Chapter 75

“WELL, DAMN, BEN! I could have used some warning, you know? I got about the biggest family and the littlest house in the whole town, and you want to move in here? Damn it all to hell, Ben!”

That was the warm greeting I got from Jacob Gill, my oldest friend in the world, my hope for a roof over my head that night.

“Sorry, Jacob,” I said, “but I didn’t know anywhere else to go.”

He looked me over. I looked right back at him. Finally he crossed some line in his mind. He sighed, picked up one of my valises, carried it through the tiny parlor and into the tiny dining room.

“I reckon this is the guest room now,” he said, and finally offered up a half smile. “I’ll get some blankets; we can make a pallet on the floor-unless you want to sleep out in the smokehouse. Got nothing hanging in there, it might be more private for you.”

“This will be fine,” I said.

Jacob’s house was a sad sight on the inside. The few pieces of furniture were battered old castoffs held together with baling wire and odd ends of rope. The cotton batting was coming out of the cushions on the settee. In the kitchen, a baby’s cradle gave off an unpleasant aroma. A skinny cat nosed around the pantry, no doubt hoping to meet a mouse for lunch. Jacob said, “You want a drink?”

“Just some water would be good for me.”

“The pump’s on the back porch,” he said. “I need me a finger or two myself.”

He didn’t bother to pour the whiskey into a glass. He pulled the cork and took a big slug right out of the bottle.

“Well, that’s just fine, ain’t it? Drinking straight from the bottle, and it ain’t even lunchtime yet.”

This observation belonged to Charlotte, Jacob’s wife, who came in from the back porch with an infant in one arm and a pile of laundry in the other.

“Hello, Charlotte. Ben Corbett.”

“Yeah, I know who you are.” Her voice was cool. “I heard you were back in town.”

“Ben’s gonna be staying with us for a few days,” said Jacob. “I told him he could sleep in the dining room.”

“That’s grand,” Charlotte said. “That’s just wonderful. That oughta make us the most popular family in Eudora.”

Chapter 76

THE SECOND NIGHT I WAS at the Gill house, after a supper of leftover chicken parts and grits, Jacob suggested we go for “a walk, a smoke, and a nip.”

First he poured whiskey from the big bottle into a half-pint bottle, which he stuck in his trouser pocket.

He walked and drank. I walked and looked anxiously down every dark alley.

“You sure are one hell of a nervous critter tonight,” Jacob said.

“You’d be nervous too, if they beat you half to death and strung you up and left you for dead,” I said. “Excuse me if I tend to be a bit cautious after almost being lynched.”

A man came down the steps of the First Methodist church, looking as if he had been waiting for us.

I recognized him: Byram Chaney, a teacher at the grammar school. Byram had to be well up in his seventies by now; I had thought of him as elderly years ago, when he was teaching me how to turn fractions into decimals.

“Evening, Jacob,” he said. “Ben.”

Jacob turned toward the streetlight to roll a cigarette. “I hope Byram didn’t startle you, Ben,” he said.

“Glad you could join us this evening, Ben,” Byram said. “I think getting a firsthand look at things will be worthwhile for you. Jacob spoke up for you.”

Suddenly I realized that Byram Chaney had, in fact, been waiting for us. I turned to Jacob to find out why.

“I haven’t told him yet,” Jacob said to Byram.

“Told me what?”

“You’d best go on and tell him,” said Byram. “We’ll be to Scully’s in a minute.”

I knew Scully as a man who owned a “kitchen farm” on the road south of town. Everybody who didn’t have his own garden went to Scully’s for whatever vegetables were in season.

“What’s going on here, Jacob?”

“Calm down, Ben. We’re just going to a little meeting. Me and Byram thought it might be a good idea if you came along. I did speak up for you.”

“What kind of a meeting?”

“Just friends and neighbors,” he said. “Keep your mind open.”

“Pretty much half the people in town,” put in Byram.

“But they don’t like to be seen by outsiders,” said Jacob. “That’s why you’ll have to wear this.”

From his knapsack he pulled a white towel.

Then I realized it wasn’t a towel at all. It was a pointed white hood with two holes cut for eyes.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

“A Klan meeting?” I said.

“Keep your voice down, Ben,” Jacob said. “We’re standing right here beside you. We can hear.”

“You must be insane,” I said. “I’m not going to any Klan meeting. Don’t you know it’s illegal? The Klan’s been outlawed for years.”

“Tell the sheriff,” said Jacob. “He’s a member.”

As soon as I got over my shock at finding that my old best friend was a Ku Klux Klansman, I knew Chaney was right. I had to go along. This was exactly the kind of information Theodore Roosevelt had sent me down here to uncover.

Chapter 77

THROUGH THE HOLES in my hood I saw at least fifty men in white hoods and robes, walking in loose ranks along the dirt road. Jacob, Byram, and I fell right in with their step.

No one said anything until we were all inside Scully’s large old barn and the doors had been closed.

One man climbed up on a hay bale and ordered everyone to gather around. I followed Jacob toward the back wall of the barn.

“Our first order of business,” he said, “is to announce that we have a special guest attending our meeting this evening.”

He waved his hand-was he waving in my direction? There was no way he could know who I was, not under that hood.

Without a word Jacob reached over and snatched the hood off my head.

I stood revealed. The only man in the place without a mask covering his face.

A murmur ran through the crowd.

“Benjamin Corbett,” said the man on the bale. “Welcome, Ben. You are among friends here. We’re not the ones tried to hurt you.”

I sincerely doubted that. But then he took off his hood and I recognized Winston Conover, the pharmacist who had filled our family’s prescriptions for as long as I could remember.

One by one the men around me began taking off their hoods. I knew most of them. The Methodist minister. A farm products salesman. A conductor on the Jackson & Northern railroad. A carpenter’s assistant. The county surveyor. The man who did shoe repairs for Kline’s store. Sheriff Reese and his deputy. The man who repaired farm implements at the back of Sanders’ General Store.

So this was the dreaded Ku Klux Klan. As ordinary a group of small-town men as you’re likely to come across.

“Ben, we appreciate you showing up to let us talk to you.” It was Lyman Tripp. Jovial, chubby Lyman had the readiest smile in town. He was the undertaker, so he also had the steadiest business of anyone.

“Maybe you’ll see that we ain’t all monsters,” he said. “We’re just family men. We got to look out for our women and protect what’s rightfully ours.”

I didn’t quite know what he meant by “rightfully ours.”

Byram Chaney tied a gold belt around the waist of his robe. He climbed up on the hay bale from which Doc Conover had just stepped down.

“All right, let’s get it started,” he said.

The men stood around in their white sheets with their hoods off, conducting the most ordinary small-town meeting. They discussed the collection of dues, a donation they’d recently made to a widowed young mother, nominations for a committee to represent the local chapter at the county meeting in McComb.

Just when it began to seem as harmless as a church picnic, Byram Chaney said, “Okay now, there must be a recognizing of new business related to the niggers.”