Tishomingo Blues

7

THE BLACK MAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH was hanging naked less than ten feet above the river. Lining the rail of the bridge above him were fifty-six people. Dennis counted them-more than he got for his diving exhibition-women in sun hats, children, men in overalls and felt hats, one man in a dark suit of clothes with his arm raised, holding on to a support strut, his other hand in his pocket. The banks of the river were thick with old trees and scrub, the water motionless. The tone of the photograph had turned sepia and there were a few cracks. Handprinted across the bottom were the words HE MOLESTED A WHITE WOMAN-TIPPAH COUNTY, MISS-1915

It was lying on the seat when Dennis got in the car and he studied the eight-by-ten all the way to Old 61, where Robert made the turn south toward Tunica. Blues came out of the speakers turned low, "Background music for the picture," Robert said. "Robert Johnson doing `I Believe I'll Dust My Broom' first, and now Elmore James dusting his broom, a heavier beat working, electrified, Elmore riding on Robert Johnson's back, plugs in the Broom and has a hit. Then you gonna hear Jimmy Reed riding on Elmore's back to get where he got. It's how you do it. Later on we'll catch Sonny Boy Williamson II, and the poet of the blues, Willie Dixon."

"There little children in the picture," Dennis said.

"A bunch of 'em. Couple of dogs, too, wondering what the fuck everybody's doing out on the bridge."

Dennis held up the photo. "Where should I put it?”

"In my case, on the backseat."

Dennis reached around for it, laid the darkbrown attache case on his lap and snapped it open. The black checkered butt of a pistol showed beneath a file folder.

"You're not gonna shoot him, are you?"

Robert glanced over. "Nooo, we gonna talk is all."

"What is it?"

"Walther PPK, the kind James Bond packs. No, it's just-you know, in case. Like I find myself in the kind of situation you find yourself in."

They turned into Southern Living Village to Sonny Boy doing "Don't Start Me Talking" past a billboard that showed what the village would look like finished: one-story homes with peaked roofs on winding streets lined with trees, that didn't look much at all like the models they came to on bare plots of ground. Dennis said, "They're like regular houses."

"Sonny Boy's gonna tell everything he knows. Yeah, once they get the garages and shit added on. Bring 'em here in big pieces and nail 'em together. See up ahead, the transit mixer? Pouring a slab, what the houses sit on."

Signs in front of the models they passed identified the VICKSBURG, the BILOXI, the GREENVILLE. "The Yazoo," Robert said. "That's my dream, live in a house called the Yazoo."

The big manufactured log cabin with no name turned out to be the office of American Dream, Inc., Kirkbride's manufacturing company. They angle-parked in front.

Walter Kirkbride stood by his desk wearing a Confederate officer's coat, gold buttons, gold braid on the collar, over a pair of khakis. They took him by surprise coming in unannounced-no one in the front display room-but within a moment the man was in charge.

"I hope you boys have come to sign up." A Confederate battle flag filled the wall behind him. "You want a job, you got it. You want to buy a house, take your pick. Ah, but if you came in here to join Kirkbride's Brigade your timing couldn't be better, as I'm looking for a few good men. I'll commission you a lieutenant," he said to Dennis, and to Robert, after a pause, "I'll find something special for you, too."

"Something special, huh?"

That was all Robert said. Dennis gave Kirkbride their names. They shook hands and Dennis said, "If I didn't know he was deceased, I'd swear, Mr. Kirkbride, you were Nathan Bedford Forrest."

"I've been the general many times," Kirkbride said. "And it's kind of you to say that. But my wife has refused to kiss me if I dye my beard again. I have a lot of nerve posing as Ole Bedford anyway. There he is," Kirkbride said, turning to a wall of paintings, "in his prime."

Robert said, "The man that started the KKK?"

"It wasn't as racially oriented as it is now. Oh my, no." He turned to the wall again. "Left to right you have Forrest, Jackson, Jeb Stuart and Robert E. Lee, the most loved by his men of any general who ever lived. Outside of Ole Stonewall and maybe Napoleon."

"Got their love," Robert said, "and then got 'em killed."

A flush came over Kirkbride's face. "They fought and died," he said, "out of a sense of honor."

