Pale Horse Coming Read Online Free PDF Page B

Channel on an LST on D-Day. Even when the latter came under fire as it neared the spot to deposit him, his men and his six 105-mm howitzers on the dangerous shore, he’d felt more comfort than he did confronting this wooden fleet rotting in the sun.
    The boats were all some form of fishing craft, their engines inboard, their cabins low to the prow, their comforts all but absent.
    FISHING , the sign said.
    And the place smelled of that commerce, with lines looped everywhere, and nets hung to dry, the sand shifty under the foot, crab husks and fish spines abandoned everywhere, the gulls flappity-flapping overhead for a bite of flesh or cake, but otherwise still as buzzards on the wharf.
    Sam ducked inside to find an old boatyard salt, with bleached eyes and a face gone straight to the quality of the dried plum called a prune.
    “Howdy,” said Sam, to no answer, but only a sullen stare. “I’d like to hire a boat.”
    “You ain’t dressed to fish.”
    “No, not for fishing.”
    “You just want to piddle around? See the sights?”
    “No, sir. Trying to get upriver to a town called Thebes.”
    “Thebes. Don’t nobody go there, except the prison supply boat once a week.”
    “Could I hitch or hire a ride aboard it?”
    “Ain’t likely. Them boys are coolish toward strangers. They run tight and private-like. What would be your business in Thebes?”
    “It’s a confidential matter.”
    “Ain’t talking, huh?”
    “Look, I don’t have to answer anybody’s questions, all right? Let’s just find me a boat that’ll go upriver. That’s your job, isn’t it? You run this place? I’m not one for Mississippi lollygagging in the hot sun when there’s work to be done.”
    “Say, you’re a cuss now, ain’t you? A stranger, too, from the way you talk. Well, sir, I can git you a boat and a man to take you deep into the bayou after big catfish or brown bass or whatever; I knows men who’ll take you far into the gulf where the big bluefish play, and maybe you’d hook one of them and be proud to put it on your wall. Maybe you just want to lie in the sun and feel it turn your pasty face a nice shade while sipping on an iced Dixie. But nobody here is going up the bayou to the Yaxahatchee and then to Thebes. Nothing up there but blue-gum niggers who’d as soon eat your liver with the spleen still attached as smile and call you sir. And if one of them blue gums takes a bite out of you, sure as winter, you goin’ die before the sun sets.”
    “I can pay.”
    “Not the boatmen around here you can’t, no sir, and that’s a fact. Nobody goes up to Thebes.”
    “Goddammit, nobody in this fool town will do what they are told to do. What is your stubbornness? Is it congenital or learned? Why such simplicity everywhere in Mississippi?”
    “Sir, I would not take our state’s name in anger.”
    Sam—well, he near exploded, but the old coot just looked at him, set in ancient ways, and Sam saw that screaming at a toothless geezer had no point to it, not even the simple satisfaction of making a fool uncomfortable.
    Instead, he turned, went back to the car.
    “No luck, sir?”
    “Not a bit of it. These Mississippians are a different breed.”
    “They are. Must be all the swamp water they drink, and that corn liquor. Makes them stubborn and dull.”
    “Just drive, Eddie. Drive along the bayou here. Maybe I’ll notice something.”
    The shiny LaSalle prowled among riverside shacks and cruised past the hulks of rotted boats tied up and banging against weathered docks. Overhead, the gulls pirouetted and wheeled and the hot sun beat down fiercely. Sam soon forgot he was in America. It was some strange country, particularly when the color of the people turned black, and little ragamuffin kids in tattered underwear and worn shorts raced barefoot alongside the big, slow-moving car, begging for pennies. Sam knew if he gave one a penny, he’d have to give them all a penny, so he gave none of them pennies.
    Then even the Negroes