“My wife is a fine lady,” he said.
“Well, whatever, she deserves something more than an old gizzard like you.”
“That is certainly true,” he said.
“How is he?” Elmer called up.
“He’s lost blood and will be abed for a month, but if we can get him out of here and to the raft on some way other than his own two legs, he’ll be around for years to come.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Elmer.
“Damn you, Elmer Kaye,” called Jack.
“And the same to you, sir.”
Sally put two gauze pads on Jack’s entry and exit wounds, then wrapped him tight with yards of linen bandage, running the material up and around his shoulder, tightening one arm to his side. Then Elmer climbed up, and so did Charlie, and between the two of them they got Jack down the ladder and set him against a tree.
“You done some good up there, Jack,” said Elmer.
“I think I did hit a few,” said Jack.
“Where’s Audie?”
“Fool kid was off in ’ho-town playing the marshal. He’s got guts, but he’s big shy on brains.”
“Hey, I heard that.” It was Audie, rejoining from his gunfighter’s foray.
“Jack’s been hit,” said Sally. “But he is too ornery to die.”
“Son, you are plumb crazy walking down the middle of the street like that.”
“I wanted to see if it could work. It works fine as long as Uncle Jack is up top running backup with a bolt gun and a scope. Jack, you don’t look so good.”
“I am fine, son. Though I am now wrapped so tight my ears might explode.”
Then Earl arrived, and he was not happy.
“What the hell are y’all doing? Sitting here yapping as if in the bar over some beer. Jesus Christ, don’t you old bastards have a lick of sense among you?”
“Earl, Jack’s hit.”
“Oh, shit. Jack, how are you?”
He coughed up a little spray of blood, then wiped it off his mouth dismissively with the back of his hand.
“I am fine. No big thing. A lot of blood is all. I’ve seen plenty of blood before.”
“He can’t walk.”
“Okay, let’s clear these buildings and rig a stretcher and get him back to the town.”
“That’ll work.”
“Jack, you stay here.”
“Earl, thought I’d go to my dancing lesson, it’s all the same to you,” Jack said.
“You are a tough old goat, I will say. Now listen up, y’all. This ain’t over yet, and it still ain’t no goddamn tea party. We got a sweep to do, and there’s still a very dangerous man about who might still get his people together.”
“Ain’t no people to be got together, Earl. Them we ain’t dropped done fled.”
“Hell, I’ll go ahead and kill what’s left, you say the word, Earl,” said Charlie. “I’m having a grand old picnic and don’t want it to end.”
Earl saw that this banter could go on forever if he didn’t stop it hard.
“Okay, now. This here’s the last damn thing. We open the gate, sweep the compound, knock open the prison barracks, and step aside as them black fellows run free. Then we burn what’s left.”
“Suppose you got old men who don’t want to leave. Old men can be peculiar stubborn like that.”
“Then you make the younger boys take charge. That’s the only way. Come on now, we have to get humping. We can’t be powwowing like this, no matter what fun it is. Next thing you know, Charlie’ll be passing the jug out.”
“Didn’t bring a jug, Earl. Got me a nice flask, though. Care for a tot of bourbon and lemonade?”
“Afterward, flying home.”
“Be all gone by that time,” said Charlie.
“Earl,” cried Jack, “you watch that fool kid, Audie. He wants to get himself killed.”
“Aww, I do not.”
“You stay under discipline, junior. That’s an order. Rest of you old coots, you listen here. This ain’t no movie. You move slow, in the shadows, in a line abreast. You keep in visual contact. You shoot what moves, and ask about it later. You stay down as low as possible, move from cover to cover. Y’all ought to know that. Sally, you stay here with Jack.”
“The hell I will. Jack don’t need me. Maybe some of them old black men do.”
“You won’t do one thing I say, will you?”
“Not a single one, no, sir.”
“Well, can you fire a flare pistol?”
“I suppose.”
“Then let’s get some illumination and finish this thing and get the hell out of here.”
