When a disturbing postcard arrives at his Atlanta office, Emerson knows he must report it to the NAACP. The postcard, sent by the mysterious Lureen from Abbotts Creek, Arkansas, depicts yet another lynching. Emerson agrees to travel to Abbotts Creek to investigate, but he knows doing so poses great risk. Emerson only passes as white, and this Lureen knows his face.
Emerson knows one day his luck will run out. And when he arrives in Abbotts Creek, he soon discovers that day might have come at last.
“The Monster in Our Midst” by Edgar Award-nominee Kris Nelscott is free on this website for one week only. The story’s also available as an ebook on Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and from other online retailers.
The Monster in Our Midst
Kris Nelscott
“I ask not only black Americans but white Americans, are you not ashamed of lynching? …The nation today is striving to lead the moral forces of the world in support of the weak against the strong. Well, I’ll tell you it can’t do it until it conquers and crushes this monster in its own midst.”
—James Weldon Johnson
NAACP Field Secretary
The National Conference on Lynching
May 10, 1919
She found the postcard next to the cash register at a general store in a small town in Arkansas. The hand-tinted photograph caught her attention. She picked it up and nearly dropped it in surprise, then glanced at the stout man who owned the place.
He had been measuring a pound of dried beans for her onto a white scale mounted on a solid oak counter. The entire store smelled of spices and coffee, with an undercurrent of Virginia pipe tobacco.
The stout man had dark mistrustful eyes and a fat, petulant mouth. He wore a heavy apron over his white shirt, and his black pants had worn gray at the knees.
He was measuring her as surely as he was measuring those beans.
“My,” she said. “Is this what I think it is?”
“I dunno, miss,” the stout man said. “What do you think it is?”
“Is this that nigra what gave you all the trouble last fall?” she asked. “I heard about these dealings the first time I came through here—what was it, September? Everyone was talking about how safe they was feeling, now that it’d all ended.”
Apparently, she sounded sympathetic enough. The stout man smiled at her, although the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“That’d be the one,” he said.
He scraped some of the beans off the top of the pile, then tied the white bag he’d put them in.
He paused, then asked pointedly, “Who’re your people?”
She’d run into that question before, and knew how to reply, no matter what name she was answering to.
“My people are in Atlanta now,” she said, “but I was raised due south of here. I’m Lureen Taylor.”
“Thomas Mosby,” he said, almost begrudgingly.
“My husband’s passed,” she said as if she were a lonely woman, unable to stop sharing, “and I don’t like Atlanta. So I’m looking for a good community with solid values where I can live out my days in relative quiet.”
She wasn’t that old, but old enough to make the story believable. It usually softened men like Thomas Mosby, although it didn’t seem to soften this one, maybe because he had seen her surprise when she picked up the postcard.
She still held it between her thumb and forefinger. If she wanted to stay in this little community for even a few days, she needed to alleviate his suspicions.
“I heard about such cards,” she said, waving it slightly. “I have never seen one made from a real event. Usually I seen the photographs of buildings or the paintings from history, never one from a real moment.”
She still couldn’t bring herself to look at it closely.
“We been recording important doings here since before the war,” he said. “We commemorate the things we’re proud of.”
The test comment. She smiled. She was committed now.
“Like you should,” she said, and ran her gloved hand over the postcard’s surface as if it pleased her. “Add this to my purchases, please.”
“I can post it for you,” he said.
“Can you?” She looked pleasantly surprised, even as she felt dismayed. She didn’t have people in Atlanta. She only knew one person there, and only because she’d been told to watch for him. Their paths had crossed on a dark and rainy afternoon three months ago in West Texas. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t realized who she was, and probably wouldn’t recognize her now.
But she kept track of him there, knowing the danger he’d been in perhaps better than he had.
The kind of danger she was in now.
Thomas Mosby stared at her.
“Do you have a pen?” she asked. “I’ll just put a little note on it, and we can send it. That way, my people will know I’ll be all right here.”
“I most surely do, Mrs. Taylor,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel. He came over to her, handed her a pen and inkwell, and watched as she wrote:
Since you worried I would end up in a community of strangers, I thought I should let you know how safe this little town makes me feel.
She signed it Love, Lureen, and then addressed the card, hoping against hope that nothing else would rouse Thomas Mosby’s suspicions.
As soon as the ink was dry, he took the postcard from her and put it in a mailbag, but not before looking at the photograph. He nodded at it, as if he approved.
She forced herself to look down at the rest of the pile, since she couldn’t buy another. Mosby would ask why she wasn’t mailing that one, and they both knew a genteel woman wouldn’t keep the postcard as a souvenir.
The body hanging from the streetlamp was mercifully blurry. But the body was clearly male with skin darker than the skin of every person in the crowd. Some were looking up happily, others holding pistols. One young man near the post held a Bowie knife as if he planned to use it.
She wasn’t going to ask if they’d cut and dried some actual souvenirs. She didn’t want to hear the answer, suspecting it would be in the affirmative.
“It was not two blocks from here,” Mosby said. “Right outside the courthouse. The new sheriff, he thought that he could send that boy to Little Rock. And, truthfully, that boy might be in Little Rock, if Little Rock is your version of hellfire.”
Then Mosby laughed, a loud braying sound that hurt almost as much as his words.
The hair rose on the back of her head, but she smiled anyway, as if she thought him the most amusing creature she’d ever seen.
She took her coin purse out of her bag. She couldn’t stay in the store much longer before she started shivering.
“How much do I owe you, Mr. Mosby?” she asked.
He told her. After she handed him the money, he held the small cloth sack he’d prepared for her.
“Welcome to Abbotts Creek, Mrs. Taylor,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Mosby,” she said. “Words fail when I try to tell you how happy I am to be here.”
***
The postcard arrived on Emerson West’s desk on a bright May morning, in a stack of mail bundled and tied with a harsh brown string. The warm yellow sunlight streamed across his oak desk, which he’d had made special back when he opened his detecting agency a decade ago.
