Frank understood that I could not swear to a soul, not even our attorney, that my codefendant was innocent: how would I know any such thing if I were innocent, too? However, I gave him my solemn promise that if we were found guilty and Cone lost on the appeal, I would notify the court that Defendant Reese had never been an accomplice in the crime and could not have known that a loaded weapon would be dropped where he was plowing. I guess Frank appreciated my good intentions, but he also knew—I knew it, too—that even if my statement was believed, the state would not go to the expense of a new trial for a black man. Having already convicted him, it would simply be much too much trouble not to hang him.
The one way Frank Reese could save himself was to turn state’s evidence against his codefendant. In order to spare me any inconvenient pang of conscience, our attorney forbade me to let him know that. What use was it to the senator’s career to get the black man off and lose the white one?
Never once did my lawyer ask if I had killed Mike Tolen. He didn’t want to know. I could have said I had not done so, which was true, but I did not care to read in his expression that he thought I was lying so I never bothered.
I felt worse and worse about dumping off my shotgun: why hadn’t I thought of a better way? Could Cone get Reese’s case severed, then dismissed, as he had with Porter? The attorney shook his head. It was true that aside from that shotgun, the prosecution had no evidence that Reese knew anything whatever about this killing, but getting his case severed and dismissed so deep into the trial might leave an impression with the jury that the remaining suspect, against whom evidence was plentiful, must surely be guilty.
Cone’s arguments weren’t as clear to me as I had thought, nor my own feelings, either, and trying to justify this line of thought to Reese got me all snarled up in my own words. “So it looks like you’re fucked,” I finished roughly, giving up. Frank shrugged that off. All these months of waiting to be unjustly hung had turned him cynical. “Nigger Frank don’t count for nothin, no more’n he did that bad mornin when Mist’ Jack dropped his shootin iron in his furrow, rode on by.”
TWO FIGURES ON THE ROAD
In the backcountry, field hands in rough homespun have a way of vanishing into the land like earthen men. As a boy in Carolina, I would see brown shapes drift along against far woods or disintegrate into the ground mist, a shift and shadow in the broken cornstalks, an isolated figure paused to hear the distant whoop of others in the broomstraw yonder in the oldfields. Some whites will fight and screw and even kill in front of niggers, knowing it won’t be talked about because nobody saw it—those black folks just aren’t there. Not till Calvin Banks was on the witness stand did I recall that sun glint on his wagon spokes, so far away that the creak of wooden wheels could not be heard. Way down that white clay lane under tall trees, in the fractured light of sun and shadow, I had seen this black man without ever seeing him.
When he heard those two shots, Calvin testified, he was on his way to Herlong Junction with a load of cross-ties. Far ahead down the white lane stood the wood post boxes by the Junction, and a man on foot—Mist’ Mike Tolen—was walking toward them. As the first shot echoed, he saw Mist’ Tolen fall and another white man stepped out of the wood edge. Though distracted by the shrieks from the Tolen cabin, Calvin thought he heard another shot before a second man jumped down from that big oak. Mis Sally Tolen, barefoot, shrieking, was already outside, “little chil’ren follerin behin’ dere mama like a line o’ ducklins.” Seeing the two figures and the body, she stopped short, clutching her hair, as her children caught up with her, shrieking, too.
Calvin had pulled up at the shots, but when the two men went back into the woods, he overtook Mis Tolen, entreating her to shut her children in the cabin. She did so, he said, but a moment later she came shrieking out again and ran right past him.
“And did you get a look at those two men?”
“Yassuh.”
“And can you identify them for this court?”
“Yassuh. Mist’ Edguh Watson—”
“Objection, Your Honor!”
“Sustained.”
Nearing the body, Calvin said, he wondered why no one had come to investigate from the Cox cabin. (Here our attorney jumped up with another objection, also sustained.) By the time the old man reached the Junction, the postman Mills Winn was already approaching from the other direction. After Mills Winn had coaxed and pried the hysterical young woman off her husband’s body, they had hoisted the victim onto Calvin’s cart and brought him home.
