Alex Cross’s Trial

“We get punished for ‘boasting,’ and for ‘strutting,’ and for talking too loud, and for casting the evil eye. We get arrested for ‘walking too fast,’ or ‘walking too slow,’ or taking too long to say yassuh.”

Moody was furious now. Her voice carried to tables nearby. Some of the people stopped their own conversations to listen.

“Colored man looks at a white woman, they kill him just for thinkin’ the thoughts he ain’t even thought,” she said. “If he even looks at a white woman, it must mean he wants to rape her or kill her. When they’re the ones doing most of the raping and killing around here!”

“Now, calm down,” Abraham said.

“Don’t tell me to calm down! I know what it’s like. It happens to me too, Papaw.”

“I know, child.”

“You don’t know what happened yesterday. I was bringin’ the basket of ironing back to Miz Cooper, you know she got that boy Dillard, he’s not right in the head. Well, he out there pulling weeds in the kitchen garden. He looked at me. All I said was, “Howdy, Dillard,” and he says somethin’ real rude, like, ‘Maybe you want to go with me, Moody’ or somethin’ like that. I just ignored him, Papaw. I just kept walking. But he come up behind me and grab me, like, you know, touching my titties.”

“Hush,” said Abraham sternly.

“It’s what happened, Papaw,” she said. “Then he says ‘Aw come on, Moody, you a nigger girl, and ever’body knows that is all a nigger girl wants.’ ”

And with that, she couldn’t keep the tears in. She folded her arms on the table and buried her head. Hiram stroked her neck.

I spoke softly: “We’re going to do something, Moody. That’s why I’m here with your grandfather.”

There was silence. Then Moody looked up at me and she was angry.

“Go home, Mr. Corbett. That’s what you could do. Just pack up your bag, and go home.”

Chapter 39

“I GUESS YOU PRAYED for mail, Mr. Corbett,” Maybelle said as I walked past the kitchen of the rooming house the next morning. “And the Lord answered.”

She held out a plate with a pair of blackened biscuits and another plate with three envelopes. My heart lifted. But my happiness faded when I glanced through the letters and found that none of them had come from Washington.

I smiled down at the biscuits, thanked Maybelle, and put them aside for disposal later.

On my way over to the Slide Inn, I thumbed through the mail. First I opened a flyer inviting me to a “social and covered dish supper” at the Unitarian church in Walker ’s Bridge, one town west of Eudora. In the right-hand margin was a handwritten addition: “Ben-Hope to see you at the supper. Elizabeth.”

The next envelope also held an invitation. This one was a good deal fancier than the first, engraved on heavy paper, wrapped in a piece of protective tissue.

Mr. and Mrs. L. J. Stringer

request the pleasure of your company at supper

on Saturday, July fourteenth,

nineteen hundred and six

at eight o’clock in the evening

Number One Summit Square

Eudora, Mississippi

R.S.V.P.

What was this world coming to? A fancy-dress invite from

L. J. Stringer, of all people!

It was hard to believe that the sweet, kindly boy with whom I’d spent a good portion of my childhood was now in such a lofty position that he could send out invitations engraved on thick vellum. And that on his way to manhood, L.J. had invented a machine that shot twine around cotton bales in one-eighth the time it took four men to do the job.

The Stringer Automatic Baler. Without it, Cotton would no longer be King.

I eased into a rear table at the Slide Inn Café. I ordered coffee and a big breakfast of grits and eggs, patty sausage and biscuits. I thought about L. J. Stringer for a moment or two, but my heart was heavy at the absence of a single letter from home.

Why hadn’t Meg written? I didn’t really need to ask myself that. I knew the answer. But even if she was too angry-why hadn’t she allowed the girls to write?

I decided to detour by the post office just to make sure no letters had been accidentally sent to Judge Everett Corbett’s home.

Meantime I took a slurp of the Slide Inn’s good chicory coffee and tore open the last of my three letters, the one without a return address.

At first I thought the envelope was empty. I had to feel around inside it before I found the card.

It was a postcard, like any other postcard. In place of a picture of the Grand Canyon or Weeki Wachee Springs, the card bore a photograph of a young black man dangling from a rope. His face had been horribly disfigured. The whip marks on his bare chest were so vivid I felt like I could touch them.

On the other side of the card was a handwritten message:

THIS IS THE WAY WE COOK COONS DOWN HERE.

THIS IS THE WAY WE WILL COOK YOU.

WE KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE.

GO HOME, NIGGER-LOVER.

Chapter 40