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Meg had already turned her face away from the door. I could see from the heaving of her shoulders that she was crying, and that made me feel awful.
I walked the girls back to their room, where I tucked them in, covering them gently with the light cotton sheets that sufficed on hot nights like this.
I kissed Amelia, then Alice. Then I had to kiss Alice again, and Amelia, in that order, to even things out.
As I rose to leave, Amelia threw her skinny arms around me and tugged me back down to her side.
“Don’t go, Papa,” she said in a voice so sweet it nearly broke my heart. “If you go, we’ll never see you again.”
The moment Amelia said it, I had the terrible thought that my little girl just might be right.
Part Two
HOMECOMING
Chapter 19
I WAS SOON ENOUGH reminded of the dangers of the mission I’d undertaken for the president of the United States. Two days into my journey south, I was in Memphis, about to board the Mississippi & Tennessee train to Carthage, where I would switch to the Jackson & Northern for the trip to Jackson. I had just discovered some truly disturbing reading material.
I had been waiting when the Memphis Public Library opened its doors at nine a.m. A kindly lady librarian had succumbed to one of my shameless winks. She agreed to violate several regulations at once to lend me a number of back issues of the local newspapers, which I agreed to return by mail.
I had carefully chosen the most recent issues that carried sensational stories of lynchings on their front pages. Many of those appeared in the Memphis News-Scimitar and the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
I was instantly confused by one headline that declared, “Colored Youth Hung by Rope AND Shot by Rope.” The article explained that after the fifteen-year-old boy was strung up by his neck—he’d been accused of setting fire to a warehouse—the mob shot so many bullets at his dangling corpse that one bullet actually severed the rope. The boy’s body crashed to the ground, a fall that would surely have killed him had he not already been dead.
Another article blaring from the News-Scimitar concerned the lynching of a Negro who was the father of two young boys. The man was taken forcibly from the Shelby County Jail and lynched within a few yards of the entrance. The unusual thing here? A member of the sheriff’s department had gone to the man’s home and brought his sons to view their daddy’s lynching.
The “coverage” in these pieces read more like the review of a new vaudeville show or a lady pianist at a classical music concert. To wit:
The Everett lynching was far more gruesome than the Kelly lynching of but two weeks previous. Due to the unusual explosion of Thaddeus Everett’s neck and carotid arteries, this hanging was both more extraordinary and interesting than the afore-mentioned Kelly death.
And from the Memphis Sunday Times, a “critique” of a different lynching:
Olivia Kent Oxxam, the only woman privileged to be present at “Pa” Harris’s lynching in the River Knolls region, declared it to be “One of the most riveting events of my lifetime. I was grateful to be there.”
These articles made the lynchings seem so engrossing that they must surely surpass the new Vitagraph “flicker” picture shows for their entertainment value.
I folded the papers carefully and stashed them in my valise. Then I decided that the heat inside the train carriage was worse than the soot and grime that would flow in from the stacks after I opened the window. I made my move, but the damn window wouldn’t budge.
I was pushing upward with all my strength when the gentleman in the opposite seat said, “Even a strong young man like yourself won’t be able to open that window—without pulling down on the side latch first.”
Chapter 20
I LAUGHED AT MYSELF, then pulled on the latch. The window slid down easily. “I guess strength doesn’t help,” I said, “if you don’t have some brains to go along with it.”
My fellow traveler was middle-aged, paunchy, seemingly well-to-do, with a florid complexion and a gold watch fob of unmistakable value. He put out his hand.
“Henley McNeill,” he said. “Grain trader. I’m from Jackson.”
“I’m Benjamin Corbett. Attorney at law. From Washington.”
“Miss’ippi?” he said.
“No, sir. Washington, D.C.”
“Well, you are one very tall attorney, Mr. Corbett. I would bet those Pullman berths play havoc with the sleep of a man your size.”
I smiled. “I’ve spent my whole life in beds that are too short and bumping into ceilings that are too low.”
