Alex Cross’s Trial

“I love that girl just about as much as I ever loved anybody,” he said. “Including her mama. And including even my dear departed wife. As for you-well, I done took you into my house, hadn’t I? That ought to show you, I hold you in high regard. You a fine man, Ben, but this just can’t be. It can’t be. Moody… and you? That is impossible.”

“I understand that, Abraham. I don’t think you ought to worry. Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but Moody hasn’t spoken a kind word to me since the day we met.”

He put his hand on my shoulder.

“And maybe you hadn’t noticed,” he said, “but that’s exactly how you can tell when a woman is in love with you.”

Chapter 73

FROM THE DAY after my hanging, someone was always awake and on guard at Abraham Cross’s house. During the day and the evening, Abraham and Moody took turns keeping watch from the front-porch rocker. Since I was the cause of all this, I took the dead man’s shift, from midnight till dawn.

Some nights I heard Abraham stirring, and then he would come out to sit with me for an hour or two.

One night, along about four a.m., I thought I heard his soft tread on the floorboards.

I looked up. It was Moody standing there.

“Mind a little company?” she said.

“I don’t mind,” I said.

She sat down on the bench beside the rocker. A foot or two away from me-a safe distance.

We sat in our usual silence for a while. Finally I broke it. “I’ve been busting to ask you a question, Moody.”

“Wouldn’t want you to bust,” she said. “What is it?”

“Is that the only dress you own?”

She burst out laughing, one of the few times I’d made her laugh.

It was the same white jumper she’d worn the day I met her and every day since. Somehow it stayed spotless, although she never seemed to take it off.

“Well, if you really want to know, I got three of these dresses,” she said. “All three just alike. Of all the questions you could have asked me, that’s the one you picked?” she said. “You are one peculiar man, Mr. Corbett.”

“I sure wish you would call me Ben. Even your grandfather calls me Ben now.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t do everything he does,” she said. “I’ll just keep on calling you Mr. Corbett.”

At first I thought it was moonlight casting that delicate rim of light around her face, lighting up her dark eyes. Then I realized that it was dawn breaking, the first streak of gray in the sky.

“I’ll be moving back to Maybelle’s tomorrow,” I said. “It’s time.”

Moody didn’t reply.

“It’ll be better for Abraham once I’m out of here,” I said. “And for you.”

No answer.

I said, “The only reason those bastards come around is because I’m here.”

Nothing. She stared out at the street.

“Thanks to y’all, I’m much better now. I’m feeling fine. I’ve got some decisions to make.”

Her silence and stubbornness just went on and on, and I gave up trying to pierce it. I sat back and watched the gray light filling in all the blank dark spaces.

I think we sat another ten whole minutes without a word. The sun came up and cast its first shadows of the day.

At last Moody said, “You know I ain’t never gonna sleep with you.”

I considered that for a moment.

“I know,” I said. “Is it because I’m white?”

“No,” she said. “Because I’m black.”

Chapter 74

“I AM JUST AS SORRY AS I can be, Mr. Corbett, but we simply have no rooms available at this time,” Maybelle said to me. “We are full up.”

The dilapidated rooming house seemed strangely deserted for a place that was completely occupied.

“But Abraham came by and paid you while I was incapacitated,” I said.

“Your money is in that envelope on top of your baggage,” she said, pointing at my trunk and valises in a dusty corner of the center hall. “You can count it, it’s all there.”

“You accepted my money,” I said, “but now that I need the room, you’re throwing me out? That makes no sense.”

Up till now, Maybelle had maintained her best polite southern-lady voice. Now the tone changed. Her voice dropped three notes.

“Look, I ain’t gonna stand here and argue with the likes of you,” she said. “I don’t know how I could make it any clearer. We got no rooms available for you. So if you don’t mind, I will thank you to go on and leave the house now.”

“I can’t carry this trunk by myself,” I said.

“Why don’t you get one of your nigger friends to help you,” she snapped. “That’s what I would do.”

“I’ll take the valises and send someone back for the trunk,” I said.

I stuffed the envelope in my pocket, picked up a bag in each hand, and walked out into the blazing noonday sun of Eudora. Now what?

Sweet tea. That’s what I needed, a frosty glass of tea. And time to think things through. I went to the Slide Inn Café and sat at my usual table. I sat there for almost twenty minutes. I could not seem to get the attention of a waitress. Miss Fanny wouldn’t even meet my eye.