We sat in silence for a while. Then Moody spoke.
“You think they coming tonight?”
I sighed. “You know they’ll want to teach us a lesson.”
We heard a groan from inside. Moody leaped up and I followed her into the parlor.
Cousin Ricky was there, at Abraham’s bedside, reading from the open Bible on his lap. Abraham looked too peaceful to have given out that groan just a moment before.
“You are the light of the world,” Ricky read. “A city set on a hill cannot be hid.”
We crept back out to the porch. After a time Moody said, “You made Papaw’s last summer a good one.”
“He’s one of the finest men I’ve met,” I said. “Of course, you know that.”
She touched the back of my hand. It crossed my mind that we might kiss each other now. Also it crossed my mind that we might not.
I’ll never know what could have been.
Suddenly there was a gunshot, then another, the clatter of hoofbeats, lots of horses.
We stood up, unable to see the men yet, but we could hear their voices in the darkness. We hurried inside before they could drop us where we stood.
“There they go, Sammy,” a man yelled. “Nigger-lovin’ Yankee and his nigger whore.”
It was unfolding just like the first White Raiders attack: gunfire everywhere, men jockeying their horses into position in the dark, the hatred in their voices.
This time though, there was a difference.
The Eudora Quarters was ready—at least I hoped so.
Chapter 132
THERE HAD NEVER BEEN A FIGHT like this one in the state of Mississippi, and maybe anywhere else in this country. One way or the other, we were about to make some history.
The Raiders must have thought we were too stupid to know what was going to happen or too scared to defend ourselves. It never occurred to them that Moody and my little stroll down the sidewalk might have been deliberate, a provocation, and that they were riding into a trap.
There were nine of them this time. That’s how confident they were that we wouldn’t resist. What arrogance—to come into the Quarters with this pack of their friends, nine of them among hundreds of Negroes.
“Ricky, go around!” Moody yelled through the window. “We’ll meet you on the other side!”
“You stay here,” I told her. “Your job is to guard Abraham.” She started to argue but gave up when I placed a snap-load pistol in her hand.
I stuck a loaded pistol in each of my trousers pockets, lifted the shotgun, and swung around just in time to stop three men dead in their tracks at the door.
I recognized them at once. There was Roy, who’d been shot in the arm in the first White Raiders attack, and Leander Purneau from the cotton gin. Best of all was the fat redheaded man in the middle, the surprised-looking fellow at whose nose both barrels of my shotgun now pointed. This was none other than Henry Wadsworth North, former defendant, murderer.
In my mind I squeezed the trigger and watched his limited supply of brains spatter all over the screen door behind him. I felt a jolt of pleasure at the prospect of being the one to end Henry North’s life.
But I couldn’t shoot the man like this. It just wasn’t in me.
His mouth twisted up into a smile. “What you gonna do, Corbett, have me arrested again?”
From out of nowhere he brought up a small pistol.
My finger tightened on the trigger. “Drop it or I’ll blow your head off,” I said. “Do not doubt me for a second! I want to shoot you!”
He let the pistol drop to the floor. All at once hands seized him and dragged him over backwards—
Here they were, the people of the Quarters, bearing guns and knives, pitchforks and sharpened sticks, clublike lengths of straight iron. A dozen men swarmed in from the porch, seizing the Raiders and dragging them outside.
Gunfire echoed, and I heard more horses—a second wave of Raiders. But here came our reinforcements too, pouring out of nearly every door in the Quarters, bearing weapons or no weapons at all, swarming down the street and around Abraham’s house. They dragged Raiders down off their horses and set upon them with clubs, rocks, and farm implements.
Every blow they struck was violent payback for a lynching, a hanging, a beating, a murder. I heard the thud of club against flesh, the crack of rock striking bone. Terrible cries erupted as the colored men overwhelmed the Raiders, avenging the lynchings of their brothers, the oppression and torture and murder of fathers and friends.
