“You mean, because we haven’t heard from Roosevelt?” I asked. “I don’t understand that at all. I almost got hanged for him.”
“This got nothing to do with the president,” he said, gazing off into the darkness. “I’m talking about another kind of business. Right here in my house.”
I swallowed the rest of the muffin and wiped my mouth, inelegantly, on the back of my hand. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had been hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“Nothing has happened, Abraham,” I said softly. “Nothing is going to happen.”
He didn’t look at me.
“I love that girl just about as much as I ever loved anybody,” he said. “Including her mama. And including even my dear departed wife. As for you – well, I done took you into my house, hadn’t I? That ought to show you, I hold you in high regard. You a fine man, Ben, but this just can’t be. It can’t be. Moody… and you? That is impossible.”
“I understand that, Abraham. I don’t think you ought to worry. Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but Moody hasn’t spoken a kind word to me since the day we met.”
He put his hand on my shoulder.
“And maybe you hadn’t noticed,” he said, “but that’s exactly how you can tell when a woman is in love with you.”
Chapter 73
FROM THE DAY after my hanging, someone was always awake and on guard at Abraham Cross’s house. During the day and the evening, Abraham and Moody took turns keeping watch from the front-porch rocker. Since I was the cause of all this, I took the dead man’s shift, from midnight till dawn.
Some nights I heard Abraham stirring, and then he would come out to sit with me for an hour or two.
One night, along about four a.m., I thought I heard his soft tread on the floorboards.
I looked up. It was Moody standing there.
“Mind a little company?” she said.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
She sat down on the bench beside the rocker. A foot or two away from me – a safe distance.
We sat in our usual silence for a while. Finally I broke it. “I’ve been busting to ask you a question, Moody.”
“Wouldn’t want you to bust,” she said. “What is it?”
“Is that the only dress you own?”
She burst out laughing, one of the few times I’d made her laugh.
It was the same white jumper she’d worn the day I met her and every day since. Somehow it stayed spotless, although she never seemed to take it off.
“Well, if you really want to know, I got three of these dresses,” she said. “All three just alike. Of all the questions you could have asked me, that’s the one you picked?” she said. “You are one peculiar man, Mr. Corbett.”
“I sure wish you would call me Ben. Even your grandfather calls me Ben now.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t do everything he does,” she said. “I’ll just keep on calling you Mr. Corbett.”
At first I thought it was moonlight casting that delicate rim of light around her face, lighting up her dark eyes. Then I realized that it was dawn breaking, the first streak of gray in the sky.
“I’ll be moving back to Maybelle’s tomorrow,” I said. “It’s time.”
Moody didn’t reply.
“It’ll be better for Abraham once I’m out of here,” I said. “And for you.”
No answer.
I said, “The only reason those bastards come around is because I’m here.”
Nothing. She stared out at the street.
“Thanks to y’all, I’m much better now. I’m feeling fine. I’ve got some decisions to make.”
Her silence and stubbornness just went on and on, and I gave up trying to pierce it. I sat back and watched the gray light filling in all the blank dark spaces.
I think we sat another ten whole minutes without a word. The sun came up and cast its first shadows of the day.
At last Moody said, “You know I ain’t never gonna sleep with you.”
I considered that for a moment.
“I know,” I said. “Is it because I’m white?”
“No,” she said. “Because I’m black.”
Chapter 74
“I AM JUST AS SORRY AS I can be, Mr. Corbett, but we simply have no rooms available at this time,” Maybelle said to me. “We are full up.”
The dilapidated rooming house seemed strangely deserted for a place that was completely occupied.
“But Abraham came by and paid you while I was incapacitated,” I said.
“Your money is in that envelope on top of your baggage,” she said, pointing at my trunk and valises in a dusty corner of the center hall. “You can count it, it’s all there.”
“You accepted my money,” I said, “but now that I need the room, you’re throwing me out? That makes no sense.”
Up till now, Maybelle had maintained her best polite southern-lady voice. Now the tone changed. Her voice dropped three notes.
“Look, I ain’t gonna stand here and argue with the likes of you,” she said. “I don’t know how I could make it any clearer. We got no rooms available for you. So if you don’t mind, I will thank you to go on and leave the house now.”
“I can’t carry this trunk by myself,” I said.
“Why don’t you get one of your nigger friends to help you,” she snapped. “That’s what I would do.”
“I’ll take the valises and send someone back for the trunk,” I said.
I stuffed the envelope in my pocket, picked up a bag in each hand, and walked out into the blazing noonday sun of Eudora. Now what?
Sweet tea. That’s what I needed, a frosty glass of tea. And time to think things through. I went to the Slide Inn Café and sat at my usual table. I sat there for almost twenty minutes. I could not seem to get the attention of a waitress. Miss Fanny wouldn’t even meet my eye.
Oh, they saw me. The waitresses cast glances at me and whispered among themselves. The other customers – plump ladies in go-to-town dresses, rawboned farmers, little girls clinging to their mamas’ skirts – they saw me too. When I dared to look back at them, they turned away. And I remembered what Abraham had said: There’s cowards in both places. That’s why the bullies can have their way.
