He rose, spent, and said, "Get him in the boat."
"You okay, boss?"
"I am fine. Get his goddamned ass in the boat."
Three of the staff controlled Earl as he was led to the boat, the chains around his wrists held tightly, while the wheelbarrow bearing its hundredweight followed behind.
They lowered him roughly into the scow, and it turned out they even had a system for getting the heavy weight aboard; it was not lifted off the barrow at all, but a plank had been set on an angle that matched up fine to a plank sited in the boat's hull, so that the thing could be wheeled down as if on a track. It took but some practiced effort, and down it went with just the gentlest thump as it arrived on the floor of the hull; the boat trembled only momentarily as the wheelbarrow was steered and manipulated toward its stern. The rest of the men jumped aboard, the engine was fired up, the lines cast off, and the boat began to nudge its way into the current.
A breeze blew. The moon had risen enough so that it was no longer red but now that pale, radiant bone-white, and it flickered off the stillness of the water. Its radiance did not quite blur the crazy quilt of stars and fancy patterns that filled the sky. It would have been a night of magic if it hadn't been a night of murder.
"This is usually where they start to cry," somebody said. "Boo hoo, it ain't fair, they got chilluns, they got a mammy and a op lady. Show some mercy, Mr. Boss, cut me a break, suh, yassuh, I be a good of' nigger boy from now on, I be. You goin' cry, Bogart?" Earl said nothing.
Someone kicked him.
"He thinks he's tough. He thinks he a hero. He ain't gonna give us the satisfaction, ain't that right, boy?" Earl said nothing.
Now he had this last thing to do. The pin had been inserted horizontally into the callus along his left palm, so that he could still form a fist to fight with, and in forming a fist he was protecting it. But in the disorientation of battle, strangeness is mandatory, and no plan survives its first contact with the enemy. This means things fall apart all the time, and you adjust to them or die. So Earl now snaked a finger into his left palm, with a moment's prayer of a small request to God that the pin still be there, that it not have slithered out and be resting in the dust of the levee somewhere, and with it all his hopes and possibilities.
It was there.
"Sometimes they just beg hard," one of the guards said. "Other times they angry. Got to smack ' down hard, and they fight "I'll the end.
You like that, Bogart? You goin' fight and spit and curse as you go down? You goin' to face the Maker with blasphemy on the tongue, white boy?"
"He won't cry," came the strong words of Bigboy, who even in the dark had his sunglasses on and his hat flat over his eyes to mute the swellings and discolorings where Earl's fists had imprinted them. "He won't curse or scream. He will face it straight on. He is a hero.
Bogart, you are a hero. That's why you are so dangerous. You are a formidable foe, I give you that. That is why you must die. These other folks here, they are soft. They don't recognize what must be done to persevere. But I have the strength to face reality. I do. So I take the mantle of responsibility, and I see that what needs to be done is what gets done. Do you understand?" Earl said nothing. The guy was stone crazy, that was all, and now as he executed Earl, he seemed to be demanding some kind of sentimentalized gesture of respect, of acknowledgment, warrior to warrior.
Earl finally said, "Pigman, you are a rank, stinking piece of pork, without no guts nor brains, who only got his way in the world by lucking into a place that needed pure-D crazy evil as its highest value. You will pay, I pledge you. Someone goin' to come out of this water―"
He was kicked hard in the kidneys.
"This is far enough," said Bigboy. "Dump him."
Earl was pushed to the rear of the boat. There two of the minions unlocked the old lock, ran the chain through the steel ring into the block on the barrow, then resecured the lock. It snapped closed with an oily click. The fellow doing this―Caleb, Earl saw―rose, and without a thought tossed the key into the river. Nobody said a thing, and there was no ceremony to it at all. They cut away his clothes until he was nude. Then someone lifted the wheelbarrow on its forward axis, and at a certain point, the cement block slid off with a mild splash, and in an instant had pulled its chain taut and Earl didn't bother to fight it, for what was the point? He jumped before the chain could pull him.
