Alex Cross’s Trial

I smiled at the man. “Neither have I,” I said gently. “Could you please keep it down?”

“I sent one to the president of Ole Miss one time,” he bellowed, “but that ain’t the same thing. You mean for this to go to the real president, in the White House, up in Washington?”

“That’s the one,” I said.

I would have to tell Abraham that his idea of coming to McComb for anonymity had failed. I wondered whether there was anyplace in the state of Mississippi from which you could dispatch a wire to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue without causing a fuss.

“Yes, sir,” the man was saying, “one time I sent one to Governor Vardaman, and there was this other time a fellow wanted to send one-”

“I’m glad you and I could make history together,” I said. “Could you send it right away?”

“Soon as the station agent comes back from his break,” he said.

I forced myself to remember that I was down South, where everything operated on Mississippi time, a slower pace than in other places. After the man’s break would be soon enough.

I hurried out to Elizabeth ’s carriage, where she sat surveying the panorama of McComb.

Half the town had burned to the ground just a few years before, but a sturdy new town had already been put up to replace it. At one end of the business district stood a fine new depot and the famous McComb Ice Plant, which iced down thousands of train cars full of southern fruits and vegetables for the trip north.

All the way at the other end of downtown, on Broadway Street, stood the only other building that really interested me-the Lyric Theatre, where Twain would perform tonight.

First we repaired to Sampson’s, where I ordered crab gumbo and Elizabeth ordered-what else?-turtle soup. We chatted and relived old times throughout the Pompano en Papillote and the Snapper Almondine, the bread pudding and the egg custard. It was the finest meal, and dining companion, I’d had since returning to the South.

With a rare sense of satisfaction, Elizabeth and I strolled down the new sidewalks of Front Street to the theater. Men in waistcoats and women in fancy crinolines were milling about the entrance, and I couldn’t wait to go in.

“You look like a child on Christmas morning,” Elizabeth said and laughed merrily.

I lifted my hat to the man I’d engaged to water our horse and keep an eye on the carriage. “It’s better than that,” I said. “Christmas comes once a year. But Mark Twain comes once in a lifetime.”

Chapter 56

LET ME PUT THIS SIMPLY. Mark Twain remains to this day the funniest, most intelligent and entertaining person I ever saw on any stage or read in any book.

By then he was an old man, over seventy, but he wore his famous white suit, smoked his famous cigar, and constantly ran his long fingers through his famously unruly hair. His voice was as raspy as an old barn door. He sounded at all times as if he were about ten seconds away from erupting in a violent rage.

“Nothing needs reforming,” he said by way of beginning, “so much as other people’s habits.”

The audience roared in recognition of a universal truth.

“Best forget about the animals. Man is the only one with the true religion…”

The audience waited. Sure enough, the rest of the sentence arrived with perfect timing.

“Yep… several of them.”

He was amusing, biting, sarcastic, ferocious, and bitter in his repudiation of nearly everything and everyone. Elizabeth laughed as hard as I did-harder sometimes. I kept sneaking glances at her: shoulders shaking, handkerchief pressed to her mouth. I was happy she was having such a good time.

I was no author, no satirist, no raconteur, but I did know that the humor of this man Clemens was different. Besides being funny, every word he spoke was the absolute truth. The bigger the lies he pretended to tell, the more truthful the stories became.

When he talked about his struggles with trying to give up whiskey and his beloved cigars, we all laughed because we had struggles of our own, and he helped us see that they were ridiculous.

When he read from his book Huckleberry Finn, a passage in which Huck is bemoaning the fancy clothes the Widow Douglas has forced him to wear, we laughed because someone had once forced us into Sunday clothes too.

Occasionally Twain landed with both feet in an area that made this audience a little restless, as when he said:

“We had slavery when I was a boy. There was nothing wrong with slavery. The local pulpit told us God approved of it. If there were passages in the Bible that disapproved of slavery, they were not read aloud by the pastors.”

Twain paused. He looked deadly serious. I saw men shifting in their seats.

“I wonder how they could be so dishonest…”

Another long pause. And then: “Result of practice, I guess.”

The laughter came, and I saw Elizabeth dab at her eyes.

After more than an hour of effervescent brilliance, it became clear that Twain was exhausted, clinging to the podium. A man pushed an armchair in from the wings, and Twain asked our permission to sit down.