Pale Horse Coming (38 page)

“I don’t know if I can get my hands in there. It’s very tight. If I bump, the thing may go off, right?”

“I can’t think of anything else. I’ve got a fairly firm grip for now.”

But that was a lie. Even as he spoke it seemed the fire in his fingers rose another ten degrees. Connie’s presence let him block the agonies that assailed him, but now that magic was wearing off.

“Oh, where are those goddamn Army boys?”

“Just like an army. There’s never one around when you need it.”

“Connie, this isn’t going to work. We aren’t going to make it.”

“Sam, we
are
going to make it. Tell me what to do and stop wasting your breath.”

“Connie, I—”

His fingers twitched. It felt like he was hanging off a ledge on their strength alone, and now, one by one, they were dying.

“Connie, please go.”

“Could we block it?”

“What?”

“Block it. The striker will fall, but if it strikes something else, then there won’t be a boom, isn’t that right?”

“Can you see in there? Is there a gap?”

Connie held the blazing bulb close again, and looked carefully.

“There should be a hole where they removed a safety pin as part of the arming process.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Listen, these things are made of cheap pan metal. They’re not well made at all. Maybe with something you could scrape around the edge of that hole, enlarge it enough to get something in there to grind away at the hole and enlarge it enough to get something in there.”

Connie didn’t say a word. She opened the surgical shears, inserted the point ever so delicately into the tiny opening for the safety pin.

“You’ve got a good grip.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Not quite true. But as good as he could manage, given the pain in his hand.

“So long, been good to know you,” said Connie, and Sam felt the subtle change in the string when a kind of pressure was applied somewhere far down the system.

He looked at her. Her eyes were wide, and the harsh light illuminated the beauty of her face like a lamp on a statue in Italy. Her face was completely focused, completely calm. She wasn’t even breathing hard. He yearned to kiss her.

A sharp pain cut through his arm.

“Ah,” he said. “I’m checking out. I’m losing it. Go on, get out of here, I can’t hold it, my hand is dead.”

“Just a second, darling?”

“It’s failing. It’s failing,” he screamed, for he tried to find his will to compress his aching fingers, but he’d been on this drill for so long, it seemed his whole life, and there was no strength left.

“Please, Connie, please, run.”

“Just a second, darling. I almost have it. Now if only there was something I could guide into that hole.”

She looked about.

There wasn’t time.

“Oh, Connie,” said Sam. “Please.”

“Stop being noble. It’s annoying.” She reached into the box. “Maybe if—”

It was gone. It was over. He had failed.

“Connie, I love you.”

“Of course you do, darling,” Connie said, and his fingers at last failed, and the cord slipped and the pin worked its last tiny bit free and the striker was released, its captured tension in its coiled spring allowed to thrust forward toward freedom, and with a powerful snap it drove ahead.

Sam closed his eyes, knowing it didn’t matter, for in the next tenth of a second he and Connie would simply cease to exist in their form and instead be rendered—well, he had seen enough deaths by high explosive.

But it didn’t go off.

“Jesus!” he said, flexing his fingers to restore the circulation as he fell to his knees.

He looked at Connie. Her face was gray, her eyes blank, her lips tense, fine beads of sweat upon her brow.

Then he realized what she had inserted into the hole to keep the striker from the primer.

It was her finger.

He raced around the table, took up the scissors and began to cut the box away, until at last he had the destructive device free. He could see it now: her smallest thinnest finger, inserted into the crudely enlarged safety-pin hole in the pipelike pull-fire gizmo.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to gently unscrew the device from the fuse well.”

“Sam, you say the sweetest things.”

Holding the mortar shell by its warhead against his hip, and with the other hand securing the device, he began the slow process of unwinding the shell from its trigger. It fought him at first, and then he started when some moist warmth clotted up against his fingers and he realized it was her blood. But he un-steadily cranked a tenth of a turn by a tenth of a turn until after what seemed hours the shell itself separated from the firing device. As he set the shell down, something fell to the ground, like a quarter. He saw that it was an artillery shell primer, the necessary ingredient in assuring the explosion.

“Hold your hand up now to stop the bleeding.”

Connie lifted her hand, its finger wedged cruelly in the opening of the pull-fire tube. More blood poured down, matting redly in the fiber of her gray sweater. He held her tightly, unsure what to do next. He wasn’t clear if he could just pull it off, or possibly that would maim her finger all the more. He thought maybe he should get her to the faucet and run cold water, but the two of them were on the floor, and she was nestled against him, and it was as close as she’d ever be to him, and he was strangely happy.

“Oh, God,” he said, “you are so brave. Jesus Christ, you are so brave. Oh, Connie, leave him, and I’ll leave Sally and—”

“Oh, stop it,” she said. “That would just make a big mess. If you want to be helpful, why don’t you find my purse and get me a cigarette and then make me a nice drink.”

Then she noticed they were no longer alone.

