Tishomingo Blues (16 page)

Dennis said, "Why you live in Detroit?"

"Everybody's got to live someplace."

"Yeah, but Detroit-"

"It's a no-shit town, man, it jumps. Look at Motown, Kid Rock, that wigger Eminem. All kind of sounds come out of Detroit."

"You grew up there, went to school?"

"In my youth," Robert said, sitting low behind the wheel of the jag, "you know what I did? Worked for Young Boys, Incorporated, street-corner entrepreneurs, sell a dime bag of heroin for thirteen dollars and keep three. Started when I was twelve years old working for Mr. Jones. That was his name. He goes, `Want to make three hundred a day? Hustle you can make three thousand a week?' What do you think I said to the man? There were a couple hundred of us doing it. They give you these little envelopes marked with brand names like Murder One, Rolls-Royce, you take out to your corner, or to the projects for home delivery. Yeah, Young Boys showed how it was done, then other gangs came along, like Pony Down was one."

Out in the country cruising past cornfields, cows in a pasture, signs on trees that said JESUS SAVES ... Dennis said, "You were twelve years old?"

"Thirteen, I bought a Cadillac."

"You weren't old enough to drive."

"I drove. Got pulled over every block, so I had the car put in my mama's name. She sold it. I was fourteen I bought a Corvette, kept it to use at night till it got jacked on me. You sell over two grand a week, Christmastime they take you to Las Vegas and get you laid by your first white lady."

"Did you use drugs?"

"Weed is all. Look at the people you selling to; you know you don't want to get hooked on the heavy shit. No, I even put money away, bought my mama things. I was fifteen I left Young Boys to try Pony Down and got a knife put to my throat. So I retired from the business."

"You went to school while you were doing this?"

"A Catholic school, but they didn't have many nuns left. It was too bad, I liked the nuns. They give it to you straight, no bullshit."

"They know what you were doing?"

"No, man. I'd get brought up in Juvenile Court, my mama'd call the school, say I had a sore throat."

"She didn't mind you selling drugs?"

"She'd look the other way taking the money. I never got sent down. I went to OaklandUniversity three years and did some dealing to pay for my tuition and books and shit, but only weed. I wouldn't sell heroin to students, fuck up their young minds. Lot of 'em were fucked up to begin with, worrying about what they gonna do when they got out."

"You weren't worried?"

"I took eighteen semester hours of history-ask me a question about it, anything, like the names of famous assassins in history. Who shot Lincoln, Grover Cleveland. I took history 'cause I loved it, man, not to get a job from it. I knew about the Civil War even before I saw it on TV, the one KenBurns did. I stole the entire set of videos from Blockbuster."

Robert looked over at Dennis staring out the window.

"You go to school to get a job?"

"I knew the first time I saw a high diver go off that's what I wanted to do."

"There you are. What'd you take?"

"I quit after two years and joined the Great American High Dive Team."

"How long can you keep doing it?"

"I'm running out of time."

"Then what?"

"I don't know."

"You ain't ever been to jail, have you?"

"I was held one time while they searched my truck."

"Thought you were trafficking?"

"I wasn't."

"The kind of nerve you have," Robert said, "when you quit diving you ought to get into something, you know, edgy."

"When I was on the dive team, I was the edge guy "There you are."

"But with divers," Dennis said, "they say the better the performer, the less stable the personality."

They came to Corinth, to a wide, open area of railroad tracks on the south edge of the town's business district, and Robert stopped the car.

"This is Civil War City, man, Corinth, the rail center all the fighting around here was about. You looking right at it. The Memphis and Charleston line went east and west, the Mobile and Ohio the other way. You listening to me?"

Dennis said, "You came here to meet Kirkbride?"

"To see what he had going. His plant's south of here, across 72. But he was already in Tunica putting up his Village. It wasn't a wasted trip 'cause I also came to visit Jarnagin's and look at uniforms. Can I go on?"

