It could have been torn down and the state persuaded to build a more modern structure quite easily. The warden had powerful allies in Jackson, men who knew what he was doing and approved of it heartily.
They would want him to be happy, for he was their bulwark, their champion, against the coming of change.
But the warden loved this old place. It held a secret meaning to him that even Bigboy, intelligent in practical ways, could not imagine. So Bigboy sat in the office, sipping port to the flicker of lamps and candles, on a warm summer night, where servants waited just outside of visibility. If you closed your eyes it was 1856 or so, before the convulsion of the War of the Rebellion, when the South stood at the apex of its civilization. Bigboy, not a native Southerner, nevertheless felt the powerful pull the era had for such as the warden and the men who supported him in Jackson. That past was as alive as their gardens, and just as alluring; if it could not be preserved, its memory could nevertheless be preserved, if not enshrined.
"It's the disease of hope," said Bigboy. "They're stirring as they've not stirred before. They have a dream. They have a possibility. They see change coming."
"And what is this hope?"
"It's obscure. I do not know the meaning of it. But I know it's being whispered nigger to nigger, and the whole farm is alive with it. Where it came from, I do not know."
"That is disturbing. Did you know that before the Sepoy Mutiny in India in 1857, chapati cakes were distributed. No one knows how or where or by whom, or what it signified, but it held some inchoate meaning to the natives, and these simple disks of unleavened dough were passed hand to hand to hand. It was an omen, and the British were blind to it. Then came the mutiny, and years of slaughter and rapine.
Race war, really, though no one will call it that. The world ended.
Or, rather, a world ended. Thousands and thousands of lives later, the British reestablished control, but not really. It was all different, and they never had confidence again. Possibly that was the beginning of the fall of the British empire even before they were half done building it, and look at India now. Improved? I think not. The wogs run everything, and everything is running down toward savagery and chaos, as it must when an uncivilized mind assumes charge. Are they better now that they are free of the English? Hardly, and it will get worse. In such a way, will the Negro be better off when he is free of the white man? Of course not. He'll be worse off. There'll be nothing to check his natural tendencies, his infantile but potent sexuality, his commitment to appetite, to instant gratification, his inability to imagine a world of permanence because he was raised in tropical innocence for a million years, and at some deep conceptual level lacks the imagination to foresee a time without heat and rain and verdant greenery, which is where all his troubles come from. Worse than that, however, is his lust for the white woman, and the progeny that ensues: children with Negro bodies and appetites, with Negro fury, with Negro violence, but as guided by secret white cunning? That is a world I care not to live in, Sergeant Bigboy, and have dedicated my life to preventing. The Negro and the white must never cohabit; only anarchy can follow."
This was a cherished rumination on the part of the warden, and Big boy had heard it many a time before, but it was delivered with such force, he dared not interrupt.
"My, my, how I do go on. You come with a report, I give you a lecture.
And you are gentleman enough not to correct me and hold me on track.
So, back to this magic message, this hope. How is it expressed?"
"In the following idiom," Bigboy reported. "The words are ' horse coming." They are muttering it among themselves." "Well, what an unusual turn of phrase," said the warden.
"Mr. Warden, would you know what it means? You know so much, I thought sure you'd know it."
"Pale horse coming." Has a biblical feel to it, doesn't it?"
"It does, Mr. Warden. Is it from the Bible?"
"Possibly. Let me think. But if I tell you what it might mean, that knowledge will corrupt you and taint your own thinking. I prefer before I comment to hear exactly what you think it means, Sergeant Big boy. You are a man of immense sagacity, and your instincts should be trusted.
Please tell me. Before we let any fancy learning intrude and occlude things for all time."
"Sir, I think it refers to that fellow, that white fellow, Bogash, we called him Bogart, who was killed trying to escape."
"Yes?"
