Most of all, it had something that was sure to lift my spirits. I had seen the handbill only the day before, hanging on the front wall of the Eudora Courier office.
TOMORROW! ONE NIGHT ONLY!
THE INIMITABLE AUTHOR, SATIRIST, & RACONTEUR
MR. SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS,
WHO MAY DECIDE TO APPEAR ALONGSIDE
MR. MARK TWAIN
DOORS OPEN AT 7 O’CLOCK
THE TROUBLE TO BEGIN AT 8 O’CLOCK
MCCOMB CITY LYRIC THEATRE
My favorite author in the world was just a carriage ride away.
And then another thought struck me. I didn’t have a carriage, but I knew someone who did.
Chapter 55
WHEN I PUSHED my carefully composed telegram across the desk to the man behind the barred window at the McComb depot, his eyes bugged. “I ain’t never sent a wire to the White House before,” he said in a loud voice.
A few people waiting for the next train turned their heads to give me an appraising glance.
I smiled at the man. “Neither have I,” I said gently. “Could you please keep it down?”
“I sent one to the president of Ole Miss one time,” he bellowed, “but that ain’t the same thing. You mean for this to go to the real president, in the White House, up in Washington?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
I would have to tell Abraham that his idea of coming to McComb for anonymity had failed. I wondered whether there was anyplace in the state of Mississippi from which you could dispatch a wire to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue without causing a fuss.
“Yes, sir,” the man was saying, “one time I sent one to Governor Vardaman, and there was this other time a fellow wanted to send one—”
“I’m glad you and I could make history together,” I said. “Could you send it right away?”
“Soon as the station agent comes back from his break,” he said.
I forced myself to remember that I was down South, where everything operated on Mississippi time, a slower pace than in other places. After the man’s break would be soon enough.
I hurried out to Elizabeth’s carriage, where she sat surveying the panorama of McComb.
Half the town had burned to the ground just a few years before, but a sturdy new town had already been put up to replace it. At one end of the business district stood a fine new depot and the famous McComb Ice Plant, which iced down thousands of train cars full of southern fruits and vegetables for the trip north.
All the way at the other end of downtown, on Broadway Street, stood the only other building that really interested me—the Lyric Theatre, where Twain would perform tonight.
First we repaired to Sampson’s, where I ordered crab gumbo and Elizabeth ordered—what else?—turtle soup. We chatted and relived old times throughout the Pompano en Papillote and the Snapper Almondine, the bread pudding and the egg custard. It was the finest meal, and dining companion, I’d had since returning to the South.
With a rare sense of satisfaction, Elizabeth and I strolled down the new sidewalks of Front Street to the theater. Men in waistcoats and women in fancy crinolines were milling about the entrance, and I couldn’t wait to go in.
“You look like a child on Christmas morning,” Elizabeth said and laughed merrily.
I lifted my hat to the man I’d engaged to water our horse and keep an eye on the carriage. “It’s better than that,” I said. “Christmas comes once a year. But Mark Twain comes once in a lifetime.”
Chapter 56