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From Part One: Sam's Journey
Chapter 1
In mid-1947, Jefferson Barnes, the prosecuting attorney of Polk County, Arkansas, finally
died. Upon that tragedy -- the old man fell out of one of those new golf cart things on
vacation in Hot Springs, rolled down a gully screaming damnation and hellfire all the way,
and broke his neck on a culvert -- Sam Vincent, his loyal Number 2, moved up to the big
job. Then in '48, Sam was anointed by the Democratic party (there was no other in western
Arkansas), which ran him on the same ticket with Harry S. Truman and Fred C. Becker. As
did those worthies, he won handily. For Sam, it was the goal toward which he had been
aiming for many years. He had always wanted to be a servant of the law, and now, much
better, he was the law.
Sam was six foot one, forty-four, with a bushy head of hair and a brusque demeanor that
would not be called "lovable" for many years. He stared immoderately and did not
suffer fools, idiots, Yankees, carpetbaggers, the small of spirit or the breakers of the
law gladly. He wore baggy suits flecked with pipe ash, heavy glasses, and walked in a
bounding swoop. He hunted in the fall, followed the St. Louis Browns during the summer,
when he had time, which he hardly ever did, and tied flies, though he fished rarely
enough. Otherwise, he just worked like hell. His was classic American career insanity,
putting the professional so far above the personal there almost was no personal, in the
process alienating wife and children with his indifference, burning out secretaries with
his demands, annoying the sheriff's detectives with his directions. In what little time
remained, he served on the draft board (he had won the Bronze Star during the Battle of
the Bulge), traveled five states to interview promising high school seniors who had
applied to his beloved Princeton, played a weekly round of golf with the county powers at
the country club, and drank too much eight-year-old bourbon. He knew everybody; he was
respected by everybody. He was a great man, a great American. He had the highest
conviction rate of any county prosecutor in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, or Tennessee for
that matter.
He was not reelected. In fact, he lost in a landslide to a no'count lawyer named Febus
Bookins, a genial hack who smelled of gin all the time and meant only to rob the county
blind during his term of office. He called himself a reformer, and his goal was to reform
his bank account into something more respectable.
Sam had made one mistake, but it was a mistake which few in his home state, and in fact
not many elsewhere, could ignore. In 1949, he prosecuted a man named Willis Beaudine for
raping a young woman named Nadine Johnson. It was an unremarkable case, save for the fact
that Willis was a white person and Nadine a Negro girl. It is true she was quite light,
what some would call a "high yeller," and that she had comely ways, and was,
perhaps, not normally so innocent as she looked when she appeared in court. But facts were
facts, law was law. Certain evidence had been developed by Sam's former investigator, Earl
Swagger, who was now a state police sergeant and was famous for the big medal he had won
during the war. Earl, however, risked nothing by testifying against Willis, for Earl was
known to be a prideful, bull-headed man who could not be controlled by anyone and was
feared by some. Sam, on the other hand, risked everything, and lost everything, although
Willis was convicted and spent six months at the Tucker Farm. As for Nadine, she moved
from town because even in her own community she was considered what Negro women called a
" 'ho," and moved to St. Louis, where her appetites soon got her murdered in a
case of no interest to anyone.
Sam had taken his defeat bitterly. If his family thought he would see them more often,
they were mistaken. Instead, he rented a small office on the town square of Blue Eye, the
county seat, and commenced to spend most of his days and many of his nights there. He
worked such small cases as came his way, but mainly he plotted out ways to return to
office. He still hunted with Earl. His other friend was Connie Long-
acre, the smart Eastern woman whom the county's richest, most worthless son had brought
back from his education at Annapolis in '30 and his failed naval career thereafter. Connie
had soon learned how appetite-driven a man her Rance was, and while trying to raise her
own hellion son, Stephen, fell to friendship with Sam, who alone in that part of Arkansas
had been to a Broadway play, had met a gal under the clock at the Biltmore, and who didn't
think Henry Wallace was a pawn of the Red Kremlin.
Sam was never stupid, not on a single day in his life. He understood that one thing he had
to do was to regain the trust of the white people. Therefore he utterly refused to take
any cases involving Negroes, even if they only revolved around one dark person suing
another. There was a Negro lawyer in town, a Mr. Theopolis Simmons, who could handle such
things; meanwhile, Sam worked hard, politicked aggressively, kept tabs, sucked up to the
gentry who had deposed him so gently, and tried to stay focused.
Then, one day in June of 1951, an unusual event occurred, though nothing in that day or
the day or week before had suggested it would. Sam, alone in his office, worked through
probate papers for a farmer named Lewis who had died intestate and whose estate was now
being sued for back taxes by the state, which would drive his widow and four children off
the property to -- well, to nothing. Sam would not let this happen, if only he could
figure out a way to --
He heard the door open. In the county's employ he had always had a secretary; now, on his
own, he didn't. He stood, pushed his way through the fog of dense pipe smoke, and opened
the door to peer into his anteroom. An elegant gentleman had seated himself on the sofa
and was paging absently through an old copy of Look magazine.