Sally took the flare pistol from Jack’s pouch, and, being practically minded, solved its intricacies quick enough.
“See, honey, you—” Charlie began to explain, but she raised the pistol and fired, the soft pop detonating a few hundred feet up, and ever so slowly, dangling from its parachute, a white flare floated down, drifting and swinging pendulum-style, so that the shadows it created danced eerily across the terrain.
“Come on, people,” said Earl.
THE gunmen moved easily through the buildings. They could sense eyes from the locked buildings hard-pressing against them, but they were looking for men with guns, not men with eyes.
Charlie, whose senses were still keenest, saw something move and blasted a Blue Whistler at it. So salty were these boys that exactly what a young Marine platoon would have done, these fellows did not, which is open up with a panicked fusillade.
“I think you just kilt a rain barrel, Charlie.”
“Was a moving target, goddammit.”
“Charlie’d shoot anything that moved.”
“Don’t kill me, Charlie, for I am moving.”
“Keep it down,” said Earl.
Where was Bigboy?
Had he missed him? Had he lit out? Had he fled at the first sign of gunfire? And what about Section Boss, with his Thompson submachine gun he loved so well? On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t Section Boss’s cup of tea to stand and fight, even with a powerful weapon. With that gun and some luck, he could have done some damage and rallied his own men, but those that weren’t dead appeared to be scattered off in the trees by this time, or crawling naked in that direction.
Sally fired another flare, and it began its gentle drift to earth.
But no guards emerged to fight or surrender.
“I think it’s clear. Them boys didn’t want to fight a bit,” said Elmer.
“Okay, let’s get these damned things opened and get these boys out of here. Then we got to blow the levee, and we’re finished.”
EARL kicked in the door of the Ape House.
Lanterns had been lit. He stepped into a cone of yellow light just inside the door, and it all came flooding back: the stench of men living close in terrible quarters, with buckets for latrines, the bunks and cots everywhere, old-sweat-soaked clothes hung out to dry, mildew, woe somehow baked into the ancient wood of the place, the iron gratings on the windows, the smell of old leather from old work boots much cured with blood and perspiration, the sense of density, hopelessness, despair. It was the last place on earth any man would go in a right mind.
But this time he wasn’t wearing chains, and he wasn’t planned as meat for the strong. He was himself again: Marine-proud and armed, a strong man who was in command.
His presence was greeted with silence.
Then a bell-clear voice called, “You is a ghost. You be dead.”
“Well, then somebody forgot to tell me, because here I am.”
“What is this? What you doing?”
“This is deliverance. Y’all, I come back to burn this goddamn place, and in the bargain you git your freedom. It’s eighteen sixty-five, boys, only I ain’t got no forty acres and a mule for you. Only a dark road into town, and off you go to whatever happens next, good or bad. Meanwhile, we’ll blow the levee, and come two hours, this place is under twenty foot of dark water. Now you go on, git!”
“Is you
from Our Lord Jesus?”
“I doubt an angel would have the notches on his gun I lay claim to. I am a gunman. I am a gunfighter. Now go on, git, before old Bogart changes his goddamn mind because he is sick and tired of yapping.”
They seemed not to be happy, not really. It wasn’t like a liberation, for perhaps the word “free” had no meaning, and perhaps as well the shock of a Bogart back in the flesh stretched their minds and made no sense.
But someone had to ask.
“You ride in on the pale horse?”
“Son, I am that pale horse. And I am done come back as I swore to old man Fish I would. Now, goddammit, get out of here, get your asses going!”
They filed by, carrying nothing, for there was nothing to carry. One by one they filed past, and Earl recognized most, Tangle Eye and Jefferson and Corner Man and James and Willis and Samuel and George P. and George M. and Vonzell and Jacob and on and on; and last of all, somehow, that contingent of sick and injured, whatever would become of them. Earl almost had pity, for what lay ahead would be hardest on them. They jabbered to themselves, or they moved slowly with fused spines, or they seemed dazed. Some would not make it, but that was the way things happened; he had to paint his violence with a broad brush, knowing that in the particulars it would be occasionally cruel.
