Another man stepped into the cabin. “Yeah, y’all get to work, would you?” I knew that voice. And that face. It was Jacob Gill.
“’Preciate you gathering ’em up for us, Ben,” he said. “We were just gonna have ourselves a little evidence-burnin’ party.”
“We knew we’d find you here,” Phineas said with a smirk on his face.
L.J. growled, “How did you know? Who the hell told you we were comin’ here?”
There was a silence, then the others looked at Richard Nottingham. Finally he said, “My wife.”
The words stabbed me in the heart. I felt my throat closing and thought I might be sick.
“Elizabeth was spying for me. She told us every word you ever said, Corbett. She’s a good girl. Thanks for keeping us up to date. It was damn useful to Maxwell Lewis.”
Phineas took the box of photographs from Moody. One of the pictures caught his eye. “We don’t need this one,” he said.
He handed it over to me. “In case you want a souvenir.”
It was a picture of me—half naked, hanging from a lynching tree.
Scooter did a fine job with the picture. The detail was crisp; you could see every leaf on the tree. The dog licking my bloody foot, the flies swarming over my face.
“You always took a nice picture, Ben,” said Jacob Gill.
Chapter 118
“ALL RIGHT NOW, Ben, we tried your plan, and you might say it didn’t work out so well. So now we’re going to try my plan.”
Jonah was not in the mood to butter me up.
“You know those photographs would have worked,” I said bitterly. “All right, all right, tell me your plan.”
“Well, it’s not quite as audacious as yours. Matter of fact, it’s very logical, very well thought out.”
“Damn it, just tell us,” L.J. said.
“Tomorrow,” Jonah said, “I want Ben to give the summation to the jury.”
L.J. didn’t hesitate a beat before answering, “That is a fine idea.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “I was there on the night of the murders. I’m a witness but you’ve chosen not to put me on the stand. You’re the one who’s been telling them the story of these crimes all along. Why change now?”
“You know why,” said L.J.
“Because I’m white?” I said. “That’s no reason!”
“It never hurts,” Jonah said with a faint smile. “Look, you come from here,” he explained. “You know these people. The judge is your father. These jurors will trust you more than they will me. And not because you’re white—because you were there. You can give a summation that comes from your heart. For God’s sake, you’ve been lynched yourself. You have to tell them a story, Ben. They need to hear it from you.”
I dreaded the truth in what he was saying. The next thing he said cinched it for me:
“I tried the case. I fought the case. I pled the case. But all along, even before I got here, it was always your case, Ben.”
Chapter 119
IT LOOKED AS IF half of America had come to tiny Eudora for the conclusion of the White Raiders Trial.
Outside the courthouse that morning, hundreds and hundreds of spectators jammed the town square. Little boys had climbed trees for a better view of the action. Photographers muscled their tripods through the crowds, jostling for the best angles. A few of the more enterprising had bought out Russell Hardware’s entire stock of ladders to get an over-the-heads-of-the-crowd view.
Judge Everett Corbett had petitioned Governor Vardaman for state militiamen from Jackson to keep order. The soldiers had set up temporary wooden fences along the sidewalk in front of the courthouse to control the spectators who’d been flooding into Eudora by train, carriage, horseback, and on foot.