Alex Cross’s Trial

The eyes of America are upon you, and upon the proceedings in Eudora. I can assure you that with my own (four) eyes I am personally watching you and the trial at every moment.

I know you will continue to do your best, and I know that you will succeed in this endeavor, as we succeeded together during the late War.

Ben, know that your president is with you every inch of the way.

Sincerely yours, I remain

Your obt. servant,

Theodore Roosevelt, Pres’t.

I smiled at the president’s little joke about his “four eyes,” but when I realized the meaning of his subsequent words, my stomach took a nervous dive. As if I didn’t have enough tension to deal with, now the president of the United States was “personally watching” me “at every moment.”

I read the letter again and put it back in the envelope.

A voice called, “Mr. Corbett, sir.”

I looked to both sides and saw no one.

Again the voice: “Mr. Corbett? Over here, sir, behind you.”

Chapter 102

I TURNED AROUND QUICKLY to find a tall, slender colored man standing on the sidewalk. He was perhaps ten years older than me and beautifully dressed, down to the club scarf in his pocket and the jeweled pin in his necktie.

“May I have a word with you for a moment, sir?” he asked.

“Well, of course,” I said. “Come have a seat.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Corbett, I can’t. That park is White Only.”

I had forgotten-or maybe I’d never realized-that the old wooden benches, the little fountain, the shade of the big old eudoras, all were reserved for the exclusive use of white Eudora.

I walked across the grass to the man and extended my hand. “Ben Corbett.”

“I’m a correspondent for the Indianapolis Cross,” he said.

“Ah yes,” I said. “I’ve read your paper. Y’all have published some of the best general reports I’ve seen on the question of lynching.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” he said. “I’m honored that you’ve heard of us.”

“Welcome to Eudora,” I said.

“Oh, it’s not my first time,” he said. “I grew up in Eudora.”

I looked at him harder. I rattled around in my memory, but I couldn’t place where I had seen him before.

“I used to work for Mr. Jenkins at the mercantile store,” he said.

All at once I knew him.

I said. “Is that-Marcus? Is that you?”

His eyes lit up. “You remember me?”

“I’ll be damned if I’ll ever forget you, Marcus,” I said.

I reached out my arms and embraced him. He was surprised, but he let me do it, and even patted me on the back.

“You were the only one who helped my mother,” I said. “You helped me get her to Dr. Frederick. If you hadn’t, she might have died.”

Marcus told me that his family had left Eudora for the Midwest not long after the time of Mama’s stroke. They wound up in central Indiana, where his father worked for a cattle farmer. Marcus went on to study English at the Negro teachers college in Gary and had landed a job with the largest colored newspaper in the state.

And now, he said, he had convinced his editors to send him to Mississippi to cover the White Raiders Trial because he had a personal interest in one of the defendants. “Henry North,” he said. “I knew him. You did, too.”

“I did?”

Marcus said, “Do you remember that redheaded boy that worked with me at Jenkins’ Mercantile? He helped us carry your mama out that day. That boy is Henry North.”

Sure, I remembered the loutish boy. He was thin and raw-boned in those days. He had said Mama was drunk, to leave her where she lay.

“I remember the day your mama took sick,” Marcus said, “like it was yesterday. You weren’t more than about seven years old, but you acted like a grown man. You answered old Sanders back like he deserved. And you helped me carry her to the doc. I always knew you were going to turn into a fine man.”

I was speechless. Marcus’s words made me feel humble. The truth was that after years of remembering Marcus’s example every day, as my mother had told me to do, I hadn’t thought about him in quite a while.

“I’ve paid close attention to your law career, Mr. Corbett-helping people up in Washington, helping wherever you can. When I saw how you were turning out, I tell you, it gave me a little hope along the way.”

Seeing Marcus again, hearing him speak like this, gave me a transfusion of energy. As if I’d just received new blood, a whole body’s worth of it.

Without knowing it, I had given Marcus “a little hope along the way.”

And now Marcus had given me hope for the difficult murder trial that lay ahead.

Chapter 103