Alex Cross’s Trial

Chapter 51

I SUPPOSE ABRAHAM WAS WISE to save the worst for last. We rode the mules through a peach orchard south of the Chip-ley plantation, making a roundabout circle in the general direction of town. The air was heavy with the smell of rotting fruit. For some reason no one was picking these peaches.

At the end of the orchard we emerged into a peaceful wooded glen. At the far side stood two huge old trees. From the fruit dotting the floor of the glen, I made out that these were black cherry trees; we had a nice specimen growing in back of the house the whole time I was growing up.

From the tree on the right hung a black man. At least, I think it was a man. It was mostly unrecognizable. Flies buzzed around it. It had been there a while.

I didn’t want to go closer, but I found myself moving there as if my legs were doing all the thinking for my body. I could see that the man had been young. He was caked with blood, spit, snot, mud, and shit. His head was distended, swollen from the pressure of hanging. His lips were swollen too, like balloons about to pop.

I began to gag and I turned away. I fell to one knee and heaved.

“Go ahead, Ben,” Abraham said. “It’s good to be sick, to be able to get rid of it like that. I wish I could. I guess I’m just gettin’ too used to seein’ it. It’s a bad thing to get used to.”

I took out my handkerchief and wiped the edges of my mouth. The wave of nausea was still sweeping over me.

“That’s Jimmy Patton up there,” he said.

“What happened to him?”

“He worked over at the gin for Mr. Purneau,” Abraham said. “Last Saturday he got drunk like he always does after he gets his pay. He was walkin’ home and somehow he got hold of a gun. Don’t know if he brung it with him, I never knowed Jimmy to carry a gun. Anyway he popped it off right there a couple of times on Commerce Street, down at the end there by the depot. He didn’t hit anybody, but a couple of men saw him. They brought him here.”

“We can’t leave him up there,” I said.

“Well sir, we have to,” said Abraham.

“Why is that?”

“Because they told the people came to cut Jimmy down they wanted him left here as a warning for the others.”

“You afraid to cut him down, Abraham? This man needs to be buried.”

“We got no way to carry him.”

“Across the mule’s back,” I said. “I can walk it, or I can ride with you.”

“I’m an old man, Mr. Corbett. I can’t climb that tree.”

“Well, I can, but I don’t have a knife,” I said.

Abraham produced an excellent bowie knife with a bone handle.

It was only when I was directly under Jimmy Patton’s body that I saw someone had severed his fingers and toes. Where his digits should have been there were bloody stumps.

I made quick work of climbing the cherry tree.

“Yes, sir,” Abraham said. “Sometime they cut off pieces. To take for souvenirs. And sometimes they sell ’em, you know. At the general store. At the barber shop. Ten cent for a nigger toe. Twenty-five cent for a nigger thumb.”

I waved my hand at the ugly explosion of blood on the front of Jimmy Patton’s trousers.

“That’s right,” said Abraham. “Sometimes they don’t stop at fingers and toes.”

I felt light-headed and nauseated again. “Just-just stop talking for a minute, would you, Abraham?”

I sawed at the rope with a knife for what seemed like an hour. Jimmy Patton finally fell to the ground with a sickening thud.

Somehow I managed to climb down that tree. Somehow I got the Indian blanket out from under Abraham’s saddle and wrapped it around the dead man. With Abraham’s help I got Jimmy onto the mule. His body was so stiff from rigor mortis that I had to balance him just so, like a pine log.

“We better get out of here,” Abraham said. “Somebody watching us for sure.”

“Where? I don’t see anybody.”

“I don’t see ’em,” he said, “but I know they watching us, just the same.”

We made it back through the peach orchard, onto the road, all the way back to town without meeting a soul. I walked the mule by its rope, hoping it would help to be out front. But there was nowhere to walk without breathing in the smell of Jimmy Patton’s decomposing flesh, the coppery smell of his blood.

“I’m ready to write that report, Abraham,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I imagine you are.”

Chapter 52

SUDDENLY IT WAS SUNDAY, and I was back in a world I recognized. I didn’t admit to myself why I felt so lighthearted. I splashed my face with lilac water and clipped a fresh collar to my shirt, but it wasn’t until I was standing at the bright yellow door of Elizabeth Begley’s white mansion that I admitted what had made me so happy yet apprehensive: the prospect of seeing her again.

The door swung open even before I could knock. At a house so grand, I naturally expected to be greeted by a servant, but instead I found the door opened by its owner, Elizabeth ’s husband, a short, bald man with an amiable smile. “You must be the famous Benjamin Corbett of Washington, attorney at law,” he said.

“I am,” I said. “And you must be the much more famous Richard Nottingham, senator and man of influence.”

He smiled. “You’ve got that just about right,” he said, grabbing my hand. That hand had not been shaken so vigorously since Roosevelt operated it at the White House. Maybe it was a habit of politicians to inflict pain on new acquaintances, as an aid to memory.

“Lizzie talks so much about you I feel like we already know each other.”

Lizzie. The familiarity of the nickname made me wince inwardly.

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” I said. “She speaks fondly of you.”

“Oh, now, he’s making that up,” said Elizabeth, coming up behind her husband. “Don’t lie, Ben. Richard knows I haven’t spoken fondly of him in years!” She threw her husband a big stage wink. “At least, not in public.”

Nottingham laughed. “Isn’t she a delight?”

I agreed that she was, in a most unspecific murmur. Then I followed them into a small drawing room off the rear of the center hall.

“Ben, Richard and I are so happy you came. There may be a few people here you don’t know-”

This looked a lot like the gathering at L. J. Stringer’s mansion: the same aging stuffed shirts, the same overstuffed dresses, a faint smell of mothballs.

Elizabeth led me to a stout couple on the fringed velvet loveseat. “This is Senator Oscar Winkler and his dear wife, Livia.”

I noticed that state senators dropped the “state,” turning themselves into real senators. Senator Winkler clasped my hand. “Nice to see you again, Ben.”

I was surprised he remembered me. Many years ago, as political editor for the Eudora High School Bugler, I had interviewed Senator Winkler for a column entitled “Eudora Looks Forward.” He had been warm to me and wise in his comments. One thing he said I had never forgotten. He said it, then asked me not to print it: “The southern man who figures out a way to bridge this terrible divide between the black and the white will enjoy all the blessings our Lord can bestow.”

I shook the senator’s hand and kissed his wife’s. As I was straightening up I heard Elizabeth say, “And I do believe you already know this fellow.”

I turned. To my astonishment, I found myself smiling and extending my hand to one Judge Everett Corbett.

He shook it quite formally and made a little bow. “Ben, always a pleasure,” he said. “I hope your business down here is going well.”

Richard Nottingham clapped his hands. “Lizzie, I heard just a bit too much preaching this morning, and presently I’m about to starve to death.” Everything the man said had that odd quality of being humorously intended but not actually fu