The jungle always wins, the man had said.
It was true. The jungle does.
Earl tried not to give up hope. But, really, with the dogs, with his own declining strength, with the fury of the black men at his whiteness, he had nothing to hope for. Maybe Sam was—
No, he tried not to think of that. If he thought of that, it was the sign that he’d given up, that he was relying on the offices of others, and he couldn’t have that in his mind if he were to survive. He had to do it on his own.
At last he got up to the water spigot, following even the sick and crazed inmates. He reached for the cup, feeling Fish’s harsh eyes upon him, when a peculiar thing happened. He didn’t reach the cup, but in the quickness of a blink, Fish intercepted his hand and probed his palm with a horny finger. Then it was over, as if it had never happened, and Earl looked up at Fish, who’d looked away and was smiling up at Section Boss now.
“Can I whack him one, Boss?” asked Fish, smiling broadly in that ass-kissing, shit-licking way of his.
Suddenly he drew back his hand as if to issue a mighty clout, and Earl flinched, drawing back. But Fish just laughed.
Earl grabbed the cup, greedily sucked down the half cup of water, and turned, and suddenly Fish was on him.
The old man had surprising strength. He’d leapt from the wagon and actually landed on Earl’s back. His strong, wiry arms lashed across Earl’s chest, drawing him in, and his legs locked around Earl’s thighs.
Earl struggled but could not get at the little man and spun away, and then felt the thrust of a sexual pelvis grind against his rear end.
“I’s Moon!” Fish was screaming, “I’s fucking the white boy! Whooooo-eeee, look-a-me!”
The laughter rose raucously, the black man mounted on the larger, slower white, grinding into him in scabrous imitation of the sexual spasm, the white man, all tangled up in his chains, lurching, spinning, unable to get leverage to separate himself from the smaller tormentor.
“Go git him, Fish!” the guards yelled.
“You hump that Nancy!” they cried.
“You ride that boy just the way Moon goin’ ride him.”
It had to be funny in its pathetic way, for the inmates themselves started to laugh, and they generally wouldn’t acknowledge the shameless way Fish played to the guards.
“Goin’ fuck you, boy, yas I am, goin’ fuck you hard, boy, have my way with you,” Fish crooned amid the laughter, and Earl spun desperately, trying to shake the man off, trying to elbow him, but the chains would not permit his arms the freedom. He spun, dizzily, a clown being fucked by a monkey, raising dust from the dry levee until it floated like a fog while the men moved aside to let the comic spectacle go on.
“I say he lasts a minute.”
“Hell, he gon’ break that bronc. He gon’ make him his, you bet!”
“You go, Fish, you go. Ride that horsie. Ride and fuck that horsie.”
Earl spun to the edge of the levee, but then his foot stepped off it, and down the two tumbled, a bone-jarring spill that brought them crashing down the incline into the mud until they’d rammed hard against a stump.
And Fish was off him in a flash, dancing back up the incline. He stood up there, doing a little jig of triumph as Earl, muddy and humiliated, dragged himself from the soupy mixture of the drained swamp, breathing hard.
“Look at him,” Fish crowed. “So high and mighty and look at him now.”
“White boy Bogart,” said Section Boss, “you is one whipped pussy, you is. You a disgrace to the white race. You is no longer a white man, no sir. I hereby drum you out of the white race. You nigger through and through.”
Earl sank to his knees.
“Men, down,” came the call, and the convicts rose as one, much amused by the show, and headed down to join him. At the same time, a very merry Fish jumped aboard his wagon, gave a theatrical flourish to his audience, and turned to the mules to go on about his rounds.
But what nobody except Earl knew was what Fish had whispered in his ear as they lay in the mud down below, entangled for just a second.
“I can git you out of here. I knows the way.”
29
SAM wished he could take the cab straight to Friendship Airport, plunk down some more of Davis Trugood’s money, and fly to Little Rock aboard that big United DC-4. He wanted that desperately. It would be so much easier.
But the duty part of him, that nagging little monster inside that would not ever leave him in peace, would not permit such indulgence. Which is why he found himself, feeling like a condemned murderer, hunting for the courage to knock upon the widow Stone’s door in the beautiful old apartment building outside Druid Hill Park.
He tried twice, three times, and then a fourth, knew he’d manage it on the fifth, but before he could find out if that were true or not, the door opened.
Dressed for a summer outing, purse in hand, she was stunned.
“Why, Mr. Vincent! What on earth are you doing here?”
“Ah, ma’am, I had—” he stammered.
“Oh dear. The news is bad?”
“I don’t know what the news is. I really don’t know what it is.”
“You had better come in, then.”
He followed her back to the living room and sat in the same chair he had sat in a day or so ago.
“So, Mr. Vincent?”
“Well, ma’am, straight out, you see, that isn’t your husband in that casket.”
At first it seemed she didn’t understand. She blinked, twice, and swallowed, once, and then said, “I’m afraid I don’t quite—”
“Ma’am, it’s not him. It’s a Negro male, much younger.”
