Tishomingo Blues

The gun a photograph of Walter naked in color, Walter in a trailer tooting crack with a naked whore named Kikky. Some party till the camera flash went off. They showed him the photo and asked for two hundred and fifty thousand, saying they had taken over the drug business here and needed cash to buy product, buy sugar for the stills, buy the stuff you made the methamphetamines with.

"Listen to Bob Hoon," Walter said. "He's our in-house manufacturer of speed, the only one of you even close to knowing anything about business. You can't be the louts you are and exercise any good sense. How long did it take me to get your cash flow set up, show you the need to run a balance sheet, how to make a steady profit and hide it? What was the first thing I told you, Arlen?"

"I must've forgot."

"I said get rid of your fifty-thousand-dollar automobile. You're a security stiff working for ten an hour."

"We let you in," Arlen said, "and you felt right at home's what happened."

"You know why?" Walter said. "Because business is business. I said to myself, If this man is forcing me to become involved, then I'll study up on his trade and see how it works. Okay, then see how my expertise can make it work even better. The first thing I look at, what to do with the profits. Okay, why not launder it through my own subsidiary, Southern Living Village, Incorporated, and pay it to suppliers who only exist on paper."

Eugene said, "I never understood that part."

"You don't have to," Walter said. "We have a

CPA who's one of the great chefs at cooking books. He has no idea where the money's coming from and doesn't want to know. You fellas are a bigger risk than he is. Now you're shooting people, bringing the police around. Arlen, what did I say to do with the nigger, this boy Robert? I said scare him, run him off."

"What I was thinking," Arlen said, "have a deputy stop him out on the road and find that pitcher. Bring him in and accuse him of using it to con people out of money."

"He doesn't ask for money."

"We can say he did."

"You want to testify?"

"Walter, you know it's some con he's working. The man on the bridge can't be both our grampas."

"No, but it could be yours or mine. Didn't he know things about your family? Where your granddad worked? You said he did. What'd I tell you to do? I said run him off. You do it, not some deputy'll fuck with the nigger's civil rights."

"Another way I was thinking," Arlen said, "shoot him accidentally during the Brice's reenactment."

"Except he's on our side," Walter said. "Guns are inspected anyway, make sure they're not loaded."

"But it happens," Arlen said. "Wasn't there one at Gettysburg a few years ago?"

"During the one-thirty-fifth," Walter said, "you're right. A fella with the Seventh Virginia was shot in the neck. Doctor removed a ball from a forty-four-caliber pistol. It was ruled accidental. The ball must've been stuck in the barrel, since the pistol had been inspected, the chambers clear."

"How about that diver," Eugene said. "Is he reenacting?"

"There'd be an investigation," Walter said, "anybody gets killed." But now he was thinking about it.

Arlen was too. Arlen saying, "Do 'em both at the reenactment, the diver and the nigger. Draw 'em off into the woods there and shoot 'em. Dump the bodies in an irrigation ditch. Come back after dark and bury 'em in the levee. Who'd miss 'em? Nobody'd know where they went or care."

"That's how to do it," Newton said, leaning forward to look past his brother at Arlen and give him a nod. "You want, I'll do the nigger."

Walter said to Arlen, "You're full of ideas, aren't you? What'd you say to John Rau when he asked aboutJunebug?"

"I said he disappeared on me, didn't know where he was at."

"He come to the house," Eugene said, "looks around and wants to know where was the sofa. I guess on account of the coffee table was sitting there with nothing behind it. I said, `What sofa? I only board here.' "

Bob Hoon said, "He asked us where we was. Newton told him, `Out in the country making speed, where you think I was?' Kidding with him. This John Rau 's a serious person. He says, `I'm go

They were winding down.

Arlen asked Walter how come he hadn't dyed his beard. Walter said you look at photos of Old Bedford in uniform, taken during the war, his beard was black as coal. But in photos less than ten years later his beard was pure white. Walter said it led him to believe the wartime photos had been retouched to make the general look fierce, "and the beard actually wasn't any darker than mine."

Arlen said, "Wasn't 'cause your wife'd get after you if you dyed it?"

There was a time a remark like that would disturb Walter. Not anymore. Walter could say to Arlen, yes, his wife was recognized as a selfrighteous pain in the ass, set in her ways, two married daughters in Corinth still under her foot. If she were ever to see that photo of him tooting in the buff with Kikky, would she howl for his blood and leave him? He could say to Arlen, yes, of course she would. But so what? He could say to Arlen, show her the photo if you want. Walter had drug profits put away, scattered from Jackson to the Caymans, that Arlen and his morons would never find in a million years. Walter believed that at a moment's notice he could walk away and become someone else.

What he did say to Arlen was, "Leave my wife out of this. Please." Keeping it light, a gesture to He

And Eugene was on him. "Jesus Christ, don't tell me you left Rose alone."

Jim Rein held up his hand wrapped in a dishtowel. "She bit me."

"Fish, I told you you can't leave her. She'll tear up the curtains, the chairs, eat the carpet-" "The house is okay," Tim Rein said. "I shot her."

Carla came out to watch him dive and they sat for a while in lawn chairs, in the shade back of the tank, talking, begi

In the days that followed his meeting the Mularonies, De

Carla came along and the Tunica girls, no match, took off.

She said, "You know you don't have to do a matinee." De

Sounding as though she wanted to tell him something, confide. They moved lawn chairs into the shade of the tank, the private area where Floyd was shot, Carla wearing shorts and a loose tank top, dark blue against her slim arms and shoulders. She said, "I don't have anyone to talk to."