Pale Horse Coming (9 page)

T
HE
dogs.

At least they weren’t free-roaming. Instead, they were kenneled at the back of the wire compound, and the deputies were so complacent that they didn’t patrol the perimeter with them or any such thing, or keep a night watch, or any true security measures. That’s how atop the world they felt. The deputies were like kings of everything, these boys, atop their horses, with their chained dogs, easy, confident masters of the universe of piney woods and bayou and cowed Negroes.

Earl studied the kennels: there he saw blue-tick hounds, low, slobbery, sinewy barking and sniffing machines. There were twenty or so of them, and they gamboled and played in their pen, but if they were put on his trail, he knew they’d be remorseless. It was the dog way.

Earl feared dogs. On Tarawa, the Twenty-eighth Marine War-Dog teams had sent their animals into blown-out bunkers in search of live Japs. The dogs’ noses were so much finer than humans’, they could pick out the smell of the living from the dead, and when they found a wounded man, they’d tear him up bad, usually to death. They’d drag them out of the bunkers or pillboxes, swarming and yapping and biting, and you could see the Jap, bled out, sometimes concussed, the poor man fighting against them on some kind of general principle of survival but without much energy. As much as Earl hated the Japanese, he hadn’t enjoyed seeing that; the packs of dogs ripping at the wounded man, usually by this time awash in blood that made the dogs even more insane. Meanwhile, their handlers, by nature brutal, urged the animals on, laughing at the spectacle. The dogs snapped and chewed, or they hung on and shook and twisted and pulled. No man, not even a Jap soldier, should die like that, torn to pieces by dogs as sport. Earl bet that after the war, those dogs had been destroyed. You couldn’t have a dog like that in a civilian world, a dog encouraged to the furthest extremes of its savagery. Yes, they were our dogs, but still: he shuddered. Some things were too much.

These dogs looked the same. They were beautiful and sleek, but they’d been corrupted by men and nourished toward specialized forms of violence. In a way, they represented all the evil that men could wreak on the world, impressed upon the innocence of a dumb, brute animal. He saw that in the kennel where it was the rule of the pack, a rough-and-tumble world of tooth and fang. A big blue seemed to run the place, and he kept the young dogs away with the strength of glare and intensity. Just like in the human world. That’s why Earl never wanted any part of a pack. Meanwhile, an old man who worked the dogs looked more dog than human; he was more an ambassador to the dog world from the human race than a full human himself. The other deputies kept apart from him. He’d be the master of hounds; he’d be the one tracking Earl if it came to that.

Earl found the compound at dawn by simply following the horse tracks. It was a rude building, made of logs, more cavalry outpost than anything. For these boys practiced their trade from horseback, and held their whole operation together from a horse, with a dog or two on chains.

So: a kennel, a stable, and a main house, all log, all secure behind a high barbed-wire fence in the piney woods. And of course, no Negroes allowed near. Maybe the dogs had been trained to smell Negroes. The main house had the lock-up attached; that’s where Sam had to be, or else he was up the road in the penal farm itself, and if he was there, there’d be no getting him out without a division of Marines. Earl watched from deep in the trees, saw well-fed, confident men locked in routine. Patrols, lots of organized activity. Boss man was a big fellow he heard someone call Sheriff Leon, to whom all others deferred. He was sure Sam was here, because Sheriff Leon checked in to the lock-up, and it seemed to be the point of a lot of energy.

Earl knew he had to get in. He studied on the place, trying to figure out a way.

It had to do with the wind, he knew. The wind might carry his scent. If the dogs picked it up, they’d throw up a fit; that might agitate the deputies, and once agitated, they might begin to nose around. They’d let the dogs out to hunt him, and the dogs would find him, and that would be that. He’d be taken and he’d be in with Sam. What good would that do?

Earl patiently charted the breezes on the first night. He learned it was most still between 5:00
A.M.
and 6:00, just before the dawn. He knew he had to come in on the other side of the compound from the dogs, and that he had to move slowly. If he sweated, the dogs would smell it; their noses were so much better, and they were creatures of pattern, used to things being just so and prone to acting up when they weren’t.

