Tishomingo Blues Read Free Page B

Hoke, amazed that a man his age was still able to throw as hard as he did.
    Darwin said, "He tell you about all the big hitters he's struck out, and what he threw them?"
    "I can't believe I've never heard of him," Dennis said, and saw that hint of a superior grin Darwin used.
    "He tell you where he struck them out?"
    "Where? I don't know what you mean."
    Ask him, Darwin said.
    Dennis thought of it now looking down from his perch. Have a beer with Charlie and listen to baseball stories. He believed Charlie was still over at his pitching cage across the lawn. He hadn't seen him leave, though it was hard to tell, the wire fence dark green against a stand of trees over there. He could yell for Charlie to come out and when he appeared show him a flying reverse somersault.
    Dennis' gaze lifted from the pitching cage and the trees to a view of empty farmland reaching to hotels that seemed to have no business being there. The hotel next door invited its patrons to enjoy "Caribbean Splendor" but was called Isle of Capri. Like the Tishomingo's patio bar looked more South Seas than Indian.
    Two guys in shirtsleeves, one wearing a hat, were by the bar. Dennis hadn't noticed them before. It looked like a cowboy hat.
    When the hotel did try for Indian atmosphere-like the mural in the office reception area: Plains Indians in war bonnets hunting buffalo-they got it wrong. Charlie said Chief Tishomingo and his Chickasaws might've seen buffalo in Oklahoma, after they got shipped there, but they sure never saw any in Mississippi. Tishomingo himself never even got to Oklahoma. Charlie said he was a direct descendant of the old chief, born in Corinth over east of here, fifteen miles from the TishomingoCounty line.
    The two guys were out at the edge of the patio now, this side of the swimming pool. Yeah, it was a cowboy hat, light-colored.
    Dennis was wearing sneakers, no shirt or socks with his red trunks. He looked down to see Floyd Showers hunched over lighting one of his cigarette butts. A couple of times Dennis had found him under the scaffolding behind the tank smoking a joint. Dennis didn't say anything and neither did Floyd, didn't even offer a hit. Which didn't bother Dennis, not sure he'd toke after it'd touched Floyd's mouth.
    Floyd hardly ever spoke unless asked a question; he'd answer and that would be it. Dennis looked down at his sneakers, stepped to the edge of the perch and was looking at the lower perch halfway down, the diving board below that and the tank you aimed for, the tiny circle of water so still the tank could be empty. For the night dive he'd light the water. He'd need a dive caller, a cute girl in a bathing suit, one with the nerve to stand on the narrow walk that rested on the rim of the tank. Announce the dives and splash the water if he had trouble telling the surface from the bottom. He was thinking it would be good if you could dive wearing sneakers, and raised his eyes.
    The two guys were out on the lawn now, coming by the tank.
    The cowboy hat was that shade between white and tan, the brim rolled where he'd take hold of it. This one walked tall in what looked like cowboy boots, long legs in slim-cut black jeans, his starched-looking white shirt buttoned up and tucked in tight. His bearing, along with the sunglasses under the hat brim, gave him a straight-up military look. Or a state trooper on his day off. The other one had a smaller frame, wore his clothes loose, his shirt hanging out and what hair he had slicked back hard.
    Dennis kept waiting for them to look up; he'd give them a wave. They didn't though, they walked past the tank toward Floyd Showers, Floyd pinching his cigarette butt, looking up as the one with his hair slicked back called to him, "Floyd ... ?" and Dennis heard it the way he might hear a voice, a word, when he was at the top of his dive, bringing his legs up to go into a reverse pike ...
    "Floyd ...?
    And Floyd had that look as if caught in headlights and turned to stone, the poor guy