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The two men with torches moved closer, illuminating the shining black skin of George Pearson’s face. Scooter put his head back under the cloth.
With that, Leon pulled hard on the rope. George Pearson stood straight up and then he flew off the ground three or four feet. His eyes opened wide, bulging as if they might explode. His whole face seemed to swell. His body began trembling and jerking.
The horror of what I was seeing froze me in place. I felt something warm dripping down my leg and realized I had peed my pants.
No one was looking at me now or bothering to hold me. Slowly, slowly, I began to back away.
“Hope you got a good likeness, Scooter,” said J.T. “We’ll all be wanting a copy. Something to remember ol’ George by.”
Everybody hooted and laughed at that one. I turned and ran for my life.
Chapter 18
I SUPPOSE THERE might have been one good thing about the punishing southern-style heat wave that had settled over Washington: that night Meg had gone to bed wearing her lightest nightgown. As I opened the door to our room Meg was resting on our bed, pretending to read her leatherbound copy of the book of Psalms.
“Are you speaking to me?” I asked her.
“You weren’t here to speak to until now,” she answered without looking up.
I leaned down and kissed her and was relieved that she didn’t turn away.
Meg was so lovely just then, and I wanted nothing more than to lie down beside her. But it wouldn’t be fair, not with the knowledge ru
“Meg,” I said softly, “I have something to tell you. I’m not sure how you’re going to take it.”
Her eyes hardened.
“I went to the White House tonight,” I said.
Her eyes flashed. In one second the hardness melted into joy.
“The White House!” she cried. “Oh, I knew it! I knew Roosevelt would have to come around! You’re one of the best young lawyers in town. How ridiculous of him to have waited this long to offer you a position!”
“It’s not a position,” I said. “The president asked me to… take on a mission for him. It could be for a month or two.”
Meg sat straight up. The Psalms slid to the floor with a soft plop. “Oh, Ben, you’re going to leave us again? Where?”
“Home,” I said. “To Mississippi. To Eudora.”
She exhaled sharply. “What could the president possibly want you to do in that godforsaken corner of nowhere?”
“I’m sorry, Meg,” I said. “I can’t tell you. I had to give Roosevelt my word.”
Meg’s rage exploded, and she cast about for a suitable weapon. Seizing the bottle of French eau de toilette I had given her for her birthday, she fired it against the wall with such force that it shattered. A dreamy scent of lavender filled the room.
“Meg, how could I say no? He’s the president of the United States.”
“And I’m your wife. I want you to understand something, Ben. When you go back to Mississippi, on your mission, you’d best be advised to purchase a one-way ticket. Because if you go, there’s no point in coming back. I mean that, Ben. So help me, I’m serious. I can’t wait for you any longer.”
I heard a sound behind me. Meg and I turned to discover that we had an audience for this display: Alice and Amelia.
“Hello, girls,” I said. “Mama and I are having a talk. An adult talk. Back to bed with both of you now.”
Meg had already turned her face away from the door. I could see from the heaving of her shoulders that she was crying, and that made me feel awful.
I walked the girls back to their room, where I tucked them in, covering them gently with the light cotton sheets that sufficed on hot nights like this.
I kissed Amelia, then Alice. Then I had to kiss Alice again, and Amelia, in that order, to even things out.
As I rose to leave, Amelia threw her ski
“Don’t go, Papa,” she said in a voice so sweet it nearly broke my heart. “If you go, we’ll never see you again.”
The moment Amelia said it, I had the terrible thought that my little girl just might be right.
Part Two . HOMECOMING
Chapter 19
I WAS SOON ENOUGH reminded of the dangers of the mission I’d undertaken for the president of the United States. Two days into my journey south, I was in Memphis, about to board the Mississippi & Te
I had been waiting when the Memphis Public Library opened its doors at nine a.m. A kindly lady librarian had succumbed to one of my shameless winks. She agreed to violate several regulations at once to lend me a number of back issues of the local newspapers, which I agreed to return by mail.
I had carefully chosen the most recent issues that carried sensational stories of lynchings on their front pages. Many of those appeared in the Memphis News-Scimitar and the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
I was instantly confused by one headline that declared, “Colored Youth Hung by Rope AND Shot by Rope.” The article explained that after the fifteen-year-old boy was strung up by his neck-he’d been accused of setting fire to a warehouse-the mob shot so many bullets at his dangling corpse that one bullet actually severed the rope. The boy’s body crashed to the ground, a fall that would surely have killed him had he not already been dead.
Another article blaring from the News-Scimitar concerned the lynching of a Negro who was the father of two young boys. The man was taken forcibly from the Shelby County Jail and lynched within a few yards of the entrance. The unusual thing here? A member of the sheriff’s department had gone to the man’s home and brought his sons to view their daddy’s lynching.
The “coverage” in these pieces read more like the review of a new vaudeville show or a lady pianist at a classical music concert. To wit:
The Everett lynching was far more gruesome than the Kelly lynching of but two weeks previous. Due to the unusual explosion of Thaddeus Everett’s neck and carotid arteries, this hanging was both more extraordinary and interesting than the afore-mentioned Kelly death.
And from the Memphis Sunday Times, a “critique” of a different lynching:
Olivia Kent Oxxam, the only woman privileged to be present at “Pa” Harris’s lynching in the River Knolls region, declared it to be “One of the most riveting events of my lifetime. I was grateful to be there.”
These articles made the lynchings seem so engrossing that they must surely surpass the new Vitagraph “flicker” picture shows for their entertainment value.
I folded the papers carefully and stashed them in my valise. Then I decided that the heat inside the train carriage was worse than the soot and grime that would flow in from the stacks after I opened the window. I made my move, but the damn window wouldn’t budge.
I was pushing upward with all my strength when the gentleman in the opposite seat said, “Even a strong young man like yourself won’t be able to open that window-without pulling down on the side latch first.”