“I know, and thought the same at first. So I picked at random five towns scattered across Mississippi. And while some have had some social structure reduction and considerable population loss, they remain vibrant. So this does seem strange.”
Earl said nothing.
Sam continued.
“Then there’s this business of the road. There was a highway into Thebes for many years and it too supported businesses and life. Gas stations, diners, barbecue places, that sort of thing. But some time ago, the road washed out, effectively sealing the town and that part of the swamp and piney woods off from civilization, well, such civilization as they have in Mississippi. You’d think a civic structure would get busy opening that road up, for the road is the river of opportunity, especially in the poor, rural South. Yet now, all these years later, it remains washed out, and as far as I can learn, no one has made an attempt to open it. The only approach to what remains of Thebes is a long slow trip by boat up that dark river. That’s not a regular business either. The prison launches make the journey for supplies on a weekly basis, and to pick up prisoners, but the place is sealed off. You don’t get there easily, you don’t get back easily, and everybody seems to want it that way. Now doesn’t that seem strange?”
“Well, sir,” said Earl, “maybe it’s a case of no road, no town, and that’s why it’s all drying up down there.”
“It would seem so. But the decline of Thebes had already begun three years earlier. It was as if the road was the final ribbon on the package, not what was inside the package.”
“Hmmm,” said Earl. “If you are that worried, possibly you shouldn’t go.”
“Well, sir, I can’t not go. I have accepted a retainer and I have a professional obligation I cannot and would not evade.”
“Would you like me to come along, in case there’s nasty surprises down there?”
“No, no, Earl, of course not. I just want you to know what is going on. I have here an envelope containing my file on the case, all my findings, my plan of travel and so forth. I leave tomorrow on the ten forty-five out of Memphis, and should reach New Orleans by five. I’ll spend the night there, and have hired a car the next morning to take me to Pascagoula. Presumably I’ll find a boatman, and I’ll reach town late the day after tomorrow. If I can find a telephone, I’ll call you or my wife and leave messages on a daily basis. If I can’t find a telephone, well then, I shall just complete my business and come on home.”
“Well, let’s pick a date, and if you ain’t home by that time, then I’ll make it my business to figure out what’s happening.”
“Thank you, Earl. Thank you so much. You saw where I was headed.”
“Mr. Sam, you can count on me.”
“Earl, if you say something, I know it’s done.”
“I’d bring a firearm. Not one of your hunting rifles, but a handgun. You still have an Army forty-five, I believe.”
“No, Earl. I am a man of reason, not guns. I’m a lawyer. The gun cannot be my way. Logic, fairness, humanity, the rule of the law above all else, those are my guidelines.”
“Mr. Sam, where you’re going, maybe such things don’t cut no ice. I’ll tell you this, if I have to come, I’ll be bringing a gun.”
“You have to do it your way, and I have to do it mine. So be it. Now let’s read a story to Bob Lee.”
“I think he’d like that. He likes the scary ones the best.”
“You still have that book of Grimm’s?”
“His favorite.”
“I know there’s a dark tale or two in there.”
“A dark tale it will be, then.”
3
THOUGH Sam loved New Orleans, he was moderate and professional the night he stayed there, avoiding its temptations. He took a room in a tourist home, ate at a diner, went to sleep early after meticulously recording all his expenditures for his client. The next morning, he rendezvoused with his car and driver, and commenced the drive along the gulf coast down U.S. 90, passing quickly from Louisiana into Mississippi.
It was, at first at least, a pleasant drive, with a driver named Eddie, who knew how to keep his mouth shut, and his big, comfortable LaSalle.
“It’s a 1940,” Eddie said, “the last and the best.” And that was the only thing Eddie said.
