Alex Cross's Trial

entire question of lynching. He is a man I trust,” Roosevelt continued. “A native of those parts. I have connected him with certain others who can show him the situation from all sides. I haven’t told you his name because I’d rather this situation remain confidential until he’s done his job. And then I will do whatever I deem necessary to remedy the tragic situation in the South.”

    Ida Wells-Barnett rose from the sofa. “Thank you, Mr. President. I gladly tell anyone who asks that you are the best friend the Negro has had in this office since Mr. Lincoln.”

    Roosevelt shook her hand enthusiastically.

    Du Bois was forced by Mrs. Wells-Barnett’s action to rise from the sofa and offer his own hand. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said.

    “Yes. Thank you, sir.” The president shook his hand. “Let’s hope we can make progress on this.”

    “I’ve been hoping for progress all my life,” Du Bois said.

    Roosevelt kept the fixed smile on his face until the two were out of the room. Then he frowned and uttered an epithet.

    “Sir?” said Hensen.

    “You heard what I said.”

    “Is there something I should do about this?”

    “Get a message to Abraham Cross. Tell him I want a report from him and Ben Corbett immediately—if not sooner.”

    Chapter 49

    I WENT DOWN to Young’s Hardware—the only such store in town—and bought myself a bicycle. Then I wheeled my purchase out into the hot sun. The machine was a beautiful silvery blue, with pneumatic tires to smooth out the bumps and ruts of Eudora’s dirt streets.

    I took my maiden voyage on my new machine out to the Quarters, to see Abraham Cross.

    On this day Abraham and I did not head for the swamp. We rode his mules along the Jackson & Northern tracks, then turned east on the Union Church Road. This was fine open ground, vast flat fields that had been putting out prodigious quantities of cotton for generations.

    Every mile or so we encountered a clump of trees surrounding a fine old plantation house. These plantations had been the center of Eudora’s wealth, the reason for its existence, since the first slaves were brought in to clear the trees from these fields.

    “You don’t mean they lynched somebody right out here in the open?” I said.

    “You stick with me,” Abraham said, “and I’ll show you things that’ll make your fine blond hair fall out.”

    At that moment we were riding past River Oak, the Mc-Kenna family plantation. In the field to our left about thirty Negro workers were bent over under the hot sun, dragging the cloth sacks that billowed out behind them as they moved down the row, picking cotton.

    We passed out of the morning heat into the shade, the portion of the road that curved close to the McKennas’ stately home. On the front lawn two adorable white children in a little pink-painted cart were driving a pony in circles. On the wide front veranda I could see the children’s mother observing their play and a small army of black servants hovering there.

    This was a vision of the old South and the new South, all wrapped into one. There, gleaming in the drive, was a handsome new motorcar, brass fittings shining in the sun. And there, rushing across the yard in pursuit of a hen, was an ink-black woman with a red dotted kerchief wrapped around her head.

    Abraham was careful to ride his mule a few feet behind mine, to demonstrate his inferior position in the company of a white man. I turned in the saddle. “Where to?”

    “Just keep riding straight on ahead to that road beyond the trees,” he said.

    “You don’t think that lady’s going to wonder what we’re up to?”

    “She don’t even see us,” said Abraham. “She just happy to sit up on her porch and be rich.”

    We passed once more out of the shade and turned our mules down the long line of trees flanking the McKennas’ pecan orchard.

    Soon we arrived at another clump of trees shading an intersection with another dirt lane. The western side of this crossing formed a natural amphitheater, with a gigantic old black gum tree as its center.

    Beneath this tree someone had built a little platform, like a stage. In a rough semicircle several warped wooden benches were arranged, their whitewash long faded. Obviously they had been hauled out of some derelict church and placed here for spectators.

    “What is this, a camp revival?” I said.

    Abraham pointed up at a sturdy low branch of the gum tree. The branch extended directly over the little wooden stage—or rather, the stage had been built