Alex Cross's Trial

I said.

    Moody’s eyes came up. “Let me tell him, Papaw.”

    He hesitated, but then he said, “All right.”

    “They’s a young fellow called Whitney,” she said, gazing intently at me. “He spent a day hoeing out the flowerbeds around ol’ Miz Howard’s house, then when she was done he told her how much it was. She didn’t want to pay. Said he hadn’t worked that many hours. Then she calls up the sheriff and says Whitney done said something dirty to her. Well, she got him arrested, but that wasn’t enough for ’em. They come drug him out of the jail and hung him up. Killed him. All because he asked for his pay.” Her eyes blazed.

    “That’s the truth, ” said Hiram.

    “Sammy Dawkins brung his empty Co-Cola bottle back to Sanders’ store to get his penny back. Ol’ Mr. Sanders tells him niggers don’t get the penny back, just white folks. Sammy argues with him and next thing you know he’s in jail. For wanting his penny! ”

    “Keep your voice down,” Abraham said.

    “There was a couple boys sitting on the sidewalk downtown. They was talkin’ to each other quiet like, telling about this strike of colored men up in Illinois. Well, sir, somebody overheard what they said, and next thing you know a bunch of men jump on these boys. One of ’em, they knocked out all his teeth.”

    “We get punished for ‘boasting,’ and for ‘strutting,’ and for talking too loud, and for casting the evil eye. We get arrested for ‘walking too fast,’ or ‘walking too slow,’ or taking too long to say yassuh. ”

    Moody was furious now. Her voice carried to tables nearby. Some of the people stopped their own conversations to listen.

    “Colored man looks at a white woman, they kill him just for thinkin’ the thoughts he ain’t even thought,” she said. “If he even looks at a white woman, it must mean he wants to rape her or kill her. When they’re the ones doing most of the raping and killing around here!”

    “Now, calm down,” Abraham said.

    “Don’t tell me to calm down! I know what it’s like. It happens to me too, Papaw.”

    “I know, child.”

    “You don’t know what happened yesterday. I was bringin’ the basket of ironing back to Miz Cooper, you know she got that boy Dillard, he’s not right in the head. Well, he out there pulling weeds in the kitchen garden. He looked at me. All I said was, “Howdy, Dillard,” and he says somethin’ real rude, like, ‘Maybe you want to go with me, Moody’ or somethin’ like that. I just ignored him, Papaw. I just kept walking. But he come up behind me and grab me, like, you know, touching my titties.”

    “Hush,” said Abraham sternly.

    “It’s what happened, Papaw,” she said. “Then he says ‘Aw come on, Moody, you a nigger girl, and ever’body knows that is all a nigger girl wants.’ ”

    And with that, she couldn’t keep the tears in. She folded her arms on the table and buried her head. Hiram stroked her neck.

    I spoke softly: “We’re going to do something, Moody. That’s why I’m here with your grandfather.”

    There was silence. Then Moody looked up at me and she was angry.

    “ Go home, Mr. Corbett . That’s what you could do. Just pack up your bag, and go home.”

    Chapter 39

    “I GUESS YOU PRAYED for mail, Mr. Corbett,” Maybelle said as I walked past the kitchen of the rooming house the next morning. “And the Lord answered.”

    She held out a plate with a pair of blackened biscuits and another plate with three envelopes. My heart lifted. But my happiness faded when I glanced through the letters and found that none of them had come from Washington.

    I smiled down at the biscuits, thanked Maybelle, and put them aside for disposal later.

    On my way over to the Slide Inn, I thumbed through the mail. First I opened a flyer inviting me to a “social and covered dish supper” at the Unitarian church in Walker’s Bridge, one town west of Eudora. In the right-hand margin was a handwritten addition: “Ben—Hope to see you at the supper. Elizabeth.”

    The next envelope also held an invitation. This one was a good deal fancier than the first, engraved on heavy paper, wrapped in a piece of protective tissue.
    Mr. and Mrs. L. J. Stringer
    request the pleasure of your company at supper
on Saturday, July fourteenth,
nineteen hundred and six
at eight o’clock in the evening

    Number One Summit Square

    Eudora, Mississippi

    R.S.V.P.

    What was this world coming to? A fancy-dress invite from

    L. J. Stringer, of all people!

    It was hard to believe that the sweet, kindly boy with whom I’d