AFTER THE COURTROOM HAD CLEARED, I sneaked out a side entrance to avoid the crowd of journalists out front, and did what I had done so many times lately. I got my bike and headed for the Eudora Quarters.
The first person I saw was the old man in the blue shack who had showed me the way to Abraham’s house the first time I came out here.
“You done your best, Mist’ Corbett,” he called. “Nobody coulda done better.”
“My best wasn’t good enough,” I called back. “But thank you.”
He shook his head. I continued down the dirt road.
A large brown woman was coming the other way, balancing a wicker basket of damp clothes on her head and carrying another under her arm. She picked up the conversation in midstep: “Aw, now, Mistuh Corbett, that’s just the way things goes,” she said.
“But it’s not fair,” I said.
She laughed. “Welcome to my life.”
There I was, trying to explain the concept of fairness to a woman carrying two huge baskets of other people’s washing.
At the crossroads in front of Hemple’s store, I saw the usual two old men playing checkers. I stopped in front of their cracker barrel. “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” I said.
One man looked up at me sadly. The other one said, “Well, suh, ain’t nobody strong enough to beat ’em. And so what they did was, they got off scot-free. Nothin’ new ’bout that.”
“Ben.” A soft voice, a hand on my arm. I turned. It was Moody.
She was wearing her white jumper again. She even had a little smile on her face.
“You planning to go door-to-door, explain to everybody in the whole Quarters what happened in the white man’s courtroom?” she asked.
“I would,” I said.
“Don’t you worry your purty head about it,” she said. “All the explaining in the world won’t change a thing.” She took me by the elbow, leading me away. The men watched us go.
“Papaw is worse sick,” she said. “I think the excitement of the trial done it. You want to see him? He wants to see you.”