"Kinda?" Charlie said. "She's got a butt on her like a mule in a pair of bluejeans."

John Rau said, "She'd have to be Federal to keep it authentic. Forrest didn't have cannon to bring up till late in the day."

Charlie said, "Who's gonna know that?"

And got a stern look from John Rau saying,

"Walter and I know it."

"When we did bring 'em up," Walter said, "we rode the limbers in close and raked you with grape."

Listen to him, like he was there. Charlie saw John Rau nodding.

"That young cannoneer-what was his name?" "John Morton, my artillery commander, twenty one years old."

Now John Rau was saying, "Did you know there was a woman fought at Brice's?"

"She the one went by Albert something?"

"Private Albert Cashier, Ninety-fifth Illinois, her real name was jenny Hodges. Everyone thought she was a man," John Rau said, "till she was run over by a car in 1911."

Walter said, "It's too bad we can't put on a show in the thicket, along the Federal line there."

"The spectators wouldn't see anything."

"I know, but that's my favorite action in the battle. I send Tyree Bell 's troopers charging in there firing their Colt Navies. John, they had extra cylinders capped and loaded in their pockets. More firepower'n even your Spencer repeaters."

John Rau said, "I did get hold of some Second New Jersey fellas, they're coming with their Spencers. I hope to have a couple of Illinois groups, the Eighty-first and One-oh-eighth Infantry. I talked to a fella may bring as many as fifty. He said, `You want Ninth Kentucky or First Iowa?' They do it either way. I said, `First Iowa, we're gonna need Yankees.' I told Billy Darwin about the Fifty-fifth and Fifty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry. He said he'd dress as many of the hotel help as volunteers. And there's a fella staying at the hotel wants to be General Grant. Has never reenacted, though he does look like him."

"Grant wasn't at Brice's."

"Everybody knows that, Walter. I don't like it either, but you know people'll want to have their pictures taken with him. Is Lee coming-that fella always plays him?"

"I believe he died. I haven't seen him since Chickamauga. I got hold of the Seventh Tennessee and the Eighteenth Mississippi Cavalry. Some are coming, but hardly anybody's bringing horses. We let Billy Darwin rush us into this," Walter said. "We got started too late."

Charlie said to John Rau, "I recall you lost a horse at one of these."

"Yellow Tavern."

"I'll be astride King Philip," Walter said. "Parade around on my sorrel and let the kids pet him. I never feel so alive as when I'm Old Bedford."

Charlie said, "I hear Robert Taylor wants to be in your escort."

"If he'll feed and wipe down King Philip," Walter said, and then to John Rau, "Have you met this Robert Taylor? Colored fella from Detroit."

"Yeah, with General Grant." John Rau looking surprised. "I assumed he'd be a Yankee. Why's he want to wear gray?"

"He heard Forrest had colored fellas in his escort," Walter said. "He seemed to know what he was talking about, but he's slippery. I don't know what exactly to think about this Robert Taylor."

"Arlen met him," Charlie said. "He tell you?"

Now Walter looked surprised. He said no, and seemed ready to ask about it, but then John Rau was speaking.

"You know there were African Confederates. Not only slaves brought along by officers and put in uniform, but volunteers, too." He said to Walter, "Arlen's coming?"

"He wouldn't miss it."

"He will if he's in jail."

"For what, Floyd Showers? Everybody knows Junebug shot Floyd, and then one of Floyd's friends must've shot Junebug. It makes sense."

"Walter, do you actually believe Floyd Showers had a friend?"

"It's none of my business," Walter said. "What I'm concerned with is bringing off this event, making it work. How many you think we'll have altogether, counting women, children and dogs?"

"Our first muster?" John Rau said. "I'm hoping for as many as four hundred. Maybe fifty or so women and children dressed the part. Half-dressed anyway, little boys running around in kepis. I'm afraid the majority of the reenactors though will be UOs."

This was one Charlie hadn't heard of. "What're UOs?"

"Unorganized Others. We'll assign them regiments, so when you're telling the crowd who's who out in the field, they'll be accounted for. We'll do that Saturday morning."

Walter said, "How do we handle farbs?"

"With patience," John Rau said. "All we can do is point out the error of their ways. And I will be wearing longjohns, Walter." He looked at his watch saying, "I have to go," but lingered to mention the Porta-Johns were coming Friday afternoon, food vendors Saturday morning. Moving toward the ladder he said something about a sutler's store, drums and bugles… Walter behind him saying he'd wait for the crew coming to stake out the areas where the camps, the civilian tents and stores would set up, something about parking across the road… Charlie waited for them to go down the rickety ladder ahead of him.

Out in the barn lot John Rau was looking up at the weathered side of the old barn saying, "We'll have a banner up there, `First Annual Tunica Muster' and so on." He turned to the farmhouse rotting away across the yard. "I wish we didn't have that eyesore." Walter said he'd have his crew clean up around it. Charlie said, "I'll see you," and walked over to his Cadillac.

By the time he'd turned out of the barn lot and was heading west on the county road, he saw in his mirror John Rau's maroon Buick Regal swing out of the lot behind him. Charlie was coming onto 61 when he saw a car approaching, a black one as it whipped past him and then past John Rau in the mirror, a black Jaguar-Robert Taylor heading toward the site.

Robert saw one car in the lot, some kind of big SUV, and Kirkbride shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, watching him drive in. Robert got out and walked toward him noticing the man hadn't dyed his beard.

" Mr. Kirkbride, how you doing? I called your office, the young lady said you were out here."

The man stood there squinting in the sun.

"Hot enough for you?" Robert giving him white talk. "I sure hope it lets up some by the weekend. I was wondering, it rains, we postpone the battle or what?"

"It rained the entire week leading up to Brice's," Kirkbride said. "You don't mind getting wet, do you?"

Giving him some hardcore reenactor shit without answering the question. Robert said, "No, I like to get wet," and heard the rest of it, you dumb tuck, in his head. "I been out driving around the area, see what's over the other side of the woods. Not much, a farm road… "

"The levee road," Kirkbride said. "There's canebrakes back there, cottonwood and willow oak. It's too bad we have to keep the battle out in the open. I think it would be interesting, at least for the reenactors, to put on a fight in the woods."

Robert said, "They any snakes back there?"

"Cottonmouth's the poisonous one to look out for, the one you see the most of. The worst things are the ticks and the red bugs."

Robert said, "Ticks and red bugs."

"And mosquitoes," Kirkbride said. "Did you know Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, came here and studied this battle? Impressed by the way Old Bedford put it to the Yankees?"

"Yeah, I read that. But I wondered did either of 'em know Hannibal pulled the same kind of shit on the Romans back in the B.C.S. Jammed 'em in a pincer move till they were stumbling all over each other. With their spears and shit."

It didn't look as if Kirkbride knew it either, standing there squinting at him. He said, "I've got a crew coming."

Making it sound like reinforcements.

Robert wasn't sure what he meant and said, "I got one coming, too. Or I should say my buddy General Grant has, since we gonna be fighting against each other."