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Japheth looked relieved. “Do y’all want to hear this or not?”
“Please,” L.J. said, straightening his face into a serious expression. “Please read on.”
“Jury selection will begin on September the seventeenth at nine o’clock a.m.,” he read.
“Goddamn, what is that, next Monday? That’s six days from today,” L.J. said. “Ben, you’re gonna have to scramble.”
“Wait. Wait. Wait,” Japheth said.
He read slowly, emphatically:
“Further, the Supreme Court has exercised its judicial discretion to appoint a judge to oversee this important and much-noted trial. The judge appointed is…”
Japheth glanced over to make sure we were listening. We absolutely were.
Then he read on:
“The judge appointed is a lifetime citizen of Eudora, the Honorable Everett J. Corbett.”
Chapter 92
SON OF A BITCH!
It was not illegal for the Mississippi Supreme Court to appoint my father to preside over a trial in which I was assisting the prosecution.
Not illegal, but wildly unusual, and absolutely deliberate.
I could have fought it, but I already knew that I wouldn’t. It gave us a second, decent ground for the eventual, inevitable appeal.
Most people in town, Japheth reported, were positively delighted with the news. Everyone knew that Judge Corbett was “fair” and “honest” and “sensible.” Judge Corbett “understands the true meaning of justice.”
“That is exactly what I am afraid of,” I said.
Having spent the first part of my life listening to my father pontificate, I knew one thing for certain: he might cloak himself in eloquence, reason, and formality, but underneath it all he believed that although Negroes might be absolutely free, thanks to the detested Mr. Lincoln, nowhere was it written that Negroes deserved to be absolutely equal.
Judge Corbett and men of his class had gradually enshrined that inequality in law, and the highest court in the land had upheld its finding that “separate but equal” was good enough for everybody.
Now the trial was less than a week away, and one huge question was still outstanding: who would the state of Mississippi send to prosecute the case?
&nb
sp; “My sources in the capital have heard nothing about it,” Japheth told L.J. and me. “It’s a big, holy secret.”
Chapter 93
A WHILE LATER, the three of us were sitting on the west veranda of L.J.’s house, watching the sunset and sipping bourbon over cracked ice.
“Well, you gentlemen are always acting so all-fired high and mighty,” Japheth said, “but you’ve yet to give me a single piece of information that I can use. Why don’t you start by sharing the names of the prosecution witnesses?”
“Watch out, L.J., he’s using one of his journalist’s tricks to get you to spill it,” I said.
“Me?” L.J. scoffed. “What do I know? I don’t know anything. I’ve been cut off by the entire town. I’m almost as much persona non grata as Mr. Nigger-Lover Corbett. Everybody from here to Jackson knows whose side I’m on. And you know any friend of Ben Corbett’s doesn’t have another friend between here and Jackson.”
I clapped his shoulder. “I appreciate what you’ve done, L.J.”
It was right then that we heard a deep tenor voice, with a hint of something actorly in the round tones, accompanying a firm bootstep down the upstairs hall.
“If you need a friend from Jackson, maybe I can fill the bill.”
