"Earl is a man bred for war, I agree, Junie. But I do think that he'll sit this one out on the porch. He's still in pain from wounds, and he knows what a wonderful home you've made for him and the boy."
"Oh, Mr. Sam, you can be such a charmer sometimes. I don't believe a word you say, never have, never will." She laughed and her face lit up.
"Now you sit here, Earl will be along shortly or not, as he sees fit. I will bring you that lemonade and that will be that."
So Sam sat and watched the twilight grow across the land. He could have sat all night, but on this night Earl had decided to come home as quickly as possible, and within a few minutes Sam saw the Arkansas Highway Patrol black-and-white scuttling down the road, pulling up a screen of dust behind it. Earl had meant to asphalt that road for four years now, or at least lay some gravel, but could never quite afford to have it done. Sam had volunteered to front him the money, but Earl of course was stubborn and wanted no debts haunting him, none left for his heirs to owe if his melancholy about the true nature of the world ever proved out and he turned up shot to death in some squalid field.
Earl got out of the car with a smile, for he had seen Sam from a long way off. He loved three things in the world: his family, the United States Marine Corps and Sam.
"Well, Mr. Sam, why didn't you tell me you were coming? Junie, get this mart a drink of something stronger than lemonade and set an extra place."
Earl lumbered up to the porch from his car. He was a big man, over six feet, and still so darkened from the Pacific sun after all these years some thought he was an Indian. He had a rumbly, slow voice famous in the county, and his close bristly hair―he'd removed the Stetson by now―was just beginning to gray. He was near forty years old, and his body was a latticework of scar tissue and jerry-built field-expedient repairs. He'd been stitched up so many times he was almost more surgical thread than human being, testimony to the fact that a war or two will write its record in a man's flesh. His hands were big, his muscles knotty from farm work on weekends and plenty of it, but his face still had the same odd calmness to it that inspired men in combat or terrified men in crime. He looked as if he could handle things. He could.
"He says he won't stay," Junie cried from inside, "though Lord knows I tried. You tie him to a chair and we'll be all set."
"Bob Lee's going to be disappointed if old Sam don't read him a story tonight," Earl said.
"I will stay to read the story, yes, Earl." In his stentorian, courtroom voice, Sam could make a story come more alive than the radio.
"And I wish this were a pure pleasure call. But I do have a matter to discuss."
"Lord. Am I in some kind of trouble?"
"No, sir. Maybe I am, however." It was such a reversal. In some ways, unsaid, Sam had become Earl's version of a father, his own proving to be a disappointment and his need for someone to believe in so crucial to his way of thinking. So he had informally adopted Sam in this role, worked for him for two years as an investigator before Colonel Jenks had managed at last to get Earl on the patrol. The bonds between the two men had grown strong, and Sam alone had heard Earl, who normally never discussed himself, on such topics as the war in the Pacific or the war in Hot Springs.
The two sat; Junie brought her husband a glass of lemonade, and he in turn gave her the Sam Browne belt with the Colt.357, the handcuffs, the cartridge reloaders and such, which she took into the house to secure.
Earl loosened his tie, set his Stetson down on an unused chair. His cowboy boots were dusty, but under the dust shined all the way down to the soles.
"All right," he said. "I am all ears." Sam told him quickly about his commission to go to Thebes, Mississippi, and the tanned, smooth-talking colleague who had put it together for him, and the large retainer.
"Sounds straightforward to me," said Earl.
"But you have heard of the prison at Thebes."
"Never from a white person. White folks prefer to believe such places don't exist. But from the Negroes, yes, occasionally."
"It has an evil reputation."
"It does. I once arrested a courier running too fast up 71 toward Kansas City. He had a trunkful of that juju grass them jazz boys sometimes smoke. He was terrified I's going to send him to Thebes. I thought he'd die of a heart attack he's so scared. Never saw nothing like it. It took an hour to get him settled down, and then of course another hour to make him understand this was Arkansas, not Mississippi, and I couldn't send him to Thebes, even if I wanted to. I sent him to Tucker, instead, where I'm sure he had no picnic. But at the trial, he seemed almost happy.