Off he went, following the block, down into the dark river. down, down, down.
Don't panic, he ordered himself, as he slipped through radiance and bubbles, the weight of the cement chained to his ankles immobile and unforgiving.
Down, down, down.
Then it stopped. The block settled into the river bottom thirty feet beneath the surface. Above, he could see the black hull riding the water, and watched as its screws began to churn up a wake, and it described a lazy U and headed to shore.
Don't panic, he told himself.
You've done this a hundred times.
He felt no oxygen starvation yet. Calmly, holding himself together, he cupped his hands, and his fingers felt for the pin. His fingers had inflated in the cold water and were stiff and numb and clumsy. His hands ached and bled still from the beating they had administered. But still there was some mobility left, and he felt the pin and worked at the tiny segment that was not buried, had it pinched tight between thumb and forefinger and began to work it out steadily, smoothly ever so But as his eyes adjusted to the underwater murk, something stunned him. It was a tree twisted strangely in the form of a man, like a submerged, crucified Christ, the moon glow having penetrated far enough to illuminate its ghastly pallor.
It was a man.
It was a man, still buoyant, still erect, still reaching for a surface he'd never make, the chain that held him still tight. Earl turned his head, and saw not another man but what had once been a man, before age and rot and water had taken all that was human about him and left only skull and shards of meat and tatters of clothes, linked fragilely by threads of ligaments. He, too, reached upward for a surface his fingers would never break.
Earl was in a glade of corpses. They floated and bobbed in the subtle drift of current, in every state of decomposition, some hard bone, others molted flesh, some dressed, some naked. Oozy weeds twisted about them, and fish flashed in schools in the deepwater moonlight, negotiating the alleyways of a metropolis of corpses.
Get it back, he ordered himself, as his lungs at last began to sing for air, and he bent to his ankles to insert the pin in the lock, and jimmy it free, and rise, but his fingers remained clumsy and puffed.
Be calm, he commanded, which was fine, until the pin slipped away, and he watched in horror as his grasping fingers could not catch up to it, and it disappeared.
Sam tried to obey the law as he always did, but he could not this time.
Especially beyond town, with just two-lane Route 8 and no twists or turns or traffic cops between himself and Board Camp, where the Swagger farm was, he punched the pedal and his Pontiac roared its merry way along, pulling up dust, scattering chickens, scaring children and birds, earning the curses of mommies who observed his thoughtless speed.
His heart was thumping, but it was pain he felt.
This would be it: news from farther south that Earl Swagger was gone.
There could be no other news.
He tried to steel himself for the scene, as he'd seen it enough when a hero dies: the weeping wife, her face a ruin of mucus and tears, the numb child who cannot begin to imagine how his life has changed, and how he has just inherited a vision of the universe as a forever imperfect engine, a place with a hole in it that sucks out the good and permits the reigns of chaos and violence.
It seemed to take forever, but that, of course, is merely the lengthening of time by the release of blood chemicals under stress. In reality, less than fifteen minutes had passed.
The place looked the same, and he wished he'd been much better for Junie. In truth, so ashamed was he and so confused by the situa
tion, that after passing along the money from Davis Trugood, he'd stayed away, for he could not bear to face the woman nor see the child.
There were no other cars, so she had not yet called the state police.
Sam swore that at last he'd tell what he knew, what he had found out, and would get it going, whatever it would be, some form of war on Thebes.
He parked, dashed up the driveway, and didn't bother to knock.
He entered the house of mourning and saw Junie sitting on a sofa, a dazed look on her face.
"Junie, what is it? What did you hear about Earl?" She looked up and smiled through her tears, and Sam thought he saw the delusions of madness on her face, as people act peculiarly in the arrival of a life's worth of black grief.
"Oh, Sam," she said.
"Earl? Please. What happened to Earl?" He thought he'd have a heart attack.
