Alex Cross’s Trial

Chapter 126

AFTER THE COURTROOM HAD CLEARED, I sneaked out a side entrance to avoid the crowd of journalists out front, and did what I had done so many times lately. I got my bike and headed for the Eudora Quarters.

The first person I saw was the old man in the blue shack who had showed me the way to Abraham’s house the first time I came out here.

“You done your best, Mist’ Corbett,” he called. “Nobody coulda done better.”

“My best wasn’t good enough,” I called back. “But thank you.”

He shook his head. I continued down the dirt road.

A large brown woman was coming the other way, balancing a wicker basket of damp clothes on her head and carrying another under her arm. She picked up the conversation in midstep: “Aw, now, Mistuh Corbett, that’s just the way things goes,” she said.

“But it’s not fair,” I said.

She laughed. “Welcome to my life.”

There I was, trying to explain the concept of fairness to a woman carrying two huge baskets of other people’s washing.

At the crossroads in front of Hemple’s store, I saw the usual two old men playing checkers. I stopped in front of their cracker barrel. “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” I said.

One man looked up at me sadly. The other one said, “Well, suh, ain’t nobody strong enough to beat ’em. And so what they did was, they got off scot-free. Nothin’ new ’bout that.”

“Ben.” A soft voice, a hand on my arm. I turned. It was Moody.

She was wearing her white jumper again. She even had a little smile on her face.

“You pla

“I would,” I said.

“Don’t you worry your purty head about it,” she said. “All the explaining in the world won’t change a thing.” She took me by the elbow, leading me away. The men watched us go.

“Papaw is worse sick,” she said. “I think the excitement of the trial done it. You want to see him? He wants to see you.”

Chapter 127

ABRAHAM LAY in the narrow iron bed in the front parlor, just the way he was lying there the night the White Raiders attacked. His voice was so faint I barely heard him. His lips were cracked and dry. “I imagine you been going around beating yourself up pretty good about this verdict, eh, Ben?” he asked.

“I thought I could accomplish something,” I said. “The country was watching, from the president on down. I thought we could make a little bit of progress.”

“Who’s to say we didn’t?” he asked.

Moody gently dabbed his forehead with rubbing alcohol, then blew lightly to cool his skin. Every time she touched his face, Abraham’s eyes closed in gratitude. I thought he must be seeing clouds, getting ready to dance with the angels.

“When you get to be as old as me, Ben, you can’t help but remember a lot of things. I was thinking about my mama… one time I stole a nickel from her purse. She knew it before she even looked in there, just by peering in my eyes. She said, ‘Abraham, I don’t know what you guilty of, but you sho’ nuff guilty of somethin’, so you might as well go on and confess.’ I cried for an hour, then I give back that nickel.”

Moody kept rubbing his face, rhythmically massaging the skin with her fingers. His eyes closed, then opened. He went on.

“I was just a young man during the war,” he said. “You ever heard that expression, how they say the ground ran red with blood?”

I said I had heard it.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” he said. “I saw the ground run red. I was up at Vicksburg, just after the fight. I saw… oh, Lord. Hurts to remember. I saw legs, you know, and arms, and feet, big heaps of ’em outside the hospital tent. All rottin’ in the sun.”

I could see the horror of it all in my mind’s eye.

“But bad as it was,” Abraham went on, “that’s when things begun to change. A big change at the first, then they took it back. But what happened in that courtroom… that’ll change it. You just wait. You’ll live to see it.”

He fell into such a deep silence that I thought he might have fallen asleep. Maybe he was begi

But he had a few more words to say.

“Moody said you told the jury a saying from the book of Samuel,” he said.

I nodded.

“That’s one of my favorite passages,” he said. “I sure hated to miss you. Would you say it out to me now?”

“Of course, Abraham,” I said.

I cleared my throat.

“For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”

Then Abraham spoke the last words he would ever say to me.

“You did fine, Ben. You did just fine.”

Chapter 128

“HE’LL SLEEP NOW,” Moody said. “Maybe he won’t wake up this time.”

I followed her out to the little front porch. We sat in the chairs where L.J. and I had spent a long hot night waiting for the Raiders to come.

The worst heat had finally broken. You couldn’t call it a cool day, exactly, but the wet blanket of humidity had lifted.

“I’m glad I got to talk to him,” I said. “His words mean a lot to me.”

Moody said nothing.

“I feel terrible about the way the trial turned out,” I said.

I was hoping, I suppose, that Moody would say something like Abraham had said: that I had done my best and it wasn’t my fault.

She turned to face me. “I know you’re going to think I’m nothin’ but a cold, ungrateful girl. But I don’t just feel bad-I’m angry. Damn angry. Oh yeah, you did your best. And Mr. Curtis did his best. And Mr. Stringer spent all that money… but those murderers walked away free.”

“You’re right, Moody,” I said. “They did.”

“Papaw keeps saying it takes a long time for things to change. Well, that’s fine for him-he’s almost run out of time. I don’t want to be old and dying before anything ever starts to get better.”

I nodded. Then I did something I didn’t know I was going to do until I did it.

I reached over and took Moody’s hand.

This time she did not pull away.

We said nothing, because finally there was nothing left to say. After a few minutes she leaned her head on my shoulder and began to weep softly.

Then she pulled away and sat up. “Listen, Ben, do me a favor. I’m afraid Papaw’s going to get bedsores, and Hemple’s is all out of wintergreen oil. You reckon you could go into town and bring some?”

“Gladly,” I said. “But only if you go with me. You’ve been trapped in this house for days.”

“You are plain crazy, Ben Corbett,” she said. “You think the people of this town want to see you and me parading together downtown? You want to get yourself lynched again?”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Do you care about what the people of Eudora think?”

She pondered that a moment. “No. I s’pose I don’t.”

She wiped her eyes with a corner of the dishtowel. “Oh, hell, Ben, what goes on in that crazy brain of yours?”

I was wondering the same thing.

“Will you go with me?” I said. “I need to do something in town.”