He liked the early mornings; the office was brighter than it would be for the rest of the day, giving him a sense of possibility. He hadn’t lost his optimism in the face of everything he’d investigated, or the frustrations he encountered. But sometimes he needed something as simple as sunlight to remind him of the good in the world.
Fortunately, most of the jobs he had done since he returned to Atlanta had been small ones such as accompanying clients who couldn’t read or write to the courthouse to fill out paperwork, thereby ensuring that the white government clerk didn’t misspell or simply fail to file the pertinent form. Some jobs were a little larger, mostly occasioned by America’s entrance into the war a year ago April. So many young men had joined up without telling their families, and finding the documentation or getting someone to reveal the military records was harder than it should have been.
Now, with 1918 not quite half done, rumors had started that the war would end within six months, but Emerson had no idea how. The newspapers proudly proclaimed that thousands of men per day were sailing overseas to get involved in Europe’s conflict, which meant that thousands of men would die there.
Emerson was privately glad that he was too old to consider going to war. Twenty years ago, he would have proudly joined up, although back then, he would have had to make a choice between enrolling under a lie to become a respected soldier or telling the truth and serving in a segregated unit.
His light brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes made it easy for him to pass for white. He had studiously avoided passing because it meant disavowing his family. His mother had skin the color of coffee with cream. His father was darker, but was at least one-quarter white. Emerson’s paternal grandfather had been the man who owned his grandmother. Emerson’s mother never said where her white blood had originated.
Emerson had never pressed her, and now the time had passed. His parents both died ten years on now, just after he married. His wife was gone too—childbirth had taken her and the baby—and Emerson saw no point in making new ties.
These days, he passed more often than he had in all of his youth. However, he only did so when he needed information for his detecting business.
The detecting agency had started as a lark, but it had become his life. And because he was now free of family and obligation, he could go places, and do things he would never have considered as a much younger man.
The postcard slid out before he even had a chance to untie the string. He saw the back first, his name written above the words “Atlanta, Georgia,” which were the only things that served as any kind of address.
The postmark had been made four days before in Abbotts Creek, Arkansas. He did not know anyone there. He had never heard of Abbotts Creek before this moment.
The same confident hand that had addressed the card to him had also written:
Since you worried I would end up in a community of strangers, I thought I should let you know how safe this little town makes me feel.
Love, Lureen
He didn’t know anyone named Lureen. But he had seen this handwriting three times before. Before he looked through his files to make certain his memory was accurate, he turned the postcard over—and dropped it, wiping his hand on his black pants almost without thinking.
He let out a breath, reminded himself that he had seen worse, and picked up the postcard. It was a photograph showing a man hanging from a street lamp, with dozens of whites around him, most of them looking like they had achieved something great.
The dead man was blurry, probably in his death throes, and if he had been touched up, he had only had his skin darkened. But other spots of color were added throughout the postcard—red neckties and handkerchiefs, some light pink added to women’s cheeks and lips, and a bit of silvery paint along parts of the lamppost.
In thick white ink along the bottom, someone had written September 19, 1917.
Emerson turned the postcard back over. He couldn’t look at the dead man any longer, nor could he stomach those jubilant white faces.
He had spent nearly two years investigating lynchings for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Walter White, who had started the Atlanta branch, had hired Emerson to accompany him on several trips into rural Georgia to investigate reports of lynchings.
White, like Emerson, could—and often did—pass.
Once Emerson was trained, White engaged his services using NAACP money to send him all over the South to gather information. Emerson had gone to Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, and things had mostly gone smoothly. The only time he felt truly unmasked was in West Texas, not because he got caught or even challenged, but because he couldn’t pass for a Texan. His accent was wrong, and the attitudes he’d learned to mimic, so common in the rest of the rural South, seemed dangerously liberal in the tiny Texas towns to which he’d been assigned.
Emerson sat in his office chair and looked at that postcard. He had heard from Walter White just last week, and White had said nothing about a new case. The NAACP was turning its findings into a report they would publish to help support Congressman Leonidas Dyer’s anti-lynching bill.
With the war, the excellent performance of the colored troops on the field of battle, and the horrible race riots last year in Dyer’s home state of Missouri, the NAACP felt the time was right.
With all that Emerson had seen, he had no idea if there was a good time for that sort of bill, even with strong white Republican support. But his was not to question. His was to gather facts, so that the report to the NAACP was accurate, not filled with hate-talk and rumor.
He’d been paid well to venture into communities his father could never have walked through. And Emerson tried, always, to keep in mind the victims, especially the ones who were murdered and buried without so much as a by-your-leave. He suspected that some of the young men he’d searched for these past two months had not joined up to fight Over There, as the song said, but instead, had died horribly in some dark Georgia backwater, where no one would talk to outsiders, not even outsiders with the right accent and skin color.
But his beliefs didn’t matter. He kept doing the work, knowing someone had to report the truth. He knew that very few people could even attempt it.
Generally, the request for information came from the Atlanta or New York NAACP offices, not directly like this. But if the handwriting here was from the person who had sent the previous postcards, then perhaps he owed her enough to figure out why she had sent the card directly to him.
He stood and went to the matching wooden filing cabinet and unlocked the bottom drawer. That was where he kept his lynching files. He was afraid—even now—that he could get in trouble for the work he had done, so he kept them hidden. If someone wanted the files badly enough, they could break in, but he knew the lock would discourage the most casual searcher.
Emerson pulled out three, all of which had come from Walter White. Two had been handed to Emerson in the Atlanta offices; the most recent one had been mailed from the New York office. He opened the files, one on top of the other, and pulled out trifolded envelopes that White had included in the larger envelopes he sent.
The Atlanta trifolded envelopes had been addressed to Walter White at his former home address in the city. The New York trifold was addressed to Walter White care of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, New York, NY, the same sort of vague address that had shown up on this postcard.
Inside those envelopes were postcards decorated with equally grim photographs, and a single page from what clearly had been a much longer letter, detailing what little the correspondent knew about the depicted scenes.