“Well now, Calvin,” said Attorney Cone in a baited, patronizing voice that was a sign to the jury to pay close attention, “you have acknowledged your poor eyesight, have you not? So please explain to these gentlemen of the jury how an old darkie with failing eyesight can be so certain that the man he identified from a quarter mile away was this defendant?” And Calvin said, “I knowed Mist’ Edguh since a boy, knowed the shape and size of him, knowed the way he walk. In clear mornin sun, I b’lieve I would know him from a quarter mile, maybe half a mile away, cause the sun shines up the color in his hair, and nobody around dem woods exceptin only him had dat dark red hair look like dry blood.”
Looking up for the first time, leaning around behind our attorneys’ broadclothed backs, Frank Reese sought my eye. His expression said, Mist’ Jack? Looks like you’re fucked. There was no way to read his feelings in the matter, no time, either, because Old Man Calvin, looking straight at Reese, kept right on talking.
“I never seed no sign of no cullud man,” Calvin stated flatly. He volunteered this of his own accord in the startled silence in the courtroom that followed his identification of Ed Watson, and I was glad, because Frank needed all the help that he could get. But neither judge nor prosecutor nor his own attorney took the least notice of this critical point, far less pursued it.
A last-minute witness was Cone’s former client Mr. Leslie Cox, whose indictment for the murder of Sam Tolen had recently been dismissed without a trial by the circuit court: Attorney Cone had been much pleased, since Cox’s acquittal was a fine precedent for The State of Florida v. E. J. Watson and Frank Reese. He was happy to pay Cox’s railway fare to Jasper out of E. J. Watson’s pocket and his faith was justified: invoking the Almighty as his witness, Les Cox lifted his palm and swore to the complete innocence of Mr. Watson. Since he himself had shot D. M. Tolen dead, he knew what he was talking about and spoke with commendable conviction. The jury was very favorably impressed by the evident sincerity of this young man and I understood much better now why Cone had cut off Calvin Banks so sharply before he could identify the second man he’d seen beside Tolen’s body.
Cone told us later that the seven Jasper jurors who voted for conviction could not dislodge the other five, who might have been bought off by Cone’s assistants, for all I know. Though my attorneys never specified where all their client’s money had been spent, one thing was certain, money was no object—these paper rattlers spent every cent I had. Fred P. Cone, who had never lost a case, did not intend to lose one now for puny financial considerations, not on his ascent in a brilliant career that would one day land him in the statehouse.
Faced with a hung jury, Judge Palmer declared a mistrial and ordered the case held over until the next term of the circuit court. Later that month, in Lake City, he threw out the lawsuit of the Myers nephews against the executors of Tabitha Watson’s will. While I festered in the Jasper jail, unable to do a single thing about it, Jim Tolen resumed his fire sale of our family property.
Leslie got word to me that if I were convicted, he would assist in my escape, and I believed him—not that I trusted him. The man whose word I trusted was his father.
CALL ME CORY
Outside my bars, on a fine morning in Jasper, a redbird chortled loud and clear, recalling lost springtime woodland days with Charlie Collins—“a day of new lilies and pale haze of dogwood in the April wood,” as she had written in a love note. But instead of that redbird, I was doomed to listen to my fine-fea
thered son-in-law, who said things like, I’m afraid your record is against you, Mr. Watson. Though Walter and his friend Jim Cole had twisted every arm in Tallahassee, they didn’t think I had a chance in hell. Cole still wanted me to like him because it made him nervous that I didn’t: I would have respected him much more if he’d told the truth, that he would have been highly gratified to see me hung.
When I first knew Walt Langford back in ’95, he was a cow hunter out in the Cypress, snot-flying drunk on rotgut moonshine from one day to the next. This morning he was dead sober in a three-piece black serge suit. “Who the hell are you, the undertaker?” I said. “Come to take my measure for my coffin?” Walter mustered a grin and passed me Carrie’s note:
Oh Daddy, please! Walter says you must throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Tell them you had to defend yourself against that man because he threatened you, tell them you regret it deeply but you had no choice. Walter and his business friends will testify what a fine hardworking planter and good businessman you are, and surely our side can convince the jury what a good provider and good husband—and wonderful kind jolly father!—our dear, dearest daddy has always been! If you’ll just cooperate and plead guilty and accept a reduced sentence, Walter says, everything is bound to turn out fine!