Finally, Miss Fanny approached with a glass of tea, dripping condensation down its sides.
She spoke in a quiet voice. “I’m sorry, Mr. Corbett. We don’t all feel the same way about you. Personally, I got nothing against you. I like you. But I ain’t the owner. So you’d best just drink this tea and be on your way. You’re not welcome here.”
“All right, Miss Fanny,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”
I drank the tea in a few gulps. I put a quarter on the table. I hoisted my valises and walked out into the street.
As I passed Miss Ida’s notions shop, I saw Livia Winkler coming out.
“Miz Winkler,” I said, touching the brim of my hat.
She suddenly looked flustered. Averting her eyes, she turned around and hurried back into the shop.
I crossed the street, to the watering trough in front of Jenkins’ Mercantile. I scooped up a handful of water and splashed my face.
“That water is for horses, mules, and dogs,” said a voice behind me. I turned.
It was the same fat redheaded man who with his two friends had jumped me at this very place, when they were holding those boys’ heads underwater.
This time he held a branding iron in his hand.
I was too exhausted to fight. I was hot. I was still a bit weak and wobbly from everything I had been through. But Red didn’t know that. I straightened up to full height.
“Use your brain,” I said. “Turn around and walk away. Before I brand you.”
We stared each other down. Finally he broke it off – shook his head in disgust, spat on the sidewalk near my shoes, and walked away. He looked back once. I was still there, watching him go.
Then I turned and headed in the direction of the one person in Eudora I believed would
help me.
Chapter 75
“WELL, DAMN, BEN! I could have used some warning, you know? I got about the biggest family and the littlest house in the whole town, and you want to move in here? Damn it all to hell, Ben!”
That was the warm greeting I got from Jacob Gill, my oldest friend in the world, my hope for a roof over my head that night.
“Sorry, Jacob,” I said, “but I didn’t know anywhere else to go.”
He looked me over. I looked right back at him. Finally he crossed some line in his mind. He sighed, picked up one of my valises, carried it through the tiny parlor and into the tiny dining room.
“I reckon this is the guest room now,” he said, and finally offered up a half smile. “I’ll get some blankets; we can make a pallet on the floor – unless you want to sleep out in the smokehouse. Got nothing hanging in there, it might be more private for you.”
“This will be fine,” I said.
Jacob’s house was a sad sight on the inside. The few pieces of furniture were battered old castoffs held together with baling wire and odd ends of rope. The cotton batting was coming out of the cushions on the settee. In the kitchen, a baby’s cradle gave off an unpleasant aroma. A skinny cat nosed around the pantry, no doubt hoping to meet a mouse for lunch. Jacob said, “You want a drink?”
“Just some water would be good for me.”
“The pump’s on the back porch,” he said. “I need me a finger or two myself.”
He didn’t bother to pour the whiskey into a glass. He pulled the cork and took a big slug right out of the bottle.
“Well, that’s just fine, ain’t it? Drinking straight from the bottle, and it ain’t even lunchtime yet.”
This observation belonged to Charlotte, Jacob’s wife, who came in from the back porch with an infant in one arm and a pile of laundry in the other.
“Hello, Charlotte. Ben Corbett.”
“Yeah, I know who you are.” Her voice was cool. “I heard you were back in town.”
“Ben’s gonna be staying with us for a few days,” said Jacob. “I told him he could sleep in the dining room.”
“That’s grand,” Charlotte said. “That’s just wonderful. That oughta make us the most popular family in Eudora.”
Chapter 76
THE SECOND NIGHT I WAS at the Gill house, after a supper of leftover chicken parts and grits, Jacob suggested we go for “a walk, a smoke, and a nip.”
First he poured whiskey from the big bottle into a half-pint bottle, which he stuck in his trouser pocket.
He walked and drank. I walked and looked anxiously down every dark alley.
“You sure are one hell of a nervous critter tonight,” Jacob said.
“You’d be nervous too, if they beat you half to death and strung you up and left you for dead,” I said. “Excuse me if I tend to be a bit cautious after almost being lynched.”
A man came down the steps of the First Methodist church, looking as if he had been waiting for us.
I recognized him: Byram Chaney, a teacher at the grammar school. Byram had to be well up in his seventies by now; I had thought of him as elderly years ago, when he was teaching me how to turn fractions into decimals.
“Evening, Jacob,” he said. “Ben.”
Jacob turned toward the streetlight to roll a cigarette. “I hope Byram didn’t startle you, Ben,” he said.
“Glad you could join us this evening, Ben,” Byram said. “I think getting a firsthand look at things will be worthwhile for you. Jacob spoke up for you.”
Suddenly I realized that Byram Chaney had, in fact, been waiting for us. I turned to Jacob to find out why.
“I haven’t told him yet,” Jacob said to Byram.
“Told me what?”
“You’d best go on and tell him,” said Byram. “We’ll be to Scully’s in a minute.”
I knew Scully as a man who owned a “kitchen farm” on the road south of town. Everybody who didn’t have his own garden went to Scully’s for whatever vegetables were in season.
