The Tree of Forgetfulness (3 page)

“God bless and keep you, son,” his father had wired back. “Come home when you can.” He hadn't expected more.

Carrying the hard black case that held his typewriter, he stepped down from the train in Aiken, South Carolina, walked through the station and out the double doors at the front. He set the case down under the portico. He took a cigarette out of a silver case and tapped it on the case and lit up, blew the smoke straight up into the air.
Take a good look
. People would be watching, Leland had said. Count on it. A porter followed, pushing a handcart on which were piled two brown leather suitcases with
CNRB
stamped in gold just above the handle. He gave the man a dollar bill, went back to smoking. The sun slanted through pines
and palmettos at a low, early-morning angle. In a small oak beside the station, blue jays squabbled; a smell of woodsmoke hung in the air.

Curtis N. R. Barrett, what kind of name was that?
people eating lunch at the counter at the Savoy would say to one another, throwing their napkins down in disgust. It suits him right well, they'd say; it matches the vanity of the thick, wavy hair combed back just so, the dark vest and trousers and white shirt, the silver cuff links and collar pin, the dark glasses and that signet ring on the pinkie finger of the hand that brought the cigarette up to his mouth and down again. Another big shot New York reporter come to tar a community of decent people for the actions of the lawless few. He stood in front of the station, smoking, and watched the fountain splash.
Take a good damn look
. A few people did, slowing their cars. A man in overalls driving a wagon pulled by two dusty mules stared at him as he passed then turned his head to keep looking. The breeze picked up and rustled the fronds of the palmettos in front of the station. He smelled breakfast in the air.

Two days earlier his editor, Bayard Swope, had summoned him to his office. “King of the
World
,” reporters called Swope. It was a joke, but also true. His window offered a king's vista—the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge, with its symphony of cables. Swope was a famous gambler, lucky at horses and cards, and an equally famous reporter. Three years earlier, in a marathon poker game in a private railway car in Palm Beach, he'd relieved two rich men of close to half a million dollars. On one office wall he'd hung framed clippings from the coverage of that triumph, and right alongside them his 1917 Pulitzer Prize citation, for a series of articles called “Inside the German Empire.”

But Swope was happy to share the wealth. He sat behind the same rough desk where he'd always written, was generous with his Cuban cigars. He knew a story that needed telling when he saw one, like the one Leland Dawson had brought back from South Carolina. The story had begun in April 1925, when Sheriff Earl Glover was shot and killed during a liquor raid on a family of tenant farmers named Long.

Bessie Long, her brother Dempsey, and their cousin Albert had been arrested, tried, and found guilty of killing the sheriff. The boys
were sentenced to the electric chair, the girl to life in prison, and that would have been the end of it if N. R. Latham, one of the few black lawyers in South Carolina, hadn't filed appeal after appeal with the state supreme court until finally, in October 1926, the Longs were sent back to Aiken for a new trial. N. R. Latham had showed up there too, along with a white lawyer from Spartanburg, to argue their case. On the third day of that second trial the judge directed a not-guilty verdict against Dempsey, but before nightfall he'd been picked up again and charged with assault and battery. Later on that moonless night the electric line to the jail was cut; a mob invaded, seized the Longs, drove them out of town, and shot them to death in front of a crowd of so many witnesses it was hard to believe the whole town hadn't been there.

Of the forty lynchings Leland Dawson had investigated, this was the worst he'd seen.
Depraved
he called what had happened that night in Aiken, and since Leland was careful with language, they'd trusted that the word accurately reflected the fact. Someone had slipped Leland a copy of the report of the coroner's physician, and Leland had given it to Barrett. He'd read it again in the Pullman car heading south, preparing himself.

Albert Long. Shot with shotgun under chin to the left. No. 8 shot.

Dempsey (Son) Long. .38 cal. entered front Breast, came out left of spine in back, four inches left of shoulder blade.

Bessie Long Cheetam. Powder burns on back (left shoulder blade). Pistol wound on right temple .38 cal. lead bullet, entrance of bullet on left side of head two inches above ear going through brain. Each wound sufficient to cause death.

