This was new. The people in the area believed the road had just been destroyed naturally. But now the government was destroying it, to protect whatever Dr. Stone was working on.
Sam wrote down this development.
“Do you know, exactly, what it was he was studying?”
“You know, I haven’t a head for medicine. I believe it was malarial virus work of some sort. He may have explained it to me at one point or other, but if I understood it then, I honestly can’t say I do today.”
“Did he ever specify the exact nature of the work? I mean, was he treating patients? Was he examining blood? Was he looking for cures and running a medicine test of some sort?”
“As I understand it, they had volunteers who agreed to be infected with various strains so that their progress could be monitored and cures tried. The whole point was to do it quickly, to arrive at some kind of cure or medical protocol years in advance of the normal techniques. It was very accelerated, that I know.”
“Would they have used prisoners?”
“I’m sure they were volunteers, Mr. Vincent. It would be very dangerous work, and you couldn’t possibly force a man to risk his health, his body, his life like that, now could you?”
“No, ma’am. Well, then, would he have sent back photographs of any sort? I’m looking for a way to document the changes at Thebes Penal Farm.”
“No, Mr. Vincent. David was not a photographer, I’m afraid. He was caught up entirely in his work.”
“I see.”
“Now,” she said, “there were letters. Lots of letters.”
Sam swallowed and hoped he didn’t give away both his surprise and his idiocy for not having come up with this possibility on his own. He finally said, “I suppose you’ve got them?”
“Of course, Mr. Vincent.”
“Would it be all right if—”
“Of course,” she said.
24
IN the dark, men breathed heavily as they snored through sleep painfully earned. Some farted away the pressures of a bean-rich diet, some moaned in pain or dread, and occasionally someone cried out from the unconscious but far more pleasant other world for a Rosie or a Mama or an Alberta.
But even in this darkness there were gradients in the shadings, as there always were in any darkness. That deeper patch over there, was it the shape of a man, prowling, hunting? Or was it a discoloration on the wall, the play of obscure shadow? That small ticking sound: the ancient timbers settling yet again, another tiny degree? Or a man opening a secret pocketknife to do some powerful cutting?
He watched, waiting for movement, waiting for some indication of assault, trying to control his breathing.
Earl had slipped from his bed an hour after lights out, and oozed with a sniper’s patience slowly along the floor an inch or so at a time, until he crouched a few feet from the mattress where he’d been sleeping these past nights. He was in his underwear but had his heavy work boots on. He tried to be soundless as he cocked his legs for a spring and readied himself for a fight.
He even had a weapon, for he could not fight in the dark without one. It was a knot of branch, secreted into his pants late in the day, heavy for clubbing, pointed and broken for stabbing.
But what if they didn’t come tonight?
If they didn’t, he’d lose the sleep and he’d never gain it back; the work in the hole was grinding him down inexorably, and he could feel his strength ebbing. And with his strength, his will was going.
He’d been thinking about one thing: escape.
But it seemed impossible.
The problem wasn’t the fences or the guns or even the swamp; he could slide under the fence, he could evade the guns, he could navigate the swamp. He’d already figured two ways to escape the barracks at night. No, the problem was those goddamn dogs, who’d hunt him down long before he could reach the only fair chance at escape, which was the river. Before, he’d been able to plan, to build traps and switchbacks to throw the hounds off. No chance of that here: he’d be blind in the swamp, and the dogs would be on him in no time.
Yet that wasn’t the worst. He knew the worst: it was that each day he was here, he lost a little strength, a little spirit, a little hope. He had to move soon or he’d never move. It was too much. It was horrible. In the war, at least you had responsibilities and comrades to get you through, to share the ordeal and lend you their strength. Here he had nothing: no Negro would have a thing to do with him, and Bigboy and his bullies wanted him dead, and this braying monster Section Boss wanted him dead slowly. Only the warden was keeping him alive, and for how long? Eventually the warden would conclude that enough time had passed, and that if Earl were indeed the agent he believed him to be, his agency would come looking for him to make a big stink. Absent that proof of Earl’s importance, the warden would conclude he was just what he said he was: a nobody. And being a potential embarrassment, he’d be easy enough to dispose of. Who would say a thing?
