Authors: Harry N. MacLean
On September 25, the final day of the grand jury session, Baird called a press conference to announce that the grand jury would issue no indictments in the McElroy case. He distributed a news release explaining that the grand jury had heard forty-five witnesses in more than eight days of testimony and had not found probable cause to return an indictment. Somewhat defensively, he stated that he had withheld no evidence from the grand jury.
Baird's announcement brought the press running back to town. The longer nobody was charged in the killing, the more newsworthy the story became. McFadin took the lead for the family, saying that Mrs. McElroy was "disappointed," but then she never expected the grand jury to indict anyone. Not only should Trena's identification of Del Clement have been adequate for an indictment, he said, but he had also turned over to authorities the names of other people who claimed to have seen the shooting.
Baird defended the grand jury, saying that they had worked hard and could consider only the evidence that was presented to them. And in a statement that endeared him to the community, he criticized the press, saying, "I think the major misconception has been the idea that it was some sort of vigilante killing-a killing by a town, so to speak. The point of view many papers have taken from the very beginning is the vigilante-type killing. That is one area where we've disagreed. The idea that it was a vigilante killing makes a nice story, but I simply feel there is no evidence to confirm that."
The grand jury action not only let Baird and the killers off the hook, at least temporarily, but the failure to indict also marked Skidmore as the town that killed the town bully. Editorial writers condemned the jury's action as a continuation of the conspiracy of silence-as if the entire town had gone into the jury room and denied seeing anything and was, therefore, guilty of a vigilante action. Headlines that followed referred to "vigilante justice" and to the "public execution" that had occurred in Skidmore.
The St. Joseph Gazette led off with a statement that it "didn't seem possible" that a grand jury could investigate the killing for two months and not indict anyone. The paper compared the shooting of Ken McElroy to the burning of Ray Gunn in 1931, and opined that "Missouri must not get the reputation of a state where murder is tolerated."
A Kansas City paper compared the killing with the assassination of Anwar Sadat and called it a "planned execution" that threatened the "destruction of the system of government we have fought for 200 years to maintain." Saying that "the bullet that killed McElroy was a direct hit at the basis of democracy," the paper called on someone in Skidmore to step forward and point the finger.
For the people of Skidmore, the most devastating editorial appeared on September 28 in the Maryville Forum. Attacking the St. Joseph Gazette because it criticized the grand jury for failing to do its job, the Forum said that the real problem was not the grand jury, which could act only on the evidence before it, but the townspeople who saw the killing and lied in front of the grand jury. After praising Baird for handling the matter so well, the editorial concluded, "For now any condemnation of the grand jury should be edged out by a chilling fear: citizens who take the law into their own hands are to be dreaded much more than the McElroys of the world."
No harsher judgment could possibly have been delivered: The town was worse than Ken McElroy. What they had done to him was worse than what he had done to them.
The community's only solace was that at least now, the crazy circus was surely over. There would be no more strange cars prowling the town, no more television cameras in the tavern, and no more cops out in the fields serving subpoenas. The grand jury didn't indict anyone, so the story was finished, and the people could get back to farming and living their private lives. Perhaps the healing could begin.
Not long afterward, in a Kansas City shoe store, Q Goslee was talking with a salesman from Lawrence.
"Skidmore?" said the salesman, scratching his head. "Isn't that where you shoot 'em out in the street?"
Later, on a vacation to the West Coast, Q registered at a motel in a tiny town in Oregon.
"Say," said the clerk, "isn't that where you killed the bully?"
"Yeah, that's where it happened."
"From what I read he sure had it coming. He must have been a helluva ornery guy."
Q said nothing.
"Why did he carry on so long without the courts or the law taking care of him?"
"A lot of us wondered the same thing."
When Kenny Weston, an alderman, wore his Punkin' Show hat to a fair in Shennandoah, Iowa, a man approached him, saying, "You're from Skidmore, huh? Isn't that where you guys shot the bully? By God, from what I read, he sure had it coming."
The approval of their countrymen only made matters worse. Most people in Skidmore didn't enjoy being looked on as vigilantes, whether the man deserved to be killed or not.
By the first week of October, the fields of corn were russet armies of stiff, dried stalks. The once upright cobs now hung almost straight down, their golden silks a dirty brown, their brittle leaves rasping and rattling in the autumn winds.
The bean fields were now spectacular arrays of bright yellows and oranges. The greens had vanished, and the early patches of orange had faded to rust. Soon the leaves would begin to fall. In the timber bordering the fields, the trees and bushes shimmered red and gold and orange.
The evenings were cool, and a heavy fog sometimes crept in on the south wind. The vaporous mist draped the fields and collected in the troughs between the steep hills, making the roads dangerously slick.
For days, the mornings dawned gray and gloomy, the steady drizzle punctuated by bursts of rain. The fields stood wet and empty, abandoned to the clinging moisture.
Finally, the sun broke through, and its light illuminated the autumn leaves, many now in full color and beginning to fall. The hedge was still green, but the hackberry leaves radiated a light yellow, and the wild cherry was mixed with flaming reds and golds. Q sat on his porch and looked up at the translucent leaves on the tall linden tree, trying to predict which leaf would fall next.
Squirrels scampered down the trees and across the lawn, going about their business of burying walnuts for the winter. Q didn't believe, as some people did, that the squirrels would remember where they buried each walnut. He had seen the animals sniffing uncertainly across January snow, and he had seen the nuts they had missed, or forgotten, shoot up as saplings in the spring.
