Pale Horse Coming (6 page)

Fire had claimed it. A blackened stone wall still stood, but the timbers were all scorched and collapsed, and rogue bricks lay about in the weeds of what had once been a public square. No pane of glass remained in the ruin, once upon a time some kind of courthouse building after the proud fashion of the South, with offices and departments and lockups and a garage or stable out back. Scavengers had picked it clean, and moss or other forms of vegetation had begun to claim it for their own.

So this was why there was no “official” Thebes County, why no letters were answered. It had burned, and perhaps with that the will that claims civilization out of nothingness was somehow finally and permanently broken.

Now what? he wondered.

It’s all gone? It burned, most everybody left town, and only a few hopeless cases remain. Those that do must eke out a living somehow from the prison farm yet another mile or so upriver.

He walked on, not out of purpose but more in the hopes of encountering an inspiration. Then, progressing a bit farther, he noticed a low, rude shack whose door was open, and from whose chimney pipe issued a trail of smoke, thin and white.

Batting at a fly that suddenly buzzed close to his face, he leaned in to discover something of a public house, though a rude caricature of it. It was empty but for an old man at the bar and an old man behind the bar. No array of liquor stood behind the bartender, only a motley collection of dusty glasses. Beer signs from the twenties dustily festooned the dim room, and dead neon curled on the wall, which could be decoded, with effort, into the names of the commercial brews of many decades past.

“Say there,” said Sam, “I need some help. Can you direct me?”

“Ain’t nowheres be directin’, suh,” said the bartender.

“Well, I’ll be the judge of that. Can you guide me to what succeeded the town hall? Surely there’s still some authority around. Possibly the registrar’s office, the tax collector. Or a police or sheriff’s station. This is the county seat, isn’t it?”

“Used to be. Not much here no more. Can’t help none. You g’wan, git back to that boat. Ain’t nuffin here you want to know about.”

“Surely there are sheriff’s deputies.”

“Dey fine you iffn dey want,” said the other. “Best pray they don’t want you.”

“Well, isn’t this the limit?” said Sam to nobody.

“It all burned down ’bout fo’ years back, Mister. Everybody done left.”

“I saw it. So now there’s nothing?”

“Only the Farm.”

“The Prison Farm, yes. I suppose I shall have to go there.”

“Don’t nobody go there but
gots
to go there, suh. In chains. Thems only ones. You don’t want to go there. You best be on ’bout your business.”

“Then let me ask you this,” he said, and went on about Lincoln Tilson, the retired Negro whose fate he had come down to locate. But as he spoke, he began to sense that his two coconversationalists were growing extremely unhappy. They squirmed as if in minor but persistent pain, and their eyes popped about nervously, as if scanning for interlopers.

“Don’t know nuffin’ ’bout dat,” said the one.

“Not a damn thing,” chimed in the other.

“So the name means nothing to you?”

“No suh.”

“All right. Wish I could thank you for your help, but you’ve not been any at all. Don’t you respect white people down here?”

“Suh, jus’ tryin’ to git by.”

“Yes, I see.”

He turned and left, and began the long trek back to the boat. He knew now he had to go to the prison, where surely what records remained were kept, if they were kept at all. It seemed out of another century: the possibility that a man like Lincoln Tilson, a man of accomplishment and property, even by these standards some prosperity, could just disappear off the face of the earth, leaving no trace of paper, no police report, no death certificate, no witnesses, no anything. That was not how you did it.

Sam’s mind was clearly arranged. He appreciated order above all things, for order was the beginning of all things. Without elemental order there was nothing; it wasn’t a civilization unless undergirded by a system of laws and records, of taxes and tabulations. This down here: it was not
right.
He felt some fundamental law was being flouted before his very eyes.

He rounded the corner and began to head down the slope to the river. That’s when he saw the dock, yet several hundred yards before him, and realized that Lazear was gone.

Goddamn the man!

But of course: this whole journey was a fiasco from the start, and how could he have trusted an old coot like Lazear? You’d as soon trust a snake in the grass.

He walked down, hoping that perhaps Lazear had taken the craft out into the deep water for some technical reason or other. But no: the boat, the old man, both were gone. Nothing stirred, nothing moved, behind him the ghost town in the mud, before him the empty river, and nothing around for hundreds of square miles but wilderness and swamp.

