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Abraham continued telling his story in precise, unwavering detail. Without any prompting from Jonah, he pointed out and positively identified two of the defendants.
“That one there, I saw him through the front window,” he said, pointing at the defense table.
Jonah asked him to be more specific.
“That one on the right,” he said. “Stephens. He shot Jimmie Cooper dead.”
“You’re sure it was Mr. Stephens you saw?”
“No doubt about it,” said Abraham. “And then that one there—Mr. Madden—he come into the parlor where I was, with another one of them Raiders. A man he called Harold.”
“And what did Mr. Madden do?”
“He says to this Harold, ‘You watch this old nigger real good. Keep your gun on his neck.’ Then he went back outside, Madden did.”
“And the one he called Harold—he stayed there with you?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did he keep a gun on you?”
“Yes, sir. Up against my skull. And he grabbed Moody too. Not in a nice way.”
“And how did you respond to that, Mr. Cross?”
Abraham scratched his old head, closed his eyes for a moment. Then he spoke.
“Well, sir, to tell you the truth I didn’t have to respond.”
“And why is that?”
“Because a minute later, Ben Corbett come into the room, and my granddaughter Moody…”
He stopped.
“Please continue,” Jonah said.
“She pushed a kitchen knife into Harold’s back.”
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Chapter 107
“SO, LET ME SEE if I’ve got this straight, Mr. Cross.”
Maxwell Hayes Lewis stood up to begin his cross-examination of Abraham.
“You were lying in your living room, half asleep. Or maybe you were asleep and dreaming part of the time, you’re not really certain. You woke up… or you think you woke up… you looked out that window and saw a man you thought was Mr. Stephens pulling the trigger on a pistol.”
Jonah said, “Your Honor—”
“Overruled,” my father said.
“This is supposed to be a cross-examination,” Jonah said. “Could he get to a question sometime today?”
“I said overruled,” my father repeated.
“Oh, I’m asking him a question,” Lewis said. “I’m asking him if I’ve got his story straight. Mr. Cross, you said you saw this man shooting a pistol. But in fact you never saw him shoot anyone. You never saw anyone take a bullet from Mr. Stephens’s gun, did you? You can’t follow the path of a bullet with your eyes.”