"Six thousand killed and wounded," Robert said, "three days before the war ended. That make sense, die knowing the war's good as over?"

"You're certain of your facts?"

" Battle of Sayler's Creek. Had to be April '65."

Dennis looked at Robert. Sayler's Creek? Did he pull that out of the air or… Now Robert was saying, "Mr. Kirkbride, I have something I'd like to show you, if I may."

The man was still flushed, but saw Robert raising his attache case and said, "Here, use the desk." He looked at Dennis as he moved aside. "You probably wonder what I'm doing in uniform, or half in and half out, but I swear to you I am not a farb. I'm as hardcore as John Rau, if you happen to know him from reenactments. John's a Yankee at heart, even though he got his law degree from Ole Miss. I think he's originally from somewhere in Kentucky. No-what I'm doing, the reenactment coming up, I'm getting used to wearing wool on a summer day. It's not bad in here with the AC on, but I go outside-man. Do it right, I should also be wearing my longjohns."

Robert had the photo out of his case. He said, "Mr. Kirkbride?" Handed him the eight-by-ten and waited until he was looking at it. "That's my great-grandfather hanging from the Hatchie Bridge, August 30th, 1915."

Walter Kirkbride said, "Oh my God."

"And that's your grampa up there," Robert said, "in the dark suit, his arm raised?"

Kirkbride stared at the photo. He took it around to his desk, brought a magnifying glass out of the middle drawer and studied the picture now through the glass.

He said, "How do you know it's my grandfather?"

"I have what you'd call circumstantial evidence," Robert said, "that my great-granddaddy sharecropped on your family's plantation in Tippah County and the dates. I have the newspaper account of his murder. I expect you know they didn't call it that. They said lynching was sometimes necessary when the authorities failed to maintain law and order. I have birth records, including your grampa's, his age at the time."

Kirkbride said, "That doesn't prove anything to me."

"And I have the eyewitness account of my own grandfather, Douglas Taylor," Robert said, "who was there."

He let that settle on Walter Kirkbride, giving Dennis a deadpan look, before he said, "You might've heard of my old grampa. He was a famous Delta bluesman, went by the name of Broom, Broom Taylor. Played in juke joints all around here and down to Greenville. Moved to Detroit and cut his big record, 'Tishomingo Blues.' Was at the same time John Lee Hooker moved there."

Dennis listened. He saw Robert pulling Broom Taylor out of the same hat where he had Sayler's Creek and all kinds of unexpected things stored. If he didn't make them up on the spot.

"Mr. Kirkbride," Robert was saying, "my grandfather was in the shack they called their home when your people came and burned it down-just a little boy then, the youngest of seven children. He was present when they beat his daddy with clubs and cut his dick off. He was at the bridge-not on it, you won't see Douglas among all those people. He was hiding in the bushes, 'cause his mama forbid him to go. But he was there when they threw his daddy over the rail on the end of that rope and it broke his neck. See how his head is cocked almost to his shoulder? He heard people calling that man in the dark suit Mr. Kirkbride. `There, Mr. Kirkbride, we punished the nigga molested your missus.' You understand the woman they talking about was your grandma."

Dennis watched Kirkbride staring at the photo.

"Are you suing me?"

"No sir."

"Then what do you want?"

"I wondered did you know about it."

The man seemed to hold back before shaking his head and saying no.

"The original was a postcard I had blown up to that size," Robert said. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought it. I don't mean to show you any disrespect by it."

"Well," Kirkbride said, "even though I'm not convinced the man on the bridge is my granddadhe's now deceased-I can understand how you see this and why you came. If it was an ancestor of mine who was…”

"Lynched," Robert said.

"Had met his end this way, I would want to know who might be responsible."

"I'm putting it behind me now," Robert said, "and I am sorry I bothered you. But you know something…?”

He paused and Dennis had no idea what he'd say next.

"When you wanted us to join up, and you said you might have something special for me? What did you have in mind, like carry water?"

"Oh my no," Kirkbride said, laying the photo on his desk where there were long, thin scars cut into the surface.

Dennis noticed them, like a rake had been drawn across the surface front to back and varnished over.

"Nothing menial," Kirkbride said, still protesting.