Sam had removed and folded his coat, rolled up his sleeves, put his straw Panama on the seat next to him, and let the cooling air stream in through the open windows of the big black car. Of course he did not loosen his tie; after all, one did not do such things. There were limits. But he got out his pipe and lit up a bowlful, and simply watched the sights. On his right, the gulf’s blue tide lapped against the white sands, and small towns fled by, each quaint and cute enough for a tourist trade that was beginning to catch hold. The small cities along the way were white, sunny places, Gulfport and Biloxi, further given over to tourists. He could see young couples on the beach, some of them beautiful, some not so beautiful. Beach umbrellas furled against the gulf breezes and homes had rooms to let, many of them with free television as the signs proudly proclaimed.
But beyond Biloxi, it changed. No one came here for the sun or the sand, and no beaches had been cleared. It was just mangoes and ferns and scrub pine and vegetation whose only distinguishing feature was its generic green viney quality, down to a strip of soil before the water which, Sam fancied (maybe it was his imagination), had changed in tone from carefree blue to a dirty brown. The sediment this far down floated unsettled in the water, giving it the look of an immense sewer. It smelled, also, some pungent chemical odor.
Pascagoula, it turned out, was a city of industry. Paper plants dominated, and shipbuilding came second, and it was a city that had once strained mightily to produce. Now, hard times had hit it. The paper industry was down, and shipbuilding had stopped with the end of the war. It was a sad place; the boom of the war years had dried to bust, but everyone had a taste for the big, easy money of before.
Again, maybe he was imagining too much, but he thought he saw despair and lassitude everywhere. The streets felt empty; signs were not freshly painted, and commerce was not active. It all baked under a hot sun, the stench from the paper mills enough to give a man a crushing headache.
“Sir, do you have a particular destination? Do you want to go to a hotel?”
Sam looked at his watch. It was only 11:00 A.M., and, yes, he did want to go to a hotel, have a nice lunch, lie down in a room with a strong fan or maybe some air-conditioning, take a nap. But it was not in him to do so. He was rigid about everything, but most of all about duty and obligation.
“No, Eddie, I’ve got to push on. Uh, do you know the town?”
“Not hardly, sir. I’m a N’Awleens boy. Don’t like to come out to these here hot little no’count places.”
“Well, then, I suppose we’d best start at the town hall or the police station. I’d like to confer with officials before I venture further.”
“Yes, sir. B’lieve I c’n hep you there.”
Eddie located the single municipal building quickly enough, a town hall on one street, a police station, complete to fleets of motorcycles and squad cars parked outside, on the other.
Sam chose the administrative before the enforcement. He suited up again, tightening all that could be tightened, straightening all that could be straightened, and implanting the Panama squarely up top as befit his position and dignity. Eddie left him in front of grand stairs that led to not much of a door; he climbed them and ducked between statues of Confederate heroes facing the gulf.
He entered to a foyer, consulted with a clerk at a desk, got directions, entered a set of hallways to look for the city prosecutor’s office. It was not at all hard to find, and he went through the opaque-glassed doors to find a waiting room with leather chairs and magazines under the rubric WHITE ONLY. Through a doorway that bore the sign COLORED ONLY he could see another room, ruder and filled with more rickety furniture, all jammed up with pitiful Negroes. He turned to the white secretary behind a desk, whose ha
ir was tidy but who ruled by right of a harsh face and too much makeup.
He presented his card.
“And, sir?”
“And I wonder, ma’am, if I could have a word with Mr….” he struggled to remember the name painted on the door, then did. “Carruthers.”
“What is this in reference to?” she said, with a Southern smile that meant nothing whatsoever.
“Ma’am, I am a prosecutor myself, only recently retired on the basis of electoral whimsy. I wish to speak with my colleague.”
“You from here in Mississip?”
“No, ma’am. Up a bit. Arkansas, Polk County, in the west. It’s on the card.”
“Well, I’ll see.”
It wasn’t Carruthers who came to get him but a Mr. Redfield, an assistant city attorney, who made a show of ignoring the unfortunate Negroes in the back room and shook his hand heartily, escorting him back to a clean little office. As they walked, Sam searched his memory, and at last realized why Redfield admitted him: they’d met at some convention in Atlantic City in 1941, with a group of other prosecutors, all having a last fling before the war did with them what it did.
