Two men lifted George as easily as if he were a cloth doll. Blood poured from his mouth, along with a load of bile and vomit.
One man held George at the waist while another pushed and pulled his head up and down to make him perform a jerky bow.
“There you go, nigger boy. Now you’re bowing and showing the respect you should.”
Then, leaning in, with one firm tug, Leon Reynolds pulled George’s ear clean off his head.
Chapter 17
I WANTED to throw up.
I stood ankle deep in the muck of the swamp, batting at the cloud of mosquitoes that whined around my face and arms. I was hiding as best I could behind a tangle of brambly vines and swamp grass, all alone and completely petrified.
In no time at all, the men had fashioned a rope into a thick noose with a hangman’s knot. It took even less time to sling the rope over the middle fork of a sizable sycamore tree.
The only sound in those woods was the awful grunting of the men, the steady metallic chant of the cicadas, and the loud beating of my heart.
“You know why you being punished, boy?” shouted one of the men.
There was no response from George Pearson. He must have fainted from the beatings or maybe the pain of losing his ear.
“We don’t appreciate boasting. We don’t appreciate it from no nigger boy.”
“Now, come on, Willy, ain’t it a little rough to throw a boy a rope party just for shootin’ off his stupid-ass mouth?” said another.
“You got another suggestion, Earl?” Willy said. “What other tonic would you recommend?”
I looked around for Jacob. Surely he’d had time to get home and come back with his father.
The men carried George to the sandy ground underneath the sycamore. One of them held up his head while the others slid the rope around his neck.
I didn’t know what I could do. I was just one boy. I wasn’t strong enough to take on one of these men, much less all of them, but I had to do something. I couldn’t just hide like a jack-rabbit in the woods and watch them hang George Pearson.
So I finally moved out of the shadows. I guess the slosh of my feet in swamp water turned their heads. I stood revealed in the light of the moon and their torches.
“Would you looka here,” said Willy.
“Who the hell is this?” said one of his friends.
“Ain’t but a little old boy, come out to give us a hand.”
I realized I was shivering now as if this were the coldest night of all time. “Let him go,” I squeaked, instantly ashamed of the tremor in my voice.
“You follered us out here to hep this nigger?” said Willy. “You want us to string you up next to him, boy?”
“He did nothing wrong,” I said. “He was just talking. I heard him.”
“Willy, that’s Judge Corbett’s kid,” said a tall, skinny man.
“That’s right,” I said, “he’s my daddy. You’re all gonna be in bad trouble when I tell what you did!”
They laughed as if I’d told the funniest joke they’d ever heard.
“Well, now, correct me if I’m wrong, young Master Corbett,” said Willy, “but I believe the law in these parts says if a nigger goes to boasting, his friends and neighbors got every right to throw him a little rope party and teach him how to dance.”
My throat was so dry I was surprised any sound came out. “But he didn’t do anything wrong,” I said again. For some reason I thought if I repeated myself, they would see the logic.
Willy put on a smile that held not a hint of amusement. “Boys, I believe we have got ourselves a pure-D, grade-A, number one junior nigger-lover.”
The other men laughed out loud. Hot tears sprang up in my eyes, but I willed them not to fall. I would not cry in front of these awful bastards, these cowards.
I recognized a tall, skinny one as J. T. Mack, the overseer at the McFarland plantation. He slurred his words as if he were drunk. “If this boy is half smart as his daddy, he’ll just turn his ass around and march on back home. And forget he ever come out here tonight.”
In two steps Willy was on me, gripping my arm, then my throat. J. T. Mack moved in to grab my other arm.
“Hold on, son. You can’t go home to daddy yet. We need a souvenir of your visit. Come on out of there, Scooter,” said J.T.
Out of nowhere came a dapper young man in a green-and-white-plaid suit, his hair slicked back with brilliantine. He looked about sixteen years old. He carried a wooden box camera on a large tripod, which he set up in the clearing about ten feet from the motionless body of George Pearson.
Scooter stuck his head under the black cloak attached to the camera and then pushed back out. “I can’t see nothing. It’s too dark. Bring your light in close to his face,” he said.
The two men with torches moved closer, illuminating the shining black skin of George Pearson’s face. Scooter put his head back under the cloth.
With that, Leon pulled hard on the rope. George Pearson stood straight up and then he flew off the ground three or four feet. His eyes opened wide, bulging as if they might explode. His whole face seemed to swell. His body began trembling and jerking.
The horror of what I was seeing froze me in place. I felt something warm dripping down my leg and realized I had peed my pants.
No one was looking at me now or bothering to hold me. Slowly, slowly, I began to back away.
“Hope you got a good likeness, Scooter,” said J.T. “We’ll all be wanting a copy. Something to remember ol’ George by.”
Everybody hooted and laughed at that one. I turned and ran for my life.
Chapter 18
I SUPPOSE THERE might have been one good thing about the punishing southern-style heat wave that had settled over Washington: that night Meg had gone to bed wearing her lightest nightgown. As I opened the door to our room Meg was resting on our bed, pretending to read her leatherbound copy of the book of Psalms.
