EARL hustled along. He was on the levee road, that ridge of land that bisected the fields and led to the trees that marked the river. Along here somewhere would be the turnoff that led through those trees to the Screaming House, with its polite doctor and his assistants, where the convicts went to die in pain.
He knew also that Bigboy could be out here. It was too easy to believe that the guard sergeant had perished in the fires at the Whipping House or the barracks. The man was too swift, too smart. Had he then fled? That didn’t seem like Bigboy either, for if there was a thing he wasn’t, it was a coward, and even if he escaped the general slaughter, it wouldn’t be his inclination to flee, but to hang around.
But Earl also knew that he hadn’t time to smoke the man out, not without dogs and other trackers. Bigboy knew the land; he didn’t. Bigboy could make time, he couldn’t. You caught Bigboy flat in the surprise or you didn’t. He hadn’t. Bigboy would survive and come dog him in his real life, he had no doubt. Bigboy wasn’t the type to let a thing like this slip; Bigboy would work just as hard to find out who Bogart was as Earl had worked to get back here with gunmen. That was Bigboy’s nature.
So when the whip flicked out and smashed against his ear, ripping it in a flash of heat pain so intense it almost took Earl’s memory, it was not quite a surprise. The surprise was that as Earl wheeled to bring the rifle up Bigboy got there so fast, for he had never seen the albino run and had no idea what animal speed the man possessed.
Bigboy hit him with the crown of his head under the left eye, and even brighter fires than the ones he’d seen that night lit instantly in Earl’s brain, and Bigboy’s force carried him onward, crushing him in the rush, until he had the smaller man down.
He cracked him crown to face, crown to face, crown to face three more times, each splitting skin, each knocking Earl’s sentience toward chaos and sloth.
Then Earl felt Bigboy’s hands on him, ripping at the guns. Earl wasn’t fast enough to catch the first one, but he got a grip on the big man’s wrist at the second, and so Bigboy crown-butted him again. His grip slipped. In an instant, both handguns had been ripped from the holsters.
But Bigboy did not shoot him as well he could have. Instead, he threw the last one away, following the other, pulled off the pouch that contained the firebombs, tossed it too, then stepped back, leaned to retrieve a thing from the ground, stepped back three more paces.
Earl got himself up slowly.
He heard the flick and whisper of the whip.
“Ever see a man die by whip, Bogart?” Bigboy asked.
“Seen one,” said Earl. “An old man chained. Don’t take much guts-wise to kill a chained-up old man.”
“You’d be surprised. Lots don’t have the entrails for the work. But I see he was talking about you at the end. You came back, riding a pale horse, just like he said you would. You’ve done good, Bogart. The sky is bright with what you’ve done. You are a hero. But remember once I told you about the hero’s flaw. It’s his vanity. Do you know what that means? Self-love. Self-adoration. And that’s your flaw. You came out here alone. Where are those other fellows with all their guns? I knew you’d come alone, even if you didn’t, for what good’s being a hero in a fairy tale if you don’t face the beast? That’s what’s ticking away inside you.”
“This ain’t no fairy tale.”
“No, it ain’t. This is the whip man with nine feet of cat rawhide for you, delivered in licks so perfect you won’t believe it. I took one ear. I’ll take the other. I’ll take the nose and the fingers and the eyes and the knees. Then I’ll put such a roar of lashes against you, you’ll pray to die. I’ll take each of your nerves. Then I won’t kill you. Then I’ll leave you blind and tongueless and paralyzed and hideous ugly as a human stump. That’ll be Bigboy’s bequest to the world.”
The whip snaked and this time it cracked at Earl’s good ear with a sound so loud it all but busted the eardrum.
“Who are you?” Bigboy said. “Tell me that and I’ll hit you so hard upside the head you’ll go unconscious, and I’ll get one of those guns and shoot you neat in the heart. Who are you?”
“Bogash. I’m a truck driver. I hope to run a hunting lodge down here for rich sportsmen from Little Rock.”