One postcard was an actual illustration, with a hand-drawn caricature of a young colored man dancing across flames as he tried to flee white-hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan. The illustration looked like something from a minstrel show, and disturbed Emerson almost as much as did the two photographic postcards.
Their subject matter was the same as the one on Emerson’s desk. He did not look at the photographs again; he did not need to. They were indelibly embedded in his mind, graphic depictions of murder, something the photographer (and those who sent the postcard) believed to be a celebration.
None of those postcards had any writing on them. The letter writer had found them and sent them, along with whatever the correspondent had discovered, to Walter White for investigation.
But the one Emerson had just received was different. It had writing on it. It was addressed to Emerson directly.
And it was signed Lureen.
He had always suspected the handwriting belonged to a woman, although he could not say why. Now, he had confirmation of it.
Emerson ran his fingers along the postcard.
He needed to speak to White before he went to Arkansas all alone. And Emerson needed to discover if White knew more about this mysterious Lureen than he had told Emerson in the past.
***
The Atlanta Branch could not afford the expense of a telephone, not even one with a party line. But the office did have use of a telephone at the Atlanta University, and that telephone was expensive and private.
Emerson had graduated from Atlanta University eighteen years ago now with a teaching degree he had used for only a decade. Still, he was proud to say he was part of the oldest Negro university in the United States—not that anyone asked any longer.
The telephone was located in the office of the president, and could only be used with advance permission or on NAACP business. Emerson had placed the postcard in an envelope, planning to use it with the secretary if she refused to let him call the New York office.
She did not refuse. Apparently, she understood the look on his face.
The president’s office was book-lined and smelled of cigars. Papers strewn about the desk did not concern Emerson, but the secretary covered them with a blotter, apparently worried that he would snoop.
He stood at the front of the desk, and picked up the black candlestick telephone. He placed the cone-shaped receiver against his right ear and spoke into the mouthpiece, asking the operator to call the New York office of the NAACP. He hoped she would not remain on the line after the call connected, but he couldn’t guarantee it.
He also couldn’t ask her to sign off, because that would alert her to the private nature of the call, and would probably make her more likely to listen in.
A young man answered, and Emerson asked for Walter White. The young man set the receiver down and went in search. Feeling nervous, Emerson glanced at the clock on a nearby bookshelf. The local branch would be angry if this call went on too long. He hadn’t approved it through them, and telephone calls were expensive.
White answered within a few minutes.
Emerson quickly told him about the postcard, and concluded with, “I want you to decide what I should do with this. I can forward it to you. However, if you would like me to investigate, all I need is the promise of an authorization and payment. I still have half your fee from the last job in my bank accounts and can fund this trip myself.”
White did not answer immediately, which made Emerson’s heart pound. He knew that the connection had not been severed because he could hear the hum of the wires.
Finally, White said, “I am disturbed by the method in which the postcard reached you. It is not our agreed-upon method.”
Emerson knew that, which was why he was calling. He was about to say so, when White continued.
“The woman who calls herself Lureen here is to contact me with evidence she finds of lynchings that she believes I am unaware of. I am then to dispatch an investigator, or to go myself in some cases.”
Emerson closed his mouth, and silently cursed the infernal machine he was using. He couldn’t see White, which interfered with the communication. He knew that White spoke deliberately, a habit that had served him well, and often his voice remained calm while his blue eyes blazed with fury.
Emerson wondered if that were true now.
“You can reach Arkansas faster than I can,” White said. “I would like you to investigate. Your normal fee will be awaiting you when you return.”
“Let me clarify,” Emerson said. “You want me to do what I usually do. You want me to gather facts on the lynching from last September.”
“Yes,” White said.
“I am not going to search for Lureen,” Emerson said, deliberately not making that a question.
“Good heavens, no,” White said. “I would hope that she has left the vicinity already.”
“Hope is one thing,” Emerson said, thinking of the missing young men he had been unable to track down. “But it is not certainty.”
“Indeed,” White said. “However, my agreement with this woman we are calling Lureen does not include running to her rescue. She does know that we have a legal budget should she get in trouble with the law.”
Emerson’s heart was pounding hard. “Does a legal budget matter? Isn’t she in danger of dying the same way the man in the postcard did?”
“Generally, no,” White said, his tone so curt that Emerson knew he wasn’t to ask more about the woman.
Still, he couldn’t resist one last question. “What is your agreement with her?”
“She found us,” White said. “She does this of her own accord, for reasons she has not explained. Every time I have offered to pay her or asked her to have an assistant, she has not only refused, but she has gone silent. However, I did ask her one favor three months ago. I asked her to keep an eye on you, and if you got into trouble to contact one of our branches—and me—immediately.”
“West Texas,” Emerson murmured.
“Yes,” White said. “We lost our normal investigator there. We have not found him to this day. I was afraid the same might happen to you. I wanted her to let me know the moment trouble began.”
“And that’s how she knew my name,” Emerson said.
“Yes,” White said. “It was quite a risk, since, to my knowledge she and I have never met. But I believed she would give you no trouble in Atlanta.”
“She hasn’t,” Emerson said, although he wondered what the post office thought of his receipt of such a postcard.
“I could send a different investigator if you are worried,” White said.
“Are you?” Emerson asked.
“It is unusual,” White said, “and she knows what you look like. There is more risk than you would normally face.”
Emerson clutched the center of the candlestick phone. He already knew these jobs were dangerous ones. And as White said, Emerson was closer than someone from New York or Boston. Emerson was a trusted investigator. So many others lacked the finesse to work in the rural areas where the bulk of these murders occurred.
“I understand the risk,” Emerson said. “I accept it. You will get the usual report from me in a week or two.”
After he hung up the receiver, he sat for a moment in the unfamiliar office, breathing in the lingering cigar smoke.
He had just volunteered to go back into the fight, one that had already exhausted him and taken most of his sleep, as surely as it had stolen a lot of his good nature.
