and twenty-four deputies.
“And that’s all there was to it,” Reverend Grace said. “The next night, Wallace Sampson got killed.”
“Reverend Grace, do you know why Wallace Sampson was shot?” Brad asked.
Grace paused. “I only know what people say.”
“Can you tell us?” I asked. “The truth shall make you free.”
Grace gave me a rueful smile. “Not in Hirtsboro, South Carolina.”
Being a reporter is all about trust. To get Reverend Grace to talk about what he really knew, he would need to trust me. It worked the other way, too. For me to evaluate what Reverend Grace said, I would need to know how much I could trust him.
“Reverend Grace, what brought you to Hirtsboro?”
“I believe it was the grace of God. I was assigned to this church right out of seminary. It was the posting they all laughed about through school—the poorest town, the meanest whites, the sorriest blacks. But it was the right posting for a four-hundred-fifty pound twenty-four-year-old who was last in his class, stuttered, and jiggled like jelly with every step.”
Brad and I exchanged quick glances and stared in disbelief at the fit man before us. “I came here miserable and it only got worse. And one day I begged God to just take back my body and let me die. He didn’t let me die but he did what I prayed for. He took control of my body. And with God in control, my weight began to drop. Because of my miracle I knew for certain that salvation was possible. And I began to understand that I had been called here for a purpose.”
“What purpose is that?” I asked.
“To get beyond the cross.”
Reverend Grace led us into the darkened sanctuary. He walked behind the purple-draped altar and stood below a large rough-hewn wooden cross that hung on the wall.
“In 1932, the Klan lynched a black teenager who was accused of raping a white Hirtsboro girl. There were no charges, no trial. They just hung him in a big oak tree, right outside of town. Later, the boy’s daddy cut the tree down and hauled the trunk home. He cut it into planks and made this cross and gave it to the church. You see, he could deal with what had happened if he thought of his son dying on a cross.”
Brad approached the altar and touched the cross. “Why do you want to get beyond it?” he asked.
“These people have lived under slavery since their ancestors were forced onto ships in Africa. The label changes but this is still slavery. The ones who can, leave town. Young people like Praise and Rejoice Sampson. The rest stay with only one thing to hang on: the salvation that comes in the next life. In Hirtsboro, justice is a gift from God and won’t happen in this world. But in the next life there will be justice and we will all live in glory. Meanwhile, the comfort of Jesus helps us ease the pain while we’re on this mortal earth. That’s what this cross means to them.
“But to me, that cross is still a lynching tree. Every Sunday my congregation looks at a symbol that killings go unpunished, that there is no hope for justice in this life. I hate that cross. We have got to move beyond it.”
“Reverend Grace,” Brad asked, “If God can perform a miracle on a four-hundred-fifty-pound young man, can’t the people of Hirtsboro believe that justice is possible now, on this earth and in our time?”
“I haven’t given up. But it’s a lot easier to believe in heaven than it is to believe that things will change for people in Hirtsboro in my lifetime.”
I saw an opening. “We can help them change, if you’ll tell us what you’ve heard.”
“Even if I believed that, communication between priest and parishioner is sacred, a trust that cannot be violated.”
“Like a reporter and a confidential source,” Brad interjected unhelpfully.
Reverend Grace took my hands in his and looked into my eyes. “I can’t violate my parishioner’s confidences,” he said. “I can’t tell you what I’ve been told. But maybe I can give you a sort of roadmap. I tell you where to look, but I just don’t tell you what you’re going to find when you get there. I might be able to do that. I’ll pray on it.”
“Please do,” I told him.
An attractive woman waved to us from the deck as Brad and I arrived back at his home that evening,
“She’s arrived,” Brad said happily. My impression of Lindsay McDaniel Hall was Newport Yacht Club—straight blonde bob, bright blue eyes, flawless skin, angular features and teeth that had paid for an orthodontist’s sports car. She wore white Keds, blue jeans, a simple white T-shirt, and minimal makeup. Brad Hall had married within his class.
She smiled when we were introduced. “I hope you can stay for dinner.”
I said I needed to be getting back.
“Nonsense. We’re due at Brad’s father’s in half an hour. I’ll tell Mary Pell to add another setting.”
“I thought we’d eat here,” Brad said, retrieving the book, the hat, and the plastic bags from the pickup’s floor.
“It’s Sunday night.”
“I know it is.” He slammed the pickup door. “I thought we’d eat here.”
She smiled uneasily. “Sunday night supper at Windrow is always at Dad’s, Brad.”
I began looking for a place to hide.
“We’ve had Sunday supper with my father almost every week of our married lives. I believe we can miss once.”
In my experience, we were one cross word away from an argument.
“Brad, we have almost nothing in the house. I’m sorry. If I’d known . . .”
“Father can be such a boor,” Brad said with a forced smile. “But if there’s nothing in our house, then Father’s it is.” And without much strain, the Halls pulled back from the brink.
That would never have happened with Delana and me, I thought. I could never pull back. One word spoken with the slightest edge or hint of anger would take us down the path of poisonous words and hurt. I admired how Brad and Lindsay Hall did it.
The sun was setting over the Savannah when we arrived at what was called, without irony, “the Big House,” the plantation home where Brad’s father spent much of the year. As Brad had explained it, his father lived alone except for the regular presence of Mary Pell, the housemaid, and a trickle of Yankee visitors who became a stream when bird-shooting season arrived on Labor Day.
Everett Hall was tall, silver-haired, and his tanned, creased face gave him the look of an outdoorsman—a look confirmed by the tweed shooting jacket he wore when he greeted us, holding a glass of red wine. I straightened my tie as he gave his daughter-in-law a kiss on the cheek and his son a handshake. Then he turned to me.
“This is Matthew Harper with the Charlotte Times,” Brad said. “Matt, this is my father, Everett Hall.”
“A reporter? Well, we’re delighted to have you here anyway,” Everett Hall said in a way that left unclear whether he meant it as a joke. “Drink?”
He refilled his glass. I accepted a glass of wine and followed him out to the veranda where the four of us watched the sun sinking over the Savannah and into the Georgia hills beyond. A great blue heron cruised up the river and lit on a branch overhanging an eddy. “He fishes there every night,” Everett Hall said. And soon the bird speared a wriggling flash of silver in his rapier-like beak and deftly slid it down its throat.
“Touché,” Brad Hall said quietly.
“Survival of the fittest,” said his father.
Dinner was served at an enormous table in a dark-paneled dining room with high-backed red leather chairs. Old portraits of Halls, Bradfords, and Everetts lined the walls. A