"You know Kirkbride?"

"I've met him. He has an office at the Village, but he's mostly in Corinth. I gave Charlie the end of the month to move out. He was broke, had no job or place to live, and I didn't care."

"Couldn't stand him talking all the time."

"Telling baseball stories if he didn't have nothing else. What a star he was. All the big-name hitters he'd struck out. I said, `Honey, who gives a shit.' " Vernice turned from the counter with a drink in each hand. "Here, sweetheart, sip it, do you good. Let the bourbon work its way down your tired young body."

Dennis took a sip and made a sound, Mmmmm, to show he liked it. He said, "I bet I'm older'n you are."

Vernice said, "Well, of course you are," sitting down at the table. "I tell Charlie he has to leave? This is when we're living in the trailer. He says there's a job waiting he knows he's gonna get. Celebrity host at the Tishomingo. Oh? I said, `What qualifies you, being a relative of Big Chief Tishomingo, or a onetime famous ballplayer no one's ever heard of?' Charlie says he can go either way, talk the talk. I said, `Charlie, you ever get hired as a celebrity host, I'll lose twenty pounds and get a job as a keno runner.' You know what he said? `Better make it forty pounds.' " Vernice got up and went over to the counter to get her cigarettes. "I've always been full-figured, it runs in my family." She came back to the table patting her tummy, holding it in. "Since then I've lost almost thirty pounds. I started out on what they call the Jenny Crank diet? If you know what I mean."

"You're on speed?"

"I said I started out on it. One weekend I painted every room in the house without stopping, day and night till it was done. I knew you could get hooked, so I quit."

"Don't lose any more," Dennis said. "You look great."

She said, "I do?"

He watched her sit at the table sideways to face him and cross her legs, showing him the whitest thighs he had ever seen. Just about any time he looked at Vernice he'd try to picture her naked.

"So Charlie talked his way into the job?"

"He goes to see Mr. Darwin and starts bragging how he can still pitch. Mr. Darwin says, `Okay, if you can strike me out you got the job.' Charlie says he'll do it on three pitches. Mr. Darwin says he'll give him four. They get a kid to bring a ball and bat, meet at a field…" Vernice paused to light a cigarette.

"Charlie struck him out?"

"He threw one at him, trying to come inside? And Mr. Darwin had to hit the dirt to save his life." "He got the job anyway?"

"That's what I asked him. `He hired you even though you knocked him down?' You know what Charlie said? `Honey, it's part of the game.' He let Mr. Darwin hit one and got hired."

Dennis said, "He's a character."

Vernice said, "He's a pain in the butt. He comes in my bedroom asking can he use the treadmill you might've noticed in there? Before I know it he's sitting on the side of my bed with his beer gut. You're lucky, you have a nice trim body from swimming."

"Divers don't have to swim much."

"You still have a nice physique." She said, "Oh. I'll be there to see you-I forgot to tell you, I start working at Tishomingo next week. Charlie put in a good word with the human resources guy. Don't you hate that, calling personnel human resources?"

"I think of bodies laid out in a stockroom," Dennis said.

Vernice drew on her cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. "I start as a cocktail waitress. The outfit's real skimpy-you've seen it-it looks like buckskin only it's polyester with fringe. And you wear the headband with the feather sticking up? It's cute."

Dennis said, "If you're gonna be there every day… I was thinking, how'd you like to be in my show?"

"You don't mean dive."

"Call the dives. You have a mike and you tell the audience what dive I'm gonna do next."

"I'd have them, like on a sheet of paper?"

"Yeah, and things you can say to the crowd. Like, `You have to clap real hard if you want Dennis to hear you, way up there eighty feet in the air.' "

"What do I wear?"

"Whatever you want."

"When would I start?"

"Tomorrow night. They're gonna televise it."

"Really?"

"It's in the local paper and there're posters around town."

"I know, `From the Cliffs of Acapulco to Tunica…' But tomorrow night, you're not giving me much time."

"Charlie said he'd do it if I don't find a goodlooking girl. You want to think about it?"

Vernice sipped her drink and smoked.

"I have to let Charlie know," Dennis said. "Give him time to look at the script. Shouldn't he be back pretty soon?"

"He sees any new faces in the bar, he'll hang around to tell baseball stories."

"I got a ride," Dennis said. "We pulled up, I saw a car drive away. I thought Charlie might've come and gone."

"No, it was that shitbird Arlen Novis stopped by to see Charlie."

"A friend of Charlie 's?"

"Maybe at one time. Arlen was a sheriff's deputy till he went to prison for extortion. He'd make bail bondsmen give him a cut of their fee or he wouldn't okay the bond. They also had him for accepting payoffs from drug dealers. I don't know, either they couldn't make a case or it was part of a deal he made. Plead guilty to the extortion and testify against the sheriff, he'd only do a couple years. The sheriff's doing thirty years on those same charges."

"What's Alvin do now?"

"Arlen. Walks around in his cowboy hat like he's a country-music star, Dwight Yoakam or somebody. Ask him what he does, he's head of security at Southern Living Village they're putting up over here. Mr. Kirkbride hires a criminal to see none of his building supplies get stolen."

Dennis said, "Yeah…?" knowing there was more.

"But what he really is, Arlen's a gangster. He got into disorganized crime with the Dixie Mafia and pretty soon he's in charge. Some call it the Cornbread Cosa Nostra, making it sound cute, but they're all dirty dogs."

"You get this from Charlie?"

"The talker."

"What's Arlen's name?"

"Arlen Novis. There was another Tunica deputy at Parchman the same time as Arlen. Jim Rein, he was in there for assaulting prisoners. He'd beat 'em with a nightstick for no reason other'n they were colored. You'd never think Jim Rein to look at him would do that. He's a good-looking young man with quite a nice physique on him. They call him Big Fish or just Fish, but I don't know why."

"He's in the Dixie Mafia, too?"

"Works for Arlen. They took over from the ones had the drug business. Charlie says just like in the regular Mafia. Arlen had Jim Rein shoot some of 'em and the rest they run off."

"That's where you get your speed?"

" Crystal meth-I told you, it was just for a while. They sell it to the casino crowd, people that stay up all night trying to win their money back. There's a honky-tonk called Junebug's? Down by Dubbs, just south of here. Arlen took it over along with the drug business. You go to Junebug's you can get all the uppers or downers you want. Speed, crack cocaine, marijuana. They have illegal gambling there, prostitutes, girls in trailers out back of the place."

"Why hasn't it been shut down?"

"Well, you know they're paying off somebody. There's a raid, Arlen gets word of it and they close for alterations. Honey, people come to Tunica for fun, all kinds of it, and spend their money. Like I read a billion dollars a year right in this county. That's what it's all about, money. Drugs are sold, casinos are robbed, people are shot… Last year a waitress from Harrah's was stabbed to death in her trailer, up in Robinsonville. I've thought seriously of moving back to Atlanta, but you know what? I love it here, something always going on."

Vernice took time to smoke. Dennis sipped his drink seeing Arlen Novis by the tank, looking up at him on the perch. He wondered who the other guy was.