South of Shiloh Page 8

  Mitch had tried to love this man. But the fact was, he had a permanent crick in his neck from all the looking up that effort required. For years, sequestered in his bank cubicle, he’d thought Robert Kirby shooting down his efforts to bring in outside business to invest in Alcorn was personal spite. Then he realized the son was just following the father’s lead. The Kirbys didn’t want outsiders coming in, rocking the boat with new ideas and stirring up the natives with higher pay scales.

  “Well,” Mitch said, not unkindly, to the comatose old man, “I’m gonna rock the boat.” Only way you all will let me.

  Thank you. Good-bye. You tried. I tried. You brought me in like a stud horse to fertilize your played-out herd and it just didn’t take…so go to Plan B.

  Mitch bent over and gently kissed the dry, brown-spotted skin of the old man’s forehead. Then he turned and walked from the room, shouldering past the lawyer in the doorway. As he walked swiftly down the corridor, he wondered if he’d ever meet a grown man anywhere, especially in the South, who could claim a clear goddamn conscience.

  Low-beam weather. The road west out of Corinth was thick with ground fog turning to drizzle. Darl’s farm rental property was just outside of town. Tires hissing, turning over curds of red clay, he rolled his Ford up the rutted track to the farmhouse. He didn’t see Darl’s truck or Dwayne’s Caddy. He parked, climbed the porch steps, and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he entered the house, which was furnished in early Dogpatch with a heavy under-scent of bacon grease and gasoline. Darl’s tenant had a coffee can full of gas sitting inside the door, soaking some machine parts. An amber Stonehenge of empty beer bottles on the table suggested that Darl and Dwayne had been here. Mitch made a quick tour of the house. Nobody was home.

  So he sat down on the swayback couch, leaned back, shut his eyes, and dozed off.

  He blinked awake with somebody shaking him. He opened one eye and saw Marcy looking down on him like she’d popped full-grown from the knot of pain in the middle of his forehead.

  Marcy, with all her sassy war paint on, for Dwayne probably, scarlet lipstick and blue eye shadow and poured into a scoop-neck, pastel blue cotton summer dress. As she sat on the side of the couch, the dress pulled up when she crossed her knees, so he could see the smooth, curved fit of inner thigh on calf, pressing flesh on flesh; same action as was going on in that low-cut bodice. She wore open-toe sandals with her toenails painted blue. Splashed mud dotted her bare ankles.

  Like always, she smelled good. Not clean, but good; trailing this faintly unwashed, silky scent of lazy, fondling, waking arousal. Her blue eyes watched him, the witch hiding beneath a mild contempt.

  “What?” he blurted.

  “I just wanted to remind you how dumb it is what you’re doing, is all.” She lowered her eyes. “I kinda hoped you and Darl would see the light and take a pass.”

  Mitch blinked at her and said, “We already had this conversation.”

  Marcy looked up. “Dumb,” she repeated, “too many moving parts.” She cocked her head one way, then the other. “This has gotta happen so the next thing can happen.”

  “Aw for Christ’s sake,” Mitch mumbled. He scratched his chin, then checked his wristwatch. “It’s nine thirty in the fuckin’ morning…” Mitch sat up, now fully awake. “Marcy, you scare me. What is it with you?”

  Marcy gave him one last-chance look, then, when she got no response, her expression told him she had wearied of the conversation. She shook his arm hard. “Get up, Darl’s waiting out back and Dwayne’s with him. You gotta audition. Remember, your cousin Dwayne’s all growed up now and he’s a King Crook. He don’t miss nothing.” She stood up, smoothed her dress, and walked out the front door.

  Mitch followed her onto the porch. She sat down on the swing and extracted a copy of Entertainment Weekly from her purse, turned to a story on Tom Cruise, looked up once, and gave him the bored look.

  “Where are they?” Mitch asked.

  She jerked a thumb toward the back of the house, then said, “Hear that?”

  Mitch listened, heard a hammer striking wood. “What?” he said.

  “Boys playing,” Marcy said, not raising her eyes from her magazine.

  10

  THE RAIN HAD PAUSED AND NOW THE LAND seemed to jump with green. Going down the porch steps, Mitch glanced over the property, which consisted of a weathered gray barn, a chicken coop, and some fenced pasture in which a dozen black cows grazed. His last gesture in the world of banking was arranging a loan to underwrite the sale of these four hundred swampy acres that skirted a potholed stretch of 72 to Darl. Mitch grinned, remembering how the other loan officers took it as a sign of his downward spiral, unloading this bog on his cousin.