“You are a stubborn bastard.”
Earl rushed. He wasn’t fast enough. Bigboy pin-wheeled the whip and flicked three cuts into Earl so explosively he knocked Earl down in the dust. Where the cuts were it hurt so bad he thought he’d die. Who knew a thing could hurt like that?
“Bad, huh? Yeah, it gets worse. You can’t do it. No man can face up to the whip man, no matter how tough and quick he is. It can’t be done.”
Earl came again and learned the same lesson, only worse. This time the whip man lashed him perfectly on the top of one hand, opening a deep cut. That hand went numb and useless at once, as if it had been stung by a hundred bees. It swelled into something fat and puffy and yellow.
“You still ain’t close enough. You think you can get inside the whip? That’s what they all think. But no one can take the pain, no one. And no one’s got that kind of speed to him.”
“One of my boys’ll be along soon. He’ll shoot you dead and laugh about it. He’s killed plenty in his time.”
“That little kid?” said Bigboy. “He looks like he’d wet his pants you yell at him. Only that one’s long passed. I take it he’s going to blow the levee and flood the place. A good plan. It’ll let me slip away, too, and start again, and wouldn’t you know I’ve got a pretty penny cached in New Orleans banks. You’re really doing me a favor and—”
Earl’s fingers scooped and tossed a cloud of dust toward Bigboy’s eyes, but it didn’t produce blindness, only laughter.
“That’s a good one. Oh, ain’t I seen that in two hundred pictures or so. And I’m so stupid I’m going to fall for that one! You must not even yet know who I am.”
Think! Earl demanded of himself.
Read him! What’s he going to do next? Anticipate.
Earl stood and backed off a few feet.
“Oh, you think you can get away. I’ll take you down across the ankles and whip your back so raw you can’t move a bit. You want that? It could be so easy. You tell me who you are and the lights go out. No pain.”
“Except after I tell you, you tell me you’re going to kill my wife and boy after you kill me. Then you whip me slow, laughing.”
“You got an imagination,” said Bigboy. “That I give you, an imagination.”
An insight passed into Earl’s mind. He is a fighter. He is a fighter with a long right-hand punch. You rotate away from it.
He began to rotate to his own right.
“Where you going, son? You think this is a boxing match? You think you can out-think me?”
With that Bigboy pivoted to his own left, and snapped the whip into the dust to Earl’s immediate right, to stand him still. But Earl saw it coming, for that was Earl’s gift, and though he knew he’d never be fast enough to catch the whip with foot or hand and pin it, he might bring that trick off with his whole body, and even before Bigboy had pivoted for his strike, Earl had started his dart to the ground, and in the same second the whip lashed the dust, he landed on it, stilled it, and rolled three spins toward Bigboy and came up until they faced each other across three feet of dead whip now wrapped tight to Earl’s body.
A flash of panic hit the big man’s eyes, but Earl stepped in and hit him hard in the nose, breaking it, and the big man recoiled, roared in pain, and grappled bearwise against Earl, his big strong arms crushing the smaller man.
Earl bit his fucking nose. Didn’t know where that trick came from, it was just what he did.
Bigboy loosened his grip and the two spun, groping for advantage, until it arrived at Bigboy, who lifted Earl off his feet and threw him seven feet through the air, where he crashed into the shed of tools, splintering it.
Bigboy waited for the man to pull himself up so that he could finish the job, and had even begun to move in for t
he kill, when he came to an abrupt halt. Earl staggered from the wreckage, but rotated slightly, blinking to clear his mind, and as he turned he revealed that in his hand he held an ax.
“You want your whip back, sir?” Earl inquired. “Come on over here and get it.”
Bigboy’s eyes dropped and he feinted a retreat, but Earl had seen this move, too, and as the big man came at him full bore, too close for Earl to swing the blade in an over-the-shoulder arc, Earl dipped under the rush and heaved through his arc horizontally. It lit with a thunk and was then torn from his grip.