Someone said, "Sam, why don't you set a spell and have some of Junie's nice lemonade," and Sam turned to see that it was Earl, even browner than before, brown as a man who'd spent two months laboring in the sun, and he held his son in his arms and was smiling.
As consciousness ebbed and the bubbles took over, a wraith or an eel or a large, slippery fish flashed before Earl's dulling, darkening eyes. He was aware of some kind of movement, and in the next second felt the full glory and pleasure of release.
Upward and reborn he coursed, seeing what all those down there had seen in their last seconds but could never reach and died dreaming of, and that was the surface.
He broke, feeling the rushing intake of cold sweet air, dipped beneath the current, surfaced again for more of the stuff. Even now he was not insane. He didn't gasp or gulp or shout, for somewhere was the boat, though those aboard would likely not be paying attention.
At that moment the old man broke the surface next to him.
"Can you swim with them chains?"
Earl nodded; there was enough play in the bonds to allow him to propel himself and his victory over death had filled him with energy and exuberance.
"We go slow. You stick with me. If you lose sight of me, you orient on that low star there and swim to it. We less than fifty yards out.
You reach walking depth in less than twenty-five yards."
Earl nodded again, and the two set out. Earl had no problem staying with the smaller man as he undulated through the water in a limited but satisfactory version of the backstroke, and indeed, in a few minutes he realized the man near him was walking, not swimming. He let his feet drift downward until they reached mud, sank an inch or two, and then were on something solid. At that point he realized it intellectually as well as emotionally: again, he had survived.
They made it up the bank and over the levee which held the water back from the land. Earl scrambled up and over it, while reckoning they were downstream a couple of hundred yards from the Drowning House. The old man had cached a blanket here and retrieved it to wrap around Earl.
That done, they found a path, more a deer track in the woods, and continued along it for a mile or so. Now and then something mean would cut at Earl's bare feet, but he felt no pain at all.
At last they reached their destination, which was an old duck blind left over from years ago, when whoever owned the original plantation that became Thebes took his autumn harvest from the sky. Earl slinked in, the old man behind.
"You okay, boy?"
"These goddamn chains."
"Gimme just a second."
The old man bent, pulled one of his amazing secret pins out of some spot or other on that wiry old body, and quickly unlocked the the ankle braces. Earl was free.
"You rest up here. I gots to get back. You be fine, here, knows a thing."
"Yes, sir."
The old man pulled over a cloth sack.
"Like I say, boy, some clothes. Dungarees, a work shirt, some old boots, a hat. You look like a tramp, but nobody be looking fo' you.
There's also some biscuits and cornmeal. There's a compass. You want to follow the river and this old track here for about five miles till you come to a island in the river. At that place, you steer north by northwest through the piney woods. You cut railroad track in ' twenty miles. Long as you stay north by northwest and keep moving and don't panic, you goin' be okay. There's a freight runs up to Hattiesburg every day ' four o'clock. You hop that, take her into Hattiesburg, and from there you on your own. About fifty dollars hard cash should help, so it's in there too. Buy some clothes, a bus ticket. Be cool. Nobody looking fo' you, nobody know a thing. You a dead man, and ain't nobody looking fo' no dead man."
"I got it."
"The woods don't scare you none?"
"I can get through woods."
"Then you all set, white boy. You home free. Go back to freedom land.
You done crossed the river of Jordan."
"Old man, why you doing this thing for me?"
"Way to beat these boys. Onliest way there is. All the time I'm looking fo' ways to beat them. It ain't much, but it's something."
"I can't say enough―"
"You hush on that. Now you gots two promises to live up to.
Remember?"
"I do."
"You listen good and live up to both of them. That's what you owe Fish."
"I will."
"First is, you go to N'Awleans, my old town. You gets yourself two fine yeller Chinee gals and a bottle of bubbly and a room in a nice hotel and y'all have a time. And when you got mo' pussy than any man done got in a single night, you lay back and you drink a toast to old Fish. Fish done this so he could get pleasure thinking on that.