But the images he had seen, the stories he had been told, would not leave his mind. He would get little rest here or in Abbotts Creek.
He set the telephone down and stood up.
He was going to go, even if it was the last thing he ever did.
***
Abbotts Creek was in Phillips County, slap dab in the middle of the Arkansas Delta. For such a small place, the town itself seemed prosperous enough. Emerson’s train had veered past what was clearly the main street that had several red brick buildings that seemed new—no more than fifteen years old.
The train station itself looked to support a much larger town. It had two levels and a large arrivals area, with solid wood benches and marble floors. The entire interior smelled new.
As Emerson and four others emerged from the train, the ticket agent behind the big arrivals and departures window, looked up, smiled and nodded, then returned to whatever it was he’d been doing.
Emerson let out a small breath. He would most likely be fine. He had a card identifying him as a reporter with the Atlanta Journal, only the name on it was Earl S. West, since he’d learned that the name Emerson wasn’t sufficiently Southern for some whites. In fact, it suggested a Northern man of liberal education, something his father aspired to, but which had become a handicap for Emerson in communities where he was unknown.
Usually, there were signs posted about the nearest boarding house. He couldn’t see any, so he walked over to the ticket agent. The ticket agent was a small man, with freshly cut red hair, and thin mustache. He looked to be about Emerson’s age, and just as tired.
The ticket agent had changed the sign behind him mentioning the next day’s train, and seemed about to close up.
“Beg pardon,” Emerson said. “I’d be much obliged if you could point me to a boarding house.”
The ticket agent looked up, frowned at him, that friendly smile gone as if it never had been. Had the ticket agent been looking at someone else when he smiled a few moments ago?
“Miss Dottie usually takes new arrivals,” the ticket agent said. “But they usually write ahead. Who did you say you were?”
“I didn’t say.” Emerson smiled as he spoke. “My name is Earl West, and I’m afraid I’m horribly unfamiliar with the local customs. I ask your forgiveness for that.”
“You should ask for Miss Dottie’s. It’s her you’ll be inconveniencing.” The ticket agent made a show of stamping some documents. The slap of the stamp echoed in the large space. “What business brings you here?”
Emerson reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, and pulled out his credentials. “I’m a reporter with the Atlanta Journal. We’re doing a series of articles on the recent sharecropping troubles, and we’d heard that most communities in the Delta had had some difficulties.”
The ticket agent’s face shuttered even more. “You a union man?”
The question surprised Emerson, and he decided to let the emotion show. “No,” he said with emphasis. “Who’d be wanting to unionize?”
“Some carpetbaggers been talking to the nigras around here, stirring them up, saying payments is off. Trouble started last fall, been spreading all over the Delta. Surprised you hadn’t heard.”
Especially given the story that Emerson was telling.
“I’d heard about the troubles and the discrepancies. There’s talk like that from here to Mississippi,” Emerson said. “I didn’t realize there was actual union men stirring up the nigras. That’s unusual, don’t you think?”
“I do,” said the ticket agent. “I always think there’s something wrong when one of our own decides that he don’t like us much no more, and decides to spend his time agitating the darkies.”
Emerson suspected that some of the ticket agent’s word choices were designed to irritate any white outsider who was visiting these parts.
“I just came to report on the trouble,” Emerson said. “We haven’t seen much of it yet in Georgia, but my editor doesn’t want anyone to be getting ideas.”
“Those what had ideas are gone now, praise the Lord,” The ticket agent said, and pounded that stamp one more time.
Emerson nodded, knowing better than to push harder. “If I could trouble you for directions…?”
The ticket agent looked up. “Miss Dottie’s is two blocks south on Elm. Go outside, turn left and walk straight. Can’t miss it.”
“I thank you,” Emerson said, and then walked out of the train station, the heels of his shoes clicking on the marble floor. He felt alone and uncomfortable, just like he had every other time he had done these investigations.
He stepped out of the cool station in the warm sunlight, blinking at its brightness. Wood sidewalks and a well-flattened dirt road ran through the center of town. He saw no automobiles, but several fancy horse-drawn carriages. Lots of men and women on foot, almost all unconcerned with the handful of new arrivals at the train station.
Except for a group of white men across the street. They sat outside a building with a fancy restaurant inside, chawin’ and spitting into the nearby spittoons, and watching him like they’d been told to.
The train station was on Cherry Street. Second Street took him past the men and onto what was most likely Elm.
Emerson walked with purpose, as if he had come to Abbotts Creek dozens of times.
The men, all wearing white shirts tucked into black pants held up with suspenders, watched him. He watched them out of the corner of his eye, careful not to appear as if he were actually staring at them.
He crossed into the street, felt the softness of the dirt, which suggested there’d been rains here recently, and then stepped onto the wooden sidewalk.
As far as he could tell, none of the men followed him. He took that as a good sign. He’d been followed too many times in too many other towns just as small as this one in the past.
The next street up was Elm and sure enough, the boarding house was in the middle of the next block—a white clapboard house with gingerbread trim and a well-kept fence. A sign outside said:
Boarding House
Inquire Inside
He squared his shoulders and walked the half block, feeling as if every eye in the town was on him. He opened the gate, and walked across a beautiful path ringed with red and pink flowering plants that he couldn’t name.
The porch had wear on its main steps, and a large brass knocker covered the main part of the solid wood door.
He knocked twice, then waited.
The door eased open part way.
“I’m enquiring about a room,” he said to the dark crack between the door’s edge and its jamb.
“Two dollars per day, ten dollars per week,” said a strong female voice. “Includes breakfast and supper, both at seven sharp. If you don’t arrive for the meal, you don’t get fed.”
A strict boarding house then. He’d stayed in some that were lax. “I presume payment is up front?”
“Yes, sir, and I do not refund.” The door still hadn’t opened all the way.
“If you have room,” he said, “I would like to pay for two nights.”
He hoped that would be all he needed. He always felt as if he was on some kind of good-luck clock when he did this work.
