Pale Horse Coming

by Stephen Hunter

  “It’s some war thing, isn’t it, Mr. Sam? Earl is a man who somehow needs a war. He saw too much war and now he has no other way to feel fully alive. His wife and child just don’t supply what he needs. He tried to get to Korea, you know.”

  “Yes, Junie, I know.”

  “But they refused. They did not want a man with his record getting shot up on some terrible ridge in a little country nobody ever heard of.”

  “I suppose no, they did not.”

  “So Earl has gone looking for another ridge upon which to die, and this time, I’m sure, for even less. For nothing at all, in fact. Mr. Sam, no man that I have ever heard tell of is like that. Why is Earl like that?”

  “Junie, I assure you, he is not in desperate, warlike circumstances.”

  “Oh, Mr. Sam, you are such a bad liar for a man so good with words. Or maybe it’s that you yourself see the truth of what I am saying regarding Earl, and so you can’t lie with the usual polish. But we both know Earl is in some terrible mess and may well die. I hope if he dies we know about it, and so can go on with our lives. I cannot have him simply disappear. That would be too cruel. Death would be hard enough, and for this boy to have no father, that would be so tragic. But for him just to be gone; no, I could not get through that.”

  “He will return. I promise.”

  “You cannot promise, Mr. Sam. You know Earl as well as I do, and you know no promise can cover his behavior. He makes his own choices on his own needs, for reasons about which I know nothing. No one does, no one ever will. That is the way he is.”

  On that displeasing note, the conversation concluded, and Sam went out to his car. The boy, Bob Lee, was sitting on the running board.

  “Whar my daddy?” the child asked sternly.

  “Son, he is off someplace doing something important. He will return as soon as possible, but your father is a particular man of duty, and will do what must be done or bust. That is why he is such a good policeman.”

  “What’s ‘duty’?”

  “I can’t explain it. It’s doing the right thing, no matter what it costs. If it’s easy, it’s not your duty, it’s your job. Most people do their jobs, but only a few, like your daddy, do their duties.”

  “I want my daddy.”

  “Son, if it is possible, he will return, I swear to you.”

  The boy fixed Sam with unblinking eyes and stared almost through him. For a second, Sam thought he was confronted by the father himself, and then he concluded that little Bob Lee probably had it in him to be just such a man as Earl, as would any of Earl’s sons, if he had more.

  When Sam got back to his office on the town square, he discovered yet another surprise: what he recognized, outside, as the limousine owned by or rented by Mr. Trugood. That gentleman himself awaited indoors, in Sam’s office.

  “Mr. Trugood, sir.”

  “Mr. Vincent, I came as soon as possible. This is very disturbing news.”

  “Sir, I am as upset about it as you are.”

  “You have to admit, please: I did not authorize the involvement of another man. This was your doing? I am not here to evade consequences, but I do have to have that acknowledged at the start.”

  “Mr. Trugood, are you seeking to avoid a lawsuit?”

  “No, I am not. I am more concerned with my own conscience. I would not have put another man in such jeopardy on so trivial a matter. That’s my concern, and only that.”

  “Then you may rest. Earl did what he did for me, not for you. He doesn’t know of you. But he is a man of great loyalty who may feel toward me what could be similar to a son’s feelings, even though we are close in age. It was his decision to risk all on my behalf.”

  “I do not mean to separate myself from him, but only to support him on my own moral compass. Is that fair? I seek to be fair. I know a good deal about unfairness.”

  “Yes, sir. That would be fair. Fair as fair could be.”

  “Good. I thought so. Then I am here to support him in any way possible. What can we do about it?”

  “As yet, I don’t know. I don’t know if he was taken by the prison or the county authorities or by anyone at all. I have had no communication from him. But they are capable of anything. That is an evil place down there. I never knew such a place could exist in this country in this century after we fought a war to liberate men from these kinds of things all over the world.”

  “Should you call the police? Surely a Mississippi state police agency would intercede in local matters.”

