Pale Horse Coming (48 page)

“You ain’t come back to kill me?”

“No, sir. I come to set you free, and only regret them boys I was too slow to help, like old Fish. You go on now. Git out of here. I’m going to pop this here thing, and when she goes, this whole building goes down.”

He held the firebomb.

Moon eyed him balefully, as if it made no sense. And by his lights it didn’t, but in time he saw where his future lay, and he drew his immense self up and walked out the door.

Without giving it a look, Earl pulled the cord, felt the fuse light properly, and tossed the thing into the back corner of the Ape House. It was fiercely alight by the time he left, where his fellows had gathered.

“Audie, you know what’s doing. You blow that levee. You other boys, you gather up Jack—maybe some of them black fellows can help you with the stretcher, and head to town. Gather up Mr. Ed. You got to be upriver by ten hundred hours tomorrow, ten in the morning for civilian types, ’cause that’s when our Navy friends come looking for us and they won’t have enough time to hang around. Sally, you make sure these old goats don’t wander off or lose interest.”

“I will run them hard, Earl.”

“You go on, now.”

“Earl, where you going?”

“I have a piece of business yet to take care of. You go. It don’t concern you.”

“What, Earl?”

“It’s the last place. It’s why there’s a Thebes on earth. It’s what it’s all about. The Screaming House.”

A
ROCKING
chair was found, and the old man sat in the middle of the street, enjoying the fireworks. Beyond the town, beyond the trees, the whole sky was lit in a glare so powerful it extinguished the stars. That acrid tang of burned wood hung crisp in the air, driving out even the moisture. It was Fourth of July and All Hallow’s Night and New Year’s Eve combined, the light crackling off the vault of the sky. The old man sat and rocked.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Ain’t just got white lightning. Got some fine old Kentucky drinking whiskey, too. Had it many a year, so many a year I don’t remember when I first owned it. Be a pleasure, sir, to serve you a drink of it.”

“Sir, my drinking days have been many a year past. But tonight I will make an exception. That is on one condition. The condition is that you and your colleague there join me, and that we raise a sip in salute to the burning of Thebes.”

“I will take that charge, sir.”

“So will I,” said the other, and in a few minutes, the three old men enjoyed a fine sip of Kentucky bourbon, fiery in its own way as the blazing sky.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Thebes came from their hovels and dogtrot cabins to see the wonders of the night. They stared and murmured, particularly as by this time the fires had grown so intense that they cast a glow on the river itself at the base of the street, and it now rippled with the orange textures of oxidation. It was quite beautiful, if not so terrifying.

A woman came to Mr. Ed.

“Sir, what is happening?”

“Why, madam, we have burned the prison farm. To the ground, even now. There have been battles, and I am certain that most of the guards have perished and the rest have vanished. The sheriff and his fellows, they, too, have gone on. There ain’t nobody here no more but you folk.”

“Sir, what do we do?”

“You may stay or you may go. It is your choice. Though there won’t be no employment, for those of you who drew a living off that place. That place, it just ain’t no more.”

“Sir, we can’t leave. We owes money. All us.”

“No, ma’am. Not no more. Whatever debts was owed was paid up in full tonight. Look up, folks, and see the ash in the wind. That’s your debts. The place you called the Store. All gone. Nothing left.”

“What we goin’ do? How can we leave? We can’t leave no way. It take a boat to leave and we—”

The woman stopped.

“Noah built his own, I recall,” said Mr. Ed. “I am no carpenter, but I see a barge just offshore, and if my old eyes still work at all in this light, I see the inscription
TRUGOOD WATERPROOF CASKET COMPANY
. And I see a powerful pile of boxes meant for the dead. Now, seems to me—”

“You can use them boxes, yes sir! You can run board between them with only a little hammering, and in no time, goddamn, you gots a raft. You gots a lot of raft.”

“Why,” said the old man, “it’s almost as if it were planned that way!”

