Mr. Baker and I tipped our hats, but the ladies failed to notice us.
I excused myself and walked up Maple Street, around the corner where they had appeared. What I saw made my heart drop.
Three white men, maybe my age, were holding the heads of two black boys under the surface of the horse trough in front of Jenkins’ Mercantile.
They were drowning those boys. It scared me how long they were submerged after I came around the corner and saw them. Then, as if on cue, they were yanked up from the water. They spluttered out a desperate heaving breath, and then their heads were plunged into the water again.
Those boys were just kids – twelve or thirteen at the most.
When their heads came up out of the water again, they cried and begged the men to please let them go.
“Whatsa matter, you thought them white ladies was gonna save you?”
Their heads went back under.
I remembered the closing words of Mr. Clemens’s address: “Where shall these brave men be found? There are not three hundred of them on the earth.”
I took three long strides forward. “What’s going on here? Let ’em up. Do it now.”
The white men whirled around. In their surprise, they jerked the heads of their victims clear of the water. The boy on the left used the moment to make his escape, but the largest man tightened his grip on the other boy’s arm.
He was a mean-looking fat man with red hair, bulging muscles, and a tooth missing in front. “These niggers was sassing us,” he said.
“Turn him loose,” I said.
“Shit, no.”
“He’s about twelve years old,” I said. “You men are grown. And three of you against two little boys?”
“Why don’t you mind your own damn bidness,” said the second man, who had a greasy head of black hair and a face that even his mother could not have loved much. “These nigger boys was out of line. We don’t allow that in this town.”
“I’m from this town too,” I said. “My father’s a judge here. Let him go.”
I guess I sounded just official enough for Big Red to relax his grip. The black boy took off like a shot.
“Look what we got here, men,” said Red then. “A genuine nigger-lover.”
Without warning he charged and struck me full force with the weight of his body. I went flying.
Chapter 59
I WAS SLAMMED DOWN on the hard dirt street, and before I could catch my breath Red jumped on top of me.
“Reckon I’ll have to teach you how to mind your own business.”
I was trying to figure a way out of this. I had once watched Bob Fitzsimmons demolish an opponent with a third-round knockout. That was one way to do it. But there was another way to win a fight.
I reached up and pressed my thumbs into the soft, unprotected flesh of the fat man’s throat. I got my leverage, then slung him off me, right over my head. Red landed face-first in the dirt and scuffed up his lip. Blood was coming out of his nose too.
I jumped to my feet and his buddies charged at me. The first ran hard into a right uppercut. He dropped like a rock and was out cold in the street.
Now there were two dazed bullies down, but the third got behind me and jumped on my back. He started pounding his fists into my ribs.
I knew there was a thick wooden post supporting the gallery in front of Jenkins’ Mercantile, so I leaned all my weight into the man, propelling us backward, smashing him right into it. His arms unraveled from my neck and he lay on the ground twitching. He’d hit that post pretty hard, maybe cracked a couple of ribs.
“Nigger-lover,” he spat, but then he struggled up and started to run. So did the other two.
It was quiet again, the street empty.
Well, almost empty.
Chapter 60
STANDING ON THE BOARD SIDEWALK beside Jenkins’s display window was the dapper local photographer, Scooter Willems. Today he looked extra-fashionable in a seersucker suit with a straw boater. As always, he had his camera and tripod with him. I wondered whether he had just photographed me in action.
“Where’d you learn to fight like that, Ben?”
“Boxing team at college,” I said.
“No, I mean, where’d you learn to put your thumbs in a man’s throat like that? Looks like you learned to fight in the street,” Scooter said.
“I reckon I just have the instinct,” I said.
“Mind if I take your photograph, Ben?”
I remembered the night I first saw him, photographing George Pearson. “I do mind, Scooter. My clothes are a mess.”
“That’s what would make it interesting,” he said with a big smile.
“Maybe for you. Not for me. Don’t take my picture.”
“I will honor your wishes, of course.” Scooter folded the tripod and walked away.
I tucked my shirt into my torn trousers, and when I brushed my hand against my chin, it came back bloody.
Moody Cross stepped out of Sanders’s store with a sack of rice on one hip and a bag of groceries on her arm. She walked toward me.
“You are beyond learning,” she said.
I used my handkerchief to wipe off the blood. “And what is it I have failed to learn, Moody?”
“You can go around trying to fight every white man in Mississippi that hates colored people,” she said, “but it won’t do any good. There’s a lot more of them than there is of you. You can’t protect us. Nobody can do that. Not even God.”
She turned to walk away, but then she looked back. “But thank you for trying,” she said.
Chapter 61
IN FOUR WEEKS OF LIVING at Maybelle’s, I’d come to realize that my room was so damp, so airless, so overheated night and day, that nothing ever really dried out.
