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Authors: Stephen Hunter
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river.
6
S AM sat in the prow of the boat, too angry to talk to Lazear, uninterested in the feeble excuses the man had thrown his way on the whys and wherefores of his seeming abandonment.
He felt two powerful, conflicting emotions. The first was relief. Thebes was enchanted, somehow, by evil. Who knew what secrets lurked there, what horrors had been perpetuated under its name, who was buried where and how they had perished? It was frightening, and escaping its pressures brought a sense of complete liberation.
So a part of Sam was happy. He was done, and now it was a mere progression of travel and he could return to his life, chastened, as it were, by exposure to the lurid and the raw, aware that the world in general was uninterested in his experiences and it would best be forgotten or filed away for distant future usage.
But there was also a powerful, seething anger. His mind was orderly yet not overly rigid. He understood that order was a value and from order all good, great things stemmed. Yet order was only a value when it guaranteed and sustained those good, great things. When it actively opposed them, where it destroyed them, where its rigidness was so powerful and its administration so violent that it was only concerned with its own ideas, something evil happened, and it filled Sam with rage.
He felt the thwack when the deputy’s two expert blows had smashed his arms, and the fear when under the influence of pain all will to resist had fled him. He remembered the helplessness of being bound and forced into the wagon, the wait for the sheriff as that man took his own sweet time, the fear on the faces of the Negroes whom he ruled so absolutely, the brazenness of the phony document that had guaranteed the end of his days in Thebes.
And Sam finally wondered this one last thing: Did he have the strength, the guts, the steel, to stand up to it, to oppose the ways of Thebes?
He knew the answer.
The answer was, No.
It wasn’t in him. It wasn’t in anybody. You just got out and didn’t look back and you went back to a better life, and soon enough the memories eroded and you won your election and you fathered your children and you won the approval of powerful men and you had a career, a set of memories, a fine tombstone, the respect of those who stayed behind when you had passed. That was enough.
He sat back, having at last faced and come to terms with his own weakness. On either side of the river, the piney woods fled by, diminished by the steady chugging of Lazear’s old motor, the day a bit cooler than before. Before him the river wove and bobbed, dark, calm and smooth. It was growing toward late afternoon; he assumed that in a few hours or so, when they had penetrated the great bayou, they would lay up as before, then continue in the morning.
He began to calculate. They’d be in Pascagoula then by late afternoon; he’d call his wife and alert her that everything was fine. He could spend a night in a fine hotel—if there was such in Pascagoula…wait, then, no, a better idea. He could hire a car and zip down the coast a bit, possibly to lush Biloxi, and take a room there, where surely there’d be fine hotels. Maybe he’d take a day or so; the stipend he’d earned would certainly cover it, and possibly he could even expense it, as the recovery time from his ordeal was a fair charge, was it not? He saw himself having an elegant meal under a slowly rotating fan, amid ferns and palms; outside there’d be a sparkling beach. The meal would commence with oysters fresh from Mother Gulf, move on to fresh sea bass or trout grilled or poached in butter, all served by an elegant black gentleman in a white cotton jacket. The room would be full of beautiful people, happy people, the best kind of people that our great country could produce.
What a riposte. What a recovery. Then, the next morning, on to New Orleans, refreshed and restored; from there by rail up to Memphis, the drive over to Blue Eye and home,
6
S AM sat in the prow of the boat, too angry to talk to Lazear, uninterested in the feeble excuses the man had thrown his way on the whys and wherefores of his seeming abandonment.
He felt two powerful, conflicting emotions. The first was relief. Thebes was enchanted, somehow, by evil. Who knew what secrets lurked there, what horrors had been perpetuated under its name, who was buried where and how they had perished? It was frightening, and escaping its pressures brought a sense of complete liberation.
So a part of Sam was happy. He was done, and now it was a mere progression of travel and he could return to his life, chastened, as it were, by exposure to the lurid and the raw, aware that the world in general was uninterested in his experiences and it would best be forgotten or filed away for distant future usage.
But there was also a powerful, seething anger. His mind was orderly yet not overly rigid. He understood that order was a value and from order all good, great things stemmed. Yet order was only a value when it guaranteed and sustained those good, great things. When it actively opposed them, where it destroyed them, where its rigidness was so powerful and its administration so violent that it was only concerned with its own ideas, something evil happened, and it filled Sam with rage.
He felt the thwack when the deputy’s two expert blows had smashed his arms, and the fear when under the influence of pain all will to resist had fled him. He remembered the helplessness of being bound and forced into the wagon, the wait for the sheriff as that man took his own sweet time, the fear on the faces of the Negroes whom he ruled so absolutely, the brazenness of the phony document that had guaranteed the end of his days in Thebes.
And Sam finally wondered this one last thing: Did he have the strength, the guts, the steel, to stand up to it, to oppose the ways of Thebes?
He knew the answer.
The answer was, No.
It wasn’t in him. It wasn’t in anybody. You just got out and didn’t look back and you went back to a better life, and soon enough the memories eroded and you won your election and you fathered your children and you won the approval of powerful men and you had a career, a set of memories, a fine tombstone, the respect of those who stayed behind when you had passed. That was enough.
He sat back, having at last faced and come to terms with his own weakness. On either side of the river, the piney woods fled by, diminished by the steady chugging of Lazear’s old motor, the day a bit cooler than before. Before him the river wove and bobbed, dark, calm and smooth. It was growing toward late afternoon; he assumed that in a few hours or so, when they had penetrated the great bayou, they would lay up as before, then continue in the morning.
He began to calculate. They’d be in Pascagoula then by late afternoon; he’d call his wife and alert her that everything was fine. He could spend a night in a fine hotel—if there was such in Pascagoula…wait, then, no, a better idea. He could hire a car and zip down the coast a bit, possibly to lush Biloxi, and take a room there, where surely there’d be fine hotels. Maybe he’d take a day or so; the stipend he’d earned would certainly cover it, and possibly he could even expense it, as the recovery time from his ordeal was a fair charge, was it not? He saw himself having an elegant meal under a slowly rotating fan, amid ferns and palms; outside there’d be a sparkling beach. The meal would commence with oysters fresh from Mother Gulf, move on to fresh sea bass or trout grilled or poached in butter, all served by an elegant black gentleman in a white cotton jacket. The room would be full of beautiful people, happy people, the best kind of people that our great country could produce.
What a riposte. What a recovery. Then, the next morning, on to New Orleans, refreshed and restored; from there by rail up to Memphis, the drive over to Blue Eye and home,
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