  Darl told people he had this notion to open a Civil War paintball range. Figured he’d piggyback on the Kirby Creek reenactment, get all these people lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in cheap blue and gray smocks and hats, march them at each other. When they were a hundred yards apart, they’d blast paint. The Rebs would fire red paint. The Yanks would load blue. Kinda like the red-state, blue-state thing, Darl said, half-serious until his patrons laughed him out of his beer joint.

  The real fact was, Marcy knew somebody in the highway department, who gave her an inside track on the Corinth bypass scheduled eventually along this road.

  Mitch walked around the back of the house and saw Darl and a taller man, who was Dwayne Leets, standing about three hundred yards away. They were nailing a four-by-eight piece of plywood up against a post along the fence line. Then he saw Darl’s truck parked closer in and spotted a compact black object on the hood. Curious, he detoured toward the truck and identified the shape as Darl’s Bushnell rangefinder.

  “What the hell you guys up to?” he called out, quickening his step. Seeing him, Darl grinned. He had a bucket of red barn paint in one hand and a small brush in the other. He had sketched a crude, mansize silhouette with an exaggerated stovepipe hat atop the head on the plywood.

  “Hey there, Mitchell Lee, how the hell you doing?” Dwayne Leets said, extending his hand, which, unlike Darl’s, was free of paint. They shook. “Caught you telling tall tales on that radio show last night when I was driving in,” Dwayne said, with a droll raise to his eyebrows. “I don’t recall Grandpa Leets eating that many squirrels? Maybe a couple on the weekend?”

  Mitch shrugged, grinned, and said, “Shucks, Cuz; gotta keep Bubba entertained.”

  Until the last two weeks, Mitch hadn’t seen Dwayne much to talk to since his childhood. What he remembered was a cruel sneer and early leadership ability. Dwayne organized his brothers and cousins into lynching parties to string cats up by the neck with slip-knotted bailing twine. Then they’d line up and shoot them with .22s. Finally, they’d set them on fire with lighter fluid as they flopped around.

  Mitch knit his eyebrows and pointed at the plywood.

  “We, ah, figured you needed some target practice,” Darl said.

  “Kinda with a little pressure thrown in,” Dwayne said.

  “Uh-huh,” Mitch said. Then he turned to Darl. “You been out to the Kirby place?”

  “It’s all set up,” Darl said.

  Mitch nodded, then jerked his thumb back toward the house. “Is Marcy on the rag or what? She just gave me an earful about leaving you over this thing.”

  “Ah,” Darl gave a shaky grin and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “She knows the score, man; she’s already in up to her neck. She’ll be just fine.”

  “So where’s the rifle?” Dwayne asked.

  “In Darl’s truck, didn’t want anybody seeing me hauling it around,” Mitch said, looking around. “We secure out here?”

  “Don’t sweat it; we’re alone. I sent my renter into town to pick up fencing material and gave him a few bucks to stay overnight. He’ll be gone most of the day,” Darl said.

  “Where’s your Caddy?” Mitch asked Dwayne.

  “Jimmy dropped me off.” Jimmy Beal was a Memphis hood, Dwayne’s driver.

/>   “So what’s this,” Mitch asked, indicating the plywood.

  Darl and Dwayne exchanged conspiratorial grins. “Well now,” Dwayne said, putting his hands together, lacing his fingers, and cracking his knuckles. His cat-killing days behind him, he’d lost the sneer. An easy-smiling man now, with blond, razor-cut hair and an accountant, a lawyer, and a personal trainer. His slurred drawl was not quite skin-deep, like his hotel-swimming-pool tan. The jeans, orange ostrich-quill boots, and Western shirt he wore could not change the faint white line that ringed his ruddy throat. Country-born, he had become a city boy. When Dwayne wasn’t slumming with his country kin, he wore a gold chain. Dwayne Leets had been born in Selmer, Tennessee, and found his way back by way of Chicago and Detroit. He owned a half dozen used-car lots in Memphis, along with a string of pizza joints and dry cleaners. The businesses were useful laundries for the proceeds from the drug trade.

  “Give you a hint,” Darl said. Then he dipped his brush into the paint and sketched a lopsided smiley face on the silhouette head, swirling the brush to make an exaggerated left eye about four inches in diameter. Then he scrawled ABE across the target’s chest. “See,” he continued, “I was telling Dwayne how people call in to you on the radio with questions about The War. How you ain’t been stumped yet.”