Sam was not the panicky sort. He simply grew grumpier and more obdurate in the face of adversity. He turned, convinced that he should find the first adult he saw and
demand
explanations. But to his surprise, almost as if awaiting him, the old mama lady stood nearby. How had she approached without his hearing? Was she magical?

Don’t be a ridiculous fool, he thought. This isn’t mumbo jumbo voodoo hoodoo, it was the blasted, backwater South, up some sewer of a river, where folks had degraded out of loss of contact with an outside world. He was in no danger. Negroes did not attack white people, so he would be all right.

“Madam, I have in my pocket a crisp ten-dollar bill. Would that be sufficient for a night’s lodging and a simple meal? Unless there’s a hotel, and I suspect there’s not a hotel within a thousand square miles.”

He held the bill out; she snatched it.

He followed her.

T
HE
house was no different from any other, only a bit farther into the woods. It was another dogtrot cabin, low, dusty, decrepit and tar-paper roofed like the others. A few scrawny pigs grunted and shat in a pen in the front yard, and a mangy dog lay on the porch, or what passed for porch, but was just floorboards under some overhanging warped roof.

The dog growled.

She kicked it.

“Goddamn dog!”

Off it ran, squealing. It clearly wasn’t her dog, only a dog she allowed to share space with her, and when feeling generous rewarded it for its companionship with a bone or something.

“Ou’ back. You go where de chickens be.”

“Why, thank you,” he said, wasting a smile on her, a pointless exercise because she had no empathy in her for him, and was only interested in minimally earning that ten spot.

He walked ’round back, and there was a low coop, wired off from the rest of the yard, and a few chickens bobbed back and forth as they walked onward.

“Home, sweet home,” he said to nobody except his own ironic sense of humor, then ducked into the place. All the rooms were occupied, and the innkeeper, an orange rooster, raised a ruckus, but Sam, sensing himself to be the superior creature, stamped his foot hard, and gobble-gobbled as he did for his youngest children at Thanksgiving and the bull bird flustered noisily off in a cloud of indignant feathers and squawks.

Sam took the best bedroom, that being a corner where the straw looked cleanest and driest, and sat himself down.

Dark was falling.

He wanted, before the light was gone, to write out an account of his day for his employer. He filled his Schaeffer from a little Scripp bottle in his briefcase. Then he set to work on his trusty yellow legal pad, soon losing contact with the real world.

He didn’t hear her when she entered.

“Here,” she finally said. “Sompin’ eat.”

“What? Oh, yes, of course.”

It was a foil pie plate, her finest china, filled with steaming white beans in some sort of gravy, and a chunk of pan bread. She had a cup of hot coffee with it and utensils that turned out to be clean and shiny.

“Thank you, madam,” he said. “You keep a fine homestead.”

“Ain’t my home,” she said. “Used to be. Ain’t no more.”

“It isn’t your home?”

“It be the Store’s.”

“The Store?”

“The Farm Store. Onliest store dese parts. Da store own everything.”

“Oh, you must be mistaken. If the Store is part of the state government, it can’t loan funds against property, calculate interest, and foreclose, not without court hearings and court-appointed attorneys. There are laws to prevent such things.”

“Da Store be the law here. Dat’s all. You eat up them beans. Tomorrow you go about your bidness. I could git in trouble wif dem. Dey don’t like no outsiders. You won’t say I told you nuffin?”

“Of course not.”

After that, she had nothing left to say, and he scraped the last of the beans off the plate. She took it, and left silently. He saw her heading back to her cabin, stooped and hunched, broken with woe.

Lord, I cannot wait to put this place behind me.

He made his plans. He’d clean up tomorrow as best he could given the circumstances, then go to the Store or the office of the Farm, where all power seemed concentrated. He would get to the bottom of this or know why.

Once he’d taken off his shoes and his hat and at last his tie, and folded his jacket into a little package that would do for a pillow, it didn’t take long for him to fall asleep. For all its scratchiness, the straw was warm and dry. His roommates cooed quietly on their nests, and even the rooster seemed at last to accept him; it realized he was no threat when it came to fertilizing the hens.

He slept easily; he was, after all, near exhaustion. The dreams he had were dead literal, without that kind of logic-free surrealism that fills most sleepers’ minds. In Sam’s dreams, the world made the same sense it made in reality; the same laws, from gravity to probate, still obtained; reason trumped emotion and the steady, inexorable fairness of the system proved out in the end, as it always did. Sometimes he wished he had a livelier subconscious, but there was nothing that could be done with such a defect.

