South of Shiloh (39 page)

56

“BULLETS,” BEEMAN SAID, HOLDING OUT HIS
hand.

“What’d she say?” Rane asked, hunched against a rising wind.

“Touched on a number of things. Bullets,” Beeman repeated.

Rane realized that Beeman wasn’t calling in the undercovers; that this was still between the two of them. So he rummaged in his cartridge box, pulled out the pack of baby wipes, extracted the sealed baggie, and gave it to Beeman, who opened the wrapping, studied the packet, and then slipped it in his cartridge box. “Now tell me about this rifle. Why’s it all rusty?” Beeman asked as he slipped the Sharps off his shoulder and held it in both hands.

“I sprayed it with water and left it in my flower bed before I left St. Paul.”

“Lord. Will it fire?”

“I plugged the barrel and I greased the breech and hammer and protected the cone.”

“And the tape on the sights?”

“Go ahead, peel it off.” After Beeman removed the tape, Rane said, “Trick of the trade. See the white marks along the right side of the flip-up sight? You place the top of the open aperture on a normal man’s head. If the first line falls on line with his eyes, he’s a hundred yards. If the second line is level with the bottom of his chin it’s two hundred. Third line across the bottom of his neck even with his shoulders it’s three hundred.”

Beeman flipped up the sights and scanned across the field, nodded, lowered the rifle.

“Now slide the catch back to free the lever,” Rane said.

When Beeman freed the catch and cranked the lever, the block dropped and the breech opened smoothly. He inserted a finger and withdrew it, rubbing a light coat of graphite lubricant between thumb and forefinger. Then he dug around and eased one of the linen-wrapped bullets from his bag, turned it in his fingers, and felt the sharp, conical lead tip. He inserted the bullet and closed the lever.

Rane said, “It takes a regular percussion cap.” After a moment, he added: “My uncle built that gun. I put about thirty rounds through it before I left home. The ramp sights are true. Hundred yards up to eight hundred.”

“Slick,” Beeman said. “I see a rusty rifle and I think, this is a dumb-ass city boy from up North who doesn’t know squat about guns, huh?”

Rane shrugged.

“What about the camera, you shining me down the road there too?” Beeman asked.

“Camera’s legit,” Rane said, shifting from foot to foot.

Beeman grunted. “Well, you had me fooled on the rifle.” Then he said softly, “Play to your opponent’s prejudices. Something Sheba taught me. A smart black dude’ll play that one to perfection against a redneck. Have the range on him every time.”

“Something like that,” Rane said as he looked around. “Okay, Beeman, now what?”

Beeman grinned and they locked eyes. “Now I’m
armed
is what. And you’re gonna help me get the sonofabitch if he shows his face. What you came for, am I right?”

“Something like that,” Rane said.

A raw wind came off the Tennessee River and whipped through the trees with enough force to scatter dead leaves. They removed their packs and leathers, unrolled their sky-blue greatcoats, and put them on. As they restrung their gear, Beeman handed Rane his Enfield and his bayonet, then shouldered the Sharps. With the caped collars of their coats turned up against the wind, they started walking back toward the parking lot.

Like a tiny school of sharks following prey, the undercovers and the van conformed to their movements.

“Would you have gone after him, given the opportunity?” Beeman asked.

“You asking as a cop or man to man?” Rane asked back.

Beeman sighed. “C’mon, John, we’re both bending the rules right about now, don’t you think?”

Rane stopped, turned, and looked directly at Beeman. “Yeah. I would have gone after him. If I got a fix on him and the conditions were right.”

“You mean if no one was watching?”

“I had an idea. Not a plan. If I really had a plan would I be talking to you about it?”

“You come all this way?” Beeman asked.

“He shot a good man. He ruined a little girl’s life.”

“C’mon, John. Gotta be more,” Beeman said. “Wearing Paul’s shit. This habit you got about stepping into a role before you do a story?”

Rane withdrew the fate card from his pocket and handed it to Beeman, who studied it a moment, then handed it back.

“Man, that’s creepy, ’specially here. Ain’t gonna bring him back,” Beeman said with slow appraisal.

“Might bring me back,” Rane said softly.

He put the card into his pocket and turned away. The fields were emptying, as spectators and reenactors hurried toward the shelter of their tents and cars. Only the monuments and the bleak rows of black cannons stood fast. “Everybody who writes about this place describes it as special,” he said finally.

