Tishomingo Blues Read Free

said, "is the critical point of the dive. You want your body in the correct attitude, what we call a scoop position, like you're sitting down with your legs extended and it levels you off. Do it clean, that's a rip entry." Dennis was going to add color but saw Darwin about to speak.
    "I'11 give you two hundred a day for two weeks guaranteed and we'll see how it goes. I'll pay your rigger and the cost of setting up. How's that sound?"
    Dennis dug into the pocket of his jeans for the Kennedy half dollar he kept there and dropped it on the polished brick surface of the patio. Darwin looked down at it and Dennis said, "That's what the tank looks like from the top of an eighty-foot ladder." He told the rest of it, up to what you did to avoid the 40,000-gallon enema, and said, "How about three hundred a day for the two weeks' trial?"
    Billy Darwin , finally raising his gaze from the half dollar shining in the sun, gave Dennis a nod and said, "Why not."
    Nearly two months went by before Dennis got back and had his show set up.
    He had to finish the gig in Florida. He had to take the ladder and tank apart, load all the equipment just right to fit in the truck. He had to stop off in Birmingham, Alabama, to pick up another eighteen hundred feet of soft wire. And when the goddamn truck broke down as he was getting on the Interstate, Dennis had to wait there over a week while they special-ordered parts and finally did the job. He said to Billy Darwin the last time he called him from the road, "You know it's major work when they have to pull the head off the engine."
    Darwin didn't ask what was wrong with it. All he said was, "So the life of a daredevil isn't all cute girls and getting laid."
    Sounding like a nice guy while putting you in your place, looking down at what you did for a living.
    Dennis had never said anything about getting laid. What he should do, ask Billy Darwin if he'd like to climb the ladder. See if he had the nerve to look down from up there.

    Chapter 2
    THE TANK, PAINTED A LIGHT BLUE with curvy white lines on it to look like waves-Billy Darwin 's idea but okay with Dennis-was in place out on the sweep of lawn. Dennis changed his mind about using that river water full of silt. He spoke to Darwin about it and Darwin got the Tunica Fire Department to fill the tank from a hydrant by the hotel, giving each of the firefighters a hundred-dollar chip they could play with or cash in. Dennis would bet they played and hoped they won.
    It was the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino's celebrity host, CharlieHoke, the ex-ballplayer, who got Dennis a place to stay, a room in a private home for a hundred a week. No meals, but he could cook if he cleaned up after.
    "Vernice," Charlie said, "is on a diet and hardly cooks anymore, goddamn it." Vernice, a nicelooking redhead if a bit plump-which was okay with Dennis, he liked redheads-owned the house, a three-bedroom bungalow with a screened porch on School Street in Tunica, the school at one end, two bail bond offices at the other. Vernice was a waitress at Isle of Capri. CharlieHoke was supposed to be her live-in boyfriend, but had his own room so Dennis couldn't tell how much time he spent with Vernice. They acted like they'd been married twenty-five years. After Dennis looked at his room and agreed to take it, Vernice said, "I never met a high diver before. Is it scary?" Dennis believed he could get next to Vernice without breaking Charlie's heart.
    It was Charlie, also, who got Dennis a rigger.
    This was a man by the name of Floyd Showers from Biloxi, a skinny guy in his fifties with a sunken mouth and skidrow ways about him. He always had a pint of Maker's Mark and cigarette butts in the pockets of the threadbare suitcoat he wore with his overalls, wore it even during the heat of day. Floyd had worked county fairs on the Gulf Coast and showed he knew how to stake down and tie off guy wires, adjusting the block and tackle to pull forty to sixty pounds of pressure. Charlie mentioned Floyd had