Tucker was no Thebes, at least not in the Negro way of looking at things."
"They live in a different universe, somehow," Sam said. "It doesn't make sense to us. It is haunted by ghosts and more attuned to the natural and more connected to the earth. Their minds work differently.
You can't understand, sometimes, why they do the things they do. They are us a million years ago." "Maybe that's it," said Earl. "Though the ones I saw on Tarawa, they died and bled the same as white folks."
"Here's why I'm somewhat apprehensive," Sam confessed. "I went up to Fort Smith the other day, and found out what I could find out about this place. Something's going on down there that's gotten me spooked a bit."
"What could spook Sam Vincent?"
"Well, sir, five years ago, according to the Standard and Poor's rating guide to the United States, in Thebes, Mississippi, there was a sawmill, a dry cleaner, a grocery and general store, a picture show, two restaurants, two bar-and-grills, a doctor, a dentist, a mayor, a sheriff, a feed store and a veterinarian."
"Yes?"
"Now there's nothing. All those businesses and all those professional men, they've up and gone."
"All over the South, the Negroes are on the move. Mississippi is cot ton, and cotton isn't king no more. They're riding the Illinois Central up North to big jobs and happier lives."
"I know, and thought the same at first. So I picked at random five towns scattered across Mississippi. And while some have had some social structure reduction and considerable population loss, they remain vibrant. So this does seem strange." Earl said nothing.
Sam continued.
"Then there's this business of the road. There was a highway into Thebes for many years and it too supported businesses and life. Gas stations, diners, barbecue places, that sort of thing. But some time ago, the road washed out, effectively sealing the town and that part of the swamp and the woods off from civilization, well, such civilization as they have in Mississippi. You'd think a civic structure would get busy opening that road up, for the road is the river of opportunity, especially in the poor, rural South. Yet now, all these years later, it remains washed out, and as far as I can learn, no one has made an attempt to open it.
The only approach to what remains of Thebes is a long slow trip by boat up that dark river. That's not a regular business either. The prison launches make the journey for supplies on a weekly basis, and to pick up prisoners, but the place is sealed off.
You don't get there easily, you don't get back easily, and everybody seems to want it that way. Now doesn't that seem strange?" "Well, sir," said Earl, "maybe it's a case of no road, no town, and that's why it's all drying up down there."
"It would seem so. But the decline of Thebes had already begun three years earlier. It was as if the road was the final ribbon on the package, not what was inside the package." "Hmmm," said Earl. "If you are that worried, possibly you shouldn't go."
"Well, sir, I can't not go. I have accepted a retainer and I have a professional obligation I cannot and would not evade."
"Would you like me to come along, in case there's nasty surprises down there?"
"No, no, Earl, of course not. I just want you to know what is going on.
I have here an envelope containing my file on the case, all my findings, my plan of travel and so forth. I leave tomorrow on the ten forty five out of Memphis, and should reach New Orleans by five. I'll spend the ni
ght there, and have hired a car the next morning to take me to Pascagoula. Presumably I'll find a boatman, and I'll reach town late the day after tomorrow. If I can find a telephone, I'll call you or my wife and leave messages on a daily basis. If I can't find a telephone, well then, I shall just complete my business and come on home."
"Well, let's pick a date, and if you ain't home by that time, then I'll make it my business to figure out what's happening."
"Thank you, Earl. Thank you so much. You saw where I was headed."
"Mr. Sam, you can count on me."
"Earl, if you say something, I know it's done."
"I'd bring a firearm. Not one of your hunting rifles, but a handgun.
You still have an Army forty-five, I believe."
"No, Earl. I am a man of reason, not guns. I'm a lawyer. The gun cannot be my way. Logic, fairness, humanity, the rule of the law above all else, those are my guidelines."
"Mr. Sam, where you're going, maybe such things don't cut no ice.
