surely there'd be fine hotels. Maybe he'd take a day or so; the stipend he'd earned would certainly cover it, and possibly he could even expense it, as the recovery time from his ordeal was a fair charge, was it not? He saw himself having an elegant meal under a slowly rotating fan, amid ferns and palms; outside there'd be a sparkling beach. The meal would commence with oysters fresh from Mother Gulf, move on to fresh sea bass or trout grilled or poached in butter, all served by an elegant black gentleman in a white cotton jacket. The room would be full of beautiful people, happy people, the best kind of people that our great country could produce.
What a riposte. What a recovery. Then, the next morning, on to New Orleans, refreshed and restored; from there by rail up to Memphis, the drive over to Blue Eye and home, home, home, home.
Home, he thought.
Home, home, home. Then he saw the body.
He happened to be looking down, in the black water, and the shock was such that perhaps it was an apparition, something that his momentarily deranged mind had conjured. But he knew in the next second that no, this was reality, no haunt, no ghost, nothing from the subconscious. It was a Negro boy, a few inches under the surface, bled white by immersion, his features puffy, his body in the cruciform as if inflated, his fingers abulge, his eyes wide and empty, his mouth open black and empty, his clothes in tatters, gliding by. Then he was gone.
Sam blinked, stunned.
He saw something just ahead, floating, its low silhouette just breaking the surface, and as Lazear's old craft fled by, he made this victim out to be a girl child, also Negro, but facedown to spare him those open eyes staring into nothingness.
He looked: on the surface of the water appeared to be the remnants of a massacre by drowning; bodies floated everywhere, as if a vessel had capsized and all perished. There had to be at least ten, drifting, riding the currents, bobbing this way and that.
'Stop the boat! Goddamn you, stop the boat!' he screamed, over the beating of the engine.
Lazear looked up, surprised, yanked from whatever crude reverie had occupied him.
'Stop the boat, you idiot!'' Sam cried, and rushed back. Lazear didn't stop it, but reined in the throttle so that the boat merely idled, drifting.
'What you say?'
'There're people in the water! Look, look around, people. A Negro family, all gone, all lost, stop the boat.'
Lazear just shook his head.
'Sir, I done top you. In de river, de currents is ugly and mean. Suck people down all de time. Send ' back bloated and dead. Nothing we can do but press on. Can't do them no good. Make a report when you gets back to civilization if it makes you feel good. I can't be wastin' no time on this.'
And with that he bent forward and readjusted the throttle to a steady roar and the boat lurched back into But Sam took him in two strong hands, shook him once malevolently, then almost quite literally threw him into the rear of the boat.
The old man raised a hand in fear as Sam advanced upon him.
'Don't hit me, sir! I didn't do nothing to them people, I swear.
They's fleeing the Store, they got in trouble, and the river done et ' up, is all.'
Sam declared, in the full stentorian powers of his voice, 'You slimy little maggot, you turn this boat around and we will recover those that we can. Then we will head back to Thebes and we will get that good for-nothing sheriff off his fat ass and all his deputies and we will come back here with full lights running. There may be a child out here, clinging to a branch or ashore in the weeds. We will save that child, or by God, we will die trying, and that is the way it'll be.'
Now he bent, and with one hand pulled Lazear up, and propelled him toward the boat's cockpit, and the old man hit it, and sank to the deck.
'Get your ass up, and get going, sir, or I will make you wish you had never ever been born.'
'Yes sir, yes sir,' said Lazear, pale with terror.
As it turned out, Sam quickly realized there was no point in recovering any bodies. It would take too much time, and it was a job for professionals with the right equipment. He realized those bodies therefore might never be recovered.
Thus, as newly proclaimed captain of Lazear's vessel by right of mutiny, he determined that the correct course of action was to return to the Thebes dock as swiftly as possible. He gave these directions to Lazear.
'And if de motor burn out, what then?'
'Then I will whip your scrawny ass until it bleeds. You just get us there faster than you got us here, you wretched old fool.'
'Yes, sir.'
'What did you mean when you said ' the Store.' What was the meaning of that comment?'
'Sir, I don't recollect saying nothing ' dat.'
'Listen here, you brainless idiot, you said it flat out in plain English just minutes ago. Now explain it, or once again I will shake you 'I'll your teeth, all three of them, rattle like dice in a cup.'
Glumly Lazear looked ahead. A bitterness settled over him. He acted as though God had selected him alone to bear this monstrous cross. He sighed.
Sam kicked his scrawny ass.
'Does that help? Clear the memory, does it?'
'You din't hear nothing from me. Dey kills me dey know I talkin' their business. Okay? Kill me dead. Kill you dead as well.'
'Talk, damn your soul.'
'The Store own everything the nigs got. Nigs take credit from the Store, fall behind, they don't get this interest thing, the Store forecloses, and then they owned by the Store. Heard the nigs talking ' it once.'
'Yes. And so?'
'And so, dey gots to work it off. Dey works for de man. Never can leave, never can go nowhere, tell nobody, no nothing. Stay and work for food is all.
'Every once a while, nigs git fed up and sneak off at night. Some make it, some don't. Dat family, dey no got no luck. The river et '.
Maybe dey's better off, though.' 'Good Lord,' said Sam, disgusted.
How did they know?
But they did. Somehow, in Thebes, they always knew.
The old boat maneuvered its way in and Lazear lined it up just fine and laid it up next to the dock. There, Sheriff Leon Gattis and no less than four deputies, all uniformed and heavily armed, awaited. Their horses, lathered and nervous, milled behind them. Together, men and horses, they looked like some apocalyptic drawing out of Dore, along the four-horsemen-of-death motif.
But Sam did not care.
'Sheriff,' he cried, as he climbed up, 'you'd best get your boys onto the river. A Negro boat has overturned some miles down, and there yet may be survivors. You'll need powerful flashlights, for I fear the light will be gone by the time?'
'Didn't you and me reach a agreement, sir? You's to leave town, and not never come back on no account. And on that bargain, you would not be prosecuted for resisting arrest or generally stirring up the population.'
'Sir, I am not here to quibble. People's lives may be at stake. For God's sake, time's wasting. Get those boys of yours on to the goddamn water and get them going. This is a river town, surely you have boats.
This is not some paltry charge, this is a public safety emergency.'
'Goddammit, Mister, you must be thick of the skull or water brained or some such. Didn't know they growed such knot heads in Arkansas. Heard it was an all right place, though I can see now it produces too many of the daft persuasion.'
'Sheriff, I insist that?'
'Mister, I am not sending boys out on that dark river to look for fleeing Negroes. The currents are tricky, the fog comes in and twists things around, and before you know it, you have white men in trouble as much as black ones.'
'My God, we are talking about human beings!'
