristly black hair. More of the coarse hair was combed straight back on his head. The porcine quality softened on the boyish features of his face. His dark brown eyes, however, were hard and alert.

“What can I get you?” he asked amiably, putting aside a copy of the
Daily Corinthian
.

Rane said offhand, “Whatever the locals prefer.” His voice and choice of language produced a barely perceptible waver in the smoky air as the three other men in the room shifted their eyes. One of the pool shooters casually exited the front door, returned a moment later, and whispered to the other guy at the pool table.

Minnesota plates.

The raggedy guy down the bar gave a phlegmy snort without raising his eyes from his glass. “Fetch’m a map, Darl, I think he missed his turn to Chicago.” A working odor of sweat, alcohol, and manure wafted off him.

The bartender ignored the comment. He said, “We got weak-ass Baptist Mississippi beer and we got Tennessee beer. Brands don’t count. The Tennessee beer’s got more alcohol by percent.”

“Bud. Tennessee,” Rane said, unslinging his bag and setting it on the countertop. The heavy Nikon and lens made a dense, expensive clunk next to the ashtray.

As the bartender bent to a cooler behind the bar, Rane shifted his bag away from the ashtray, plucking up a cigarette butt and dropping the hand to his lap. When the bartender brought up an opened bottle and a glass, Rane took the chilled brown bottle, held up his other hand, refusing the glass. Then he picked up the napkin the bartender set down next to the glass, palmed the cigarette butt into it, and slipped it in his jeans pocket. One smooth motion.

As he hoisted the beer to his lips, he noticed that the big guy had moved silently down the bar and now leaned, too close. “See you got a haversack there,” he said.

Rane sipped his beer, nodded.

“Haversack’s for food,” the guy said, knitting his brow.

“Camera,” Rane said, flipping open the flap and showing part of the Nikon.

“How much it worth?” the guy said, appraising the complex nomenclature with a grin from which two of the front teeth were missing.

“Back off, Sweet; give the man some air,” the bartender said, quietly in charge. The big guy leered, moving his face to within inches of Rane’s, then slowly retreated down the bar. “That ain’t no tourist camera, is it?” the bartender inquired with a smile.

Rane leaned forward, resting his forearms on the bar. “I’m a news photographer. I work for a paper in St. Paul, Minnesota.”

“Photographer, huh? You ever take any pictures for the
National Geographic
magazine?”

Rane smiled and shook his head. “Nope, never have.”

The bartender swiped at a smear on the bar counter with a flourish of his bar rag. “What would you say if I told you that every
National Geographic
magazine published in the world from the sixties on was printed right down the road in Corinth, Mississippi?”

“No kidding,” Rane said.

“True fact, up until about a year and a half ago when they sold World Color. So what brings you down here?”

“The Minnesota guy who got killed at Kirby Creek. Figured I’d look around, take a few pictures. Ask a few questions.”

“What do people say?” the bartender asked, curious.

Rane shrugged. “Depends. Officially they tell me it was a freak accident. One theory is a piece of ramrod broke off. Another is somebody had a loaded musket and didn’t know it. They never found a bullet, so I don’t know…” He became aware of someone standing next to him; he turned his head and saw a lean, fox-faced man in a flowing Hawaiian shirt, one of the pool shooters.

“Go on the Internet, to AuthenticCampaigner.com. That’s a Web site for hardcore reenactors. There’s a big-ass debate going on about safety after Kirby Creek.” The guy bobbed his head.

Now the big guy down the bar chimed in, “Shouldn’t let these hardcore assholes spring rammers. Mainstream ain’t allowed. My cousin was at Perryville couple years back and this Yankee dickweed actually blasted a rammer across the field…”

“Oh yeah? What was that like?” the bartender asked.

The guy called Sweet giggled. “Well, I guess it wobbled about thirty yards and stuck in the ground.”

“Not exactly a lethal weapon,” the bartender said.

“Bullshit.” Now the other pool shooter had joined the discussion. “I read where at Petersburg the two sides got bored in the siege works and were shooting rammers back and forth at each other.”

“Bullshit is right,” said the bartender with a droll scowl. “I think what you got is a shooter.”

Rane lowered his beer bottle and studied the man behind the bar, who, he was pretty sure now, was Darl Leets.