Bigboy stepped back and looked with curiosity at the ax blade sunk into his hip, and the black blood that welled from it, and the two feet of wooden haft that hung off it. He went to one knee, groggy, shaking his head as if to make the spiders and firecrackers leave his mind.
Earl had another ax by this time, and when the big man regained his sense of purpose and came at him, Earl was fast enough to sidestep, and go top to bottom with his arc, and bury this one in the shoulder.
The two axes stuck deep in the big man, each slightly aquiver. Bigboy turned, spied Earl with ax Number 3.
“You goddamned bastard,” he said.
He lurched, with enough power still but no speed, and Earl planted this one in his stomach, hanging it up among the loops of entrails which split open, and it wasn’t just blood that came out, it was also shit and turnips.
“You bastard,” he said again, and Earl was amazed that the man was so tough. He had never seen toughness like this, not even from the Jap naval infantry. But that didn’t stop him from seizing another ax from the pile. Bigboy staggered left, and reached for his own ax, and Earl chopped off his right hand. Bigboy looked at the stump, as if to waggle phantom fingers, but became fascinated with the arterial spray spurting from the wound. Then, once more he launched himself, and Earl teed off with the fourth ax, a ballplayer with a fat pitch too slow to miss. He felt like DiMaggio. It went with a noise that was new to his ears, unheard even in all the close combat of the Pacific, on the diagonal across Bigboy’s face, tearing out eye and nose and cheekbone, and he stepped groggily away as if he couldn’t yet believe this thing had happened to him and looked at Earl, face halved like a melon by the last of the axes, which all still lay set in him.
“Earl Swagger,” Earl said. “United States Marine Corps.”
Bigboy fell at last, as dead as they get.
69
SOMEHOW the town itself became engulfed in flame. No bombs had been thrown. But evidently in the melee, as the convicts ripped lumber from the dogtrot cabins and hammered them into frameworks on the pontoons of the waterproof coffins, a lamp was spilled over. That flame caught, and a wind or whatever propelled its jump to another cabin and another.
The conflagration didn’t matter, though. By this time, far into the night, the original townspeople had long since departed, taking with them what they could, cached money and food, old photos, a treasured Bible. Sally had been everywhere among them, cajoling, speaking gently, helping the elderly, giving guidance or medical help or benediction as the circumstances warranted.
“That girl is some kind of angel,” said Elmer.
“She is pure goodness,” said Jack, from his stretcher. “Her grandad would be proud for her,” said Bill. “Should we wake him?”
“Let him sleep some more,” said Elmer.
And the convicts labored hard and well in their own benefit, some of them proving master carpenters as well, and indeed their rafts were even more soundly engineered and constructed than the first generation.
The plan was simple; it was hardly even a plan. No, they would not drift into Pascagoula, all two hundred of them, and hope that nobody would notice. Instead there were three or four Negro towns in the great swamp, and segments of them would make landfall at each of these, and there gather wits and disperse overland. They’d have at least a couple of days’ head start, and if they didn’t bunch up and stayed cool and kept moving, they’d have disappeared so totally Mississippi would not have the energy to look hard for them if it ever quite caught on that they were not dead and not drowned by a flood.
So they had it at last: freedom. It was worth working the long night for, and so they did, and not soon but soon enough, they were gone and on their way, without a farewell, leaving the three awake white men, the girl and her sleeping grandpap.
Sally and the old men watched them go.
“Well, that’s the last goddamn act. We done what we come to do.”
“We done it good,” crazy Charlie said. “I ain’t had a ball like this one in years, if ever.”
“I hope it turns out for the best, ’cause there’s no going back.”
“I’d bet we done the right thing.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Elmer, “but my theory of the human heart may be darker than yours.”
“Mr. Elmer, you should believe in the good,” said Sally. “If you believe in it, maybe it will happen.”
“But Sally, most people ain’t like you. You’re special. Most are like us, crabby old men who don’t care much about nothing except what’s in it for us.”
