Timepiece
So it was for nearly a decade. Hatt had enjoyed a sense of celebrity among his friends as a relative of the rich, with an occasional allowance to prove it. As the widow’s only relative, he, and Barker, erroneously assumed that Hatt would be the only heir of her estate and fantasized about the day when the old lady would die and they would live a glorious lifestyle of unlimited gratification. The fantasies filled the men briefly with delusions of wealth, but left them all the hungrier at the reality of their present circumstance.
Growing increasingly impatient with the woman’s longevity, Barker had offered to hasten the happy occasion by helping the widow on her way. It was not a surprise to anyone that Barker would make such an offer. Cal Barker lived his life in darkness. As a miner, his days were spent in the belly of the earth and his nights on the darker parts of its surface.
He was married, though there was little evidence of his marital status, and he returned home just often enough to force himself on his wife, a plain-faced woman who feared the large man and tacitly accepted his abuse and neglect. She had borne four children which she provided the sustenance for through hiring herself out for domestic chores and occasionally from what was left of Barker’s wages after the gambling and alcohol had taken its due.
Barker’s life of darkness was more than one of locale. He lived his life in sole pursuit of its baser desires, discovering that pleasures diminish with indulgence and become harder to come by. And as those who chase the unattainable do, he grew meaner with age. Mean enough to kill a widow.
Hatt, on the other hand, though unfettered by moral turpitude, feared the possibility of a noose. “She’s an old-enough bag of bones,” he told Barker. “Ain’t hardly got another year left in her. Let God do the dirty work.”
The day the widow died, there were two rounds of drinks on Hatt, which exhausted the last of his money, followed by another from Barker, who was sure to share in Hatt’s good fortune. Not coincidentally, his register of friends swelled that day, and Hatt, who had never enjoyed such eminence, was just stupid enough to believe in his new-found popularity.
Six days later, at the reading of the widow’s last will and testament, Hatt’s dreams were shattered. It was fortunate for all present that Hatt had not brought a gun into the law office, as he would likely have killed all present, then turned the weapon on himself.
Once the initial shock of the reading wore off, the details of the will became of greater concern to the men. They found that the bulk of the estate was willed to a church—a faceless entity in which their only retribution lay in profaning God, something they had long before perfected. Then, a week later, Wallace Schoefield, one of the better readers of the group, stumbled onto the one individual who had received a personal gift. A golden timepiece had been bestowed upon a man by the name of Lawrence Flake. Upon further investigation, they discovered that the man was a Negro—a revelation that only added to their outrage.
In the twisted reasoning of the unjust (that all things which do not incur to their benefit are inherently unfair), the men decided that the timepiece was rightfully theirs and that they would claim it at any cost.
Hatt’s motivations ran deeper. He was, as the widow ascertained, unable to derive gratification from anything of true value in life and, frustrated at his own character, despised all those who could. And this was Hatt’s state of mind when he went after the delicate golden wristwatch, when in reality he wanted nothing more than to kill the man upon whom it was endowed.
The trial began at exactly nine in the morning, presided over by the Honorable William G. Halloran—an old man rarely seen outside a courtroom, who dressed spartanly and viewed justice and wardrobe with the same idiosyncratic fervor.
Due to the sensationalism of the trial, the gallery was filled to capacity and spectators stood against the wall and outer doors. The press was well represented and had secured many of the better seats near the front of the courtroom or against the wall near the oak jury box, where hats were hung in a row.
The twelve-man jury wore stone faces throughout the ordeal, listening to the arguments dutifully. By six o’clock, it was over. The jury unanimously found Hatt guilty of trespassing with intent to kill and that David, a model citizen, had acted in self-defense.
Despite the tabloids’ promise of a good show, by the end of the trial few were surprised at the reading of the verdict, and the only excitement of the day came when a juror, taking aim at a spittoon, inadvertently nailed a constable, who reacted by brandishing a billy club over the man.
At the conclusion of the reading, the judge thanked the jury for their service and dismissed them, while MaryAnne breathed a great sigh of relief and embraced Catherine, who sat next to her in the gallery. The four adult members of the Parkin household joined outside the courtroom and all seemed exceptionally relieved except David, who had never shared their anxiety.
“I had expected more of a show.”
“I will not say I am disappointed,” MaryAnne said. “I am just happy it is all over.”
“I am happy that I have not lost all of the day,” David replied, lifting a gold pocket watch from his vest pocket. “I need to meet with Gibbs. Mark, see the ladies on home. I will walk to the office.”
“Shall I come for you later?”
“Gibbs will bring me home.”
“Hurry back,” MaryAnne urged.
“Always, my love.”
David kissed her twice, once for Andrea, and they parted company. He entered the narrow alleyway next to the courthouse and hurried off to his office. As he neared the end of the passage, three men blocked his path. David recognized one of them from the courtroom.
“Excuse me,” he said, expecting and receiving little reaction from the men.
