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 done time on a burglary conviction, but said don't worry about it, Floyd wasn't apt to get in any trouble.
This final day of setting up they were working late to finish. Dennis in red trunks stood on the top perch-there was another perch below at forty feet-looking down at Floyd tying off the last of the wires. Dennis pressed down on his end and felt it taut.
It was early evening, the sun going down over Arkansas across the river. No one sitting by the pool, the patio in shade now. About an hour ago Dennis had spotted Vernice in her pink Isle of Capri waitress uniform with Charlie out on the lawn talking. It surprised Dennis to see her here at Tishomingo. She had looked this way to give him a wave as she walked back to the hotel. Charlie had returned to the weird attraction he worked and was still there: a wirefence enclosure that looked like half a tennis court and a sign on it that read:
CHICKASAW CHARLIE 'S PITCHING CAGE
LET'S SEE YOUR ARM!
What Charlie had there, inside the enclosure, was a pitching rubber at one end and a tarp with a strike zone painted on it hanging sixty feet six inches away. You made your throw and a radar gun timed the speed of the baseball getting to the tarp and flashed it on a screen mounted in there on the fence. Five bucks a throw. Get three in a row in the strike zone, you got three more chances free. Hum one in ninety-nine miles an hour or better, you won ten thousand dollars. Or you could challenge Chickasaw Charlie. If this big ex-ballplayer with the beer gut, fifty-six years of age, failed to beat your throw, you won a hundred bucks.
It looked easy.
The first time Dennis left his work and wandered over there to see what was going on, Charlie said to him, "Watch 'em. These young hotshots and farm boys come here thinking they have an arm. Watch this kid with the shoulders." Wearing his John Deere cap backwards. "He throws harder'n sixty mile an hour I'll kiss him on the mouth." The kid went into his stretch, brought the ball up to his chest with both hands and threw it, Dennis believed, as hard as he could. The radar screen flashed 54. Charlie said, "See?" and to the kid, "Boy, my older sister can throw harder'n that. You ever see a knuckleball? I'm gonna show you a knuckler. Look here, how you hold it with the tips of your fingers." Charlie stepped on the rubber, went into his stretch and threw a ball that seemed to float toward the tarp before it dipped into the dirt and the radar screen registered 66. Charlie said to Dennis, "They throw with their arm, you notice? 'Stead of using their whole body. You play any ball?"
"Not once I climbed up on a diving board. I follow the American League," Dennis said. "Now and then I'll bet the Yankees, except if they're playing Detroit."
"You're smart, you know it? How 'bout the '84 Series?"
"Who was in it?"
"De-troit won it off the Padres. You remember it?" No, but it didn't matter, Charlie kept talking. "I was up with the Tigers and pitched in what became the final game. Went in in the fifth and struck out the side. I got Brown and Salazar on called third strikes. I hit Wiggins by mistake, put him on, and got the mighty Tony Gwynn to go down swinging at sixty-mile-an-hour knucklers. I went two and a third innings, threw twenty-six pitches and only five of 'em were balls. I hit Wiggins on a nothingand-two count, so you know I wasn't throwing at him. I come inside on him a speck too close. See, I was never afraid to come inside. I've struck out Al Oliver, Gorman Thomas and Jim Rice. Darrell Evans, Mike Schmidt, Bill Madlock, Willie McGee, Don Mattingly, and I fanned Wade Boggs twice in the same game-if those names mean anything to you."
Later on that day Billy Darwin had come out to see how Dennis was doing. By then he and Floyd Showers had put up four sections of ladder and the metal scaffolding that supported a diving board three meters above the rear side of the tank. Dennis told the boss they'd finish tomorrow and then started talking about Charlie 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 Tishomingo County 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.