“The family has decided I am guilty, is that correct?”
“Nosir, it’s not that, exactly—”
“Walter,” I told him, “it is that. It’s that exactly, Walter.” I sent a message back to Carrie that her dear, dearest daddy had done no wrong even if he’d shot Mike Tolen, which he hadn’t, and therefore he would not plead guilty under any circumstances.
Walter told me I had better think that over because after the hanging it would be too late. Walt didn’t even know he was being funny. Said he’d “heard on excellent authority that the State was prepared to negotiate”—that’s the constipated way Walt talks since he became a banker. And he had Eddie, who trailed in here behind him, talking that same way, the pair of them sitting upright on my bunk, ever so prim and mealy-mouthed, like they wouldn’t mind a second helping of nice mashed potato. “I’m afraid your record is against you, Dad,” my offspring said.
Walter’s “good authority,” of course, was State’s Attorney Cory Larabee, with whom my family were clearly in cahoots. And who should happen by an hour later to inquire if “Ed” was comfortable? The state’s attorney himself stepped into my cell talking too loudly in the grand flatulent manner of politicians. He slapped my back and sat his ass down, made himself at home. “Now don’t stand on your manners, Ed, just call me Cory!” Here I was, entirely at the mercy of Call-me-Cory and my kinfolks, who seemed to think they had some special dispensation to squeeze right into my small cell beside me.
“Spit it out,” I said. How had this happened? Where the hell was Cone?
Because Friend Ed had support from influential friends—Call-me-Cory meant the governor—he might be paroled in three years’ time if he pled guilty. Cory raised his eyebrows high on that pale dome of his while his good news penetrated my dull criminal brain. “Because otherwise, Ed,” said he when I was silent, “we’ll do our very best to hang you, boy!”
Damn if he didn’t laugh out loud and slap me on the knee, to show me no offense was meant by threatening my life. Because I was so close to Broward, this public servant was out to please, no matter whom, no matter what, so I damn well better take advantage—that’s what he wanted me to think. That was the bait.
I jumped up with a sudden yell and backed him up against the bars, squinting one eye. Knowing a dastard when he saw one, Call-me-Cory hollered, “Guard!” But Buddy had stepped out to heed a call of nature after locking up an innocent prosecutor with a vicious killer. I had the prosecutor cornered, I was panting in his face. “No sir!” I shouted. “No sir, Call-me-Cory, sir! I am not pleading guilty. All you have for motive, Cory, is a dispute in the family, Cory, and if that’s a motive, you will have to hang every adult in the state of Florida. Furthermore, Cory”—my voice had dropped to a whisper of quiet menace—“since you mention my friends in Tallahassee, be aware that I am keeping them abreast of every aspect of this shameful case, including the behavior of the prosecutor. So the next time you come in here trying to trick a defenseless prisoner in the absence of his legal counsel, those friends will see to it that you are disbarred.”
The prosecutor was trying to chuckle but all he made were airy little sounds like a rooster with its throat cut. He had put out a rank body smell, that’s how quick fear took him. “All right now, Ed,” he whined, to calm me. “All right now, Ed, if that’s the way you want it.” Looking more sheepish than a sheep, he told me I had a first-rate legal mind, I was much too sharp for him, that’s all, no wonder the governor thought so highly of me! He was shaking his head in admiration, laughing, too, the kind of laugh that might get away from him at any moment, go way high up like a fox yip, out of shattered nerves. His cautious hand rose to pat me on the shoulder, then hung dead in the air not knowing where to go.
“Where’s that damned guard?” he squawked, peering out through my bars, as if we were in this damnable fix together. Next thing I knew, he was hollering at someone else. “Christamighty, you never heard me tell you, Wait outside?” Damned if that mean turd of a Jim Tolen hadn’t snuck in here while the guard frequented the privy. Shifty Jim was peering through the bars, itching away in his sharp-cornered suit. “Mr. Per-secutor? Sposin I was to inform to them newspapers how you was a-hobnobbin in here, crackin jokes with the selfsame heenus killer you was swored to persecute?”
