Tishomingo Blues

"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 go

"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 De

Now De

"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 go

"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 ru

De

"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. De

"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."

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.

De

"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 a

"Who asked you?"

“The committee, who you think?”

"They want to hear baseball stories?"

"I've been reenacting nine years, De

"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."