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We had already spoken our last words to each other.
Chapter 137
“ARE YOU STAYING for Abraham’s funeral?” L.J. asked. “I’ll go with you, Ben.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Moody already knows how I feel about him. And it’s definitely time for me to head back… you know…”
“North!” L.J. said. “Go ahead, say the word! You’re headed back up to damn Yankeeland to become a damn Yankee again!”
We were standing near the table in the War Room, where we’d spent so many hours plotting our strategies for the White Raiders Trial. I was just finishing packing.
“I’ve gone around and around in my mind, L.J., and for the life of me I don’t know what I would do differently,” I said. “If I had the luxury of doing it over again.”
“You did as much as you could, Ben. Most men wouldn’t even have tried to help.”
I slipped my razor and shaving brush into the little leather kit and tucked it in my valise. “Help,” I said. “Is that what we did? I think some of the help I gave ended up hurting them.”
“Go ask ’em. Go to the Quarters,” L.J. said, “and ask ’em if they’re worse or better off for what you did.
“I can have a man drive you up to McComb so you can get the earlier train to Memphis,” L.J. went on.
“No need for that. I’ll just take the good old two-oh-five.” I snapped the catches on my valise. “I might stop over in Memphis tonight and hear a bit of that music I told you about.”
“Sure you don’t want to stay here a day or two more?” L.J. asked. “Rest up?”
I shook my head. “It’s time to go. I’ve said my good-byes, and I suspect I’ve worn out my welcome in Eudora. In fact, I’m sure of it. My own father said as much.”
Chapter 138
THREE DAYS LATER I stepped off the train in Washington. My soles squeaked on the station’s marble floors when I walked across them, and I once again admired the acres of gold leaf and ranks of granite arches like victory gates. A man entering Washington through this portal was glorified and enlightened by the passage.
But one man, Ben Corbett, coming home after all these months, felt as lowly and insignificant as a cockroach scurrying along an outhouse floor.
My mind was a jumble, a clutter of worries. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had passed, and all the terrible things that might yet happen.
&
nbsp; Meg had never answered my letters. I thought it likely that I would return to an empty house, shuttered and forlorn, my wife and children having gone off to live with her father in Rhode Island.
I could imagine the walls empty of pictures, white sheets covering the furniture, our modest lawn overgrown with foot-high grass and weeds.
These were my dark thoughts as I made my way through happy families on holiday, returning businessmen, flocks of government workers, Negro porters in red coats, and bellboys in blue caps.
“Mr. Corbett, sir,” a voice rang out down the platform. “Mr. Corbett! Mr. Corbett!”
I stopped, searching the oncoming faces for the source of the greeting—if indeed it was a greeting.
“Mr. Corbett. Right here. I’m so glad I found you.”
He was a young man, short and slight, with wire-rimmed glasses and an intensely nervous stare. I had seen him somewhere before.
“Mr. Corbett, I’m Jackson Hensen. The White House?”
“Ah, Mr. Hensen,” I said. “What a surprise to see you here.”
He smiled hesitantly, as if not quite sure whether I’d made a joke. “Will you come with me, sir?”
“I’m sorry?” I looked down at his hand cupped on my elbow.