Down the Valley Road, in the middle of the second curve, the two-story house stood empty and quiet. The windows were nailed shut, the yapping dogs and their cages were gone, and the weeds were beginning to grow in the drive where the pickups once stood. A hundred yards away, in the small house, eighty-four-year-old Mabel McElroy still lived with her youngest son, Tim. The once-sturdy body which had borne and raised fourteen kids and toiled in the harvest fields had grown frail and weak. Mabel had come home from the hospital a few days after Ken's death, but her diabetes was worsening, and her respiratory system was failing. She spent most of her days sitting in a chair hooked up to an oxygen machine, with vials of medicine on the table next to her. Tim had told her that Ken had been shot and killed, but he spared her the details of how and why. She seemed to accept the news without wanting to know more. On some days, her mind slipped, and she would sit by the window looking for him. "Where's Ken?" she would ask. "He hasn't been to see me in several days." Turning away from the window, she would say, "He should be home soon."
The morning after the first day of sunshine, a few combines clambered into the fields and began stripping the stalks of their fat cobs. The debate in the cafe that morning was fierce, one side arguing that it was time to get going and get 'er done, and the other side insisting that the corn wasn't dried down enough to avoid penalties at the elevator. If the moisture was above 16 percent, the farmer would be docked so many cents per bushel. Around midday, a few big stock trucks hauled the corn to the elevator in Maitland, and the chits given to the drivers indicated penalties. The combines shut down.
After two days of sun, when the air was dry and crisp and the corn was an even yellowish brown, the combines fired up again. Like ravenous creatures, the cumbersome machines lurched noisily into the fields. The glass cabs sat atop the tall wheels like huge eyes, staring out over the long, tapered metal spikes, as they guided the corn stalks into the grinding teeth. Up and down the rows the combines roamed, awkwardly but steadily, until finally they stopped beside a truck, and a long metal tube swung out and disgorged the corn in huge yellow heaps.
In the morning, the blacktops and gravel roads were crowded with the metal creatures moving to new fields of forage. Their shiny-spiked heads were a foot or two wider than a single lane and would rip open an oncoming car at the level of the headlights. Trucks ahead and behind the creatures signaled with flashing lights, warning other vehicles to slow down and move over.
The October push to get the crops out of the ground was as powerful as the April push to get the seed in. Seven days a week, as soon as the dew had evaporated, Kirby Goslee started the red behemoth rolling down the rows, and ran it on into the night until the moisture made the stalks too rubbery to snap. A happy man, he worked to the point of exhaustion, interrupted only by the arrival of the pickup from home with coffee and sandwiches.
In town, the streets were clogged with stock trucks and huge semis hauling grain to St. Joe. Weary men covered with dust and grease piled into the cafe for lunch. Conversation centered on bushels per acre and dollars per bushel-how much would actually end up in their pockets?
There was little talk of Ken McElroy or the shooting. He was dead and buried, the way he should be, and there was really nothing more to say.
At the little house on Valley Road, Ken's mother's was troubled. During a visit from Alice Wood, Mabel began talking about Ken's soul. She knew Ken had sinned in his lifetime, and she also knew that he had never been able to admit that he had done anything wrong. If he couldn't admit to God that he had sinned, he wouldn't be able to ask for forgiveness, and if he couldn't ask for forgiveness, he would surely spend eternity in hell. Mabel grabbed Alice's hand and pleaded, "Surely Ken will be able to ask for forgiveness in the end, won't he?"
Skidmore held its fall smorgasbord to raise money for the next year's Punkin' Show. Sunday dinner was held in the basement cafeteria of the schoolhouse, and long tables, set end to end, were covered with the dishes women cooked and brought for the feast: vegetable casseroles, broccoli, noodles, beans and bacon, Jell-o salads, mashed potatoes, fresh breads and muffins, and enormous platters of chicken and ham. At the end of the tables sat banana, raisin cream, apple, pumpkin, peach, and cherry pies, and at least four varieties of cheesecake. Pumpkins lined up around the room were judged for the biggest, smallest, oddest, and best dressed.
Q and Kirby stood quietly on the porch of the Goslee farmhouse, their hands in their pockets, their shoulders slightly hunched, and looked east over the fields of corn and beans. They had been working on the combine in the yard-Kirby using a wrench on one of the big gears and Q observing and making suggestions-when the sky opened suddenly, and sheets of rain drove them to shelter. Of the four boys, Kirby was the most like his father-stubborn, generous, funny, and insatiably curious about human nature. As they stood on the porch, he seemed even more his father's son. Both men were tall, with broad shoulders, thick arms, and pale blue eyes. The pot bellies protruding from their large frames were nearly the same size. Neither had much of a rear end, and their pants hung low in the back.
The sky overhead and to the east was swollen a heavy bluish black. Behind the house, to the west, the autumn sun broke through the clouds, and clusters of light rays slanted almost horizontally across the fields, burnishing the landscape a pale gold. The chill fall wind whipped the rain about and under the eves of the porch, and at the same moment, in the same motion, both men zipped up their red jackets. After a few minutes, the rain slowed, and a bright, opalescent rainbow appeared in the eastern sky, one end off in the fields and the other just behind Q's equipment shed. Q waited for his son to comment. "I've never been at the end of a rainbow before," Kirby said finally. "The pot must be just beyond the shed."
Under the arch of the first rainbow, a second one appeared, further east, smaller and fainter, but fully arrayed in brilliant hues. Q pointed up to the eastern sky, over the horizon. "Geese," he said, "heading south for the winter." Thousands of Canada geese were rising from the fields in a dramatic flurry. The upward spiral of birds gradually swung southward, forming a graceful arc that undulated in the middle as it continued to rise. The scattered spears of light from the west picked out the birds, and the black sky sparkled with tiny flashes of silvery turquoise. As the tail of the crescent rose from the fields, the head leveled out and made a final southward adjustment, disappearing into the darkness between the arches of the two rainbows.