infamous, penal farm for colored called Thebes Farm.'
'That's it,' said Sam. 'It is legendary among the Negro criminal class, with whom I had many dealings as a young prosecutor. 'You don't wants to go to Thebes, they say, don't nobody never nohow come back from Thebes.'
Or words to that effect.'
'It seems they have it mixed up with Hades in their simplicity. Yes, Thebes is not a pleasant place. Nobody wants to go to Thebes.'
'Yet you want me to go to Thebes. That is why the fee would be so high?'
'There is difficulty of travel, for one thing. You must hire a boat in Pascagoula, and the trip upriver is unpleasant. The river, I understand, is dark and deep; the swamp that lines it inhospitable.
There was only one road into Thebes, through that same forbidding swamp; it was washed out some years back, and Thebes County, not exactly a county of wealth, has yet to dispatch repair.'
'I see.'
'Accommodations would be primitive.'
'I slept in many a barn in the late fracas in Europe, Mr. Trugood. I can sleep in a barn again; it won't hurt me.'
'Excellent. Now here is the gist of the task. My client's estate?as I say, considerable?is hung up in probate because Mr. Lincoln Tilson seems no longer to exist. I have attempted to communicate with Thebes County authorities, to little avail. I can reach no one but simpletons on the telephone, when the telephone is working, which is only intermittently. No letter has yet been answered. The fate of Lincoln is unknown, and a large amount of money is therefore frozen, a great disappointment to my client's greedy, worthless heirs.'
'I see. My task would be to locate either Lincoln or evidence of his fate. A document, that sort of thing?'
'Yes. From close-mouthed Southern types. I, of course, need someone who speaks the language, or rather, the accent. They would hear the Chicago in my voice, and their faces would ossify. Their eyes would deaden.
Their hearing would disintegrate. They would evolve backward instantaneously to the neolithic.'
'That may be so, but Southerners are also fair and honest folk, and if you don't trumpet your Northern superiority in their face and instead take the time to listen and master the slower cadences, they will usually reward you with friendship. Is there another issue here?'
'There is indeed.' He waved at his handsome suit, his handsome shoes, his English tie. His cufflinks were gold with a discreet sapphire, probably worth more than Sam had made in the last six months. 'I am a different sort of man, and in some parts of the South?Thebes, say-that difference would not go unnoticed.'
'You have showy ways, but they are the ways of a man of the world.'
'I fear that is exactly what would offend them. And, frankly, I'm not a brave man. I'm a man of desks. The actual confrontation, the quickness of argument, the thrust of will on will: not really my cup of tea, I'm afraid. A sound man understands his limits. I was the sort of boy who never got into fights and didn't like tests of strength.'
'I see.'
'That is why I am buying your courage as well as your mind.'
'You overestimate me. I am quite a common man.'
'A decorated hero in the late war.'
'Nearly everybody in the war was a hero. I saw some true courage; mine was ordinary, if even that.'
'I think I have made a very good choice.'
'All right, sir.'
'Thank you, Mr. Vincent. This is the fee I had in mind.'
He wrote a figure on the back of his card, and pushed it over. It took Sam's breath away.
'You are sending me to be your champion in hell, it sounds like,' said Sam. 'But you are paying me well for the fight.'
'You will earn every penny, I assure you.'
IT took Sam but a few days to bank the retainer, rearrange his schedule, book a ticket on the City of New Orleans, and spend an afternoon in the Fort Smith municipal library reading up on Thebes and its penal farm.
What he learned appalled him.
On the night before he was to leave, he finally faced the unsettled quality of his feelings. At last, he climbed into his car and drove the twelve miles east along Arkansas Route 8 toward the small town of Board Camp; turning left off the highway, he traveled a half mile of bumpy road to a surprisingly large white house on a hill that commanded the property. The house was freshly painted as was the barn behind, and someone had worked the gardens well and dutifully; it was June, and the place was ablaze with the flora chosen to flourish in the hot West Arkansas sun. A few cows grazed in the far meadows, but much of the property was still in trees, where Sam and the owner shot deer in the fall, if they didn't wander farther afield.
Sam pulled up close to the house, aware that he was under observation.
This was Earl's young son, Bob Lee, almost five. Bob Lee was a grave boy who had the gift of stillness when he so desired. He was a watcher, that boy. He already had made some hunting trips with them, and had a talent for blood sport, the ability to understand the messages of the land, to decipher the play of light and shadow in the woods, to smell the weather on the wind, though he was some years yet from shooting. Still, he was a steady presence on the hunt, not a wild kid. It was Sam's sworn duty as godfather to the boy to draw him into the professional world; Earl was adamant that his son would do better than he and not be a roaming Marine, a battlefield scurrier, a man killer, as Earl had been. Earl wanted something more settled for his only son, a career in the law or medicine. It was important to Earl, and when things were important to Earl, it was Earl's force of will that usually made them happen.
'Howdy there, Bob Lee,' called Sam.
'Mr. Sam, Mr. Sam,' the boy responded, from the porch where he had been sitting and looking out over the land in the twilight.
'Your daddy's still on duty, I see. Is he expected back?'
'Don't know, sir. Daddy comes and goes, you know.'
'I do know. How you got such a worker as a daddy I'll never figure, when he has such a lazy son who just sits there like a frog on a log.'
'I was memorizing.'
'It doesn't surprise me at all. Memorizing the land? The birds. The sky, the clouds.'
'Something like that, sir.'
'Oh, you are a smart one. You have received all the brains in the family, I can see that. You'll end up a rich one. Is your mama here?'
'Yes, sir. I'll fetch her.'
The boy scooted off as Sam waited. He could have walked in himself, for he was that familiar with the Swaggers. But something in his mood kept him still and worrisome.
Junie Swagger emerged. Lord, a beauty still! But Junie was, well, who knew? The childbirth had been a terrible ordeal, it was said, and Earl not around to help, at least not till the end, and so the poor girl fought her way through fifteen hours of labor on her own. She had not, it was also said, quite ever come back from that. She was somewhat dreamy, as if she didn't hear all that was said to her. Her great pleasure was those damned flowers, and she could spend hours in the hottest weather cultivating or weeding or fertilizing. It was also said that she would have no more children.
Now, a little wan, she stood before him.
'Why, hello, Mr. Sam. Come on in.'
'Well, Junie, thank you much, but I don't want you making no fuss. I have to have a chat with Earl is all. You needn't even consider this a visit, and there's no need to unlimber any hospitality.'
'Oh, you are so silly. You sit down, I'll git you a nice glass of lemonade. You'll stay for supper, I insist.'
'No, ma'am. Can't. I'm in the middle of getting ready for a business trip to New Orleans. I'm driving over to Memphis tomorrow to catch the train.'
'You know, Mr. Sam, Earl sometimes gets so caught up he doesn't get here ' late.'
'I do know. It seems a shame after all he's been through that he can't have a quieter life.' Junie said nothing for a second, but her face focused with a surprising intensity, as if some spark had been struck.
