wrong, but that it felt wrong.
A tide of liar's phlegm overwhelmed your esophagus, your heart popped, your knees trembled. Sam hated lying and liars.
Sam lied.
He lied, he lied, he lied.
He hated himself for it and swore to God if he ever got out of this horrid sewer into which Davis Trugood and the Thebes State Penal Farm (Colored) had dragged him, he would never tell a lie again, not even a social one, like 'Honey, you sure look pretty today.'
But what bothered him more than even that was how well he had lied, how he had learned to lie over the course of this ordeal.
'Ma'am, I'm afraid I have some very good news and some very bad news,' he had said to the widow Stone. 'Your husband, David Stone, M. D.' is heir to a not inconsiderable fortune. Ma'am, I'm not yet prepared to divulge financial details, but I would estimate that it is in the seven-figure range.'
Even Stone's beautiful widow, smooth and polished and cosmopolitan as she was, gulped slightly at this information.
'Yes, ma'am. It seems his father had a brother, a rogue in the family you might say, who went off on his own. This man, Daniel Stone, had a rambunctious, tumultuous life, he did indeed. Possibly your husband never mentioned him nor did his father, because I believe some time in the penitentiary was involved.'
The widow had gasped again.
'But he died intestate and wealthy, through certain interests in the West involving industries not exactly on the up-and-up. After probate taxes, the estate is, as I say, considerable. Your husband was his last living relative. As heir to his estate, you are therefore the beneficiary.' 'I see,' said the widow. 'But as you can see, I'm quite well off from my own family's estate. I see no reason whatsoever to enter into a protracted legal engagement to acquire money I don't have any need for.'
Ach! Sam hated this! Character! A woman who could not be motivated by greed! Now there was a tough one.
'But madam,' he said quickly, 'think of the money not for you but to in some way commemorate your husband. Think of the David Stone Scholarship for Negroes at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Think of the young doctors that would come out into the world, and how well they would reflect the best of the American Negro, the good they would do, the mercy they would bring to the world and their own people. Now would that not be a testament to the greatness of your husband?'
It was so amazing. This beautiful woman from the highest circles, with her knowledge of art and beauty, her social connections, her dead husband's brilliant reputation to sustain her, her many (he assumed) fractious suitors, was biting. Not for some free dough but for the narcissism of Doing Good and Feeling Good: put that before her and she was any tart in a bar looking for a sugar daddy.
He hated himself for manipulating her. He hated her for being so malleable. He hated it all.
'Ma'am, what I need to do is disinter your husband's body, don't you see? I need to ascertain beyond doubt that that is indeed him in Green Mount Cemetery, and that you are his legal widow, and with that we can swiftly accomplish the transfer of the funds. Think of the future.'
And so it was that Sam now stood in the mortuary room of the Smallwood Brothers Funeral Home in downtown Baltimore, where a casket, still caked with dirt, had just arrived. He had the proper authorization, the proper paperwork, everything in its place, every i dotted and t crossed.
In her apartment the widow awaited his call.
He was used to death, of course, but not its ceremonies. For him it was a wartime thing, squalid and tragic; or an issue of small-beer west Arkansas murder, where a husband choked his wife blue and bulge eyed out of rage at an infidelity she had not really committed, or a businessman neatly perforated the liver of his embezzling partner with a nickel-plated.32, or two wild country crackers cut each other dead in a ditch in a drunken waltz of anger and stupidity.
This was a dark, subdued place, without joy. It felt as if a heavy coating of oil had lubricated every surface, so that friction was impossible. Things moved slowly, with greasy decorum; it was more like a graduation than a mortal inquiry.
The funeral director supervised; the undertaker executed. It didn't take long.
'Mr. Vincent?'
'Yes.'
'Sir, we have removed the decedent from his inner casket.'
'Yes. And?'
'Sir, there appears to be a mixup.'
'Of what nature?'
'There's a discrepancy between the death certificate and the remains.
Would you like to see? It's only over here.'
'Frankly, sir, no. I will take on trust a report of your findings.'
'Yes, sir,' said the funeral director, one of the Smallwoods.
He was a man used to mortal circumstances, well schooled to represent dignity in the face of crushing grief. His solemnity was unbridgeable, but Sam knew something was up when he saw that dry tongue lick nervously across those dry lips.
'Sir, according to the death certificate, this is a forty-three year-old white male. But the remains are those of a thirty-year-old Negro male. I don't know what to say.' 'I don't either,' Sam said.
'Worse, he appears to have perished of some grotesque disease. I can't say I've ever seen anything like it. Chancres, tumors, limbs eaten away.
It is a true horror, sir. I would like to burn it?him?in the next minute or so. The fires are ready.' 'Oh, Christ,' said Sam.
The sun blasted down as it usually did, and Fish showed up, as he usually did, with the water wagon drawn by the two old mules in the jingly tack. Earl hardly noticed. He was in a depression so deep and dark he could hardly breathe. He hacked at a stump with his hoe until he heard the call, 'Men, out!'
He was slow clambering out of the hole for his place at the end of the line and a guard gave him a whack with a stick to speed him up.
'You slower than the niggers now, boy!' he said with a whoop, as he laid the flat of the club hard against Earl's kidneys, driving him in a spasm of pain to the ground.
'He used to be white,' sang out Fish. 'Haw, boss, now he all nigger.
He mo' nigger than any nigger you got!'
Earl humbly made it to the rear of the line, wishing he could rub the new bruise with his hand but unable to reach it because of the chain.
At a point his eyes lost focus and he went to a knee.
Whap!
Another blow. Since he had turned down the mystery fellow in the mystery house, the word had gotten out among the guards. He was fair game. The process would intensify, then intensify some more. They would break him or kill him, and it seemed now not to matter. Maybe Moon would be his killer. Earl was the dead.
'You stand straight in line, nigger, or you don't git nothing,' the guard sang. Section Boss, on his horse with Mabel Louise the Thompson gun dangling over the horn on a sling, patrolled back and forth, not far at all from Earl. He was a good horseman, and in a second, if he wished, he could use the power of the beast to crush Earl to nothingness. His closeness was ominous and full of anger. But he said nothing, and Earl didn't look up at him, for that would merely earn another whack.
The jungle always wins, the man had said.
It was true. The jungle does.
Earl tried not to give up hope. But, really, with the dogs, with his own declining strength, with the fury of the black men at his whiteness, he had nothing to hope for. Maybe Sam was No he tried not to think of that.
If he thought of that, it was the sign that he'd given up, that he was relying on the offices of others, and he couldn't have that in his mind if he were to survive. He had to do it on his own.
At last he got up to the water spigot, following even the sick and crazed inmates. He reached for the cup,
