Tishomingo Blues

5

DENNIS ASKED IF CHARLIE HAD CALLED and Vernice said, "He hardly ever does. I don't have to worry about meals for him, so he comes and goes when he wants." She said, "You're hungry, aren't you? There some Uncle Ben's rice bowls in the fridge. There's Teriyaki Chicken and some Lean Cuisines, different ones. The Chicken l'Orange's my favorite."

They were in the kitchen, Dennis at the table where she told him to sit down after working on his ladder all day. Vernice's Georgia accent was slowpaced, but the words full and rich the way she rolled them out. Dennis at the table and Vernice with her back to him making toddies-Early Times over crushed ice and a sprinkle of sugar on top-in her Isle of Capri uniform, its short skirt tight around her rear end, which Dennis was staring at no more than three feet in front of him.

He wanted to know if Charlie had called Vernice and told her what happened. He wanted to know who the cowboy was and why he was here. And he wanted to know if Vernice and Charlie were old friends or if they were getting it on.

"He calls if he wants me to do something for him. Throw his T-shirts in the washer. He'll wear ten'r twelve of those let's-see-your-arm T-shirts before he thinks to wash 'em. I don't ordinarily bother with him."

"I thought you two were close."

"Two months in a trailer, that was close encounters with a man never shuts up. Three months in this house I bought with my own money. I get tired of hearing him talk's the thing. Couldn't stand it in that little trailer, so I told him he had to go. It was at one of those Kirkbride Trailer Havens. Mr. Kirkbride 's making prefabs now, or whatever they are."

“Manufactured homes,” Dennis said.

"You see 'em on the highway," Vernice said, "they have that sign, `Extra Wide Load,' on the back end? He's putting up a mess of 'em right over here, calls it Southern Living Village. They're not too bad. Dishwasher and microwave in the kitchen."

"You know Kirkbride?"

"I've met him. He has an office at the Village, but he's mostly in Corinth. I gave Charlie the end of the month to move out. He was broke, had no job or place to live, and I didn't care."

"Couldn't stand him talking all the time."

"Telling baseball stories if he didn't have nothing else. What a star he was. All the big-name hitters he'd struck out. I said, `Honey, who gives a shit.' " Vernice turned from the counter with a drink in each hand. "Here, sweetheart, sip it, do you good. Let the bourbon work its way down your tired young body."

Dennis took a sip and made a sound, Mmmmm, to show he liked it. He said, "I bet I'm older'n you are."

Vernice said, "Well, of course you are," sitting down at the table. "I tell Charlie he has to leave? This is when we're living in the trailer. He says there's a job waiting he knows he's gonna get. Celebrity host at the Tishomingo. Oh? I said, `What qualifies you, being a relative of Big Chief Tishomingo, or a onetime famous ballplayer no one's ever heard of?' Charlie says he can go either way, talk the talk. I said, `Charlie, you ever get hired as a celebrity host, I'll lose twenty pounds and get a job as a keno runner.' You know what he said? `Better make it forty pounds.' " Vernice got up and went over to the counter to get her cigarettes. "I've always been full-figured, it runs in my family." She came back to the table patting her tummy, holding it in. "Since then I've lost almost thirty pounds. I started out on what they call the Jenny Crank diet? If you know what I mean."

"You're on speed?"

"I said I started out on it. One weekend I painted every room in the house without stopping, day and night till it was done. I knew you could get hooked, so I quit."

"Don't lose any more," Dennis said. "You look great."

She said, "I do?"

He watched her sit at the table sideways to face him and cross her legs, showing him the whitest thighs he had ever seen. Just about any time he looked at Vernice he'd try to picture her naked.

"So Charlie talked his way into the job?"

"He goes to see Mr. Darwin and starts bragging how he can still pitch. Mr. Darwin says, `Okay, if you can strike me out you got the job.' Charlie says he'll do it on three pitches. Mr. Darwin says he'll give him four. They get a kid to bring a ball and bat, meet at a field…" Vernice paused to light a cigarette.

"Charlie struck him out?"

"He threw one at him, trying to come inside? And Mr. Darwin had to hit the dirt to save his life." "He got the job anyway?"

"That's what I asked him. `He hired you even though you knocked him down?' You know what Charlie said? `Honey, it's part of the game.' He let Mr. Darwin hit one and got hired."

Dennis said, "He's a character."

Vernice said, "He's a pain in the butt. He comes in my bedroom asking can he use the treadmill you might've noticed in there? Before I know it he's sitting on the side of my bed with his beer gut. You're lucky, you have a nice trim body from swimming."

"Divers don't have to swim much."

"You still have a nice physique." She said, "Oh. I'll be there to see you-I forgot to tell you, I start working at Tishomingo next week. Charlie put in a good word with the human resources guy. Don't you hate that, calling personnel human resources?"