My clothes, my hand towel, and my shave towel were always damp. My hair was moist at all times. As much as I toweled off, powdered with talc, and blotted with witch hazel, my shirts and underclothes always retained a film of moisture. This stifling closet at the top of Maybelle’s stairs was a punishment, a torture, a prison.
And besides, there was so much to keep me awake at night.
I longed for a letter from home.
And maybe because I didn’t hear, I wrestled with thoughts of Elizabeth. I could still feel our kiss in front of her house.
I wondered if Roosevelt had ever gotten my wire. Surely he would have sent some answer by now. What if that telegraph operator in McComb had taken exception to the facts as I was reporting them?
And here I was, quite a sight, if anyone happened in to see me. I lay crosswise on the iron bed, naked, atop sweat-moistened sheets. I had tied a wet rag around my head; every half hour or so, I refreshed it with cool water from the washbasin.
But no one could win the battle against a Mississippi summer. Your only hope was to lie low and move as little as possible.
“Mr. Corbett.”
At first I thought the voice came from the landing, but no, it came from outside.
Beneath my window.
“Mr. Corbett.”
A stage whisper drifting up from three stories below.
I swung my legs to the floor, wrapped the top sheet around myself, and walked over to the window. I couldn’t make out anyone in the mottled shadows under Maybelle’s big eudora tree.
I called softly, “Who’s out there? What do you want?”
“They sent me to get you,” the voice said.
“Who sent you?”
“Moody Cross,” he said. “Can you come?”
I didn’t think it was a trap, but it paid to be careful. “What for? What does Moody want?”
“You got to come, Mr. Corbett.” The fear in the voice was unmistakable. “They been another lynchin’.”
“Oh God – where?”
“Out by the Quarters.”
“Who is it?”
“Hiram,” the man said. “Hiram Cross. Moody’s brother is dead.”
Chapter 62
I FELT A DEEP SURGE of pain in m
y chest, a contraction so sharp that for a moment I wondered if I was having a coronary. Almost instantly I was covered with clammy sweat.
I heard the voice from outside again.
“Somebody overheard Hiram say that one day white folk would work for the black,” the man whispered hoarsely. “Now Hiram swinging dead from a tree.”
I felt the room beginning to turn – no, that was just my head spinning. I felt a strange chill, and a powerful force rising within me.
“Stand back,” I said loudly.
“What’s that, Mr. Corbett?”
“I said stand back. Get out from under this window!”
I heard branches strain and creak as the man obeyed.
Then I leaned my head out the window and threw up my supper.
Chapter 63
MOODY DID NOT SHED a tear at her brother’s funeral. Her face was an impassive sculpture carved from the smoothest brown marble.
Abraham fought to stay strong, to stand and set a brave example for all the people watching him now. And although he managed to control his expression, he could do nothing about the tears spilling down his face.
Swing low, sweet chariot.
Coming for to carry me home.
It must have been the hottest place on earth, that little sanctuary with one door in back and one door in front and no windows at all. It was the Mt. Zion A.M.E. Full Gospel church, three miles out of town on the Muddy Springs Road, and it was jammed to overflowing with friends and relatives.
Early in the service, a woman fainted and crashed hard to the floor. Her family gathered around her to fan her and lift her up. A baby screamed bloody murder in the back. Half the people in the room were weeping out loud.
But Moody did not cry.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.
Nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.
Glory hallelujah!
“I knew Hiram from the day he was born!” cried the preacher. “I loved him like a father loves his son!”
“Yes, you did!” shouted an old lady in the front row.
“Tell it, brother!”
“Amen!”
“I carried the baby Hiram to the river,” the preacher went on, “and I dipped him in the river of life. That’s right, I held him under the water of Jesus until he was baptized, and he come up sputtering, and then he was lifted up in the Holy Spirit and the everlasting light of Jesus–”
“That’s right, Rev!”
“–so that no matter what might happen to Hiram, no matter what fate might befall him as he walked the earth, he would always have the Lord Jesus Christ walking right there by his side!”
“Say it, brother!”
“Now, children,” the preacher said with a sudden lowering of his tone, “we know what happened to our son and brother Hiram Cross! We know!”
“Hep us, Jesus!”
“The white man done come for Hiram, done took him and killed him,” the preacher called. “We should think of our Lord, and how brave he was on that last night when he set there waiting for the Roman soldiers to come. He knew what was gonna happen. He knew who was coming for him. But he did not despair.”
Instantly I found myself wanting to disagree, wanting to cry out, to remind him of the despairing words of Jesus on the cross, My father, my father, why hast thou forsaken me?
“Hiram was just that brave,” said the preacher. “He didn’t bow down or beg them to spare his life. He went along without saying a word, without letting them ever get a look at his fear. We should all strive to be as courageous as our brother Hiram.”
“That’s right!”
“The white man killed Hiram!” he hollered again. “But my friends, we are not like the white man! We cannot allow ourselves to be like that. The Bible tells us what to do. Jesus tells us what to do. It’s plain to see. We have to do as Jesus did, we have to turn the other cheek.”
