Reenacting A Murder

Fresh bacon sizzling over a wood fire makes one of the most heavenly smells on this planet. I put six strips into the forged iron pan sitting on top of Rollie Hutson’s small brazier. When the bacon crisped to my satisfaction, I’d remove it from the pan and fry the four eggs that sat awaiting their fate.

“You makin’ love to that pig-meat or cookin’ it?” Rollie asked, while I fiddled with a long-shanked fork, moving the bacon around.

“You could do this yourself, you know.” I didn’t like criticism while creating a culinary masterpiece.

Our campfire was one of thirty in the Prospect City Park. Other old-fashioned braziers and open fire pits smoked away as historical reenactors began their day at the Annual Prospect Heritage Festival. Everyone there volunteered to provide the paying public with an authentic glimpse of life in early Tennessee.

Smoke from hickory, oak, and cherry swirled around the encampment. Additional cooking smells filled the air—coffee, oatmeal, parched corn, and more bacon.

Several people walked among the canvas shelters carrying water buckets, all of them wearing 18th century-style clothing. Wedge tents, crude lean-tos, and large marquees made up a temporary canvas city within the park.

Besides being one of the two men there to portray local gunsmiths, I’m also the police chief in Prospect, Tennessee, a small city on the northwest corner of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

“You reckon the bacon’s done yet?” Rollie sounded impatient.

A commotion four tents away interrupted my answer.

“Je-sus Christ! Hey, somebody, come here! Gat dag, somebody, I need a li’l he’p!”

“Sounds like a job for the local po-leece-man.” Rollie showed me a wide grin.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” I said, removing the fry pan from the flames.

I stood and looked toward the bell-backed wedge tent thirty yards down the row. A small crowd began to gather while a big man, dressed in a linen hunting shirt and knee-britches, held open the entry flap. Several people looked into the ten-by-twelve lodge before recoiling from the sight and smell.

“Excuse me, folks.” I pushed through the crowd. “If there’s a problem, I need to take a look.”

”Jesus Christ, Sam,” Bo Worley, the man holding the canvas flap, said, “I came lookin’ fer Whitey to show him this here powder horn I jest made and found him like this. Lord have mercy!”

I grimaced at G. Noble Whitehead, who sprawled face-up on his red wool blanket. The unusual thing I noticed was a pipe-tomahawk buried deep in his forehead.