James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

IN FOUR WEEKS OF LIVING at Maybelle’s, I’d come to realize that my room was so damp, so airless, so overheated night and day, that nothing ever really dried out.

My clothes, my hand towel, and my shave towel were always damp. My hair was moist at all times. As much as I toweled off, powdered with talc, and blotted with witch hazel, my shirts and underclothes always retained a film of moisture. This stifling closet at the top of Maybelle’s stairs was a punishment, a torture, a prison.

And besides, there was so much to keep me awake at night.

I longed for a letter from home.

And maybe because I didn’t hear, I wrestled with thoughts of Elizabeth. I could still feel our kiss in front of her house.

I wondered if Roosevelt had ever gotten my wire. Surely he would have sent some answer by now. What if that telegraph operator in McComb had taken exception to the facts as I was reporting them?

And here I was, quite a sight, if anyone happened in to see me. I lay crosswise on the iron bed, naked, atop sweat-moistened sheets. I had tied a wet rag around my head; every half hour or so, I refreshed it with cool water from the washbasin.

But no one could win the battle against a Mississippi summer. Your only hope was to lie low and move as little as possible.

“Mr. Corbett.”

At first I thought the voice came from the landing, but no, it came from outside.

Beneath my window.

“Mr. Corbett.”

A stage whisper drifting up from three stories below.

I swung my legs to the floor, wrapped the top sheet around myself, and walked over to the window. I couldn’t make out anyone in the mottled shadows under Maybelle’s big eudora tree.

I called softly, “Who’s out there? What do you want?”

“They sent me to get you,” the voice said.

“Who sent you?”

“Moody Cross,” he said. “Can you come?”

I didn’t think it was a trap, but it paid to be careful. “What for? What does Moody want?”

“You got to come, Mr. Corbett.” The fear in the voice was unmistakable. “They been another lynchin’.”

“Oh God – where?”

“Out by the Quarters.”

“Who is it?”

“Hiram,” the man said. “Hiram Cross. Moody’s brother is dead.”

I FELT A DEEP SURGE of pain in my chest, a contraction so sharp that for a moment I wondered if I was having a coronary. Almost instantly I was covered with clammy sweat.

I heard the voice from outside again.

“Somebody overheard Hiram say that one day white folk would work for the black,” the man whispered hoarsely. “Now Hiram swinging dead from a tree.”

I felt the room beginning to turn – no, that was just my head spinning. I felt a strange chill, and a powerful force rising within me.

“Stand back,” I said loudly.

“What’s that, Mr. Corbett?”

“I said stand back. Get out from under this window!”

I heard branches strain and creak as the man obeyed.

Then I leaned my head out the window and threw up my supper.

MOODY DID NOT SHED a tear at her brother’s funeral. Her face was an impassive sculpture carved from the smoothest brown marble.

Abraham fought to stay strong, to stand and set a brave example for all the people watching him now. And although he managed to control his expression, he could do nothing about the tears spilling down his face.

It must have been the hottest place on earth, that little sanctuary with one door in back and one door in front and no windows at all. It was the Mt. Zion A.M.E. Full Gospel church, three miles out of town on the Muddy Springs Road, and it was jammed to overflowing with friends and relatives.

Early in the service, a woman fainted and crashed hard to the floor. Her family gathered around her to fan her and lift her up. A baby screamed bloody murder in the back. Half the people in the room were weeping out loud.

But Moody did not cry.

“I knew Hiram from the day he was born!” cried the preacher. “I loved him like a father loves his son!”

“Yes, you did!” shouted an old lady in the front row.

“Tell it, brother!”

“Amen!”

“I carried the baby Hiram to the river,” the preacher went on, “and I dipped him in the river of life. That’s right, I held him under the water of Jesus until he was baptized, and he come up sputtering, and then he was lifted up in the Holy Spirit and the everlasting light of Jesus–”

“That’s right, Rev!”

“–so that no matter what might happen to Hiram, no matter what fate might befall him as he walked the earth, he would always have the Lord Jesus Christ walking right there by his side!”

“Say it, brother!”

“Now, children,” the preacher said with a sudden lowering of his tone, “we know what happened to our son and brother Hiram Cross! We know!”

“Hep us, Jesus!”

“The white man done come for Hiram, done took him and killed him,” the preacher called. “We should think of our Lord, and how brave he was on that last night when he set there waiting for the Roman soldiers to come. He knew what was gonna happen. He knew who was coming for him. But he did not despair.”

Instantly I found myself wanting to disagree, wanting to cry out, to remind him of the despairing words of Jesus on the cross, My father, my father, why hast thou forsaken me?

“Hiram was just that brave,” said the preacher. “He didn’t bow down or beg them to spare his life. He went along without saying a word, without letting them ever get a look at his fear. We should all strive to be as courageous as our brother Hiram.”

“That’s right!”

“The white man killed Hiram!” he hollered again. “But my friends, we are not like the white man! We cannot allow ourselves to be like that. The Bible tells us what to do. Jesus tells us what to do. It’s plain to see. We have to do as Jesus did, we have to turn the other cheek.”

There were groans from the congregation. It seemed to me that most of them had been turning the other cheek their entire lives.

Abraham’s head had drooped until his chin was nearly resting on his chest. Moody continued to gaze straight ahead at the plain wooden cross on the rear wall.

“As the Lord tells us in Proverbs, ‘Do not say, “I’ll pay you back for this wrong!” Wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.’ God does not want us taking matters into our own hands.

“That is our charge, brothers and sisters. That is what the Lord tells us, in the book of Matthew: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.’”

“How long, Brother Clifford?” came a voice from the back. “How long we ’posed to wait? Till the end of all time? How long?”

“We wait until the Lord makes his will clear,” the preacher said calmly. “We wait like the children of Isr’al waited, forty years out in that desert.”

The insistent voice spoke again:

“But how long? How long do we go on forgiving? How many of us got to die before it’s time?”

And that is when I saw one shining tear roll down Moody’s face.

We shuffled along, following behind Hiram in his pine box, out the narrow front door. The choir took up an old hymn.