He was not dreaming when they woke him. He was in dark, black nothingness; the light in his eyes had the quality of pain and confusion. He sat up, bolt awake, aware of shapes, the smell of horses, the sense of movement all ’round him.

Three flashlights had him nailed.

“Say, what on earth is—” he began to bluster, but before he could get it out, somebody hit him with a wooden billy club across the shoulder. The pain was fearsome, and he bent double, his spirit initially shattered by it. His hand flew to the welt.

“Jesus!” he screamed.

“Git him, boys.”

“Goddamn, don’t let him squirm away.”

“Luther, if he fights, whop him agin!”

“You want another goddamn taste, Mister? By God, I will skull you next goddamn time.”

They were on him. He felt himself pinned, turned, then cuffed.

“That’s it. Bring him out now.”

He was dragged out. There were three deputies, husky boys, used to using muscle against flesh, who shoved him along, their lights beaming in his face, blinding him. The cuffs enraged him. He had
never
been handcuffed in his life.

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing! I am an attorney-at-law, for God’s sake, you have no right at all to—”

Another blow lit up his other arm and he stumbled to the earth in the agony of it.

“That ought to shut him up,” said the man on horseback, who was in command. “Load him in the meat wagon and let’s go.”

I
T
smelled of pines. The odor actually was not unpleasant; it was brisk, somehow clean, and pine needles, like tufts of feathers, light brown and fluffy, lay everywhere.

But it was still a prison.

Sam’s arms were both swollen, and when he clumsily peeled away the clothes he wore, he saw two purplish-yellow bruises inscribed diagonally across each biceps, as if laid there by an expert. One was not harder than the other. In fact, they were mirror images. No bones were broken, no skin cut, just the rotted oblong tracing exactly the impact of the billy club upon his upper arms, each delivered with the same force, at the same angle, to the same debilitating effect. Sam’s arms were numb, and his hands too un-feeling to grab a thing. He could make but the crudest of movements. When he had to pee in the bucket in the corner, undoing his trouser buttons was a nightmare, but he would not let these men do it for him, if they would, which was questionable.

He knew he had been beaten by an expert. Someone who had beaten men before, had thought critically about it, had done much thorough research, and knew where to hit, how to hit, how hard to hit, and what marks the blows would leave, which, after a week or so, would be nothing at all. Without photographic evidence, it would only be his word against a deputy’s in some benighted Mississippi courtroom, in front of some hick judge who thought Arkansas was next to New York, New York, the home of communism.

His head ached. His temper surged, fighting through the pain.

It was some kind of cell in the woods, and he had a sensation of the piney woods outside, for he could hear the whisper of needles rustling against each other in the dull breeze.

He said again to the bars and whoever lurked down the corridor, “I DEMAND to see the sheriff. You have no right or legal authority to hold me. You should be horsewhipped for your violations of the law.”

But no one bothered to answer, except that once a loutish deputy had slipped a tray with more beans, some slices of dry, salty ham, and a piece of buttered bread on the plate, as well as a cup of coffee.

Was he in the prison?

Was this Thebes, where uppity niggers were sent to rot?

He didn’t think so. There was instead a sense of desolation about this place, the stillness of the woods, the occasional chirping of birds. The window was too high to see out of, and he could see nothing down the hall. His arms hurt, his head hurt, his dignity hurt, but what hurt even more was his sense of the system corrupted. It cut to the core of the way his mind worked. People were not treated like this, especially people like him, which is to say white people of means and education. The system made no sense if it didn’t protect him, and it needed to be adjusted.

“
Goddammit, you boys will pay!
” he screamed, to nobody in particular, and to no sign that anybody heard him.

At last—it had to be midafternoon, fourteen or fifteen full hours after his capture—two guards came for him.

“You put your hands behind yourself so’s we can cuff you down now,” said the one.

“And goddammit, be fast about it, Sheriff ain’t got all day, goddammit.”

“Who do you think—”

“I think you gimme lip, I’ll lay another swat on you, Dad, and you won’t like it a dadgum bit.”

So this was the fellow who had hit him: maybe twenty-five, blunt of nose and hair close-cropped, eyes dull as are most bullies’, a lot of beef behind him, his size the source of his confidence.