"Sir, do you have an appointment?" Sam asked.
The man looked up at him.
He was tanned softly, as if from an expensive vacation at the beach, balding, and looked
well tended, of an age that could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty. He was
certainly prosperous, in a smooth-fitting blue pinstripe suit, a creamy white shirt and
the black tie of a serious man. A homburg, gray pearl, lay on the seat beside him; his
shined shoes were cap-toed black bluchers, possibly bespoke, and little clocks or flowers
marked his socks. The shoes were shined, Sam noticed, all the way down to the sole, which
was an indication that a professional had done them, in a rail station, a hotel lobby, a
barbershop.
"Why, no, Mr. Vincent. I'd be happy to make one, or if you prefer, to wait here until
you have the time to see me."
"Hmm," said Sam. He knew when money came to call.
"I am currently in the throes of a case," he said. "Mr., ah -- "
"My name is Trugood, sir."
"Mr. Trugood. Have you a few minutes while I file and clear my desk?"
"Of course. I don't mean to interrupt."
Sam ducked back in. Quickly he gathered the Lewis papers up, sealed them in a file, and
put it into a drawer. His desk was a mess; he did some elementary rearranging, which meant
he'd have to derearrange after the man left, but Sam could use a fee, he didn't mind
admitting, for any return from the poor Lewises, or the Jenningses, or the Joneses, the
Smiths, the Beaupres, the Deacons, the Hustons, all that was in a future that seemed quite
distant. More or less prepared, he removed a fresh yellow legal tablet from his cabinet
and wrote the word trugood, and the date, atop it.
He opened the door.
"Sir, I can see you now."
"Thank you, Mr. Vincent."
Trugood stood elegantly, smiled at Sam as he walked through the door, pretended not to
notice the debris, the mess, the strewn files, the moth-eaten deer's head, or even the fog
of sweetbriar gas that hung, almost moist, in the air.
Sam passed him, gestured to a seat, and as he moved around the desk to sit, watched as the
man placed a business card before him on the desk.
"Ah," said Sam. "A colleague."
"Indeed," said the man, whose card announced him to be Davis Trugood, Esq., of
the firm of Mosely, Vacannes & Destin, 777 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois,
Hillcrest 3080.
"Mr. Trugood? I am at your service."
"Thank you, Mr. Vincent. May I say, I've heard a great deal about you, and I've
worked some to find you."
"I've always been here, sir. I had no idea any reputation had spread beyond our
little benighted state. Certainly not as far as a big sophisticated city like
Chicago."
"Well, sir, possibly it hasn't reached that far. But it has reached all through the
South, or, I should say, a certain South."
"What South would that be, sir?"
"That South occupied by our population of color, sir. Our Negroes. They say you are
the rare white lawyer who is fair to the man of Negro blood."
"Well," said Sam, somewhat taken aback, "if by that they mean that as a
prosecuting attorney I laid the same force of law against white as against black, then
they are correct. I believe in the law. But do not understand me too quickly, sir. I am
not what you might call a race champion. I am not a hero of the Negro, nor do I ever mean
to be. I believe history has dealt our American Negroes a sorry hand, as do many people.
But I also believe that sorry hand will have to be corrected slowly. I am not one for
tearing things down in service to various dubious moral sentiments, which in fact would
turn my own race against me, which would unleash the savagery of the many embittered
whites of the South against the poor Negro, which would in fact result in destruction
everywhere. So, Mr. Trugood, if you thought I was someone to lead a crusade, change or
challenge a law, throw down a gauntlet, burn a barn, sing a hymn, or whatever, why, I am
not that man, sir."
"Mr. Vincent, thank you for speaking straight out. I must say, most Southern lawyers
prefer to speak a code which one has to have attended either Ole Miss or Alabama to
penetrate. You, sir, at least speak directly."
"I take a pleasure in that. Possibly the product of an Eastern education."
"Excellent, sir. Now, I need a representative to travel to a certain town deeper in
the South and make private inquiries. This man has to be extremely smart, not without
charm, stubborn as the Lord, a man of complete probity. He must also be somewhat brave, or
at least the sort not turned feeble by a show of hostility. He also has to be comfortable
around people of different bloods, white and Negro. He has to be comfortable around law
enforcement officers of a certain type, the type that would as soon knock a fellow's hat
off as talk civilly to him. The fee for this service, perhaps lasting a week, would be
quite high, given the complex diplomatic aspects of the situation. I would suppose you
have no ethical objections to a high fee, Mr. Vincent."
"High fee. In my career those two words rarely appear in the same sentence. Yes, do
go on, Mr. Trugood. You have my attention, without distraction."
