Free Pale Horse Coming by Stephen Hunter Page A

recollect saying nothing ’bout dat.”
    “Listen here, you brainless idiot, you said it flat out in plain English just minutes ago. Now explain it, or once again I will shake you ’til your teeth, all three of them, rattle like dice in a cup.”
    Glumly Lazear looked ahead. A bitterness settled over him. He acted as though God had selected him alone to bear this monstrous cross. He sighed.
    Sam kicked his scrawny ass.
    “Does that help? Clear the memory, does it?”
    “You din’t hear nothing from me. Dey kills me dey know I talkin’ their business. Okay? Kill me dead. Kill you dead as well.”
    “Talk, damn your soul.”
    “The Store own everything the nigs got. Nigs take credit from the Store, fall behind, they don’t get this interest thing, the Store forecloses, and then they owned by the Store. Heard the nigs talking ’bout it once.”
    “Yes. And so?”
    “And so, dey gots to work it off. Dey works for de man. Never can leave, never can go nowhere, tell nobody, no nothing. Stay and work for food is all.
    “Every once a while, nigs git fed up and sneak off at night. Some make it, some don’t. Dat family, dey no got no luck. The river et ’em. Maybe dey’s better off, though.”
    “Good Lord,” said Sam, disgusted.

7
     
    H OW did they know?
    But they did. Somehow, in Thebes, they always knew.
    The old boat maneuvered its way in and Lazear lined it up just fine and laid it up next to the dock. There, Sheriff Leon Gattis and no less than four deputies, all uniformed and heavily armed, awaited. Their horses, lathered and nervous, milled behind them. Together, men and horses, they looked like some apocalyptic drawing out of Doré, along the four-horsemen-of-death motif.
    But Sam did not care.
    “Sheriff,” he cried, as he climbed up, “you’d best get your boys onto the river. A Negro boat has overturned some miles down, and there yet may be survivors. You’ll need powerful flashlights, for I fear the light will be gone by the time—”
    “Didn’t you and me reach a agreement, sir? You’s to leave town, and not never come back on no account. And on that bargain, you would not be prosecuted for resisting arrest or generally stirring up the population.”
    “Sir, I am not here to quibble. People’s lives may be at stake. For God’s sake, time’s wasting. Get those boys of yours on to the goddamn water and get them going. This is a river town, surely you have boats. This is not some paltry charge, this is a public safety emergency.”
    “Goddammit, Mister, you must be thick of the skull or water-brained or some such. Didn’t know they growed such knotheads in Arkansas. Heard it was an all right place, though I can see now it produces too many of the daft persuasion.”
    “Sheriff, I insist that—”
    “Mister, I am not sending boys out on that dark river to look for fleeing Negroes. The currents are tricky, the fog comes in and twists things around, and before you know it, you have white men in trouble as much as black ones.”
    “My God, we are talking about human beings!”
    “If they go out there after dark, they know damned well the chance they take.”
    “Sheriff,” a merry deputy called, “bet it’s Jimmy and Glory and them all.”
    “That Jimmy, never was no good,” said another. “That one always be in trouble. Lord, he done got Glory and the chilluns drowned, too.”
    “We’ll ride over and check in the morning.”
    “Sheriff,” Sam implored, “am I to understand you’ll do nothing? Nothing at all. Possibly a child—”
    “Ain’t no children out there, sir. The children are all dead. These people flee their responsibilities and they make plumb fool decisions and take terrible chances, and they pay the price, most of them do. Jimmy owed money, he should have stayed like a man and worked off his debt, ’stead of running off to welch on it.”
    “Sir, I have to tell you: If I don’t see evidence of public safety activity on your part, I will myself make a report