"Second is: you put this place out of your mind. Here we are the st.
We are in hell's farthest pasture. Ain't no getting out or coming ack.
Nobody care, nobody want to know. You go on, have a good life, and don't let what you done seen down here poison your mind. Don't let it do no clouding. You can't do nothing about it, so you forget it, or it wins.
It kills you. You blows your brains out from sadness, thinkin' on the pain. Don't you no way think about coming back here to set things right.
It can't happen, not now, not in ten years, not in twenty, maybe not never, and no point rapping yo' head bloody to find that out. I already knows."
Earl considered.
Then he said, "Well, old man, you're going to have to swim me back out that river and chain me down again, because I'm not keeping either of those promises. I am a married man with a young son, so I don't need two Chinese whores for fun. Sure would enjoy it, but it's not in the cards.
And as for the other, I can't help you none there neither. For I will come back. And this time when I come, I ain't coming alone.
This time I'll have some friends. And you know what else, old man?" ij "No," said Fish.
"This time I'll have a whole lot of guns."
"Whoooeeeee," whistled the old man in the dark, enough moon glow creeping in to light his face. "Whoooeeeeee! That pale horse coming to Thebes at last! That pale horse coming." Sam said, "We must tell people." Davis Trugood said, "Nobody will care." Sam said, "Then we will make them care." Davis Trugood said, "All this is happening to Negroes.
To many in the South and even to some in the North―possibly more than you would ever believe―the Negro is not fully human. They take the Dred Scott decision as gospel still. Allow me to quote: Mr. Justice Taney wrote that the Negroes were a ' and inferior class of beings [who] had been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
"
"It isn't eighteen fifty-seven anymore," said Sam.
"It is in much of Mississippi," said Davis Trugood. "It has never stopped being eighteen fifty-seven down there."
Sam screwed up his wily face. "You know a bit more about conditions down there than I might suspect, sir. More than you could have learned from my reports."
&nbs
p; "All I know I know from your reports, Mr. Vincent. You are the author of my opinions."
"Then why do I reach different conclusions?"
"Because your template for interpretation is your own mind, which is tolerant and logical and orderly. But it is ill-equipped to deal with that which is not."
"You say you never argue, sir? You argue well."
"When I must, I can, I suppose. But the true expert on Thebes County has yet to speak."
Earl had sat listening to these two palaver for an hour now. His ribs were still heavily taped, as four of them were broken. He had serious internal injuries, a doctor thought, possibly as bad as a ruptured spleen. He still could not walk without pain, or move quickly. The doctor had put 134 new stitches in him, and had grown annoyed when Earl stuck to a stupid story about being the victim of a beating by gamblers.
"If you are the victim of a beating," he had said, "why then would your hands be swollen still, your knuckles ripped to hell and gone? You may have several broken fingers."
"If my fingers move, they must not be broke. As for the rest, those fellows must have drug me after I passed out," was all Earl had said.
"I should call the police," said the doctor.
"Sir, I can handle this."
"No getting back at these fellows then. It has to stop here, or I will call the police. You must learn the power of forgiveness."
"Yes, sir," Earl had said.
Now, both pairs of eyes turned on him. He was in Sam's office three days after his return, and Davis Trugood, alerted by telegraph in Chicago, had arrived as soon as the travel schedules allowed.
"I have something of an idea," said Earl. "I would like Mr. Sam to leave the room. I don't want him to hear of it." "I will do no such thing," said Sam. "Earl, I am a party to this as much as you. I got you in. I will not leave."
"I do not want you knowing what horror I am capable of imagining. Your opinion of me will drop. That, and you may feel obligated to make a report to the police, or no longer be able to represent the law fairly."
"I don't like where this is going," Sam said. "Earl, you are a good man.
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