“G’wan, hurry, Mister, I ain’t here to wait on your dadgum mood.”

At last Sam obliged, turning so that they could cuff him, a security measure that was, in a civilized state like Arkansas, reserved for the most violent and unpredictable of men in the penal system, known murderers and thugs who could go off on a rampage at no provocation at all. It was for dealing with berserkers.

Once they had him secured, they unlocked the cell and took control of him, one on each arm, and walked him down the wood corridor, then into a small interrogation room.

They sat him down, and, as per too many crime movies and more police stations than Sam cared to count, a bright light came into his eyes.

The door opened.

A large man entered, behind the light so that Sam could not see details, but he made out a dark uniform, black or brown, head to toe, with a beige tie tight against his bulgy neck, and a blazing silver star badge on his left breast. He wore a Sam Browne belt, shined up, and carried a heavy revolver in a flapped holster, his trousers pressed and lean, down to cowboy boots also shiny and pointed.

“Samuel M. Vincent,” he said, reading from what Sam saw was his own wallet. “Attorney-at-law, Blue Eye, Polk County, Arkansas. And what is your business in Thebes, Mr. Vincent?”

“Sheriff, I am a former prosecuting attorney, well versed in the law and the rightful usage of force against suspects. In my state, what your men have done is clearly criminal. I would indict them on counts of assault and battery under flag of authority, sir, and I would send them away for five years, and we would see how they swagger after that. Now I—”

“Mr. Vincent, what is your business, sir? You are not in your state, you are in mine, and I run mine a peculiar way, according to such conditions as I must deal with. I am Sheriff Leon Gattis, and this is my county. I run it, I protect it, I make it work. Down here, sir, it is polite of an attorney to inform the police he be makin’ inquiries. For some reason, sir, you have seen fit not to do so, and so you have suffered some minor inconveniences of no particular import to no Mississippi judge.”

“I did not do so, Sheriff Gattis, because there were
no deputies
around. I spent most of yesterday
looking for them.
They prefer to
work after midnight!
I insist—”

“You hold on there, sir. You are getting on my wrong side right quick. Any nigger could have told you where we are, and if they didn’t it’s ’cause they thought you’s up to no good. God bless ’em, they have the instinct for such judgments. So, Mr. Vincent, you’re going to have to cooperate, and the sooner you do, the better. What are you doing in Thebes County? What is your business, sir?”

“Good Lord. You set up a system that
cannot
be obeyed, then punish when one does
not
obey. It is—”

Whap!

The sheriff had not hit him, but he’d smacked his hand hard on the wooden table between them, the room echoing with reverberation from the force of the blow.

“I ain’t here to talk no philosophy with you. Goddamn you, sir, answer my questions or your time here will be hard. That is the way we do things here.”

Sam shook his head.

Finally he explained: he was after a disposition or certificate in re the death of a Negro named Lincoln Tilson named in a will being probated in Cook County—that is, Chicago—Illinois.

“Thought you had a Chicago look to you.”

“Sir, if it’s your business, and it’s not, I have never been in the state of Illinois and know nothing at all of it.”

“What I hear, up there, the Negro is king. Ride ’round in fancy Cadillac cars, have white girls left and right, eat in the restaurants, a kind of jigaboo heaven, if you know what I mean.”

“Sir, I feel certain you exaggerate. I have been to New York, and that town, progressive though it may be, is nothing as you describe.”

“Maybe I do exaggerate. But, by God, that ain’t goin’ happen in Thebes. Down here, we got a natural order as God commands, and that’s how it’s goin’ to be.”

“Sir, I feel that change will come, because change is inevit—”

“So you are one of them?”

“Uh—”

“One of them.”

“I’m not clear—”

“One of them. You talk like one of us, but you be one of them. Northern agitators. Communists, Jews, God knows who, what or why, but up to nothing good. Is that you, Mr. Vincent? Are you a communist or a Jew?”

“I am a Democrat and a Scotch Presbyterian. You have no right to—”

But the sheriff was off.

“Oh, we done heard. We done been warned. We onto y’all. Y’all come down here and stir our niggers all up. You think you doin’ them a favor. Yes sir, you
helping
them. But what you be doin’ is filling their fool heads full of things that can’t never be, and so you be making them more unhappy rather than less unhappy, while you be gittin’ it ready to tear down what we done built down here, on nothing but sweat and blood and guts and our own dying. Oh, I know your sort, Mister. You are the pure-D devil hisself, only you think you doin’ good.”

