either main or drag, just shuttered storefronts behind which, on either side, lay the dogtrot cabins that made up the domiciles of the place before yielding to the all encompassing piney woods. He tried to remember. This way or that?
It's not that Thebes was a complex metropolitan zone, with byways and alleys that could lure a man to ruin, or at least get him lost. Still, in the dark, it seemed all different, and the vistas down the few streets were closed off to his eyes. But then he saw the public house where the two bitter old men had been and remembered… no, he didn't get to the woman's house until after he'd been there. Why hadn't he paid attention? It hadn't seemed important then, but it surely did now.
At last he thought he had it, as he projected a three-dimensional map of Thebes in his mind. He passed the public house, turned down an alley, walked amid silent cabins. Dogs scuffled and scurried, and occasionally barked, and he heard the slithery, feathery rattlings of chickens twitching in their coops. A pig or two was up, for whatever reason, maybe to shit in the mud or whatever. But of people the place fwas forlorn and empty. It was a balmy Southern night. Above, towers of stars spangled in i' the pure black sky and a zephyr whispered through the pines, bringing relief from the day's brutal heat. The smell of the pines was every where, bracing and pure, almost medicinal. With the squalor and the despair blocked out by the darkness, Sam could almost convince him self he was in some healthy place, some non blasphemed ground. ' And then, yes, there it was. That was hers. It was different from the', rest, being set farther back, almost in the woods themselves. But he recognized it by its shape and location, and as his eyes adjusted, and he moved just a bit, he made out that coop out back where he'd had the (, corner suite with the chickens and the disgruntled rooster. / Sam approached stealth fully He didn't want it noted that the white i lawyer from the North had visited old granny in the night. It would do ' old granny no good at all in Thebes County, Mississippi.
Of course the door was not locked. He slipped in and stood motionless for a bit, waiting for his eyes to adjust yet again, this time to the closer dark of the interior space.
When at last he could pick out impediments and chart a passage in the dark?say, the doorway into the bedroom to be aimed for, the stove in the middle of the room to be avoided, the rickety furniture not to be knocked asunder?he moved quietly, and slipped into her bedchamber. He was a prince come a-calling.
No, he was a soldier of the Lord, come to bring righteous vengeance and God's wrath to Sodom.
No, he was a scared white man in way too deep and playing with forces he could not even begin to understand.
He approached the bed, wondering how to waken her without making her scream and alerting the locals and the gendarmerie.
'Madam,' he whispered, in a low voice.
There was no response.
'Grandma? Grandma, wake up, please, it's me, Mr. Sam, come for a talk.'
That was louder still, but there was no response.
He bent to the bed where she lay swaddled and touched her arm, gently as he could, and rocked ever so slowly, crooning, 'Mama, Mama, please awaken, Mama.'
But Mama remained mute.
He became aware of an odor, and then, through the bedclothes, his fingers sensed damp.
He recoiled, but had to go forward.
He turned to the candle next to the bed and found a few stick matches next to it. He struck one on the bedpost, cupping the sudden flare, and brought it to the wick, where it clung, then held fast. Again, he kept his hand cupped around it, to cut down on the light, and brought it to her, and pulled back the bedclothes.
She had been smashed all to hell and gone. Her skull had the shocking aspect of deflation, for its integrity was breached mightily. Whatever oozed from it oozed black onto the bedclothes. Her eyes were distorted by the trauma done to her skull, and one had a bad eight-ball hemorrhage to it. It was too cool for the flies, but by midmorning they'd be here in waves.
He had been to murder scenes too many times before, so he did not panic, but a breath of air passed with a hiss from his lips.
Jesus Christ, he thought. Who could The flashlights from the window came on, several of them. Then, from the other side too. Men moved swiftly toward him, and he heard the creaking of leather boots and belts.
'Mister, you in plumb bad deep dark trouble now,' said Sheriff Leon Gams. 'Boys, git this Yankee cuffed. We done caught us a murderer.'
EARL called the town up through blur by focusing his binoculars, and watched as it swarmed into clarity. What he saw was of no surprise in the piney woods, a slatternly place in the mud, with its ruined waterfront, its closed sawmill ruin off to one side, and the residential zone, its warren of jumbled cabins, and the listless people who populated it.
He saw also the men on horses, six, seven, then eight of them on the big steeds, in the dark uniforms, lords and masters, rulers of all. He watched them thunder through the town when it so moved them, and could read terror in those they stopped to talk to. There were no easy encounters in Thebes; all confrontations were charged and difficult.
Earl therefore set out to do what he knew he absolutely must. He set out to draw a map. He was across the river, possibly one hundred yards from the town, and he lay there, hour by hour, his binoculars focused, his handwriting steady and clear, the lines growing in his notebook. He noted also the times of the mounted patrols, the officers involved, the routes they took. He noticed the officers themselves, the fat ones, the quick ones, the mean ones. He wrote it all down.
He watched early in the morning as the Negro ladies all left. These, Earl guessed, were the prison cooks and seamstresses and whatnot, who picked up after the white men who ran the prison and, Earl also knew, provided comforts as they were needed. He knew at night men on horses would stop at certain houses in the town, enter, then leave an hour or so later. He didn't care to speculate on the drama of favor and fury that took place inside the cabins; down here, it was an ancient pattern, and maybe that's why so many of the children who roamed the wild streets during the day had a yellowish cast to them.
Earl's approach had been different than Sam's. Earl was no lawyer like Sam; he presumed, as Sam had not, the existence of no set rules of order and regulation, no rational system that would entertain inquiry with fairness and due deliberation and cough up, ultimately, a response, rational and complete. Earl was a policeman, but not really; he was still a Marine in his mind, and any territory was enemy territory until he knew otherwise. He acted deliberately and decisively.
For example, on the day that he and Sam agreed upon as the last day by which Sam could be expected back, Earl called Sam's wife and made his inquiry.
'No, Earl, I haven't heard a thing. I've begun to worry. Should I contact the authorities?' Earl thought not, for who knew by what compass the authorities in swamp-water Mississippi steered?
'Did he tell you so?' 'He said no such thing about it.'
'Then, Mary, I'd wait. You know how Sam hates a fuss.'
'Earl, it's been long enough. What he had to do oughtn't to have taken this long.'
'Well, Ma'am, these little towns, you just can't tell how they operate.
As I understand, it's swamp country and communication might be tricky.'
He then called Sam's other closest friend, Connie Longacre. Earl knew the two had a private relationship, though its nature was neither clear to him nor curious to him.
'Miss. Connie?'
'Earl, have you heard from Sam? I've begun to worry.' 'No, Ma'am. I thought possibly you had. You know how that man enjoys a good talk.'
'Not a word, Earl, strange on its face for Sam. Earl, what should?'
'I will do something.'
'Earl, I?'
'Miss. Connie, I will.'
Then Earl made another phone call. It was to Colonel Jenks, the commandant of the Arkansas Highway Patrol and his mentor beyond Sam.
'Earl, yes?'
'Colonel, sir, I've some leave time due. It's been on five years straight. Got a private situation I need to deal