The people got themselves into action, and if they were slow and clumsy at first, it was minutes before convicts began arriving in torrents down the dark road. They too saw the genius of it all, and with their muscle and skill, with nails reclaimed from dogtrot cabins and mallets and boots and whatever used as hammers, with boardage from cabins quickly disassembled, it was not at all long before a fleet of rafts, each supported squarely by a squadron of pontoons that had been coffins, came into being.

“Sir, we going. They be enough for all of us. You come with us, sir. Ain’t nothing left.”

But the old man was dozing in the excitement, and even when three more white cowboys, a wounded man on a stretcher, and his granddaughter arrived to look on the scene with encouragement, no one could muster the nerve to wake the old fellow up, for certainly, all agreed, he had earned his rest this night.

B
IGBOY
saw him a fair ways off. The flames leaping at the horizon helped, for they threw a wash of light that otherwise would have kept the man invisible. But no, there he was, two hundred yards out, moving swiftly, bent in purpose. Bigboy’s heart leapt a little, but he calmed it to quiet by the imposition of his will, and concentrated on the practicalities of the problem ahead.

He was in the gully just behind the toolshed where the axes and shovels were locked each night. He knew it was Bogart by the walk, the manful stride. He could see the cow man’s hat low over the eyes and a rifle in his hands, and he guessed there’d be handguns under that big canvas coat. Bigboy knew Earl was dead set on going to Thebes’s one last secret place.

With a pop and a hiss, Bigboy let the whip uncoil and snake through the dirt. It had to be loose and ready for an instant’s use. He looked left and right to make certain no branches hung low to capture the tail and tie it up, and of course there weren’t any. He was free and clear. His whip hand was strong and his whip had free rein to snap and bite where he directed it.

He tried to dull himself out, reach a kind of no-place feeling, so that he could move swiftly when the time came, use the whip to take the man down, get on him, and disarm him, then shoot him with his own gun or beat him to death. No, not beat him. Bogart was too swift and tough to be beaten, and no one punch would do the trick; it would have to take two or three in a row, and good as he was, Bigboy remembered that the smaller man was equally good and would have a chance at the lucky punch as he had managed before. But shooting him had no pleasure in it anywhere, for it didn’t reflect Bigboy’s own purity of will and natural propensity for triumph. Bigboy had to kill him with his own hands, that he knew; but he also knew those hands would have a whip in them.

E
ARL
hustled along. He was on the levee road, that ridge of land that bisected the fields and led to the trees that marked the river. Along here somewhere would be the turnoff that led through those trees to the Screaming House, with its polite doctor and his assistants, where the convicts went to die in pain.

He knew also that Bigboy could be out here. It was too easy to believe that the guard sergeant had perished in the fires at the Whipping House or the barracks. The man was too swift, too smart. Had he then fled? That didn’t seem like Bigboy either, for if there was a thing he wasn’t, it was a coward, and even if he escaped the general slaughter, it wouldn’t be his inclination to flee, but to hang around.

But Earl also knew that he hadn’t time to smoke the man out, not without dogs and other trackers. Bigboy knew the land; he didn’t. Bigboy could make time, he couldn’t. You caught Bigboy flat in the surprise or you didn’t. He hadn’t. Bigboy would survive and come dog him in his real life, he had no doubt. Bigboy wasn’t the type to let a thing like this slip; Bigboy would work just as hard to find out who Bogart was as Earl had worked to get back here with gunmen. That was Bigboy’s nature.

So when the whip flicked out and smashed against his ear, ripping it in a flash of heat pain so intense it almost took Earl’s memory, it was not quite a surprise. The surprise was that as Earl wheeled to bring the rifle up Bigboy got there so fast, for he had never seen the albino run and had no idea what animal speed the man possessed.

Bigboy hit him with the crown of his head under the left eye, and even brighter fires than the ones he’d seen that night lit instantly in Earl’s brain, and Bigboy’s force carried him onward, crushing him in the rush, until he had the smaller man down.

