“Is there something I should do about this?”

“Get a message to Abraham Cross. Tell him I want a report from him and Ben Corbett immediately-if not sooner.”

Chapter 49

I WENT DOWN to Young’s Hardware-the only such store in town-and bought myself a bicycle. Then I wheeled my purchase out into the hot sun. The machine was a beautiful silvery blue, with pneumatic tires to smooth out the bumps and ruts of Eudora’s dirt streets.

I took my maiden voyage on my new machine out to the Quarters, to see Abraham Cross.

On this day Abraham and I did not head for the swamp. We rode his mules along the Jackson & Northern tracks, then turned east on the Union Church Road. This was fine open ground, vast flat fields that had been putting out prodigious quantities of cotton for generations.

Every mile or so we encountered a clump of trees surrounding a fine old plantation house. These plantations had been the center of Eudora’s wealth, the reason for its existence, since the first slaves were brought in to clear the trees from these fields.

“You don’t mean they lynched somebody right out here in the open?” I said.

“You stick with me,” Abraham said, “and I’ll show you things that’ll make your fine blond hair fall out.”

At that moment we were riding past River Oak, the Mc-Kenna family plantation. In the field to our left about thirty Negro workers were bent over under the hot sun, dragging the cloth sacks that billowed out behind them as they moved down the row, picking cotton.

We passed out of the morning heat into the shade, the portion of the road that curved close to the McKennas’ stately home. On the front lawn two adorable white children in a little pink-painted cart were driving a pony in circles. On the wide front veranda I could see the children’s mother observing their play and a small army of black servants hovering there.

This was a vision of the old South and the new South, all wrapped into one. There, gleaming in the drive, was a handsome new motorcar, brass fittings shining in the sun. And there, rushing across the yard in pursuit of a hen, was an ink-black woman with a red dotted kerchief wrapped around her head.

Abraham was careful to ride his mule a few feet behind mine, to demonstrate his inferior position in the company of a white man. I turned in the saddle. “Where to?”

“Just keep riding straight on ahead to that road beyond the trees,” he said.

“You don’t think that lady’s going to wonder what we’re up to?”

“She don’t even see us,” said Abraham. “She just happy to sit up on her porch and be rich.”

We passed once more out of the shade and turned our mules down the long line of trees flanking the McKennas’ pecan orchard.

Soon we arrived at another clump of trees shading an intersection with another dirt lane. The western side of this crossing formed a natural amphitheater, with a gigantic old black gum tree as its center.

Beneath this tree someone had built a little platform, like a stage. In a rough semicircle several warped wooden benches were arranged, their whitewash long faded. Obviously they had been hauled out of some derelict church and placed here for spectators.

“What is this, a camp revival?” I said.

Abraham pointed up at a sturdy low branch of the gum tree. The branch extended directly over the little wooden stage-or rather, the stage had been built directly under the branch. Three ropes were carefully knotted and hanging from the branch, three loops waiting for heads to be slipped in, waiting for someone to hang.

“Good God!” I said as I realized what I was seeing.

“For the audience,” Abraham said as he gestured around at the benches. “They come to watch the lynching. And they need a place to sit. Nothing worse than having to stand while you waiting to watch ’em hang a nigger.”

That was the first time I’d heard Abraham use that word, and his eyes burned fiercely.

I almost couldn’t believe it. Across that fence was the Mc-Kennas’ impeccable lawn, acres and acres of flawless mown grass. I could see beds of bright orange daylilies sculpted into the landscape from here to the big house.

To one side of the stage, I noticed a low table with a small bench behind it. Maybe that was for shotguns and rifles, to keep them out of the dirt.

“What’s that table for, Abraham?”

He answered with a weak smile. “That’s where they sell refreshments.”

Chapter 50

IF I THOUGHT that obscene place was the worst abomination I was going to see-a serene amphitheater constructed for the pleasure of human beings torturing other human beings-I was wrong.

Our journey was just beginning.

We turned south, along back roads, until we were riding beside the fields of the Sauville plantation. I asked if they too had a theater for lynching.

“I don’t believe so,” said Abraham. “Why bother building your own when there’s such a nice one already established in your neighborhood?”

We rode past the showy Greek Revival pile of the Sauville home, past miles of fields with colored folks in them, picking cotton.

After riding for most of an hour, we came to a long, low cotton barn with a tall silo for storing grain at one end. The place was neatly kept and obviously much in use; the doors at one end stood open, revealing deep rectangular bays stuffed to the ceiling with the first bales of the new crop.

The most successful farmers used barns like this for storing their cotton from year to year, selling only as they needed cash or the price reached a profitable level.

“You telling me they’ve lynched somebody here?”

“I’m afraid so. This was where Hiram Frazier got hanged. And a couple more since.”

“How on earth could you hang somebody in a barn this low? Looks like his feet would drag on the ground.”

He pointed to the end of the barn by the silo. “The folks watch from in here. But they hang ’em inside the silo. Don’t even need a tree.”

I shook my head. I thought of Jacob Gill and the pint he kept in his leather toolbox. I wished for a taste of that whiskey right now.

Abraham led the mules to a slow, muddy stream, where they drank. The old man knelt down, cupped some water in his hand, and drank too.

“It don’t look like much, but it taste all right,” he said.

I was thirsty but decided I could wait.

We climbed up on the mules. Abraham’s animal groaned as he brought his full weight down on its back.

“I declare, I don’t know who’s in worse shape,” Abraham said, “this poor old mule or me.”

I smiled at him.

“There’s one more place I need to show you, Ben,” he said. “Then I reckon we’ll be ready to write an official report for Mr. President.”

As his mule started off, I saw Abraham wince in pain and try to hide it. He saw that I had noticed and forced a smile.

“Don’t worry about me, Mr. Corbett,” he said. “I’m old, but I ain’t even close to dyin’ yet.”

But as he turned away and the smile dropped from his face like a mask, I realized that Abraham was a very old man, and probably a sick man as well. His face had the hidden desperation of someone hanging on for dear life.

Or maybe just to make this report to the president.