Alex Cross’s Trial

I breathed in short sharp intakes of air. The fingers of my right hand wedged into the rope had kept open just enough of a passage for a trickle of air down my windpipe. It had kept me alive. Or maybe somebody had spared me. Maybe the one who said I was too tall? Maybe someone I knew?

The rest of my body was pure pain: so intense, so complete, that the pain now seemed like my normal state.

“Look, Roy, ain’t no colored man. That man white.”

The voice of a child.

“Dang,” said another voice. “Look like they done painted him red all over.”

A dog barked.

“ Worms!” the first boy yelled.

I could only imagine what kind of horrible creatures were crawling on my skin.

“ Worms!”

I felt something licking my foot. Then it barked.

“ Worms! Get away from him, he dirty!”

Ahhh. Worms was the dog.

It was so hot. I should surely be dead by now. I think the pain radiating from my knees was keeping me alive. It wasn’t that I had a will to survive.

I thought of stories from the war, wounds so horrible or amputations so unbearable that men begged their comrades to shoot them, to put them away. If I could speak, I would ask these boys to fetch a gun and shoot me in the head.

I felt something sharp poking my stomach. I must have flinched or jumped a little, and gave out a groan. The boys shrieked in terror.

“Oh, Jesus, the man alive!”

“Run!”

I heard them running as fast as they could, running away from the monster. I heard Worms barking as he ran after them.

I wanted to tell them to please come back and cut me down. Oh, how I wanted to lie on the ground just once more before I died.

That was not to be. I couldn’t just hang here like this, waiting to die. The best I could hope for was to hasten it along.

I began wriggling my dead hand, trying to get it out from between the rope and my neck.

Part Four . “MY NAME IS HENRY”

Chapter 70

“MY NAME IS HENRY.”

I could barely hear.

“Can you hear me? I said my name’s Henry.”

I could barely see.

I could, however, tell that the person speaking to me was a woman. An ancient, bent-over colored woman.

“Henry. My name is Henry,” she said. “You in there, Mist’ Corbett?”

Most of her teeth were missing, producing a kind of whistly lisp as she leaned closer and spoke to me.

“Come on now, eat this,” she said. She held out a spoonful of something. I opened my mouth. She stuck it in. God, it was delicious: black-eyed peas cooked to death, mashed to a paste.

While moving the food around my sore, battered mouth, my tongue discovered the gaping hole on the left side where two teeth had been.

“Where am I?” I croaked.

“Abraham house,” Henry said. She poised another spoonful in front of my mouth.

I will never forget the taste of those peas. They remain to this day the single most wonderful food I have ever encountered.

I heard a familiar voice: “Now would you look at Mr. Corbett, settin’ up and eatin’ baby food all by himself.” Moody came around from the head of the narrow cot where I lay, at the center of their parlor, in exactly the spot where Hiram’s coffin had been.

Perhaps I was still in the midst of my delirium, but I thought she looked happy that I was alive and awake.

“This is Aunt Henry who been looking after you,” she said.

“Henry?” I asked.

“Don’t you be calling me Henrietta,” she said.

Moody sat on the little footstool beside my bed. “You been through a pretty rough time, Mr. Corbett,” she said. “When they cut you down, we just knew you was dead. But Papaw felt a pulse on your arm. So he run and got Aunt Henry. She’s the one with the healing touch.”

“Don’t make him talk now, child,” Aunt Henry said. “He still wore out.” Every time I opened my mouth she stuck in more of the black-eyed-pea mush that was bringing me back to life, a spoonful at a time.

“She been pouring soup in you with a funnel,” Moody said. “She done washed you and powdered you, shaved your face. When your fever went up, she sent me to the icehouse for ice to put in your bed. When the cut places started to scab, she put salt water on ’em so they wouldn’t scar.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Eight days since they cut you down,” she said.

I felt the dull pounding ache in both knees. I remembered how those men had kicked my feet out from under me, then gone after my knees with the toes of their boots.

“Did they break my knees?”

Aunt Henry frowned. “Near ’bout,” she said. “But you got you some hard knees. All battered up and cut up. But ain’t broke.”

“That’s good.” I managed a weak smile.

“It is good,” Aunt Henry said. “Soon as you finish this here peas, you gonna have one more little nap, and then we gonna see if we can get you walkin’.”

Moody said, “You’d best get him up running, Aunt Henry.”

I shifted onto my side. “What do you mean?”

“The ones that hanged you gonna find you,” Moody said. “Then they gonna hang you again.”

Chapter 71

AUNT HENRY WAS RIGHT. My knees weren’t broken. But they certainly were not happy when called upon to do their job.