He cracked him crown to face, crown to face, crown to face three more times, each splitting skin, each knocking Earl’s sentience toward chaos and sloth.

Then Earl felt Bigboy’s hands on him, ripping at the guns. Earl wasn’t fast enough to catch the first one, but he got a grip on the big man’s wrist at the second, and so Bigboy crown-butted him again. His grip slipped. In an instant, both handguns had been ripped from the holsters.

But Bigboy did not shoot him as well he could have. Instead, he threw the last one away, following the other, pulled off the pouch that contained the firebombs, tossed it too, then stepped back, leaned to retrieve a thing from the ground, stepped back three more paces.

Earl got himself up slowly.

He heard the flick and whisper of the whip.

“Ever see a man die by whip, Bogart?” Bigboy asked.

“Seen one,” said Earl. “An old man chained. Don’t take much guts-wise to kill a chained-up old man.”

“You’d be surprised. Lots don’t have the entrails for the work. But I see he was talking about you at the end. You came back, riding a pale horse, just like he said you would. You’ve done good, Bogart. The sky is bright with what you’ve done. You are a hero. But remember once I told you about the hero’s flaw. It’s his vanity. Do you know what that means? Self-love. Self-adoration. And that’s your flaw. You came out here alone. Where are those other fellows with all their guns? I
knew
you’d come alone, even if you didn’t, for what good’s being a hero in a fairy tale if you don’t face the beast? That’s what’s ticking away inside you.”

“This ain’t no fairy tale.”

“No, it ain’t. This is the whip man with nine feet of cat rawhide for you, delivered in licks so perfect you won’t believe it. I took one ear. I’ll take the other. I’ll take the nose and the fingers and the eyes and the knees. Then I’ll put such a roar of lashes against you, you’ll pray to die. I’ll take each of your nerves. Then I won’t kill you. Then I’ll leave you blind and tongueless and paralyzed and hideous ugly as a human stump. That’ll be Bigboy’s bequest to the world.”

The whip snaked and this time it cracked at Earl’s good ear with a sound so loud it all but busted the eardrum.

“Who are you?” Bigboy said. “Tell me that and I’ll hit you so hard upside the head you’ll go unconscious, and I’ll get one of those guns and shoot you neat in the heart. Who are you?”

“Bogash. I’m a truck driver. I hope to run a hunting lodge down here for rich sportsmen from Little Rock.”

“You are a stubborn bastard.”

Earl rushed. He wasn’t fast enough. Bigboy pin-wheeled the whip and flicked three cuts into Earl so explosively he knocked Earl down in the dust. Where the cuts were it hurt so bad he thought he’d die. Who knew a thing could hurt like that?

“Bad, huh? Yeah, it gets worse. You can’t do it. No man can face up to the whip man, no matter how tough and quick he is. It can’t be done.”

Earl came again and learned the same lesson, only worse. This time the whip man lashed him perfectly on the top of one hand, opening a deep cut. That hand went numb and useless at once, as if it had been stung by a hundred bees. It swelled into something fat and puffy and yellow.

“You still ain’t close enough. You think you can get inside the whip? That’s what they all think. But no one can take the pain, no one. And no one’s got that kind of speed to him.”

“One of my boys’ll be along soon. He’ll shoot you dead and laugh about it. He’s killed plenty in his time.”

“That little kid?” said Bigboy. “He looks like he’d wet his pants you yell at him. Only that one’s long passed. I take it he’s going to blow the levee and flood the place. A good plan. It’ll let me slip away, too, and start again, and wouldn’t you know I’ve got a pretty penny cached in New Orleans banks. You’re really doing me a favor and—”

Earl’s fingers scooped and tossed a cloud of dust toward Bigboy’s eyes, but it didn’t produce blindness, only laughter.

“That’s a good one. Oh, ain’t I seen that in two hundred pictures or so. And I’m so stupid I’m going to fall for that one! You must not even yet know who I am.”

Think!
Earl demanded of himself.

Read him! What’s he going to do next? Anticipate.

Earl stood and backed off a few feet.