  “Sir, in that part of the South, I’m not so sure. It’s different. It’s cut off, isolated, they have their own rough way of doing things, and I suspect certain folks in Jackson like it that way. But Earl did grab me hard, as I said, and made me promise not to instigate an investigation or raise a complaint. He thought that could put him in more, rather than less, danger.”

  “Do you share that assessment?”

  “I don’t know. Earl is a good judge of matters of force and violence, as I have indicated. He knows better than most how such men operate, and he can operate with the best of them. This is what he wanted. He was afraid that if outside pressures were brought to bear, they would result in his death rather than his release, assuming he’s even been taken.”

  “I find it hard to stand by and do nothing.”

  “I do, too.”

  “We should set a time. Say, one month from now. If we haven’t heard from him by then, then I would urge you to begin to apply every pressure you know how. Is that fair?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I would advise this, too: If we are to in any way move to change events in Thebes County, then we will have to know all about Thebes County. Would it not make sense to begin some kind of research project, so that we could know all about how Thebes County became Thebes County, who is responsible, what local conditions ensue? Would that not be a wise course?”

  “I’ve already begun, sir. Earl is my friend, and I am torn as to what to do, and I feel guilty as sin for being here, among my children and friends, comfortable and at ease, while he is in extremes. I say that even though I know him to be a man of superior capability, and that if he can in some way escape and survive, he will do it.”

  “Here is a check, Mr. Vincent, drawn on my bank in Chicago.”

  “Sir, I have not asked for money. Earl is my friend.”

  “Then he is my friend, too, and what he has done on your behalf he has done on my behalf, and on my client’s behalf and on Lincoln Tilson’s behalf. All of us in a row are beholden to him, and I cannot live with myself if I sit back and do nothing. So I want this check going into a sort of working fund. Any expense that is necessary for the rescue or release of Earl should come from this; I leave it to you to put some portion of it with his wife and child, for theirs can’t be an easy lot while they wait. But use the money wisely, Mr. Vincent, and keep me informed. You have the number.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Vincent, I will say I am very pleased about your escape and impressed with the dedication you Arkansans have to one another. We could use some of that kind of loyalty up in Chicago. I know some families where loyalty like that isn’t much applied.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will begin to find a way to crack this nut right away. I only hope we have not in our way declared a war, without even realizing it. Wars can be hard to control and too many of the innocent can die.”

  “Though if you must wage them, I take it Earl Swagger is just the man for such an enterprise.”

  “Yes. That is his genius. And also his tragedy.”

  16

  IN the coffin it is not the heat, even though that is considerable. It is not your own filth, which soaks you, and the odor of your corruption, which assails you. It is not the darkness, though that is a special hell of its own. It’s not the solitude, at least not for Earl, a man accustomed to solitude and able to endure it more lightly than most. It’s not the rats, or whatever they may be, that skitter over your feet or may be felt examining you
r particulars, or the occasional insect bite. All of that is miserable in its own pure right, but it may be borne by a strong man who believes in what he is doing.

  What it is, really, is the space. Or the lack of it. The sense of being crushed, of being utterly helpless. That is why they call it the coffin, and that is why it is so terrible.

  The box is six feet long and about twelve inches deep. It is framed in concrete out on the harsh and pitiless yard behind the Whipping House, near some trees, but sited to catch the sun’s full blast. Its floor is concrete and it has no comforts at all, just the rawness of the concrete beneath and the overwhelming encasement of the steel, which draws and magnifies the heat and whose closeness permits no air circulation, so breathing itself becomes labored and sometimes a cause for panic.

  Supine and stiff, with no room to flex any joint, Earl found only a universe of corrugated steel. Above, it was but two inches from his face. He could not move. The sense of claustrophobia grew in geometrical degrees, and came in a very short time to weigh immensely upon him. In any case, he was not a man for stillness, and this stillness, enforced by a wall an inch beyond his nose, an inch beyond each hand, an inch from the top of his head and the bottom of his feet, this sense of being pinioned, of being trapped, locked, broken: this was difficult.