"I think of bodies laid out in a stockroom," Dennis said.

Vernice drew on her cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. "I start as a cocktail waitress. The outfit's real skimpy-you've seen it-it looks like buckskin only it's polyester with fringe. And you wear the headband with the feather sticking up? It's cute."

Dennis said, "If you're gonna be there every day… I was thinking, how'd you like to be in my show?"

"You don't mean dive."

"Call the dives. You have a mike and you tell the audience what dive I'm gonna do next."

"I'd have them, like on a sheet of paper?"

"Yeah, and things you can say to the crowd. Like, `You have to clap real hard if you want Dennis to hear you, way up there eighty feet in the air.' "

"What do I wear?"

"Whatever you want."

"When would I start?"

"Tomorrow night. They're gonna televise it."

"Really?"

"It's in the local paper and there're posters around town."

"I know, `From the Cliffs of Acapulco to Tunica…' But tomorrow night, you're not giving me much time."

"Charlie said he'd do it if I don't find a goodlooking girl. You want to think about it?"

Vernice sipped her drink and smoked.

"I have to let Charlie know," Dennis said. "Give him time to look at the script. Shouldn't he be back pretty soon?"

"He sees any new faces in the bar, he'll hang around to tell baseball stories."

"I got a ride," Dennis said. "We pulled up, I saw a car drive away. I thought Charlie might've come and gone."

"No, it was that shitbird Arlen Novis stopped by to see Charlie."

"A friend of Charlie 's?"

"Maybe at one time. Arlen was a sheriff's deputy till he went to prison for extortion. He'd make bail bondsmen give him a cut of their fee or he wouldn't okay the bond. They also had him for accepting payoffs from drug dealers. I don't know, either they couldn't make a case or it was part of a deal he made. Plead guilty to the extortion and testify against the sheriff, he'd only do a couple years. The sheriff's doing thirty years on those same charges."

"What's Alvin do now?"

"Arlen. Walks around in his cowboy hat like he's a country-music star, Dwight Yoakam or somebody. Ask him what he does, he's head of security at Southern Living Village they're putting up over here. Mr. Kirkbride hires a criminal to see none of his building supplies get stolen."

Dennis said, "Yeah…?" knowing there was more.

"But what he really is, Arlen's a gangster. He got into disorganized crime with the Dixie Mafia and pretty soon he's in charge. Some call it the Cornbread Cosa Nostra, making it sound cute, but they're all dirty dogs."

"You get this from Charlie?"

"The talker."

"What's Arlen's name?"

"Arlen Novis. There was another Tunica deputy at Parchman the same time as Arlen. Jim Rein, he was in there for assaulting prisoners. He'd beat 'em with a nightstick for no reason other'n they were colored. You'd never think Jim Rein to look at him would do that. He's a good-looking young man with quite a nice physique on him. They call him Big Fish or just Fish, but I don't know why."

"He's in the Dixie Mafia, too?"

"Works for Arlen. They took over from the ones had the drug business. Charlie says just like in the regular Mafia. Arlen had Jim Rein shoot some of 'em and the rest they run off."

"That's where you get your speed?"

" Crystal meth-I told you, it was just for a while. They sell it to the casino crowd, people that stay up all night trying to win their money back. There's a honky-tonk called Junebug's? Down by Dubbs, just south of here. Arlen took it over along with the drug business. You go to Junebug's you can get all the uppers or downers you want. Speed, crack cocaine, marijuana. They have illegal gambling there, prostitutes, girls in trailers out back of the place."

"Why hasn't it been shut down?"

"Well, you know they're paying off somebody. There's a raid, Arlen gets word of it and they close for alterations. Honey, people come to Tunica for fun, all kinds of it, and spend their money. Like I read a billion dollars a year right in this county. That's what it's all about, money. Drugs are sold, casinos are robbed, people are shot… Last year a waitress from Harrah's was stabbed to death in her trailer, up in Robinsonville. I've thought seriously of moving back to Atlanta, but you know what? I love it here, something always going on."

Vernice took time to smoke. Dennis sipped his drink seeing Arlen Novis by the tank, looking up at him on the perch. He wondered who the other guy was.

"Has a nice taste, doesn't it?"

Dennis said yeah, looked at the glass and took another sip.

"I don't put sugar in mine no more, it's still a treat."

"Vernice, why would Kirkbride hire a guy for security who's a known criminal?"

"Arlen told Mr. Kirkbride it takes one to know one. Says he can spot anybody hanging around the property who's up to no good."

"According to Charlie?"

"Who else. He has the ear for all the dirty stuff that's going on. He talks and people talk to him. He says Arlen told Mr. Kirkbride he had been cleansed of his sins by his conscience beating on him and time served."

