'Good. I thought so. Then I am here to support him in any way possible.
What can we do about it?'
'As yet, I don't know. I don't know if he was taken by the prison or the county authorities or by anyone at all. I have had no communication from him. But they are capable of anything. That is an evil place down there.
I never knew such a place could exist in this country in this century after we fought a war to liberate men from these kinds of things all over the world.'
'Should you call the police? Surely a Mississippi state police agency would intercede in local matters.'
'Sir, in that part of the South, I'm not so sure. It's different. It's cut off, isolated, they have their own rough way of doing things, and I sususpect certain folks in Jackson like it that way. But Earl did grab me hard, as I said, and made me promise not to instigate an investigation or raise a complaint. He thought that could put him in more, rather than less, danger.'
'Do you share that assessment?'
'I don't know. Earl is a good judge of matters of force and violence, as I have indicated. He knows better than most how such men operate, and he can operate with the best of them. This is what he wanted. He was afraid that if outside pressures were brought to bear, they would result in his death rather than his release, assuming he's even been taken.'
'I find it hard to stand by and do nothing.'
'I do, too.'
'We should set a time. Say, one month from now. If we haven't heard from him by then, then I would urge you to begin to apply every pressure you know how. Is that fair?'
'Yes, it is.'
'I would advise this, too: If we are to in any way move to change events in Thebes County, then we will have to know all about Thebes County.
Would it not make sense to begin some kind of research project, so that we could know all about how Thebes County became Thebes County, who is responsible, what local conditions ensue? Would that not be a wise course?'
'I've already begun, sir. Earl is my friend, and I am torn as to what to do, and I feel guilty as sin for being here, among my children and friends, comfortable and at ease, while he is in extremes. I say that even though I know him to be a man of superior capability, and that if he can in some way escape and survive, he will do it.'
'Here is a check, Mr. Vincent, drawn on my bank in Chicago.' 'Sir, I have not asked for money. Earl is my friend.'
'Then he is my friend, too, and what he has done on your behalf he has done on my behalf, and on my client's behalf and on Lincoln Tilson's behalf. All of us in a row are beholden to him, and I cannot live with myself if I sit back and do nothing. So I want this check going into a sort of working fund. Any expense that is necessary for the rescue or release of Earl should come from this; I leave it to you to put some portion of it with his wife and child, for theirs can't be an easy lot while they wait. But use the money wisely, Mr. Vincent, and keep me informed. You have the number.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Mr. Vincent, I will say I am very pleased about your escape and impressed with the dedication you Arkansans have to one another. We could use some of that kind of loyalty up in Chicago. I know some families where loyalty like that isn't much applied.'
'Thank you, sir. I will begin to find a way to crack this nut right away. I only hope we have not in our way declared a war, without even realizing it. Wars can be hard to control and too many of the innocent can die.'
'Though if you must wage them, I take it Earl Swagger is just the man for such an enterprise.'
'Yes. That is his genius. And also his tragedy.'
In the coffin it is not the heat, even though that is considerable. It is not your own filth, which soaks you, and the odor of your corruption, which assails you. It is not the darkness, though that is a special hell of its own. It's not the solitude, at least not for Earl, a man accustomed to solitude and able to endure it more lightly than most.
It's not the rats, or whatever they may be, that skitter over your feet or may be felt examining your particulars, or the occasional insect bite. All of that is miserable in its own pure right, but it may be borne by a strong man who believes in what he is doing.
What it is, really, is the space. Or the lack of it. The sense of being crushed, of being utterly helpless. That is why they call it the coffin, and that is why it is so terrible.
The box is six feet long and about twelve inches deep. It is framed in concrete out on the harsh and pitiless yard behind the Whipping House, near some trees, but sited to catch the sun's full blast. Its floor is concrete and it has no comforts at all, just the rawness of the concrete beneath and the overwhelming encasement of the steel, which draws and magnifies the heat and whose closeness permits no air circulation, so breathing itself becomes labored and sometimes a cause for panic.
Supine and stiff, with no room to flex any joint, Earl found only a universe of corrugated steel. Above, it was but two inches from his face. He could not move. The sense of claustrophobia grew in geometrical degrees, and came in a very short time to weigh immensely upon him. In any case, he was not a man for stillness, and this stillness, enforced by a wall an inch beyond his nose, an inch beyond each hand, an inch from the top of his head and the bottom of his feet, this sense of being pinioned, of being trapped, locked, broken: this was difficult.
Earl tried not to scream. But panic was his constant enemy. If he didn't work at relaxation, the panic, liberated by the pain and the misery and the darkness and the closeness, flew out of control. He yearned so desperately to sit up. Sitting up seemed a paradise worth dying to attain. Rolling over was too greedy a goal and stretching seemed positively indecent.
Here the time passed slowly. It drained by, as he could feel the tickle of the sweat as it departed his hairline, drawing a tickly track of irritation down his face. That was the only measure of time, except that by the excess, brutal heat, he could tell it was day and by the endless shivering of the dark, he could tell it was night.
No one came for him. No one fed him or watered him. He pissed and shat where he lay and starved or gulped dryly in thirst over time. He was alone in the world, literally buried alive. In there, thoughts of death came naturally to him, and he began to pray for the arrival of that old friend.
Then he rallied, at least a little. He tried to find a place where he could go to relax, where memories could overcome the present. He examined his life for oases of respite, where the sensations of well-being were so overwhelming they could even overcome this grotesqueness.
It didn't work, not even a little.
Each wonderful memory in a life soon produced a moment of pain, which jerked him down to the steel an inch away.
He thought of surviving the islands, and that only got him melancholy for those who hadn't.
He thought of the day his son was born, but he was so exhausted he somehow missed truly feeling that, and there was a look so soon in Junie's eyes that expressed some kind of disappointment.
He thought of a boxing match he'd won in a different world, before there had been a Second World War, and everything was different, and the joy had been so thorough: it was the first time he'd really ever won a goddamn thing, and he had been so proud. But then he knew his daddy would say 'You was just lucky, boy,' even if his daddy was a world away across the huge Pacific, but still that harsh truth sucked the joy from that pleasure and opened his eyes, and there was his steel wall in the blackness, an inch off, and the suffocating smell of his own filth, and the touch of some other form of life finding him fascinating, and horror that this would be his forever and ever, that all the things he had tried to do would come only to this, the coffin. you can get through this, he told himself, to quell the panic that again flashed through his brain and made him ache for release, for freedom, for some other chance, even if he doubted he could get through this.
He was a physical man, used to the freedom of movement and the expression of his strength. Physical enemies he could vanquish, and he was used to them and to that process. He knew better than most how to fight, how to win a fight, where to look for weakness, how to exploit it, when to show mercy and when to close for the kill.
But here there was no enemy except his own immobility and the immensity of the steel and concrete crushing him. He tried to focus on Bigboy or the sheriff or the warden, or on old Pepper, the dog man, who'd kicked him so savagely when he was down.
He could not hold these images in his mind. They slipped away, as if he hadn't the energy to hate them now,