The dignity of the Persecutor’s office could not permit this sort of insolence. Winking at the prisoner, Larabee climbed onto his high horse and rode all over him. “And prosecute him I shall, sir, with all the might God gave me! And the Lord willing, Mr. Tolen, sir, you shall see him hung! because in my opinion he is red in tooth and claw! A man more guilty of a heinous crime never drew breath! Nevertheless—”
“All I’m sayin, Mr. Persecutor—”
“Yes sir! And all I’m saying, Mis-ter Tolen, is the following: having made the acquaintance of said defendant in the halls of justice, I can testify that E. J. Watson is a man, sir, made from the same dull clay as yourself. He eats as you do, breathes as you do, and worships God as you do, Mis-ter Tolen! What is more, he is a lively man, piss and vinegar just don’t describe it, and when he’s up there swinging from that rope, I for one won’t be ashamed to say I was proud to know him!”
When Cory paused to get a breath, his sly wink said, How’s that, Ed? Still want to make that not-guilty plea and go up against a ripsnorter like me in the public try-bunal?
“Now that don’t mean friend Ed deserves to live. Howsomever, may I remind you, Mis-ter Tolen, that no judgment has been pronounced and that in this great democracy of ours, E. J. Watson is innocent until found guilty by a jury of his peers. So tell the press whatever you damn please and I’ll expose you for a reckless liar and take you to court for obstruction of justice, Mis-ter Tolen!”
Larabee was having sport with this poor dolled-up Tolen but mainly he was sucking up to the defendant, knowing that Broward might return a favor to a smart young state’s attorney with political ambitions who had obliged him with some lenience and discretion. Even were he to lose this trial, its notoriety might lend some color to such a thin gray feller, which he would need when hustling votes on down the line.
Buddy came galumphing back like a big woolly dog. “Dammit, Guard, where have you been?” Call-me-Cory hollers. But Buddy is wheezing and he merely grunts, fiddling his keys. This big boy sees ’em come and sees ’em go on both sides of the bars. “Had me a good bowel movement, Mr. State’s Attorney,” he confided, in better humor now that he felt comfortable again. But noticing Tolen, he frowned deeply, grasping the man’s scrawny upper arm. “How’d you get in here?”
Cory signaled to Buddy to let Tolen go. Feeling magnanimous now that he was safe, he winked at friend Ed through the bars. All the while, Jim Tolen had been
eyeing him with that sliding look of the mean dog sneaking around behind for a good bite, and damned if he didn’t spit his brown tobacco chaw toward Cory’s boots, in a loud wet squirt that would fire a clan feud back where he came from.
Old Cory went stomping off after the guard, having had about enough of our rough company, and Tolen took advantage of this opportunity to ease up to the bars. Since the last time I’d seen him so close up, there was no improvement. Jim Tolen was the bitter end of centuries of Appalachian incest, with bad weak teeth, big bony ears, and thick black brows that curved right down around the eye sockets. He gave off a dank chill of revenge and death like the cold breath of an autumn wind down his home ravines.
“Yeller Ed.” His voice was hoarse.
“For a little shit who’s been looking up a mule’s ass all his life, you’re dressed up pretty smart there, Jim. Looks like you might know a thing or two about stolen property.”
“Yer bein tried just for the one, Ed Watson, but you was in on both them hee-nus murders,” Tolen yelled, hoping the prosecutor could still hear him, “and they ain’t a man in the south county as don’t know that!” He turned back to me. “Yeller Ed the backshooter. Ain’t goin to parlay your way out of this one, you shitty bastrid. Gone to hang you high. And they’s men waitin on you in Fort White as will take care of it in case this jury don’t.”
What the hell kind of a jail was this, I wondered, where the prisoner had no protection—where some degenerate like this could stroll right in and shoot an inmate through the bars? But of course any jail so easily entered might be just as readily departed. This Jasper jail would be a whole lot easier than Arkansas State Prison.