"He was a tough one. He was a hero. He was an impressive enough boy in his own right, who stood up to ' in their own jungle and fought them down, all of them. Then he stood up hard to us. In the primitiveness of their minds, they might come to believe he's a messenger from God. Some kind of angel. And as Christ returned from the dead, Mr. Warden, so it seems to me that they could allow themselves to think that he would return from the dead."
"I take it that is not possible."
"It is not."
"Your report was sketchy on details."
"I guarantee you he will not be returning from the dead. Not in three days, not in three years, not in three millennia, not in three million years. I guarantee it."
"I trust you. And I think you may be right. The word " does have religious connotations. We first find it in the Revelation of Saint John, Chapter Six, Verse Eight: "Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
"Yes."
"Pale," of course, is a logical association with death, for it reflects the pallor of the flesh when having passed, denied of warm blood, marbleizing, calcifying as it breaks down. It's cold, really, and paleness is a feature of the cold. Snow is white, it is pale, it is cold. A pale sky is a chilled sky. We find paleness as death in many places in the western imagination associated with death. Then there's '
Hell followed them'; yes, I can see how that connection to the Bible would satisfy these desperate, evil men, for they believe that when that pale horse comes, death rides upon it, and in concert horse and rider bring hell to us here in our humble institution. So sayeth Saint John the Rev elator."
Bigboy nodded. The warden took another sip of port. There was no stopping him once he got going.
"Mr. Warden, begging your pardon, but do you think a Mississippi nigger here at Thebes would be reading much Saint John?"
"No, indeed, but that is the miracle of the way images move through literature, memory and the imagination. They wouldn't know Revelations from shoe-fly pie, but they will have met people who have had, and will have communicated not so much the information as the idea. So " as an expression of death delivered will have forceful meaning to them, even if they know not why."
"Yes, Mr. Warden."
"Keats too was absorbed in paleness as death, but he saw it in the form of extremely competent men, very gifted, capable men. "I saw pale kings and warriors, too," he writes, ' warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried lla Belle Dame sans Merci I hath thee in thrall!"
Now what is the meaning of "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and what is this thrall she holds over the pale warriors?"
Bigboy had about as much chance of answering this question as he did of flying to Mars. But he understood that it was rhetorical, and so he said nothing.
"Well," the warden answered his own question, "though interpretations vary, I would say the beautiful lady without mercy is that hideous cow, duty. She demands that we give up all for her, she has no mercy on us.
In thrall to her we fight, in thrall to her we die. So in this meaning of the phrase, he seems to be predicting the arrival of men of duty, with guns, who want to kill us all, and bring hell to our little part of the earth."
"So you would take this very seriously?"
"Very. Very, indeed."
"Then I will find out where it came from, what it relates to. It will not be pleasant work. You may hear the screams in the night."
"I've learned to sleep through screams in the night. It is necessary sometimes. Our fortunes, our lives, may depend on thos
e screams.
Sergeant, do what has to be done. Do it fast, do it without mercy. I will not be like the British, slaughtered in my bed because I didn't read the signs. Find out what is going on.
"Meanwhile, I will notify the doctor that we suspect mischief afoot.
If he feels threatened, he will conjure the highest powers of the state in self-protection. Our mission is to protect his mission; that is what gives all this nobility as well as necessity." it was a long flight. It was hard to find a cab. The city was rundown, seedy, like the worst parts of Little Rock, but it had crests of low mountains running through it. The local businesses seemed mostly to be pawn and doughnut shops, though car washes were numerous as well, and restaurants serving what Mexicans ate. But mainly: doughnuts. It was the cake doughnut capital of the universe, Earl thought.
But eventually, he got there, an even more run-down section of town, and he stepped out of the cab, felt the blast of heat, the movement of pedestrian traffic. He glanced about: palms stood, but they were far from the majestic ones he'd seen in the Pacific; these were bent down, brown at the edges, and looked as if they'd breathed in too much automobile exhaust for anybody's good. You could catch cancer from a palm like the sorry specimen that grew crookedly in a patch of dry dirt out here in the flats of an unlovely place called the San Fernando Valley, where Hy Hooper had his gun shop.