"I wondered," Robert said, " 'cause I recall General Forrest had black guys in his escort. You read about that?"

Now Kirkbride was nodding. "I believe I have, yeah."

"Called 'em colored fellas," Robert said. "Told a bunch of his slaves, `You boys come to the war with me. We win, I'll set you free. We lose, you're free anyway.' You recall that, Mr. Kirkbride?"

The man was nodding again, eyes looking off half-closed at the General Forrest print on the wall. "Yeah, I know he had a few slaves in his escort."

"You recall what General Forrest said after the war?"

"Lemme think," Kirkbride said.

"General Forrest said, `These boys stayed with me, and better Confederates did not live.' See, I could go gray," Robert said, "as an African Confederate, or I could go blue. I seem to recall there was two regiments of the U.S. Colored Infantry, the Fifty-fifth and the Fifty-ninth under a Colonel Bouton, at Brice's Cross Roads-the one you're doing the reenactment about. I believe they held a position above Tishomingo Creek, yeah, and later on covered the Union retreat up the Guntown Road. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes, indeed," Kirkbride said, "it was a rout."

"Nathan 'skeer'd' the Yankees all the way to Memphis, didn't he? That's why I don't want to dress Federal for this one, even though the U.S. Colored Infantry did okay. No, I'm going South this time, wear the gray, only I don't know what as."

Dennis stepped in saying, "Walter, dye your beard. Sir, you are General Forrest-I mean it. Hire Robert, he knows all about the Civil War and gets to be in Forrest's Escort, with the colored fellas."

"As a scout," Robert said.

"He's your scout," Dennis said to Walter. "But you really oughta dye your beard."

They walked through the front room with its displays and stacks of literature, a map of the Village and color photos of the models on the walls, a Confederate battle flag. Robert said, "I believe he'll do it."

Dennis wasn't sure. "He said he would, but the man sounds afraid of his wife."

Outside, going to the car, Robert said, "The man's a fool."

"He believed you," Dennis said.

"It's what I'm saying, the man's a fool." Getting in the car Robert said, "Even if it's true what I told him."

They were out of Southern Living Village, on the highway, before Dennis said, "What do you mean, if it was true?"

"You heard the story-did you believe it?"

"No."

"But that don't mean it isn't true, does it?" "Wait a minute. Was that your great-grandfather hanging from the bridge?"

Robert said, "Was that his grampa? Was that the Hatchie River? Was a man lynched in Tippah County in 1915? Was there a bluesman name Broom Taylor?"

"Was there?"

"Take your pick."

They passed Tunica over there off the highway, heading toward the hotels.

"You came here," Dennis said, "knowing about the reenactment."

"Yes, I did."

"Planning to take part in it. And studied up on the Civil War."

"I already had. I did look up Brice's Cross Roads."

"Learned enough to sound like an expert."

"The key to being a good salesman."

"What're you selling?"

"Myself, man, myself."

"You never mentioned the reenactment before."

"You never asked was I interested."

"What's a farb?"

"Man that isn't hardcore about it. Wears a T-shirt under his polyester uniform, his own shoes, won't cook or eat sowbelly, has candy bars in his knapsack. His haversack if he's Confederate."

"How do you know all that?"

"I read."

"The picture of the lynching-"

"Man, what is it you want me to tell you?"

"You only used it to set Kirkbride up."

"That don't mean it ain't real."

Dennis paused, but then went ahead. "Already knowing you wanted to get into the reenactment with him."

"You helped me, didn't you? Telling the man he had to dye his beard? You jumped right in."

Dennis paused again. He said, "I guess you're not through with him."

Robert said, "Listen, Dennis?" and turned his head to look at him. "I have to meet some people, so I won't be at your show tonight. I'd like to, but I can't. Okay?"

Some people.

"Sure, I understand."

"You want, I could meet you later on. You can tell me how it went."

Dennis said, "Come by Vernice's for a toddy. Did I tell you she likes to talk? You might learn something can help you."

There was a silence, both of them gazing straight ahead at the highway. Now Robert turned his head again to look at Dennis.

"Trying to figure out what I'm up to, huh?"

"It isn't any of my business."

"But you dying to know."