I'll tell you this, if I have to come, I'll be bringing a gun."
"You have to do it your way, and I have to do it mine. So be it. Now let's read a story to Bob Lee."
"I think he'd like that. He likes the scary ones the best."
"You still have that book of Grimm's?"
"His favorite."
"I know there's a dark tale or two in there."
"A dark tale it will be, then."
Sam loved New Orleans, he was moderate and professional the night he stayed there, avoiding its temptations. He took a room in a tourist home, ate at a diner, went to sleep early after meticulously recording all his expenditures for his client. The next morning, he rendezvoused with his car and driver, and commenced the drive along the gulf coast down U. S. 90, passing quickly from Louisiana into Mississippi.
It was, at first at least, a pleasant drive, with a driver named Eddie, who knew how to keep his mouth shut, and his big, comfortable Lasalle.
"It's a 1940," Eddie said, "the last and the best." And that was the only thing Eddie said.
Sam had removed and folded his coat, rolled up his sleeves, put his straw Panama on the seat next to him, and let the cooling air stream in through the open windows of the big black car. Of course he did not loosen his tie; after all, one did not do such things. There were limits. But he got out his pipe and lit up a bowlful, and simply watched the sights. On his right, the gulf's blue tide lapped against the white sands, and small towns fled by, each quaint and cute enough for a tourist trade that was beginning to catch hold. The small cities along the way were white, sunny places, Gulfport and Biloxi, further given over to tourists. He could see young couples on the beach, some of them beautiful some not so beautiful. Beach umbrellas furled against the gulf breezes and homes had rooms to let, many of them with free television as the signs proudly proclaimed.
But beyond Biloxi, it changed. No one came here for the sun or the sand, and no beaches had been cleared. It was just mangoes and ferns and scrub pine and vegetation whose only distinguishing feature was its generic green viney quality, down to a strip of soil before the water which, Sam fancied (maybe it was his imagination) had changed in tone from carefree blue to a dirty brown. The sediment this far down floated unsettled in the water, giving it the look of an immense sewer.
It smelled, also, some pungent chemical odor.
Pascagoula, it turned out, was a city of industry. Paper plants dominated, and shipbuilding came second, and it was a city that had once strained mightily to produce. Now, hard times had hit it. The paper industry was down, and shipbuilding had stopped with the end of the war.
It was a sad place; the boom of the war years had dried to bust, but everyone had a taste for the big, easy money of before.
Again, maybe he was imagining too much, but he thought he saw despair and lassitude everywhere. The streets felt empty; signs were not freshly painted, and commerce was not active. It all baked under a hot sun, the stench from the paper mills enough to give a man a crushing headache.
"Sir, do you have a particular destination? Do you want to go to a hotel?"
Sam looked at his watch. It was only 11:00 a. m." and, yes, he did want to go to a hotel, have a nice lunch, lie down in a room with a strong fan or maybe some air-conditioning, take a nap. But it was not in him to do so. He was rigid about everything, but most of all about duty and obligation.
"No, Eddie, I've got to push on. Uh, do you know the town?"
"Not hardly, sir. I'm a N'Awleens boy. Don't like to come out to these here hot little no' count places."
"Well, then, I suppose we'd best start at the town hall or the police station. I'd like to confer with officials before I venture further."
"Yes, sir. B'lieve I c'n hep you there."
Eddie located the single municipal building quickly enough, a town hall on one street, a police station, complete to fleets of motorcycles and squad cars parked outside, on the other.
Sam chose the administrative before the enforcement. He suited up again, tightening all that could be tightened, straightening all that could be straightened, and implanting the Panama squarely up top as befit his position and dignity. Eddie left him in front of grand stairs that led to not much of a door; he climbed them and ducked between statues of Confederate heroes facing the gulf.
He entered to a foyer, consulted with a clerk at a desk, got directions, entered a set of hallways to look for the city prosecutor's office. It was not at all hard to find, and he went through the opaque-glassed doors to find a waiting room with leather chairs and magazines under the rubric white only. Through a doorway that bore the sign colored only he could see another room, ruder and filled with more rickety furniture, all jammed up with pitiful Negroes. He turned to the white secretary behind a desk, whose hair was tidy but who ruled by right of a harsh face and too much makeup.
