The boys commenced to beat on him, for their amusement, for a few minutes. Even Section Boss, emboldened by Earl's chains and pain, came over and got a few licks in. One of the blows opened the cut across Earl's body, and he felt the blood begin to seep out of his shirt.
'Enough,' said Bigboy. 'Get him up and in the back of the car. Jack Bogart, you're going for a ride.'
Strangled by his chains and pinned by the beef of guards on either side, and with a sawed-off Winchester pump rammed in his ribs for good measure, Earl rode through the penal farm. Once he even glimpsed the river beyond, pale and flat and broad, like some highway out of town.
But soon the vegetation thickened and darkened again, and the tropics took over; they came to a gate.
'Yes, sir,' said Bigboy in the front seat as the driver ran out to unlock the gate and pivot it open, 'you listen hard to what the man is going to say to you. You won't get another shot at redemption. We don't sell redemption here. We're not in the salvation trade. We're punishers.
We make the evil pay for their sins, that's our specialty, but on account of my deep and abiding affection for heroic types, I have arranged something special for you, along temptation lines. We shall see how tough you are. Pain doesn't frighten you, Mr. Hero, nor does the fear of death or degradation. We'll offer you what the devil offered Jesus Christ himself, which is the whole world.'
He chuckled softly in the fading light.
The car purred along a narrow jungle path and soon encountered a strangely tidy building nestled among the lob lollies and the palmettos, white and trim, well built along strict government guidelines. It had a very 1943 feel to it; it reminded Earl of the jungle headquarters the Seabees would throw up so efficiently on back islands away from the battle zone, where staff and intelligence matters were considered in comfort.
Earl was dragged out, further confused by a mechanical hum arising from somewhere. It was the sound of generators, well insulated, churning away, another cue familiar from the Pacific in wartime.
In he went, to an utter astonishment: coolness.
The place was air-conditioned.
The temperature must have been seventy-two degrees. He blinked in low darkness, and the two hulking guards took him down a shiny corridor.
Doors off it opened to what appeared to be ward rooms, and one was opened just enough so that he saw a black man in an oxygen tent, clearly close to death. They reached the end of the corridor and an office which, entered, proved to be clean and modern along military lines, with a medicine cabinet, a sink, a shelf of jars, a pile of clean towels, many sterilized packets of either pills or small instruments and an examining table.
Two men in white coats over otherwise nondescript clothes awaited him.
'You keep still, Bogart,' the senior guard said. 'You let these fellows work on you or I will do some serious thumping on your haid that you will not enjoy one damned bit.'
Earl was placed on the table. Quickly, the technicians snipped off his foul clothes and washed him with the smoothness of medical orderlies, which he now saw they must be. They were impersonal, efficient, uninterested. They disinfected his wounds, and quickly sewed them up.
He winced each time the needle perforated his torn skin, but the two orderlies were not at all put off by his pain.
Then the hypodermic needle came out. Earl flinched involuntarily as the technician drew some fluid into the shaft of the thing, then walked around, prepped his arm, and slid it in with a sting. Something about the needle was more hurtful than all the beatings he'd gotten.
'Waste of that fine medicine on this sorry specimen, you ask me,' one of the guards said.
'No one is asking you, Rufus,' said the orderly snootily, claiming his hierarchical superiority over the fellow, whom Earl knew to be called Clete.
'Okay, now get lost,' said the other orderly to the guards. 'We'll take him from here.'
The guards obeyed, angry to be shown up by the two lesser but somehow higher ranking men.
'Here now, this'll relax you,' said the technician, and quickly gave Earl another shot.
'Just a little tranquilizer, sweetie. Keep you calm and collected.
Now you just sit here a bit.'
Earl waited. Whatever it was hit him hard; it softened him, and the world seemed to fall ever so slightly out of focus. He blinked, almost passed out, and felt a great calmness, almost a sleepiness, pour through him.
'There you are, sunshine,' said the technician, coming back. 'My, aren't we relaxed now. Okay, you come with us now.'
Though still chained, Earl was wrapped in a cotton bathrobe, and the two men led him through another door. He was trying to track details, but they wouldn't stay tracked as his mind seemed to slip in and out.
Was this a hospital? There was a hospital smell somehow, but at the same time he felt no sense of bustle or movement or urgency. That was certainly missing from the hospital sense of the place. He couldn't figure it out.
The last door led to a room oddly lit. He sat on a chair and the two orderlies stood by.
'Doctor will see you shortly, stud boy. You just sit tight now.'
Earl couldn't sit any other way. He felt himself on the edge of consciousness.
Earl sat there.
The door opened and a man slid in, and even through the strange condition of his mind, Earl right away recognized the doctor who had given him the shots after his time in the coffin.
'Do you want a cigarette, friend?'
Earl nodded.
A cigarette was placed in his chained hands, and he put it to his lips.
Quickly it was lit, and that first drag was like paradise, biting through his drugged blur.
'You know, it doesn't have to be like this,' the man said.
Earl said nothing.
'You're a remarkable man. You're strong, tough, resilient, heroic.
Nobody denies that. But you're fighting the jungle, and the jungle always wins. Surely you've figured that out.'
Earl knew this to be a fact, but he didn't acknowledge it. He didn't say a word.
'Who are you? You can't be who you say you are. You're too motivated, too clever, too experienced, too well trained. Are you some kind of federal agent? FBI, perhaps? Are you military intelligence? Are you something military? What is your interest? Whom do you represent? Why are you here?'
Earl was silent. He took a puff on the cigarette.
'You keep fighting. It's really amazing. You should be studied. I've seen heroes before, believe me, and most are ordinary men compelled by circumstances to the incredible. You are heroic every single day.
Every single one. Amazing.'
Earl paid him back in silence.
'All right,' said the man. 'I'm going to give you an out. I'm going to give you hope. You don't even have to tell us who you are, at least not until you want to, and you will want to, eventually. It's simple.
You come over.' Earl said, 'Come over?'
'Yes. You join us. We need good people. I can have you here in a second.
You'll be fed, you'll sleep in clean sheets, you'll have a pleasant duty day. It'll seem all strange at first, even frightening.
But you'll see that what we are doing is very necessary. It's work of the utmost importance, and it ennobles everyone associated with it.
These poor Negro convicts, these ignorant white trash guards, the brutality, the death, the seeming wanton cruelty of Thebes, the shots they get: it's all justified. It's all for a higher good for our country and our way of life. You won't see that at first. But eventually you will. There'll come a i time when you'll believe. Then we can let you go back to wherever you came from. And you won't be bitter; you'll be proud you've served your country.'
Earl drew a last breath on the cigarette, then stubbed it out on the desk.
'No,' said Earl. 'Not a chance. Not a goddamned chance. I may die here, but I won't be a part of whatever terrible thing you're up to.'
'A shame,' said the doctor.
Sam could not lie. Sam was against lying. All kinds of mischief sprang from lying. It wasn't merely that it was
