Frankly, I felt a bit reluctant to leave. There was something good about life as it happened in this modest little house. Certainly, the opportunity to see Moody every day was something I had enjoyed. But as much as that, I had enjoyed getting to know Abraham. With everything going against him—the death of his grandson, the increasing fear in the colored community, the lifetime of bigotry he had endured—Abraham was a man at peace with himself.
Just the night before, on a warm rainy evening when the mosquitoes were at their droning worst, we sat on a bench underneath the overhang of the porch.
We were working our way through a basket of hot corn muffins Moody had just brought out of the oven. I smiled up at her. She ignored me and turned back inside.
“Sometimes a man can sense something,” Abraham said. “Something small that can blossom up into trouble.”
“You mean, because we haven’t heard from Roosevelt?” I asked. “I don’t understand that at all. I almost got hanged for him.”
“This got nothing to do with the president,” he said, gazing off into the darkness. “I’m talking about another kind of business. Right here in my house.”
I swallowed the rest of the muffin and wiped my mouth, inelegantly, on the back of my hand. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had been hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“Nothing has happened, Abraham,” I said softly. “Nothing is going to happen.”
He didn’t look at me.
“I love that girl just about as much as I ever loved anybody,” he said. “Including her mama. And including even my dear departed wife. As for you—well, I done took you into my house, hadn’t I? That ought to show you, I hold you in high regard. You a fine man, Ben, but this just can’t be. It can’t be. Moody… and you? That is impossible.”
“I understand that, Abraham. I don’t think you ought to worry. Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but Moody hasn’t spoken a kind word to me since the day we met.”
He put his hand on my shoulder.
“And maybe you hadn’t noticed,” he said, “but that’s exactly how you can tell when a woman is in love with you.”
Chapter 73
FROM THE DAY after my hanging, someone was always awake and on guard at Abraham Cross’s house. During the day and the evening, Abraham and Moody took turns keeping watch from the front-porch rocker. Since I was the cause of all this, I took the dead man’s shift, from midnight till dawn.
Some nights I heard Abraham stirring, and then he would come out to sit with me for an hour or two.
One night, along about four a.m., I thought I heard his soft tread on the floorboards.
I looked up. It was Moody standing there.
“Mind a little company?” she said.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
She sat down on the bench beside the rocker. A foot or two away from me—a safe distance.
We sat in our usual silence for a while. Finally I broke it. “I’ve been busting to ask you a question, Moody.”
“Wouldn’t want you to bust,” she said. “What is it?”
“Is that the only dress you own?”
She burst out laughing, one of the few times I’d made her laugh.
It was the same white jumper she’d worn the day I met her and every day since. Somehow it stayed spotless, although she never seemed to take it off.
“Well, if you really want to know, I got three of these dresses,” she said. “All three just alike. Of all the questions you could have asked me, that’s the one you picked?” she said. “You are one peculiar man, Mr. Corbett.”
“I sure wish you would call me Ben. Even your grandfather calls me Ben now.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t do everything he does,” she said. “I’ll just keep on calling you Mr. Corbett.”
At first I thought it was moonlight casting that delicate rim of light around her face, lighting up her dark eyes. Then I realized that it was dawn breaking, the first streak of gray in the sky.