The door opened the rest of the way. Emerson stepped inside. The interior smelled of roasting beef mixed with heavy perfume. The door closed behind him before his eyes adjusted enough to see the heavy-set woman in front of him. She wore her steel-gray hair in a bun. An apron covered a long blue dress that had seen better days.
“I have a register,” she said. “Come with me.”
She led him into the front parlor. There, someone had set up a counter with some fresh flowers in a vase on one side, and an open register on the other.
She handed him a pen and an inkwell, along with a printed card that he had to fill out with his name, his home address, and the length of his stay.
He did all of that, using the address for Atlanta University as his own, and marked down two nights.
He took four dollars from his wallet, and handed them to her along with the card. She took the money and set it with the card, but did not put either away. Apparently she did not want him to know where the money was kept.
Then she shoved the register at him. He paused before signing his name.
The register went back two weeks. On the page across from the empty line where his name would go was the name Lureen Taylor with the city and state left off.
He paused for a moment too long.
“I require my guests to fill out the register,” the woman said.
He did, not apologizing for the extra time it took him to do so. He signed his alias, and added that he was from Atlanta. He decided not to ask about Lureen Taylor. He would find out soon enough if she remained at the boarding house.
The woman nodded, then said, “I’m Dottie and this here’s my house. You will treat it like a home and not some way station, are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Your room is six stairs up. It is the only room on the landing. It’s a mite small but you’re not staying long. If you decide to stay for a week or more, we’ll find you something more comfortable.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
She almost smiled. It looked like that was as friendly as she got. “Stairs are back in the entry.”
Apparently, she wasn’t going to take him up there.
“Much obliged.” He turned around, taking in the horsehair furniture that looked like no one had sat in it in this century, the occasional tables covered with expensive glassware and shelves with all sorts of little figurines. He did not pause to examine them.
Instead he returned to the entry, and saw the stairs off to his right. He took them, saw the landing, and a door to his left.
The room was more of a walk-in closet than an actual room. He had to duck once inside, because the bulk of the room was under the stairs. A narrow bed with a handmade quilt pushed against the only long wall. A chamber pot peeked out from under the bed. A short table stood beside the bed, with a washbasin and matching pitcher on top. A kerosene lamp had left black stains on the underside of one of the stairs.
A tiny round window, the size of a portal, had been drilled into the wall behind the bed. The window opened, but just barely.
There was no closet, no bureau, and no place to store his things. No wonder she had said that if he decided to stay longer he would get a nicer room. No one could live comfortably in this one for a week.
He set his satchel underneath the table, as far from the chamber pot as he could. He would have thought that a nice house like this would have indoor plumbing. Perhaps it did on the main floor, but he had not been informed of it. He would have to ask somehow, without offending anyone’s sensibilities.
He pulled out his pocket watch. He had two hours until dinner, which meant many of the businesses were closing. He sometimes had to think what an average traveling man would do, and he supposed someone like him would not wander the streets, looking for someone to speak with.
So he removed his shoes and spread out on top of the covers, hoping to get some rest.
The next thing he knew, a gong had sounded below.
He assumed that sound invited all of the boarders to supper.
***
The large oak table in the dining room was set for eight. When he arrived, two men were standing near the sideboard, looking at a decanter and glasses. Emerson could only assume they had hoped for some kind of alcohol, but he doubted they would find any. Arkansas, like Georgia, prohibited the sale and manufacture of liquor, and genteel homes like this one did not serve any of it, even if the owner indulged.
The entire first floor smelled heavily of that roast beef, and his stomach growled. Emerson introduced himself to the men as Earl, but he did not mention his profession or give any reason for being in Abbotts Creek.
“You’re in luck,” one of the men said. “Dottie makes the best roast beef in the entire Delta.”
The other man nodded in agreement, then added, “Pay attention to her hints. If she mentions that she’s low on potatoes or needs coffee, then volunteer to pick some up from Abbotts Mercantile. We’ve learned that if we buy some of the supplies, she rewards us with good down-home cooking.”
Emerson smiled and said he would remember that. They exchanged small talk for a while—both men lived in the house and had since their wives died, claiming living here gave them the opportunity to talk with people they wouldn’t normally encounter.
They were inviting him to tell them about himself. Instead, he said, “I see that Miss Dottie also takes female boarders.”
“Yes,” said the first man. “When there are women in the house, we men are confined to the outhouse out back. Fortunately, the last woman left here near to a week ago.”
So much for Lureen. He tried not to look disappointed. As the other boarders showed up, Miss Dottie banged the gong a second time.
This close, it sounded as if the entire house would shake.
The men sat down in what seemed like their usual places, and then Miss Dottie entered, without any food at all, which surprised Emerson. His surprise only lasted a moment though, because a young colored girl, wearing a maid’s uniform, staggered in under the weight of an uncarved roast.
Emerson had to catch himself from helping her. In this town, among the white folk, this girl was an invisible servant, not a lady deserving of assistance. He studiously avoided looking at her, so that he wouldn’t acknowledge her, even as she brought out the rest of the meal.
One of the men carved the roast, then Miss Dottie said grace. She sat at the head of the table, and presided over the conversation like a queen instructing her court.
Emerson didn’t dare bring up any troubles or the sharecropping information he had received. He definitely couldn’t discuss lynching in mixed company, nor could he comfortably mention race issues.
Finally, he managed to turn the conversation to other guests, asking Miss Dottie who the most interesting boarders she had ever had were. She demurred, saying it wasn’t her place to discuss her “people.”
“Miss Dottie always has a fascinating mix,” one of the men said. “Every time I stay here, I meet someone new.”
“I was saying earlier that I was surprised to see a female name on the register,” Emerson said, hoping he sounded prim.
Miss Dottie’s gaze met his, and he felt her measure him. She finally understood why he paused.
“I’ve been to very few boarding houses that mixed male and female,” he added, disapprovingly.
“We have no women here now,” said one of the other men.
“I like them,” said the first man who’d come into the room. “They always liven up the conversation.”