“Sam, there’s a man from Mars over there.”

Indeed, the Martian lumbered over to them. He was some sort of giant robot, stiffly encumbered in armor, his body a bulk of pure iron, his face an iron mask with a tiny viewing hole. He wore immense mittens of steel braid.

“Say, what part of Mars are you from?” Connie asked.

The Martian shucked off his huge mittens and removed his mask and revealed himself to be merely “Sergeant Rutledge, U.S. Army, ma’am,” and in seconds everybody else was in there, including police officers, the heroic Harry Debaugh, a medical technician and two more partially disrobed bomb guys, pulling a huge metal box on wheels behind them.

“Look at all these party crashers,” said Connie.

But Sam was thinking: damn, damn, damn, another second and I could have kissed her.

E
ARL
looked at the telegram and wished it hadn’t come. It sat, as yet unopened, on the table on the porch. It actually had arrived yesterday, and Earl could not bring himself to open it. It could only be from Sam. Sam had promised him he’d tell him man-to-man if he’d decided against the plan. Maybe Sam couldn’t come, so Sam had sent a telegram. Earl imagined it said, At midnight, unless I hear from you, I will inform state police. Regards.

Sam, really, was not a man of war. Sam was a civilian. He thought like a civilian, he reacted like a civilian, he had a civilian’s fears and doubts. Earl was a soldier. Earl killed people. That was a difference in the way the two minds worked that Earl could not bridge.

He should never have told Sam. He should never have come back. He should have done it on his own.

Earl sat on the porch of the farmhouse in Florida. He could see the empty barn, the rolling fields, and the long dirt road and in the distance the forest cut with palmetto plants, and above it all a blaze of sun.

There was nothing to do but wait; the boys would begin to show up tomorrow or the next day, and dark of the moon was but four days off. To make himself useful, he was working with the .38–44 high-velocity cartridges, taking each one from its nest of fifty, and with an awl drilling a hole in the center of the semiwadcutter bullet, so that the bullet would rupture when it went through flesh, on the principle of the dumdum bullet. Illegal to do so in battle, but battle was a different phenomenon. This was a holy war, where the odds would be seven against Thebes. So it was allowed.

Earl worked steadily, trying to keep his mind clear, trying not to worry. He went over his own private operational plan, trying mentally to take it apart, to see it afresh, to figure on the unintended consequence. He knew that the confidence that he had thought of everything was the true sign of danger.

Then he saw the car.

It was a long way off. It pulled up the road, yanking a screen of dust behind it. Under the newspaper next to him on the table was a Colt .357 Trooper, loaded with the dumdums. Earl could get at it fast, but hoped he didn’t have to.

But soon enough it was recognizable, and Earl put aside his thoughts of the gun. It was the Cadillac limousine that Mr. Trugood seemed to travel the country in.

Earl sat back, still dumdumming cartridges, until the car arrived, and a fellow popped out obsequiously to spring the door for the august Mr. Trugood.

Earl stood and beheld. The man was resplendent in cream linen, with a blue shirt and a yellow tie and a nice straw Panama, with a yellow band to match the tie.

“Hello, sir,” said Earl, rising.

“Mr. Earl. You don’t seem happy to see me.”

“Come on up and get yourself out of that heat.”

The man came up, following Earl into the squalid living room. He looked about with distaste.

“It’s certainly not elegant, is it? Well, that’s what sixty dollars a month rents these days.”

“These boys won’t even notice. They’ll be too busy buzzing among themselves about cartridges and gun actions.”

“Earl, you’re still not happy that I’m here.”

“Sir, I don’t want no one down here to see you and identify you. If this thing goes wrong, I want to be the only man with the whole picture. I don’t want it coming back at you.”

“Yes, and you also don’t want a rich fellow in a fancy car suddenly getting all the natives excited in this backwash, wouldn’t that be equally true?”

“It would.”

“Well, we traveled back roads, and after Montgomery I have not been out of the vehicle. Fair enough?”

“Yes, sir. Since you are paying, you are always welcome.”

“Earl, I’ve come about the plan.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Earl, I have to say this. I think there’s a mistake.”

“Since you’re paying all the bills, Mr. Trugood, then if you think there’s a mistake, I’ll listen hard to it and try and get it fixed.”

“Excellent.”

“I’ve been butting against it myself. I’m trying to see it fresh. Maybe you’ve seen something I ain’t yet.”

“It’s not the plan, not really. It’s the bigger picture.”

Earl squinted. What was this bird up to?

“Sir?”

“You’re a Marine. You make your attack, you move on. That’s it, right?”

It was so true Earl simply nodded.

“Yes. Well, what about them?” said Davis Trugood.

“Them?”

“The Negroes. When you’re done, you’ll have two-hundred-odd convicts and thirty-five odd townspeople stuck upriver miles from civilization. You’ve drowned the prison under twenty feet of black water. What happens to those folks, Earl?”