The largest of the men, Cal Barker, stepped forward and struck David across the face, knocking him backward. David rubbed his cheek, then, lowering his hand, noticed the blood on his fingers. Again, Barker sprang forward. This time, he grabbed David by the jacket and shoved him up against the yellow brick of the nearby building. His breath reeked of cheap whiskey.
“They say that you had nuthin’ to do with Hatt’s murder, that the nigger killed Hatt.”
David said nothing.
“A white man coverin’ for a nigger. Whatsa matter with you?”
David remained silent, staring at Barker dispassionately. The man’s face turned crimson.
“You stinkin’ rich, think you can buy anything. Well, you can’t buy justice. We’ll get our justice.”
David’s face showed no sign of intimidation, which only provoked Barker further. “Whatsa matter with you! You dumb?! Don’t you know I could kill you right now?”
Confusing control with cowardice, Barker awkwardly recoiled to strike David again. David quickly swung around, slamming his fist against the bridge of Barker’s nose and knocking him up against the opposite wall. Barker let out a small cry, then slumped to the ground. The two standing men moved toward David. David flashed a slim black ten-shooter from his waistcoat and leveled it at Barker.
“Back off! And you stay down or you will die like Hatt.”
Barker motioned to the men with his eyes and they retreated. Barker wiped at the thin stream of blood that flowed from his nose.
“You are not the ass your appearance would suggest.” He looked up at the two men, continuing to point the gun at Barker’s head.
“Step aside.”
The men moved to the wall. As David made his escape, Barker spat blood on the ground and scowled. “Justice will be served, Parker. We will have justice.”
“Parker? It’s Parkin, you ass.”
At David’s arrival, Gibbs slid the bolt from the door and let him in, then barred it behind them. He noticed the blood on David’s hands and chin.
“What happened?”
“Hatt’s friends.”
Without explanation, David went up to his office with Gibbs following closely behind. He set a lit candle on his desk, then reclined in his chair, rubbing his
fist. Gibbs sat down in the chair before his desk.
“What are you going to do?”
“About what?”
“These hoodlums.”
David shrugged. “Nothing. It’s done.”
Gibbs leaned forward toward the desk. “David, listen to me. There is much talk about these men. It’s not going to end here. They are trouble.”
David stared quietly at the candle burning on the table. A wax tear fell to its base. He looked up slowly. “What would you have me do? The trial is done.”
“Go back. Turn Lawrence over to the law. Let him go to trial.”
David looked at him levelly. “What kind of trial?”
“What does it matter! If they hang him, they hang him! He’s an old man, a poor old man! He’s got nothing, David, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
“What kind of life could that be knowing that I had betrayed a friend?”
“Betrayed?” His eyes squinted in disbelief. “He put himself in this situation, not you! David . . . he’s a Negro!”
David looked at him sadly, then dropped his head in his hands. He felt weary. “Leave me, please.”
Gibbs sighed, then reluctantly stood. “We have been through a lot together and you always seem to come out on top. But I have a bad feeling about this. I grant you that what you are doing is noble in its own way, but the cost of what you are doing is too great.”
David shook his head. “No, Gibbs. Only the cost of doing nothing is ever too great.”
“All is ashes . . .”
David Parkin’s Diary. December 4, 1913
It was easy for the five hooded men to enter Lawrence’s shack. The structure had been constructed by the cannery as a storage shed, so it could not be locked from the inside but only from the exterior by a rusted steel latch that had once run horizontally across the outside of the door. Lawrence had removed the latch the previous summer after some teens, in a schoolyard prank, had locked him in his own house. He had never considered moving the lock inside, thinking to himself, Who would rob a shack?
The men entered clumsily, growling in foul and guttural tones, drunk with whiskey and hatred. They hovered above the sleeping man only long enough to focus their assault. Lawrence was awakened by the rifle butt that smashed across his face. Panicked and bleary-eyed, he looked up at the hooded men who stood over him. Suddenly, one of them struck him across the face with a metal flask, then fell on him, thrashing wildly. With a powerful kick, Lawrence sent the man sprawling backward into a pile of clocks. In an instant, three men pounced on him, pummeling him with their fists, leaving his face a bloody mask. One clumsily tried to force a glass bottle into his mouth, which cut open his lip and cracked his front tooth, but slipped from the bumbling hands and bounded onto the floor and was lost in the darkness, followed by the man’s cursing.
Lawrence managed to free one hand and, swinging wildly, knocked one of the men to the ground. His mind reeled in confusion. He did not know who was attacking him, nor what he could have done to warrant the assault.
As he struggled to raise himself, an ax handle caught him across the back of his head, knocking him off his cot and to the ground, unconscious. The men, growing increasingly sadistic in their violence, stripped him of his clothes, dragged him outside, and bound him to a tree, where they beat and kicked him until they thought him dead. Two of the men returned to the shack and, after taking what they had come for, smashed several clocks with the ax handle, then disappeared into the night.
The fire spread quickly from the back porch, climbing upward to the second level, hungrily devouring all in its path. MaryAnne awoke to the baying of a mongrel dog and thought there was something peculiar about the dawn light shimmering through the bedroom window. Suddenly, there was a sharp crack, like the vaporous expansion of a log in the fireplace. She bolted up in bed as a thin stream of smoke snaked upward from beneath the bedroom door. “David! Our house is on fire!” She suddenly shrieked, “Andrea!”