“Are you speaking to me?” I asked her.
“You weren’t here to speak to until now,” she answered without looking up.
I leaned down and kissed her and was relieved that she didn’t turn away.
Meg was so lovely just then, and I wanted nothing more than to lie down beside her. But it wouldn’t be fair, not with the knowledge running around in my head.
“Meg,” I said softly, “I have something to tell you. I’m not sure how you’re going to take it.”
Her eyes hardened.
“I went to the White House tonight,” I said.
Her eyes flashed. In one second the hardness melted into joy.
“The White House!” she cried. “Oh, I knew it! I knew Roosevelt would have to come around! You’re one of the best young lawyers in town. How ridiculous of him to have waited this long to offer you a position!”
“It’s not a position,” I said. “The president asked me to… take on a mission for him. It could be for a month or two.”
Meg sat straight up. The Psalms slid to the floor with a soft plop. “Oh, Ben, you’re going to leave us again? Where?”
“Home,” I said. “To Mississippi. To Eudora.”
She exhaled sharply. “What could the president possibly want you to do in that godforsaken corner of nowhere?”
“I’m sorry, Meg,” I said. “I can’t tell you. I had to give Roosevelt my word.”
Meg’s rage exploded, and she cast about for a suitable weapon. Seizing the bottle of French eau de toilette I had given her for her birthday, she fired it against the wall with such force that it shattered. A dreamy scent of lavender filled the room.
“Meg, how could I say no? He’s the president of the United States.”
“And I’m your wife. I want you to understand something, Ben. When you go back to Mississippi, on your mission, you’d best be advised to purchase a one-way ticket. Because if you go, there’s no point in coming back. I mean that, Ben. So help me, I’m serious. I can’t wait for you any longer.”
I heard a sound behind me. Meg and I tur
ned to discover that we had an audience for this display: Alice and Amelia.
“Hello, girls,” I said. “Mama and I are having a talk. An adult talk. Back to bed with both of you now.”
Meg had already turned her face away from the door. I could see from the heaving of her shoulders that she was crying, and that made me feel awful.
I walked the girls back to their room, where I tucked them in, covering them gently with the light cotton sheets that sufficed on hot nights like this.
I kissed Amelia, then Alice. Then I had to kiss Alice again, and Amelia, in that order, to even things out.
As I rose to leave, Amelia threw her skinny arms around me and tugged me back down to her side.
“Don’t go, Papa,” she said in a voice so sweet it nearly broke my heart. “If you go, we’ll never see you again.”
The moment Amelia said it, I had the terrible thought that my little girl just might be right.
Part Two
HOMECOMING
Chapter 19
I WAS SOON ENOUGH reminded of the dangers of the mission I’d undertaken for the president of the United States. Two days into my journey south, I was in Memphis, about to board the Mississippi & Tennessee train to Carthage, where I would switch to the Jackson & Northern for the trip to Jackson. I had just discovered some truly disturbing reading material.
I had been waiting when the Memphis Public Library opened its doors at nine a.m. A kindly lady librarian had succumbed to one of my shameless winks. She agreed to violate several regulations at once to lend me a number of back issues of the local newspapers, which I agreed to return by mail.
I had carefully chosen the most recent issues that carried sensational stories of lynchings on their front pages. Many of those appeared in the Memphis News-Scimitar and the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
I was instantly confused by one headline that declared, “Colored Youth Hung by Rope AND Shot by Rope.” The article explained that after the fifteen-year-old boy was strung up by his neck—he’d been accused of setting fire to a warehouse—the mob shot so many bullets at his dangling corpse that one bullet actually severed the rope. The boy’s body crashed to the ground, a fall that would surely have killed him had he not already been dead.
Another article blaring from the News-Scimitar concerned the lynching of a Negro who was the father of two young boys. The man was taken forcibly from the Shelby County Jail and lynched within a few yards of the entrance. The unusual thing here? A member of the sheriff’s department had gone to the man’s home and brought his sons to view their daddy’s lynching.
The “coverage” in these pieces read more like the review of a new vaudeville show or a lady pianist at a classical music concert. To wit:
The Everett lynching was far more gruesome than the Kelly lynching of but two weeks previous. Due to the unusual explosion of Thaddeus Everett’s neck and carotid arteries, this hanging was both more extraordinary and interesting than the afore-mentioned Kelly death.
And from the Memphis Sunday Times, a “critique” of a different lynching:
Olivia Kent Oxxam, the only woman privileged to be present at “Pa” Harris’s lynching in the River Knolls region, declared it to be “One of the most riveting events of my lifetime. I was grateful to be there.”
These articles made the lynchings seem so engrossing that they must surely surpass the new Vitagraph “flicker” picture shows for their entertainment value.
I folded the papers carefully and stashed them in my valise. Then I decided that the heat inside the train carriage was worse than the soot and grime that would flow in from the stacks after I opened the window. I made my move, but the damn window wouldn’t budge.
I was pushing upward with all my strength when the gentleman in the opposite seat said, “Even a strong young man like yourself won’t be able to open that window—without pulling down on the side latch first.”