Earl thought it over a bit. Finally, he said, “You have a point. But in the war if we’d thought of that stuff, then we’d never have made the first invasion. We’d still be in our boats off Guadalcanal.”

“Of course. I understand that. That is how you think. That is fine. I accept that. Only it cannot stand as is.”

“What are you saying?”

“I will do that part.”

Earl squinted.

“I don’t think that’s so good an idea, Mr. Trugood. You yourself said you’re best behind a desk. Now suddenly you want to be up there where there’s lead flying all over the place and things can get messy. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and I guarantee you that’ll happen. Some of these boys may catch one, and I may even catch one. I don’t want you catching one. You didn’t sign up for that kind of work.”

“Believe me, Sergeant, I am no hero. I will do nothing heroic. I have no intention of going in harm’s way. I’ll retreat happily to my desk and wait for a call from you telling me all’s well. But I must get a craft up there, something big enough to take all who want to escape away in the morning.”

“If you take a craft up there, you will tip off the boys at Thebes exactly what we’ve got cooking in our little pot. So there would be no point in going. So why go at all? You can’t have it two ways. You go in hard and trust what comes will be better, or you don’t go in. That I know.”

“Seemingly immutable, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“So I thought it out. I thought it out, and I came up with something. You’ve heard of the Trojan Horse?”

It touched something in Earl from long ago. Couldn’t quite get it straight, but sure enough he had it filed away for future usage back there among the point of impact of a .30–06 with a quarter value wind drift and the proper way to regulate the rate of fire on the gas pipe under a Browning Automatic Rifle barrel.

“Some old thing. Some big wooden horse, raiders was inside. The boys in the city, they thought it was a gift. Now me, I’d have burned it right there on the plain. That’s how a sergeant thinks. But them boys brought it in, and that night the raiders slipped out and started slitting throats.”

“That’s it exactly.”

“I don’t think you’re going to have a horse built, though.”

“No, sir. Not at all.”

“What will you build then?”

“I’ve worked this out neatly. It’ll be a barge full of prefabricated housing materials. To build a church. A minister is starting up a flock for the lost Negroes of the swamp. Now the boys won’t like that, but they won’t quite know what to do. What they don’t know is that anyone will see that the beams and the steeples and the roofing triangles can be quickly assembled into rafts. That way, there’s an escape.”

Earl considered. He didn’t like it. But then, he wasn’t paying for it, so in a sense it didn’t matter what he didn’t like.

“You sound so set I can’t see much point in trying to talk you out of it. I have to tell you, in the morning, my boys ain’t going to be hanging around to help folks put rafts together out of church parts. Our plan stays the same. We hit hard and burn the place and shoot any and all armed men. We free the prisoners, we blow the levee, and we’re out of there at first light. My men ain’t the kind to be helping old ladies get aboard rafts. You understand that?”

“Totally. It is time the Negro race learned to fend for itself. Surely someone among them will grasp the possibility. I’ll simply have the barge towed upriver, moored, and the boatman will leave. I’m simply providing an opportunity. It helps me sleep the night.”

“Then if it don’t have nothing to do with my people, you will do what you have to do.”

“Good, Earl. You understand that.”

“I do.”

“So I will be off. I have to get to Pascagoula, set all this up. That is all.”

Earl didn’t like it a bit. Any little thing out of the norm would send the Thebes boys out scurrying. All they had to do was put more men on night patrol, erect the smallest little fortifications, set up flare patterns or wire, and the whole thing got shaky.

“You go ahead then.”

“Earl, I have to say one thing. I’m very proud of what we’re doing. It’s the right thing. I’m so glad you found men who would fight for this cause.”

“Sir, you put that out of your mind. These boys ain’t fighting for no cause at all. Most of ’em don’t care much for the Negroes, if they thought about it a bit, which I doubt they done. They’re doing it because it’s their nature. They’re gunmen. Some have been in it, some haven’t, but they’ve all got to go to the dark valley one time or one more time and see what kind of fellows they are. That’s all they care about. They ain’t no Holy Rollers. They’re bitter, tough old birds, and if you make ’em into something they ain’t, you will be powerfully disappointed.”

“I expect all righteous armies are like that.”

“Wouldn’t know about that, sir. To me, armies are just men doing what they think is right and proper, for whatever reason.”

“So be it.”

He shook Earl’s hand, and walked off.

Earl went back to the porch and watched him go away.

Finally, it was time.

He opened up the telegram from Sam, held it in his hand for a second before unfolding it.

Hope you’re with me, Mr. Sam. Lord, I hope you’re with me.

It said:

UP 73. STOP. CORRECT FOR WIND 15 RIGHT. STOP. FIRE FOR EFFECT. STOP. SAM.

 

Earl smiled. For whatever reason, Sam had come around. That meant but one thing: blow them off the face of the earth.

Dark of the moon, Earl thought, I will do just that.