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I REALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT I can tell you, Miss DuBose,” said Craig Baker.
DuBose had driven over in Jack’s Fiat the following morning and was seated opposite Baker in his office in downtown Norfolk.
Craig Baker was a mild-looking man in his early fifties, paunchy with graying hair and a trim mustache, and wearing a finely tailored blue suit. DuBose was surprised that he had even agreed to meet with her. Yet his manner was decidedly cautious.
“Your client is dead, Mr. Baker. She was murdered. If you can provide any information that might show why someone else would want to kill the Randolphs?”
“The attorney-client privilege survives the death of a client.”
“Yes, but I’m trying to prevent my clients from dying in the electric chair.”
“For what it’s worth, I am sympathetic to your position.”
“Is there any way that you can help me then?”
“I just don’t see how, I’m sorry.”
“Can you at least tell me what sort of law you practice?”
When he hesitated she said, “Surely you tell people what you do for a living. That cannot be confidential. And maybe I’d like to hire you one day,” she tacked on.
“You’re not married, are you?”
She looked startled. “Uh, why no.”
“Then I doubt you would have need of my services.”
She looked puzzled, but as realization spread over her features, Baker smiled and nodded. “That’s right. I’m a divorce lawyer. Does that help you?”
Later, DuBose drove back to Freeman County. She passed by broad tobacco fields, and also endless rows of tiny corn plants that would not be ready to harvest until September or so. She knew that tobacco plants ripened from the bottom to the top and that they took about two to three months to be ready for harvest. You could get multiple yields from one plant, and it was a good cash crop for both large and small farming operations.
DuBose also knew the whole country had profited off the cotton crop, from plantation owners in the south to factory owners in the north, as well as multiple countries that imported the commodity. Cotton production had made America an economic power, casting wealth across the land. The only ones who had not profited were the slaves who labored to plant it, pick it, and carry it to market. They had done all of that terribly hard work and helped build this country, for centuries. And in return they had received nothing except continued enslavement.
DuBose had spent years in the south litigating cases. Because of that she probably knew more about growing and harvesting tobacco and cotton than most people. And she had read extensively about what had happened once the Union prevailed in the war. And that had led directly to where they were right now.
After the Civil War, the federal government had given former slaves land to farm so they could become self-sustaining. This land was often part of plantations where they had once labored as slaves. Meanwhile, Black men were given the right to vote, and they registered in large numbers, electing to office many Black politicians. Schools opened to teach them to read and write, and the former slaves were on their way to building new lives in freedom, and becoming productive members of society. It had all looked promising as America seemed on the verge of turning the page on the ugliest part of its history and becoming far stronger and more robust in the process, as Black people were finally included in the American Dream.
However, under intense pressure from mostly Southern politicians, the federal government reneged on its promises to the former slaves, pulled troops from the South, and with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan quickly came voter suppression, riots, and murderous rampages, with whole Black sections of towns wiped out. Soon, there were no longer any Black elected officials, or Blacks who could vote without threat of being killed.
This had all happened with alarming swiftness, but then bad things very often did, while positive change took considerably longer.
Wealthy whites once more owned the land, and they made the laws. They fashioned arrangements with poor Blacks and whites to work the soil as sharecroppers all year without formal pay. Since these folks had no other means of supporting themselves or their families, they really had no choice. They were forced to purchase their seeds, food, and tools at inflated prices from the landowners and pay high rents for the shacks in which they lived—which was, ironically, often old slave housing. At the end of the year, after the crops had been harvested and sold, the owner would meet with the sharecroppers and go over the “books” of which the owner had sole control. And virtually every time the owner, who had already made his money, would tell the sharecropper that he owed the owner money. And this debt would be added to prior years, effectively making it impossible for the sharecropper to ever be free of this burden.
And when Black sharecroppers tried to leave and migrate north or west for gainful employment that actually paid them for their labors, the police would be waiting at the train or bus stations, where they would arrest them on some bogus charge. They would then be told that they would have to work for a decade or more in order to make good on the “wrongs” they had committed. It was just another form of slavery that continued to this day. And once more Black—and poor white—parents watched their children grow up in a country that really had no place for them, and that would do all it could to ensure no version of the “American Dream” would ever be possible, for them.
As DuBose passed a modest building set back off the road, she slowed and then stopped the car. She stared at the place for a few moments, trying to make up her mind. Finally, she pulled the Fiat into the parking lot.
CHAPTER 54
DUBOSE STARED UP AT THE church. Her mother had been a devout Catholic all her life. By contrast, DuBose’s devotion had been haphazard over her adult years and then had totally faded.
She got out of the Fiat and stood in front of the house of worship, again wondering whether to go in. She turned back to the car twice but then finally reached an internal resolution and entered the Catholic church. She made the sign of the cross with a few drops of holy water taken from the marble font just inside the front doors. She walked slowly up the aisle, past the rows of pews, breathing in faded aromas of incense and the mustiness of the old building, until she reached the altar. She genuflected and stayed on her knees, her hands clasped, a remembered prayer forming on her lips that she wanted to say on behalf of Lucy Lee and her family.
“Excuse me?” said an agitated voice.
She turned to see an elderly priest in his black cassock and white collar striding purposefully toward her. Behind his thick specs was a pair of angry eyes.
“Excuse me, what are you doing here?” he demanded.