"Thank you, sir. I am charged with executing a will for a certain rather well-off
late Chicagoan. He had for many years in his employ a Negro named Lincoln Tilson."
Sam wrote: "Negro Lincoln Tilson" on his big yellow pad.
"Lincoln was a loyal custodian of my client's properties, a handyman, a bodyguard, a
gardener, a chauffeur, a man whose brightness of temperament always cheered my client, who
was negotiating a business career of both great success and some notoriety."
"I follow, sir," said Sam.
"Five years ago, Lincoln at last slowed down. My employer settled a sum on him, a
considerable sum, and bid him farewell. He even drove him to the Illinois Central terminal
to catch the City of New Orleans and reverse the steps by which he arrived up North so
many years ago, for Lincoln's pleasure was to return to the simpler life from which he had
sprung in the South. Lincoln returned to his birthplace, a town called Thebes, in Thebes
County, Mississippi."
Sam wrote it down, while saying, "That is the deepest part of the deepest South, I
would imagine."
"It is, sir."
Thebes, as a word, rang ever so slightly in Sam's imagination. He recalled that the
original was a Greek town, city even, much fought over in antiquity. For some reason the
number seven occurred in concert with it.
"I see puzzlement, sir," said Trugood. "You are well educated and no doubt
think of Seven Against Thebes, by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus. I assure you, no
army led by seven heroes is necessary in this case. Mississippi's Thebes is a far distance
from Aeschylus's tragic town of war. It is a backwater Negro town far up the Yaxahatchee
River, which itself is a branch of the Pascagoula River. It is the site of a famous, or
possibly infamous, penal farm for colored called Thebes Farm."
"That's it," said Sam. "It is legendary among the Negro criminal class,
with whom I had many dealings as a young prosecutor. ŒYou don't wants to go to
Thebes, they say, don't nobody never nohow come back from Thebes.' Or words to that
effect."
"It seems they have it mixed up with Hades in their simplicity. Yes, Thebes is not a
pleasant place. Nobody wants to go to Thebes."
"Yet you want me to go to Thebes. That is why the fee would be so high?"
"There is difficulty of travel, for one thing. You must hire a boat in Pascagoula,
and the trip upriver is unpleasant. The river, I understand, is dark and deep; the swamp
that lines it inhospitable. There was only one road into Thebes, through that same
forbidding swamp; it was washed out some years back, and Thebes County, not exactly a
county of wealth, has yet to dispatch repair."
"I see."
"Accommodations would be primitive."
"I slept in many a barn in the late fracas in Europe, Mr. Trugood. I can sleep in a
barn again; it won't hurt me."
"Excellent. Now here is the gist of the task. My client's estate -- as I say,
considerable -- is hung up in probate because Mr. Lincoln Tilson seems no longer to exist.
I have attempted to communicate with Thebes County authorities, to little avail. I can
reach no one but simpletons on the telephone, when the telephone is working, which is only
intermittently. No letter has yet been answered. The fate of Lincoln is unknown, and a
large amount of money is therefore frozen, a great disappointment to my client's greedy,
worthless heirs."
"I see. My task would be to locate either Lincoln or evidence of his fate. A
document, that sort of thing?"
"Yes. From close-mouthed Southern types. I, of course, need someone who speaks the
language, or rather, the accent. They would hear the Chicago in my voice, and their faces
would ossify. Their eyes would deaden. Their hearing would disintegrate. They would evolve
backward instantaneously to the neolithic."
"That may be so, but Southerners are also fair and honest folk, and if you don't
trumpet your Northern superiority in their face and instead take the time to listen and
master the slower cadences, they will usually reward you with friendship. Is there another
issue here?"
"There is indeed." He waved at his handsome suit, his handsome shoes, his
English tie. His cufflinks were gold with a discreet sapphire, probably worth more than
Sam had made in the last six months. "I am a different sort of man, and in some parts
of the South -- Thebes, say -- that difference would not go unnoticed."
"You have showy ways, but they are the ways of a man of the world."
"I fear that is exactly what would offend them. And, frankly, I'm not a brave man.
I'm a man of desks. The actual confrontation, the quickness of argument, the thrust of
will on will: not really my cup of tea, I'm afraid. A sound man understands his limits. I
was the sort of boy who never got into fights and didn't like tests of strength."
"I see."
"That is why I am buying your courage as well as your mind."
"You overestimate me. I am quite a common man."
"A decorated hero in the late war."
"Nearly everybody in the war was a hero. I saw some true courage; mine was ordinary,
if even that."
"I think I have made a very good choice."
"All right, sir."
"Thank you, Mr. Vincent. This is the fee I had in mind."
He wrote a figure on the back of his card, and pushed it over. It took Sam's breath away.
Excerpted from PALE HORSE COMING © Copyright 2001 by Stephen Hunter. Reprinted with permission by Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.
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