In the window it said: home of the.357 atomic!
Earl shook his head. Instinctively he didn't like California generally, and Los Angeles specifically, its brown hills, its sense of thickness filling the air, like they were burning rubber somewhere nearby, the arid little neighborhoods of bungalow amid burned-out shrubbery, its heat, but most of all: its showiness.
This was where they made the pictures, and Earl didn't like the pictures a bit, except for that John Wayne fellow or one or two other cowboy-style heroes. He could never remember their names. But there was something sinister about the picture business, and it seemed to have been reflected all through the Los Angeles he'd just traveled, and here it was again: the.357 atomic! What the hell would that be but some slightly jacked-up.357 Magnum, which had been around since '35, but now some slick boy was trying to make it showy by connecting it with the atom bomb!
Yet this is where he had to go. Grudgingly, carrying his valise, straightening his fedora, he stepped in. He found himself in what might be called more showiness yet: a cavern of guns.
There were guns everywhere. Unlike other gun stores, where the guns were in display cabinets, in this one they lay there, but not only there; hundreds, it seemed, had been mounted on the walls, and as Earl looked up, he saw that the guns rose to and spangled the ceiling as well. The low firmament was filled with cheap break-top.32s and.38s from the first part of the century, most of them looking unshootable and unsafe.
"Sort of takes your breath away, doesn't it?" asked the man behind the counter, who was florid and heavyset, with his hair slicked back. He had a cowboy belt on, much carved, with an elaborate silver buckle, and his khakis were cowboy-style as was his shirt, which had some kind of floral inscriptions on the chest. He wore a white Stetson and had a car-salesman's smile to him.
"Quite a few guns, I'd say," said Earl.
"And you'd be Earl Swagger, I'm guessing. You look like someone who could handle one of these things."
"Yes sir, I am. Mr. Hooper?"
"I am that, sir. Please, it's an honor to shake the hand of a Medal of Honor winner."
He reached and Earl complied.
"You'd be surprised who drops by here once in a while. Why, just the other day I had a nice chat with Marsh Williams. You know him?"
"Fellow that designed the carbine?"
"Designed in prison no less. How's that for genius. He was up for manslaughter in North Caroline. To keep his mind free he concentrated on guns, which he knew well, and that way he figured out a way to get a semiauto into a much tinier amount of space than anything be fore. Six million M-l carbines later, he's a national hero. They say they're going to do a picture about Marsh, with Jimmy Stewart."
"Won't that be a thing," said Earl.
"Did you carry a carbine, Mr. Swagger?"
"No, Mr. Hooper. I was a tommy gun man. We did a lot of up-close work, and I liked the thump of the Thompson. I didn't mind a little extra weight for the extra thump. But you can bet a lot of our boys did. It was a right handy little number."
Earl would keep his actual opinion of the carbine to himself.
"Then, Mr. John Wayne. I'm trying to get him to carry our.357 Atomic in his next Western picture. That'd really move them off the shelves.
But you didn't come to talk about picture stars, did you, Mr. Swagger?"
"Only the one I wrote you about, Mr. Hooper." "Well, like I told you on the phone, I know him well, and he's a fine young man. He's a wonderful young man, though he has a touch of that Irish melancholy to him. But I called him, and gave him the invite, and maybe he'll show and maybe he won't."
The youngest of the old men, but also the oldest, was late, of course.
But not by much. Earl watched him arrive. He pulled up in some bright English sports car, red as blood, gleaming and slick. He wore sunglasses, a cowboy hat, an elaborate gentleman cowboy rig of buckskin coat and pressed dungarees, a white shirt with pearl buttons and a string tie, and finally a pair of handmade, three-hundred-dollar boots.
He looked like somebody playing at being a grown-up and the grown-up he was playing at being was Hoot Gibson.
He came in shyly, and Earl could sense reticence in him. He wasn't one of those fellows, like Hooper here, who grew larger in the presence of others. He grew smaller, waif like lost.