“I am a firm believer in the rules, and I—”

“The rules! Mister, I got a county full of piney-woods niggers who all they want to do is fuck or fight, don’t matter much to them.”

“Sir, I didn’t say—”

“Now I’ll tell you what. I will make inquiries. I will git you your certificate, and my deputies will get you out of our county. Don’t you never come back, you hear? That’s the goddamnedest best you’re gonna git down here, and I am cutting you an exclusive deal because you are white, even if I believe you be deluded close to mental instability. Thebes ain’t for outsiders. You want Mississippi hospitality, you go to Biloxi, you square on that, partner?”

“I see the point,” said Sam.

“Yes, sir, I bet you do. Boys, move Mr. Vincent to holding, where he’ll be more comfortable. He’s ’bout to leave us.”

S
AM
was no longer locked up, nor did he remain handcuffed. He was free to move about the general area, but had, under orders and strict observation, to stay close to the station, as it was called, and not to go near to or rile any Negro people.

They let him take a nice shower indoors, where they themselves kept clean, and he got himself back into some kind of civilized order. He was fed, and the food was better than anything he had eaten since leaving Pascagoula, beans and ham, fried potatoes, heavy chicory coffee, fresh bread. These boys here, they lived pretty good, in what was a kind of barracks in the woods, a good mile out of town, which, he now saw, was protected against attack by a stout barbed-wire fence. There was a stable here, for the deputy force seemed more like some kind of light cavalry than any law enforcement unit. The men lounged about like soldiers, keeping their uniforms sharp, riding off on patrol now and then in twos. There was a duty room with assignments and rotation, a roster board; in all, it seemed far more military than police.

Finally, a rider came, and after conferring with some of the deputies, he came and got Sam, who was put back into the wagon, though this time not bound or beaten. He sat up front with the driver, who drove the team through the piney woods—Lord, they were dense, seeming to stretch out forever into the looming darkness—and then through the town, dead now as it was then.

They approached the river, the big wagon and the thundering horses driving back what Negroes remained in the street. As they passed the public house, Sam felt the eyes of the two old men he’d spoken to watching him glumly.

Down at the dock, a happy sight greeted Sam. It was Lazear, back from wherever, standing by his boat, whose old motor churned a steady tune. The sheriff stood there also.

Sam climbed down from the wagon, on unsure legs, then caught himself.

“All right, Mr. Arkansas Traveler, here is your official document. You’ll see that it’s right and proper.”

It appeared to be. Under the seal of the state of Mississippi and the state motto it was an official
CERTIFICATE OF DEATH
for one
LINCOLN TILSON
, Negro, age unknown but elderly, of Thebes, Thebes County, Mississippi, October 10th, 1950, by drowning, namely in the river Yaxahatchee. It was signed by a coroner in an illegible scrawl.

“There, sir. The end of that poor man. The river can be treacherous. It takes you down and it does things to you, and out you come three days later. Poor Negro Tilson was such a victim. It’s a miracle that after that time in the water, he was still identifiable.”

“Sheriff, who identified him?”

“Now, Mr. Arkansas Traveler, we don’t keep records on every dead Negro in the county. I don’t recollect, nor do I recollect the exact circumstances. Nor, sir, do I fancy a chat with you on the subject, while you interrogate me and try to prove your Northern cleverness over my simplicity.”

“I see.”

“You have been given fair warning. Now you get out of our town, and don’t you come back nohow. There is nothing here for you and you have done your task.”

Sam looked at the document; there was nothing to it to convince him that it couldn’t have been fabricated in the last hour or so.

But here it was: the out. The end. The finish. He had earned his retainer, and would file a complete report to his client, and what would happen next would be up to the client.

“Well, Sheriff, this is not the way I do things, but I see things down here are slow to change, and it is not my charge to do that. I fear when change comes, it will be a terror for you.”

“It ain’t never coming, not this far south. We have the guns and the will to make that prediction stick, I guarantee you. Now, sir, every second you stand there is a second you try my hospitality to an even more severe degree.”

Sam stepped down into Lazear’s boat and didn’t look back as it pulled from the shore and headed out to the center of the dark river.