They'd been killed sometime after midnight on the eighth of October, and in the morning their bodies had been loaded onto a county truck and buried in a common grave behind a church near Monetta. Later that day the coroner's jury had questioned Sheriff Aubrey Timmerman about the mob that had taken his prisoners from his jail.

Did you have your flashlight in your hand?

Yes, sir, I did, but I dropped it.

Did you recognize anybody?

All I saw had something on their faces.

Did they have on citizens' clothes?

I didn't pay any attention to the clothes.

They didn't have a Ku Klux robe on?

No, sir.

On October 10 the coroner's jury ruled that the Longs had died at the hands of persons unknown.

The other thing that still amazed them in New York was how Leland Dawson, a black man, secretary of the NAACP, had gotten out of South Carolina alive. He'd posed as a reporter for the
World
, and he was so light-skinned that he'd fooled them. Fooled the white people, anyway; Leland never said if the black people knew he was one of them. Believing they were talking to another white man, two types of people confided in Leland. People with outraged consciences, and thank God for them, he said. There were more of them than he'd let himself hope there would be. And the people who always cluster around a big story like flies around a spill because they want to put themselves in the middle of it, to show how important they are.

Whatever their reasons, people talked to Leland; they named the men who'd dragged the Longs out and driven them up the Columbia Highway and shot them dead, and Leland had sent those names to Governor Arthur McCormick. Then he'd hightailed it back to New York and waited for the South Carolina papers—the
State
and the
Columbia Record
and the
Aiken Standard
—to report that the governor had opened an investigation.

“The eyes of the civilized world are upon Aiken, and her people, innocent as well as guilty, are upon trial,” Judge Marvin Mann said in his charge to the grand jurors called into special session on October 18 to investigate the murders.

That had seemed promising, but then the state fair opened in Columbia, and the front page of the
State
filled up with stories about
lancing tournaments, and horse races, and the “Hail, South Carolina” pageant that promised to dramatize South Carolina history in its entirety, accompanied by an orchestra and a chorus of eight hundred and fifty voices.

A letter arrived for Leland Dawson, and for a few days they distracted themselves in the newsroom with dramatic readings by anyone who could do a passable southern accent.

Dear Sir:

Mr. Austin Eubanks said in his caustic article in the Aiken Standard that “Leland Dawson, a Negro, came down here and passed himself off as a white man.” Is that true? At the time, I had on amber colored glasses and did not study your color, but I took you for a white man and according wto South Carolina law, you may well be
.

As you may know, we have a miscegenation law on the books in this State. The Courts had to construe that law and they held that a child born to a black person and a white person is a mulatto. The offspring of a quadroon and a white person is an octoroon, but the child of an octoroon and a white person is
WHITE
. That's the law of South Carolina, though sometimes the lines get so crossed and re-crossed it is hard to determine exactly what a person is
.

But had you been as black as the hinges of hell, I would have treated you exactly as I did. We attend to business for black people, meet with them in our offices, and sometimes when necessary take them into our houses, ride with them in automobiles, and so forth, and never think anything about it
.

As a youngster, I heard an amusing story about an argument between two men, one of whom was very dark. An old South Carolina law held that you could not slander someone by calling him a Negro, because everybody could see that he was
NOT
; but it was slanderous to call him a mulatto. The man quarreling with the dark complexioned man said:

“You are a damned 'latter
—
NO
nigger, nigger, nigger!!!!”

Well, this long letter simply because I want to hear the truth about what you did or said to persuade people you were white. And then do the figuring and see what you really are in South Carolina
.

I am, yours very truly for justice to all
,

Earl P. Henderson

At the end of every reading they'd laugh about the pompous old cracker, and Leland would remind them that this was the same man who'd tried to warn the judge that lynching was in the air on the day the charges against Dempsey Long were dismissed and he walked out of that courtroom, a free man. But that didn't stop them from laughing the next time the letter was read. “Go on and laugh,” Leland always said. He was tempted to join in himself, but he wanted them to understand that it was easier to parse these things from New York than it had been when he was down there in the thick of it, where friend and enemy switched places daily.

