“WE DON’T HAVE TO GO far to find a lynching tree,” Abraham said. “But I know how tired you young fellas get from walking in the heat of the day. I reckon we’d best take the hosses.”
The two “hosses” Abraham led out from a rickety blacksmith shop were mules—in fact, they were mules that had hauled one too many plows down one too many cotton rows. But those skinny animals proved their worth by depositing us, less than twenty minutes later, at a secluded swampy area that was unmistakably the site of a lynching.
Unmistakably.
A cool grotto tucked back in the woods away from the road. Big branches interlaced overhead to form a ceiling. The dirt was packed hard as a stone floor from the feet of all the people who had stood there watching the terrible spectacle.
Abraham pointed to an oak at the center of the clearing. “And there’s your main attraction.”
Even without his guidance, I would have recognized it as a lynching tree. There was a thick, strong branch barely a dozen feet from the ground. The low dip in the middle of the branch was rubbed free of its bark by the friction of ropes.
I walked under the tree. The hard ground was stained with dark blotches. My stomach churned at the thought of what had happened in this unholy place.
“Somebody left us a greeting,” Abraham said. “That would be the Klan.”
He was pointing behind me, to the trunk of a sycamore tree. About five feet up, someone had used an odd-looking white nail to attach a plank with crude lettering on it:
“I’ve never seen a nail that color,” I said.
“You never seen a nail made out of human bone?” said Abraham.
I shuddered, reaching up to haul the plank down.
“Don’t waste your strength, Mr. Corbett,” he said. “You pull that one down today, there’ll be a new sign up there next week.”
His face changed. “We got company,” he said.