Chapter 131

I THOUGHT I would be standing guard alone on the porch that evening, but at midnight Moody appeared-wearing a clean white jumper, of course.

“I couldn’t sleep, thinking how you hadn’t had nothing to eat the whole day long.” She set before me a plate of butter beans, field peas, and shortening bread.

The minute I smelled it, I was starving. “Thank you kindly,” I said.

“You’re welcome kindly,” she said, easing down to the chair beside me.

I dove in. “There was this old colored lady who raised me,” I said, “and she always sang, ‘Mammy’s little baby loves short’nin’-’ ”

“Hush up, fool!” Moody said.

I held up both hands in surrender. “All right, all right,” I said, laughing.

“You can’t help it, I reckon,” she said, shaking her head. “No matter how hard you try, you are always gonna be a white man, the whole rest of your life.”

“I expect I am,” I said, taking a bite of bread.

We watched the moon rising over the swamp from Abraham’s front porch. We heard the gank, gank of the bullfrogs and the occasional soft call of a mourning dove staying up late.

We sat in silence for a while. Then Moody spoke.

“You think they coming tonight?”

I sighed. “You know they’ll want to teach us a lesson.”

We heard a groan from inside. Moody leaped up and I followed her into the parlor.

Cousin Ricky was there, at Abraham’s bedside, reading from the open Bible on his lap. Abraham looked too peaceful to have given out that groan just a moment before.

“You are the light of the world,” Ricky read. “A city set on a hill cannot be hid.”

We crept back out to the porch. After a time Moody said, “You made Papaw’s last summer a good one.”

“He’s one of the finest men I’ve met,” I said. “Of course, you know that.”

She touched the back of my hand. It crossed my mind that we might kiss each other now. Also it crossed my mind that we might not.

I’ll never know what could have been.

Suddenly there was a gunshot, then another, the clatter of hoofbeats, lots of horses.

We stood up, unable to see the men yet, but we could hear their voices in the darkness. We hurried inside before they could drop us where we stood.

“There they go, Sammy,” a man yelled. “Nigger-lovin’ Yankee and his nigger whore.”

It was unfolding just like the first White Raiders attack: gunfire everywhere, men jockeying their horses into position in the dark, the hatred in their voices.

This time though, there was a difference.

The Eudora Quarters was ready-at least I hoped so.

Chapter 132

THERE HAD NEVER BEEN A FIGHT like this one in the state of Mississippi, and maybe anywhere else in this country. One way or the other, we were about to make some history.

The Raiders must have thought we were too stupid to know what was going to happen or too scared to defend ourselves. It never occurred to them that Moody and my little stroll down the sidewalk might have been deliberate, a provocation, and that they were riding into a trap.

There were nine of them this time. That’s how confident they were that we wouldn’t resist. What arrogance-to come into the Quarters with this pack of their friends, nine of them among hundreds of Negroes.

“Ricky, go around!” Moody yelled through the window. “We’ll meet you on the other side!”

“You stay here,” I told her. “Your job is to guard Abraham.” She started to argue but gave up when I placed a snap-load pistol in her hand.

I stuck a loaded pistol in each of my trousers pockets, lifted the shotgun, and swung around just in time to stop three men dead in their tracks at the door.

I recognized them at once. There was Roy, who’d been shot in the arm in the first White Raiders attack, and Leander Purneau from the cotton gin. Best of all was the fat redheaded man in the middle, the surprised-looking fellow at whose nose both barrels of my shotgun now pointed. This was none other than Henry Wadsworth North, former defendant, murderer.

In my mind I squeezed the trigger and watched his limited supply of brains spatter all over the screen door behind him. I felt a jolt of pleasure at the prospect of being the one to end Henry North’s life.

But I couldn’t shoot the man like this. It just wasn’t in me.

His mouth twisted up into a smile. “What you gonna do, Corbett, have me arrested again?”

From out of nowhere he brought up a small pistol.

My finger tightened on the trigger. “Drop it or I’ll blow your head off,” I said. “Do not doubt me for a second! I want to shoot you!”

He let the pistol drop to the floor. All at once hands seized him and dragged him over backwards-

Here they were, the people of the Quarters, bearing guns and knives, pitchforks and sharpened sticks, clublike lengths of straight iron. A dozen men swarmed in from the porch, seizing the Raiders and dragging them outside.

Gunfire echoed, and I heard more horses-a second wave of Raiders. But here came our reinforcements too, pouring out of nearly every door in the Quarters, bearing weapons or no weapons at all, swarming down the street and around Abraham’s house. They dragged Raiders down off their horses and set upon them with clubs, rocks, and farm implements.

Every blow they struck was violent payback for a lynching, a hanging, a beating, a murder. I heard the thud of club against flesh, the crack of rock striking bone. Terrible cries erupted as the colored men overwhelmed the Raiders, avenging the lynchings of their brothers, the oppression and torture and murder of fathers and friends.

I saw Doc Conover swinging a long rifle like a club at a woman who was down on her knees, covering her head with both arms. Then I saw a man knock Conover senseless with a fireplace poker to his skull.

Lyman Tripp, the undertaker, was on the ground, surrounded by men kicking him in the ribs. I remembered how happy he had been to hang a Jew, so I didn’t feel sorry for him. Not for any of them.

But then, over the racket of punches and shouts, I heard more horses approaching. There were many horses, bearing reinforcements for the other side.

Chapter 133

“CORBETT!” A MAN SHOUTED at the top of his lungs.

I stepped out onto the porch to see none other than Phineas Eversman on a fine black mare, wearing his black cowboy hat with the badge pinned to the brim. “You are under arrest,” he said, “and that nigger girlfriend of yours.”

The fight was swirling all around us, defenders chasing and shouting, new waves of attackers coming in from the woods. It seemed unbelievable that Eversman would be trying to make an arrest in such a setting.

I trained my shotgun on his chest. “Get your ass down off that horse, Phineas.”

“You put your gun down, Ben,” said a voice behind me.

I turned to find a revived Doc Conover with a nasty twelve-gauge shotgun leveled at me.

“Hey, Ben,” Doc said. “I meant to bring your oil of winter-green, but I forgot.” He chuckled.

A shot rang out and the gun flew from his hands. Conover screamed and grabbed his elbow. Ricky ran up and scrambled after his gun.

I glanced around to see who had fired the shot. Good God!-It was ancient Aunt Henry in the doorway of Abraham’s shack, blowing smoke from the long barrel of a Colt revolver. She nodded at me and went back inside.

I heard a loud crack and turned to find Eversman down off his horse with a big bullwhip in his hand, a whip straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It had a black leather-wrapped stick for a handle and three little stinger-tips at the end of the whipcord. Eversman cracked it again, with a report louder than a pistol shot.