“Go on,” he said, “into town. There’ll be rafts of some sort there, I have been told. Whether the State of Mississippi comes looking for you or not, I can’t say. I will say all the records with your names on them have been burned to nothing. That, and I can give you a couple days head start and hope you don’t kill no folks nor rob none neither. Go on, git. You Grandpa, you go on, this is for you, too.”
That was the eldest, and Sally came to him, spoke soft words, and got him mobile. She commandeered two fellows to march with him on the way down that dark road.
Earl watched as the men of the Ape House joined up with the human torrent that had been released from the other barracks and headed off toward the town of Thebes, leaving the penal farm behind forever, not that much of it remained unburned. For as they left, one by one, the barracks went aflame, bursting with cowboy firebombs that lit them from within. The orange glow roared flickery and hot up the sky, burying the stars in illumination, and lighting the parade as the boys went out.
But Earl knew his building was not empty.
With a lantern he walked on back, until at last he found him.
Moon, once so magnificent a warrior, the king of Thebes, had been whipped so hard his lacerations had scarred up. He was a ragged man, with no part of him untouched by the cat’s tail. His face a mask of tatters, like a doll ripped up by feral dogs or cats, it now showed not manhood and aggression but fear. He was weeping.
“You come to kill Moon, Bogart? G’wan, kill me. Shoot Moon dead. He ain’t good for nothing no more. The whip man done took his soul.”
“Moon, you git out of here. You git your soul back in the world. It sure ain’t in here. Whip man will win, you stay here. Killing you don’t matter a damn to me. Go on, so I can burn this place once and for all.”
“You ain’t come back to kill me?”
“No, sir. I come to set you free, and only regret them boys I was too slow to help, like old Fish. You go on now. Git out of here. I’m going to pop this here thing, and when she goes, this whole building goes down.”
He held the firebomb.
Moon eyed him balefully, as if it made no sense. And by his lights it didn’t, but in time he saw where his future lay, and he drew his immense self up and walked out the door.
Without giving it a look, Earl pulled the cord, felt the fuse light properly, and tossed the thing into the back corner of the Ape House. It was fiercely alight by the time he left, where his fellows had gathered.
“Audie, you know what’s doing. You blow that levee. You other boys, you gather up Jack—maybe some of them black fellows can help you with the stretcher, and head to town. Gather up Mr. Ed. You got to be upriver by ten hundred hours tomorrow, ten in the morning for civilian types, ’cause that’s when our Navy friends come looking for us and they won’t have enough time to hang around. Sally, you make sure these old goats don’t wander off or lose interest.”
“I will run them hard, Earl.”
“You go on, now.”
“Earl, where you going?”
“I have a piece of business yet to take care of. You go. It don’t concern you.”
“What, Earl?”
“It’s the last place. It’s why there’s a Thebes on earth. It’s what it’s all about. The Screaming House.”
67
A ROCKING chair was found, and the old man sat in the middle of the street, enjoying the fireworks. Beyond the town, beyond the trees, the whole sky was lit in a glare so powerful it extinguished the stars. That acrid tang of burned wood hung crisp in the air, driving out even the moisture. It was Fourth of July and All Hallow’s Night and New Year’s Eve combined, the light crackling off the vault of the sky. The old man sat and rocked.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Ain’t just got white lightning. Got some fine old Kentucky drinking whiskey, too. Had it many a year, so many a year I don’t remember when I first owned it. Be a pleasure, sir, to serve you a drink of it.”
“Sir, my drinking days have been many a year past. But tonight I will make an exception. That is on one condition. The condition is that you and your colleague there join me, and that we raise a sip in salute to the burning of Thebes.”
“I will take that charge, sir.”