He tried to keep his mind sharp. He couldn’t. He kept sliding off into blurry reverie. He remembered so many nights like this in the war, particularly early on, on jungle-rich Guadal, where the Japs crept in through the shadowy trees and left a man or two with his throat slit every night. Earl had caught one once about to finish him after he’d finished another man in the gun pit, and Earl had kicked him in the balls, then beat him to death with an entrenching tool. It was not a pleasant memory, and as it stole over him now, waiting, he felt a sense of shame. He remembered the glee with which he’d whacked and whacked at the small, squirming yellow man, and the strange notes that came from his enemy’s constricted throat, and the exultation when it was over, and he was blood-smeared, exhausted but alive for one more tropical sunrise and one more shot at survival.
He tried not to move his head, or let the pain stinging in his tensed legs get to him. He scanned without motion; his eyes simply rotated left and right, scoping the abstractions for a sense of movement, listening for a sound.
But nothing came. It was going to be a—
They were fast and quiet. They were as good as the Japs. They rose soundlessly from nowhere and only passed through a tiny smear of light from a dim moon beyond the window to alert him, and they were on his bunk in split seconds; they made no noise at all, like expert jungle killers, men well experienced in mortal confrontations and well studied in the leverage of force against flesh. He watched their arms blur as they struck again and again into the hump of knotted clothing that was a laundry bag he’d stolen in the dark.
In the next second, they realized they were stabbing at somebody’s sweaty underwear, not a man, and in the next second after that, he was on them.
Earl was without mercy. He was not in a universe where mercy was allowable. Mercy equaled death. Yet even as far gone as he was toward savagery, he was not comfortable with what happened next, though he was its sole author. As he lunged, he swung the limb with the force of an ax, wishing for more weight up top. But it didn’t matter, for his timing was exquisite and he struck one of his antagonists—too dark to tell which one—full in the face with it and felt the satisfying shudder up the shaft of the club and the length of his arms to signify a solid wallop. That man, stunned, loosened and slipped, gasping, his two hands flying to his injured face, which now must have worn a broken nose, a shattered cheek and a mouthful of broken teeth. He was out of the fight.
Earl was quick on the rebound, knowing he’d never get a full swing off again; instead, from the full extension of the first blow, he came driving back this time with the sharp point of his weapon, driving it hard into something soft and moist, a neck he presumed, that belonged to the second man. He drove this shaft like a piston, back and forth in cruel, savage strokes, at the same time shoving his body with all its strength against his antagonist’s, and yet also keeping that now-screaming man between himself and the other who was charging around to cut him.
Earl separated from the second bleeder to meet the rush of the knife man. He countered the blade with the stic
k, catching the last man’s lunge, and spared himself a deep stab. But he knew also that he had not hurt the second man enough to put him out of the fight, and if the two of them got to him, and the fight went to the floor, as most fights do, they’d crush him beneath them, grapple him still, and gut him.
The other blade probed again, this time glancing off Earl’s parry and slicing a bad wound across his forearm. The blood spurted, but there wasn’t any pain, for his system was too aboil with blood chemicals to register hurt. He got a short stroke of the haft into the face of the other fighter, driving him back, and then the second man recovered enough to get him in a driving bear hug and slam him into a bunk, spilling two screaming sleepers from it.
Lanterns were lit somewhere, and in the pitching darkness, Earl saw that it was big Moon himself who had him crushed, while another man retrieved the knife to close on Earl. So Earl squirmed and improvised. With his boot he crushed Moon’s instep, and when the giant screamed and loosened his grip, Earl head-butted him backward in the nose, breaking it. Then he spun, saw an opening, and nailed him with a hard jab to the lower side of the head, and felt the jaw he’d smashed snap and twitch; he’d broken it clean. He grabbed the injured heavyweight and pushed him in the direction of the knife fighter, deflecting him.
