Alex Cross’s Trial

“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…”

Moody began to cry.

“He weren’t nothing but a baby himself,” she said.

I felt tears coming to my own eyes.

“Here.” I thrust the pie under her nose. “Eat some of this. You need to eat.”

It was useless advice, I knew, but it was what I remembered my father saying to people at funerals. Eat, eat… Now I understood why he’d said it: he just couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Moody took the plate from my hand.

Chapter 66

MOODY WAS RIGHT. No “peaceable joy” came into Abraham Cross’s house that day.

The bottle of moonshine was gradually consumed. The ham was whittled away until nothing but a knuckly bone was left on the plate. The pies shrank, shrank some more, then disappeared entirely. The afternoon lingered and finally turned into nighttime, with ten thousand cicadas singing in the dark.

I shook hands with Abraham. Moody gave me a quick little hug. I made my way through the remaining mourners, out the front door.

Fifty yards from the house, in front of the fig tree where I had parked the bicycle, stood three large white men. I couldn’t make out details of their faces in that shadowy street, but I knew where I’d seen them: these were the same men who’d been standing with Scooter that afternoon at the Mt. Zion church when he took his photographs.

One of them spoke. “You looking for some trouble, Corbett?”

I didn’t answer.

Looking back on it, I guess one man must have been smoking a pipe. I saw him move and smack something hard against the trunk of the fig. Sparks flew in a shower to the ground.

“We asked you a question,” said the man in the middle. “Serious question.”

“Abraham! Moody!” I yelled.

I don’t know if they heard me. If they did, I don’t know whether they came out of the house. In less time than it took for me to get my arms up, the three men were on me.

Kicked in the head. In the face. I tasted blood. I fell face-down on the ground, hard. A knee went into my stomach, fists whaling at me all over. Someone stomping on the side of my rib cage. I could not get my breath. Something tore into my neck. It felt like fire.

“Looks like you found it-trouble!” a man grunted, and drew back to get a better angle for kicking me. He delivered a stunning blow to my knee. I heard a cracking crunch and felt a wild sear of pain and thought he had shattered my right kneecap.

That was the last thing I remembered for a while.

Chapter 67

THE NEXT THING I was aware of-voices.

“You gotta use a higher branch. He’s tall.”

Something was in my eyes. Blood. I was blind from all the blood.

“Use that next branch, that one yonder,” said a second man. “That’s what we used when we hung that big nigger from Tylertown.”

“He wasn’t tall as this one. I can’t hardly see up this high.”

“Hell he wadn’t. I had to skinny up the tree to put the rope way over.”