21

A LANTERN HUNG FROM THE TENT where the pie lady, smoking a cigarette, sat in a low-slung canvas chair at the edge of the awning. She watched him walk up to her, not smiling, not saying a word.

She was wearing lipstick.

She was wearing, he believed, eyeliner. Her hair was combed from a part and fell to her shoulders in a white shirt with a few buttons undone and a long skirt; but it didn't look period either.

He held out the joint, half of it left, and watched her look at it and then look up at his eyes before she took it, pinched it between her fingers and leaned forward in the scoop of canvas to the flame on the lighter he offered. She inhaled and held it, her body straight, before she blew out a cloud and sank back in the chair and smiled.

"You made it."

"I'm on picket duty."

"You mean right now?"

"At this moment, in the scrub."

She said from down in her chair, "You left your post for a piece of Naughty Child?"

There was an answer to that and he tried hard to think of what it was while she sat waiting to hear it. Finally all he did was smile.

She didn't, she kept looking at his eyes looking at hers.

"How'd it turn out?"

"The mister came up from his camp to pick up the pie and take it back. I told him it burned and I threw it away. He wanted to know where, so he could check on me, not trusting I even made the pie. I told him go on over to the Porta-Johns, it was in the second one to the left."

"Did he check?"

"He thought about it."

"Did you make the pie?"

"I rolled out the dough, got that far."

Dennis propped his rifle against the table. He pulled a short straight camp chair over next to hers, sat down and took off his kepi, settling in with things to say to her.

"You didn't want him to have any Naughty Child."

"I suppose."

"I run into girls all the time," Dennis said, "feeling trapped in a situation they don't know how to get out of. They're young, they're divorced, they have kids and the former husbands are all behind in their child support. Some of 'em look at me, the girls, I can see 'em wondering if it might work this time."

She said, "What are you wondering, how to get out?"

"Not always." He could feel the weed and was comfortable and wanted to talk. "I've met girls-I always think of them as girls instead of young women because it's my favorite word. Girl." He smiled.

"What's your least favorite?"

"Snot. What's yours?"

"Bitch. I get called it a lot."

They could go off on that, but he wanted to make his point before he forgot what it was. "I started to say, I've met girls I feel I could marry and we'd be happy and get along."

"How do you know?"

"We can talk and like the same things. Being able to talk is important."

She said, "Tell me about it," and said, "What do you do, you meet all these girls?"

"For a living? Take a guess."

She said, "You're not a salesman," and kept staring at him. "You're not from around here, or anywhere close by. You're not in law enforcement."

"Why do you say that?"

"I mean like a sheriff's deputy. You seem intelligent."

"You don't think much of cops?"

She said, "Having known a few."

"Why'd you marry this hardcore Confederate?"

She said, "I was going through one of my stupid periods. I started writing to a convict-he was related to a friend of mine and she got me into it. Girls do that, you know, write to convicts. They come to believe theirs is really a nice guy-look at the letters he writes. The idea is to make him see his good side and be comfortable with it." She raised the joint to take a hit but then paused. "Well, mine doesn't have a good side, and by the time I found out it was too late, we were married."

"Leave," Dennis said. "Walk out."

"I'm working up my nerve to file. What I'd love to do is move to Florida. Orlando. I hear it's the place to be, a lot going on."

She was a country girl-Loretta-trying hard not to be, but stuck with who she was. Her goal, to live where there were theme parks.

She said, "Anyway, I'm guessing what you do, meet all these girls that fall in love with you," staring at him again, slipping back into her soft mood; but then seemed to straighten in the camp chair as she said, "You're a croupier, at one of the casinos. No, you're a professional gambler, a card counter."

Dennis shook his head. It sounded good though. He caught a glimpse of himself at a poker table, very cool.

"You're not a business executive."

"Why not?"

"Your hair."

"I could be in the music business."

"Yeah, you could. Are you?"

"No."

"Then why'd you mention it?"

"I'm trying to help. You like blues?"

"Yeah, I guess. You're some kind of musician?" Dennis shook his head. "How about Drug Enforcement, something like that, a federal agent?"

Looking at him she half-closed her eyes in the lantern glow. "Yeah, you could be working undercover. But you wouldn't give me a joint, would you?"

"What if I was a dealer?"

She studied him again, their faces only a couple of feet apart. "I suppose. But you look too, like, clean and healthy." She narrowed her eyes now, suspicious. "You ever been to Parchman?"

He shook his head. "That where your husband was?"

"Two years."

It came to Dennis all at once. He said, "Your husband was a sheriff's deputy before that and now he works for Mr. Kirkbride…"

She said, "Oh, my Lord."

"And runs the drug business."

She said, "You're the diver."

Dennis waited.

She said, "Why don't you tell on the son of a bitch and have him put away?"

Everybody knew he was up on the ladder when Floyd was shot. She said it herself and Dennis asked if Arlen had told her. She heard it in a casino bar and when she asked her husband about it, yes, he told her. Loretta said he got drunk and told her all kinds of stupid things he did.

Dennis was in the pasture now with his rifle, heading back to his post, every now and again stumbling over ruts and clods of earth in the dark.

She wanted to know why he didn't tell. He said to her, "I'm going to next week, unless something happens I don't have to." She didn't know what he meant. "Like what?" Now he was talking the way Robert did, with no intention of spelling it out. He said to Loretta, the way Robert would keep you hanging, "Don't file yet. You may not have to." Picked up his rifle and got out of there.

He trudged along toward the dark mass of the thicket. Finally when he was getting close he saw the figure standing in the open. Dennis thought it was another sentry and he was off course from the direction he should be heading. When he'd walked off from the post he had turned around and lined up with the round top of an oak back in the thicket. There it was, he was heading toward it. But also toward the sentry, who didn't look like he had a rifle.

No, because it was Colonel John Rau-shit-his hand on the hilt of his sword.

He said, "Corporal, you left your post."

Dennis said, "Yes sir," because, well, why not.

"You know you could be court-martialed and shot?"

"Sir," Dennis said, going along with it, half turning to point toward the dark pasture, "I thought I saw something out there."

It stopped him, John Rau with nothing in his head ready to say.

"I thought it might be a Confederate raiding party," Dennis said, "looking to take prisoners."

John Rau said, "Corporal-"

But Dennis was already saying, "Get shipped off to Andersonville to die of dysentery."

"Corporal?"

"Yes sir."

"You've been gone over an hour."

"Colonel, you want to know the truth?"

"Tell me."

"I'm not a reenactor. I don't feel it in me."

"Are you quitting?"

"When this is over. I doubt I'll ever do it again."