At the same time as he exhibited a hunter’s patience, Earl was himself becoming increasingly disturbed. It’s one thing when deputies live with families, and go on duty and off, and when off go back to a civilian world, be with their kids and wives, go to church or the movies. But these boys weren’t like that. Instead, they were kept living out here in the woods, isolated, in uniforms that sparked fear and mystery, behind wire and protected by dogs. They were more like a conquering army in an occupied territory than police officers.

And they were young, too. Somehow, they were paid enough to put up with the dormitory-style living far off in the woods, and the constant discipline of the military. So there was some money behind this, certainly more than could be justified by the paltry ruin that was Thebes County, a town locked in mud living off a penal installation upriver still a mile or so.

Earl didn’t like it. The dogs, the horses, the guns, the fear of the townspeople, Sam locked up way out here. He didn’t like it one bit.

E
ARL
scrubbed himself in a cold-water stream until he shivered, then put on the last of his clean underwear. He would sweat some, though it was cold, but still he’d leave less man smell that way.

He slithered to the wire at 4:30, and watched. In the lock-up, a candle burned, meaning someone had night duty, but Earl bet he was asleep. The big log house was before him, between him and the dogs. Earl had patted dark mud against his face, as he’d done in the Marines with burnt cork, and stripped to his dungarees and a dark shirt. Getting through the fence was tough, and the barbs cut him in a dozen places, shallowly, but enough to sting like hell and leave a tiny blood track. Easier to simply cut the wire; but if he cut it they’d notice it the next day.

Earl lay inside the wire, waiting. He was unarmed, except for a K-bar knife, black-bladed and leather-gripped, which he might use in a pinch on a dog. But no dogs howled or barked, no one called. He lay still for the longest time. Then he stood, and walked.

He walked nonchalantly. He didn’t sneak or dash or evade. If anyone should see him from the house, he looked like he belonged. He walked across the yard to the house, waiting every second for a challenge, but it never came. These boys felt secure in their place.

He skittered around the house to the lock-up, and peeked in; he could see a deputy asleep at the desk, the fire in the stove having burned low, and beyond three cells in the back, two open, one locked. That’s where Sam would be. But Earl didn’t enter. Instead, he crawled around, past the door to the back, then found purchase at a window and gutter and swung his way up, as silently as he could. Again, no challenge came. He eased to his haunches, then to his feet, and staying at the edges eased around until he thought he was over the locked cell.

Going prone again, he pulled the knife, and quickly set at cutting through the roof. He figured—rightly—that the roof would be the weakest part, unreachable as it was to the prisoners. It was old, rotted wood, the shingles soft, the tar holding them down softer, and digging assiduously, he quickly opened a seam in the roof, chopped through the wood, and at last got a bit of an opening. He could see down at Sam, sleeping restlessly on his cot.

Earl just loosed a gob of spit. It wasn’t a nice thing to do, but it hit the man in the face, to the effect of minor irritation. Another followed, and the man awakened.

“Shhhhhh!” Earl commanded. “Mr. Sam, you keep it down.”

Sam blinked, unbelieving. He looked around, dumbfounded.

“Earl, is that—”

“Shhhh!”

Sam was silent, and at last looked up. He saw the gap in the rotted wood and an eye behind it that could only be Earl’s.

Quickly he rose, to close the distance between them. He stood on the cot, craning upward, until his mouth was but a foot or so from Earl.

“Good God, how did you find me?”

“It don’t matter. What is happening?”

“Oh, Lord. These boys have me buffaloed on some fool charge of murder that wouldn’t stand up for one second in a real court of law or even a grand jury room. What they’re planning, I do not know, Earl, I want you to contact our congressman and then work through the—”

“Shhhh!” commanded Earl again.

“No, I have thought this out, and I know exactly how to proceed. Listen to me carefully.”

“Mr. Sam, you listen to me carefully. I have eyeballed this setup, and you are in shit up to your nose.”

“Earl, you must contact Congressman Etheridge, Governor Decker, Governor Bilbo of Mississippi, and then—”

“I will do no such thing. That would get you killed right fast. What I have to do is get you out.”