“Wasn’t nothing in it for you as I can see,” said Sally. “You did it because it was right, and I did it because it was right, and who can ask for more?”
“I did it because it felt so damn good,” said Charlie.
“Charlie, underneath it all I don’t believe that’s the true you.”
“No, honey,” said Elmer, “underneath it all that is the true Charlie.”
Of course all the time they were talking, the modest, humble, silent Bill was working. He had carpentry skills, too, and he threw together a raft as fine as any of them in an hour’s worth of labor, a platform on a frame nailed neatly to four strategically placed coffins. He worked hard and steadily.
“Y’all can sit there yapping, but if you do, you ain’t riding on my raft,” he finally said, and the two other gunfighters wearily arose to join him.
“Problem is,” he said, “we got to go upstream. Them other fellows, they all headed downstream.”
“Bill,” said Charlie, “whyn’t you build us a Johnson outboard? That’d get the trick done right fine.”
“No oil,” said Bill. “If I built it, we couldn’t run it, ’cause we got no oil to cut the kerosene with.”
“Good point,” said Charlie.
“Can we pole?”
“Have to pole,” said Bill. “No other choice.”
“What’s ‘pole’?” asked Charlie.
“Don’t you know a goddamn thing?” Bill said.
“We stay close to shore and sort of push ourselves upstream.”
“I got it.”
“It ain’t all that hard to get.”
“I’ll go into the woods and look for saplings we can cut into them poles.”
“Charlie, that’s the first smart thing you’ve said all week,” said Jack from his stretcher.
Charlie went off, Jack rested, Bill worked on the raft, Elmer helped, Sally helped—she couldn’t be ordered to rest—the town burned to ash and chars, the sky began to lighten and the old man dozed contentedly.
In time, Charlie returned, and with his knife set to hewing the instruments of their deliverance. He did a good job and was finished just as the dawn was breaking.
“Want to go?”
“It’s not seven yet. I figure two hours to get upstream. We—”
A boom cracked the air, far off. That meant that Audie had blown the levee.
“Best wake your grandpap, sweetie.”
“Yes, it’s time.”
She walked up the incline to the old man dozing comfortably in the rocking chair in the middle of the empty street in the town of burned-out buildings and returned in a bit.
“What’d he say? Want to snooze some more?”
“Grandpap didn’t say a thing,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Elmer.
“At least he died happy,” said Charlie. “Hope
I die that happy, though it’ll happen in bed likely, after a crotchety decline and lots of hell thrown at and received back from damn women nurses and wives.”
“Are you all right, Sally?” Bill Jennings asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. Give me a moment please, is all.”
She walked off and faced the river, the dawn, the far shore, the rest of her life.
“Well, whatever, she don’t have to spend the rest of her life caring for an old man. She can find a young one now.”
“Doubt there’s one good enough for her,” said Jack. “These kids these days, if you catch my drift.”
“I do.”
“All right,” she said, returning, “I am all fine now.”
“Let’s wrap Mr. Ed carefully.”
“He sure deserves that.”
“He surely does.”
And they set about to prepare a funeral shroud and then place the old man in one of the Trugood waterproof coffins.
70
EARL pulled the coiled whip off him as if it were an infected snake whose very skin contained poison. He hated the gnarly feel of the thing, and threw it as far as he could off into the fields, with a shudder of revulsion. Then, quickly, he went to look for his revolvers and found one, the Heavy Duty Smith. The Colt Trooper was evidently gone forever, for he did not have a night to hunt for it. It would rust away to nothingness in the coming years. He picked up the pouch with the last few firebombs.
Then at last he touched his face. There wasn’t much blood, except at his ear. His sorest spot remained the top of his left hand, where the whip tail had cracked deep. That one was almost useless, and the ear, with a deep and bad tear, was equally a mess, though for some odd reason it didn’t hurt as much. The openings on his face had coagulated and ceased to bleed. Stitches would close them up, but stitches were still a day or so away.