I was flabbergasted by this announcement from my wife of nearly eleven years. We were sitting in the parlor on the uncomfortable horsehair sofa Meg’s father had given us as a wedding gift. We had just finished an awkward supper.
“Two different marriages? That’s a tough statement, Meg.”
“I meant it to be, Ben. When I was at Radcliffe and you were at Harvard I used to look at you and think, Now, this is the man I could always be with. I honestly believed that. So I waited for you while you went to law school. All the time you were at Columbia, in New York, I was wasting away at my father’s house. Then I waited some more, while you went to Cuba and fought in that war that none of us understood.”
“Meg, I’m sorry. It was a war.”
“But I’m still waiting!” She twirled around, her arms outstretched. And in that one gesture, in those few seconds, I realized the complete truth of what she was saying. Our house was not the one on Dupont Circle that Meg deserved, but a small frame bungalow on the wrong side of Capitol Hill. Cracks were visible in our plaster walls. The piano had broken keys. The roof leaked.
Through soft sobs Meg continued, “I’m not a selfish woman. I admire the cases you take, really I do. I want the poor people and the colored people to be helped. But I also want something for my girls and me. Is that so wrong?”
She wasn’t wrong. Maybe I had let her down by worrying too much about my own conscience, not thinking enough about her expectations and the life she believed she was getting when she married me.
“I love you, Meg. You know I adore you.” I reached and touched her face. Her dark hair fell across my fingers. We could have been back in Harvard Yard or walking in the moonlight along the Charles.
A sudden knock, and Mazie entered the room. “’Scuse me, Mr. Ben. They’s a man at the door. Says it’s urgent.”
“Who is it, Mazie?” said Meg.
“He say his name Nate, and…” She paused, reluctant to finish the sentence.
“Is he a colored man, Mazie?” I asked.
Meg said, “Of course he is, Ben. He’s here to see you, isn’t he?”
A pause.
“Please show the man in,” I said.
Chapter 12
RIGHT THEN AND THERE, everything changed in our lives, certainly in mine. Meg looked at me with those big eyes of hers, as much in sorrow as in anger. I reached to touch her again, but she pulled away. She shook her head as if I were a child whose behavior had disappointed her. “You know this one by name?”
“I only know one man named Nate, and that’s Nate Pryor. He was Tenth Cavalry. We rode together at San Juan Hill.”
Nate appeared at the door just in time to hear Meg say, “The hell with you, Ben.”
She walked past Nate and out of the room without so much as looking at him. Her passing set up the first decent breeze I’d felt all day.
“You can introduce us some other time,” Nate said. His voice was deep, his enunciation precise. I shook his hand warmly and clapped his shoulder.
“I don’t know what elixir you’re drinking, Nate, but you look younger than you did the day Colonel Roosevelt drove us up old San Juan Hill.”
“The only medicine I take is good old-fashioned hard work. The kind the Lord intended a man to make with his days. Maybe a little taste of ’shine once in a while, for a chaser.”
I nodded, but then I looked into his eyes. “What brings you here, Nate? What’s so urgent?”
“I’m here with a serious proposition. I wouldn’t bother you, but it’s something I believe only you can do.”
Whatever the favor he was about to ask of me, I was fast losing the desire to hear about it. A sad tale, surely—hard times, ill health, someone’s poor relative left penniless and in need of free legal assistance.
I tried to keep my voice gentle. “I’ve taken on about all the cases I can handle for a while.”
“Oh, this is not a law case.” He flashed a particularly charming smile. “Perhaps I should have mentioned that I came here today directly from the White House. This isn’t my proposition. This is a request from the president.”
I was astonished. “Roosevelt sent you here? To my home?”
“The man himself.”
Chapter 13
THE FIRST TIME I EVER LAID eyes on Theodore Roosevelt—God, how he hated the nickname “Teddy”—I was surprised by how much he resembled the cartoons and caricatures with which the papers regularly mocked him. And now, on this fine summer day in the White House, I saw that the thick spectacles pinching his nose, the wide solid waist, and the prominent potbelly had only become more pronounced since he took up residence on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Roosevelt jumped up from his desk and charged across the room toward me before his assistant, Jackson Hensen, could finish his introduction.
“Captain Corbett, a pleasure to see you again. It’s been too long.”
“The pleasure is entirely mine, Colonel… uhm, Mr. President.”
“No, no, no. I’ll always prefer Colonel!”
The president waved me over to a green silk sofa near his desk. I sat, trying to contain my excitement at being in the Oval Office, a room that was airy and beautifully appointed but a good deal smaller than I would have imagined.
A door to the left of the president’s desk glided open. In came a tall Negro valet bearing a tea tray, which he placed on a side table. “Shall I pour, sir?”
“Thank you, Harold, I’ll do my own pouring.”
The valet left the room. Roosevelt went to a cabinet behind his desk and took out a crystal decanter. “Except I’ll be pouring this. What’ll it be, Captain, whiskey or wine? I’m having claret myself. I never touch spirituous liquors.”
That is how I wound up sitting beside TR on the green sofa, sipping fine Kentucky bourbon from a china teacup embossed with the presidential seal.
