Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (18 page)

Hesitantly, I lifted up one flap of the tent front – and found myself staring at a huge, gleaming, modern sound system, the kind roadies haul around to fuel rock bands.

"Mel, Frank, run those speakers out," Jess ordered. "Carrie, you make sure the tape is cued up right."

Mel and another soldier dragged out a pair of enormous speakers to flank the tent, while a homespun-clad woman put on a pair of earphones, fiddled with some of the controls of the sound system, and nodded to Jess.

"Earplugs, everyone," Jess ordered. "You might want to put these on, ma'am. Now, on my cue, just hit that button Carrie's pointing to, and we'll give those no-good redcoats one last volley before we retire for the evening."

I pressed the button and jumped back. Through the earplugs, I could faintly hear Jess's prerecorded voice ordering his crew through the steps of the firing drill, culminating in a satisfactorily loud boom.

"That's it for the night, folks," Jess said. Mel and Frank put the speakers away while Carrie, putting the headphones back on, rewound the tape to the proper place.

"That's how come we know your mother had already gone to bed," Jess explained, as we returned to the campfire. "As long as there's anyone here to watch us, we go through the whole drill. We like doing it, but it just seems a waste of time and powder to do the whole thing with no one watching. So we assigned a couple of our guys to take turns shadowing her. She heads our way, one of them uses the cell phone, calls my pager, and we're all correct by the time she gets here."

"Brilliant," I said.

"And so historically accurate," Michael murmured.

"Well, hell, we're not nut cases," Jess said "We're big on authenticity, don't get me wrong. You get some guys, they're not interested in the history."

"Just want to come out, fire off their black-powder guns a few times, then sit around and drink beer," Mel said, frowning at one of the other men lounging around the fire. The man lifted his mug, uttered an improbably loud belch as if it were a toast, and drained the mug.

"Some others, they're so gung-ho they want to come out and pretend the twenty-first century doesn't exist," Jess said, with a glance at Mel. "Want to do everything exactly the way it was done back then, no matter how long it takes or if there's a good reason not to. Dig privies instead of using the chemical toilets. Drink unpasteurized milk. Boil their coffee like eggs. Hell, why don't they just go ahead and bleed people when they feel sick; that's pretty authentic."

"People have a right to do what they like," Mel put in.

"And I respect that right, as long as they don't come over and try to interfere with our right to do what we like."

"Halt! Who goes there?" the sentry shouted.

"Is Meg Langslow up here?" came the reply.

"Oh, God," I said. "Wesley."

"Someone you're trying to avoid?" Jess said. "We could send him back the way he came."

"I wouldn't want to interfere with the freedom of the press," I said. "That's part of what you're all fighting for, isn't it? Let him pass if you want."

A minute later, Wesley Hatcher scuttled over to where I was sitting.

"I've been looking for you all night," Wesley said. "I understand you found the body!"

"Body?" Jess said. "You mean all that talk about a murder was real? I thought it was just one of those weekend murder games."

"Oh, it was real, all right," I said.

"By the time they finally found someone to let me out, the body was gone, and there was nothing to see," Wesley complained. "I've got to get an interview with you!"

"Wesley, as Mrs. Fenniman always says, the only thing you've got to do in this world is live until you die. Can I have another cup of your anachronism?" I asked, turning back to Jess.

"Certainly, ma'am," he said. He served out coffee all round, and we studiously ignored Wesley, who paced up and down, whining an occasional complaint. He sounded pitiful, like a dog that badly needed to be let out.

"Halt! Who goes there?" we heard again.

"Place is Grand Central Station tonight," Mel muttered.

"Danny must be loving it," one of the loungers said. "Usually hard to keep awake on sentry duty this time of night."

"Hey, Jess," said one of the two men who now approached the campfire. "Xavier from the Victory Center wants to know if we could help him out by making some charges."

"Hate to ask, when you're pretty busy all day," Xavier said. "But I'm really in a bind."

"No problem," Jess said. "Thought you made these up way ahead of time, though."

"We did, weeks ago, but we had a burst pipe in the storeroom last night," Xavier said. "Everything is soaked, including the charges."

"Ouch," Jess said, and the men around the fire shook their heads in sympathy.

"You want to learn how to do this?" Jess asked. Michael seemed interested, and I'd gotten my second wind, so Jess showed us how to cut trapezoidal pieces of paper in the proper size, measure the precise amount of gunpowder with a little scoop, roll the paper into a cylinder like a clumsy homemade cigar, and twist the ends closed.

I thought it was a little incongruous that we were making authentic colonial-style musket charges using old copies of the
Newport News Daily Press
and the
York Town Crier,
but no one else even batted an eye.

Wesley joined in, too, but I'm not sure how useful he was. He kept looking at me, as if hoping I'd reward him with an interview if he made enough cartridges.

"Be real careful not to go over on the powder," Xavier said, not for the first time. "It's better to be a little short than to go over."

"Just what are these cartridges for, anyway?" Michael asked.

"A lot of times, when a reenactment takes place on park land, they arrange for us to hand out the ammo," Xavier said. "For safety reasons."

"You get some of these guys, like to overcharge to get a bigger bang, and that gets dangerous," Jess said.

"Not to mention the fools who do black-powder hunting with the same guns and aren't careful about keeping the live ammo separate from the blanks."

