Sam put the phone down.
'I'm listening,' he said.
'We're not here to make any trouble. It's just been suggested to us confidentially by someone in authority that some inquiries you made weren't appreciated.'
'What authority?'
'That is confidential.'
'You tell me, goddammit, or you will spend five years in an Arkansas state penitentiary.'
'It was from a security operative at an installation called Fort Dietrich, in Maryland.'
'What?'
'Sir, I don't know what you've been into that got those people up there so alarmed. But you have been messing where you should not have been messing, and we were sent down here to make sure you stopped the messing. Now we've communicated that. Sorry if we did it too roughly.
Why don't we just get on out of here, and let you go on about your business. We've delivered the message. That's all we're here for.'
'Hmmm,' said Sam. 'I do believe even the questions have done me some harm.'
'Well, sir, I suppose on our way out of town we could stop off at a couple of places and explain the whole thing is a big misunderstanding.
Would that set it straight by you?'
'I suppose it might.'
'Well, sir, then why don't we shake on it?'
He stood and offered his big hand.
'No, sir,' said Sam. 'Down here we take our etiquette seriously, and we only pay it out to those we respect. Y'all came into this town with blackness in your hearts, and now I'm chasing you out. You stop off on the way and clear my name as you say, and I won't have you arrested or have Boss Harry make a phone call to the chairman. That's all you get from me. Now please leave. I have business.'
He sat down as they passed from his office and his life.
He thought: Fort Dietrich, in Maryland. What the hell is that one all about?
The phone rang.
'Hello?'
'Sam, why'd you hang up on me?'
'Well, uh?' It was Mildred, the operator.
'Well, anyhow, you gave me the wrong number. There ain't even a Davis exchange in Washington, D. C. If you want Boss Harry's number, I got that for you, Sam. You need to talk to Betty?'
'No, Mildred, I don't. Sorry.'
'All right, Sam. Good-b?oh, wait, your light is flashing. Put the phone down.'
He hung it up and it rang in seconds, as Mildred made the connection.
It was Junie Swagger.
'Sam, come quick,' she said. 'It's about Earl.'
In the gray dawn the prisoners jogged out to the levee between the horsemen who ran them like cattle.
'You boy, you keep up, goddammit.'
'Jethro, yee-haw, watch that nigger on the left!'
'Ya'll keep together, goddammit.'
The snap of whips flicking supersonic ally through the air stood out like rifle reports amid the general thunder of hooves, running men and yelling men. Now and then came the whap of a solid shot against flesh when some low man displeased some high one, and the sticks were used.
They reached the levee and formed up the line to get the tools out of the old toolshed, where a trustee with a key went to open the old lock and pay out the implements while another trustee ran the count.
'Fifty-six out, boss,' came a cry.
'Fifty-six,' Section Boss cried in reply, 'you mark it good. Fifty five black niggers and one white nigger!'
Earl stood in the line and Section Boss rode up to him, his horse veering ever so close to make Earl draw back. But Earl knew the horseman wasn't going to come too close; he was scared of Earl.
Then Earl looked up.
'Section Boss, got to talk to you.'
'Well, damn, boy, don't that beat it all.'
'Please, Section Boss.'
Section Boss backed up, steadied his horse, and climbed off.
Immediately a couple of other riders came up to cover him, their sticks and whips at the ready, their freshly greased Winchester.351s close by in their saddle scabbards.
Earl approached humbly.
'Speak, boy.'
'Sir, I can't take it no more. When Moon gets back, he going to do sum ping awful to me, and it preys heavy on my mind. All these other men gonna laugh about it. Then he going kill me. I can't die in no prison for colored. Please, sir, you tell Guard Sergeant Bigboy I am a broken man at last.'
'You see the error of your ways?'
'I do, boss. Surely I do. I will come clean, yes sir, and we can git this all straightened out. I can't take no more of this shit. I won't last another night.'
'You punkin' out after all? And you'd be such a hero! You'd be such a tough boy!'
'Ain't no kind of tough, boss. Ain't no kind of hero. Ain't nothing but a man.'
'You git back down in that hole!'
'Boss, I?'
'You git back down in that goddamn hole, boy, like I say, or I'll please myself to give you another thumping. I may tell Bigboy, I may not. I's looking forward to tonight. What I hear, Moon got some real plans for you. Moon gonna have fun tonight. Maybe we'll just let him and take you in tomorrow.'
'Oh, boss, please don't do that.'
'Git in that hole, boy, while I think this over.'
Earl got back in the line, where his conversation with Section Boss had been noted.
'You finally goin' over to the man, buckra?'
'He done slept wif niggers enuff. Yes suh, the white boy goin' on back.'
'Moon still gonna hunt his ass down and do it up fine. If I know Moon, that's what's goin' to happen right swell.'
So Earl had another morning in the hole, and at 10:00, when Fish showed up, he worked Earl over plenty hard, as he did all the time, mainly along male rape lines and the power of Moon and his boys against the weakness of the lone white man. He worked him over so hard Earl wondered if it were a dream or not, the whole fantasy of escape. Maybe it was something his crazed brain had heated up for him as a way of retreating from the reality of the place.
But though Fish mocked him blasphemously, to the amusement of both his white and his black audience, as Earl reached for the cup, the old man grabbed his hand to check for the pin with a quick probe of his fingers, found it, and threw a wink at Earl. That gave Earl some sustenance.
It was finally about four o'clock. The sun had pulled down in the sky and swelled up red, like some big fruit corpulent with its own close-to-rotted ripeness. It threw a golden glow across the land, and the wind had stilled. They saw it coming, all of them.
It was the new black Hudson Hornet that had carted out Bigboy in the first place. This was so unusual that all work stopped, and even the guards reined in their horses to watch the approach of the vehicle.
It was here under the guise of the distraction that a powerful presence pressed against Earl; he looked to see a large man whom he had noted but who never spoke. Up close, the man's face revealed its mutilation, a crust of scar tissue lighter against his jet blackness, though all was touched golden by the sun. The man's eye, in that sea of frozen pain that was his ruined flesh, was askew and wandered its own dumb, blind way. This had to be Tangle Eye.