Beeman rubbed his knuckles across the stubble on his cheek, then blew on his hands to warm them. “I been to Gettysburg several times and it’s sacred ground but it’s kinda this marble sacred ground. Shiloh’s out here all alone in the woods. Pretty much the way it was. Only two of the Confederates buried here were ever identified. And just a third of the Union dead. You spend the night here camped on the ground and listen long enough you get beyond sacred pretty quick into haunted. It was fierce, what happened here, John, the first modern battle…”

“You ever been shot at, Beeman?” Rane asked abruptly.

Beeman studied Rane’s face in the pale storm light. “The truth? Couple piddly contacts going into Kuwait. Small arms, some mortars. And years back, Wally Hunter took a pop at me with a .32 as he was going out the back door of his house over south. Missed me by four feet and drilled a hole in a picture of Bobby Kennedy his mom had over the kitchen table. I had a twelve-gauge pump so I put a load of birdshot in his large black ass to slow him down.”

“Didn’t try to kill him?”

“Why would I do that? I known him since we were little kids clipping tamales off Rat Ferguson’s cart down by the depot. Shit, we played ball against each other when he was at Easom High. Plus his wife and four children were hiding in the parlor. ’Course the reason I was there is he was beating on his woman. Friday-night drunk, was all.”

“What about the Leets kid, the one you put in prison?”

“Donnie? He emptied a nine at me during the car chase. After I run him off the road he reloaded and let a few more fly as he was running away. I was so amped when I jumped out of the car I damn near mashed handprints in the grip of my SIG. Won’t lie. I tried to put him down. Wound up hitting him in the knee.”

Rane looked past Beeman into the trees, where the mist churned like troubled breath. “What happened here must have been like fighting in your backyard,” he said.

“More like fighting in your living room. There were brothers shooting at each other,” Beeman said.

Rane reached for his canteen, pulled the cork, and took a drink. “You remember the desert?” he asked.

Beeman nodded, clearly intrigued that Rane was finally starting to talk. “I remember sand in everything and damn near forgetting what green looked like.”

They were walking past a row of cannons lined up facing the Sunken Road. Rane slowed his pace and peered across Duncan Field into the oak thickets beyond a split-rail fence.

“I don’t believe in ghosts, Beeman. Or demons,” he said slowly. “But I do believe in consequences.”

Beeman cocked his head, listening.

“It was just that one time,” Rane said. “I put down seven Republican Guards in less than five minutes. They never got a round inside twenty yards of me.” Then he stopped, extended his hand, and touched the slick, wet muzzle of a cannon. Turning to Beeman, he said, “I’ve never been shot at. Not really to my thinking. Not the way I shot at people.”

They walked back to the Jeep in silence.

57

BEEMAN TALKED WITH THE TENNESSEE COPS IN
the back of the Chevy van while Rane warmed himself in the Jeep. Warmed his outside. After Jenny’s call, it felt like he had the whole cold, wet battlefield in his chest. Beeman left the van and climbed in with Rane, who was holding his cell phone.

“You going to call the Edin woman?” Beeman asked, dusting raindrops from his hair.

Rane shook his head, killed the power on the phone, leaned over, and put it in the glove compartment. Beeman plugged his charger into the cigarette lighter and hooked up his cell.

“So what does our security detail say?” Rane asked.

“They still think it’s a snipe hunt,” Beeman said as he shifted in the seat and checked the connection between the portable radio clipped to his belt and the mike fastened under the collar of his overcoat. “But they’re pros. They’ll see it through.”

The drizzle and the wind moderated to a random drip by the time they’d put their gear back on and tramped across the Rebel encampment toward Hurlbut Field. A regiment of Tennessee infantry was forming up in front of their tents. Off to the right, twenty cavalrymen were mounting their horses along a tree line.

On the field ahead, behind a rope barrier fastened to engineer stakes, artillery crews stood to four cannons and their limbers. On a wooden stage set up next to a triangular pile of black cannonballs, a group of singers with banjos roused the gathering crowd.

Beeman led Rane to the left until they were about two hundred yards from the crowd of spectators and the marshaling reenactors. A modest group detached from the crowd and started to trail Beeman. A uniformed cop herded them back.

“Vampires,” Beeman muttered. Then he hunched over and keyed the shoulder mike clipped inside his collar. “We’re going to hold here, try’n keep clear of the crowd.” On the other end, they depressed the squelch key twice, as an affirmative response. Beeman glanced warily at the surrounding tree lines. The wind had died down and the fog was making a comeback.