  “Yeah,” Dwayne said. “So I been doing some reading and I got a Civil War question.”

  “Really,” Mitch said, shaking his head, starting to grin. Their infectious nonsense was easing his headache. The Leets boys.

  “You ready? Here’s my question,” Dwayne said. “In October 1861 Hiram Berdan shot Jefferson Davis through the right eye, firing offhand at six hundred yards—true or false?”

  “Bullshit, I told him nobody ever shot Jeff Davis.” Darl grinned.

  “And,” Dwayne said, making a flourish with his hand, “Ole Abe Lincoln was watching.”

  “True, sorta, figuratively speaking,” Mitch said, chewing the inside of his cheek, mulling it.

  “Give you a hint, it was in the nature of a contest,” Dwayne said.

  Mitch cleared his throat. “Okay, what happened was Lincoln and McClellan were touring army camps in Virginia and had dropped in on Berdan’s Sharpshooters to see a demonstration…fact was, the War Department was resisting Berdan’s request for the pricey Sharps breechloader…”

  “Yankee piece-of-shit rifle,” Darl offered.

  Mitch continued. “The assistant secretary of war, Thomas Scott, was along and Scott dared Berdan to take a shot. So they set up a man-sized silhouette with JEFF DAVIS painted on it. Scott instructed Berdan to shoot offhand at the right eye.” Mitch shrugged. “He made the shot. Lincoln got such a kick out of it he assured Berdan he would get his breech-loaders.”

  “Damn, thought he had you,” Darl said.

  Mitch fingered a cigarette out of his chest pocket, popped a Bic, lit up, and blew a stream of smoke. “Fact is, you got your facts a little skewed…”

  “Skewed?” Dwayne rolled the word, like he didn’t hear it every day.

  “Yeah,” Mitch said, loosening his shoulders. “Most sources put the range at six hundred feet, so two hundred yards.”

  “Just so happens,” Dwayne said, looking at Darl, “it’s two hundred yards back to the truck. Darl bet me twenty bucks you could make a similar shot.”

  Darl pointed to the target. “Left eye, sorry. And ah,” Darl nodded down the fenced pasture, “try not to hit the cows.”

  Laughing, they strolled back toward the truck.

  “You nervous?” Dwayne asked.

  “Nope,” Mitch said.

  “Got a lot riding on this shot, huh?” Dwayne needled.

  “Ain’t gonna work, Dwayne; you trying to fuck with me.”

  “Okay then, let’s see if you’re really Tommy Lee’s boy,” Dwayne said.

  “Comin’ right up,” Mitch said.

  Darl opened the diamond plate locker in the bed of his truck and removed the rifle case along with the duffel that contained Mitch’s shooting paraphernalia. Mitch opened the case, withdrew the Enfield, and carefully set it on the soft, corrugated rubber interior of the case. Then he zipped open his satchel and set up the tripod for the spotting scope. Several slender pieces of cardboard were attached by threads to the tripod legs along with a few lengths of light yarn.

  A faint eddy of breeze kicked up. Mitch immediately checked the tripod, to see the wind’s effect on the dangles.

  Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed Marcy walk around the house and approach halfway to the truck. Her curiosity had apparently got the better of her high-and-mighty snit. But he wasn’t watching the sway of her hips or the flash of her shins. He observed the way the thin material of her dress hung limp, moved only by the motion of her legs.

  No-wind day. Dead still. But the air was a long rain shadow; lots of moisture.

  Marcy called out, irritated, “This is bullshit what you’re up to. No-brain redneck bullshit, Darl; I’m telling you.”

  “For Chrissake, Marcy. Don’t be like that. Dwayne’s here,” Darl protested.

  Dwayne laughed, “Get-r-done, Darl, bring that woman to heel.”

  Marcy gave Dwayne her best Medusa glare, extended a pointed finger, like a curse, and declared, “I’m serious, goddamn it; I ain’t having this.”

  “Then get your holier-than-thou little ass back behind the house and let the men be,” Dwayne shouted back, less than amused. When Marcy spun on her heel and stomped out of sight, Dwayne gave Darl a reproving sidelong glance. “What the fuck, Darl?”

  Darl gritted his teeth and suffered Dwayne’s disapproval with a pained expression.