“Yeah,” the bartender said. “Some crazy fuck stirring the pot. Wouldn’t put it past some of those League of the South boys…”

“Or some mental militant coon ass,” Sweet said, stroking his chin.

The bartender nodded. “Hell yes, you got all this red-state-blue-state pressure building up; thousands of guys eye-to-eye only a few minié balls away from the whole thing starting up again, huh?” He grinned.

“You’re putting me on, right?” Rane asked.

The bartender stared him down briefly, then his face split into a slow grin. “Yeah.”

Sweet cackled, “Darl had this fantasy about starting a Civil War paintball game, get all these guys lined up…”

The bartender leaned forward, planting one elbow on the bar in a conversational posture, fingers trickling open. “Fact is, you get thousands of guys out there with black powder it’s like deer season. Miracle more people don’t get themselves killed.”

Rane’s lips turned down in a Gallic shrug. “Good comparison.”

“Don’t get me wrong. It was a stone bummer. I was there,” the bartender said sincerely. “Was with the Fifty-second Tennessee dressed in blue last Saturday and I was standing no more’n two hundred yards away when that dude got hit.”

Rane shifted on the stool and observed something close to remorse flicker in the bartender’s eyes.

“Did you see it happen?” Rane asked.

“Nah, just all the confusion. I was way down the line,” the bartender said as his hand came up and his fingers stroked his nose.

Rane had followed a professional poker player once and learned that this mannerism was a tell: a nervous tick that covered a lie. He considered raising the question of the missing Mitchell Lee and rejected it.

But the bartender, no slouch in the people-watching game himself, had noticed the sudden intensity in Rane’s eyes and asked, “Kirby Creek’s on the other side of State 45 below the line. How’d you wind up here?”

Rane shrugged. “I read in this tourist brochure about the old state-line days. Figured I’d take a look. Was this where they filmed those
Walking Tall
movies?”

Wrong thing to say.

“Fuck no,” Sweet erupted. “We run ’em into another county to tell their fuckin’ lies.” He advanced and menaced a finger at Rane. “I growed up here all my life ’cept when I went away for that machine-gun thing. My daddy knowed the evil sonofabitch, Pusser. Biggest shakedown crook in the region. Killed his own wife out on New Hope Road and made it look like some local boys did it…put that in your fuckin’ newspaper up North.” Sweet’s rigid finger jabbed Rane’s chest hard.

In a joint like this, showing weakness can take you down quick. Rane had trained six hard months for the book on cage fighting, working off a karate foundation he’d kept up since high school. The old reflexes from two years as a street cop bristled. His hands reacted ahead of his mind.

“Back off,” he said, flat and cold, as he slammed his left palm up under Sweet’s elbow. The instant the arm straightened, he clamped his right hand down on Sweet’s wrist and cranked. Using the trapped wrist as a lever, he twirled the bigger man and smashed him hard into the bar counter in an efficient motion.

Sweet careened off the bar and stumbled back, caught his balance, and grabbed a bottle by the neck and raised it club-fashion, beer slopping down his arm. “Why you little pissant…”

The bartender vaulted the bar counter, stood between them, hands outspread, and scrutinized Rane. “Where’s a photographer learn to move like that I wonder?”

“Whattayou thinking, Darl? Is he dumb or just plain crazy?” Sweet said, agitated, shifting from foot to foot.

“Not sure,” Darl said carefully.

“Maybe he’s an undercover they run in on us,” Sweet grinned broadly, moving around Darl and smashing the bottle on the bar. He thrust the jagged edge up to the light as shards of glass skittered across the floor. He bared his gapped teeth. “I think what we got here is a case of suicide by redneck.”

Rane snatched up his camera bag, slung it quickly over his shoulder onto his back so it wouldn’t interfere with his hands, and eyed the distance to the door. The two pool shooters were coming forward, cues lightly balanced in their hands.

“I ain’t done anything to rate a cop so he must be crazy,” Darl said thoughtfully.

As Rane danced back, the two pool shooters moved to block the exit, so he swept the balls off the table with both hands, gathered several in the crook of his left elbow, and cocked one in his right hand. The pool shooters surged forward, swinging, and Rane fired the pool ball into the stomach of the nearest one. As he went to his knees, the other guy caught Rane a glancing blow across the forehead with the cue.