“Except that last woman, what was her name?” asked a different man. “Mrs.—?”
“Taylor,” Miss Dottie said. “She left.”
“Left town?” Emerson asked.
“She didn’t say.” The man who spoke sounded disappointed.
“We suspect that Dan here scared her off,” said one of the other men. “He was too interested and she wasn’t comfortable.”
Emerson looked at the man they had called Dan. He was one of the men who lived here. He was short and balding, with a round belly. Certainly not the most appealing fellow in the room.
Then Emerson caught Miss Dottie’s eye. She was still staring at him. Something had set her off. Maybe she hadn’t liked Lureen Taylor.
He would have to tread carefully. He wanted to ask more questions, but didn’t dare.
“I saw no reason for her to leave,” said one of the other regulars, maybe in defense of the man named Dan.
“She didn’t belong here,” Miss Dottie said tightly, and the conversation died as if it hadn’t existed at all. Everyone turned their attention to the meal before them.
Emerson looked up after a few minutes to find Miss Dottie still watching him, her gaze flat and cold.
He made himself smile, and vowed to keep quiet for the rest of his stay in this place.
***
His vow lasted for less than an hour.
He needed to stretch his legs, and he didn’t feel safe enough to walk in downtown Abbotts Creek. So he took the pipe he rarely smoked and stepped onto the porch.
One thing he did like about nights in faraway places—the soft perfume of spring flowers, the rich sweet cut of pipe smoke, and the comfort of a good wrap-around porch. Miss Dottie’s had a swing and well cushioned wicker chairs.
But he didn’t sit. Instead, he stood near the railing and looked out over the quiet street.
After a moment, the man named Dan joined him. Emerson waited, not certain if the man wanted to defend his actions with Lureen Taylor or if he was just here for a companionable evening.
The man reintroduced himself.
“Dan McCall,” he said, extending his hand.
“Earl West,” Emerson said, and took a puff off his pipe.
“You didn’t say what brings you to these parts,” McCall said.
“It’s not for discussing around ladies,” Emerson said.
McCall looked at him sideways.
“I’m a reporter with the Atlanta Journal. We’re doing a series of investigative reports about the agitators who are stirring up the sharecroppers in the Delta and beyond. My editor’s worried our own boys might get Ideas, and he wants to use other places as a cautionary tale.”
Emerson hoped he hadn’t over-explained. He had done that before, and it had been something which made people suspicious.
“Don’t believe what they tell you,” McCall said. “It ain’t northern agitators coming down here. There’s some white lawyers from Little Rock who seem to believe that how we do business here ain’t proper.”
“Don’t you do business how you’ve always done business?” Emerson asked. He wished he’d had time to study up on this. Ironically, he was going with what he had learned from the papers.
McCall shook his head sadly. “There’s money now. The war, and all. Cotton prices are good, and them nigras, they see a dime and want a dollar. The white lawyers say we gotta write out receipts and payments, pay everyone equal for the same labor. They’re even researching cotton prices, see what white landowners are really getting paid, and making sure they give the right amount to the sharecroppers.”
Emerson took another puff of his pipe to hide his feelings. He hated the sharecropping system. It was little better than slavery—with all the rents and food taken out of the payments, and often nothing left for the sharecroppers to save or use to move elsewhere.
He hadn’t realized that cotton prices were up because of the war, but it made sense as did McCall’s interpretation. Money did bring in agitators, and for good reason. When money flowed, people thought about cheating.
“I’m surprised that you’re talking white Southern agitators,” Emerson said. “I’d thought Northern boys’d come down and stirred up things. I’d heard about how you’d dealt with that boy last September. I’d been hoping to use that as the focus of my article, how Abbotts Creek dealt with those who believed the bunkum those Bolsheviks peddled.”
McCall scratched a match on the wooden post beside him. The match flared with a stink of sulfur. He used it to light his pipe.
“That boy? Moses Ross.” McCall stretched out the name, making fun of it with his tone. “He wasn’t sharecropping. He just got too big for himself. Heading off to some school in the North or maybe Atlanta.”
Then he glanced sideways at Emerson, trying to gage a reaction. Emerson kept his expression neutral, that of a man hearing a tale which did not concern him, instead of the story about the horrifying end to someone else’s life.
“One dark night just before Moses left, someone knifed Willis Bowden to death, left his wife bloody and terrified, and we all know who done it.”
“That boy,” Emerson said softly. He’d heard these stories before. “The wife said so.”
“Oh, no,” McCall said. “She was so out of her head, she said she done it. We told her to hush up, and she did. She ain’t never said it again. Not that she has need to. Willis didn’t treat her the way a Southern lady should be treated, but he did leave her money.”
And gave the town an excuse to make an example of an uppity Negro, Emerson thought, but didn’t say.
“The sheriff arrested Moses Ross. We all knowd he liked Mrs. Bowden. But that boy, he kept saying he didn’t do nothing. His family was gonna use his school money to fight what everyone knew to be true. Took about ten days before everyone was ready, but the sheriff—who had all those misguided reform thoughts—finally saw things our way.”
So, the sheriff wanted actual law and order. Emerson nodded, but not in agreement with McCall. Just in understanding.
Which chilled him.
He had to change the subject. He didn’t want to seem too concerned with Moses Ross’s death. Nor did Emerson want to hear any more details. Not at the moment.
“What about those white lawyers?” he asked. “How’re you going to stop them from agitating?”
“We catch them,” McCall said. He spoke with such calm deliberation, it sounded as if he were talking about a picnic. “We don’t touch them, though. We just make them watch what happens to them they’re trying to convince.”
Emerson had seen something similar in Alabama. Northern labor unionists got hauled to a lynching, and were expected to cheer. If they didn’t, they were afraid they’d die. They didn’t die. They left and reported the incident to the New York Times.
“Does it work?” Emerson asked, keeping his tone calm and barely interested.