I saw Doc Conover swinging a long rifle like a club at a woman who was down on her knees, covering her head with both arms. Then I saw a man knock Conover senseless with a fireplace poker to his skull.
Lyman Tripp, the undertaker, was on the ground, surrounded by men kicking him in the ribs. I remembered how happy he had been to hang a Jew, so I didn’t feel sorry for him. Not for any of them.
But then, over the racket of punches and shouts, I heard more horses approaching. There were many horses, bearing reinforcements for the other side.
Chapter 133
“CORBETT!” A MAN SHOUTED at the top of his lungs.
I stepped out onto the porch to see none other than Phineas Eversman on a fine black mare, wearing his black cowboy hat with the badge pinned to the brim. “You are under arrest,” he said, “and that nigger girlfriend of yours.”
The fight was swirling all around us, defenders chasing and shouting, new waves of attackers coming in from the woods. It seemed unbelievable that Eversman would be trying to make an arrest in such a setting.
I trained my shotgun on his chest. “Get your ass down off that horse, Phineas.”
“You put your gun down, Ben,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to find a revived Doc Conover with a nasty twelve-gauge shotgun leveled at me.
“Hey, Ben,” Doc said. “I meant to bring your oil of winter-green, but I forgot.” He chuckled.
A shot rang out and the gun flew from his hands. Conover screamed and grabbed his elbow. Ricky ran up and scrambled after his gun.
I glanced around to see who had fired the shot. Good God!—It was ancient Aunt Henry in the doorway of Abraham’s shack, blowing smoke from the long barrel of a Colt revolver. She nodded at me and went back inside.
I heard a loud crack and turned to find Eversman down off his horse with a big bullwhip in his hand, a whip straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It had a black leather-wrapped stick for a handle and three little stinger-tips at the end of the whipcord. Eversman cracked it again, with a report louder than a pistol shot.
His arm swept around, and the whip shot out and wrapped around my ankles with a sting as fierce as yellowjackets. It snatched me off my feet, and I landed hard on my back in the dirt. I felt blood running down where the whip was cutting into flesh and then Eversman was on me, hitting with both fists at once. But I was stronger, and angrier too. I managed to roll over and fling him on his back. Seizing the slack end of the whip, I wrapped it around his neck so tight that with one hard tug I could break his windpipe. He gurgled and coughed like the two men I had seen lynched—like the sound I must have made when they lynched me.
Eversman’s eyes bugged out horribly. The leather cord bit into his neck, making a deep red indentation.
And then…
I let go of him. He would kill me if he could, but I couldn’t kill him.
He fell into the mud. Somehow I had opened a big cut on his cheek just above his mouth. Blood oozed out. I began unwinding the whipcord from my ankles.
I stood over him, breathing hard. “You’ve cut your face, Phineas. Ask Doc if he’s got any wintergreen for that.”
Chapter 134
IN THE BACKYARD I FOUND the old checker players from Hemple’s store tying up Byram Chaney, the retired teacher in whose wagon I’d been taken to the Klan rally. That rally and the lynching that followed seemed to have taken place a hundred years ago.
I heard an odd glunking sound behind me and turned to see two men with k
erosene cans working their way along the side of Abraham’s house, splashing fuel on the foundation.
The one nearest me was the renowned legislator Senator Richard Nottingham, Elizabeth’s husband. The military jacket he wore for this night’s action was too small for him; the fabric gaped open around the buttons.
“Bring a match to that fuel,” I called out, “and I’ll shoot you dead. Be my pleasure.”
The other man was bent over, facing away from me. He whirled and pulled a handgun. To my horror, it was Jacob Gill.
“Drop your gun, Ben,” he said. “I would shoot you dead too.”
Around us swirled a madness of yelling, fighting, and dust, screaming, cursing, and gunfire. Yet at that moment it felt as if Jacob and I were facing off all alone in the middle of a giant, empty room.