“What’s going on here, Jacob?”
“Calm down, Ben. We’re just going to a little meeting. Me and Byram thought it might be a good idea if you came along. I did speak up for you.”
“What kind of a meeting?”
“Just friends and neighbors,” he said. “Keep your mind open.”
“Pretty much half the people in town,” put in Byram.
“But they don’t like to be seen by outsiders,” said Jacob. “That’s why you’ll have to wear this.”
From his knapsack he pulled a white towel.
Then I realized it wasn’t a towel at all. It was a pointed white hood with two holes cut for eyes.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
“A Klan meeting?” I said.
“Keep your voice down, Ben,” Jacob said. “We’re standing right here beside you. We can hear.”
“You must be insane,” I said. “I’m not going to any Klan meeting. Don’t you know it’s illegal? The Klan’s been outlawed for years.”
“Tell the sheriff,” said Jacob. “He’s a member.”
As soon as I got over my shock at finding that my old best friend was a Ku Klux Klansman, I knew Chaney was right. I had to go along. This was exactly the kind of information Theodore Roosevelt had sent me down here to uncover.
Chapter 77
THROUGH THE HOLES in my hood I saw at least fifty men in white hoods and robes, walking in loose ranks along the dirt road. Jacob, Byram, and I fell right in with their step.
No one said anything until we were all inside Scully’s large old barn and the doors had been closed.
One man climbed up on a hay bale and ordered everyone to gather around. I followed Jacob toward the back wall of the barn.
“Our first order of business,” he said, “is to announce that we have a special guest attending our meeting this evening.”
He waved his hand – was he waving in my direction? There was no way he could know who I was, not under that hood.
Without a word Jacob reached over and snatched the hood off my head.
I stood revealed. The only man in the place without a mask covering his face.
A murmur ran through the crowd.
“Benjamin Corbett,” said the man on the bale. “Welcome, Ben. You are among friends here. We’re not the ones tried to hurt you.”
I sincerely doubted that. But then he took off his hood and I recognized Winston Conover, the pharmacist who had filled our family’s prescriptions for as long as I could remember.
One by one the men around me began taking off their hoods. I knew most of them. The Methodist minister. A farm products salesman. A conductor on the Jackson & Northern railroad. A carpenter’s assistant. The county surveyor. The man who did shoe repairs for Kline’s store. Sheriff Reese and his deputy. The man who repaired farm implements at the back of Sanders’ General Store.
So this was the dreaded Ku Klux Klan. As ordinary a group of small-town men as you’re likely to come across.
“Ben, we appreciate you showing up to let us talk to you.” It was Lyman Tripp. Jovial, chubby Lyman had the readiest smile in town. He was the undertaker, so he also had the steadiest business of anyone.
“Maybe you’ll see that we ain’t all monsters,” he said. “We’re just family men. We got to look out for our women and protect what’s rightfully ours.”
I didn’t quite know what he meant by “rightfully ours.”
Byram Chaney tied a gold belt around the waist of his robe. He climbed up on the hay bale from which Doc Conover had just stepped down.
“All right, let’s get it started,” he said.
The men stood around in their white sheets with their hoods off, conducting the most ordinary small-town meeting. They discussed the collection of dues, a donation they’d recently made to a widowed young mother, nominations for a committee to represent the local chapter at the county meeting in McComb.
Just when it began to seem as harmless as a church picnic, By
ram Chaney said, “Okay now, there must be a recognizing of new business related to the niggers.”
Doc Conover spoke up. “I had two colored girls come into the drugstore last week. They said they was up from Ocean Springs visiting some kin of theirs. They wanted to buy tincture of iodine. I explained to ’em, just as nice as I could, that I don’t sell to coloreds. Then one of ’em started to lecturin’ me on the Constitution. When I told her to get the hell out of my store, she said she’d come back with her daddy and her brother, and they’d make me sell ’em iodine.”
“You say they’s from Ocean Springs?” said Jimmy Whitley, the athletic coach at Eudora High.
“That’s sure what they said.”
“Johnny Ray, ain’t you got a cousin in the chapter down in Ocean Springs?”
“I do, that’s Wilbur Earl,” said Johnny Ray.
Byram Chaney said, “Johnny Ray, why don’t you talk to your cousin, find out who those girls might have been. Then we can see about getting ’em educated.”
The crowd murmured in agreement.
Another man spoke. “I only want to report that that old nigger Jackie, you know, the one that used to drive the carriage for Mr. Macy? He come into my store again, looking for work.”
I recognized the speaker as Marshall Farley, owner of the five-and-dime.
Jacob leapt to his feet and spoke with passion. “There you go,” he said. “Niggers looking for jobs that belong to us! That old coon’s had a perfectly good job all this time, driving for one of the richest men in the county. Now he wants more. He wants a job that could go to a fella like me, a good man with a family to feed.”
In place of the polite murmur, a wave of anger now rolled through the crowd. I understood something new about these men. They weren’t filled just with hate; they were filled with at least as much fear. Fear that the black man was going to take everything away from them – their jobs, their women, their homes, all their hopes and dreams.
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