On October 28 the grand jury reported to the judge that it was unable to secure sufficient evidence on which to bring indictments and asked to be excused. The
State
reported the story on the third page. That was the day that Swope called Barrett into his office. When he saw the
State
newspaper on Swope's desk, Barrett said, “I'm on my way, boss.”

“Can you believe these people?” Swope said, tapping the newspaper.

“No,” he said, but that wasn't exactly true. It was what Swope wanted to hear, but he could believe anything now. He believed, for instance, that there was no limit to the harm people could inflict on one another. On any given day during the war, he thought he'd seen the worst. The day when the two men on either side of him had simply dissolved was the nadir, and then the day at Chemin de Fer, when the Germans came over the hill with flamethrowers. Nightfall had brought a kind of relief; surely nothing more awful could come than what had happened that day. But gradually, grindingly, he came to see that what
he'd believed were discrete and finite events were parts of an endless series, and every day began from a benchmark slightly more horrific than the one he'd passed the day before.

After meeting with Swope, he'd gone home and packed fast, as though the story were melting ice. Ink pens and yellow paper, his typewriter and clothes. He'd latched the suitcases and stood them by the door. He'd smoothed the white chenille spread then sat on the bed and looked around. An armchair upholstered in flowered chintz, a mahogany dresser and bedstead, a lamp, a table, a sink and mirror on the wall. Already the room felt like he had never lived there, which was how he liked to leave things. When he walked out the door, carrying his suitcases and his typewriter, there would be no trace of him left.

A wagon pulled by a shaggy chestnut horse with white front feet eased under the portico in front of the station, and a tall young black man jumped down and walked toward Barrett with a long stride, his fists clenched at his sides. He was dressed in a black suit coat, a faded blue shirt buttoned up under his chin, dusty gray pants mended with thick white thread, and a pair of brogans laced with brown twine. A gray fedora was cocked over one eye.

“Carry you somewhere, captain?” he said, pulling off the hat. He had a deep voice, and he pronounced every word completely, as though competing in elocution. His face was rough, like a rock outcrop, and he had a way of looking just to the side of Barrett's eyes with a grim little smile that seemed meant to be humble but felt challenging. He looked, Barrett thought, like a man who had just lost one fight and didn't plan to lose the next one. Given what Leland had said about this place, he bet that look had gotten him into plenty of trouble.

The black man pointed behind him, to the wagon. Barrett tugged down his vest, straightened his tie, dusted off his shirt and trousers. “You bet,” he said. “Take me to the Hotel Aiken.” The hotel stood directly across Park Avenue from the Southern Railway depot, but he didn't want to be seen carrying his own suitcases across the sandy street. The young man gave him a quick, narrow look from the corner of one eye then shrugged; he was used to carrying white men across the street,
out into the county, ten times around the block; as long as they paid him, it wasn't any of his business where they wanted to go. He had the biggest hands Barrett had ever seen.

He settled the hat back on his head, picked up both suitcases and tucked one under his arm, then picked up the typewriter case and clumped off toward the wagon. Barrett followed him out from under the portico and into the light. A haze of woodsmoke hung in the air, the rich, fermenting smell of rotting leaves. White sand below and a bright blue sky overhead, the moon still hanging in the sky like an empty bowl. The gleam of pine needles in the sunlight and the squawk of blue jays hauled him back to the moment when he'd stepped off another train and into the same light and air, down in Georgia, where they'd sent him to learn to shoot and climb, to dig and run and hit the dirt, and burrow into it. Where he'd volunteered for the medical corps, learned to splint bones and pack wounds and swab gas from men's eyes and skin. “Curtis N. R. Barrett,” he said, putting out his hand. The man looked around then shook Barrett's hand once and dropped it. “What's your name?” Barrett asked, as they stood beside the wagon.