“Why, Ben?” he croaked. “Why’d you have to come back and ruin our nice little town?”
Chapter 135
JACOB JUST KEPT walking toward me.
Finally, my face hovered inches from his, so close I could smell whiskey and bacon grease on his breath. His face was covered with stubble, the skin on his nose peppered with gin blossoms.
I lashed out and grabbed his gun hand and twisted it hard until the weapon dropped. Jacob had always been smaller, but he could whip me at least half the time when we were boys. He was wiry and strong, and not afraid to fight dirty. I remembered the venom he could turn on our enemies when we got together in a schoolyard scrap.
“Goddamn you, Ben!” he yelled. Then I saw he had a knife. I took his arm and held it with all my strength. It felt as if we stayed that way for hours, grappling, neither of us gaining an advantage, the razor edge suspended between us. My arms ached.
I looked Jacob in the eye. “Jacob!” I yelled at him. “It’s me, goddamn it! It’s Ben!”
But his eyes were bulging with rage, one hand now gripping my throat, the other inching closer with the blade. If he killed me here, amid all this noise and insanity, no one would ever know it was Jacob who’d done the deed. I would just be Ben Corbett, another victim in another senseless attack in a small town.
And then I knew that was not how it was going to happen. I was not going to die here, at the hand of Jacob Gill. That knowledge gave me strength, just enough to jerk his arm sideways and break his hold on the knife.
I kicked Jacob hard and wrenched the knife away. I got on him, kneeling on his chest with the blade an inch from his neck. I could have slit his throat right then, but instead I poked the knife into his Adam’s apple, hard enough to draw blood. Jacob’s eyes widened. God, I knew those eyes.
“You gonna kill me, Ben?” he said.
I flung the knife away and heard it crash into the bushes beside the smokehouse. Then I got up. There were no words for this. So I turned and walked away from the man who had once been my best friend in the world.
Chapter 136
WHILE I WAS FIGHTING JACOB, the rest of the fracas had begun to die down.
I watched Sam Sanders, owner of the general store, jump off his horse and run away into the darkness. I saw two other White Raiders flee in his wake, one of them limping badly.
“We’ll come back for you, niggers,” one yelled as he ran.
“You ain’t won. You just think you won,” another called.
A flurry of hoofbeats, and the Raiders were gone.
Colored people were scattered all over the yard, nursing wounds. Four white men lay trussed up in the dirt in front of Abraham’s house. I remembered Abraham talking about the earth running red with blood—and I saw blood, tiny rivers of it, here on his home ground.
On the porch near the tied-up men, Aunt Henry was dressing the leg wound of Lincoln Alexander Stephens, another of the original White Raiders who’d come calling tonight. Aunt Henry would take care of anyone, I reflected, regardless of race, creed, or degree of idiocy.
There seemed to be only one fatality—Leander Purneau, who lay flat on his back in the mud across the road from Abraham’s house. I wouldn’t miss him for a second.
Cousin Ricky told the captured Raiders he could kill them. Or he could tar and feather them. Or he could do what he was going to do: drive them into town and leave them, tied up, for the citizens of Eudora to find in the morning. “Tell ’em what we did to you,” he said. “Tell ’em there’s as many of us in the Quarters as there is of you in town. Don’t come out here again, not unless you’re invited. Which ain’t likely.”
Richard Nottingham brought his flat-wagon out of the woods. Brown hands helped him lift Leander Purneau’s body up into the bed. Nottingham’s shoulder was bandaged.
The battle was over. Eudora Quarters had won—at least for one night. It would not help me or the people of the Quarters to shoot one more bullet. It was finished.
And if I needed more proof, from around the house came Jacob Gill, his shirtfront stained red with blood from where I’d nicked his throat. He walked between two colored men to the wagon and climbed in the back without looking at me. So be it.
“Mr. Corbett!” I looked up. It was Ricky, standing at the front door.
“Come on back in,” he said. “Abraham has passed.”
