As the light passed, people saw a man in goggles who looked like he was laughing as he held on to a black vehicle as it roared across the snow-covered street. Friends and neighbors stood watching and cheering, their faces hidden under layers of coats and scarves. It couldn’t be a motorcycle, not in this snow, but it sounded just like one, rumbling and spitting in the dark winter night. The machine powered up and turned off, skimming across the streets. It was a motorcycle sled, one of the men said. Cocchi had invented it. He is good with machines, they said. He is smart.
Two weeks after the DA’s announcement that Ruth had run away, Maria Cocchi read in the newspapers that Mrs. Cruger was confined to her room because she couldn’t stop crying. Maria walked to the DA’s office and sat for hours on a hard bench before someone would see her. When someone finally came up to her, she asked, through her own tears, what she could do to help.
7
The Mysterious Island of Sunny Side
July 1907
The sun was so bright that Charles Pettek could only keep one eye open as he stared up the Mississippi River as it curled out ahead of him. He turned away from the July sun and eyed the green plants on the banks, draped and dipping into the cloudy water. Even here, on the river, it was hot as the hinges of hell. Pettek knew they were somewhere close to Greenville, Mississippi, though he thought they were probably still in Arkansas. This far up, the lines between things got lazy.
As the river began to draw left, their boat creaked and headed for a rude landing on the western bank. Pettek could hear the water splashing against the dock with a hollow, wooden sound. He knew they must be at Sunny Side. On the maps he had studied, the plantation sat on a big green peninsula. But as he stepped onto the dock, it seemed more like an island, floating within the main channel of Chicot Lake. He looked again, attempting to take in the whole swell of the land. There was something white and ghostly that was slowly floating over the surface of everything.
Cotton.
Pettek then took a dummy train—a coach car that moved on its own—straight into Sunny Side. He floated his cover story to a man in coveralls and took off for the fields. As the cotton swirled around him, he saw the fields interrupted by ramshackle cabins. Farther up, he finally saw the men swinging away in the grass. Pettek saw their dark skin but knew they were not Negroes. They were thin and hot and looked like wrung-out, dirty rags. They wore clothes—white shirts and baggy pants—that made them look like peasants. Checking his watch, Pettek saw it was only ten o’clock in the morning. He walked over to talk to one of the farmers. Pettek was a translator of the Italian tongue, so they spoke of many things until the man in coveralls appeared and pointed in their direction. Another man in coveralls, who looked related, also sprang out of the crop. They approached Charles Pettek with fixed eyes. He couldn’t tell who was who.
Pettek quickly reached for his credentials. The men pinned back his arms. They grabbed him and took him to the company store, located in the middle of the plantation. The men were Tom and Shelby Wright, the plantation bosses. Their behavior did not seem to surprise the farmers, who tried their best not to stare. They diverted their eyes to the green curved leaves in front of them.
Inside the store, the air was cooler, but not by much. Pettek kept trying to explain who he was, but stopped when he realized it didn’t matter. The two men made Pettek sit until 4:30 that afternoon, dripping in the heat of the wooden room. Finally, the door opened and a loud man stomped in. He identified himself as C. B. Owens, the manager of Redleaf, the neighboring cotton plantation. Owens was sweating profusely through his jacket as he pointed at Pettek and formally charged him with trespassing. Owens explained that he was also the local justice of the peace.
Another man walked in, a plantation engineer, whom Owens pointed at and shouted that he was immediately deputizing him as a sheriff. This man, named Kennedy, laughed at the very action. Pettek couldn’t believe his eyes. Owens drew out a warrant on an affidavit that Shelby signed and gave to Kennedy, who, on Owens’s insistence, served it to Pettek, who was now officially arrested in the great state of Mississippi. Pettek, who knew he was standing squarely in Arkansas, might have felt like laughing. But he knew better because his life was still in danger.
Pettek again tried to show his identification card. He tried to explain that he had been talking to a Sunny Side farmer who owned his own land and therefore couldn’t be accused of trespassing. None of it mattered to Owens, who wouldn’t even look at him.
“I’m acting under the specific instructions of my superior officer, the assistant attorney general of the United States,” Pettek said, with added emphasis.
Owens spat. “If the president of the United States comes down here on such an errand, we will put him in the chain gang, too!”
Tom and Shelby Wright gathered up some clerks to serve as a de facto jury. Pettek’s heart was beating fast. Owens judged Pettek guilty, on-the-spot, as someone who “rides, ranges, or hunts” across the properties of others. Owens sentenced Pettek to three months in the chain gang or a fine of one hundred dollars. Pettek couldn’t believe this was happening to him, but he knew these small-town justices had the power to do what they wanted. Pettek only had fifty dollars on him, but he knew that as soon as they took it, they would then charge him with vagrancy, which was very serious in Mississippi. Thinking fast, Pettek made a desperate gamble and asked if he could telegraph for the money.
For the first time, Owens looked thoughtful. After some deliberation, he allowed Pettek to telegraph for the money. Using the store machine, the sum was requested and finally sent. Pettek looked relieved. Owens said that the money should be wired directly to a justice of the peace named O’Bannon located in Greenville. This transaction was very strange, but Pettek was not in a position to ask questions. He knew that the company that owned the plantation, Crittenden & Co., had their offices in Greenville.
Once they were square, Owens let Pettek go, albeit a bit reluctantly, walking him back to the dock himself to make a show of it to the workers. When Pettek arrived back in New Orleans, he called the person who had wired him the money. He told her everything that happened and how they had to get back into Sunny Side. He had proof of nothing, but the plantation bosses obviously had something to hide. They were on the right track, Pettek said.
On the other end of the line, Grace agreed.