Chapter 53

I WAS PLEASED about two things immediately. One, Elizabeth seated me next to herself at the table; two, turtle soup was not on the Nottinghams’ menu.

I’d eaten a skimpy breakfast, expecting the usual six-or seven-course southern exercise in dinnertime excess. Instead I found the food a touch on the dainty side: deviled eggs, shrimp rémoulade, cucumber sandwiches, various cheeses, and a big silver dish of pickles.

My father was also dishing it up: the personification of silver-haired charm, as he could be at those times when he let himself be roped into a social event.

“I really owe you and Elizabeth a debt of gratitude,” he told Nottingham. “If it weren’t for you, who knows if I’d even get to see my son again before he heads home!”

I recognized that as a clear signal. Now that we’d seen each other and been observed acting cordially toward each other, my job was done. I was welcome to go back to Washington anytime.

“Oh, I’m not going home yet, Father,” I said over the back of the settee. I held up my glass of claret. “I’m grateful too, Richard. My father and I don’t get to see each other enough. It’s so rare to see him in such a cheerful and expansive mood.”

My father gave out a little laugh. “Ben is quite a character,” he said. “He’s come down to tell us all where we went wrong. He thinks the South ought to be able to change overnight.”

Richard Nottingham was glancing from my father to me, as if wondering whether this dispute was going to lead to blows among all this expensive china and crystal.

“I’m just hoping for a South that returns to the rule of law,” I said. “I just want a place where the Ku Klux Klan is not hanging black men from every available tree.” I knew that I was treading dangerously here, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Now you’re being plain ignorant,” my father said. “You don’t seem to remember that the Klan was outlawed about forty years ago.”

“I remember it very well,” said Livia Winkler. “My daddy said it was the end of civilization.”

Senator Winkler cleared his throat. “Now, Judge, you know as well as I do that outlawing something does not guarantee that it ceases to exist,” he said. “As a matter of fact, that’s one of the best ways to ensure its continuing existence-to forbid it!”

They glared at each other. It struck me that they’d had this argument before, when I was nowhere around. It also reminded me that there were many good men and women in the South, even here in Eudora.

I was about to say something in support of Winkler when a servant girl walked in bearing a large round cake, frosted white, on a silver platter.

Nottingham brightened. “Why, Lizzie, is that a hummingbird cake?”

“Of course it is. I had them make it just for you. Richard’s going off to Jackson next week. We’ll miss his birthday, but we can all celebrate tonight.”

Something happened then that sent an electrical jolt through my body. It was all I could do to keep from bolting upright in my seat.

As she said these words to her husband, I felt Elizabeth ’s hand gently pat the inside of my thigh.

“Ben,” she said, “you must try the cake.”

Chapter 54

“NO, SIR.”

“No, not today, Mr. Corbett.”

“No, sir, nothing today.”

Maybelle always had the same answer to the question I asked her at least once every day. First I would check the table in the front hall, then I’d convince myself that a letter had come and Maybelle was keeping it from me because she knew how anxiously I waited.

I would go ask her, and she would say, “No, sir.”

It had been more than a week since I’d written to Meg. I’d imagined that my love had fairly leapt off the page when she read it and that she would write back immediately.

That letter had not yet arrived.

Meanwhile I was keeping someone else waiting: President Roosevelt expected a report on what I had found out about lynching in and around Eudora. I had spent the past two evenings on a long letter to the president that gave precise locations, right down to the species of the hanging trees. I included the names of victims and the approximate times and dates of their murders.

Then I showed the letter to Abraham. He read it and said, “If it was me, I’d make it like a telegram. Short and sweet. ‘Dear Mr. President, it’s worse than you heard. Send the Army. Stop.’ ”

Abraham was right. I remembered years ago at Las Guasimas when Roosevelt spoke to me for the first time. He glared down from his horse. “Do we have provisions for an overnight, Captain?”

“Sir, I ordered the men to double their rations and to fill their canteens-”

“Stop!” Roosevelt commanded. “That was a yes-or-no question.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

And now it took Abraham to remind me of Roosevelt ’s fondness for a concise report.

“Send it to him in a wire,” he said.

“That’s a good idea. But I can’t send it from Eudora.”

The telegraph operator in town was Harry Kelleher, who was also the stationmaster. The moment I left the depot after sending my wire to the White House, Kelleher would personally see that the contents were passed on to every man, woman, and child in Eudora.

“Where can I go, Abraham?”

“Where’s the closest place where everybody doesn’t know who you are?”

I thought about that. “McComb,” I said.

McComb was the nearest sizable town, a farm center and railroad hub ten miles north. When I was growing up, McComb was nothing but a crossroads, but when the Jackson & Northern railroad extended its line and located a terminus there, it outgrew Eudora. McComb was only an hour’s carriage ride away, and it boasted Sampson’s, a fine restaurant specializing in New Orleans-style food: Creole jambalaya, grits and grillades, steak Diane.

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.