  Earl tried not to scream. But panic was his constant enemy. If he didn’t work at relaxation, the panic, liberated by the pain and the misery and the darkness and the closeness, flew out of control. He yearned so desperately to sit up. Sitting up seemed a paradise worth dying to attain. Rolling over was too greedy a goal and stretching seemed positively indecent.

  Here the time passed slowly. It drained by, as he could feel the tickle of the sweat as it departed his hairline, drawing a tickly track of irritation down his face. That was the only measure of time, except that by the excess, brutal heat, he could tell it was day and by the endless shivering of the dark, he could tell it was night.

  No one came for him. No one fed him or watered him. He pissed and shat where he lay and starved or gulped dryly in thirst over time. He was alone in the world, literally buried alive. In there, thoughts of death came naturally to him, and he began to pray for the arrival of that old friend.

  Then he rallied, at least a little. He tried to find a place where he could go to relax, where memories could overcome the present. He examined his life for oases of respite, where the sensations of well-being were so overwhelming they could even overcome this grotesqueness.

  It didn’t work, not even a little.

  Each wonderful memory in a life soon produced a moment of pain, which jerked him down to the steel an inch away.

  He thought of surviving the islands, and that only got him melancholy for those who hadn’t.

  He thought of the day his son was born, but he was so exhausted he somehow missed truly feeling that, and there was a look so soon in Junie’s eyes that expressed some kind of disappointment.

  He thought of a boxing match he’d won in a different world, before there had been a Second World War, and everything was different, and the joy had been so thorough: it was the first time he’d really ever won a goddamn thing, and he had been so proud. But then he knew his daddy would say “You was just lucky, boy,” even if his daddy was a world away across the huge Pacific, but still that harsh truth sucked the joy from that pleasure and opened his eyes, and there was his steel wall in the blackness, an inch off, and the suffocating smell of his own filth, and the touch of some other form of life finding him fascinating, and horror that this would be his forever and ever, that all the things he had tried to do would come only to this, the coffin.

  You can get through this, he told himself, to quell the panic that again flashed through his brain and made him ache for release, for freedom, for some other chance, even if he doubted he could get through this.

  He was a physical man, used to the freedom of movement and the expression of his strength. Physical enemies he could vanquish, and he was used to them and to that process. He knew better than most how to fight, how to win a fight, where to look for weakness, how to exploit it, when to show mercy and when to close for the kill.

  But here there was no enemy except his own immobility and the immensity of the steel and concrete crushing him. He tried to focus on Bigboy or the sheriff or the warden, or on old Pepper, the dog man, who’d kicked him so savagely when he was down.

  He could not hold these images in his mind. They slipped away, as if he hadn’t the energy to hate them now, he was too weak.

  He was scared. So many thought he was so brave, but he knew bravery to be a kind of fraud. He was alone and terrified that now, at the end, he would disgrace himself. Even with the noose around his neck he had not been particularly scared, for he’d been anesthetized from fear by rage. He had just wanted to kill those crackers who were lynching him.

  But now, again, his strength was meaningless and without an enemy to focus on, his rage deserted him and he felt defeated. It hardly seemed worth it.

  He hated that, and possibly it was the warden’s shrewdness that saw how this would plague him. In fact, he saw that that was the point of the coffin: it was for strong, active men, that is, violent Negro felons, who were so full of hatred they felt no fear. It was superbly designed to crush them so totally—both in the exact meaning of that phrase but also in the larger, more philosophical kind of way—that their minds gave up, and they were broken. It was an expression of the ultimate power of what the Negroes call “the Man,” meaning the white boss, who was so all-powerful he could not allow a single threat, even in the form of a petty theft, to his rule. But even knowing that did not stop it from working so well.

  He yearned to straighten up. He tried not to think of it, or of water, or of the pleasures of a good stretch, or of the simple dog’s freedom to roll over and scratch your own butt, and these things, now denied, seemed more valuable than gold or diamonds or, possibly, even love.