"You're driving."

"I mean with your lesson, telling you about what happened here. Musta been thirty thousand, at least, killed, wounded, died of cholera or the shits fighting over these railroad tracks. I'm counting Shiloh, north of here across the Tennessee line, luka, a place where they fought east of here, and the Battle of Corinth itself. Was October 1862, the Confederates trying to take it back from the Federals." Robert pointed. "Over that way not too far I'll show you where the meanest fighting was, the Confederates trying to take Battery Robinett. It's now a historical landmark, some of the earthworks still there."

Dennis said, "Yeah, Battery Robinett. I believe one of the heroes of the assault was a Colonel Rogers of the Second Texas. Shot seven times charging up the redan."

Robert turned his head and stared at Dennis before he said, "You sneaky, aren't you? Every now and then flash your chops at me." Robert smiled. "Shows your potential. Tells me I'm right to bring you along. But the way I heard it, was a drummer boy picked up a pistol and shot Colonel Rogers. It's a better story, the big hero getting popped by a kid. You ever imagine what it would be like?"

"What, getting shot?"

"No, being in a battle. Walking across a field toward a line of men shooting at you. Or charge this Battery Robinett, big Parrott guns, twentypounders, firing canister at you."

"What's canister?"

"I think it's like scrap metal packed together, but I'm not all the way sure. I know I wouldn't want any parts of it. Man, you have to be brave keep walking into that shit. But they did, both sides." Robert shook his head. "How, I don't know. I went up to Shiloh? This Park Service person, Ranger Diana, cute girl, took me around in her uniform and Smokey the Bear hat. Showed me the Sunken Road, the famous Hornet's Nest, like a woods. She said they fought in there for hours, the black-powder smoke so thick they shooting their own people by mistake. The trees caught fire and there's wounded in there can't get out. She said you could hear 'em screaming and smell burning flesh. Yeah, Ranger Diana, she was good, put you right there at the scene."

For maybe a minute the air-conditioning was the only sound in the car.

Robert said, "Right over there across the tracks was the original Tishomingo Hotel. They used it as a hospital. You can take a walking tour of historical sites, see where General Beauregard stayed, visit a war museum, or we can skip it, get your uniform and something to eat. Beer and wine, but no booze in this county. What else you want to know?"

There was no showroom or retail shop here. Dennis stood before the mirror in Jarnagin's stockroom wearing a Federal infantry shell jacket, the one with sky-blue piping on the stand-up collar and the cuffs, nine buttons down the front, the jacket Robert had ordered for him. The sky-blue trousers were a disappointment-Dennis staring at the almost shapeless cut-but good enough for a couple of days. He tried on a kepi. Yeah ... ? Then a forage cap, like the kepi but with a higher crown that DavidJarnagin told him was worn with the crown falling forward on the leather bill. Dennis put on the kepi again. DavidJarnagin said that regulars in the Union Army normally wore the forage cap. Dennis said, "If I have a choice . . . " and went with the kepi, seeing himself in the mirror 140 years ago. He liked the look and tried the kepi a bit closer on his eyes. Yeah. The shoes were something else, plain black ankle-high brogans with blunt toes, four holes for the shoelaces; they were called bootees. DavidJarnagin told Dennis they'd soften with shoe oil; but don't put them close to a fire, the soles would dry up and crack. Dennis picked out a belt, a bugle infantry insignia for the cap, sky-blue corporal chevrons to add some color. He looked at the Civil War underwear, flannel longjohns, told himself he could always cut the legs off, looked at Robert, Robert shrugged, and Dennis said he'd skip the official underwear. He didn't think DavidJarnagin cared one way or the other; he put Dennis' uniform in a box and said, "Thanks for your business," as Robert wrote the check.

Outside, Dennis asked him how much it cost.

"Don't worry your head about it."

"I know the shell jacket was one-twenty, the shoes around a hundred."