“Like father like son, huh,” Rane quipped as he watched Beeman take out the tin of Copenhagen and insert a pinch in his lower lip.

“Can’t hurt,” Beeman said as he eased the hammer of the Sharps to half-cock and worked a percussion cap out of the small pouch on his belt. Casually, he placed the cap on the cone under the hammer and bent the flanges down. Then he reached in his trouser pocket and took out something that he began to knead between his thumb and fingers like worry beads.

“What’s that?” Rane asked.

Beeman opened his hand, revealing a shiny brown nut. “Buckeye. My daddy gave it to me. Suppose to be good luck.”

“Shit,” Rane hunched his shoulders, “now you’re making me nervous.”

“The time to take a shot would be when those cannons go off. Which is gonna happen pretty damn soon,” Beeman said, squinting at the far tree lines.

The spectators applauded when the cavalry trotted in twos. Then the Tennessee regiment marched to the far end of the field and formed in two long ranks. Rane tracked the SWAT guys as they parked their van down the road, and two of them got out wearing period, ankle-length slickers and Reb slouch hats and walked casually toward the trees. The undercovers had melted into the crowd of spectators.

Rane studied the two men who had left the van. “Guy on the right is carrying something under his coat; a slinged rifle, probably a 308, hanging down under his right armpit. The other one’s also got something,” Rane speculated. A moment later the SWAT duo disappeared into the trees.

“Got him a spotting scope and an M16,” Beeman said.

The shoulder mike emitted a muted squawk: “Snipe, this is Bag Man. How do you hear?”

Beeman grimaced. “Sniper with a sense of humor.” Then he keyed the mike. “Hear you five by.”

“We’re thinking you guys should stroll up and down, kind of stay in motion. Make it a little harder for somebody trying to put your lights out.”

“Roger,” Beeman said, showing the whites of his eyes.

As they started to slowly walk perpendicular to the field, they both ducked when all four cannons fired at once and a long, low cloud of smoke spread out.

“Oh boy,” Beeman said with a thin smile. “Does kinda pucker you up.” He was squeezing the buckeye in his right hand.

“Do me a favor and put that away,” Rane said, half-serious, as he instinctively reached for the Nikon in his haversack. His hand, wanting the Sharps on Beeman’s shoulder, was indifferent to the camera. Beeman pocketed the good-luck charm, changed direction, and angled back toward the field. Now the cavalry was riding forward, eighty hooves thudding on the wet ground. The horsemen wheeled into line, advanced, reigned in, and dismounted. Every fourth man remained in the saddle and led the horses to the rear. The dismounted troopers spread out, kneeled, and began firing their carbines into the woods.

“Jesus. That should make the SWAT boys feel real cozy,” Beeman said, ejecting a stream of brown spit.

On the platform, an emcee with a microphone explained the demonstration to the crowd: “Now the cavalry has engaged a little more than they can handle in those woods so they’re sending back for the infantry to come up.” A mounted courier rode back and conferred with an infantry officer, who raised his sword and shouted orders.

Rane half-heard. He was intent on the far tree lines, across from the demonstration.

The emcee said, “Now the infantry is deploying in company front.” Rane glanced back to the field, where the long double line of gray was segmenting and reforming forward in a series of double ranks, one behind the other. As a drum began to beat a hollow cadence, the ranks set off in step. Rane found himself briefly fascinated by the earnest pageant of infantry advancing with measured tread; the dull flash of hundreds of rifles and the red flag furled in fits of wind in the center of the second company. At the other end of the field the meager screen of dismounted cavalry fell back and moved to the side.

Beeman glanced over his shoulder and said, “Not bad for a bunch of fat boys, huh?” Then he jerked Rane’s sleeve. “Better keep moving.”

They walked slowly, watching as the lead company of advancing soldiers began to pass between the spectators and the artillery. The cannons fired in sequence, flooding the field white.

Rane squinted. For a fraction of a second, the soldiers became timeless shadows suspended in the vale of smoke. Absently, he thought, That’s the money shot. Then the smoke tattered away and the columns fanned out into a double line across the field.

But now Rane had turned away and was watching the broad, grassy area leading to the parking lot and the woods beyond. He instinctively flinched when two hundred reenactors fired a loud volley behind him.