“Are you telling me my husband is alive?”
“No, ma’am. I am only telling you that he is not in his casket; someone else is. What that means, I don’t know. Possibly it’s a terrible mistake made by somebody at an Army mortuary back in nineteen forty-five. Possibly, it’s—well, I can’t even begin to imagine what it is.”
“Good heavens.”
“Ma’am, is there any—well, ma’am, I am by profession a prosecutor and I proceed by blunt methods. So if I may be blunt, is there anything in your husband’s life or character that would suggest his capacity to become mixed up in something not quite aboveboard?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I’m just groping for explanations here, Mrs. Stone, and I—”
“Are you imputing that David Stone, the medical researcher and heroic savior to the world’s beleaguered and benighted, that he is involved in some criminal activity?”
“No, ma’am, I’m—”
“Mr. Vincent, I may have to ask you to leave. This is very upsetting to me.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m just trying to get a fix on all this. I’m just trying to—”
“You’re not here for the reasons you said, are you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“That whole business about the fortune. That was all a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sir, you are despicable.”
“I do not deny that.”
“Really, you have to leave. Immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. This is so unfortunate.”
“It’s more than unfortunate, Mr. Vincent, if even that is your name, it may be criminal.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“So tell me, finally, after it’s all over: Why are you here?”
“In truth, I began working for another attorney in Chicago, and I was investigating the death or disappearance of a Negro man at what was your husband’s medical station. Not during his tenure, but somewhat later. That is, recently. I journeyed down there, and barely escaped with my life. It’s something of an American disgrace. And even as I speak to you, a good man who rescued me may be dead for his assistance. I have a private compact now with my conscience to find out what is going on in Thebes, Mississippi. I’m sorry I lied. I’m not in this for money or financial gain o
r anything. But I am very concerned about my friend, and until I find out about him, I am making it my business to learn everything about Thebes that I can. Your husband’s name came into it from a governmental source in Washington, but all the files have disappeared. So I was working from this end.”
“You think my husband was involved in the murder of a man?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t. But I thought his involvement might lead me to someone who might lead me to someone who…well, that’s the way we investigate.”
“I see. This is very upsetting.”
“Ma’am, if you wish, if you’d feel more comfortable, possibly you’d care to call your attorney. Possibly if you will let me continue this conversation, you’d feel more comfortable in his office instead of your home. I’m very sorry I misrepresented myself. It was unethical. But I’m under great pressure to get a fix on that place, in order to help my friend.”
“My attorney won’t be necessary, Mr. Vincent. I’m simply going to reassert that you must leave. My husband was a saint, a hero, a martyr. He died giving his life for his country. Were you in the war?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“I was an artillery officer.”
“So you shot cannons at Germans or Japanese. Well, my husband was in battle too, only he shot microscopic cannons at germs and parasites and worms. I will not let you defame him. Please, leave, or I shall have to call the police.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sam got up, wooden-faced, and walked to the door. He had certainly blown this one and would be fortunate to get out of Baltimore without getting arrested. But he had to try one last thing.
“Ma’am, you’ll forgive me, but one question I have is that in one of the letters, your husband expressed sorrow over ‘the baby’—”
“Mr. Vincent! How dare you! How dare you? I was taught that people from the South are gracious, and yet you ask me the most personal questions imaginable. I will call the police if you don’t please leave at once.”
“I’m very sorry, ma’am.”
“You should be very sorry. My husband was a great man and that was part of his greatness, his capacity to forgive. He had a terrible disappointment. I cannot have children. It is nobody’s fault, so you may not believe anything ill of him. Do you understand? You cannot believe anything ill of my husband.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m going to leave now.”
But he didn’t, and his crudeness produced a crude treasure. It was an old prosecutor’s trick; he hated himself for using it. But it worked: to ask someone highborn a lowborn question, one notable for its lack of taste and sensitivity. It frequently shocked such people into tears, and before they realized they had lost control of their emotions, they blurted something out that no amount of torture could otherwise have produced.
“I cannot have children,” she said, “because I contracted a virulent venereal disease in my early twenties; I was a month pregnant at the time. My husband worked feverishly to help me and save the child, but it couldn’t be done. He blamed himself for my misfortune.”
“Ma’am, I’m very sorry. It’s none of my—Ma’am, I can’t believe that you contracted something so—”
“I was raped, Mr. Vincent. One night, late. In Asia. It was very violent.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“The disease killed my baby, it killed all the babies I would have. It was the cruelty of the world, and a perfect example of the sort of tragedy that my husband gave up his life to prevent. Now please leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
30
EARL watched and waited, but there was no approach. He thought: maybe it’s a trick. Maybe it was part of Fish’s psychological war against him, just to whet his appetite and get his hopes up, then to let him down.
And he cursed himself for letting the little bastard get to him. He tried hard to pretend he didn’t feel crushing disappointment when lights-off and lock-down hit at ten and the place settled into wheezing darkness. He waited in the dark, and the more he waited, the angrier he became, and he realized the fury was a form of medication against the despair he was beginning to feel.