“Don’t know for sure,” McCall said. “But we ain’t seen none of them Little Rock folks for months now. And they better hope we never see them again.”
He said that last with great force, as if he were trying to convince Emerson, as if he thought Emerson was one of the lawyers.
Emerson wasn’t quite sure how to convince McCall that he wasn’t.
“Anyone else I should talk to about the ways Abbotts Creek is protecting its own?” he asked.
McCall puffed on his pipe for a moment. The smoke had a touch of vanilla, making it even sweeter than the usual blends.
“We got a meeting coming up five days from now,” he said after a moment. “But we usually don’t take outsiders to it. Maybe a few of us’ll talk to you. Don’t mind hoods, do you?”
The Klan.
Emerson’s heart beat harder. He wasn’t sure if he had just been threatened or if he’d just been approved for membership. He wasn’t sure he would know unless he let the men talk to him.
“No,” he said, “I don’t mind hoods. But I’d best extend my stay. I’d only planned to be here two days.”
“Do that,” McCall said, and something in his tone made the shivers run down Emerson’s spine again.
He had no idea if he was hearing things that weren’t there. His fears and imagination often put him in as great a risk as his actual identity did.
But he thanked McCall, and then stood in what he hoped was companionable silence until the house lights went out.
***
Emerson slept with his satchel open and his pistol near to hand. “Slept” was too powerful a word for the half-awake state he kept himself in all night. Clearly he didn’t feel safe, even here.
He kept playing McCall’s words over and over in his head. Emerson slowly realized that he had what he needed. What the NAACP wanted for its reports weren’t so much the gory details as why a lynching had been committed. Not the official story, the one told to outsiders, but the real story, the one the community knew.
Such as protecting a woman whose husband beat her so severely that she took a knife to him in the middle of the night. Clearly, the locals hadn’t wanted to prosecute her, but felt someone had to pay. And reminding the colored community that rising above their station was a bad idea was simply an added bonus.
Emerson knew he couldn’t stay here until the meeting. He wasn’t sure he should stay any much longer. He took his satchel down to breakfast, figuring if anyone asked, he could say he had his papers in it.
He wasn’t sure how much more information he would gather, but he did want to answer one more question for himself. He wanted to know what happened to Lureen Taylor.
Breakfast provided no answers at all. It was served at the long table in the kitchen. Miss Dottie was there, and she wasn’t willing to talk to him. Instead, over the fine biscuits and gravy, she said, “Mr. McCall says you’ll be needing a room for three additional nights.”
Then she looked pointedly at the satchel, and added, “But I see that he’s mistaken.”
Emerson shook his head. “He’s correct. I simply carry my satchel with me because it has my research.”
Her lips thinned, as if she didn’t believe him.
“Well,” she said. “I’m not sure if I’ll have a room. I will know this afternoon. I will tell you when you return.”
Then she stepped over to the counter and opened one of the bins.
“Lord a’mercy,” she said. “We’re in need of flour. I have no idea how I could have let us get so short of something so important.”
Then she closed the bin, crossed her arms, and looked at him. He would have understood even without the stare. If he brought the flour, he could stay.
He smiled, and nodded, not quite willing to verbally commit to her blackmail. After finishing his meal, he set his plate near the others by the sink, then thanked Miss Dottie for her hospitality.
He had put her in an awkward situation. Either she had to ask him if he planned to return with the flour or she had to trust him.
He rather liked her look of dismay.
He went out the back way, using the porch to reach the front. The town seemed quiet, even for a weekday morning. Although it was coming on nine, most folks had probably been working since sun-up.
He walked to Abbotts Creek Mercantile. He’d best take care of his purchase first. Besides, a general store in the morning was always a great place to get information.
The mercantile was only a few blocks from Miss Dottie’s. Two wagons were tied up outside. As Emerson approached, two women came out of the mercantile. One had her hair covered with a scarf, the other wore hers in a knot on top of her head. The shorter war fashions hadn’t really hit this community; both women wore dresses that brushed the wooden sidewalk.
Both nodded at him in greeting. He nodded back. Then he held the door for an elderly woman, who wore a black dress with a bustle and a hat that partly obscured her face. The dress shushed at him; expensive silk, mostly likely widow’s weeds, probably passed down from an even earlier generation. Mourning was nothing if not ubiquitous.
He followed her inside. Every general store between here and West Texas smelled the same—a hint of coffee, the faint scent of tobacco, and a dry edge from all the goods in barrels on the floor.
The elderly woman picked up a basket and wandered toward the sewing goods. The owner stood by a counter, his meaty arms crossed, his fleshy face florid.
He stared at Emerson, much the way that Miss Dottie had the night before.
“Help you?” the man asked.
“I hope so,” Emerson said. “I’m here for some flour for Miss Dottie.”
The man smiled. “Be needin’ a few more nights at the boarding house, eh?”
“I’d ask how you knew, but apparently she does this often.” Emerson did his best to sound amused at her petty blackmail.
“Keeps one of our best boarding houses in business,” the man said as he headed to one of the barrels.
He took a white sack and a scoop. He opened the barrel and started carefully scooping flour into the sack.
“What brings you to Abbotts Creek?” he asked.
“I’m with the Atlanta Journal,” Emerson said. “We’re doing a story on sharecropping—”
“What’d you say your name was?” the man asked.
“I hadn’t,” Emerson said. “My name is Earl West.”
The man tied the bag, then weighed it on the large scale behind him. One pound exactly.
“You from Atlanta?” he asked.
The question seemed to have more import than a casual enquiry.
“I am,” Emerson said, refraining from saying that all the reporters from the newspaper lived in Atlanta. Instead, he added, “We’re starting to have similar troubles in Georgia—”
“Do you know a gentleman named Emerson West?” The man set the pound of flour next to the cash register.
Emerson was so surprised to hear his own name that he wasn’t quite sure what to say. He approached the counter, and saw the pile of postcards beneath it. Then he saw the sign propped against the cash register listing this building as a post office.
He felt cold.
