Pale Horse Coming (28 page)

The two men looked at each other.

They both knew that an adversary like Harry Etheridge could make life difficult for them, and that their own guy, Martin Dies, didn’t have enough juice to stand.

It was simple calculation on their part. Was Sam bluffing or
could
he get Boss Harry?

Clearly, the answer was not worth finding out.

“Now, see here, Mr. Vincent, there’s no need to get upset. Why don’t you put that phone down and we can have a little chat. I feel we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”

Sam put the phone down.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“We’re not here to make any trouble. It’s just been suggested to us confidentially by someone in authority that some inquiries you made weren’t appreciated.”

“What authority?”

“That is confidential.”

“You tell me, goddammit, or you will spend five years in an Arkansas state penitentiary.”

“It was from a security operative at an installation called Fort Dietrich, in Maryland.”

“What?”

“Sir, I don’t know what you’ve been into that got those people up there so alarmed. But you have been messing where you should not have been messing, and we were sent down here to make sure you stopped the messing. Now we’ve communicated that. Sorry if we did it too roughly. Why don’t we just get on out of here, and let you go on about your business. We’ve delivered the message. That’s all we’re here for.”

“Hmmm,” said Sam. “I do believe even the questions have done me some harm.”

“Well, sir, I suppose on our way out of town we could stop off at a couple of places and explain the whole thing is a big misunderstanding. Would that set it straight by you?”

“I suppose it might.”

“Well, sir, then why don’t we shake on it?”

He stood and offered his big hand.

“No, sir,” said Sam. “Down here we take our etiquette seriously, and we only pay it out to those we respect. Y’all came into this town with blackness in your hearts, and now I’m chasing you out. You stop off on the way and clear my name as you say, and I won’t have you arrested or have Boss Harry make a phone call to the chairman. That’s all you get from me. Now please leave. I have business.”

He sat down as they passed from his office and his life.

He thought: Fort Dietrich, in Maryland. What the hell is that one all about?

The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Sam, why’d you hang up on me?”

“Well, uh—” It was Mildred, the operator.

“Well, anyhow, you gave me the wrong number. There ain’t even a Davis exchange in Washington, D.C. If you want Boss Harry’s number, I got that for you, Sam. You need to talk to Betty?”

“No, Mildred, I don’t. Sorry.”

“All right, Sam. Good-b—oh, wait, your light is flashing. Put the phone down.”

He hung it up and it rang in seconds, as Mildred made the connection.

It was Junie Swagger.

“Sam, come quick,” she said. “It’s about Earl.”

I
N
the gray dawn the prisoners jogged out to the levee between the horsemen who ran them like cattle.

“You boy, you keep up, goddammit.”

“Jethro, yee-haw, watch that nigger on the left!”

“Ya’ll keep together, goddammit.”

The snap of whips flicking supersonically through the air stood out like rifle reports amid the general thunder of hooves, running men and yelling men. Now and then came the
whap
of a solid shot against flesh when some low man displeased some high one, and the sticks were used.

They reached the levee and formed up the line to get the tools out of the old toolshed, where a trustee with a key went to open the old lock and pay out the implements while another trustee ran the count.

“Fifty-six out, boss,” came a cry.

“Fifty-six,” Section Boss cried in reply, “you mark it good. Fifty-five black niggers and one white nigger!”

Earl stood in the line and Section Boss rode up to him, his horse veering ever so close to make Earl draw back. But Earl knew the horseman wasn’t going to come too close; he was scared of Earl.

Then Earl looked up.

“Section Boss, got to talk to you.”

“Well, damn, boy, don’t that beat it all.”

“Please, Section Boss.”

Section Boss backed up, steadied his horse, and climbed off. Immediately a couple of other riders came up to cover him, their sticks and whips at the ready, their freshly greased Winchester .351s close by in their saddle scabbards.

Earl approached humbly.

“Speak, boy.”

“Sir, I can’t take it no more. When Moon gets back, he going to do sumpin’ awful to me, and it preys heavy on my mind. All these other men gonna laugh about it. Then he going kill me. I can’t die in no prison for colored. Please, sir, you tell Guard Sergeant Bigboy I am a broken man at last.”

“You see the error of your ways?”

“I do, boss. Surely I do. I will come clean, yes sir, and we can git this all straightened out. I can’t take no more of this shit. I won’t last another night.”

“You punkin’ out after all? And you’d be such a hero! You’d be such a tough boy!”

“Ain’t no kind of tough, boss. Ain’t no kind of hero. Ain’t nothing but a man.”

“You git back down in that hole!”

“Boss, I—”

“You git back down in that goddamn hole, boy, like I say, or I’ll please myself to give you another thumping. I may tell Bigboy, I may not. I’s looking forward to tonight. What I hear, Moon got some real plans for you. Moon gonna have fun tonight. Maybe we’ll just let him and take you in tomorrow.”

“Oh, boss, please don’t do that.”

“Git in that hole, boy, while I think this over.”

Earl got back in the line, where his conversation with Section Boss had been noted.