  Pain was everywhere, in places he hadn’t known he had. His lower back itself ached tragically, for the tightness of the coffin held it at a wrong angle, against the concrete, and muscles unused to that tension soon rebelled. His elbows were rubbed raw, and so were his heels. His ass itched because of the foulness there, and that seemingly minor irritation tunneled deep into his brain and was possibly the worst thing, for it made him ashamed of being alive, and made him hate himself for his filth.

  He tried not to give in to self-pity, but there was nobody to hide it from. He tried not to give in to rage at, of all people, Sam, for his stupidity, good-hearted though it might have been, in swearing him to a vow of not killing, and thereby dooming him, at the expense of Sam’s own sense of morality. Sam got to feel moral; Earl got to die alone, paralyzed, in the suffocating heat, with ants and spiders eating him, and his wild and crazed yearning for the simple freedom of moving his head or turning his neck.

  It grew and grew and grew, this big thing, this weight. He felt an urge to scream.

  Tell them, he thought.

  Tell them you’re nobody; you’re an Arkansas cop who came looking after his buddy, a man he owed much to, your boy’s godfather. You meant no harm. They could just let you go and it would all be over.

  Yes, and then they’ll kill you and bury you and that’s all there is. You’ll never be heard from again. You’ll be nothingness, and that’s what got Earl through it: he refused to be nothing. On that issue alone he could fight them.

  I will not be nothing.

  I will fight you, even from the coffin.

  He closed his eyes, but he could not sleep. He itched, he ached, he shat, he stank, he was lunch for something and dinner for something else and he could not move his face or his head or his shoulder and he didn’t know how he’d get through it.

  17

  SAM recalled what he had learned of Thebes before his trip, remembering the decline in the town and the unrepaired road that cut the place off from casual visitors and dried up economic prospects. At the Fort Smith Public
Library, he looked up the WPA Guide to the Magnolia State, and there refreshed himself on the subject of Thebes State Penal Farm (Colored) and Thebes County. It was listed on Tour 15, which drew travelers, however few of them there may have been, down into the southeastern corner from Waynesboro to Moss Point. It was the shortest tour in the whole damn book over a “remote backwoods section about which little has been written [where] economic and social development have been slower, perhaps, than in any part of the State.” He looked up the Mississippi state guidebook and went to “penal system” in the index. There was a whole batch of numbers behind the subheading “Parchman Farms,” the big complex in the Delta, but for Thebes there was only one page number, on which it was stated merely that the prison was founded in 1927 on the old Bonverite Plantation as a satellite of the Parchman Farms, as a place to segregate particularly violent Negro convicts. No visiting hours or amenities were cited.

  That at least gave Sam two clues to work with, the old Bonverite Plantation and the year 1927. For this work, he decided he had to go to Jackson, Mississippi’s capital, loath though he was to reinsert himself into that state’s unwelcoming climate. But after once again checking the circulars in the Blue Eye police department (where he was still highly regarded and where everyone assumed he’d be prosecuting attorney again after the next election), he learned that no “wanted” bulletins had been sent out with his name on them, and so he went ahead, with his wife’s sullenness, his children’s indifference and Connie Longacre’s blessings.

  The trip there, by train and bus, was uneventful, though made livelier by far by what had been missing from the first part of his last trip, which is Mississippi hospitality. Everywhere he went it seemed he met people willing to help him with his business, to make calls and arrangements for him, to do what had to be done. His first appointment was with a Mrs. James Beaufueillet (“That would be ‘bo-fwew-yay,’ son”) Ridgeway III, who turned out to be the state’s youngest living Confederate widow, in that her late husband, whom she had married when he was sixty and she twenty, had run at the Yankee position with Pickett and his fellows, and carried a ball in his lungs ever since that day, Lord only knows how he survived it in the first place. Mrs. Ridgeway III, formidable in her own way as the German panzers Sam had blown to hell and gone that snowy day in Belgium, was custodian of the memories, as a fellow prosecutor in Jackson told him. That is, she knew the social history of the old Mississippi, and it would be she who would verse him on the Bonverite Plantation.