Pale Horse Coming

by Stephen Hunter

  “Would you care for more coffee, Mr. Vincent?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I was just looking at the photos and tributes on the wall. I wish I’d known the doctor during his lifetime. It would have been an honor and a privilege.”

  A dreamy look of assent flew across the woman’s face, which itself was her reply, and off she fled to get more coffee.

  “The engineers have at last finished the levee,” the doctor wrote, “and we can therefore count on uninterrupted work. No more floods, no more lost documents and protocols, no more horror stories terrifying the ‘natives’ around here.”

  Hmmm. Army engineers had built a levee to protect the doctor’s project from flood damage? This in the middle of the war—July 6, 1943, Sam was in Sicily then—when engineers were in high demand in the world’s combat theaters. That suggested how important official Washington considered his project or how much private influence a mere major could wield even in the military, if he were charming, famous, charismatic, well connected. Sam remembered the crumbly bridges his guns had traveled as they crossed that rocky island, and how he’d lost one, and two men, both maimed for life, when in some nameless village the truss bridge built by the Romans had given way, and collapse had ensued. They could have used more engineers in the Sicily of 1943.

  “My spirits are high, darling, and we are making progress. I must say even the ‘volunteers’ are taking this in good cheer. They want to do their part too! Everybody wants to win the war, so they can go back to their loved ones proud of what they’ve done to put Herr Hitler and Tojo-san out of business!”

  Sam wondered about those innocent quote marks around “volunteers”; to a sophisticated man such as Dr. Stone, punctuation could express a whole range of subtle irony and camouflaged meaning; was it some reflection of ambivalence on his part, a whisper of cynicism, a subconscious projection of contempt?

  It all began to change by the spring of 1944. Evidently the early days of great progress had run into a wall and, medically, whatever it was the doctor was working on now resisted his efforts.

  Darling, I’m afraid I won’t see you next weekend as I had promised. There’s so much to do here and so little time. Now that the invasion is imminent, I’m losing personnel to go to Europe. It seems I’ve slipped a little in the priority department. It’s as if they expect miracles, and when I can’t produce them overnight, they lose confidence in me and the project. It’s so damned unfair, but then, I keep reminding myself, that is the way the military works. It’s very much like it was at the Hopkins with batches of us competing for attention, and first this project and then that looks the most rewarding and gets the lion’s share of the funding. But I soldier on, darling, and will see you as soon as possible. Love and kisses, your ever-loyal David.

  David canceled his next leave, too; that was August of 1944, and in December, he was even sharper.

  Darling, I love you truly, but I cannot in good conscience have you coming even to New Orleans. There has been a shift in the direction our program is taking us, and I feel I must be here constantly to supervise our reconfiguration. Moreover, in these momentous times, darling, we must discipline ourselves and give all to the immense task at hand, especially when the end is so near and we are so close to victory and to a return to our way of life. To have you taking up valuable railroad space to see someone as insignificant as me is simply wrong; best give that seat to the war widow, the kid on last pass before hitting some godforsaken Pacific atoll, the fellow on compassionate leave over a sick and dying mother. Meanwhile, in my way, I struggle on, fighting for what I believe and doing my damndest to eradicate the ancient enemy.

  Sam thought he was getting a little florid and over-melodramatic; the woman’s passage to New Orleans by December of 1944 certainly wouldn’t have counted a bean’s worth against the war effort. Again it felt emotionally inauthentic, as if something were wrong.

  In the next letter, Sam realized what was wrong: the guy had a screw loose. He was nuts.

  Yes, we are making good progress in our new direction, but it’s hard, in a way. He was our ancient enemy, who has stalked us for years. He’s been a wary adversary. Now we try to make him work for us, and yet he’s still the enemy. It’s like collaborating suddenly with a Nazi, very depressing but I’m sure very necessary. So I still wrestle him, though now I try to wrestle him to our side. Am I tarnished for my vanity, for my belief I can master him? Perhaps. But then I realize, I don’t matter, the only thing that matters is continuing the struggle, and what others might think of me, well, that too is meaningless against the larger, more insistent drama of the crusade. Darling, when I think of your sweet pureness in this world that is so filled with filth, perversion, decadence, weakness, cowardice, it sickens me. It is not right. Darling, you are too good for this world.

  What was going on with the doctor? Was he delirious? Was he losing control? Nowhere in all the previous correspondence had such an insane note been struck; it was as if the doctor were no longer himself and no longer writing these letters. Some other had taken over, some Being. And what was this mysterious “change in direction” in the project? Whatever, that certainly seemed to be upsetting the doctor. Was it driving him insane, as he tried to reconcile his “goodness” with whatever the new aims were?

  There was a long lapse in the letters, at least six months’ worth. By June of 1945, the doctor’s mind was really scrambled:

  Am I God? I think not. I never wanted to b God! But science makes us God, or at least gods: what are we to do? I sought to learn the truth, to help, and that humble mission was enough for me. Yet THEY sought me out, and let me have my way. They made me a GOD! They gave me the POWER! What is life and death to a GOD? I smote what was evil, wherever I could find it. I found it in my own heart and there I smote it most grievously, but in doing that, I smote myself. In dying, I learned I was not GOD, I was but a man. I am so sorry we lost the baby all those years ago. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when it happened. I am so sorry what was going on through the microscope was more real to me than what was going on in my own house. I am so sorry about all I did before you. Darling, forgive me. I never meant to be GOD.