“There are a lot of Wests in Atlanta,” he said, hoping that would stop the man’s questions.
“There are Mosbys in Phillips County,” the man said, “and we’re mostly kin.”
Even the colored Mosbys? Emerson wanted to ask, but didn’t.
“Atlanta’s a big city,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too argumentative.
“I been,” Mosby said. “It’s not that big.”
Emerson frowned. He could let it pass, or he could say something. He opted for bluntness. “Are you implying something, Mr. Mosby?”
“Lady come in here not one week ago, bought one of them postcards you’re near, and sent it to an Emerson West in Atlanta. Now you’re here. And I’ve been hearing of government men, investigating our justice here, trying to change our laws because they saw things they like better in France. Just making sure you’re not one of them.”
Emerson pulled out his credentials, happy that his hands didn’t shake. “I’m not with the government.”
“You wouldn’t be from one of them new-fangled nigger associations, would you?”
“Do I look like I am?” Emerson asked, hoping he sounded offended instead of frightened.
Mosby let out a small unamused laugh. “For all I know, you’re high yella.”
Emerson’s breath caught in his throat.
Mosby’s beady eyes bored right into him. “I been hearing tell of high yella niggers from some advancement association mixing with good folks, trying to stop some of our organizations from doing right. I even heard one of them high yella niggers is named White. Might think another would be named North, but West’ll do.”
Emerson’s mouth had gone dry. His cheeks were warm. He had actually flushed. He obviously couldn’t hide his reaction, so he had to give it lie.
“I have covered stories all over Dixie,” he said with as much indignation as he could muster. “And never once have I been called a nigger before.”
Mosby reached over the counter and grabbed a handful of postcards. He spread them next to the flour. The first postcard was the same as the one Emerson had received. The next two pictured men hanging from trees, one surrounded by a crowd, the other by four men in white shirts and hats. One of the men looked like Mosby.
The last postcard showed a body being burned—or worse, a man being burned alive.
Emerson made himself look at them. Then he thought about his pistol in the satchel. He’d always feared he would come across a moment like this, when he was directly confronted, and he often wondered what he’d do.
If he shot this man, Emerson would guarantee his own ugly death.
He worked alone.
What he had to do was survive to the next day.
“You trying to scare me?” Emerson asked, voice flat. “Because I came to Abbotts Creek to understand your justice, and perhaps bring a taste of it to Georgia, not to have it threatened against me.”
“I heard that this nigger association collects information on nigger killings,” Mosby said. “I got me a cousin in L’siana who met this White feller, didn’t stop him before he left. Heard tell this White was drummed out of the South, had to go to New York City to escape.”
Emerson had no idea how to deal with this kind of bluntness. He’d heard of it, but never encountered it. And didn’t know how a true white man would respond.
He decided to stick with indignation. “How much do I owe you for the flour?”
Mosby stared at him. Emerson stared back.
Finally, Mosby looked down. “This ain’t a town for niggers.”
“That’s fairly obvious,” Emerson said. “Do you think if I was one I’d be here?”
“I don’t think nothing,” Mosby said. “We’ve had lots of agitators.”
“I’m not one of them,” Emerson said. “But I assume you don’t want to sell me the flour.”
“I don’t need your money,” Mosby said. “And you don’t need to talk to Miss Dottie no more.”
Emerson didn’t know how to argue with that. He needed to leave Abbotts Creek before he really did meet with the Klan. But now, he had to find out what happened to Lureen. He had a hunch he knew, and he didn’t like what he was thinking.
“You said a lady sent one of these postcards to a man named West,” Emerson said, “and somehow that made you think I was colored. I do not understand how a lady’s postcard would make you think that.”
“Miss Dottie didn’t like her,” Mosby said.
Emerson’s stomach twisted. “I gathered that. I also had the sense Miss Dottie doesn’t like everyone.”
“Miss Dottie knows people.” Mosby looked down at the postcards, almost wistfully.
Emerson felt cold. His heart was pounding so hard it was probably audible.
“So,” he said, “will I be seeing a postcard of this lady next time I’m here?”
“No.” Mosby’s tone was flat. “But not for lack of trying.”
Emerson’s gaze met Mosby’s again.
“Because you couldn’t get a good photograph?” Emerson asked, afraid of the answer.
“Because there was nothing to photograph.” Mosby gathered up the four postcards and put them back on the pile. “Now you get. I’ll tell Miss Dottie you have no need of her hospitality any longer.”
“Then she has no need of that flour,” Emerson said, hoping the emotion in his voice sounded like rage. “Of course, she already has my money, so she can afford her own. Do tell her that her boarding house will not get a good review in the Atlanta Journal.”
“We’ll be watching for it,” Mosby said.
Emerson glared at him a final time, then gripped the handle of the satchel and left the store. He paused, his back to the wall, looking to see if anyone was waiting for him.
Cherry Street was empty.
The door banged behind him and he jumped.
The elderly woman peered at him from beneath her hat. She carried a sack in one hand. The other was hidden in the pocket of her silk dress.
He hoped to God she wasn’t carrying a lady’s pistol.
He looked at her, trying not to seem afraid.
She stopped beside him, and also looked at the street, not at him.
“Miss Taylor took the train to Little Rock seven days ago,” the woman said softly. “Before she did, she asked me to give you these.”
She pulled the four postcards out of her pocket, and slid them to his nearby hand.
Then she backed away from him and spit on the wooden sidewalk. “Now, you git!” she said. “We don’t need no agitators here.”
She crossed the street, shaking her head as if his very presence offended her.
He was trembling. He watched her go. He hoped no one had heard any of that. She would get in trouble for helping him, and she could get him in trouble for threatening her.
In the distance, a train whistle sounded. It was later than he thought.
It was always later than he thought.
He stuffed the postcards in his satchel, next to the pistol. Then he walked the block to the station, just in time to board the train.
Copyright © 2015 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Fiction River: Past Crime, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, WMG Publishing, November 2014
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2015 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Vlntn/Dreamstime
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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