“I presume our old friend Nate Pryor has given you some idea why I wanted to see you,” he said.
I placed my cup on the saucer. “He actually didn’t say much, to be honest. Only that it was to do with the South, some kind of mission. A problem with the colored people? Danger, perhaps.”
“I’ve been doing a little checking on you, Ben. It just so happens that the place you were born and raised is the perfect place to send you. Assuming you agree to this assignment.”
“Mississippi?”
“Specifically your hometown. Eudora, isn’t it?”
“Sir? I’m not sure I understand. Something urgent in Eudora?”
He walked to his desk and returned with a blue leather portfolio stamped with the presidential seal in gold.
“You are aware that the crime of lynching has been increasing at an alarming rate in the South?” he said.
“I’ve read newspaper stories.”
“It’s not enough that some people have managed to reverse every forward step the Negro race has managed since the war. Now they’ve taken to mob rule. They run about killing innocent people and stringing ’em up from the nearest tree.”
The president placed the portfolio in my hand.
“These are papers I’ve been collecting on the situation: reports of the most horrible occurrences, some police records. Things it’s hard for a Christian man to credit. Especially since the perpetrators of these crimes are men who claim to be Christians.”
My first thought was that the president was exaggerating the problem. Northerners do that all the time. Of course I had heard of lynchings, but I hadn’t known of any in Mississippi since I was a boy.
“They hang men, they hang women, for God’s sake they even hang young children,” Roosevelt said. “They do the most unspeakable things to their bodies, Ben.”
I didn’t say a word. How could I? He was talking about my hometown.
“I’ve tried discussing the matter with several southern senators. To a man, they claim it’s the work of outsiders and a fringe element of white reprobates. But I know damn well it’s the Klan, and in some of these towns that includes ju
st about every respectable white man.”
“But Colonel,” I said, “the Klan was outlawed forty years ago.”
“Yes. And apparently it’s stronger than ever now. That’s why you’re here, Captain.”
Chapter 14
I WAS GLAD when Roosevelt reached for the decanter again. This talk of the sins of my fellow southerners had me upset, even a little angry.
“Colonel, I haven’t spent much time down home since I finished law school,” I said cautiously. “But I’d be surprised if there’s a problem in Eudora. Folks there generally treat the Negroes well.”
When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Open your eyes, Ben. Since April there have been two men and a fifteen-year-old boy allegedly lynched within a few miles of your hometown. It’s on the way to becoming a goddamn epidemic, and I—”
“Excuse me, sir. Sorry to interrupt. You said ‘allegedly’?”
“Excellent! You’re paying attention!” He thwacked my knee with the portfolio. “In this file you’ll see letter after letter, report after report, from congressmen, judges, mayors, governors. Nearly every one tells me the lynching reports are greatly exaggerated. There are no lynchings in their towns or districts. The Negro is living in freedom and comfort, and the white southerner is his boon friend and ally.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to admit that had I been asked, that would have been very much like my own estimate of the situation.
“But that is not the story I’m hearing from certain men of conscience,” he said. “I need to know the truth. I’m glad you don’t automatically believe what I’m telling you, Ben. I want a man with an open mind, an honest and skeptical man like yourself who can see all sides of the question. I want you to go down there and investigate, and get to the bottom of this.”
“But sir, what is it you want me to find out? Exactly what?”
“Answer these questions for me,” he said.
“Are lynchings as common a fact of life as I think they are?
“Is the Ku Klux Klan alive and thriving down there, and if so, who is behind the outrageous resurgence?
“What in hell is the truth—the absolute truth? And what can a president do to stop these awful things from happening?”
He barked these questions at me in the same high, sharp voice I recalled from the parade ground in Havana. His face was flushed red, full of righteous anger and determination.
Then, softly, he asked, “Will you do it for me, and for this country, Ben?”
I did not hesitate. How could I? “Of course, I am at your service. I’ll do what you ask.”
“Bully! When can you go?”
“Well, sir, I do have a trial beginning next week in the circuit court,” I said.
“Leave the judge’s name with Mr. Hensen. We’ll take care of it. I want you in Mississippi as soon as possible.”
He clapped his hand on my shoulder as he walked me to the door. From the breast pocket of his jacket he removed a folded scrap of paper, which he handed to me.
“This is the name of a man who will assist you down there. I believe he’ll be able to open your eyes to the way your good people of Eudora have been treating their colored citizens.”
“Yes, sir.” I tucked it away.
“One more thing…”
“Sir?”
“I must have secrecy. A cover story has been arranged for you: you’re in Mississippi to interview possible federal judges. If your real mission is exposed, I will deny that I had anything to do with your trip. And Ben, this could be dangerous for you. The Klan murders people—clearly.”
In the outer office I gave the judge’s name to Mr. Hensen, then walked down the steps of the North Portico to the curving driveway. To be honest, I hoped some friend or acquaintance might happen along and witness my emergence from that famous house, but no such luck.
I stepped out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and turned toward my office. I would have to work late getting everything in order. It seemed I might be gone for a while.
I had just passed the entrance to Willard’s Hotel when I remembered the slip of paper the president had given me. I pulled it out and took a step back to read it in the haze of gaslight from the hotel lobby.
