Pale Horse Coming

He was dragged out. There were three deputies, husky boys, used to using muscle against flesh, who shoved him along, their lights beaming in his face, blinding him. The handcuffs enraged him. He had never been handcuffed in his life.

"What in God's name do you think you're doing! I am an attorney-at-law, for God's sake, you have no right to ---"

Another blow lit up his other arm and he stumbled to the earth in the agony of it.

"That ought to shut him up," said the man on horseback, who was in command. "Load him in the meat wagon and let's go."

No one with any sense would travel to Thebes Mississippi, but Sam Vincent allows himself to be talked into it by a Chicago lawyer. Lincoln Tilson has inherited a decent sum of money from a former employer, and the lawyer, Trugood, is having a hard time tracking him down. So he wants Sam Vincent to go to Tilson's last known location to see what he can discover. Vincent is less than thrilled...years ago the one road to Thebes was washed out, and never repaired. The only way is by river, and people are loath to take anyone there. Thebes is the home of a prison farm, a place of such infamy that it would be better to be called Hades than Thebes, and is a place from where no one returns. Vincent wants the money. Although he really suspects that the place will be only a little rough, a little backwards because of it's isolation and poverty, he tells his best friend Earl Swagger where he's going, and asks that, if he should be gone for more than a week, to come and get him.

Lucky thing. Thebes is much worse than anyone could have imagined. The black population of the town are beaten and abused by the white, horse riding deputies. The women are made into prostitutes and everyone is in debt to The Store. When he wants to leave, his boat is gone. He stays over night with an older woman, the only person who is willing to talk to him, but the Sheriff and his men come after him, beat him severely, and arrest him. (This scene is part of the excerpt above.) The next day they tell him to get out and never come back, or the next time he won't be so lucky. His boat is returned and he gets in, but the trip is cut short. Vincent sees dead bodies floating in the river, and his sense of goodness and justice, --- for Sam is a real, out and out law-and-order kind of guy --- is outraged to the point where he decides to turn back, and see if he can get a party of people together to go after the dead bodies. (At this point, you're probably thinking What? in very loud letters.) And yes, as you may have guessed, he is arrested again. Earl Swagger comes down, as promised, and arranges Sam's escape. By the end of the chase, Earl ends up sacrificing his own freedom to save Vincent's... he tells him do not tell the authorities where he is, just find out as much as he can about Thebes.

Earl Swagger is very strong. He is tortured and beaten by these men, who are convinced that he's up to much more than a simple rescue mission, and they try all sorts of ways to break him. The worst thing they do is to sentence him to the prison, a place where no white man has been an inmate before. He handles the situations he finds himself in with a sheer force of will that is completely awe-inspiring. He gets beat up quite a bit, and while I suppose it is integral to what Hunter is trying to accomplish, it gets a little...how best to put this? You wince and go, "Not again!" an awful lot. This is especially true since Earl is so likable, because who wants to see someone you like, someone who is admirable, get hurt? In some ways, I think these scenes aren't just characterization and plot forwarding devices, I think that Hunter is drawing some parallels that are worth looking at. It brings out another thread of theme, about endurance. Not just Earl's implacable strength in the face of a great deal of pain, but the endurance of the women who are beaten and abused, of the town that is nearly completely dried out, but somehow manages to hold on, and about the prisoners, who dream alternatively of escape and the horrors of the screaming house. It segues into the more common theme of man's cruelty to man, blending with it to make this a much stronger novel.

While this is not a sequel to Hot Springs, it does have some of the same characters. I think anyone who enjoyed that book will also find much to enjoy in this one. It has good pacing, and an ending that is satisfying and, despite the dark overtones of the book, really fun.