  Mitch kept his eyes lowered and ignored Marcy’s attempt to hex him. He took a tack cloth from his satchel, wiped down the barrel and the wooden stock. It was one of Hiram’s favorite rifles. Mitch had quietly borrowed it from the spacious gun cabinet at Kirby Creek.

  Shooting was a bonding hobby he’d shared with the old man. On a no-wind day, from a bench rest, he could reliably shoot the Enfield into a three-inch bull at two hundred yards.

  Then he removed from the satchel a tray containing wrapped paper cartridges; old Hiram’s private stock. He’d measured out the powder and made the rounds in a custom bullet mold, then ran it through a sizing die to achieve the absolute correct diameter.

  As he puttered with a cartridge, he thought out loud. “Ellie’s hired LaSalle Ector to stay out at the Kirby House.”

  Darl shrugged. “I heard LaSalle came back from Iraq so fucked up they didn’t give him his job back driving the ambulance. Maybe all that big jig is good for anymore is emptying bedpans…”

  “That ain’t it. She’s got a soft spot for LaSalle because of Robert. The old man’ll never leave the hospital. She’s getting ready to pull the plug. Sign one of those do-not-resuscitate orders,” Mitch said.

  “Woman is depressed. Her brother got killed in Iraq, her dad is stuck full of tubes…”

  Mitch thought about it and shook his head. “She don’t get depressed, she broods and then she gets mad.”

  “C’mon, she’s depressed,” Darl said. “No offense to Aunt Pearl, but all Miss Kirby’s sorority sisters from Ole Miss are gossiping behind her back, saying ‘I told you so,’ marrying some state-line redneck out of a roadhouse whore in Selmer, Tennessee…Poor woman’s probably standing in the bathroom right now staring at the pills in the cabinet.”

  “I doubt it,” Mitch said. Then, abruptly, he emptied his mind and stared at the target. “So what are we doing here?”

  “You’re going to shoot at two hundred, right?” Darl asked, gnawing his lip.

  “Yep,” Mitch said.

  “Okay then. Cold shot, supported,” Darl said, “you can snap in over the hood of the truck.” He closed the gun case and plopped down several sandbags on the hood.

  “Okay,” Mitch said. More serious now, he looked downrange at the target, leaned back to his rifle. Then, all business, he bit the end off the cartridge, poured powder and ball down the muz
zle, then tucked in the paper. Ramrod in, then out, and returned to the pipe along the barrel.

  He bent over the rifle, chest and elbows on the warm hood of the truck, adjusting the sandbags on the case. Then he slipped on a percussion cap, clicked back the hammer, flipped up his elevation crossbar, got his eye relief, and settled the sights on the almost invisible dot.

  He took a deep breath, let it out, steadied over the warm hood, and rested the rifle barrel on a sandbag, snugged the stock along his cheek, raised the sights imperceptibly, found the magic moment, and squeezed the trigger.

  With a loud, familiar bang, the rifle heaved against his shoulder. As the cloud of sulfurous smoke dissipated, he counted under his breath, one thousand…and heard the whack of cast lead tearing wood as the low-velocity round smacked home.

  “Aw right,” Darl crowed, looking up from the spotting scope. “You owe me twenty bucks, ’cause Mitch just blew a wad of splinters through ‘Abe Lincoln’s’ friggin eye.”

  So much for auditions.

  Mitch set the rifle on the hood of the truck, looked back over his shoulder, and saw Marcy watching from the side of the house. She shook her head and turned away.

  “Hold out your hands,” Dwayne said.

  Mitch did.

  Dwayne took Mitch’s outstretched hands in his own, gently pressed his fingers into the hollow of Mitch’s wrist, then released them, and said, “Not bad. You were under some pressure and made your shot. Your hands are dry and your pulse’s practically normal. What about tomorrow? Think you’ll be sweating and your heart banging?”

  Mitch said, “You really believed that you wouldn’t be here talking.”

  “Pretty sure of yourself, ain’tcha.” The way Dwayne said it, it didn’t come out like a question. “Okay.” He glanced at the rifle lying on the case across the hood of the truck. “So a fuckin’ Civil War rifle.”

  “Yep,” Mitch said. “That’s the original wood, the original lock and action. Go on, touch the barrel and feel the dead Yankees. Hiram sent it up to Bobby Hoyt in Pennsylvania and he retooled the barrel. No one does it better.”