Written in the president’s own bold, precise hand were four words:
ABRAHAM CROSS EUDORA QUARTERS
I thought I knew everybody in Eudora, but I’d never heard of Abraham Cross. “The Quarters” was the Negro section of town. This was the man who was going to teach me about southerners and lynching?
The fact was, I had not been completely honest with Roosevelt. Had he asked me, I would have told him the truth. I already knew more than I cared to know about the horror of lynching.
I had seen one.
Chapter 15
THE SUMMER WE BOTH turned twelve, my best friend, Jacob Gill, and I made it a practice to slip out of our houses after supper and meet at the vacant lot behind the First Bank of Eudora. Once out of the sight of grown-ups, we proceeded to commit the cardinal and rather breathtaking sin of smoking cigarettes.
We’d blow perfect smoke rings into the hot night air and talk about everything, from the new shortstop just sent down from the Jackson Senators to play with the Hattiesburg Tar Heels, to the unmistakable breasts budding on a lovely and mysterious eighth grader named Cora Sinclair.
More than anything, I think, we liked the ritual of smoking—swiping the tobacco from Jacob’s father’s humidor, bribing Old Man Sanders at the general store to sell us a pack of Bugler papers without a word to our mothers, tapping out just the right amount of tobacco, licking the gummed edge of the paper, firing the match. We considered ourselves men, not boys, and there was nothing like a good after-dinner smoke to consecrate the feeling.
Then came a Monday night, early August. The last night we ever smoked together.
I will tell you how the nightmare began, at least how I remember it.
Jacob and I were a little light-headed from smoking three cigarettes in quick succession. We heard noises on Commerce Street and walked down the alley beside the bank to see what was stirring.
The first thing we saw was a group of men coming out of the basement of the First Methodist Church. I immediately recognized Leon Reynolds, the “dirty man” who did the sweeping and manure hauling in front of the stores around the courthouse square. He had a hard job, a big belly, and a sour-mash-whiskey attitude.
Across Commerce Street, on the sidewalk in front of Miss Ida Simmons’s sewing and notions shop, we saw three colored teenagers standing and shooting the breeze. Lounging against the wall of Miss Ida’s, they were facing the wrong way to see that there were white men bearing down on them.
I recognized the tallest boy as George Pearson, whose mother sometimes did washing and ironing for our neighbors the Harrises. Beside him was his brother Lanky. I didn’t recognize the third boy.
If Jacob and I could hear their conversation this plainly, so could the men walking down the sidewalk toward them. George Pearson was doing most of the talking.
“Shoot, Lank, they couldn’t do a damn thing ’round here without us,” he said. “Let ’em try to get along without colored folks. Who’d curry their hosses and pitch their hay? Who’d they get to cut cane and pick cotton?”
Jacob looked at me. I looked back at him. We knew black boys were not supposed to talk this way.
The white men walked right past us and stepped down into the street. I don’t think they even registered our presence. When they heard what George was saying, they started walking faster, and then they ran. They were almost upon the three boys when one of the men boomed, “Hell, George, you one smart little nigger to figure all that out by yourself!”
Chapter 16
GEORGE PEARSON TURNED, and I saw nothing but the whites of his eyes. It was stupid of him to be talking like that in the open on Commerce Street, but he quickly demonstrated that he was smart enough to run.
Jacob and I watched him leap the horse trough in one bound and take off sprintin
g through the skinny alley beside the church. Leon Reynolds and his pals gave chase, huffing and cursing and yelling “Stop, nigger!”
“We better go home, Ben,” said Jacob. “I’m not kidding you.”
“No,” I said. “We’re going after them. Come on. I dare you.”
I knew Jacob would lay down his life before taking off in the face of a dare. Sure enough, he followed me. We kept far enough back so as not to be seen. I had not been a very religious boy up till then, but I found myself praying for George Pearson to get away. Please, God, I thought, make George run fast.
The men chased him all the way to the end of Court Street, out past the icehouse. As they went along, a couple more men joined the chase. George seemed to be getting away! Then, from out of nowhere, a bucket came sailing out of the icehouse door, tangling his feet and tripping him up.
Within seconds the men were on George. Leon Reynolds punched him right in his face. The man next to him hocked up a big wad of spit and let it fly. Another man reached down, grabbed George by the testicles, and twisted his hand.
“Holy God,” Jacob whispered in the bushes where we’d taken shelter. “They’re gonna kill him, Ben. I swear to God.”
The men yanked George up by one arm and set him stumbling in front of them. They taunted and teased and pushed him toward the swampy woods behind the icehouse. One of them had a torch. Then another torch was lit.
“We gotta do something,” I said to Jacob. “We gotta. I’m serious, boy.”
“You crazy? What in hell can we do? They’ll twist our balls off too.”
“Run home and get your daddy,” I said. “I’ll try to keep up with ’em.”
Jacob looked at me, plainly trying to gauge whether his departure now would mean he had failed to live up to my earlier dare. But finally he ran for help.
Leon Reynolds yanked George up hard by his ear. I found my hand clutching at the side of my own head in sympathy.