Free The Dog of the South by Charles Portis Page A

squirrels and ducks either. I mean stock the place with some real brutes. Wart hogs and Cape buffalo. I don’t say it would be cheap but these hunters have plenty of money and they don’t mind spending it.”
    â€œThat’s not a bad idea.”
    â€œI’ve got a hundred ideas better than that but Mama won’t answer my letters. What about a Christian boys’ ranch? It’s an ideal setting. You’d think that would appeal to her, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. How about a theme park? Jefferson Davis Land. It’s not far from the old Davis plantation. Listen to this. I would dress up like Davis in a frock coat and greet the tourists as they stepped off the ferry. I would glower at them like old Davis with his cloudy eye and the children would cry and clutch their mothers’ hands and then—here’s the payoff—they would see the twinkle in my clear eye. I’d have Lee too, and Jackson and Albert Sidney Johnston, walking around the midway. Hire some people with beards, you know, to do that. I wouldn’t have Braxton Bragg or Joseph E. Johnston. Every afternoon at three Lee would take off his gray coat and wrestle an alligator in a mud hole. Prize drawings. A lot of T-shirts and maybe a few black-and-white portables. If you don’t like that, how about a stock-car track? Year-round racing with hardly any rules. Deadly curves right on the water. The Symes 500 on Christmas Day. Get a promotional tie-in with the Sugar Bowl. How about an industrial park? How about a high-rise condominium with a roof garden? How about a baseball clinic? How about a monkey island? I don’t say it would be cheap. Nobody’s going to pay to see one or two monkeys these days. People want to see a lot of monkeys. I’ve got plenty of ideas but first I have to get my hands on the island. Can you see what I’m driving at? It’s the hottest piece of real estate in Louisiana, bar none.”
    â€œAre you a student of the Civil War, Dr. Symes?”
    â€œNo, but my father was.”
    â€œWhat was that about Bragg? You said you wouldn’t have Bragg walking around in your park.”
    â€œMy father had no time for Bragg or Joseph E. Johnston. He always said Bragg lost the war. What do you know about these revolving restaurants, Speed?”
    â€œI don’t know anything about them but I can tell you that Braxton Bragg didn’t lose the war by himself.”
    â€œI’m talking about these restaurants up on top of buildings that turn around and around while the people are in there eating.”
    â€œI know what you’re talking about but I’ve never been in one. Look here, you can’t just go around saying Braxton Bragg lost the war.”
    â€œMy father said he lost it at Chickamauga.”
    â€œI know what Bragg did at Chickamauga, or rather what he didn’t do. I can’t accept Joseph E. Johnston’s excuses either for not going to help Pemberton but I don’t go around saying he lost the war.”
    â€œWell, my father believed it. Pollard was his man. A fellow named Pollard, he said, wrote the only fair account of the thing.”
    â€œI’ve read Pollard. He calls Lincoln the Illinois ape.”
    â€œPollard was his man. I don’t read that old-timey stuff myself. That’s water over the dam. I’ve never wasted my time with that trash. What’s your personal opinion of these revolving restaurants?”
    â€œI think they’re all right.”
    â€œLeon Vurro’s wife said I should have a fifty-story tower right in the middle of the park with a revolving restaurant on top. What do you think?”
    â€œI think it would be all right.”
    â€œThat’s your opinion. I happen to have my own. Let’s cost it out. Let’s look a little closer. All right, your sap tourists and honeymooners are up there eating and they say, ‘Let’s see, are we looking into Louisiana now