Pale Horse Coming (8 page)

He had been to murder scenes too many times before, so he did not panic, but a breath of air passed with a hiss from his lips.

Jesus Christ, he thought. Who could—

The flashlights from the window came on, several of them. Then, from the other side too. Men moved swiftly toward him, and he heard the creaking of leather boots and belts.

“Mister, you in plumb bad deep dark trouble now,” said Sheriff Leon Gattis. “Boys, git this Yankee cuffed. We done caught us a murderer.”

E
ARL
called the town up through blur by focusing his binoculars, and watched as it swarmed into clarity. What he saw was of no surprise in the piney woods, a slatternly place in the mud, with its ruined waterfront, its closed sawmill ruin off to one side, and the residential zone, its warren of jumbled cabins, and the listless people who populated it.

He saw also the men on horses, six, seven, then eight of them on the big steeds, in the dark uniforms, lords and masters, rulers of all. He watched them thunder through the town when it so moved them, and could read terror in those they stopped to talk to. There were no easy encounters in Thebes; all confrontations were charged and difficult.

Earl therefore set out to do what he knew he absolutely must. He set out to draw a map.

He was across the river, possibly one hundred yards from the town, and he lay there, hour by hour, his binoculars focused, his handwriting steady and clear, the lines growing in his notebook. He noted also the times of the mounted patrols, the officers involved, the routes they took. He noticed the officers themselves, the fat ones, the quick ones, the mean ones. He wrote it all down.

He watched early in the morning as the Negro ladies all left. These, Earl guessed, were the prison cooks and seamstresses and whatnot, who picked up after the white men who ran the prison and, Earl also knew, provided comforts as they were needed. He knew at night men on horses would stop at certain houses in the town, enter, then leave an hour or so later. He didn’t care to speculate on the drama of favor and fury that took place inside the cabins; down here, it was an ancient pattern, and maybe that’s why so many of the children who roamed the wild streets during the day had a yellowish cast to them.

Earl’s approach had been different than Sam’s. Earl was no lawyer like Sam; he presumed, as Sam had not, the existence of no set rules of order and regulation, no rational system that would entertain inquiry with fairness and due deliberation and cough up, ultimately, a response, rational and complete. Earl was a policeman, but not really; he was still a Marine in his mind, and any territory was enemy territory until he knew otherwise. He acted deliberately and decisively.

For example, on the day that he and Sam agreed upon as the last day by which Sam could be expected back, Earl called Sam’s wife and made his inquiry.

“No, Earl, I haven’t heard a thing. I’ve begun to worry. Should I contact the authorities?”

Earl thought not, for who knew by what compass the authorities in swamp-water Mississippi steered?

“Did he tell you so?”

“He said no such thing about it.”

“Then, Mary, I’d wait. You know how Sam hates a fuss.”

“Earl, it’s been long enough. What he had to do oughtn’t to have taken this long.”

“Well, ma’am, these little towns, you just can’t tell how they operate. As I understand, it’s swamp country and communication might be tricky.”

He then called Sam’s other closest friend, Connie Longacre. Earl knew the two had a private relationship, though its nature was neither clear to him nor curious to him.

“Miss Connie?”

“Earl, have you heard from Sam? I’ve begun to worry.”

“No, ma’am. I thought possibly you had. You know how that man enjoys a good talk.”

“Not a word, Earl, strange on its face for Sam. Earl, what should—”

“I will do something.”

“Earl, I—”

“Miss Connie, I will.”

Then Earl made another phone call. It was to Colonel Jenks, the commandant of the Arkansas Highway Patrol and his mentor beyond Sam.

“Earl, yes?”

“Colonel, sir, I’ve some leave time due. It’s been on five years straight. Got a private situation I need to deal with. Would certainly appreciate it if you could help.”

The colonel loved Earl, as did most who knew him, the others being those who only feared him. He knew that if Earl had a situation, Earl would need the time to deal with it. Earl didn’t request things lightly; he was the kind of fool for duty that commanding officers have relied upon for thousands of war-filled years.

“Earl, I’ll notify personnel. We’ll see to it the county is covered.”

“Yes, sir. Much obliged.”

“Earl, you’ve earned it, you know you have.”