"You get a present from somebody, you ask how much they spent on you?"

"This isn't a present. How much?"

"Little under four bills."

They were in the Jaguar now going back to Tunica by way of Memphis, into the sun, both wearing their shades.

"You understand," Robert said, "reenactors are serious people. I mean whether they all the way hardcore or not. They go to the trouble to get to the place, put their uniform on, sleep in a tent on the ground, cook their food over a fire, they're serious people do that. They have no patience with farbs wearing Speedo skivvies under their wool pants. You know what I'm saying?"

"They're serious."

"They are ser-i-ous."

"Not just about reenacting."

"About everything."

"Like you and Jerry. And Anne."

"Going as a quadroon hooker-shit, huh?" Robert grinning. "She walk down that row of tents you see the heads come popping out."

"And she's serious."

"Me and Jerry and Anne-hey, and you-we all part of this agenda."

Dennis said, "I'm not gonna ask what it is, so fuck you."

Robert glanced over. "You don't like me playing with your head. But you're cool, you can handle it." He said, "Listen, what I was saying about these people ... I went to two different reenactments up in Michigan. One near Flint, a small one, only a couple hundred people dressed up, one cannon. And the other reenactment near Jackson, home of America's biggest walled lockup, five thousand inmates in there messing with each other. This Jackson reenactment had a couple of thousand counting people dressed as civilians, women and children, General Grant, Robert E. Lee, the cavalry, lot of cannons, people selling Civil War memorabilia, kielbasa and grilled Italian sausage, and all the people I spoke to, man, were serious."

"So you were serious, too," Dennis said.

"Yes, I was."

"They didn't know you were only acting serious."

"No. I was. I found myself being serious with them and it was a strange experience."

"Being in the real world for a change."

Robert said, "Yeaaah," in a dreamy tone of voice. "That's what it's like, huh?"

Dennis fell asleep. He missed going through Memphis, opened his eyes to see they were in the country going south, blues coming out of the speakers.

"RobertJohnson," Dennis said.

"You passed the test. EricClapton will speak to you."

They went by a US 61 road sign and Dennis said, "Do we come to 49?"

"Other side of Tunica, down by Clarksdale, the most famous crossroads in the history of blues. Shit, in the history of music."

"Where RobertJohnson sold his soul to the devil."

"You remember-that's good."

"But I don't know what it means."

"Like Faust, man. Sell your soul you get anything you want. They say RobertJohnson made that kind of deal. He didn't say it, they did. But now TomJohnson's a different story. This was when RobertJohnson was still a child. TomJohnson tells people he sold his own soul at the crossroads. I say maybe, maybe not. The man drank poison, canned heat, that Sterno. What kind of deal is that? Now RobertJohnson-one day Son House tells him he ain't gonna make it, ain't good enough. Robert goes to the crossroads-the way the story is told-meets Satan in the form of this giant black dude. Satan takes Robert's guitar and messes with it, hands it back, and from then on nobody can believe the way he plays. They say to him, `How you do that?' Robert won't tell. See, but if he didn't sell his soul, why did he write `Hell Hound on My Trail'? Why did he write `Me and the Devil Blues'? Everybody's saying he musta gone to the crossroads and made the deal, 'cause listen to him, his wailin' chords, man, crawling up your spine. No doubt about it, was the devil gave him his mojo."

"Like a charm?"

"Mojo-yeah, like a charm, an amulet, something you use to get what you want, or be what you want. Something that's magic for you. You keep it in your mojo bag."

Dennis said, "It sounds like gris-gris." "How you know about gris-gris?" "New Orleans."

"Yeah, I forgot. Voodoo City."

"You have a mojo?"

"Wouldn't be without it."

"You keep it in a mojo bag?"

"Yeah, little bag made of flannel, has a draw string. You want to see it, don't you?" "I wouldn't mind."

"It's in the room. I'll show it to you."

"What's the charm that's in it?"