But not for long. The knife boy knew his stuff. He evaded Moon deftly, stayed balanced and without panic, went to a trapping backhand grip on his cutter, and his eyes were empty of emotion but full of skill. He was fast as he danced at Earl, and the knife then came at Earl’s face so fast even a man as fast as Earl couldn’t completely avoid it, and it sliced along the line of his skull, opening a squirting gash. But the point missed his eyes, which had been the idea behind the thrust, and Earl didn’t panic when he was hurt as so many do. He closed faster than the man withdrew, knowing the closer he was the more he cut the power of the stabber. And before that one could get the knife back into play, Earl tattooed him with a left-right-left-right combo to the center of the body, knowing the satisfaction of punches well delivered. The other buckled and stepped back, and with hazy eyes flailed at Earl with the knife, which Earl evaded easily enough, and when the blade had passed, hit him a haymaker over the jaw, taking the consciousness away from him. He twisted down in a heap.
The lanterns were fully on now. Moon was alone, his jaw disfigured, a great foam of redness spread across the heaving blackness of his chest from the many gougings Earl had applied with the back end of his club.
“Come on, big man. Let’s finish it,” Earl shouted in full rage, blood and sweat streaming off him. He had surrendered fully to the warrior’s madness. He wanted to kill and crush his antagonist, but Moon, rather than stepping forward, stepped back, raising a hand. He slinked away, trying to stem the blood from his wound. He was done for that night.
Earl staggered slightly, as the pains his adrenaline had kept him from feeling now announced their presence. His hands hurt the most and his knuckles were garlanded in red. He opened and closed his fists, feeling the pain as fire, hot and raw. But no bones were broken. When he turned he saw horror on the faces of the lantern-lit Negroes who stared at him as if he were some kind of rough beast, newly born among them. Then he realized he was bathed in blood.
He touched his head where the long slice had been opened up, and his fingers came away red. He looked at his left arm, where the other cut was. Both oozed. He went to his own laundry cache and pulled out a clean undershirt, broke the seams with his teeth and quickly improvised cotton bandages around them to stanch the blood flow. He knew he had not been hurt mortally but that the less blood he lost the faster he’d recover. Too bad there wasn’t fishing line about; he’d sew himself up. Then he heard the commotion.
“Mama! Mama! I ain’t goin’ to de Screamin’ House! Mama, don’t let dem take me to de Screamin’ House! Lord, Lord, ain’t goin’ to de Screamin’ House.”
He saw that it was the knife fighter, now conscious, now aware he was dying. Knocked out by Earl’s blow, he had managed to twist on his blade. He had buried it in his thigh, and the blood ran so swiftly and puddled so hugely that it seemed clear he would bleed out. Around him stood men watching, seemingly frozen in the drama of his exsanguination.
“Oh, God!” he screamed, waving his hands futilely, “don’t let me die like this. Please God, don’t let them take me to de Screamin’ House.”
No one seemed able to help. Memories danced through Earl’s mind from the war: young men, blood, the shock of loss, the disbelief that oneself could be so badly hurt so quickly, the numbness of the survivors, their tentativeness. It was all too familiar.
Earl pulled himself up off the floor and went to and kneeled by the man.
“You deep cut, son,” he said.
“Don’t let dem take me, boss. Please to the Lord, no.”
“You hold on tight now. The less you scream and move, the less blood you lose.”
Earl bent closer. It was a butcher knife with an old, worn haft.
“I’m going to pull it out, son. Goin’ to hurt like Jesus.”
“Help me, boss.”
Earl called, “Some you other fellows, you come here. Give this man something to hold on to. Someone else, you go get a cool cloth from the pump and wet his face. He has to be calm or he is a goner.”
The men shambled to do what he wanted.
When they had him secured, Earl leaned his strength against the meaty thigh with the wooden grip buried in a well of bubbly red, winked at the man—a boy, he now saw, just as so many of them had been in the war—and drew it out. The boy shuddered in the pain, though he didn’t scream.
Immediately the blood flow increased.
“Ya’ll git me a cord or a rope or something. We have to tie off that artery.”
Someone went to improvise one, but the blood came so fast, Earl was afraid it was too late. Gently, he pried the wound open.
“Git a light down here so I can see!”
The lantern was lowered and Earl could make out the pulsing, severed artery. He had no clamp at all, so he reached in and plucked the little spurting tube between his two fingers and closed it.
