Pale Horse Coming Read Online Free PDF

some on Northern communist agitation, all that plus your natural Negro tendency toward chaos, irrationality and ol’ Willie thumping Willie on Saturday night just for something to do. So them boys got a whole lot on their minds, hear? I wouldn’t just go poking about now.”
    “I see,” said Sam.
    “What I’d do, you’ll pardon me for presuming, I’d just turn around, head back up North. Yes, sir. Then write that fellow in Chicago, tell him everything’s fine, he don’t got to worry, the death certificate be on its way. I mean, it’s only probate now, isn’t it? Then I’d forget all about it. Come time, he’ll write some angry letters, but hell, he’s a Yankee, that’s all they know how to do is act all indignant.”
    “Well, see here, Redfield, I can’t do that. I took the money, I must do the work.”
    “Oh, come on now, Vincent. Wouldn’t be the first time someone took a retainer, wrote a letter, and forgot all about it. I just wouldn’t be messing about in Thebes. They got their own ways of doing things up there, they don’t want nobody getting in their bidness, no sir. I’d write you a letter, but to who?”
    “Whom,” corrected Sam.
    “Who, whom, it don’t matter. Thebes up there, up that dark river, ain’t nobody up there to write to, ain’t nobody up there to sit down nice and polite, sit under a fan, have a sip of rye whiskey, and palaver. They’re sitting on a goddamned powder keg, what they’re doing. A nigger powder keg. They got to keep it from blowing, and, way I see it, that’s a hero’s job.”
    “Redfield, I have been in a variety of prisons, white and Negro both. The men who run them are many things, but heroic is about the last word I’d employ. Necessary is about as far as I’d be pleased to go.”
    “Well, it’s all clear and dandy to y’all up North, with all your answers. Down here, where it never snows and things change slow except when they change fast and ugly, it’s a lot less stamped out. It can be downright messy. That’s why there has to be a Thebes. The niggers have to know there’s a Thebes, and by God if they get uppity, Thebes is where they’ll be sent. So in its way, Thebes is more important than Jackson or Biloxi or Oxford or Pascagoula. Without Thebes, wouldn’t be no Jackson or Biloxi or Oxford or Pascagoula. Without Thebes, Mississippi is the Congo and America is Africa. Thebes is what keeps the lid on. I’d hate to see you get your nose all a-twitch because you saw one guard knock a nigger down and you make a big thing over it. It just won’t do. I say as one white man to another, you best stay far from Thebes. Nothing going on in Thebes you got to see or know about, you hear?”
    “Well, Redfield, I am sorry you see it that way. I can tell you’re a man set in your ways, but I am equally set in mine. I have a job to do, that’s all. I am an attorney, I took on a client, and goddammit, that is what I will do, so help me God, Thebes or no Thebes.”
    He stood and walked out, without looking back.
     
     
    T HEY drove for a while, and Eddie read Sam’s gloomy mood.
    “Sir, any directions? I’ll take you anywheres.”
    Sam said, “I suppose we’re looking for a waterfront, or a marine district or some such. I have to hire a boat and just get this done on my own.”
    “Yes, sir. I’ll try and find it for you, I surely will.”
    It turned out Pascagoula itself had only a marine industry focused on the deep waters of the gulf; what they needed was a smaller satellite city called Moss Point, up the river a few miles, where boats ventured out into the bayous that lay to the north.
    Eventually, after more starting and stopping, they found a place, an old boatyard administered from a peely shed near the water. The boats were moored along docks, and they floated and bobbed on the vagaries of tide and current, bumping into one another, none of them particularly impressive craft. Sam had traveled to England on the Queen Elizabeth and across the