“I’m ready to write that report, Abraham,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I imagine you are.”
Chapter 52
SUDDENLY IT WAS SUNDAY, and I was back in a world I recognized. I didn’t admit to myself why I felt so lighthearted. I splashed my face with lilac water and clipped a fresh collar to my shirt, but it wasn’t until I was standing at the bright yellow door of Elizabeth Begley’s white mansion that I admitted what had made me so happy yet apprehensive: the prospect of seeing her again.
The door swung open even before I could knock. At a house so grand, I naturally expected to be greeted by a servant, but instead I found the door opened by its owner, Elizabeth’s husband, a short, bald man with an amiable smile. “You must be the famous Benjamin Corbett of Washington, attorney at law,” he said.
“I am,” I said. “And you must be the much more famous Richard Nottingham, senator and man of influence.”
He smiled. “You’ve got that just about right,” he said, grabbing my hand. That hand had not been shaken so vigorously since Roosevelt operated it at the White House. Maybe it was a habit of politicians to inflict pain on new acquaintances, as an aid to memory.
“Lizzie talks so much about you I feel like we already know each other.”
Lizzie. The familiarity of the nickname made me wince inwardly.
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” I said. “She speaks fondly of you.”
“Oh, now, he’s making that up,” said Elizabeth, coming up behind her husband. “Don’t lie, Ben. Richard knows I haven’t spoken fondly of him in years!” She threw her husband a big stage wink. “At least, not in public.”
Nottingham laughed. “Isn’t she a delight?”
I agreed that she was, in a most unspecific murmur. Then I followed them into a small drawing room off the rear of the center hall.
“Ben, Richard and I are so happy you came. There may be a few people here you don’t know—”
This looked a lot like the gathering at L. J. Stringer’s mansion: the same aging stuffed shirts, the same overstuffed dresses, a faint smell of mothballs.
Elizabeth led me to a stout couple on the fringed velvet loveseat. “This is Senator Oscar Winkler and his dear wife, Livia.”
I noticed that state senators dropped the “state,” turning themselves into real senators. Senator Winkler clasped my hand. “Nice to see you again, Ben.”
I was surprised he remembered me. Many years ago, as political editor for the Eudora High School Bugler, I had interviewed Senator Winkler for a column entitled “Eudora Looks Forward.” He had been warm to me and wise in his comments. One thing he said I had never forgotten. He said it, then asked me not to print it: “The southern man who figures out a way to bridge this terrible divide between the black and the white will enjoy all the blessings our Lord can bestow.”
I shook the senator’s hand and kissed his wife’s. As I was straightening up I heard Elizabeth say, “And I do believe you already know this fellow.”
I turned. To my astonishment, I found myself smiling and extending my hand to one Judge Everett Corbett.
He shook it quite formally and made a little bow. “Ben, always a pleasure,” he said. “I hope your business down here is going well.”
Richard Nottingham clapped his hands. “Lizzie, I heard just a bit too much preaching this morning, and presently I’m about to starve to death.” Everything the man said had that odd quality of being humorously intended but not actually funny. “Could we please have our dinner?”
Chapter 53
I WAS PLEASED about two things immediately. One, Elizabeth seated me next to herself at the table; two, turtle soup was not on the Nottinghams’ menu.
I’d eaten a skimpy breakfast, expecting the usual six-or seven-course southern exercise in dinnertime excess. Instead I found the food a touch on the dainty side: deviled eggs, shrimp rémoulade, cucumber sandwiches, various cheeses, and a big silver dish of pickles.
My father was also dishing it up: the personification of silver-haired charm, as he could be at those times when he let himself be roped into a social event.
“I really owe you and Elizabeth a debt of gratitude,” he told Nottingham. “If it weren’t for you, who knows if I’d even get to see my son again before he heads home!”
I recognized that as a clear signal. Now that we’d seen each other and been observed acting cordially toward each other, my job was done. I was welcome to go back to Washington anytime.
“Oh, I’m not going home yet, Father,” I said over the back of the settee. I held up my glass of claret. “I’m grateful too, Richard. My father and I don’t get to see each other enough. It’s so rare to see him in such a cheerful and expansive mood.”
My father gave out a little laugh. “Ben is quite a character,” he said. “He’s come down to tell us all where we went wrong. He thinks the South ought to be able to change overnight.”
Richard Nottingham was glancing from my father to me, as if wondering whether this dispute was going to lead to blows among all this expensive china and crystal.
“I’m just hoping for a South that returns to the rule of law,” I said. “I just want a place where the Ku Klux Klan is not hanging black men from every available tree.” I knew that I was treading dangerously here, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Now you’re being plain ignorant,” my father said. “You don’t seem to remember that the Klan was outlawed about forty years ago.”
“I remember it very well,” said Livia Winkler. “My daddy said it was the end of civilization.”
Senator Winkler cleared his throat. “Now, Judge, you know as well as I do that outlawing something does not guarantee that it ceases to exist,” he said. “As a matter of fact, that’s one of the best ways to ensure its continuing existence—to forbid it!”
They glared at each other. It struck me that they’d had this argument before, when I was nowhere around. It also reminded me that there were many good men and women in the South, even here in Eudora.
I was about to say something in support of Winkler when a servant girl walked in bearing a large round cake, frosted white, on a silver platter.
Nottingham brightened. “Why, Lizzie, is that a hummingbird cake?”
“Of course it is. I had them make it just for you. Richard’s going off to Jackson next week. We’ll miss his birthday, but we can all celebrate tonight.”
