Alex Cross’s Trial

“Your mother enjoyed that about you,” he went on. “Your Yankee free-thinking ways. But she’s gone now, God rest her soul. And I can tell you this, Benjamin. You’re a fool! You’re up to your knees in the sand, and the tide’s approaching. You can keep trying to shovel as hard as you can, but that will not stop the tide from coming in.”

“Thank you for the colorful metaphor,” I said. Then I went upstairs, packed my valise, and went back to Washington.

After that I heard from him only once a year, around Christmas, when a plain white envelope would arrive containing a twenty-dollar bill and the same handwritten note every year:

“Happy Christmas to yourself, Meg, and my granddaughters. Cordially, Judge E. Corbett.”

Cordially.

Chapter 24

NOW HERE I WAS, STANDING at his door again. And as much as it galled me to knock on that door, I could not come home to Eudora without seeing my father. I was sure he already knew that I was back.

Dabney answered the door. He had been my father’s house-man since before I was born.

“Good Lord! Mister Ben! Shoot, I never expected to open this door and find you on the other side of it. The judge is gonna be absolutely de-light-ed to see you.”

“Dabney, it’s good to know you’re still the smoothest liar in Pike County.”

He smiled brightly and gave me a wink. Then I followed him to the dining room, breathing in the old familiar smell of floor wax and accumulated loneliness.

My father sat alone at the long mahogany table, eating a bowl of soup from a fine china bowl. He glanced up, but his face did not change when he saw me-eyes icy blue, his lips thin and unsmiling.

“Why, Benjamin. How nice of you to grace us with your presence. Did somebody die?”

My father’s gift for sarcasm had not diminished. Immediately I found myself wishing I hadn’t come running over to his house my first day in town.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Sound body, sound mind. As far as I can tell. Why? Have you heard otherwise?”

“Not at all. I’m glad to hear you’re well.”

“What wonderful Yankee manners. I trust you are healthy yourself?”

I nodded. The silence between us was almost painful.

“So, Ben, you still busy up there freeing the slaves?”

“I believe it was President Lincoln who did that.”

“Ah, that’s right,” he said, a wisp of a smile coming to his face. “Sometimes I forget my history. Care for some turtle soup?”

Soup? On a ninety-degree night in Mississippi?

“No, thank you.”

“No turtle soup? Yet another in a succession of foolish choices on your part, Benjamin.”

My father did not ask me to take a seat at his table.

He did not ask what brought me to Eudora after six years, and I wondered if it was possible that he knew.

He did not inquire after Meg, or ask why my wife had permitted me to travel all this way by myself. He did not ask about Alice or Amelia.

I thought of Mama, how much she would have loved having two little granddaughters in this house. It was always too quiet in here. I remembered one of her favorite expressions: “The silence in here is so loud, I can hear my own heart rattling around in my ribs.”

Judge Corbett looked me up and down. “Where is your baggage?” he asked.

“I’m not staying here,” I said. “I’ve taken a room down at Maybelle Wilson’s. Actually, I’m here on business for the government. I have to check out some candidates for the federal courts.”

I could have sworn this news made him wince, but he recovered quickly enough.

“Fine,” he said. “Be about your business. Maybelle’s should suit you perfectly. Is there something else?”

I saw no reason to prolong this agony. “Oh, no. Nothing. It was pleasant to see you again.”

He waved for Dabney to ladle more soup into his bowl. He dabbed at his lips with a starched linen napkin. Then he deigned to speak.

“We should arrange another visit sometime,” my father said. “Perhaps in another six years.”

Chapter 25

“YOU NEED SOMETHING for your belly, Mr. Corbett?” May-belle called in a loud voice from the front parlor of her rooming house.

I had found the Slide Inn Café all closed up for the night, but still I declined Maybelle’s invitation. “No, thank you, ma’am. I’m all taken care of.”

“Just as well. Ain’t nothin’ in there but some old pone.”

Maybelle’s had never been known for luxury. In fact, the only thing the place was ever known for was a string of slightly disreputable boarders through the years. Now, I supposed, I was one of them.

The original Maybelle had died years ago, about the time the house was last given a fresh coat of paint. But Eudora tradition dictated that any woman who ran the place was referred to as “Maybelle.”

Occasionally a shoe salesman or cotton broker spent a night or two at Maybelle’s. Once or twice a year my father commandeered the place to sequester jurors during a trial. And there were, inevitably, rumors about women of uncertain morality using the rooms for “business.”