Someone said, 'Sam, why don't you set a spell and have some of Junie's nice lemonade,' and Sam turned to see that it was Earl, even browner than before, brown as a man who'd spent two months laboring in the sun, and he held his son in his arms and was smiling.
As consciousness ebbed and the bubbles took over, a wraith or an eel or a large, slippery fish flashed before Earl's dulling, darkening eyes. He was aware of some kind of movement, and in the next second felt the full glory and pleasure of release.
Upward and reborn he coursed, seeing what all those down there had seen in their last seconds but could never reach and died dreaming of, and that was the surface.
He broke, feeling the rushing intake of cold sweet air, dipped beneath the current, surfaced again for more of the stuff. Even now he was not insane. He didn't gasp or gulp or shout, for somewhere was the boat, though those aboard would likely not be paying attention.
At that moment the old man broke the surface next to him.
'Can you swim with them chains?'
Earl nodded; there was enough play in the bonds to allow him to propel himself and his victory over death had filled him with energy and exuberance.
'We go slow. You stick with me. If you lose sight of me, you orient on that low star there and swim to it. We less than fifty yards out.
You reach walking depth in less than twenty-five yards.'
Earl nodded again, and the two set out. Earl had no problem staying with the smaller man as he undulated through the water in a limited but satisfactory version of the backstroke, and indeed, in a few minutes he realized the man near him was walking, not swimming. He let his feet drift downward until they reached mud, sank an inch or two, and then were on something solid. At that point he realized it intellectually as well as emotionally: again, he had survived.
They made it up the bank and over the levee which held the water back from the land. Earl scrambled up and over it, while reckoning they were downstream a couple of hundred yards from the Drowning House. The old man had cached a blanket here and retrieved it to wrap around Earl.
That done, they found a path, more a deer track in the woods, and continued along it for a mile or so. Now and then something mean would cut at Earl's bare feet, but he felt no pain at all.
At last they reached their destination, which was an old duck blind left over from years ago, when whoever owned the original plantation that became Thebes took his autumn harvest from the sky. Earl slinked in, the old man behind.
'You okay, boy?'
'These goddamn chains.'
'Gimme just a second.'
The old man bent, pulled one of his amazing secret pins out of some spot or other on that wiry old body, and quickly unlocked the the ankle braces. Earl was free.
'You rest up here. I gots to get back. You be fine, here, knows a thing.'
'Yes, sir.'
The old man pulled over a cloth sack.
'Like I say, boy, some clothes. Dungarees, a work shirt, some old boots, a hat. You look like a tramp, but nobody be looking fo' you.
There's also some biscuits and cornmeal. There's a compass. You want to follow the river and this old track here for about five miles till you come to a island in the river. At that place, you steer north by northwest through the piney woods. You cut railroad track in ' twenty miles. Long as you stay north by northwest and keep moving and don't panic, you goin' be okay. There's a freight runs up to Hattiesburg every day ' four o'clock. You hop that, take her into Hattiesburg, and from there you on your own. About fifty dollars hard cash should help, so it's in there too. Buy some clothes, a bus ticket. Be cool. Nobody looking fo' you, nobody know a thing. You a dead man, and ain't nobody looking fo' no dead man.'
'I got it.'
'The woods don't scare you none?'
'I can get through woods.'
'Then you all set, white boy. You home free. Go back to freedom land.
You done crossed the river of Jordan.'
'Old man, why you doing this thing for me?'
'Way to beat these boys. Onliest way there is. All the time I'm looking fo' ways to beat them. It ain't much, but it's something.'
'I can't say enough?'
'You hush on that. Now you gots two promises to live up to.
Remember?'
'I do.'
'You listen good and live up to both of them. That's what you owe Fish.'
'I will.'
'First is, you go to N'Awleans, my old town. You gets yourself two fine yeller Chinee gals and a bottle of bubbly and a room in a nice hotel and y'all have a time. And when you got mo' pussy than any man done got in a single night, you lay back and you drink a toast to old Fish. Fish done this so he could get pleasure thinking on that.
'Second is: you put this place out of your mind. Here we are the st.
We are in hell's farthest pasture. Ain't no getting out or coming ack.
Nobody care, nobody want to know. You go on, have a good life, and don't let what you done seen down here poison your mind. Don't let it do no clouding. You can't do nothing about it, so you forget it, or it wins.
It kills you. You blows your brains out from sadness, thinkin' on the pain. Don't you no way think about coming back here to set things right.
It can't happen, not now, not in ten years, not in twenty, maybe not never, and no point rapping yo' head bloody to find that out. I already knows.'
Earl considered.
Then he said, 'Well, old man, you're going to have to swim me back out that river and chain me down again, because I'm not keeping either of those promises. I am a married man with a young son, so I don't need two Chinese whores for fun. Sure would enjoy it, but it's not in the cards.
And as for the other, I can't help you none there neither. For I will come back. And this time when I come, I ain't coming alone.
This time I'll have some friends. And you know what else, old man?' ij 'No,' said Fish.
'This time I'll have a whole lot of guns.'
'Whoooeeeee,' whistled the old man in the dark, enough moon glow creeping in to light his face. 'Whoooeeeeee! That pale horse coming to Thebes at last! That pale horse coming.' Sam said, 'We must tell people.' Davis Trugood said, 'Nobody will care.' Sam said, 'Then we will make them care.' Davis Trugood said, 'All this is happening to Negroes.
To many in the South and even to some in the North?possibly more than you would ever believe?the Negro is not fully human. They take the Dred Scott decision as gospel still. Allow me to quote: Mr. Justice Taney wrote that the Negroes were a ' and inferior class of beings [who] had been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.'
'
'It isn't eighteen fifty-seven anymore,' said Sam.
'It is in much of Mississippi,' said Davis Trugood. 'It has never stopped being eighteen fifty-seven down there.'
Sam screwed up his wily face. 'You know a bit more about conditions down there than I might suspect, sir. More than you could have learned from my reports.'
'All I know I know from your reports, Mr. Vincent. You are the author of my opinions.'
'Then why do I reach different conclusions?'
