If Jacob and I could hear their conversation this plainly, so could the men walking down the sidewalk toward them. George Pearson was doing most of the talking.
“Shoot, Lank, they couldn’t do a damn thing ’round here without us,” he said. “Let ’em try to get along without colored folks. Who’d curry their hosses and pitch their hay? Who’d they get to cut cane and pick cotton?”
Jacob looked at me. I looked back at him. We knew black boys were not supposed to talk this way.
The white men walked right past us and stepped down into the street. I don’t think they even registered our presence. When they heard what George was saying, they started walking faster, and then they ran. They were almost upon the three boys when one of the men boomed, “Hell, George, you one smart little nigger to figure all that out by yourself!”
Chapter 16
GEORGE PEARSON TURNED, and I saw nothing but the whites of his eyes. It was stupid of him to be talking like that in the open on Commerce Street, but he quickly demonstrated that he was smart enough to run.
Jacob and I watched him leap the horse trough in one bound and take off sprinting through the skinny alley beside the church. Leon Reynolds and his pals gave chase, huffing and cursing and yelling “Stop, nigger!”
“We better go home, Ben,” said Jacob. “I’m not kidding you.”
“No,” I said. “We’re going after them. Come on. I dare you.”
I knew Jacob would lay down his life before taking off in the face of a dare. Sure enough, he followed me. We kept far enough back so as not to be seen. I had not been a very religious boy up till then, but I found myself praying for George Pearson to get away. Please, God, I thought, make George run fast.
The men chased him all the way to the end of Court Street, out past the icehouse. As they went along, a couple more men joined the chase. George seemed to be getting away! Then, from out of nowhere, a bucket came sailing out of the icehouse door, tangling his feet and tripping him up.
Within seconds the men were on George. Leon Reynolds punched him right in his face. The man next to him hocked up a big wad of spit and let it fly. Another man reached down, grabbed George by the testicles, and twisted his hand.
“Holy God,” Jacob whispered in the bushes where we’d taken shelter. “They’re gonna kill him, Ben. I swear to God.”
The men yanked George up by one arm and set him stumbling in front of them. They taunted and teased and pushed him toward the swampy woods behind the icehouse. One of them had a torch. Then another torch was lit.
“We gotta do something,” I said to Jacob. “We gotta. I’m serious, boy.”
“You crazy? What in hell can we do? They’ll twist our balls off too.”
“Run home and get your daddy,” I said. “I’ll try to keep up with ’em.”
Jacob looked at me, plainly trying to gauge whether his departure now would mean he had failed to live up to my earlier dare. But finally he ran for help.
Leon Reynolds yanked George up hard by his ear. I found my hand clutching at the side of my own head in sympathy.
Two men lifted George as easily as if he were a cloth doll. Blood poured from his mouth, along with a load of bile and vomit.
One man held George at the waist while another pushed and pulled his head up and down to make him perform a jerky bow.
“There you go, nigger boy. Now you’re bowing and showing the respect you should.”
Then, leaning in, with one firm tug, Leon Reynolds pulled George’s ear clean off his head.
Chapter 17
I WANTED to throw up.
I stood ankle deep in the muck of the swamp, batting at the cloud of mosquitoes that whined around my face and arms. I was hiding as best I could behind a tangle of brambly vines and swamp grass, all alone and completely petrified.
In no time at all, the men had fashioned a rope into a thick noose with a hangman’s knot. It took even less time to sling the rope over the middle fork of a sizable sycamore tree.
The only sound in those woods was the awful grunting of the men, the steady metallic chant of the cicadas, and the loud beating of my heart.
“You know why you being punished, boy?” shouted one of the men.
There was no response from George Pearson. He must have fainted from the beatings or maybe the pain of losing his ear.
“We don’t appreciate boasting. We don’t appreciate it from no nigger boy.”
“Now, come on, Willy, ain’t it a little rough to throw a boy a rope party just for shootin’ off his stupid-ass mouth?” said another.
“You got another suggestion, Earl?” Willy said. “What other tonic would you recommend?”
I looked around for Jacob. Surely he’d had time to get home and come back with his father.
The men carried George to the sandy ground underneath the sycamore. One of them held up his head while the others slid the rope around his neck.
I didn’t know what I could do. I was just one boy. I wasn’t strong enough to take on one of these men, much less all of them, but I had to do something. I couldn’t just hide like a jack-rabbit in the woods and watch them hang George Pearson.
So I finally moved out of the shadows. I guess the slosh of my feet in swamp water turned their heads. I stood revealed in the light of the moon and their torches.
“Would you looka here,” said Willy.
“Who the hell is this?” said one of his friends.
“Ain’t but a little old boy, come out to give us a hand.”
I realized I was shivering now as if this were the coldest night of all time. “Let him go,” I squeaked, instantly ashamed of the tremor in my voice.
“You follered us out here to hep this nigger?” said Willy. “You want us to string you up next to him, boy?”
“He did nothing wrong,” I said. “He was just talking. I heard him.”
“Willy, that’s Judge Corbett’s kid,” said a tall, skinny man.
“That’s right,” I said, “he’s my daddy. You’re all gonna be in bad trouble when I tell what you did!”
They laughed as if I’d told the funniest joke they’d ever heard.
“Well, now, correct me if I’m wrong, young Master Corbett,” said Willy, “but I believe the law in these parts says if a nigger goes to boasting, his friends and neighbors got every right to throw him a little rope party and teach him how to dance.”
My throat was so dry I was surprised any sound came out. “But he didn’t do anything wrong,” I said again. For some reason I thought if I repeated myself, they would see the logic.
Willy put on a smile that held not a hint of amusement. “Boys, I believe we have got ourselves a pure-D, grade-A, number one junior nigger-lover.”
The other men laughed out loud. Hot tears sprang up in my eyes, but I willed them not to fall. I would not cry in front of these awful bastards, these cowards.
I recognized a tall, skinny one as J. T. Mack, the overseer at the McFarland plantation. He slurred his words as if he were drunk. “If this boy is half smart as his daddy, he’ll just turn his ass around and march on back home. And forget he ever come out here tonight.”
In two steps Willy was on me, gripping my arm, then my throat. J. T. Mack moved in to grab my other arm.
“Hold on, son. You can’t go home to daddy yet. We need a souvenir of your visit. Come on out of there, Scooter,” said J.T.
Out of nowhere came a dapper young man in a green-and-white-plaid suit, his hair slicked back with brilliantine. He looked about sixteen years old. He carried a wooden box camera on a large tripod, which he set up in the clearing about ten feet from the motionless body of George Pearson.
Scooter stuck his head under the black cloak attached to the camera and then pushed back out. “I can’t see nothing. It’s too dark. Bring your light in close to his face,” he said.