“You finally goin’ over to the man, buckra?”

“He done slept wif’ niggers enuff. Yes suh, the white boy goin’ on back.”

“Moon still gonna hunt his ass down and do it up fine. If I know Moon, that’s what’s goin’ to happen right swell.”

So Earl had another morning in the hole, and at 10:00, when Fish showed up, he worked Earl over plenty hard, as he did all the time, mainly along male rape lines and the power of Moon and his boys against the weakness of the lone white man. He worked him over so hard Earl wondered if it were a dream or not, the whole fantasy of escape. Maybe it was something his crazed brain had heated up for him as a way of retreating from the reality of the place.

But though Fish mocked him blasphemously, to the amusement of both his white and his black audience, as Earl reached for the cup, the old man grabbed his hand to check for the pin with a quick probe of his fingers, found it, and threw a wink at Earl. That gave Earl some sustenance.

It was finally about four o’clock. The sun had pulled down in the sky and swelled up red, like some big fruit corpulent with its own close-to-rotted ripeness. It threw a golden glow across the land, and the wind had stilled. They saw it coming, all of them.

It was the new black Hudson Hornet that had carted out Bigboy in the first place. This was so unusual that all work stopped, and even the guards reined in their horses to watch the approach of the vehicle.

It was here under the guise of the distraction that a powerful presence pressed against Earl; he looked to see a large man whom he had noted but who never spoke. Up close, the man’s face revealed its mutilation, a crust of scar tissue lighter against his jet blackness, though all was touched golden by the sun. The man’s eye, in that sea of frozen pain that was his ruined flesh, was askew and wandered its own dumb, blind way. This had to be Tangle Eye.

He nodded briskly to Earl, who made as if he’d slipped, went briefly to his knees and pulled the wrist chain taut across a trunk.

The blow was swift and perfect, and in the same second that it was delivered, Tangle Eye pulled away and headed back to his detail.

Earl saw that he’d not hit the link closest to the ring on the cuff, but the ring itself, the one point where the ancient steel was thinnest. Earl hadn’t even felt the shudder or the sting of vibration, so perfectly placed was the blow and so completely sheared was the ring. Earl grabbed the now freed chain with his free hand and pulled it close. He was no longer tethered.

The car pulled up, and someone dashed out to open the rear door. His royal hugeness, Bigboy, sunglasses and drill instructor hat in place, perfect tie putting a point to his immensity, stepped daintily out, sniffed at the brackish air, then looked about until his eyes rested at last upon Earl.

“You, Bogart. You, up out of the hole.”

“Yes, sir,” cried Earl, “I am coming.”

He got halfway and he turned.

“Ain’t going to be with you no ’count trash no more, you bet!” he screamed. “I’m goin’ back to the white world, thank you, Jesus.”

The men regarded him furiously, as he climbed the rest of the way out, reached the levee, and with a shuffle and a shit-eating grin minced toward the big man.

“Take me from these low men, sir, for they are beasts of the field, and I am white.”

Someone grabbed him roughly and brought him stumbling to Bigboy.

“So you want to talk, eh, Bogart. Finally seen the light, have you? You have been a stubborn cuss.”

“My ’pologies, sir, but being among the colored is enough to set any white man straight.”

The guards let him stand free.

“And one more thing, Mr. Guard Sergeant. You’re a tub of white-trash monkey shit.”

Bigboy’s mouth fell open in astonishment, and Earl stepped back as his two companions moved in on him. They grabbed; he ducked and slipped, then banged the first one hard with a double jab to the jaw, feeling that bone shatter on the second hard blow.

The other man roundhoused him, and Earl dropped under the arc of the clumsy punch and nailed this one right in the heart. It took the fight out of him, and he went low fast, his face whiter than terror, his eyes big as fried eggs.

“No guns,” Bigboy screamed, for guns were coming out all along the line.

“You, Bigboy, let’s see how much tough you got in you,” Earl yelled, drawing near.

“You’re about to find out, partner. I have this dance saved up special for you,” said the man, who had not a lick of fear anywhere in him and suddenly welcomed the assault as an amusement of great potential.

Somewhere the dogs started growling, their throats filling with sound as the excitement of battle violence filled their dog veins and brains.

Bigboy tossed aside his hat, pulled his big Colt handgun and tossed it. Last to come off were his sunglasses, which he neatly folded before tossing to another guard.

“I can rack him, boss,” screamed Section Boss, who’d heaved near atop his mighty horse and unlimbered the Thompson gun from his saddlehorn.

“No, sir,” said Bigboy, his fists circling with a pugilist’s grace as he moved with surprising agility left, then right, dancing like a well-schooled heavy. “This here boy’s been aching for a boxing lesson, and I’m going to give him one. You think us albinos are weak and red-eyed. Ho, boy, you goin’ learn the truth.”

Earl shot a left, which Bigboy flicked away, but in the next instant Earl drove a hard right into the big man’s gut and met nothing but an impenetrable wall of muscle, skinning up his knuckles but doing the big fellow no apparent harm.