David jumped up from the bed in horror. “Andrea! Dear God!”
David shot to the door and threw it open. A black pillow of smoke billowed into the room. The end of the hallway was completely engulfed in flames and from behind the wall of fire came a horrible sound. Andrea’s cry.
MaryAnne screamed. “Andrea!”
“Mama!” Andrea wailed faintly from behind the flames.
David ran back to the bed and pulling a quilt over himself, pushed toward the inferno surrounding Andrea’s room only to be repelled by the intense heat. He screamed out in frustration. The flames snapped fiercely, drowning out Andrea’s pleas. Just then, another male voice hollered out. “David!” Mark raced up the stairs. “David!”
“Andrea is in the nursery! Alert the fire station!”
“Catherine has left to pull the alarm.”
“Take MaryAnne out. I will climb the back railing to Andrea. Go!”
Outside, the pneumatic siren of a fire truck crescendoed as it entered the yard. A second fire vehicle, a large bell-shaped water drum drawn by horses, pulled into the yard behind it. The corps sprang to action. Two men began operating a pump hooked to the vehicle while a half dozen others, carrying leather fire buckets, streamed into the house, throwing water down the hallway.
In the yard below, Mark held MaryAnne back from her home. She sobbed and wrung her hands violently, each second weighing longer than the next. Where was David? Suddenly, he stumbled from the front doorway, coughing violently, his face streaked wet and blackened from smoke and soot. In his arms lay a motionless child.
CHAPTER NINE
The Release
“I know not why I am compelled to write at this time except as those caught in a torrent seek the surer ground and those caught in life’s tempests seek the familiar and the mundane.”
David Parkin’s Diary. December 4, 1913
Through the heroic efforts of the fire corps, the fire had been isolated to the east wing, though the stench of smoke permeated the entire mansion. The house itself had escaped serious structural damage, but the damage inflicted upon its occupants was of far greater consequence.
Night had fallen and the drawing room was illuminated by the yellow radiance of kerosene sconces. Usually by this hour Catherine would have extinguished the wicks and secured the downstairs. Tonight, however, there was company in the house. The police officer rose when David entered the room.
“Mr. Parkin, I am Officer Brookes. Perhaps you remember me from the other day.”
David habitually nodded.
“How is your daughter?” he asked cautiously.
“She is badly burned,” David replied, his eyes betraying the emotion within.
“I’m truly sorry. I have a little one at home scarcely older than yours.” The policeman paused. Then he continued, “It is our belief that the fire was deliberately set.”
David said nothing. Just then, Catherine entered the room. She walked up to David and whispered in his ear. David turned toward her, anticipating some change in Andrea’s condition.
Catherine read his intent. “There is no change, sir.”
“I am needed upstairs,” David said. “The doctor . . .”
Brookes frowned. “I am terribly sorry and I will leave you shortly but, please, just two questions.”
David looked at the officer impatiently.
“I understand that yesterday you were threatened by a man named Cal Barker.”
“I don’t know the man’s name.”
“I was alerted yesterday about the confrontation in the alley, but I arrived too late. I found Barker at a bar and questioned him. He had a broken nose and was raving like a lunatic, but denied the incident. What were his words to you?”
David breathed out. “He said something about getting his own justice.”
The officer nodded. “Barker was a friend of Everen Hatt’s. I will be arresting him this afternoon. I will keep you informed.” He stood up to go. “I am heartfelt sorry to intrude on you now, but time is of the es
sence. God bless your little one.”
David glanced over at Catherine, who was waiting anxiously.
“I will see you to the door, Officer Brookes,” Catherine said.
“I would be obliged.”
David mumbled a thank-you, then climbed the stairs to the parlor, where Andrea was being cared for. Dr. Bouk stood outside the door, grim-faced and fatigued.
“She has not stirred yet,” he said directly, as if in answer to an unspoken question. “If I thought she could survive the move, I would transport her to the hospital.” He took a deep breath, then looked David in the eyes. “The child cannot possibly live.”
David turned from the doctor and peered in through the crack in the parlor door to where MaryAnne knelt at the side of the walnut-framed bed. It was the same bed and room where she had given birth to Andrea three and a half years previous. The moment seemed frozen, betrayed only by the faint sound of a mantel clock. David turned to the doctor again. His eyes pled for solace. “Is there nothing to be done?”
The doctor frowned, nodding his head slowly. “The burns are too severe. She is running a high fever from the wounds.” He removed his bifocals and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I am very sorry, David. I wish I could give you hope. If she were conscious, she would be in excruciating pain.” He returned his glasses to his shirt pocket and untied his apron. “Frankly, I do not know what is keeping her alive.”
David looked back in at MaryAnne, bowed fervently over the bed, her cheek pressed against the feather mattress with her forehead touching Andrea’s motionless torso.
“I know what is keeping her alive,” he said softly.