The prosecutor rose to his feet. He lowered his head, and his cheeks moved for a moment, as if he were sucking something out of his teeth. He turned to the jury:
“Let us expatiate upon the properties,” he said, “of the Black Race. And let us begin with the words of Scripture. For do we not find it written in Leviticus that if thy servant love thee, thou shall put an awl through his ear, binding him to the door. And bind him, as it were, to your house for life?
“And I ask you: Why would one submit to that?
“And I tell you the answer you know, which is that it is better than the alternative. Which, to the nigro mind, is not to be conceived.
“To the mind of one bred, nay, born to be a slave, the alternative is not to be conceived. And you know it as well as me.
“… to venture into the world—a foreign world—unequipped, scorned, no, not for what one is. but for the actions one has taken.
“I say, further, not for the action’s presumption, but for its inevitable discohesion: resulting in misery for black and white alike, but—and as you hear me I know you will nod with me and sorrow with me—infinitely more oppressive to the black.
“To leave his state? To bear the just wrath of a city disordered—through caprice? Why? Who would desire to do that?
“And, again, we know it’s said if every man would act in his best interest this would be paradise on earth.
“And we can, yes, envision nigros who would, through folly, through, as I have said, caprice, would ‘quit their master’s house.’
“We have experienced it. And what is the inevitable …”
“Why can I not cease worrying about the factory?” Frank thought. “How strange I am. No, I am a vile man. Incapable of concentrating. Mr. Fowler goes on hours at a stretch, and here I am, brooding over the price of cedar blanks. Price of cedar be damned. I will think of something else. I will think of the Brooklyn Zoologic Gardens, and the behavior of the apes. And I will think how no one can say anything novel about them. …” His face brightened. “Except that!” he thought. “And Morris said no one could say a thing illuminating or novel about the apes, and here I have.”
“… and look at him,” he heard the prosecutor say, and he turned his head to see the object being indicated, and he saw the whole courtroom staring at him, and he felt the grin on his face, and knew that Fowler’s next sentence would be an indictment of that grin.
“… while we sit here, gentlemen …” He saw the jurors nodding. “… and he … this man,” the prosecutor said, “who took that girl, a working girl, a Southern girl, who wanted nothing more nor better than to earn her bread, and serve her family; who took her, and debauched her, and killed her, and hid the evidence of the crime; who had the gall … to blame a nigro, yes, a nigro, mark you, also entrusted to his care; who, by his very presence, and I use the word, gentlemen, by his presence as a guest in our state, and our region, might have, in humility, might have deemed himself held to a higher …”
“No, but he is good at it,” Frank thought. “Who could deny him that?”
Fowler droned on, and Frank endeavored to compose his face. “To look away is to acknowledge guilt; to look at them would arouse their anger; to stare ahead might seem to acquiesce in the punishment.”
“… Yes, you may well be confused,” he heard the prosecutor say. “Indeed you may. In what may be the first display of human behavior we have seen from you, since the inception of …”
“The apes. The factory, the cedar blanks, Aunt Bess …”
The room stank of sweat and tobacco. The air was still as stone. The prosecutor’s word fell heavily, one by one. Frank sat like an animal.
“If he were innocent, he would rise up and kill the fellow,” one of the reporters thought. “A man would. I would.”