“Glad to see you made it back, Mr. Redfield,” Sam said.
“Never got the chance to leave, alas,” said the man, as they walked into the door of a clean little cubicle. “Four-F. Stayed here prosecuting draft dodgers while you boys had all the fun. Where’d you end up? Europe, wasn’t it?”
“Finally. Ended up in the artillery.”
“Win anything big?”
“No, just did the job. Glad to be back in one piece.”
Redfield broke out the bourbon and poured himself and Sam a tot. Tasted fine, too. They settled into chairs, chatted somewhat aimlessly on the subject of the others in attendance of that long ago convention, who was dead, who divorced, who quit, who rich, who poor. Redfield then segued neatly into local politics and gossip, his chances for getting the big job in the next election or maybe it would be better to wait until ’56, local conditions, which weren’t good, except for, he laughed heartily, the coming of some Northern fool’s waterproof coffin company to the South, which would put the ship carpenters to some good use until it failed, ha ha ha, or the gub’mint lost so many destroyers off Korea it needed to build some new ones. Sam didn’t really care, but down South here, it was the way business was done, until finally, when a ten-second pause and a second drink announced it to be the time, he launched into particulars.
He explained, concluding with his unease about the upcoming trip.
“Well,” said Redfield, “truth be told, I don’t know much about Thebes. That’s two counties up the river, and not much between but bayou and wild niggers and Choctaws living on ’gators and catfish, then finally your piney woods, thick as hell. Too thick for white people.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Don’t know why any feller’d go up there he didn’t have to.”
“Well, Redfield, I really don’t want to. But I’ve accepted the job. I was hoping you’d write me a letter of introduction or give me a name of a colleague to whose good offices I could appeal.”
“Most counties, that’d work just fine, that’d be the way to do it. But Thebes now, Thebes is different. It’s the prison farm, and that’s about all. You’d have to git into our state corrections bureaucracy, and I do know those boys run their territory very tight and private-like. Don’t like strangers, especially strangers from up North—”
“Arkansas? Up North?”
“Now, mind you, I ain’t saying I’d be in agreement with that sentiment, but that would be how their minds work. I’m only clarifying here. They’re a clannish bunch. They’ve got a system full of colored men, some of whom may be het up on juju, some on booze, some on Northern communist agitation, all that plus your natural Negro tendency toward chaos, irrationality and ol’ Willie thumping Willie on Saturday night just for something to do. So them boys got a whole lot on their minds, hear? I wouldn’t just go poking about now.”
“I see,” said Sam.
“What I’d do, you’ll pardon me for presuming, I’d just turn around, head back up North. Yes, sir. Then write that fellow in Chicago, tell him everything’s fine, he don’t got to worry, the death certificate be on its way. I mean, it’s only probate now, isn’t it? Then I’d forget all about it. Come time, he’ll write some angry letters, but hell, he’s a Yankee, that’s all they know how to do is act all indignant.”
“Well, see here, Redfield, I can’t do that. I took the money, I must do the work.”
“Oh, come on now, Vincent. Wouldn’t be the first time someone took a retainer, wrote a letter, and forgot all about it. I just wouldn’t be messing about in Thebes. They got their own ways of doing things up there, they don’t want nobody getting in their bidness, no sir. I’d write you a letter, but to who?”
“Whom,” corrected Sam.
“Who, whom, it don’t matter. Thebes up there, up that dark river, ain’t nobody up there to write to, ain’t nobody up there to sit down nice and polite, sit under a fan, have a sip of rye whiskey, and palaver. They’re sitting on a goddamned powder keg, what they’re doing. A nigger powder keg. They got to keep it from blowing, and, way I see it, that’s a hero’s job.”
“Redfield, I have been in a variety of prisons, white and Negro both. The men who run them are many things, but heroic is about the last word I’d employ. Necessary is about as far as I’d be pleased to go.”