“He’s got to stay still like this ’til medical help comes.”
“Won’t be nothing ’til the morning.”
“Well, if we can hold him still and keep him calm, now that I got this hose shut down, he may make it.”
“Fo’ what?” somebody asked. “Come back here?”
“You got a point, man. But still, I say keep this young man alive for better times. Whyn’t ya’ll do some of that singing you’re so damn good at. Maybe that’ll keep him with us an extra minute or two till the doc comes.”
The men began to sing.
25
Well, sweetheart, it isn’t pretty and it’s primitive, but after Africa and Asia, it’s certainly comforting to be in one’s own country, although Mississippi has a long way to go before it joins the rest of the U.S.A.
Sam sat in a leather chair in a study. He had before him a cup of coffee and a pile of letters on the thin paper that marked the V-mail of the war, a large sheet folded many ways to make it a small and efficient package for delivery. VICTORY it said at the top of every fold.
This was the earliest one, marked January 9, 1943.
“It’s so odd,” the doctor went on,
you expect Mississippi to be hot and swampy and to see men in chain gangs working in dust and heat. You expect to run into Walker Evans images everywhere. Now Let Us Praise Famous Men. Well, it’s not at all like that. It is squalid, of course, and underdeveloped, but it’s both cold and wet and of course dreary as well. Everything is muddy and the forest or jungle or whatever it is is impenetrable. I certainly can see why they put this prison here on this old plantation site; the question is, why did they put the plantation here in the first place?
Sam was a thorough, disciplined man. He read each letter completely, occasionally taking notes on his yellow pad. He skipped nothing, he tried to prejudge nothing, and he willed hims
elf to pay no attention to the emotional content of the letters, which was none of his business.
Yet that of course, particularly in the early going, was the only thing he could notice. As a couple, Dr. and Mrs. Stone seemed so…well, damned perfect. He had censored his own men’s letters during the same time period, as he moved his artillery unit across up Italy, then over to England, then to invade France and roll toward Germany. He therefore had a reference point, but quickly found it of no use. For while the average soldier’s letters were full of sentences like, “You tell Luke he still owes me that $300, and I am not forgetting it when we finally win this thing” and “Who is this Bob you keep writing about. Shirley I am sleeping in cold dogshit every night and these German fellows are trying to blow me up and I DO NOT appreciate hearing about Bob taking you to the church supper.” But the Stones were like a couple in a movie: “Miss you darling, dearest, and am so proud of the work you are doing at the U.S.O.” “Thanks, sweetness, for that last wonderful letter, and it doesn’t surprise me that flower club politics are so rough. All politics are rough, from the Medical Corps to the flower club. You will become treasurer in the next election, I am sure of it.”
Unable to help himself, Sam wrote the words “emotional authenticity lacking” on his yellow pad, unsure himself quite what he meant.
Occasionally, he’d look up when the sentiments grew too cloying and Hollywoodesque, pinch the bridge of his nose, take another sip of coffee, and glance around the study, with its wall of photographs taken in obscure foreign places where the great humanitarian had gone in his quest for a disease-free universe. The photos were the same and seemed in bright color, even though they were black and white: the great man, in a white coat or a pith helmet, standing among a coterie of little people of differently hued skin and differently configured wardrobes, enjoying their adoration and his own sense of centrality. His wife was in some of the photos as well, always a beautiful woman of classical posture and self-possession, the memsahib of a dozen or more native cultures. The little people were brown, black, yellow, in a variety of fabulously interesting garb: feathers, loincloths, ceremonial gowns, animal skins, black pajamas, sometimes in just the pale dowdy uniform of colonialist lackeys in some empire’s far-flung bureaucracy. Among the pictures, of course, were the testimonials, some even in English. They spoke of the same thing: the doctor’s commitment, the doctor’s love of people, especially children, the doctor’s courage. It was a fabulous cavalcade, and it made Sam himself feel a little banal and worthless. He’d blown up some German tanks and put some bad fellows in a little county in nowhere, U.S.A., in prison or in the electric chair. What was that in comparison to a life lived so grandly, so heroically?