There were groans from the congregation. It seemed to me that most of them had been turning the other cheek their entire lives.
Abraham’s head had drooped until his chin was nearly resting on his chest. Moody continued to gaze straight ahead at the plain wooden cross on the rear wall.
“As the Lord tells us in Proverbs, ‘Do not say, “I’ll pay you back for this wrong!” Wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.’ God does not want us taking matters into our own hands.
“That is our charge, brothers and sisters. That is what the Lord tells us, in the book of Matthew: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.’”
“How long, Brother Clifford?” came a voice from the back. “How long we ’posed to wait? Till the end of all time? How long?”
“We wait until the Lord makes his will clear,” the preacher said calmly. “We wait like the children of Isr’al waited, forty years out in that desert.”
The insistent voice spoke again:
“But how long? How long do we go on forgiving? How many of us got to die before it’s time?”
And that is when I saw one shining tear roll down Moody’s face.
We shuffled along, following behind Hiram in his pine box, out the narrow front door. The choir took up an old hymn.
I sing because I’m happy.
I sing because I’m free.
For His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me.
And I know He watches me.
Chapter 64
A BLINDING LIGHT CAME. Then another bright flash.
We were leaving the church, just making our way down the rickety steps.
Another stunning flash of light came.
At first I thought it was lightning, then I realized lightning doesn’t come from a clear blue sky. I blinked, trying to regain my power of sight, and then saw what was causing it: Scooter Willems and his camera, with its flash-powder apparatus.
Beside him were three large men I did not recognize, white men with twisted smiles on their faces, guns at their sides.
Moody left the line of mourners and marched straight over to Willems, right up to him.
“Show some respect,” she said to him. “This is my brother’s funeral.”
“Sorry, Moody,” Scooter said, almost pleasantly. “I thought you might want a photograph for your memory book.”
“I don’t need no photograph to remember this,” she said. “I’ll remember it fine.”
The pallbearers were sturdy young men about the same age as Hiram. They slid Hiram’s coffin onto the back of a buck-board. I made my way over to where Moody was glaring at Scooter and his bodyguards.
Scooter turned to me. “Moody’s all het up because I wanted to take a memorial photograph of the funeral.”
“Too bad you didn’t take a memorial photograph of the lynching,” Moody said. She turned on her heel and fell in step with the other mourners behind the wagon.
“Leave her alone, Scooter,” I said.
Scooter frowned. “Like I said, I just wanted to commemorate the event.”
I turned to leave, but Scooter wasn’t quite finished talking.
“Hey, Ben, how’s about I take one of you against this ocean of colored folks.”
I spun around at him. “Put your damn camera away. Go back to Eudora, where you belong. Leave these folks alone.”
I noticed two little black boys listening to our conversation. As I turned to leave, Scooter spoke to them.
“Hey, little boys, I’ll give you each a nickel to let me take your picture.” He held out his hand with two nickels in it.
I pulled nickels out of my own pocket and handed one each to the boys. “Y’all run on,” I said.
They did.
And I went to join Hiram’s funeral procession.
Chapter 65
ABRAHAM HANDED ME a huge slice of chess pie. It was a southern funeral favorite because it could be made quickly, using ingredients most people kept on hand – milk, eggs, sugar, butter.
Abraham’s house was overflowing with dishes and platters and baskets of food, and mourners eating as much as they could.
A question swam into my mind. How did Scooter Willems know Moody? I distinctly recalled him calling her by name, as if they were old friends. Were they? And how could that be?
I excused myself and threaded my way through the crowded little parlor, through the overpopulated kitchen, out the back door. I saw Moody sitting in the yard on an old tree stump, glaring at the ground.
“Moody,” I said.
She did not acknowledge me.
I reached out to touch her shoulder. “Moody.”
She pushed my hand away. “Don’t put your white hand on my black shoulder,” she said.
I drew back and put my hands in my pockets.
“Do you know Scooter Willems?” I asked.
She lifted her head and looked at me. “Who?”
“Scooter Willems. That photographer from outside the church.”
“I never seen that man in my life. He ain’t nothin’ but a buzzard, pickin’ the meat off of dead people’s bones.”
“If you’ve never seen him, how did he know your name?”
“I don’t know.”
Moody looked into my eyes. For the first time since we’d met, she didn’t look the least bit feisty or defiant. She looked downtrodden. Defeated. The heartbreak of Hiram’s death had drained all the anger from her.
I put my hand on her shoulder again. This time she reached up and patted my hand.
“I’ve been going to funerals since I was a baby,” she said. “This one is different. Ain’t no ‘peaceable joy’ around here.”
“What do you mean?”
“We used to burying the old folks,” she said. “You know – after they lived a whole life. After they married and had their own kids, maybe even their grandkids. But lately, all these funerals for the young ones. And Hiram… I mean, Hiram…”
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