Chapter 20
I LAUGHED AT MYSELF, then pulled on the latch. The window slid down easily. “I guess strength doesn’t help,” I said, “if you don’t have some brains to go along with it.”
My fellow traveler was middle-aged, paunchy, seemingly well-to-do, with a florid complexion and a gold watch fob of unmistakable value. He put out his hand.
“Henley McNeill,” he said. “Grain trader. I’m from Jackson.”
“I’m Benjamin Corbett. Attorney at law. From Washington.”
“Miss’ippi?” he said.
“No, sir. Washington, D.C.”
“Well, you are one very tall attorney, Mr. Corbett. I would bet those Pullman berths play havoc with the sleep of a man your size.”
I smiled. “I’ve spent my whole life in beds that are too short and bumping into ceilings that are too low.”
He laughed and put away the book he’d been reading.
“Are you a journalist, too?” Henley McNeill asked.
“No.”
“Well, I only ask on account of I saw you reading all those newspapers.”
I decided to see where the truth might take me. “I was doing a little research… on the history of lynching.”
He blinked, but otherwise betrayed no reaction. “Lynching,” he said. “In that case, newspapers might not be your best source of information.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, sir, in my view, the newspapers don’t always tell the truth.
“Let me give you a point of observation,” McNeill continued. “Now, this is just the opinion of one man. But I’m a man who’s spent his whole life right here in Mississippi. And my daddy fought for the Confederacy alongside Braxton Bragg at Stones River.”
Henley McNeill seemed like a sensible fellow. This was the very type of man Roosevelt had in mind when he sent me down here to speak with the locals.
“The white man doesn’t hate the colored man,” he said. “The white man is just afraid of the colored man.”
“Afraid?”
“Not afraid in the way you think. He’s not afraid the colored man’s going to rape his wife or his daughter. Although, let’s be honest, if you turned a colored man loose on white women with no laws against it, there’s no telling what might happen.”
He leaned forward in his seat, speaking intensely. “What genuinely scares the white man is that the colored is going to suck up all the jobs from the whites. You just got out of Memphis, you saw how it is. It’s the same in all the big cities—Nashville, New Orleans, Atlanta. You got thousands and thousands of Negroes running around looking for jobs. And every one of ’em willing to work cheaper than the white man, be they a field hand, a factory hand, or what have you.”
I told McNeill that I understood what he was saying. In fact, it was not the first time I’d heard that theory.
“Yes, sir,” he went on. “The black man has got to figure out a way to get along peaceable with the white man, without taking his job away from him.”
He paused a moment, then leaned in to tap the side of my valise with an insistent finger. A smile spread over his face.
“And if the black man don’t come to understand this,” he said, “why, I reckon we’ll just have to wipe him out.”
Chapter 21
HOME AGAIN.
Home to the town where I learned to read, write, and do my multiplication tables. Home to the town where my mama fell ill, stayed ill for many years, and died, and where my father was long known as “the only honest judge in Pike County.”
My town, a little over three thousand souls, where I once set the Mississippi state record for the hundred-yard dash, shortly before I broke my leg in a fall from a barn roof. Where Thomas McGoey, the mail carrier, rang our doorbell and personally presented me with the letter announcing I’d been accepted at Harvard.
The last time I’d been home to Eudora was for my mother’s funeral, six years ago. I remember being startled at the time by how much the town had changed. Most astonishing to me then were the two gas-powered motorcars parked beside the hitching posts.
> Many other things had changed since that last mournful journey to my birthplace. But on this day, while I waited for Eudora Station’s one ancient porter to summon the energy to unload my trunk, I found myself amazed to see how much this lazy little town resembled the one I knew when I was a boy.
The early-summer heat remained as overwhelming as I remembered, the whitish sun seeming to press down on everything under its gaze. The First Bank, Sanders’ General Store, the Purina feed and seed, the Slide Inn Café—everything was just the same.
Eudora Town Hall still featured an oversized Confederate stars-and-bars hanging in the second-floor window above the portico. The same faded red-and-white-striped barber’s pole stood outside the shop with the sign that said “Hair Cuts, Shaves, & Tooth Extractions”—although no one had gone to Ezra Newcomb for a bad tooth since the first real dentist moved to town when I was eleven.
One difference I noticed immediately was that many of the doorways—at the depot, at the little vaudeville theater, at the Slide Inn—now bore signs marking certain entrances as “White” or “Colored.” When I was a boy, everyone knew which places were for whites and which for Negroes.
At last the porter approached with my trunk and valises, accompanied by a gangly colored teenager. The porter asked, “Will we be taking these to your father’s house, Mr. Corbett?”
I frowned. “How’d you know my name?”
“Well, suh, the stationmaster tol’ me to hurry up and go help Judge Corbett’s boy with his trunk, so I purt’ much figured it out from there.”
I gave the old man a dime and offered another dime to the boy if he would carry my luggage on to my destination. He threw that heavy trunk up on his shoulders as if it contained nothing but air and picked up my pair of valises with one large hand.
“I’ll be staying at Maybelle Wilson’s,” I said. “I’m here on business.”