As the sound echoed away, he tasted the acrid black powder trinity of carbon, saltpeter, and sulfur lightly spiced with nitrates. That’s when he caught the movement, felt it; a palpable sensation tiptoeing inside his chest. A man in gray lurched out of the trees next to the parking lot. He was carrying a rifle and he broke into a fast jog.

“Beeman! Ten o’clock, three hundred yards,” Rane said in a loud, clear voice.

They both went turtle when the reenactors behind them triggered another volley.

Rane jerked at Beeman’s arm with one hand. “See him?” Out of reflex, he dropped his other hand to the Nikon.

A second later, Beeman’s radio erupted in urgent static. “Beeman, get down, man, we got somebody moving your way…” Rane recognized the trained, hyper-controlled, Chuck Yeager voice of a police sniper clicking off the safety.

Beeman, half-crouched, waved his hand to clear the film of smoke, and bared tobacco-stained teeth as he swung the Sharps off his shoulder by the sling. “Yeah,” he said. “I see him.”

The figure in the gray uniform and swinging gear jogged in a brisk, stiff-legged gait, straight toward Rane and Beeman. His rifle dangled low in both hands, his arms loose, at the ready. He was coming straight on, with purpose.

Rane quickly sorted details; two guys had jumped from the van. All four of the undercovers were running from the back of the crowd. In the distance, the flashers atop a Hardin County squad car started to rotate as it lurched forward.

“Get down, Beeman,” the SWAT sniper said urgently in the radio.

Rane raised his hand. “Stand down. Tell them to wait.”

“What?”

“It’s the guy from the bar. Darl,” Rane said.

“Darl?” Beeman craned his neck. “You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Rane said.

“Back it off. This ain’t the guy,” Beeman said into the radio.

The man had slowed now, seeing the cops running toward him, plus two accelerating police cars swerving off the road, coming across the grass. Carefully, he leaned over and laid the rifle down. Hands half-raised, he continued walking toward Beeman and Rane until the approaching cops overtook him.

Beeman turned to Rane. “It
is
Darl. But how could you tell?”

“Saw his face.”

“Way out there you saw his face?” Beeman wondered as they walked quickly to where the four cops surrounded a nervous Darl Leets. As they came closer, they heard snatches of Darl’s breathless conversation. He was gesturing, trying to explain he’d arrived late. “I should be on the field there,” he said, pointing, “with that Tennessee regiment.”

Two of the cops, still kinked up with adrenaline, insisted on frisking Darl, checking his haversack and cartridge box. When they finished their search, they pushed him roughly aside.

“Jeez, Bee, what the hell,” Darl gasped, wide-eyed, his baby face pale with sweat, “call off the dogs, man…”

Beeman’s discussion with the pissed off security detail was drowned out by another musket volley, then a cheer from the crowd as the infantry fixed bayonets and double-timed forward, yipping and howling.

The disgusted cops trudged back to the parking lot to regroup. Beeman and Rane stood over Darl as he stuffed strewn items back in his pouches.

“That took some balls,” Beeman said.

Darl shook his head, his eyes flitting. He gritted his teeth and said, “No, man. Not listening to Marcy, that would take balls.” Then he angled his eyes away from Beeman’s dour gaze, stood up with his repacked gear, and started back to where his rifle lay on the grass.

“Okay, let’s have it,” Beeman said.

As they walked, Darl said, “Marcy says you got to lose all the cops or it ain’t gonna happen.”

Rane laughed and rolled his eyes. “Shit, they just made your security.”

“Is he here?” Beeman asked.

Darl ignored the question and said, “Where can I find you in the morning?”

“At the Union camp by the Visitors Center.”

Darl bit his lip, looked back across the grassy area to the parking lot where one of the cops was gesturing in frustration and kicking the tires of the van. “Look for me around nine,” he said. “But you gotta lose those guys or it won’t happen,” he repeated. Then he stared at the wet grass, bit his lip, and raised his tight brown eyes. “Won’t bullshit you. Mitchell Lee is snakeshit. This is strictly touch-and-go…”

“And?” Beeman asked.

“And I’m saying I got nothing personal against you, Bee. Donnie was a fuckin’ psycho deserved what he got. What I’m saying is you best watch yourself.” Then Darl turned with a nervous shrug of his shoulders and left Beeman and Rane standing alone, watching him march off toward the rows of white tents where the Tennessee regiment was filing back into camp to the beat of a drum.