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.

Inside the courtroom there was no question who was in control: Judge Everett Corbett.

During the course of the trial, he had expelled four colored women from the gallery for reacting too loudly. He had found three reporters in contempt of court for referring in unflattering terms to his dictatorial ways. And he had sent an old colored man to jail for shouting, “The Lord hates a liar!” during one defendant’s testimony.

The first thing my father did on the trial’s last morning reaffirmed his imperial status.

“Now we are ready to deliver this case to the jury,” he said. “The testimony has been passionate on both sides. Tempers have run high. Outside interest has been remarkable by any standard. And thus, gentlemen of the jury, we have come to the crux of the matter. You have to let the facts speak for themselves. You will now hear from the prosecutor, Mr. Curtis, his last and best argument about how you’ll decide. Then you’ll hear the same from Mr. Lewis. And finally, it will be entirely up to you, the jury, to make your decision, as the framers of the Constitution intended. Mr. Curtis?”

Jonah rose with an impassive face. “Your Honor, the jury has heard quite a lot from me in this trial. More than enough, I think. So I’m going to let my colleague Mr. Benjamin Corbett deliver the summation for the state.”

Chapter 120

I GOT TO MY FEET, a little wobbly in the legs. The dumb-founded faces of my father, Loophole Lewis, and his three murdering clients gave me at least some pleasure.

It took my father only a moment to make the calculation: I had the right to speak, and there was nothing he could do about it. He smiled, crossed his arms, and sat back in his chair.

“I wondered if we were ever going to hear from Counselor Corbett,” he said. “Of course, as his father, I have heard a great deal from him over the years, and I look forward to sharing that pleasure with the rest of you.”

Appreciative laughter rolled through the room. I had no choice but to smile and try for a little joke of my own. “And, of course, as the proud son of my father, I can only say I have done at least as much listening over the years as talking,” I said. “I have learned a great deal that way.”

“Please proceed, Mr. Corbett,” my father said, “and let us decide for ourselves if that is true.”

The audience laughed again. My old dad had definitely won the first round.

I wondered what he saw, peering down at me from his bench. Did he see a Harvard Law graduate, a well-known Washington defense lawyer? Did he see a man of passion, righteousness, ambition?

No. He saw a boy crying when he fell off his rocking horse, a child furiously resisting a spoonful of the hated mashed carrots. He didn’t see me. He saw a powerless boy.

So I was determined that when I finished speaking, he would see a man; he might even see the real Ben Corbett.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “I will try not to disappoint you.”

Chapter 121

BENJAMIN E. CORBETT’S SUMMATION to the jury:

“Judge Corbett just told you that you have to let the facts speak for themselves. The only problem with that is, facts do not have voices of their own; they can’t actually speak. So I’m the one who is standing here to give voice to the facts. That is my job today, and I appreciate your willingness to give me an ear.

“It’s the middle of the night in the Eudora Quarters. Three men ride up to execute a search warrant. It’s two o’clock in the morning-hardly the most traditional time to conduct a search of private premises-but that is what these men have decided to do.

“Ah, but wait. There’s a girl in the house, granddaughter of the old dying man. She reads the warrant and accepts it. She doesn’t like it, she says, but it’s the word of the law, so she will not resist. Come on in, she says. Search our house. Torment us. Question us. Rifle through our belongings. We have committed no crime, there is no actual legal reason for you to want to search here. But she allows it. She opens the door. She lets them in.

“And yet even her total submission, her complete and immediate cooperation, are not enough for these men. The search warrant was simply a ruse to get in the door. They have not come here to do anything legal.

“They are here to torture and torment, and to kill, because they think it’s their right to kill anyone who gets in their way. To skirt around the law and execute anyone they decide is guilty. To evade juries like the one you gentlemen are sitting on today. They are there to kill the idea of fair trial, a jury of a man’s peers. They have come to get their way by using the gun, the knife, the rope. And the terrible rule of the mob.”

Calmly, meticulously, I began to lead them through the events of that night-the shooting and wounding of the guards at Abraham’s house, the death by kicking of Luther Cosgrove, the fatal shooting of Jimmie Cooper up on the roof, the spectacle of poor Abraham with a gun to his head.

And finally, I told them about my part in the whole thing: why I’d gone to Abraham’s house that night, how I knew the Raiders were coming, what I did and thought and felt at every moment. I explained how lucky Abraham and I had been to avoid being killed and to manage to bring these three Raiders to Phineas Eversman so the law could work as it is supposed to work.

“Now, Chief Eversman did his duty that night as an officer of the law. Not only that, he stuck his neck out, gentlemen. He did the honest, moral, upright thing-and that’s not always easy to do. He arrested these men and charged them, and he saw that they were brought to trial. He may have changed his mind since then about some things, but the fact remains that Chief Eversman knew instinctively that these men had to be stopped.

“He had no choice. He saw the blood. He smelled it-that’s how fresh it was. The blood of their victims was on the defendants’ hands when we brought them to him. It was on the toes of their boots.

“Now you gentlemen are in the same position the chief of police was in that night. You have heard the truth from the people of the Quarters who witnessed these brutal attacks, these murders. You have seen the blood.

“Let me put it to you frankly: the evidence has not been refuted, because it cannot be refuted.

“Gentlemen, outside this courthouse, there is a whole nation watching us. Reporters from all over the country have come to Eudora to see if our little town can rise above itself, rise above the customs and prejudices that have held sway down here.

“But that’s not why I want you to deliver the verdict you know to be right: a verdict of guilty on all counts. I don’t want you to do it because I think you should rise above your prejudices, whatever they may be. Or because I want you to show the world that Mississippi is not a place where murderers get away with their awful crimes.