Alex Cross's Trial

Street, past the Slide Inn Café, past the icehouse where a bucket came flying out of the darkness just in time to trip up poor George Pearson and send him to his death by hanging.

    The exhilaration of my first ride through town was fading under the glare of a morning sun that was beating down hard. I was out of training for Mississippi summers. My thirst was demanding attention, and I remembered a pump at the end of the cotton-loading dock at the gin, just down from the depot.

    I pedaled down Myrtle Street to the end of the platform that ran from the cotton gin beside the tracks of the Jackson & Northern line. I leaned my machine against the retaining wall and turned to the pump.

    As I worked the handle and reveled in the water—half drinking, half splashing my face—I heard a loud voice behind me, an angry voice.

    “What the hell makes you nigger boys think you can come high-walkin’ into our town looking for a job? All our jobs belong to white men.”

    At the other end of the platform were two large and burly men I recognized as the Purneau brothers, Jocko and Leander, an unpleasant pair of backwoods louts who had been running the cotton gin for Old Man Furnish as long as I could remember. The two of them towered over three scrawny black boys who looked to be fifteen years old, maybe even younger.

    “Well, suh, we just thinking with the crop coming you might be needin’ some mo’ help round the gin,” said one of the boys.

    “That’s the trouble with you niggers, is when you set in to tryin’ to think,” said Leander Purneau. He spoke in a friendly, jokey voice, which put me, and the boy, off guard. But then he popped him a solid punch on the side of his face and sent the boy down onto his knees.

    The other boys skittered away like bugs from a kicked-over log. Suddenly I really was back in the past, and the boy on the ground was in serious trouble, like poor George Pearson had been.

    There was one difference now—I was not a timid little boy. I was a grown man. As I wiped my wet hands on my shirt, I considered what I was about to do.

    If I caused a commotion, made a scene, called attention to myself, I might endanger my mission even before it started.

    But if I did nothing?

    Fortunately, the boy on the ground rolled over and jumped up. He sprinted off down the platform, holding his jaw, but at least he was getting away.

    And at that very moment, I felt something cold and hard jammed against the side of my neck.

    It felt an awful lot like the barrel of a gun.

    A deep voice behind me: “Just put your hands in the air. Nice and slow, high, that’s the way to do it.”

    Chapter 29

    “NOW, I WANT you to turn around real slow, partner. Don’t make any fast moves.”

    I did exactly as I was told. Real slow.

    And found myself looking straight into the face of Jacob Gill. Jacob and I had been inseparable from as far back as I could remember, until the day I left Eudora for college.

    “You son of a bitch!” I shouted at him.

    Jacob was laughing so hard he actually held his stomach and doubled over. His laughter made him do a little jig of delight.

    “You nearly gave me a goddamn heart attack,” I said. “You’re a jackass.”

    “I know,” Jacob said, howling some more.

    Then we hugged, seizing each other by the shoulders, stepping back to get a good look.

    “How’d you even know it was me?” I asked.

    “We don’t have too many yellow-haired fellows ten feet tall hanging around,” said Jacob. Then he added, “I saw you decide not to mix it up with Jocko and Leander. That was smart thinking on your part.”

    “I guess so,” I said. I remembered the time Jacob left me in the swamp to watch what happened to George Pearson. I wished I could tell him why I’d held back this time.

    “Hey, it’s near dinnertime,” Jacob said and lightly punched my shoulder. “Let’s go get some catfish.”

    “That sounds good. Where we going?”

    “Don’t tell me you’ve turned into such a big-city boy you forgot Friday is catfish day at the Slide Inn?”

    Chapter 30

    I PUSHED THE BICYCLE between us down Myrtle Street, toward the town square. Jacob stopped twice along the way to take a nip of whiskey from a pint he kept in his worn leather toolbox, and I said hello to a couple more people I recognized, or who remembered me.

    The Slide Inn was alive with the hum of conversation, the smell of frying fish, the smoke from the cigars of the old fellows who always occupied the front table, solving the world’s problems on a daily