'Oh, we done heard. We done been warned. We onto y'all. Y'all come down here and stir our niggers all up. You think you doin' them a favor. Yes sir, you helping them. But what you be doin' is filling their fool heads full of things that can't never be, and so you be making them more unhappy rather than less unhappy, while you be gittin' it ready to tear down what we done built down here, on nothing but sweat and blood and guts and our own dying. Oh, I know your sort, Mister. You are the pure-D devil his self only you think you doin' good.'
'I am a firm believer in the rules, and I?'
'The rules! Mister, I got a county full of piney-woods niggers who all they want to do is fuck or fight, don't matter much to them.'
'Sir, I didn't say?'
'Now I'll tell you what. I will make inquiries. I will git you your certificate, and my deputies will get you out of our county. Don't you never come back, you hear? That's the goddamnedest best you're gonna git down here, and I am cutting you an exclusive deal because you are white, even if I believe you be deluded close to mental instability.
Thebes ain't for outsiders. You want Mississippi hospitality, you go to Biloxi, you square on that, partner?' 'I see the point,' said Sam.
'Yes, sir, I bet you do. Boys, move Mr. Vincent to holding, where he'll be more comfortable. He's ' to leave us.' sam was no longer locked up, nor did he remain handcuffed. He was free to move about the general area, but had, under orders and strict observation, to stay close to the station, as it was called, and not to go near to or rile any Negro people.
They let him take a nice shower indoors, where they themselves kept clean, and he got himself back into some kind of civilized order. He was fed, and the food was better than anything he had eaten since leaving Pascagoula, beans and ham, fried potatoes, heavy chicory coffee, fresh bread. These boys here, they lived pretty good, in what was a kind of barracks in the woods, a good mile out of town, which, he now saw, was protected against attack by a stout barbed-wire fence.
There was a stable here, for the deputy force seemed more like some kind of light cavalry than any law enforcement unit. The men lounged about like soldiers, keeping their uniforms sharp, riding off on patrol now and then in twos. There was a duty room with assignments and rotation, a roster board; in all, it seemed far more military than police.
Finally, a rider came, and after conferring with some of the deputies, he came and got Sam, who was put back into the wagon, though this time not bound or beaten. He sat up front with the driver, who drove the team through the piney woods?Lord, they were dense, seeming to stretch out forever into the looming darkness?and then through the town, dead now as it was then.
They approached the river, the big wagon and the thundering horses driving back what Negroes remained in the street. As they passed the public house, Sam felt the eyes of the two old men he'd spoken to watching him glumly.
Down at the dock, a happy sight greeted Sam. It was Lazear, back from wherever, standing by his boat, whose old motor churned a steady tune.
The sheriff stood there also.
Sam climbed down from the wagon, on unsure legs, then caught himself.
'All right, Mr. Arkansas Traveler, here is your official document.
You'll see that it's right and proper.'
It appeared to be. Under the seal of the state of Mississippi and the state motto it was an official certificate of death for one lincoln tilson, Negro, age unknown but elderly, of Thebes, Thebes County, Mississippi, October 10th, 1950, by drowning, namely in the river Yaxahatchee. It was signed by a coroner in an illegible scrawl.
'There, sir. The end of that poor man. The river can be treacherous.
It takes you down and it does things to you, and out you come three days later. Poor Negro Tilson was such a victim. It's a miracle that after that time in the water, he was still identifiable.'
'Sheriff, who identified him?'
'Now, Mr. Arkansas Traveler, we don't keep records on every dead Negro in the county. I don't recollect, nor do I recollect the exact circumstances. Nor, sir, do I fancy a chat with you on the subject, while you interrogate me and try to prove your Northern cleverness over my simplicity.'
'I see.'
'You have been given fair warning. Now you get out of our town, and don't you come back nohow. There is nothing here for you and you have done your task.'
Sam looked at the document; there was nothing to it to convince him that it couldn't have been fabricated in the last hour or so.
But here it was: the out. The end. The finish. He had earned his retainer, and would file a complete report to his client, and what would happen next would be up to the client.
'Well, Sheriff, this is not the way I do things, but I see things down here are slow to change, and it is not my charge to do that. I fear when change comes, it will be a terror for you.'
'It ain't never coming, not this far south. We have the guns and the will to make that prediction stick, I guarantee you. Now, sir, every second you stand there is a second you try my hospitality to an even more severe degree.'
Sam stepped down into Lazear's boat and didn't look back as it pulled from the shore and headed out to the center of the dark river.
Sam sat in the prow of the boat, too angry to talk to Lazear, uninterested in the feeble excuses the man had thrown his way on the whys and wherefores of his seeming abandonment.
He felt two powerful, conflicting emotions. The first was relief.
Thebes was enchanted, somehow, by evil. Who knew what secrets lurked there, what horrors had been perpetuated under its name, who was buried where and how they had perished? It was frightening, and escaping its pressures brought a sense of complete liberation.
So a part of Sam was happy. He was done, and now it was a mere progression of travel and he could return to his life, chastened, as it were, by exposure to the lurid and the raw, aware that the world in general was uninterested in his experiences and it would best be forgotten or filed away for distant future usage.
But there was also a powerful, seething anger. His mind was orderly yet not overly rigid. He understood that order was a value and from order all good, great things stemmed. Yet order was only a value when it guaranteed and sustained those good, great things. When it actively opposed them, where it destroyed them, where its rigidness was so powerful and its administration so violent that it was only concerned with its own ideas, something evil happened, and it filled Sam with rage.
He felt the thwack when the deputy's two expert blows had smashed his arms, and the fear when under the influence of pain all will to resist had fled him. He remembered the helplessness of being bound and forced into the wagon, the wait for the sheriff as that man took his own sweet time, the fear on the faces of the Negroes whom he ruled so absolutely, the brazenness of the phony document that had guaranteed the end of his days in Thebes.
And Sam finally wondered this one last thing: Did he have the strength, the guts, the steel, to stand up to it, to oppose the ways of Thebes?
He knew the answer.
The answer was, No.
It wasn't in him. It wasn't in anybody. You just got out and didn't look back and you went back to a better life, and soon enough the memories eroded and you won your election and you fathered your children and you won the approval of powerful men and you had a career, a set of memories, a fine tombstone, the respect of those who stayed behind when you had passed. That was enough.
He sat back, having at last faced and come to terms with his own weakness. On either side of the river, the piney woods fled by, diminished by the steady chugging of Lazear's old motor, the day a bit cooler than before. Before him the river wove and bobbed, dark, calm and smooth. It was growing toward late afternoon; he assumed that in a few hours or so, when they had penetrated the great bayou, they would lay up as before, then continue in the morning.
He began to calculate. They'd be in Pascagoula then by late afternoon; he'd call his wife and alert her that everything was fine. He could spend a night in a fine hotel?if there was such in Pascagoula… wait, then, no, a better idea. He could hire a car and zip down the coast a bit, possibly to lush Biloxi, and take a room there, where
