Read Online Pale Horse Coming by Stephen Hunter - Free Book Online

some reason, sir, you have seen fit not to do so, and so you have suffered some minor inconveniences of no particular import to no Mississippi judge.”
    “I did not do so, Sheriff Gattis, because there were no deputies around. I spent most of yesterday looking for them. They prefer to work after midnight! I insist—”
    “You hold on there, sir. You are getting on my wrong side right quick. Any nigger could have told you where we are, and if they didn’t it’s ’cause they thought you’s up to no good. God bless ’em, they have the instinct for such judgments. So, Mr. Vincent, you’re going to have to cooperate, and the sooner you do, the better. What are you doing in Thebes County? What is your business, sir?”
    “Good Lord. You set up a system that cannot be obeyed, then punish when one does not obey. It is—”
    Whap!
    The sheriff had not hit him, but he’d smacked his hand hard on the wooden table between them, the room echoing with reverberation from the force of the blow.
    “I ain’t here to talk no philosophy with you. Goddamn you, sir, answer my questions or your time here will be hard. That is the way we do things here.”
    Sam shook his head.
    Finally he explained: he was after a disposition or certificate in re the death of a Negro named Lincoln Tilson named in a will being probated in Cook County—that is, Chicago—Illinois.
    “Thought you had a Chicago look to you.”
    “Sir, if it’s your business, and it’s not, I have never been in the state of Illinois and know nothing at all of it.”
    “What I hear, up there, the Negro is king. Ride ’round in fancy Cadillac cars, have white girls left and right, eat in the restaurants, a kind of jigaboo heaven, if you know what I mean.”
    “Sir, I feel certain you exaggerate. I have been to New York, and that town, progressive though it may be, is nothing as you describe.”
    “Maybe I do exaggerate. But, by God, that ain’t goin’ happen in Thebes. Down here, we got a natural order as God commands, and that’s how it’s goin’ to be.”
    “Sir, I feel that change will come, because change is inevit—”
    “So you are one of them?”
    “Uh—”
    “One of them.”
    “I’m not clear—”
    “One of them. You talk like one of us, but you be one of them. Northern agitators. Communists, Jews, God knows who, what or why, but up to nothing good. Is that you, Mr. Vincent? Are you a communist or a Jew?”
    “I am a Democrat and a Scotch Presbyterian. You have no right to—”
    But the sheriff was off.
    “Oh, we done heard. We done been warned. We onto y’all. Y’all come down here and stir our niggers all up. You think you doin’ them a favor. Yes sir, you helping them. But what you be doin’ is filling their fool heads full of things that can’t never be, and so you be making them more unhappy rather than less unhappy, while you be gittin’ it ready to tear down what we done built down here, on nothing but sweat and blood and guts and our own dying. Oh, I know your sort, Mister. You are the pure-D devil hisself, only you think you doin’ good.”
    “I am a firm believer in the rules, and I—”
    “The rules! Mister, I got a county full of piney-woods niggers who all they want to do is fuck or fight, don’t matter much to them.”
    “Sir, I didn’t say—”
    “Now I’ll tell you what. I will make inquiries. I will git you your certificate, and my deputies will get you out of our county. Don’t you never come back, you hear? That’s the goddamnedest best you’re gonna git down here, and I am cutting you an exclusive deal because you are white, even if I believe you be deluded close to mental instability. Thebes ain’t for outsiders. You want Mississippi hospitality, you go to Biloxi, you square on that, partner?”
    “I see the point,” said Sam.
    “Yes, sir, I bet you do. Boys, move Mr. Vincent to holding, where he’ll be more comfortable. He’s ’bout to leave us.”
     
     
    S AM was no longer locked up, nor did