Something happened then that sent an electrical jolt through my body. It was all I could do to keep from bolting upright in my seat.
As she said these words to her husband, I felt Elizabeth’s hand gently pat the inside of my thigh.
“Ben,” she said, “you must try the cake.”
Chapter 54
“NO, SIR.”
“No, not today, Mr. Corbett.”
“No, sir, nothing today.”
Maybelle always had the same answer to the question I asked her at least once every day. First I would check the table in the front hall, then I’d convince myself that a letter had come and Maybelle was keeping it from me because she knew how anxiously I waited.
I would go ask her, and she would say, “No, sir.”
It had been more than a week since I’d written to Meg. I’d imagined that my love had fairly leapt off the page when she read it and that she would write back immediately.
That letter had not yet arrived.
Meanwhile I was keeping someone else waiting: President Roosevelt expected a report on what I had found out about lynching in and around Eudora. I had spent the past two evenings on a long letter to the president that gave precise locations, right down to the species of the hanging trees. I included the names of victims and the approximate times and dates of their murders.
Then I showed the letter to Abraham. He read it and said, “If it was me, I’d make it like a telegram. Short and sweet. ‘Dear Mr. President, it’s worse than you heard. Send the Army. Stop.’ ”
Abraham was right. I reme
mbered years ago at Las Guasimas when Roosevelt spoke to me for the first time. He glared down from his horse. “Do we have provisions for an overnight, Captain?”
“Sir, I ordered the men to double their rations and to fill their canteens—”
“Stop!” Roosevelt commanded. “That was a yes-or-no question.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
And now it took Abraham to remind me of Roosevelt’s fondness for a concise report.
“Send it to him in a wire,” he said.
“That’s a good idea. But I can’t send it from Eudora.”
The telegraph operator in town was Harry Kelleher, who was also the stationmaster. The moment I left the depot after sending my wire to the White House, Kelleher would personally see that the contents were passed on to every man, woman, and child in Eudora.
“Where can I go, Abraham?”
“Where’s the closest place where everybody doesn’t know who you are?”
I thought about that. “McComb,” I said.
McComb was the nearest sizable town, a farm center and railroad hub ten miles north. When I was growing up, McComb was nothing but a crossroads, but when the Jackson & Northern railroad extended its line and located a terminus there, it outgrew Eudora. McComb was only an hour’s carriage ride away, and it boasted Sampson’s, a fine restaurant specializing in New Orleans–style food: Creole jambalaya, grits and grillades, steak Diane.
Most of all, it had something that was sure to lift my spirits. I had seen the handbill only the day before, hanging on the front wall of the Eudora Courier office.
TOMORROW! ONE NIGHT ONLY!
THE INIMITABLE AUTHOR, SATIRIST, & RACONTEUR
MR. SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS,
WHO MAY DECIDE TO APPEAR ALONGSIDE
MR. MARK TWAIN
DOORS OPEN AT 7 O’CLOCK
THE TROUBLE TO BEGIN AT 8 O’CLOCK
MCCOMB CITY LYRIC THEATRE
My favorite author in the world was just a carriage ride away.
And then another thought struck me. I didn’t have a carriage, but I knew someone who did.
Chapter 55
WHEN I PUSHED my carefully composed telegram across the desk to the man behind the barred window at the McComb depot, his eyes bugged. “I ain’t never sent a wire to the White House before,” he said in a loud voice.
A few people waiting for the next train turned their heads to give me an appraising glance.
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.
He sat down and lit a cigar, which drew another round of applause.
He was finishing up. When he spoke this time, I felt he was speaking directly to me.
“There’s a question I’m interested in,” he said. “ You-all might have an opinion on this. Why does a crowd of people stand by, smitten to the heart and miserable, and by ostentatious outward signs pretend to enjoy a lynching?”
The room fell so quiet you could hear the nervous cough of one man at the b
ack.
“Why does the crowd lift no hand or voice in protest?” Twain said. “Only because it would be unpopular to do it, I think. Each man is afraid of his neighbor’s disapproval—a thing which, to the general run of the race, is more dreaded than wounds and death.”
Still the audience sat rapt, unmoving.
“When there is to be a lynching, the people hitch up and come miles to see it, bringing their wives and children,” he said. “Really to see it? No—they come only because they are afraid to stay at home, lest it be noticed and offensively commented upon.
“No mob has any sand in the presence of a man known to be splendidly brave. When I was a boy, I saw a brave gentleman deride and insult a mob, and drive it away.
“This would lead one to think that perhaps the remedy for lynchings is to station a brave man in each affected community. But where shall these brave men be found? That is indeed a difficulty. There are not three hundred of them on the earth.”
That’s exactly what Mark Twain said that night. I looked around and saw almost everyone in that audience nodding their heads, as if they all agreed.
Chapter 57
APPARENTLY ELIZABETH’S CARRIAGE HORSE had never encountered an automobile before, at least not after sundown, and not in such profusion.
With all the sputtering and clanging and light-flashing and honking in the streets around the Lyric Theatre, the frightened old horse bucked and snapped at the air. It took some fancy rein work to get us safely back on the road to Eudora.
The trip home made the trouble worthwhile. The stir of a breeze in the sultry night. A fat full moon that seemed stained yellow around its edges.
“I saw Charley’s Aunt in that theater,” Elizabeth said. “I saw Maude Adams in Jackson when she came through as Peter Pan. And they were both wonderful. But they didn’t touch my heart the way Mr. Twain did. Or make me laugh until there were tears.”