It was true. Earl’s record was embarrassingly without blemish. His problem: he worked too hard, he cared too much, he was too fair and too meticulous in his planning and deportment. It was as if the goddamned medal he had won demanded of him that he be perfect the day long, and by God, perfect the day long he would be, and he would die before letting it down, though of course he never, ever, to any man or woman, talked of it.

As for Earl, the next part was the difficulty, with Junie. Yet it turned out easier than he expected. He told her he’d be going off for a bit, and he watched as her face fell.

“You’re going to that war,” she said. “You are a fool for war. You cannot stay out of it.”

“No, ma’am,” he said, “I am not. They do not care for me; I’m too used-up for them these days.” Then he told her he was only going to Mississippi, and only for a few days, and only to look after Sam, who might be in some trouble.

“Sam? In trouble? Why Earl, Sam could talk the devil himself out of hell.”

“I know. But maybe Sam run up against something meaner than the devil. Don’t you worry none.”

He knew he had won; her deeper terror was the anguish he felt about being over here while the Marines were over there, in Korea. She knew he had been writing letters to congressmen and the commandant, and she worried that sooner or later one would be fool enough to let him back in, despite the wounds he’d picked up in the big war. So in a way she was relieved that it was only Mississippi.

That done, a few travel arrangements needed to be made, and finally he had one last call, though he made it from a pay phone. He called a colleague named Wilbur Forebush, by rank a lieutenant in the Arkansas State Police and by authority director of undercover work, which was becoming necessary, as the crime tendencies grew more sophisticated. He and Wilbur had shared a pleasant few Saturdays in a duck blind over flooded rice fields these past several years.

He explained what he wanted but not why.

But Wilbur trusted him.

“All right, but Earl, if you git in a jam now, you call me. I will come quick for you.”

“I appreciate it. I just don’t want no tracks back to my family, when I don’t know what’s cooking.”

“So I understand. I’ll have it couriered down to you. Tomorrow morning okay?”

“That’s fine.”

What arrived was a pouch containing a driver’s license, seemingly authentic, in the name of, as it turned out, one Jack Bogash, of Little Rock. Other authenticating documents included a social security card, a heavy equipment operator’s license, and others. There was no Bogash, of course. The documents were high-grade fakes, meant for undercover officers in tough circumstances, and would pass scrutiny in every crime lab except the FBI’s.

Earl then took the bus to Pascagoula, his belongings, including a .45 from the old days, in a pack under a sleeping roll, and a Winchester ’95 carbine in a scabbard. He dressed in hunter’s rough clothes and high boots, and wore a fedora. No one thought the rifle odd at all, for rifles rode in pickups and saddle scabbards everywhere in the South. On the ride down he studied what maps were available, the best a big color thing that was included in the WPA’s 1938
Guide to the Magnolia State.
He scanned it carefully, looking to learn the land and the foliage, committing it carefully to memory.

He did not stop in Pascagoula, but went farther up the river still by bus until he was the only white person left aboard, to an old, nearly dead lumber town called Benndale close to Greene County. There he picked up some supplies at the general store, then went looking for a hunting guide. Of course it wasn’t hunting season. Hell, he knew that, he was scouting for some rich fellows and wanted to find a place where he could take a deer lease, bring these boys in the fall, git them all fat bucks, pass some green around, and, dammit, everybody’d be better off. He was directed, eventually, to a hardscrabble ol’ boy named McTye, who volunteered to canoe him up the Pascagoula, then up the Leaf. Earl said that sounded fine.

The trip through the bayou was without incident, but then Earl changed plans on the old fella. Instead of heading up the Leaf, he decided to have the boy put him off there, at the juncture of the three rivers, Leaf, Yaxahatchee and Pascagoula. He’d work up the Leaf on foot, looking for a sign, scaling out the terrain. The oldster would come pick him up a week hence.

“Mister, this here’s dangerous territory,” said the scrunched-up old man, McTye. “There’s bogs and hollows, and hellholes, where the land has fallen and the trees are so thick you maybe get in, but you ain’t getting out. Tricky currents in the water. No one’s quite clear on who’s hereabouts. Might still be some Indians, might be blue-gum niggers whose bite’ll kill you. We got us a dog problem, too. Feral dogs, big as wolves, they travel in packs and can chew a man to bonemeal right fast. They got a prison farm thirty to forty miles away, and they didn’t plan to build it there ’cause the territory was easy traveling.”