"He talks like that?"

"Arlen's a bullshitter."

"And Kirkbride believes him?"

"Not 'cause of anything Arlen has to offer, like drugs. The reason they're close, they both love to dress up and take part in those Civil War battle reenactments. They been doing it for years. I mean you wouldn't believe how serious they are. Mr. Kirkbride 's always the general. Arlen's under him and brings along his boys, Jim Rein, Junebug, all these gangsters in Confederate uniforms."

It reminded Dennis of the posters he had seen in the hotel and around town, big ones in color that announced the TUNICA CIVIL WAR MUSTER, the dates and the name of a battle they'd reenact.

He mentioned it to Vernice and she said, "Yeah, they're thinking of making it an annual affair. This year they're doing the Battle of Brice's Cross Roads. Not on the site, but just east of here a few miles. The actual site's way over by Tishomingo County. Charlie says Mr. Kirkbride 's grown a beard so he can be Nathan Bedford Forrest. He's the general won the battle."

"Charlie's not into dressing up, is he?"

"You betcha he is. It's why Arlen was here to see him. He said he heard Charlie's gonna be a Yankee this time. Arlen comes by to threaten him out of it. Charlie says he's tired of that Confederate gray. It reminds him too much of the road uniforms he wore playing baseball. Charlie says they always look dirty."

He came home right as Dennis finished his shower and was in his bedroom getting dressed, putting on a fresh T-shirt and jeans from the clothes Vernice had laundered for him and laid folded on the chenille bedspread-Vernice doing for him what she didn't do for Charlie, which Dennis liked to think told him something. By the time he had dressed and walked across the hall to the kitchen he could see Charlie had told Vernice what happened. They both sat at the table with their drinks, not talking, Vernice looking up with worry on her face. She said, "Dennis…?" And Charlie said, "I'll tell him." So now he had to get ready to act surprised and then say…

What he said was, "Why would anyone want to shoot Floyd?… Jesus, the poor guy," and felt it, he did, seeing that pathetic figure in that mangy suitcoat too big for him.

"You called the cops?"

This was the part he wanted to hear, what happened after.

Charlie said he called nine-eleven. Sheriff's deputies came in about twenty minutes. Then a couple of detectives, also from the Sheriff's Department. Then the crime-scene people arrived and the medics. They took pictures, fooled around. The medics were ready to haul Floyd away, but were told to wait. One of the detectives was chewing out a deputy for calling the state police on his own. A new guy, Charlie said, one he hadn't seen around before. They waited over an hour for the guy from the CIB-that's the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Mississippi Department of Public Safetyto come from Batesville, the closest district office, fifty-two miles away.

"The investigator arrives," Charlie said. "He tells me he's John Rau and starts asking the same questions the local guys asked me. How it was I found the body, all that. What Floyd was doing here. He looks over the crime scene and asks if they lifted Floyd's prints. One of the sheriff's detectives says, `We know who he is. Jesus Christ, don't you? It's Floyd Showers. He ratted somebody out and got fuckin popped for it.' This John Rau has a suit and tie on, a nice way of handling himself. He's reserved, never raised his voice once. He said he wanted the prints sent to Jackson. Meaning the Criminal Information Center. John Rau told me later they have a method of handling prints nowlike you put 'em in a machine and the guy's sheet comes out."

Vernice said, "How do you remember all that?"

Charlie said, "You remember what you want to remember," turning his head to look at Dennis. "One of the local dicks says, `We can tell you anything you want to know about this piece of dog shit.' John Rau looks at him and says, `I want him printed.' What I'm getting at," Charlie said to Dennis, "John Rau wasn't taking the word of the Tunica sheriff's people for what happened. He didn't act superior to them. As I said, he never raised his voice or even said much. But you knew he was taking over the investigation and they better do what they were told. He's a low-key type of person and smart, the kind you better watch."

Vernice said, "What're you telling him that for?"

Charlie was wearing a sportshirt hanging open over his T-shirt. He took a business card from the pocket and handed it to Dennis. "This is the guy. He wanted to come out and talk to you this evening. I said why not wait till tomorrow? I told him you were beat from working twelve hours getting ready for your show, and you didn't know anything anyway. I told him I was the one hired Floyd Showers for you." He turned to Vernice. "Man's name was Showers and looked like he never took one in his life. Floyd was a miserable sight, years beyond saving."

Dennis looked up from the business card. "Where do I meet him?"

"At the hotel. He'll come by some time in the morning. I said come in the afternoon and see the show."

"What'd he say?"

"It'll most likely be around eleven." Charlie squinted then. "I ran into this colored guy staying at the hotel? Robert Taylor, doesn't have a bad arm. He's in seven-twenty. Wants you to call him tomorrow. You know this guy?"