  There were but two other letters. The penultimate was from the War Department.

  Mrs. David Stone, 12 Druid Hill Park Drive, Apartment 854, Baltimore, Maryland.

  Dear Mrs. Stone, the War Department regrets to inform you that your husband, David M. Stone, MAJ., U.S. Army Medical Corps, died of complications after a short illness June 23, 1945, at his post at the medical research facility at Thebes, Miss.

  Major Stone did a great deal to assist his country in the pursuit of final victory and we are saddened that he did not make it through the conflict.

  Yours Very Warmly,

  George C. Marshall

  Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

  United States Army

  Washington, D.C.

  But the last V-letter arrived after the death notice; presumably Dr. Stone had written it as he faced death full in the face on his last night.

  It only said: “The darkness.”

  “Such a shame,” she said.

  He was not sure when the woman had entered. She stood across from him now, pale and beautiful as death, as he put down the last letter.

  “Ma’am, I’m very sorry.”

  “Was this of any help?”

  “Well, uh, I’m not certain. It contains certain leads I may be able to follow up on. Time will tell.”

  “He tried so hard. He fought so valiantly. He was such a hero.”

  “Ma’am, toward the end, he seemed to be…well, not quite himself. Do you have any idea what was going on? And there was something about a ‘change in direction’ in the research. Do you know what that could be?”

  “I presume the disease was working on his mind. I wrote him letter after letter begging him to slow down, to relax, to go on leave. I wrote the War Department, the Medical Corps, everyone I could think of, or knew. I could feel him getting dangerously mixed up.
As for the change he mentioned, I honestly couldn’t say. He didn’t share things like that with me.”

  “‘The darkness.’ What could that have been?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was done with the body?”

  “It was shipped back in a closed coffin. He was buried here in a small, somber ceremony.”

  “Here?”

  “Here in Baltimore.”

  “He’s in Baltimore?”

  “Yes, Mr. Vincent. At Green Mount Cemetery. But what would this have to do with your case? After all, you represent a man suing the State of Mississippi for a wrongful death well after the end of the war.”

  Sam didn’t even have an answer: he was thinking, I have to get that body autopsied.

  26

  WHETHER the boy died right away or later was unknown. In any event, he had been more or less in survivable condition by the time the guards arrived at 4:00 A.M. and he was hauled off, though not, he was assured, to the Screaming House.

  Earl thought he’d make it. The cut wasn’t deep, but arterial, and he’d spent the last two hours with his fingers in the boy’s thigh, pinching off the blood flow, while the boy moaned for his mama over and over again. The other men had gotten him calmed with their strength and their music.

  But he died, anyway.

  As for Moon, the same hidden convict grapevine conveyed the news that his jaw was broken and he’d been wired up as best as possible, but he had to be shipped via the prison launch to Pascagoula, where a surgeon would repair his jaw and he’d be in a maximum security ward while his jaw healed. He’d be back in a few weeks or so.

  It was another day on the levee. Earl worked hard, though at a strange angle, because he didn’t want to stress his own wound, which had not been stitched closed as it should be but instead bound up with linens. He knew a sudden twist or jump and the blood would start spurting again. It wasn’t arterial, so he wouldn’t bleed out fast. He’d just get weaker and weaker.

  The sun was a monster’s eye that day. It was a huge, angry thing, and it poured out its fiery radiance, and it sucked the energy and the will off them all. The flies, the skeeters. The heavy work, the poor food, the never-enough water. Section Boss sneering at Earl up top his horse, but now, since he’d kept himself alive much longer than anybody had expected, keeping a wary distance. They were afraid of Earl now, the guards. Earl liked that. Somewhere deep inside himself, he liked that a lot.

  The rain came at 3:00. It slashed down from heaven with such vengeance that even Section Boss, now in a hunter’s poncho, understood that it was pointless to work, a rare concession to the elements. He commanded the convicts out of the soupy hole and up to the levee, where they could at least sit this one out.

  Earl sat, as usual, alone. But he had a strange sense that men were closer to him than before.

  “You, white boy. You box? You musta boxed, boy. You gots fast hands.” The voice came from directly behind him, but nobody was looking at him.

  “Did some fighting in the service,” Earl said, in response to the first question anyone had asked other than Moon or one of his young thugs.

  “I worked corners and cuts for a coupla years. You gots fast hands and can slip a punch. Nice jab combo.”

  “You pick things up,” was all Earl allowed himself to say.

  “You so smart, buckra, how come you done made a big mistake? You be dumb as any nigger, ask me.”

  “What mistake is that?”

  “You shoulda kilt Moon. He down, he out of the fight. You should have pulled that blade out of that no’count Junior and come over and gutted Moon.”

  “He’d said he was through.”