At the door, Ricky put his hand on my shoulder. “You all right?”
“I am.”
Moody glanced up as we came in, then went back to reading from the Bible:
“And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingly power.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, this day you shall be with me in Paradise.’ ”
Moody closed the Bible. She looked up and our eyes met.
We had already spoken our last words to each other.
Chapter 137
“ARE YOU STAYING for Abraham’s funeral?” L.J. asked. “I’ll go with you, Ben.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Moody already knows how I feel about him. And it’s definitely time for me to head back… you know…”
“North!” L.J. said. “Go ahead, say the word! You’re headed back up to damn Yankeeland to become a damn Yankee again!”
We were standing near the table in the War Room, where we’d spent so many hours plotting our strategies for the White Raiders Trial. I was just finishing packing.
“I’ve gone around and around in my mind, L.J., and for the life of me I don’t know what I would do differently,” I said. “If I had the luxury of doing it over again.”
“You did as much as you could, Ben. Most men wouldn’t even have tried to help.”
I slipped my razor and shaving brush into the little leather kit and tucked it in my valise. “Help,” I said. “Is that what we did? I think some of the help I gave ended up hurting them.”
“Go ask ’em. Go to the Quarters,” L.J. said, “and ask ’em if they’re worse or better off for what you did.
“I can have a man drive you up to McComb so you can get the earlier train to Memphis,” L.J. went on.
“No need for that. I’ll just take the good old two-oh-five.” I snapped the catches on my valise. “I might stop over in Memphis tonight and hear a bit of that music I told you about.”
“Sure you don’t want to stay here a day or two more?” L.J. asked. “Rest up?”
I shook my head. “It’s time to go. I’ve said my good-byes, and I suspect I’ve worn out my welcome in Eudora. In fact, I’m sure of it. My own father said as much.”
Chapter 138
THREE DAYS LATER I stepped off the train in Washington. My soles squeaked on the station’s marble floors when I walked across them, and I once again admired the acres of gold leaf and ranks of granite arches like victory gates. A man entering Washington through this portal was glorified and enlightened by the passage.
But one man, Ben Corbett, coming home after all these months, felt as lowly and insignificant as a cockroach scurrying along an outhouse floor.
My mind was a jumble, a clutter of worries. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had passed, and all the terrible things that might yet happen.
&
nbsp; Meg had never answered my letters. I thought it likely that I would return to an empty house, shuttered and forlorn, my wife and children having gone off to live with her father in Rhode Island.
I could imagine the walls empty of pictures, white sheets covering the furniture, our modest lawn overgrown with foot-high grass and weeds.
These were my dark thoughts as I made my way through happy families on holiday, returning businessmen, flocks of government workers, Negro porters in red coats, and bellboys in blue caps.
“Mr. Corbett, sir,” a voice rang out down the platform. “Mr. Corbett! Mr. Corbett!”
I stopped, searching the oncoming faces for the source of the greeting—if indeed it was a greeting.
“Mr. Corbett. Right here. I’m so glad I found you.”
He was a young man, short and slight, with wire-rimmed glasses and an intensely nervous stare. I had seen him somewhere before.
“Mr. Corbett, I’m Jackson Hensen. The White House?”
“Ah, Mr. Hensen,” I said. “What a surprise to see you here.”
He smiled hesitantly, as if not quite sure whether I’d made a joke. “Will you come with me, sir?”
“I’m sorry?” I looked down at his hand cupped on my elbow.
“The president would like to see you immediately.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course,” I said. “And I would like to see him. But first I thought I would see my family.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Corbett. The president is at the White House right now. He’s waiting for you.”
So I followed Hensen outside to a splendid carriage drawn by the handsomest quartet of chestnuts I’d ever seen. All the way to the White House I kept thinking, Dear God, please see to it that Teddy Roosevelt isn’t the only person in Washington who wants to see me.
Chapter 139