“Earl, no! If I escape, I break the law. Then I am no better than—”

“And if you don’t escape you are dead. Then you are no better than the worms that are eating at you and having a fine picnic at it, I might add. Mr. Sam, look hard at the cards you have been dealt: these boys will kill you. They have to. They’re working up a plan even now: accident, drowning in the river, fall, quicksand, I don’t know. It’ll be crude but legal and you will be long gone to the next world. I guarantee you that.”

“Earl, there are laws and—”

“Not out here there ain’t. Now you listen. I can get you out. But you have to be ready, you understand? I have to set dog traps and figure us a course and cache goods along the way. I need something from you, your undershirt with a lot of stink on it.”

“That I have.”

“Good. You drop it out the window. Two nights from now, at two
A.M.
I will come git you. You will be awakened by distractions, which I ain’t yet figured. Fires, explosions, something like that. Then I will kill that big blue boss hound and the hound master and I will come git you.”

“Earl, you cannot kill anything. Not a dog, not a man.”

“Either would kill you in a second.”

“Earl, I have done nothing. If you kill, we’ve moved beyond a limit. There’s no getting back. I could not forgive myself for pushing you to that situation. You of all men should not be made an outlaw. I would rather be sunk in the river than be the ruination of you.”

“You are a stubborn old piece of buffalo meat.”

“Earl, swear to me. No killing. No matter what these boys have done. They cannot be killed, for that makes us them sure enough.”

Earl shook his head. Sam was set in his ways.

“Throw that shirt out, Mr. Sam. I will see you two nights off, at two. And then you and I will go on a little walk in the piney woods and go home and fall off the wagon with a big laugh.”

E
ARL
got back into the deep trees just before dawn broke and stole a few hours of sleep. Some internal alarm awoke him, and maybe the sleep was pointless, for he never quite relaxed enough to let it take a good grip of him.

But he awoke, washed again in the cold water, fighting a shiver that came through the dense heat of the place, and then set to thinking. He thought about direction, and looked through his effects until he found that goddamned 1938 WPA
Guide to the Magnolia State,
God bless them commies or whoever done the work, they done a good job. Besides the big map, he found on page eighty-three a nice map marked “Transportation.” Squinting hard, he found what he needed, a rail line running north–south more or less, as it wended from Pascagoula to Hattiesburg, a spur of the Alabama and Great Southern. That’s where they’d head, and hope to snag a train as it came by.

Earl knew it would be a close-run thing. The dogs would be on them almost immediately, and he had to throw the dogs off the track as many times as he could. The straighter the dogs tracked them, the worse off they’d be. They might never make the railway, or they might get there but no trains would come. Fortunately the land was too foresty for horsemen; the deputies would have to pursue on foot, and as horsemen they’d be slow and reluctant on their own two legs. They’d tire long before the dogs, but the dogs would drive them on, and that nameless hound master and of course that Sheriff Leon, who’d have all his pride on the line. He wondered if they’d have time to involve the prison security people. In a way, he hoped so, for that would take more time in the organizing, and time was precious for him.

He maneuvered his way through the trees until he picked his positions: where he’d enter the compound, how he’d move, how he’d get Sam out, which way they’d move, what their landmarks would be as they moved into the woods. He used his compass to orient himself, and when he reached a stream, he cached his pack, his rifle and his pistol, to be picked up on the outward trek. That rifle might be the smartest thing he’d brought, for with it he could kill the dogs that the boys sent after him.

Night came, and he penetrated the prison compound again. He went first to the stable and worked his way among the shifting, seething, beautiful animals. In a tack room, he found what he needed most of all: rope. Good, strong four-ply rope, which anyone who administered horses would pack.

Next he worked around back to the shed that housed the generator. The boys shut it down at night. He slipped in and found several twenty-five-gallon cans for the gasoline. He looked about until he found the gallon cans by which the tank would be filled and took three of them, loading them to the brim and screwing the caps down tight. Three gallons of gasoline. Fella could do a lot with that.