what had just happened to him, unhelped by the terrifying reality that nothing yet was settled. Earl was still out there, somewhere, somehow. That ate a large hole in Sam's digestive tract and would not stop hurting, like an ulcer gnawing away on him.
He tried to reason it out. Earl probably got away. Earl, in the woods on his own, was a match for any ten men. Earl survived, for nothing could kill an Earl Swagger, state police sergeant, Marine war hero and all around the most capable of all men on the planet.
But that presumed… the rational universe. A place that made sense, where order prevailed, where justice was paid out. Wherever they had been, it was not a rational universe but some haunted zone of Manichaean savagery, as if out of some ancient tale, where survival was not for the just but for the lucky, and one's antagonists were unbound by civil logic or the stays of the human heart.
I put Earl in that, he thought, and his heart broke again, as the tide of guilt, like a kind of phlegm in the soul, molasses-thick and greasy, pure sludge, oozed over him. He thought of what he had done to Earl, where he had put Earl, and for what?
His self-loathing exploded, and he worked himself over pretty hard, wondering if the right thing to do hadn't been to jump off the train and head on back to help Earl. But even as he conceived that idea, he knew it was impossible. He could not have done so. He could not leap off a moving train (leaping on had been hard enough) and gone back to face Sheriff Leon Gattis and his deputies and their educated billy clubs and their dogs. He already had seen the battered skull of that poor black mama. Who could have killed her but them? He had seen the fear among the Negroes at their powerful and confident ways, their occupier's arrogance, their complete self-assurance in their mandate to rule by force. He could not face that again, not without a shirt, with a twisted ankle, exhausted beyond any exhaustion that had afflicted him in the war, when he was so much younger and stronger and had believed so much more firmly.
So it was not until 8:30, when the train pulled into a freight yard at Hattiesburg that the last reality suddenly occurred to him: he was a wanted man. The police would be hunting him. Bulletins had gone out, possibly by radio or radio telephone or telegraph. There would be a manhunt. And there he was with no money, no local connections, nothing to sustain him.
It was at this point that his hand closed on something hard and round and crisp in the left pocket of Earl's canvas hunting coat, and he pulled whatever it was out to discover a roll of bills. He quickly slipped the rubber band off and discovered over four hundred dollars, mainly tens and twenties. With that he could buy lodging, a shirt, some new shoes, but he knew he had to be careful, and that the cops would have all forms of transportation covered. He formulated a plan: Connie Longacre could drive down here and pick him up. He could hide in the trunk of her car and hopefully get through the roadblocks that way.
Connie would do it. Connie always liked a big adventure, as if being married to the worthless but wealthy Ranee Longacre wasn't adventure enough, or was perhaps too much adventure.
It wasn't much of a plan. Earl would no doubt come up with a much better plan, as Earl was a natural man of action, whereas he, Sam, had a tight legal mind focused on the stratagems of the law, but at the same time somewhat indifferent to the physics of the natural world.
But he knew one thing: he had to get away from this rail yard. That would be the first thing to be reported, the first thing the police would think of. In fact, he realized with a start, they were probably combing the place now.
He looked around. It was dark. He saw nothing. He gathered the coat up around him and slipped off the flatcar, dropping a few feet and again feeling a twitch of amazement at the hugeness of the thing. Of course he was unobserved by anybody, except for the three police officers who happened to be strolling along the way at precisely that moment.
'Well,' said the first one, 'ain't you a bit old to be bumming the rails, Dad?'
'Ah! Well?'
Sam's mind, normally so filled with words, so glib, swift, logical, eloquent, powerful, emptied. It purged. He felt his mouth gibbering soundlessly, his lungs inflating with air, his lips drying in the breeze.
He was caught.
'I, uh, er '
'Cat got your tongue, buster?'
'It's, ah, er, you see ' 'Bet he don't got no ID neither,' said the last officer. 'Bet he don't know nothing about nothing. They never do.'
But the cops didn't seem menacing. None of them put their hands on their revolver butts, which is, Sam knew from experience, the first thing an officer does if he's not feeling right about a situation.
Nobody unlimbered a billy or a kosh or a sap, no knuckles went white, nobody started breathing hard or squinting or hunching and coiling at the prospect of violence; there were no signs of aggression whatsoever.
'Well, let's go, bud, or I guess we'll run you down to the drunk tank to sleep it off all night long.'
'Sir,' Sam finally found the voice to say, 'I am not inebriated.'
'Well, he's got a voice and he knows some big words, by God!'
Sam was amazed at how quickly he had recovered, and at how quickly he was analyzing this: do they know? Have I been reported an escaped prisoner? If so, wouldn't they be quick to the gun and the club, in full cop manhunt posture and tension, which he'd seen in his time, too.
No, these boys were pretty relaxed and seemed to think he was a funny old goat.
'Bet there's a helluva story on how he lost his shirt,' said one.
'Something involving a farmer's daughter, a farmer, a shotgun, and some city feller knows too many big words for his own good.'
Sam realized: they don't know. They can't. They wouldn't be acting like this.
So he reached back ever so slowly and removed his wallet.
One cop took it; he put his flashlight on it.
'He's an Arkansas lawyer. Mr. Sam Vincent, Esquire, of Blue Eye, Arkansas. Hell, don't that beat all.'
'Mr. Vincent, sir, you are a long way from your stomping grounds.
Ain't Blue Eye way to the west in Arkansas, if I recollect correctly?'
'You do, sir.'
'Well, sir, I'm afraid we got to ask you how come you're riding the rails into our little city? Without a shirt and looking like the devil his self just got done throwing a party for you.'
Sam never knew where the inspiration came from, or why, or how, but there it was, and in a second or so he even had himself convinced.
'Officer, I was on a business trip to New Orleans. You know that town.
I'm afraid I gave in to certain low temptations, after denying for years I felt them at all. In a certain house I met a certain young woman. She was a Negress. A yellow Negress.'
'A high yeller. Them's the worst. They can make a man act like a dog faster'n hell.'
'Yes, sir. I would confess also that alcohol played a part. In any event, the next day I believed myself to be in love and went back to the house to rescue her from it, and take her home with me. I admit I hadn't yet figured out how I'd explain her presence to my wife of seventeen years and my five children. In any event, it was made clear to me that I wasn't wanted, but I learned she was from Pascagoula, her name was Vonetta Louise, and thence she had returned. I imagined it was because she was so profoundly moved by my love for her and hers for me that she had struck out a new path in life.'
'Haw! Heard that one before! Knowed plenty of white boys thought they could rescue a nigger gal from being a nigger.'
'It don't never work. God won't let it work.'
'Anyhow, before I knew it, I had hired a car and traveled to Pascagoula, and began to make inquiries. I found her. I also found her boyfriend and his gang of brutish young Negro fellows, her daddy, her granddaddy, and most fearsome of all, her grand mama They were not moved by my declaration of love, nor the whiskey on my breath. I seem to recall a scuffle, some rough thrashing and rolling, and the next thing, I was fleeing. I found myself without a shirt in a rail yard being hunted by large men of a dark persuasion interested in administering what I believe they referred to as a ' of' ass whuppin.' That didn't sound like much fun to me, and suddenly my love for sweet Vonetta Louise acquired a somewhat tarnished patina. I managed to sneak aboard a flatcar and lay still for the longest time.