"He saw me dive," Dennis said, his eyes holding on to Charlie. "He was looking out his window and saw me dive."

Vernice subscribed to the National Enquirer, preferring it over other supermarket tabloids because "they get deeper into the stories and're better written." She kept back issues she hadn't had time to read on the screened porch, saying, "They come every week, but it seems like near every day."

Dennis had a couple of microwaved Lean Cuisines for supper, both chicken but different, and came out on the porch to look through a few Enquirers. He sat by a lamp reading, not sure if the sound he heard was the hissing in his ears from diving-a constant sound when he thought about it-or insects out in the yard. Sometimes he thought it sounded like steam from a radiator. He had read a few stories, finished "Jennifer Lopez Warned: Leave My Puff Daddy Alone," and was starting on "Jane Fonda Finds God" when Charlie came out to the porch.

"This Robert Taylor saw you dive, huh? What else?"

"He saw Arlen Novis and the other guy… What's his name?"

Charlie hesitated but then told him, "Junior Owens. They call him Junebug."

Dennis said, "The guy that runs the honky-tonk, but it's really Arlen's?"

"Jesus Christ-she tell you everything's going on? That woman sure likes the sound of her own voice."

"Charlie, all Robert saw were two guys talking to me up on the perch. He wasn't watching when Floyd was shot."

"But he was in the crowd come out to the crime scene." Charlie sounding hoarse keeping his voice down. "He knows what happened now and he can put you there."

"He won't," Dennis said.

"How do you know?"

"Robert's got his own agenda."

"The hell does that mean?"

"Take my word," Dennis said, not wanting to get into Kirkbride and the granddaddies. "Robert isn't the kind's gonna volunteer information. We're talking, I must've seemed nervous. You know, after what I saw. He said, `Come on, I'm not looking into your business.' "

Charlie seemed to give it some thought before he said, "You saw Arlen. You sure he didn't see you, in Robert's car?"

"He couldn't have."

"But you recognized him?"

"I see the Lone Ranger coming out of the house-shit yeah, I recognized him. Vernice told you, didn't she? He wanted to talk to you about uniforms? Doesn't like you going Yankee on him."

"That's what he told her."

"You dress up and play war with those guys? Pretend to shoot each other? It's hard for me to imagine."

" 'Cause you don't know anything about it."

"I remember you saying-I told you I thought the one looked like a deputy or a state trooper? And you said, `You oughta see him with his sword'? I didn't know what you were talking about. Then Vernice tells me Arlen and his gang all get into it, playing war." He could tell Charlie didn't like the way he was talking, but didn't care. He said, "You gonna let him talk you out of being a Yankee?"

Charlie said, "You're sure a lot spunkier'n the last time I saw you."

"I'm trying to forget what happened. Since I wasn't there."

"That's good, 'cause Arlen just phoned." "About the uniform?"

"Will you forget the goddamn uniform?" Charlie's voice rising now, irritated. "He wanted me to know they killed Floyd because he might talk, not 'cause he did. Arlen says we ever put him at that scene we'd end up in a ditch."

"What did you say?"

"I told him to stay away from us. And had another drink."

"What're you gonna do?"

"Watch my goddamn back. What you think I'm gonna do?"

Dennis thought of Robert Taylor, Robert's voice in the dark saying, "That man gives you any shit, tell me." Dennis hesitated but kept looking at Charlie before he said, "I think of what happened… I'm up on the ladder… Could they have walked out from the hotel and not seen me?"

"They couldn't miss seeing you."

"So they don't care I'm a witness. It wasn't gonna stop 'em from shooting Floyd."

Charlie said, "You're just some squirt stuck up there on the ladder. They might've wished they brought a rifle."

Dennis said, "They were having fun talking about it-making a bet whether the one could hit me or not, Junebug, with the slicked-back hair. He said, `Shit, I'll hit him on the fly.' "

"I heard 'em," Charlie said, "but couldn't tell what they were saying."

"I think about it now," Dennis said, "it pisses me off. They didn't see me as any kind of problem. Who's the guy in the red trunks? Where? Up on the ladder. That's nobody-fuck him. You know what I mean? When Arlen threatened you, on the phone, didn't it piss you off?"

"Sure it did."

Dennis watched Charlie looking down at his big hands, the left one that years ago could throw a baseball ninety-nine miles an hour.

"You bet I was pissed."

Dennis said, "You're bigger than he is."

"Yes, I am," Charlie said, looking up. "I use to buy him cheap when he was a two-bit deputy and I was running liquor."

Dennis sat in the lawn chair, National Enquirers on his lap. "Did you know Tom and Nicole fell out of love way before Tom pulled the plug?"

"I suspected it," Charlie said, "but wasn't ever sure. You want a beer?"