'I was thinking,' Arlen said, 'it was time we set our minds on what we're doing here. Except you're with your whore, Eugene and Fish are fighting over a dead dog, and all Newton wants to do is lynch the nigger.'
It was in Walter's mind that he might not have to listen to this man, this lout, ever again after today. And to make it come true he should help Robert any way he could.
Arlen said, 'The hell're you looking at?'
It brought Walter back. He turned his head to Traci on the cot. 'See you later, Barbie honey.'
She lifted her head from the pillow. 'Okay, Kin.' Walter stepped outside.
Arlen said, 'You got a new one in there?'
Anne got up from the room-service table to answer the door. Jerry didn't move, looking at the Sunday paper, the
Robert was in uniform. Coming in he said, 'That was me called.' Anne opened the door all the way and now he saw Jerry at the table. 'And you two were sound asleep, huh? I'm sorry I woke you up.'
Jerry said, 'How was it?' dipping his spoon into a soup bowl of soft-boiled eggs.
Robert estimating there were three eggs in the bowl, runny, maybe four when Jerry started eating. That took up part of a moment in Robert's mind, the rest of it was thinking, How was what? And realized Jerry meant sleeping in a tent. 'We missed you, Jer. Yeah, that camping out's fun. We built a fire, sat around it and told ghost stories.'
Anne said, 'Did you sing camp songs?'
She stood with her orange juice now by the open doors to the balcony.
'We didn't know any. Tonto did sixty days in one of those tent jails that's like a camp, in Texas? But he said they didn't sing any songs.'
Jerry said, 'What time's this thing today, the battle?'
'Two o'clock. You muster at the Union camp no later than one-thirty.'
'Or what,' Jerry said, 'they don't let you play? How we gonna work it?'
Hector had phoned this morning, so Robert was able to say, 'Hector talked to Arlen. He says they'll go fists, knives, anything… rocks. Hector says even swords. There four of them counting Arlen, not counting Mr. Kirkbride. We might want to use him, and this other one, Bob Hoon, runs the meth lab. I drove out and spoke to him a few days ago, gave him some what-ifs, told him he ought to stay loose. So it's their four against us four, us being me and you, Hector and Tonto.'
'And the two spades,' Jerry said.
'You mean,' Robert said, 'Groove and Cedric? I told you where they gonna be.'
'Yeah, I forgot,' Jerry said, getting up from the table with the paper. 'That's what I have you for, the details.'
Robert watched him go into the bedroom and heard the bathroom door close. Now he saw Anne drilling him with her look and knew he was about to get yelled at through clenched teeth.
'I told you he'd come back. I walk in the room what am I supposed to tell him?'
'Baby, I'm sorry. He was awake?'
'He was asleep.'
'Then you had time to make something up.'
'How do I know when he got back? I had to find that out first.'
Robert moved toward her now saying, 'Baby, what'd you tell him? It must've been good.' He would have to take her in his arms now while her husband was in there taking a dump, give her some comfort, ready to, but then saw the ladder out there past her against the sky, and saw a figure standing on the top perch.
Now Anne turned to follow his gaze and said, 'Is that Dennis?'
'It's Billy Darwin,' Robert said. 'He climbed up there once before. And climbed down,' Robert's voice drifting with a thoughtful sound to it. 'The cool hotel manager gonna find out if he's all the way cool. See Carla down there? By the tank with Charlie Hoke in his uniform. But the man is not doing it for them or anybody watching. I see Billy Darwin up there for his own knowledge of himself. He wants to know can he do it from the height of cool, eighty feet up. He's gonna do it, too. See him on the edge? The man's gonna do it.'
Robert watched Billy Darwin raise his arms, look down at the tank and then straight out at the sky, watched him jump into space and drop sixty miles an hour in two seconds to smack the water with a sound Robert could hear.
Robert said, 'Uh-oh.'
His eyes holding on the tank, waiting for Billy Darwin to surface, as Anne told him she would never, ever, let him talk her into that kind of situation again, taking a chance that could get them killed, for Christ sake, for what? She said, 'Hey, I'm talking to you. Where're you going?' raising her voice to Robert crossing the room and going out the door.
Two figures stood on the slope not far from the barn, a Yankee and a Confederate with a sword, Dennis halfway across the field before he recognized them, Robert and Charlie, and trudged up the slope with his rifle.
Charlie said, 'We saw you coming-'
Robert got right to it, telling Dennis, 'Billy Darwin went off the ladder. He might've injured himself.'
'Bad?'
'Did something to his back. Carla went in and fished him out.'
'With her clothes on,' Charlie said. 'He manages to take a few steps at a time, but stooped over. The Emergency people came, he didn't want to go with 'em. They strapped him down and took him anyway. Said they thought he ought to be x-rayed.'
Dennis was shaking his head now. 'Carla said he wanted to do it. He jumped?'
'Looked good, too,' Robert said, 'till he's almost to the tank and you see his legs go out in front of him like he's sitting down. Made a way bigger splash than any of yours. I believe his timing was off a speck, but he was cool to try it. Have to give him that.'
Dennis said to Robert, 'You're not gonna try it, are you?'
'Why would you ask me that?'
'Don't, okay?'
'No, man, I can admire it without feeling the need to do it. Listen, I told Jerry to look for you at the Federal camp. Where you going now?'
'Get my corporal stripes cut off,' Dennis said. 'Or Colonel Rau won't let me play war.'
'What you do,' Robert said, 'stay close as you can to Hector and Tonto, you'll be okay. I told them to get up close to the woods on the north side, straight out there, and I'll give 'em the sign when to duck in.'
'I'm not getting into anything over my head.' 'That's what I'm saying to you. They'll see you don't get in trouble.'
Charlie said, 'The hell are you talking about?' 'I have to go,' Robert said, and went off to join his Confederates.
Charlie watched him walk off and then turned to Dennis. 'What's going on?'
'If I knew,' Dennis said, 'I'd tell you.'
'Well, I gotta go study my script,' Charlie said, and headed for the barn.
And now Dennis was on his way to visit the Naughty Child woman. See if she had a pair of scissors. It was strange, he could tell Loretta was younger than he was by a few years, and yet he thought of her as a woman and not a girl. Or as Arlen 's wife.
23
SHE WASN'T OUTSIDE. She could be in the tent. And Arlen could be in there with her, but he doubted it. Dennis stepped under the awning.
'Loretta?'
'Who is it?' Her voice close.
He said, 'Dennis,' not sure if that was enough.
The flap opened and there was her face, no makeup, her features clean-scrubbed, shiny. She didn't give him
