have hired a car the next morning to take me to Pascagoula. Presumably I'll find a boatman, and I'll reach town late the day after tomorrow. If I can find a telephone, I'll call you or my wife and leave messages on a daily basis. If I can't find a telephone, well then, I shall just complete my business and come on home.'
'Well, let's pick a date, and if you ain't home by that time, then I'll make it my business to figure out what's happening.'
'Thank you, Earl. Thank you so much. You saw where I was headed.'
'Mr. Sam, you can count on me.'
'Earl, if you say something, I know it's done.'
'I'd bring a firearm. Not one of your hunting rifles, but a handgun.
You still have an Army forty-five, I believe.'
'No, Earl. I am a man of reason, not guns. I'm a lawyer. The gun cannot be my way. Logic, fairness, humanity, the rule of the law above all else, those are my guidelines.'
'Mr. Sam, where you're going, maybe such things don't cut no ice.
I'll tell you this, if I have to come, I'll be bringing a gun.'
'You have to do it your way, and I have to do it mine. So be it. Now let's read a story to Bob Lee.'
'I think he'd like that. He likes the scary ones the best.'
'You still have that book of Grimm's?'
'His favorite.'
'I know there's a dark tale or two in there.'
'A dark tale it will be, then.'
Sam loved New Orleans, he was moderate and professional the night he stayed there, avoiding its temptations. He took a room in a tourist home, ate at a diner, went to sleep early after meticulously recording all his expenditures for his client. The next morning, he rendezvoused with his car and driver, and commenced the drive along the gulf coast down U. S. 90, passing quickly from Louisiana into Mississippi.
It was, at first at least, a pleasant drive, with a driver named Eddie, who knew how to keep his mouth shut, and his big, comfortable Lasalle.
'It's a 1940,' Eddie said, 'the last and the best.' And that was the only thing Eddie said.
Sam had removed and folded his coat, rolled up his sleeves, put his straw Panama on the seat next to him, and let the cooling air stream in through the open windows of the big black car. Of course he did not loosen his tie; after all, one did not do such things. There were limits. But he got out his pipe and lit up a bowlful, and simply watched the sights. On his right, the gulf's blue tide lapped against the white sands, and small towns fled by, each quaint and cute enough for a tourist trade that was beginning to catch hold. The small cities along the way were white, sunny places, Gulfport and Biloxi, further given over to tourists. He could see young couples on the beach, some of them beautiful some not so beautiful. Beach umbrellas furled against the gulf breezes and homes had rooms to let, many of them with free television as the signs proudly proclaimed.
But beyond Biloxi, it changed. No one came here for the sun or the sand, and no beaches had been cleared. It was just mangoes and ferns and scrub pine and vegetation whose only distinguishing feature was its generic green viney quality, down to a strip of soil before the water which, Sam fancied (maybe it was his imagination) had changed in tone from carefree blue to a dirty brown. The sediment this far down floated unsettled in the water, giving it the look of an immense sewer.
It smelled, also, some pungent chemical odor.
Pascagoula, it turned out, was a city of industry. Paper plants dominated, and shipbuilding came second, and it was a city that had once strained mightily to produce. Now, hard times had hit it. The paper industry was down, and shipbuilding had stopped with the end of the war.
It was a sad place; the boom of the war years had dried to bust, but everyone had a taste for the big, easy money of before.
Again, maybe he was imagining too much, but he thought he saw despair and lassitude everywhere. The streets felt empty; signs were not freshly painted, and commerce was not active. It all baked under a hot sun, the stench from the paper mills enough to give a man a crushing headache.
'Sir, do you have a particular destination? Do you want to go to a hotel?'
Sam looked at his watch. It was only 11:00 a. m.' and, yes, he did want to go to a hotel, have a nice lunch, lie down in a room with a strong fan or maybe some air-conditioning, take a nap. But it was not in him to do so. He was rigid about everything, but most of all about duty and obligation.
'No, Eddie, I've got to push on. Uh, do you know the town?'
'Not hardly, sir. I'm a N'Awleens boy. Don't like to come out to these here hot little no' count places.'
'Well, then, I suppose we'd best start at the town hall or the police station. I'd like to confer with officials before I venture further.'
'Yes, sir. B'lieve I c'n hep you there.'
Eddie located the single municipal building quickly enough, a town hall on one street, a police station, complete to fleets of motorcycles and squad cars parked outside, on the other.
Sam chose the administrative before the enforcement. He suited up again, tightening all that could be tightened, straightening all that could be straightened, and implanting the Panama squarely up top as befit his position and dignity. Eddie left him in front of grand stairs that led to not much of a door; he climbed them and ducked between statues of Confederate heroes facing the gulf.
He entered to a foyer, consulted with a clerk at a desk, got directions, entered a set of hallways to look for the city prosecutor's office. It was not at all hard to find, and he went through the opaque-glassed doors to find a waiting room with leather chairs and magazines under the rubric white only. Through a doorway that bore the sign colored only he could see another room, ruder and filled with more rickety furniture, all jammed up with pitiful Negroes. He turned to the white secretary behind a desk, whose hair was tidy but who ruled by right of a harsh face and too much makeup.
He presented his card.
'And, sir?'
'And I wonder, ma'am, if I could have a word with Mr…' he struggled to remember the name painted on the door, then did. 'Car rut hers 'What is this in reference to?' she said, with a Southern smile that meant nothing whatsoever.
'Ma'am, I am a prosecutor myself, only recently retired on the basis of electoral whimsy. I wish to speak with my colleague.'
'You from here in Mississip?'
'No, ma'am. Up a bit. Arkansas, Polk County, in the west. It's on the card.'
'Well, I'll see.'
It wasn't Carruthers who came to get him but a Mr. Redfield, an assistant city attorney, who made a show of ignoring the unfortunate Negroes in the back room and shook his hand heartily, escorting him back to a clean little office. As they walked, Sam searched his memory, and at last realized why Redfield admitted him: they'd met at some convention in Atlantic City in 1941, with a group of other prosecutors, all having a last fling before the war did with them what it did.
'Glad to see you made it back, Mr. Redfield,' Sam said.
'Never got the chance to leave, alas,' said the man, as they walked into the door of a clean little cubicle. 'Four-F. Stayed here prosecuting draft dodgers while you boys had all the fun. Where'd you end up?
Europe, wasn't it?'
'Finally. Ended up in the artillery.'
'Win anything big?'
'No, just did the job. Glad to be back in one piece.'
Redfield broke out the bourbon and poured himself and Sam a tot.
Tasted fine, too. They settled into chairs, chatted somewhat aimlessly on the subject of the others in attendance of that long ago convention, who was dead, who divorced, who quit, who rich, who poor. Redfield then segued neatly into local politics and gossip, his chances for getting the big job in the next election or maybe it would be better to wait until '56, local conditions, which weren't good, except for, he laughed heartily, the coming of some Northern fool's waterproof coffin company to the South, which would put the ship carpenters to some good use until it failed, ha ha ha, or the gub'mint lost so many destroyers off Korea it needed to build some new ones.