“Oh, you think you can get away. I’ll take you down across the ankles and whip your back so raw you can’t move a bit. You want that? It could be so easy. You tell me who you are and the lights go out. No pain.”

“Except after I tell you, you tell me you’re going to kill my wife and boy after you kill me. Then you whip me slow, laughing.”

“You got an imagination,” said Bigboy. “That I give you, an imagination.”

An insight passed into Earl’s mind. He is a fighter. He is a fighter with a long right-hand punch. You rotate away from it.

He began to rotate to his own right.

“Where you going, son? You think this is a boxing match? You think you can out-think me?”

With that Bigboy pivoted to his own left, and snapped the whip into the dust to Earl’s immediate right, to stand him still. But Earl saw it coming, for that was Earl’s gift, and though he knew he’d never be fast enough to catch the whip with foot or hand and pin it, he might bring that trick off with his whole body, and even before Bigboy had pivoted for his strike, Earl had started his dart to the ground, and in the same second the whip lashed the dust, he landed on it, stilled it, and rolled three spins toward Bigboy and came up until they faced each other across three feet of dead whip now wrapped tight to Earl’s body.

A flash of panic hit the big man’s eyes, but Earl stepped in and hit him hard in the nose, breaking it, and the big man recoiled, roared in pain, and grappled bearwise against Earl, his big strong arms crushing the smaller man.

Earl bit his fucking nose. Didn’t know where that trick came from, it was just what he did.

Bigboy loosened his grip and the two spun, groping for advantage, until it arrived at Bigboy, who lifted Earl off his feet and threw him seven feet through the air, where he crashed into the shed of tools, splintering it.

Bigboy waited for the man to pull himself up so that he could finish the job, and had even begun to move in for the kill, when he came to an abrupt halt. Earl staggered from the wreckage, but rotated slightly, blinking to clear his mind, and as he turned he revealed that in his hand he held an ax.

“You want your whip back, sir?” Earl inquired. “Come on over here and get it.”

Bigboy’s eyes dropped and he feinted a retreat, but Earl had seen this move, too, and as the big man came at him full bore, too close for Earl to swing the blade in an over-the-shoulder arc, Earl dipped under the rush and heaved through his arc horizontally. It lit with a thunk and was then torn from his grip.

Bigboy stepped back and looked with curiosity at the ax blade sunk into his hip, and the black blood that welled from it, and the two feet of wooden haft that hung off it. He went to one knee, groggy, shaking his head as if to make the spiders and firecrackers leave his mind.

Earl had another ax by this time, and when the big man regained his sense of purpose and came at him, Earl was fast enough to sidestep, and go top to bottom with his arc, and bury this one in the shoulder.

The two axes stuck deep in the big man, each slightly aquiver. Bigboy turned, spied Earl with ax Number 3.

“You goddamned bastard,” he said.

He lurched, with enough power still but no speed, and Earl planted this one in his stomach, hanging it up among the loops of entrails which split open, and it wasn’t just blood that came out, it was also shit and turnips.

“You bastard,” he said again, and Earl was amazed that the man was so tough. He had never seen toughness like this, not even from the Jap naval infantry. But that didn’t stop him from seizing another ax from the pile. Bigboy staggered left, and reached for his own ax, and Earl chopped off his right hand. Bigboy looked at the stump, as if to waggle phantom fingers, but became fascinated with the arterial spray spurting from the wound. Then, once more he launched himself, and Earl teed off with the fourth ax, a ballplayer with a fat pitch too slow to miss. He felt like DiMaggio. It went with a noise that was new to his ears, unheard even in all the close combat of the Pacific, on the diagonal across Bigboy’s face, tearing out eye and nose and cheekbone, and he stepped groggily away as if he couldn’t yet believe this thing had happened to him and looked at Earl, face halved like a melon by the last of the axes, which all still lay set in him.

“Earl Swagger,” Earl said. “United States Marine Corps.”

Bigboy fell at last, as dead as they get.