Sam didn't really care, but down South here, it was the way business was done, until finally, when a ten-second pause and a second drink announced it to be the time, he launched into particulars.
He explained, concluding with his unease about the upcoming trip.
'Well,' said Redfield, 'truth be told, I don't know much about Thebes.
That's two counties up the river, and not much between but bayou and wild niggers and Choctaws living on ' and catfish, then finally your piney woods, thick as hell. Too thick for white people.'
'Ah, I see.'
'Don't know why any feller'd go up there he didn't have to.'
'Well, Redfield, I really don't want to. But I've accepted the job. I was hoping you'd write me a letter of introduction or give me a name of a colleague to whose good offices I could appeal.'
'Most counties, that'd work just fine, that'd be the way to do it. But Thebes now, Thebes is different. It's the prison farm, and that's about all. You'd have to git into our state corrections bureaucracy, and I do know those boys run their territory very tight and private-like. Don't like strangers, especially strangers from up North?'
'Arkansas? Up North?'
'Now, mind you, I ain't saying I'd be in agreement with that sentiment, but that would be how their minds work. I'm only clarifying here.
They're a clannish bunch. They've got a system full of colored men, some of whom may be het up on juju, some on booze, some on Northern communist agitation, all that plus your natural Negro tendency toward chaos, irrationality and of' Willie thumping Willie on Saturday night just for something to do. So them boys got a whole lot on their minds, hear? I wouldn't just go poking about now.' 'I see,' said Sam.
'What I'd do, you'll pardon me for presuming, I'd just turn around, head back up North. Yes, sir. Then write that fellow in Chicago, tell him everything's fine, he don't got to worry, the death certificate be on its way. I mean, it's only probate now, isn't it? Then I'd forget all about it. Come time, he'll write some angry letters, but hell, he's a Yankee, that's all they know how to do is act all indignant.'
'Well, see here, Redfield, I can't do that. I took the money, I must do the work.'
'Oh, come on now, Vincent. Wouldn't be the first time someone took a retainer, wrote a letter, and forgot all about it. I just wouldn't be messing about in Thebes. They got their own ways of doing things up there, they don't want nobody getting in their bid ness no sir. I'd write you a letter, but to who?'
'Whom,' corrected Sam.
'Who, whom, it don't matter. Thebes up there, up that dark river, ain't nobody up there to write to, ain't nobody up there to sit down nice and polite, sit under a fan, have a sip of rye whiskey, and palaver. They're sitting on a goddamned powder keg, what they're doing. A nigger powder keg. They got to keep it from blowing, and, way I see it, that's a hero's job.'
'Redfield, I have been in a variety of prisons, white and Negro both.
The men who run them are many things, but heroic is about the last word I'd employ. Necessary is about as far as I'd be pleased to go.'
'Well, it's all clear and dandy to y'all up North, with all your answers. Down here, where it never snows and things change slow except when they change fast and ugly, it's a lot less stamped out. It can be downright messy. That's why there has to be a Thebes. The niggers have to know there's a Thebes, and by God if they get uppity, Thebes is where they'll be sent. So in its way, Thebes is more important than Jackson or Biloxi or Oxford or Pascagoula. Without Thebes, wouldn't be no Jackson or Biloxi or Oxford or Pascagoula. Without Thebes, Mississippi is the Congo and America is Africa. Thebes is what keeps the lid on. I'd hate to see you get your nose all a-twitch because you saw one guard knock a nigger down and you make a big thing over it. It just won't do. I say as one white man to another, you best stay far from Thebes. Nothing going on in Thebes you got to see or know about, you hear?'
'Well, Redfield, I am sorry you see it that way. I can tell you're a man set in your ways, but I am equally set in mine. I have a job to do, that's all. I am an attorney, I took on a client, and goddammit, that is what I will do, so help me God, Thebes or no Thebes.'
He stood and walked out, without looking back. they drove for a while, and Eddie read Sam's gloomy mood.
'Sir, any directions? I'll take you anywheres.' Sam said, 'I suppose we're looking for a waterfront, or a marine district or some such. I have to hire a boat and just get this done on my own.'
'Yes, sir. I'll try and find it for you, I surely will.'
It turned out Pascagoula itself had only a marine industry focused on the deep waters of the gulf; what they needed was a smaller satellite city called Moss Point, up the river a few miles, where boats ventured out into the bayous that lay to the north.
Eventually, after more starting and stopping, they found a place, an old boatyard administered from a peely shed near the water. The boats were moored along docks, and they floated and bobbed on the vagaries of tide and current, bumping into one another, none of them particularly impressive craft. Sam had traveled to England on the Queen Elizabeth and across the Channel on an LST on D-Day. Even when the latter came under fire as it neared the spot to deposit him, his men and his six 105-mm howitzers on the dangerous shore, he'd felt more comfort than he did confronting this wooden fleet rotting in the sun.
The boats were all some form of fishing craft, their engines inboard, their cabins low to the prow, their comforts all but absent. fishing, the sign said.
And the place smelled of that commerce, with lines looped everywhere, and nets hung to dry, the sand shifty under the foot, crab husks and fish spines abandoned everywhere, the gulls flap pity-flapping overhead for a bite of flesh or cake, but otherwise still as buzzards on the wharf.
Sam ducked inside to find an old boatyard salt, with bleached eyes and a face gone straight to the quality of the dried plum called a prune.
'Howdy,' said Sam, to no answer, but only a sullen stare. 'I'd like to hire a boat.'
'You ain't dressed to fish.'
'No', not for fishing.'
'You just want to piddle around? See the sights?'
'No, sir. Trying to get upriver to a town called Thebes.'
'Thebes. Don't nobody go there, except the prison supply boat once a week.'
'Could I hitch or hire a ride aboard it?'
'Ain't likely. Them boys are coolish toward strangers. They run tight and private-like. What would be your business in Thebes?'
'It's a confidential matter.'
'Ain't talking, huh?'
'Look, I don't have to answer anybody's questions, all right? Let's just find me a boat that'll go upriver. That's your job, isn't it? You run this place? I'm not one for Mississippi lolly gagging in the hot sun when there's work to be done.'
'Say, you're a cuss now, ain't you? A stranger, too, from the way you talk. Well, sir, I can git you a boat and a man to take you deep into the bayou after big catfish or brown bass or whatever; I knows men who'll take you far into the gulf where the big bluefish play, and maybe you'd hook one of them and be proud to put it on your wall. Maybe you just want to be in the sun and feel it turn your pasty face a nice shade while sipping on an iced Dixie. But nobody here is going up the bayou to the Yaxahatchee and then to Thebes. Nothing up there but blue-gum niggers who'd as soon eat your liver with the spleen still attached as smile and call you sir. And if one of them blue gums takes a bite out of you, sure as winter, you goin' die before the sun sets.'
'I can pay.'
'Not the boatmen around here you can't, no sir, and that's a fact.
Nobody goes up to Thebes.'
'Goddammit, nobody in this fool town will do what they are told to do.
What is your stubbornness? Is it congenital or learned? Why such simplicity everywhere in Mississippi?'
'Sir, I would not take our state's name in anger.'
Sam?well, he near exploded, but the old coot just looked at him, set in ancient ways, and Sam saw that screaming at a toothless geezer had no point to it, not even the simple satisfaction of making a fool uncomfortable.