“Well, sir, I am in no hurry to git close to a prison one way or the other. But I am an experienced woods fellow and believe I can hold my own. I ain’t doing my job if I’m just looking at the ground from a canoe. Want to find and map the hellholes, see where I’d put up stands, where the deer paths are, where I might expect some heavy bucks, if this state done growed ’em.”

“She does, I’ll tell you, eight-points and more, big ’uns. So I can see I’ll not be telling you what’s for. I can see you’re a hardhead. Okay, son, the funeral they be holding be for you, not me. You want to leave me word for your next of kin?”

“Yes sir, Mr. McTye,” said Earl, and wrote out an address for Jack Bogash in Little Rock. “I will leave this here with you. You come back in a week. If I am here, so much the better. If I am not, then possibly I’ve left in another direction. Don’t you worry none either way, until maybe some weeks hence, if my widow calls the state po-lice. Then you tell ’em where I started in, and if they can find the body, so much the better.”

“Sir, I hope you know your stuff.”

“Mister, I do too. But this is what a feller has to do these days to earn a living, and if this pays out, I’ll be a happy dog.”

The old man spat into the river, left Earl off on the shore of the Leaf, turned around, and in smooth strokes propelled his way back until a bend at last obscured him.

Alone now in the dark cathedral of the swamp, Earl wasted no time. He unlimbered the rifle, fed four .30-’06 150-grain cartridges into the magazine which, by the peculiarity of the gun, was not a tube under the barrel but a complicated internal spring-loaded well that took some care in the proper fitting of the shells, and jacked the lever to feed a cartridge to the chamber. That done, he lowered the hammer.

Next, compass: he shot an azimuth due east, meaning to carry him across the promontory between the upper-Y configuration of Leaf and Yaxahatchee and in seven or eight hours good traveling, locate up on the Yax yet still twenty or so miles downriver from Thebes.

This he did, the pack on his back, a canteen on his belt, the .45 still secured. Though not in combat shape, Earl lived a vigorous life and his body was entirely comfortable in the state of extra effort. He didn’t feel now as if he were in Japanese territory, so he moved quickly, without a mind toward invisibility, on as straight a line as he could manage. The woods, once the waters had receded, were firm and piney, and it didn’t take long for the heat to soak his shirt and the brim of his fedora. He kept his pace up steady for a good five hours, avoiding hellholes, always returning to his original due east heading. He finally took a quick break for tuna from a can (buried afterward) and a few swigs of water. Then onward. He reached the Yax by dusk, just where it began to widen and straighten for its last twenty-mile plunge through the piney wilderness to Thebes. He spent two hours with his good knife hewing pine boughs, then stripping them, working until well after dark, assembling a raft.

He slept without a fire, sitting up in his bag, the rifle across his knees, his eyes watching, never asleep enough to be unconscious but nevertheless nourishing his energy.

Breakfast, before dawn, was another can of tuna fish, followed by a can of cold tomato soup, the cans again buried. By the duck hunter’s hour, he was on his fragile craft, poling his way along the shore, never venturing to the center, ready to dip into shore at the first sign of disturbance.

He reached what he felt must be Thebes well before dark, having pulled off the river only once, when the powerful churning of engines far off indicated a heavy craft; it was the weekly Mississippi Bureau of Prisons boat, a steam-driven thirty-five-footer, with its supplies and its cargo of human woe, a few more unfortunates destined for the penal farm. He studied the craft through his binoculars, noting nothing peculiar about it except a large white box with an odd insignia of red triangles arranged around a red dot, where a red cross would be if the box contained medical supplies. He’d never seen such a thing; he recorded it in his notebook, and having done so, promptly consigned it to his subconscious, forgetting it totally at his functional brain level.

Earl laid up across from the town, watching and waiting.

It became clear soon enough that there had to be some sort of station on that side of the river, near enough to the town for the officers to run their patrols, and they were aggressive enough and changed horses enough to suggest that they were close by.

And Earl could guess where it would be. To the northwest, equidistant between the town and the still unseen Thebes Penal Farm for Colored.

Earl knew it was there; he could tell by the barking of the dogs.