“So will I,” said the other, and in a few minutes, the three old men enjoyed a fine sip of Kentucky bourbon, fiery in its own way as the blazing sky.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Thebes came from their hovels and dogtrot cabins to see the wonders of the night. They stared and murmured, particularly as by this time the fires had grown so intense that they cast a glow on the river itself at the base of the street, and it now rippled with the orange textures of oxidation. It was quite beautiful, if not so terrifying.
A woman came to Mr. Ed.
“Sir, what is happening?”
“Why, madam, we have burned the prison farm. To the ground, even now. There have been battles, and I am certain that most of the guards have perished and the rest have vanished. The sheriff and his fellows, they, too, have gone on. There ain’t nobody here no more but you folk.”
“Sir, what do we do?”
“You may stay or you may go. It is your choice. Though there won’t be no employment, for those of you who drew a living off that place. That place, it just ain’t no more.”
“Sir, we can’t leave. We owes money. All us.”
“No, ma’am. Not no more. Whatever debts was owed was paid up in full tonight. Look up, folks, and see the ash in the wind. That’s your debts. The place you called the Store. All gone. Nothing left.”
“What we goin’ do? How can we leave? We can’t leave no way. It take a boat to leave and we—”
The woman stopped.
“Noah built his own, I recall,” said Mr. Ed. “I am no carpenter, but I see a barge just offshore, and if my old eyes still work at all in this light, I see the inscription TRUGOOD WATERPROOF CASKET COMPANY. And I see a powerful pile of boxes meant for the dead. Now, seems to me—”
“You can use them boxes, yes sir! You can run board between them with only a little hammering, and in no time, goddamn, you gots a raft. You gots a lot of raft.”
“Why,” said the old man, “it’s almost as if it were planned that way!”
The people got themselves into action, and if they were slow and clumsy at first, it was minutes before convicts began arriving in torrents down the dark road. They too saw the genius of it all, and with their muscle and skill, with nails reclaimed from dogtrot cabins and mallets and boots and whatever used as hammers, with boardage from cabins quickly disassembled, it was not at all long before a fleet of rafts, each supported squarely by a squadron of pontoons that had b
een coffins, came into being.
“Sir, we going. They be enough for all of us. You come with us, sir. Ain’t nothing left.”
But the old man was dozing in the excitement, and even when three more white cowboys, a wounded man on a stretcher, and his granddaughter arrived to look on the scene with encouragement, no one could muster the nerve to wake the old fellow up, for certainly, all agreed, he had earned his rest this night.
68
BIGBOY saw him a fair ways off. The flames leaping at the horizon helped, for they threw a wash of light that otherwise would have kept the man invisible. But no, there he was, two hundred yards out, moving swiftly, bent in purpose. Bigboy’s heart leapt a little, but he calmed it to quiet by the imposition of his will, and concentrated on the practicalities of the problem ahead.
He was in the gully just behind the toolshed where the axes and shovels were locked each night. He knew it was Bogart by the walk, the manful stride. He could see the cow man’s hat low over the eyes and a rifle in his hands, and he guessed there’d be handguns under that big canvas coat. Bigboy knew Earl was dead set on going to Thebes’s one last secret place.
With a pop and a hiss, Bigboy let the whip uncoil and snake through the dirt. It had to be loose and ready for an instant’s use. He looked left and right to make certain no branches hung low to capture the tail and tie it up, and of course there weren’t any. He was free and clear. His whip hand was strong and his whip had free rein to snap and bite where he directed it.
He tried to dull himself out, reach a kind of no-place feeling, so that he could move swiftly when the time came, use the whip to take the man down, get on him, and disarm him, then shoot him with his own gun or beat him to death. No, not beat him. Bogart was too swift and tough to be beaten, and no one punch would do the trick; it would have to take two or three in a row, and good as he was, Bigboy remembered that the smaller man was equally good and would have a chance at the lucky punch as he had managed before. But shooting him had no pleasure in it anywhere, for it didn’t reflect Bigboy’s own purity of will and natural propensity for triumph. Bigboy had to kill him with his own hands, that he knew; but he also knew those hands would have a whip in them.