You got yourself into a goddamn fix, partner, was what he couldn’t admit feeling. But he knew he felt it just the same. For the first time in his life, he was very close to feeling beaten down and broken.
Sleep came roughly after too much time and too many pictures in his mind of other places and other lives he had lived and would never live again. But it came, and if he dreamed he didn’t know it or remember it, because the next thing he felt, something bit him.
Goddamn!
It jerked him awake, some little insect or mouse where it shouldn’t be, on the side that was down on the mattress. Now how the hell—
Another bolt of discomfort came, and his mind settled down enough to put two and two together properly: he realized it wasn’t a bite so much as a poke, up against him from the other side of the mattress.
He leaned over his bunk and saw some kind of rod extended up from the floorboards, where it had poked him awake. There was somebody down there.
He slipped off the bunk and put his mouth to the crack in the floorboard.
“Yeah?”
“You crawl to the third window, eastern side.”
And that was all.
Earl low-crawled, listening to the snores and the groans and the farts. He made it without a problem and wondered what was in store for him there. And then he felt the floor drop out, as one board was removed from beneath. He waited until another came out, and he had enough room to snake through.
“You come on,” Fish whispered.
Fish rose and took him around back, so that he was invisible to the men in the closest tower with the searchlight that commandeered the Ape House, yet too far in the dark to be spotted by any of the other towers.
“We be okay here,” said the old man. “The patrol don’t come back this way fo’ half a hour.”
“You said you could get me out.”
“Didn’t say that. Said I knows the way out. Maybe you man enough to make it, maybe you ain’t. Took five fellas out. Four be dead. One got out. That too much a risk fo’ you? One in five. It ain’t easy. Fact, it’s the hardest goddamn thing you ever done, and I’m bettin’ you been in the war something fierce. Harder than that even. You want me to go on? Or you want me to disappear and you can go back to waiting for Moon to slit your belly or Bigboy take you to the Whipping House.”
“Why?” said Earl.
“Why what?”
“Why you get me out? You hate me. I’m the white boy. Everybody in this place hates me.”
“You got that right. I was sent up here by white boys just like everybody else in here. And we do hate you. You done us so wrong and you ain’t even got no idea. You took us over here in chains and we in chains still. You fuck our women and make ’em whores, and when we gets angry you be actin’ all su-prised. You keep us poor and weak and set it up to crush the life out of us, and you pretend it be fo’ our own good, ’cause we too stupid to be otherwise. So onliest thing fo’ us be: yes suh; no suh! Yassuh, with a big coon-ass smile and bright white teeth. Y’all like our white teeth.”
“Sorry I asked.”
“I pick you ’cause of two things. I heard first off you kep’ your fingers on Junior’s artery, keep him from bleeding out. He was my sister’s boy. So I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me nothing. I’d do that for any man.”
“Way my haid work, I owe you. Second is, as I say, to do this thing it takes a bucket of guts. Not many have it. Even brave men, strong men, hard men, they don’t have it. It’s a motherfucker. It’s a big old royal-ass motherfucker.”
“I don’t have that kind of stuff, old man.”
“Oh, I’d bet you does. You just got to make me two promises, that’s all.”
“So what are they?”
“Tell you later. I get you out, I tell you.”
??
?I ain’t promising no promises I don’t know about.”
“You’ll make these promises. All them other fellas done it, and one them out now, living high on the hog.”
“Just tell me where this is going.”
“It’s simple. All you got to do is open this.”
The old man handed him a brass lock, an almost antique thing that weighed nearly a pound. It was tighter than hell. Earl pulled and felt no give at all in the connection between the hasp and the lock body. He tried to examine it in the darkness, and felt for buttons or screws but touched only rivets. He tried to put his finger into the keyhole underneath it, and of course made no progress at all.
“I can’t do it. Nobody could do it.”
“Gimme,” said Fish.
Earl handed it over, saw it disappear in the old man’s hands. There seemed to be some fiddling, maybe a massaging, and in two seconds, the lock came sprung with a barely audible metallic snap.
“Jesus,” said Earl. “You do that bare-handed?”
“You pick it,” the old man said, displaying a pin about two inches long. “It take practice, but when you learn it, you can git her open in about two seconds.”
“Yeah, fine, except where do I get the pick?”
“See, that’s it. That’s why I touched your hand. You got enough callus to carry it now. You couldn’t done it till now.”
Earl watched as the old man made the pin disappear into the ridge of callus that decorated his horny old palm. He turned and looked at his own hands and saw that yes, now they were ridged with a hard pad of deadened, accumulated skin, where healing skin had covered broken blisters but come out tough as leather gum. It was a dead zone, one of God’s few kindnesses to those who worked hard with their hands.
“Gimme that paw, boy.”
Earl put out his left hand and felt not pain but pressure. The pin punctured his hand and rode across the palm. There it was, tightly held.