“My old man hit harder than that,” he said, smiling.

Mine didn’t,
Earl thought, a little surprised at what a cool athlete this big monster was turning out to be.

Bigboy fired off a right that hit Earl above the eye. It was a fast, hard punch, an expert’s punch, the punch of a man who’d worked both light and heavy bags for years. The big fellow had fast hands, too, but Earl shook it off, trying to show no pain, even if half-a-second’s worth of bright lights skyrocketed off behind his eyes.

Earl circled on his toes, and so did the big man. Two jabs were thrown by each, and caught by each high on the arm, for bruises that would emerge in two days but not now. Then Earl fired a good shot off that struck the big man in the nose, crunching it. Blood gushed, but Bigboy merely dropped back a step, spat disdainfully into the ground, a goober of red-shot mucus, then set himself again and moved into the attack.

He was a body puncher. He was so slathered in muscle and so anesthetized by fury no blows could stop him. He absorbed pain on his arms, kept his head hunched behind his big fists, then worked in close, unleashed a flurry of sharp jabs that flew to Earl’s ribs and lit off hell. Earl fell back, his backward motion somewhat defusing the punches, then slipped the one blow thrown from the outside (meant to crescendo the flurry) and countered with a good hammer to the jaw. It would have KO’d a lesser man and rocked a greater man, but like the nose-buster, it merely made Bigboy blink and spit, take a step back, then set himself and move in.

He would take pain to give pain. That was his strategy. It was crude but based on conviction: he knew he could dish out more than any man could give. He would emerge from his fights bruised and bloodied, but always the winner, on that principle alone.

Earl had a sudden fear: he would lose. The guy was a polished professional-level fighter, who could take a punch, who expected pain, who had the stamina of a platoon, and whose will to conquest was unquenchable. Plus he had good health and nourishment, six inches in height and six in reach, forty or fifty pounds in weight, and lots of gym workouts going for him. And pleasure. This was
fun
for him. He was loving this, loving the drama, the power, the savagery of it, as he must have hated the delicacy of the Earl problem and now could deal with it without frustration.

Earl took a couple of shots to the arm, ducked and moved in to pummel the gut, and took a glancing blow to the temple, which nevertheless opened a gash that soon issued copious amounts of red blood.

“No cut men in this ring, Bogart,” sang the happy warrior. “No corner men, no bell, son, just you, me, until you drop, and son, that’s coming up real soon now.”

He smiled and closed, threw two hard rights, the last of which glanced off Earl’s blocking arm and reached his ribs for a stinging shot that brought tears to Earl’s eyes.

“Oh, felt that one, did you? More coming, convict.”

He threw a punch that Earl countered, but Earl’s return blow was somewhat blurred by the fatigue that now corrupted his body, and didn’t land square enough to do any damage.

The big man dropped back, reached up and undid his tie and tossed it away, while he sucked oxygen.

Earl, in this moment of respite, realized that the drama was so intense that both audiences, black and white, had formed an auditorium around it. No one spoke, but they watched in utterly raptured fascination.

The big man ripped off his shirt, revealing an undershirt sopped in sweat that constrained muscles of unusual density and precision. He had a statuelike quality to him, marble wrapped in wet cotton. He wasn’t fat at all, just big and solid as Wall Street.

The big man went back to his toes and came at Earl.

“We’re going to finish it right soon, nigger,” he said.

Earl went into his crouch, bobbed and weaved, dashed this way and that, as the big one sought to close. Earl now saw what he must do. Tire the man, wait for a guard to drop out of fatigue, then hit him hard and fast and dash back out of range. This was no ring, so there was plenty of room to move.

But in that same instant, Bigboy backed up, dropped his arms and yelled to his boys, “Get those dogs behind him. He’s running too much. This ain’t about running, it’s about hitting.”

Earl sensed that ordered activity unspooling behind him and knew his backing days were done. If he couldn’t dance, he couldn’t win, he knew, for the big man would corner him and pummel his arms. His arms would die, and then his body and then his head.

He heard the dogs screaming on their leashes as they were brought near. They smelled the blood and sweat in the air and knew that killing time was near. He felt them scuffling frantically behind him, and a sudden snapping yap sunk into his heel as one of them got a brief hold on him. He pulled his leg back and saw there were no options.

“Time is running out, boy. No place to run,” Bigboy snarled, after lunging out another red goober and shaking the sweat off his brow.

He threw a fast punch that snapped off the crown of Earl’s skull, opening another cut. Earl felt the blood spurt and blinked it out of his eyes, though some reached his lips and tasted of salt.

“Ooo, you didn’t know how much speed I had on me, did you, convict? You think you’re tough, you’re the champ. Hey boy, you have
met
the champ.”

He threw another rocket Earl’s way, and Earl slipped it, hammered him quick twice over the ribs, bobbed out of reach and had some space to evade. But still Bigboy came on, no sign of weakness. His eyes were red, the irises open like headlights, and the sweat poured off him, but he was on his toes and his guard was well held, steady. Onward, inward he rushed, crouching, taking blows to deliver blows.