  “You is dumb, buckra. You is dumb. That boy gonna come back with one thing on he mind. He goin’ kill you. You done messed up his old haid twicet, he gots to kill you. You best kill him first night he gits back, else he kills you deader ’n a motherfucker.”

  It was solid advice, Earl knew. Moon wasn’t the sort of man who’d learn a lesson. He’d get through his pain and fury in the prison ward in Pascagoula, wired up without anesthetic, and he’d lay in silent pain for a week or two or three, in the darkness, and all that time he’d nurture his hatred for Earl, he’d think on it and polish it and lick it shiny, until there was no other thing in his mind, no other thing at all. That was the way a fellow like Moon worked.

  So: Earl had to kill him.

  Or: Earl had to prepare to die.

  Or: Earl had to escape.

  None of the possibilities were inspirational to him. Instead, he just tried to fight the despair by snatching a quiet moment in the warm, hard rain, feeling slightly cleansed for the moment. He looked around: fronds of palmetto pulsed out of the green undergrowth, and before him, down the levee slope and in the hole, though the ground had turned even muddier and more desperate, the vegetation was green and glisteny. It was like a Guadalcanal in Mississippi, where the beauty of the wild place stood in contrast to the squalor of the savagery. That was the now. That was the present. That he could enjoy.

  “Hey,” he said to the man who had spoken to him, “tell me something. The Screaming House Junior was yelling about. What would that be?”

  “You don’t want to go there, white boy. Take my word on that.”

  “It’s the end of the line?”

  “You see them bedbug-crazy boys down ’end of the barracks? Look, they standing over there.”

  Earl glanced quickly through the rain, to a small knot of gibbering crazies who were shunned and stood apart from the others. He recognized a few: the fellow who talked to himself, the fellow who gripped his own arms so tightly you thought he’d squeeze himself to death, the gentleman with the fused spine who looked as though an iron bolt had been sunk through the center of his spindly old body. Each had a bright red number painted on his shirt so that he could be recognized.

  “Them boys should be in a hospital someplace.”

  “Ain’t no hospitals here. Only the Screaming House. You ain’t been here long enough, but when one gits so bad he can’t work, they comes git him in the night. They takes him off to the Screaming House. We calls it that. No man never seen it. It’s off to the west a bit. Fish claims it’s cool there, and clean. But off goes a crazy boy and you can hear him in the night, the wind is right, the weather calm. You can hear him screaming. He scream and scream and scream. These country niggers let a place like that grow on their minds, think it’s some kind of torture place. Think these guards got a special torture place.”

  “What happens?”

  “The screaming stops. That boy don’t never come back. Nobody never comes back from the Screaming House.”

  “I will avoid that place if I can,” said Earl. “What they sick from?”

  “Don’t know, white boy. Some say it’s bad blood. Some say it’s the fevers of the river. Some say it’s the shots they give us when the doctor look us over every three-fo’ months.”

  “What kind of doctor would let men like that fry in the sun?”

  “The white kind,” said the man, simply, and that seemed to end the conversation.

  Earl noticed the rain had stopped just as suddenly as it had started, and now shed of his poncho, his tommygun named Mabel Louise gleaming from frequent cleanings, Section Boss rode the levee road commanding the convicts back into the hole.

  “Git ’er goin’, you lazy niggers. Work to be done. You too, white boy, you git on down there and don’t you think you be slackin’ none. I catch you leaning, I’m going to beat your hide with my stick, boy.”

  Earl rose, feeling the endless pains cut at him. His respite was over. The hole beckoned, with its sucking mud and stubborn, iron-hard cyprus stumps and its endless tangles of bramble and thorn, its mosquitoes, its snakes.

  “You do what Section Boss says, or I be on you ass, white boy, and maybe, heh heh, I be in yo’ ass!”

  It was Fish, who’d jingled up on his mule-drawn cart unnoticed during the rain.

  “You tell him, Fish!” came
the cry from the guards.

  “Yassuh, boss. Talked to ol’ Moon afore he done left. Moon, before he guts you, he goin’ fuck you! Yassuh, he be goin’ do dat. Up the ass! Make you his sweet bitch. So you die a bitch! Ha, lawdy, lawdy, don’t that beat it all! Make you wear lipstick! You be a fancy lady!”

  The homosexual content of the jibes annoyed the hell out of Earl. Things like that weren’t right. Shouldn’t be said out loud. He’d once caught two Marines doing something sexual out near the shitters on one island rest camp and immediately transferred them out of the unit, to different regiments. His fear on this one went deep, for some reason.

  “Hoo, don’t think the white person like to know he goin’ be Miss Katharine Hepburn for old Moon when he gets back! Hey, white boy, iffn’ you can take out the garbage and wear nylons, maybe Moon marry yo’ pale bootie!”

  Earl lost himself in his work, trying not to feel humiliated and debased by this new tack of Fish, who clearly had a way of getting under the skin.

  As Earl used his hoe to chop at the root of an old tree, Fish was making Lana Turner smooching sounds, full of the suggestion of tongue and spit, to raucous laughter from the guards, particularly Section Boss.