It could have been torn down and the state persuaded to build a more modern structure quite easily. The warden had powerful allies in Jackson, men who knew what he was doing and approved of it heartily.
They would want him to be happy, for he was their bulwark, their champion, against the coming of change.
But the warden loved this old place. It held a secret meaning to him that even Bigboy, intelligent in practical ways, could not imagine. So Bigboy sat in the office, sipping port to the flicker of lamps and candles, on a warm summer night, where servants waited just outside of visibility. If you closed your eyes it was 1856 or so, before the convulsion of the War of the Rebellion, when the South stood at the apex of its civilization. Bigboy, not a native Southerner, nevertheless felt the powerful pull the era had for such as the warden and the men who supported him in Jackson. That past was as alive as their gardens, and just as alluring; if it could not be preserved, its memory could nevertheless be preserved, if not enshrined.
'It's the disease of hope,' said Bigboy. 'They're stirring as they've not stirred before. They have a dream. They have a possibility. They see change coming.'
'And what is this hope?'
'It's obscure. I do not know the meaning of it. But I know it's being whispered nigger to nigger, and the whole farm is alive with it. Where it came from, I do not know.'
'That is disturbing. Did you know that before the Sepoy Mutiny in India in 1857, chapati cakes were distributed. No one knows how or where or by whom, or what it signified, but it held some inchoate meaning to the natives, and these simple disks of unleavened dough were passed hand to hand to hand. It was an omen, and the British were blind to it. Then came the mutiny, and years of slaughter and rapine.
Race war, really, though no one will call it that. The world ended.
Or, rather, a world ended. Thousands and thousands of lives later, the British reestablished control, but not really. It was all different, and they never had confidence again. Possibly that was the beginning of the fall of the British empire even before they were half done building it, and look at India now. Improved? I think not. The wogs run everything, and everything is running down toward savagery and chaos, as it must when an uncivilized mind assumes charge. Are they better now that they are free of the English? Hardly, and it will get worse. In such a way, will the Negro be better off when he is free of the white man? Of course not. He'll be worse off. There'll be nothing to check his natural tendencies, his infantile but potent sexuality, his commitment to appetite, to instant gratification, his inability to imagine a world of permanence because he was raised in tropical innocence for a million years, and at some deep conceptual level lacks the imagination to foresee a time without heat and rain and verdant greenery, which is where all his troubles come from. Worse than that, however, is his lust for the white woman, and the progeny that ensues: children with Negro bodies and appetites, with Negro fury, with Negro violence, but as guided by secret white cunning? That is a world I care not to live in, Sergeant Bigboy, and have dedicated my life to preventing. The Negro and the white must never cohabit; only anarchy can follow.'
This was a cherished rumination on the part of the warden, and Big boy had heard it many a time before, but it was delivered with such force, he dared not interrupt.
'My, my, how I do go on. You come with a report, I give you a lecture.
And you are gentleman enough not to correct me and hold me on track.
So, back to this magic message, this hope. How is it expressed?'
'In the following idiom,' Bigboy reported. 'The words are ' horse coming.' They are muttering it among themselves.' 'Well, what an unusual turn of phrase,' said the warden.
'Mr. Warden, would you know what it means? You know so much, I thought sure you'd know it.'
'Pale horse coming.' Has a biblical feel to it, doesn't it?'
'It does, Mr. Warden. Is it from the Bible?'
'Possibly. Let me think. But if I tell you what it might mean, that knowledge will corrupt you and taint your own thinking. I prefer before I comment to hear exactly what you think it means, Sergeant Big boy. You are a man of immense sagacity, and your instincts should be trusted.
Please tell me. Before we let any fancy learning intrude and occlude things for all time.'
'Sir, I think it refers to that fellow, that white fellow, Bogash, we called him Bogart, who was killed trying to escape.'
'Yes?'
'He was a tough one. He was a hero. He was an impressive enough boy in his own right, who stood up to ' in their own jungle and fought them down, all of them. Then he stood up hard to us. In the primitiveness of their minds, they might come to believe he's a messenger from God. Some kind of angel. And as Christ returned from the dead, Mr. Warden, so it seems to me that they could allow themselves to think that he would return from the dead.'
'I take it that is not possible.'
'It is not.'
'Your report was sketchy on details.'
'I guarantee you he will not be returning from the dead. Not in three days, not in three years, not in three millennia, not in three million years. I guarantee it.'
'I trust you. And I think you may be right. The word ' does have religious connotations. We first find it in the Revelation of Saint John, Chapter Six, Verse Eight: 'Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.'
'Yes.'
'Pale,' of course, is a logical association with death, for it reflects the pallor of the flesh when having passed, denied of warm blood, marbleizing, calcifying as it breaks down. It's cold, really, and paleness is a feature of the cold. Snow is white, it is pale, it is cold. A pale sky is a chilled sky. We find paleness as death in many places in the western imagination associated with death. Then there's '
Hell followed them'; yes, I can see how that connection to the Bible would satisfy these desperate, evil men, for they believe that when that pale horse comes, death rides upon it, and in concert horse and rider bring hell to us here in our humble institution. So sayeth Saint John the Rev elator.'
Bigboy nodded. The warden took another sip of port. There was no stopping him once he got going.
'Mr. Warden, begging your pardon, but do you think a Mississippi nigger here at Thebes would be reading much Saint John?'
'No, indeed, but that is the miracle of the way images move through literature, memory and the imagination. They wouldn't know Revelations from shoe-fly pie, but they will have met people who have had, and will have communicated not so much the information as the idea. So ' as an expression of death delivered will have forceful meaning to them, even if they know not why.'
'Yes, Mr. Warden.'
'Keats too was absorbed in paleness as death, but he saw it in the form of extremely competent men, very gifted, capable men. 'I saw pale kings and warriors, too,' he writes, ' warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried lla Belle Dame sans Merci I hath thee in thrall!'
Now what is the meaning of 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' and what is this thrall she holds over the pale warriors?'
Bigboy had about as much chance of answering this question as he did of flying to Mars. But he understood that it was rhetorical, and so he said nothing.
'Well,' the warden answered his own question, 'though interpretations vary, I would say the beautiful lady without mercy is that hideous cow, duty. She demands that we give up all for her, she has no mercy on us.
In thrall to her we fight, in thrall to her we die. So in this meaning of the phrase, he seems to be predicting the arrival of men of duty, with guns, who want to kill us all, and bring hell to our little part of the earth.'
'So you would take this very seriously?'
'Very. Very, indeed.'
'Then I will find out where it came from, what it relates to. It will not be pleasant work. You may hear the screams in the night.'
'I've learned to sleep through screams in the night. It is necessary sometimes. Our fortunes, our lives, may depend on those screams.
Sergeant, do what has to be done. Do it fast, do it without mercy. I will not be like the British, slaughtered in my bed because I didn't read the signs. Find out what is going on.
