Tishomingo Blues (22 page)

"I'm serious, and you make fun of me."

He could tell her she was easy to make fun of, any time she became serious like that, having the bad feeling. But he didn't. No, he showed her he was as sensitive as he had to be, saying, "What's wrong, baby? What you worried about?"

"I keep thinking," Anne said, "something's going to happen to Jerry."

What she meant was hoping. Robert said, "Like he could get popped?"

"It's possible, isn't it?"

"You play the grieving widow till the lawyer cuts you a check?"

"You're not funny."

"Wear a black thong bikini around the pool?"

She walked away from him.

Robert said after her, "My sensitivity stretches so far and it snaps back on me."

Dennis asked the TV lady if she'd have a drink with him, the least he could do, telling Diane she was the best dive-caller he'd ever had, and the bestlooking-as she followed him around behind the tank. He said he had to change first and she said, "Go ahead, I won't look." He watched her bend her head back to gaze straight up the ladder, then at the ground beneath the scaffolding where Floyd was shot, and then at him as he stood naked stepping into his underwear.

"I thought you weren't gonna look."

She said, "I lied."

They brought chairs from the patio bar out to the edge of the lawn, away from loud voices, a party going on, and sat next to each other with summer drinks, in the dark, Dennis' gaze on his ladder that rose against the sky and stopped, not going anywhere.

Her voice, close to him, quiet, said, "How long have you been hauling it around?" "Four years."

"Are you tired of it?"

"I'm getting there."

"Then what?"

"I don't know."

"Where're you staying?"

He turned his head to see the soft expression in her eyes, waiting.

"I have a landlady who stays up late."

"You want to go to Memphis?"

"Is that where you live?"

She nodded. "After I do the news?"

He said, "There's nothing I'd rather do than go to Memphis," and let it hang.

She said, "But there's a lot you have to think about."

"If I told you, you wouldn't believe it."

She said, "You were on the ladder that night, weren't you?"

He nodded, their eyes still holding.

"Arlen and the Bug?"

He nodded again.

She looked away, toward the ladder, before turning to him again. "I don't understand. Why you're telling me now."

"I don't know either. You asked.... If you hadn't I probably wouldn't have said anything."

"You needed to tell somebody."

"Who doesn't know? It's not like getting something off my chest and now I feel better. But you're the one to tell-maybe that's it-the TV lady, if I'm gonna tell anybody. Outside of a lawyer. But don't put it on the air yet, I won't admit it. You have to wait."

"Until what happens?"

"Till you see how it ends."

"What do you think will happen?"

"I haven't any idea."

It was only a few minutes later Robert showed up.

He said, "You all like to be alone?"

In that moment Dennis had to make up his mind. If he said yes, they'd like to be alone, he risked Diane bugging him until he told her everything that was going on. But if he said no, they wouldn't, he might never get to Memphis. All that in his mind when Diane said she had to go get ready for the eleven o'clock news. So Dennis said he was tired, he'd find Charlie and go on home. Robert said he'd drive him, but why didn't they relax and have a drink first. "There's something I want to tell you."

Now Dennis sat staring at the ladder with another vodka collins and Robert instead of Diane.

"You haven't made up your mind yet, have you?"

"To sell my soul? No, I haven't."

"You can't beat the deal."

"I don't have any offers to compare it to."

"There's poverty. What you gonna do when you can't dive no more? Listen, I'll answer any your questions and I'll be honest with you. What we in is a dirty business, but it's where the money's at. I want you in so I'm upping the pay schedule. Twofifty the first year. Five the second. We jump now like Regis does on his show to one million the third year. Also bonuses, also what you make off your Dive-O-Rama. Wuz wrong with that?" Robert grinned and sipped his drink. "How MilesDavis says it. 'Wuz wrong with that?' In his voice."

"What about Jerry?"

"Yeah, what?"

"What's he do? You said he use to be into arson."

"And high explosives, he learned about in the Nam. Jerry shipped home a footlocker full of C4 when he got out and was in business."

"With the Mafia?"

"Detroit, they call it the Outfit. Jerry did some work for them till they got involved with his brother. Two of the Outfit dudes wanted a cut of the land development business, the manufactured homes? The next time they went to see Jerry's brother, they come out of the office, get in their car and it blows up. From then on Jerry had an understanding with the wiseguys. Leave him and his brother alone and he won't blow up any more their cars."

"How'd he get away with it?"

"Jerry's a hard-on, doesn't give an inch. Also he was related, like a second cousin, to the guy running the Outfit at the time. One of those blood things where they have to get along. The way I met him," Robert said, "I'm running Young Dogs and there's a rival gang, the Cash Flow Posse, giving us trouble. I hire Jerry-this was back ten years-to throw some pipe bombs in their crack houses. Worked better than a drive-by, it put 'em out of business. So then I bring Jerry in as the muscle. You know what I'm saying? The enforcer, keep the Young Dogs in line, thinking straight. Pretty soon we partners. Then he steps up another level saying he's the boss, gonna run the show. He's the fivehundred-pound gorilla and what am I gonna fuckin do about it? But I owed him, 'cause he set up how to maintain the money, ways he learned from his brother to keep it away from the tax people. He did take a fall, went to Milan for a couple of years and that's where he got his master's degree. Learned from the big boys, the Wall Street types, how to hide money without leaving tracks."

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."

Chapter
18

SATURDAY MORNING DENNIS GOT UP at 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 JohnRau 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, preferably 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?"