"Well, Audie," said Hy Hooper, "I'm glad you dropped by. This fellow's come a long way to meet you. He's one of your own kind."
Even in his sunglasses, Audie Ryan wouldn't look at Earl. The older, larger man's presence seemed to have him unhinged a bit. There was quite a war going on between the California fancy cowboy swagger of his style, and the pale, diffident boy it concealed. Finally, he took off his glasses, and Earl saw almost a gal's eyes, soft and gentle and sensitive and a face startling in its beauty.
Hard to believe this little perfect angel was the most decorated soldier of the Second World War and had killed close to three hundred Germans, at least fifty of whom he got with a.50-caliber machine gun atop a burning tank destroyer as they came in to wipe out his unit and break out into our lines. He killed them all, and single-handedly drove back the tanks in support, and was given the Medal of Honor for that day's work, which was only one of many good days he'd had across Europe.
"Major Ryan," said Earl, "I'm Earl Swagger, sir. It's an honor to meet you."
Audie Ryan smiled shyly, embarrassed. He almost giggled to be reminded of the rank at which he left the Army in 1946.
"Gee, Sarge," he said, "nobody's called me "Major' in five years. It's just Audie. And I didn't do anything you didn't do, Sarge, from what I hear, so the honor's just as much mine as it is yours."
"I think we were both lucky bastards," said Earl, "and the real heroes didn't make it back."
"If I had a drink, I'd drink to that, as that's the truest thing I've heard in months."
He had a soft accent from his native Texas, in whose northwest corner he'd grown up hard scrabble and poor, where it was his rifle alone that put meat on the table for a large, fatherless family. He learned to shoot well and early, and in the war his hunter's skills had paid their dividends.
"So, Sarge, Hy tells me you've got some sort of proposition or something?"
"That's right," said Earl.
"Say, fellows," said Hy Hooper, "why don't you step on back and use the office."
He led them back, and in the little room the heads of various beasts killed the world over stared at him. It reminded Earl of his father's study; his father had been a mighty hunter, too.
"You haven't got the buffalo back yet, Hy?" Audie asked.
"No, it takes a bit. I got back from
Africa some weeks ago," Hy explained to Earl. "Took some fine trophies, including an eighty-four inch horn-spread Cape Buffalo." "Wow," said Earl.
"Yep, proudest moment of my life, and listen to me talking about what I'm proud of in the presence of two men who've won the Medal of Honor.
I ought to be skinned alive. I'm butting out. You go ahead. There's Scotch and bourbon in the desk."
He scurried out.
Audie Ryan, still a little nervous, poured himself a finger of bourbon and offered it to Earl.
"I gave it up soon after the war," said Earl.
"I should give it up. But if I don't, I see Germans," Audie said, downing the brown fluid and quickly replenishing it.
"I still see the Japs everywhere."
"It never goes away, does it?"
"No, it doesn't. And everybody forgets."
"What I hate most of all is, they think they want to know about it.
And they ask about it. But it turns out they really don't want to know about it. What they want to do is tell you about it. They know more'n you."
"I get that, too. It does grow heavy on the shoulder."
"This town is the worst. This picture business was probably a mistake, but since I can't hardly read, and these people think I'm a cutie pie, I guess it's what I'm stuck doing. It's a stinking business, though.
Everybody lies, everybody just wants to git ahead, they'll do any damn thing. New York people run everything, and they talk so fast you can't hardly understand them. But you get along with them or you don't work.
And so much waiting. I may get a big picture made by John Huston. You ever hear of him, Sarge?"
"Can't say I have."
"Maybe it's that other one, John Ford. Always get them two mixed up, which could hurt me bad. Whichever, it's a war picture. But the Civil War, based on some old book. Of course, they can't really show a war.
They make it all pretty and heroic."
"That it sure wasn't."
"So anyhow, don't suppose you care much about the picture business, Sarge, do you?"
"The truth is, it seems silly. A man who's done what you've done, out here with these showy people."
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