"You mean this is what you'd use if you were shooting for real?" I asked. "With old newspapers and all?"

"Sure," Xavier said. "I do a bit of black-powder hunting myself, and I always use the comics for the live ammo and the rest of the paper for the blanks, to be sure of keeping them straight."

Was he pulling my leg?

"You make the live rounds the same as we're doing it," Jess said. "Only after you've rolled one up and closed off the first end, you'd put the bullet in after the powder before you twist the other end closed. When you come to load the gun, you tear the cartridge open with your teeth and pour the powder down the barrel."

"One of the few physical requirements for the Continental Army," Mel said. "Must have two teeth that meet, so you can tear cartridges open."

"Dental care being what it was, a lot of guys couldn't qualify," Xavier put in.

"Couldn't they just rip the cartridge open with their fingers?" Michael asked.

"Yeah, but it'd be pretty hard, 'cause they'd already be juggling the gun and the ramrod." Jess said. "See, it goes like this."

He took up his musket and demonstrated tearing the cartridge open with his teeth, tapping a small amount of powder in the firing pan, then tucking the paper cartridge into the end of the barrel.

"If I was shooting live ammo, I'd leave the bullet wrapped in this paper, for wadding, which is what made the bullet fit snug in the barrel," he said. "Bullet on top of the powder, of course, or it's not going anywhere. Next I take the ramrod and make sure the charge is all the way down the barrel. And take the ramrod out and put it back in its holder. Last thing we need is ramrods flying every which way in the middle of a skirmish. Now the gun's loaded. If it wasn't the middle of the night, I'd fire her off and show you the cleaning routine, but you get the idea."

"You're not going to leave that thing loaded, are you?" Xavier asked. Jess shook his head.

"You use this worm to snake the charge out," he said, holding up an object like a corkscrew on a two-foot stem. We watched as he dug out the remnants of the cartridge, shook the gunpowder out of the barrel into the general supply, and blew the powder out of the firing pan.

"Most any well-run reenactment either hands out ammo or does an inspection," Xavier remarked as we watched. "And most units do their own inspection, too, just in case."

"Couldn't you tell by the weight of the cartridge that it was live?" I said. "I mean, the bullets are made of lead, right? So the live cartridges have to be heavier."

"Yeah, but in the heat of battle, who notices?" Mel said. "You know what I mean," he added, turning to Michael.

"I'm pretty new at this," Michael admitted.

"Had an incident a long time ago where some fool shot a guy's hat off with live ammo," Xavier said, shaking his hat. "At least he was aiming high like he was supposed to."

"And my guys wonder why the unit's insurance fees for the events keep going up," Jess said. "Even using blanks, you're supposed to aim over the enemy's heads. Blanks aren't harmless, you know; the paper cartridge still gets shot out, and at point-blank range that could put your eye out."

I frowned, and looked over at Michael. Had he already heard all this from his unit, and not told me? Or was this his first exposure to the dire perils of his new hobby?

"Gruesome," Wesley said, a little too eagerly. "Stuff like that happen often?"

"Almost never," Jess said, squelching Wesley's hopes of an expose on the perils of reenacting.

After a while, Michael spotted me yawning while I was trying to cut a cartridge paper and suggested that we head back to camp. We said goodnight to the cannoneers remaining around the campfire, and to the sentry when we passed him.

"Or am I supposed to say
'Gatinois chasseurs'
like you did when we came?" I asked Michael.

"No, why would you?"

"I don't know. What is
'Gatinois chasseurs,'
anyway?"

"It's my unit," Michael said, sounding mildly hurt. "I was identifying my unit to the sentry."

"Oh," I said. "Sorry. I know how it's spelled, but that's not how I'd been pronouncing it."

"I hadn't noticed that you'd been pronouncing it at all," Michael said, chuckling.

"Well, no," I said. "Not out loud, anyway. But I was working my way up to pronouncing it, and that's not how I would have done it."

"Hey, wait for me," Wesley called, scrambling after us. "I'm going your way, remember."

"Give it up, Wesley," I said. "I'm too tired to talk about the murder."

"Look, I need to know what happened," Wesley said.

"Go see Monty," I said. "He warned us not to talk to the press."

"It's not just for the story," he insisted. "I need to know for myself. I'm worried about my safety."

"Considering some of the articles you write, I don't wonder," I said.

"Hey, you don't have to tell me any details you're not supposed to mention, but just tell me this: could that Benson guy have been killed by mistake?"

"By mistake?" I repeated.

"He was wearing a blue coat, just like mine," Wesley said. "And we're about the same height and weight."

"Wesley, dozens of men were wearing blue coats just like yours," I said. "And a lot of them were about your size."

"Yeah, but how many had people who wanted to kill them?" Wesley said. "I know things. Things I haven't written about yet. Things that could ruin people's lives and stuff. I've had death threats, you know."

"Yes, I know. I made a few myself back when you worked for the
York Town Crier."

"Anonymous death threats," he said. "And some of them came from some pretty scary people, people who wouldn't just make idle threats."

"How would you know, if they were anonymous?"

"Because I know who knows what I know!"

"Not to mention who's on first base," Michael murmured.

"Look," Wesley went on. "A lot of people saw your friend Tony chasing me off in the direction of the craft fair."