He presented his card.
"And, sir?"
"And I wonder, ma'am, if I could have a word with Mr…" he struggled to remember the name painted on the door, then did. "Car rut hers "What is this in reference to?" she said, with a Southern smile that meant nothing whatsoever.
"Ma'am, I am a prosecutor myself, only recently retired on the basis of electoral whimsy. I wish to speak with my colleague."
"You from here in Mississip?"
"No, ma'am. Up a bit. Arkansas, Polk County, in the west. It's on the card."
"Well, I'll see."
It wasn't Carruthers who came to get him but a Mr. Redfield, an assistant city attorney, who made a show of ignoring the unfortunate Negroes in the back room and shook his hand heartily, escorting him back to a clean little office. As they walked, Sam searched his memory, and at last realized why Redfield admitted him: they'd met at some convention in Atlantic City in 1941, with a group of other prosecutors, all having a last fling before the war did with them what it did.
"Glad to see you made it back, Mr. Redfield," Sam said.
"Never got the chance to leave, alas," said the man, as they walked into the door of a clean little cubicle. "Four-F. Stayed here prosecuting draft dodgers while you boys had all the fun. Where'd you end up?
Europe, wasn't it?"
"Finally. Ended up in the artillery."
"Win anything big?"
"No, just did the job. Glad to be back in one piece."
Redfield broke out the bourbon and poured himself and Sam a tot.
Tasted fine, too. They settled into chairs, chatted somewhat aimlessly on the subject of the others in attendance of that long ago convention, who was dead, who divorced, who quit, who rich, who poor. Redfield then segued neatly into local politics and gossip, his chances for getting the big job in the next election or maybe it would be better to wait until '56, local conditions, which weren't good, except for, he laughed heartily, the coming of some Northern fool's waterproof coffin company to the South, which would put the ship carpenters to some good use until it failed, ha ha ha, or the gub'mint lost so many destroyers off Korea it needed to build some new o
nes. Sam didn't really care, but down South here, it was the way business was done, until finally, when a ten-second pause and a second drink announced it to be the time, he launched into particulars.
He explained, concluding with his unease about the upcoming trip.
"Well," said Redfield, "truth be told, I don't know much about Thebes.
That's two counties up the river, and not much between but bayou and wild niggers and Choctaws living on ' and catfish, then finally your piney woods, thick as hell. Too thick for white people."
"Ah, I see."
"Don't know why any feller'd go up there he didn't have to."
"Well, Redfield, I really don't want to. But I've accepted the job. I was hoping you'd write me a letter of introduction or give me a name of a colleague to whose good offices I could appeal."
"Most counties, that'd work just fine, that'd be the way to do it. But Thebes now, Thebes is different. It's the prison farm, and that's about all. You'd have to git into our state corrections bureaucracy, and I do know those boys run their territory very tight and private-like. Don't like strangers, especially strangers from up North―"
"Arkansas? Up North?"
"Now, mind you, I ain't saying I'd be in agreement with that sentiment, but that would be how their minds work. I'm only clarifying here.
They're a clannish bunch. They've got a system full of colored men, some of whom may be het up on juju, some on booze, some on Northern communist agitation, all that plus your natural Negro tendency toward chaos, irrationality and of' Willie thumping Willie on Saturday night just for something to do. So them boys got a whole lot on their minds, hear? I wouldn't just go poking about now." "I see," said Sam.
"What I'd do, you'll pardon me for presuming, I'd just turn around, head back up North. Yes, sir. Then write that fellow in Chicago, tell him everything's fine, he don't got to worry, the death certificate be on its way. I mean, it's only probate now, isn't it? Then I'd forget all about it. Come time, he'll write some angry letters, but hell, he's a Yankee, that's all they know how to do is act all indignant."
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