feeling Fish's harsh eyes upon him, when a peculiar thing happened. He didn't reach the cup, but in the quickness of a blink, Fish intercepted his hand and probed his palm with a horny finger. Then it was over, as if it had never happened, and Earl looked up at Fish, who'd looked away and was smiling up at Section Boss now.
'Can I whack him one, Boss?' asked Fish, smiling broadly in that ass-kissing, shit-licking way of his.
Suddenly he drew back his hand as if to issue a mighty clout, and Earl flinched, drawing back. But Fish just laughed.
Earl grabbed the cup, greedily sucked down the half cup of water, and turned, and suddenly Fish was on him.
The old man had surprising strength. He'd leapt from the wagon and actually landed on Earl's back. His strong, wiry arms lashed across Earl's chest, drawing him in, and his legs locked around Earl's thighs.
Earl struggled but could not get at the little man and spun away, and then felt the thrust of a sexual pelvis grind against his rear end.
'I's Moon!' Fish was screaming, 'I's fucking the white boy!
Whooooo-eeee, look-a-me!'
The laughter rose raucously, the black man mounted on the larger, slower white, grinding into him in scabrous imitation of the sexual spasm, the white man, all tangled up in his chains, lurching, spinning, unable to get leverage to separate himself from the smaller tormentor.
'Go git him, Fish!' the guards yelled.
'You hump that Nancy!' they cried.
'You ride that boy just the way Moon goin' ride him.'
It had to be funny in its pathetic way, for the inmates themselves started to laugh, and they generally wouldn't acknowledge the shameless way Fish played to the guards.
'Goin' fuck you, boy, yas I am, goin' fuck you hard, boy, have my way with you,' Fish crooned amid the laughter, and Earl spun desperately, trying to shake the man off, trying to elbow him, but the chains would not permit his arms the freedom. He spun, dizzily, a clown being fucked by a monkey, raising dust from the dry levee until it floated like a fog while the men moved aside to let the comic spectacle go on.
'I say he lasts a minute.'
'Hell, he gon' break that bronc. He gon' make him his, you bet!'
'You go, Fish, you go. Ride that horsie. Ride and fuck that horsie.'
Earl spun to the edge of the levee, but then his foot stepped off it, and down the two tumbled, a bone-jarring spill that brought them crashing down the incline into the mud until they'd rammed hard against a stump.
And Fish was off him in a flash, dancing back up the incline. He stood up there, doing a little jig of triumph as Earl, muddy and humiliated, dragged himself from the soupy mixture of the drained swamp, breathing hard.
'Look at him,' Fish crowed. 'So high and mighty and look at him now.'
'White boy Bogart,' said Section Boss, 'you is one whipped pussy, you is. You a disgrace to the white race. You is no longer a white man, no sir. I hear by drum you out of the white race. You nigger through and through.'
Earl sank to his knees.
'Men, down,' came the call, and the convicts rose as one, much amused by the show, and headed down to join him. At the same time, a very merry Fish jumped aboard his wagon, gave a theatrical flourish to his audience, and turned to the mules to go on about his rounds.
But what nobody except Earl knew was what Fish had whispered in his ear as they lay in the mud down below, entangled for just a second.
'I can git you out of here. I knows the way.'
Sam wished he could take the cab straight to Friendship Airport, plunk down some more of Davis Trugood's money, and fly to Little Rock aboard that big United DC-4. He wanted that desperately. It would be so much easier.
But the duty part of him, that nagging little monster inside that would not ever leave him in peace, would not permit such indulgence. Which is why he found himself, feeling like a condemned murderer, hunting for the courage to knock upon the widow Stone's door in the beautiful old apartment building outside Druid Hill Park.
He tried twice, three times, and then a fourth, knew he'd manage it on the fifth, but before he could find out if that were true or not, the door opened.
Dressed for a summer outing, purse in hand, she was stunned.
'Why, Mr. Vincent! What on earth are you doing here?'
'Ah, ma'am, I had?' he stammered.
'Oh dear. The news is bad?'
'I don't know what the news is. I really don't know what it is.'
'You had better come in, then.'
He followed her back to the living room and sat in the same chair he had sat in a day or so ago.
'So, Mr. Vincent?'
'Well, ma'am, straight out, you see, that isn't your husband in that casket.'
At first it seemed she didn't understand. She blinked, twice, and swallowed, once, and then said, 'I'm afraid I don't quite?'
'Ma'am, it's not him. It's a Negro male, much younger.'
'Are you telling me my husband is alive?'
'No, ma'am. I am only telling you that he is not in his casket; someone else is. What that means, I don't know. Possibly it's a terrible mistake made by somebody at an Army mortuary back in nineteen forty-five.
Possibly, it's?well, I can't even begin to imagine what it is.'
'Good heavens.'
'Ma'am, is there any?well, ma'am, I am by profession a prosecutor and I proceed by blunt methods. So if I may be blunt, is there anything in your husband's life or character that would suggest his capacity to become mixed up in something not quite aboveboard?'
'Excuse me?'
'Well, I'm just groping for explanations here, Mrs. Stone, and I?'
'Are you imputing that David Stone, the medical researcher and heroic savior to the world's beleaguered and benighted, that he is involved in some criminal activity?'
'No, ma'am, I'm?'
'Mr. Vincent, I may have to ask you to leave. This is very upsetting to me.'
'Yes, ma'am. I'm just trying to get a fix on all this. I'm just trying to?' 'You're not here for the reasons you said, are you?'
'No, ma'am.'
'That whole business about the fortune. That was all a lie, wasn't it?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'Sir, you are despicable.'
'I do not deny that.'
'Really, you have to leave. Immediately.'
'Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. This is so unfortunate.'
'It's more than unfortunate, Mr. Vincent, if even that is your name, it may be criminal.' 'Yes ma'am,' he said.
'So tell me, finally, after it's all over: Why are you here?'
'In truth, I began working for another attorney in Chicago, and I was investigating the death or disappearance of a Negro man at what was your husband's medical station. Not during his tenure, but somewhat later.
That is, recently. I journeyed down there, and barely escaped with my life. It's something of an American disgrace. And even as I speak to you, a good man who rescued me may be dead for his assistance. I have a private compact now with my conscience to find out what is going on in Thebes, Mississippi. I'm sorry I lied. I'm not in this for money or financial gain or anything. But I am very concerned about my friend, and until I find out about him, I am making it my business to learn everything about Thebes that I can. Your husband's name came into it from a governmental source in Washington, but all the files have disappeared. So I was working from this end.'
'You think my husband was involved in the murder of a man?'