“Well, it’s all clear and dandy to y’all up North, with all your answers. Down here, where it never snows and things change slow except when they change fast and ugly, it’s a lot less stamped out. It can be downright messy. That’s why there has to be a Thebes. The niggers have to know there’s a Thebes, and by God if they get uppity, Thebes is where they’ll be sent. So in its way, Thebes is more important than Jackson or Biloxi or Oxford or Pascagoula. Without Thebes, wouldn’t be no Jackson or Biloxi or Oxford or Pascagoula. Without Thebes, Mississippi is the Congo and America is Africa. Thebes is what keeps the lid on. I’d hate to see you get your nose all a-twitch because you saw one guard knock a nigger down and you make a big thing over it. It just won’t do. I say as one white man to another, you best stay far from Thebes. Nothing going on in Thebes you got to see or know about, you hear?”
“Well, Redfield, I am sorry you see it that way. I can tell you’re a man set in your ways, but I am equally set in mine. I have a job to do, that’s all. I am an attorney, I took on a client, and goddammit, that is what I will do, so help me God, Thebes or no Thebes.”
He stood and walked out, without looking back.
THEY drove for a while, and Eddie read Sam’s gloomy mood.
“Sir, any directions? I’ll take you anywheres.”
Sam said, “I suppose we’re looking for a waterfront, or a marine district or some such. I have to hire a boat and just get this done on my own.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll try and find it for you, I surely will.”
It turned out Pascagoula itself had only a marine industry focused on the deep waters of the gulf; what they needed was a smaller satellite city called Moss Point, up the river a few miles, where boats ventured out into the bayous that lay to the north.
Eventually, after more starting and stopping, they found a place, an old boatyard administered from a peely shed near the water. The boats were moored along docks, and they floated and bobbed on the vagaries of tide and current, bumping into one another, none of them particularly impressive craft. Sam had traveled to England on the Queen Elizabeth and across the Channel on an LST on D-Day. Even when the latter came under fire as it neared the spot to deposit him, his men and his six 105-mm howitzers on the dangerous shore, he’d felt more comfort than he did confronting this wooden fleet rotting in the sun.
The boats were all some form of fishing craft, their engines inboard, their cabins low to the prow, their comforts all but absent.
FISHING, the sign said.
And the place smelled of that commerce, wi
th lines looped everywhere, and nets hung to dry, the sand shifty under the foot, crab husks and fish spines abandoned everywhere, the gulls flappity-flapping overhead for a bite of flesh or cake, but otherwise still as buzzards on the wharf.
Sam ducked inside to find an old boatyard salt, with bleached eyes and a face gone straight to the quality of the dried plum called a prune.
“Howdy,” said Sam, to no answer, but only a sullen stare. “I’d like to hire a boat.”
“You ain’t dressed to fish.”
“No, not for fishing.”
“You just want to piddle around? See the sights?”
“No, sir. Trying to get upriver to a town called Thebes.”
“Thebes. Don’t nobody go there, except the prison supply boat once a week.”
“Could I hitch or hire a ride aboard it?”
“Ain’t likely. Them boys are coolish toward strangers. They run tight and private-like. What would be your business in Thebes?”
“It’s a confidential matter.”
“Ain’t talking, huh?”
“Look, I don’t have to answer anybody’s questions, all right? Let’s just find me a boat that’ll go upriver. That’s your job, isn’t it? You run this place? I’m not one for Mississippi lollygagging in the hot sun when there’s work to be done.”
“Say, you’re a cuss now, ain’t you? A stranger, too, from the way you talk. Well, sir, I can git you a boat and a man to take you deep into the bayou after big catfish or brown bass or whatever; I knows men who’ll take you far into the gulf where the big bluefish play, and maybe you’d hook one of them and be proud to put it on your wall. Maybe you just want to lie in the sun and feel it turn your pasty face a nice shade while sipping on an iced Dixie. But nobody here is going up the bayou to the Yaxahatchee and then to Thebes. Nothing up there but blue-gum niggers who’d as soon eat your liver with the spleen still attached as smile and call you sir. And if one of them blue gums takes a bite out of you, sure as winter, you goin’ die before the sun sets.”