That Night at the Palace (38 page)

“As I looked across the street at the three of you, I thought about rushing over there and pushing you into the mine. The hole is a deep one. You’d never get out. No one would ever find you, and with some luck no one would come to New Birmingham looking. I’d keep my little home. My life would go on in peace.

“I almost did it, too. I don’t know for sure what stopped me.

“Then the next day I went down to that shantytown to barter for a couple of cans of beans. That’s what we did in those days, we’d bargain with each other, ‘cause nobody had any money. But right after I got there, a cop showed up in a flatbed Ford with some kids who started giving everybody watermelons. You handed me two.”

Jesse looked Shakes in the eyes. “I think I remember you.”

“Sometime after that the story went around the shantytown that you kids got in a heap of trouble for stealing those watermelons,” Shakes smiled. “I hated myself more than ever after that. Y’all were three good kids and I almost killed all y’all.

“About a month after that I woke up in the middle of the night because a really noisy Ford Model-T flatbed went rumbling down the street. I sneaked out and watched you and that other boy lowering something into that mine. I don’t know what it was, but it looked like a body.

“I stewed over that for a couple of days, that and the fact that my life had sunk so low that I had almost committed murder for a bed in the back of a crumbling down hotel. Finally one day I went into town. That cop stopped me and asked if I’d seen some woman. He said she’d gone missin’. I told him that I didn’t know anything about it.

“I didn’t know what y’all put down that shaft, but I knew this. Three kids who will steal watermelons, knowing full well that they’ll get in a heap of trouble, so they can feed some folks who don’t have enough money to buy dirt aren’t going around killing people and hidin’ ‘em in mineshafts. I thought long and hard about it, and that was the conclusion I came to.

“One day I was in Elza and I notice the steeple on the Baptist church. I hadn’t walked into a church since before I left Rusk. I was just a kid back then. I don’t know why I went in. I guess that I just wanted to hear what someone else thought about it. That was the day I met that preacher.”

“Brother Bill,” Jesse added.

Shakes smiled broadly. “Brother Bill. He’s one of my best friends now. It sounds funny to say that. Back then I didn’t have any friends. Now I have a lot of ‘em.”

Jesse watched the man who seemed to have nothing but couldn’t keep from smiling.

“I went in there to tell him about you kids, but I really never got a chance to talk about y’all. That preacher kept making me tell him about myself. I probably talked for the better part of an hour. I told him about everything - Chicago, the market, my wife, my parents dying. I told him how I was about the lowest person on earth.

“Then he asked me how God felt about me. Well, I thought that was pretty obvious. I was a sinful man and God didn’t like me much. Hobos are always meetin’ preachers. They’re always telling us that God loves us, but we know better. We always say that we know he loves us and we pray with ‘em and take whatever handout they’ve got. Only, this guy didn’t leave it at that, he kept pressin’ and finally I flat out told him what I thought. I said, ‘If God loves me, how come I ended up a drunken hobo living in a ghost town?”

“Then he said to me, ‘Shakes, you haven’t ended up yet. God started something with you and this life you’re livin’ is part of it.’

“He didn’t bother tryin’ to save me or anything like preaches usually do. He just gave me an old Bible and told me to prove him wrong. So I tried. Let’s face it. I’m a hobo. I ain’t got nothin’ and I ain’t worth nothin. Why would God want to do anything with someone like me?

“I read that book cover to cover a couple or three times, and all I could find is stuff that backed him up. Finally one night, all alone in my little room at the Southern, I prayed for the first time in my life. Oh, I’d said prayers before, but this was the first time I’d ever really tried to speak to God. I don’t really know what I said. It was something like ‘if I’m worth anything to you, take me and use me.

“I think it was that night when I realized that I wasn’t a hobo because of all the things I’d done. I was a hobo because of all the things I could do.

“Jesse, back when I first met you, I was a loner without a single friend in the world. Now I have friends in every train depot and back alley from here to Chicago. Somewhere along the way I realized that just because I was a hobo, it didn’t mean that I had to be miserable.

“But I still couldn’t get the night that you and that other boy came to New Birmingham out of my mind. So about a month after meeting that preacher I bought me a rope, and I climbed down that old mineshaft.”

Jesse stared at the man as a cold chill went through him.

“It took me all day, but I managed to get that woman’s body out of that hole. I buried her in that little cemetery just past the smelter. I spent over a week workin’ on the marker. There was a pink granite corner stone on the old bank building. It took a lot of work but I managed to get it free and rolled it up to the cemetery. I carved her name on it.”

Jesse broke down in tears. “We didn’t kill her, Shakes, I swear we didn’t kill her,” he said, trembling.

“I know. Like I said, I worked for a coroner back in Chicago. Capone was around in those days. I saw a lot of shooting victims. I also saw a lot of suicides too. You’d be surprised at how many people either miss or change their minds at the last second only to shoot themselves in the neck and chest. What happened that night, Jesse? Why’d she kill herself, and why’d you boys try to hide her?”

Jesse wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at his new friend. “She was Jewel’s mom. You remember the girl who was with us the day we gave you the watermelons? I don’t know the whole story. There was this man in town, two men, really. They had hurt this girl; they beat her up real bad, maybe even raped her. Up in Jacksonville they lynched a black guy for it, but it wasn’t him who did it. It was these other two. Me and Cliff had seen this one guy meet Mrs. Stoker in the alley across from the Palace, so we climbed up on the roof to watch. We saw him beat her. Then one night I followed her into an alley. Both of the men were there that night. She told ‘em that she was pregnant. They just laughed at her. She pulled a gun and tried to shoot one of ‘em, but she ended up getting all beat up. I just sat there in the shadow like a coward and watched. When they left she shot herself.”

“Are these the same men who killed your friend?”

Jesse nodded. “I think one of them did it. The other’s dead. He got hit by a train.”

“Why didn’t you tell that cop about all this?”

“Before she died, Mrs. Stoker begged us not to tell anyone. She wanted to protect Jewel.”

“Why don’t you tell anyone now? They’re going to throw you into prison, they may even give you the chair.”

Jesse wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at Shakes and said, “You remember the girl that came to see me last night?”

“Gemma?”

“Her father was the one that got hit by the train. The other man’s her uncle.”

Shakes sat back on his bunk and thought for a minute and then looked up at Jesse.

“Have you noticed, Jesse, my hands don’t shake anymore? I don’t know when it stopped. Just one day I looked down, and my hands weren’t shaking. I don’t drink anymore either. I’m still a drunk. If you offered me a swig, I’d probably down the whole bottle. But I almost never take that first drink anymore.

“I had everything in Chicago, and at the same time I had absolutely nothing. Now I have nothing, but feel like I have everything.

“Kid, whatever happens in this trial, even if you get sent to jail, you’re more valuable than you will ever know. You haven’t ended up yet.”

#

CHEROKEE COUNTY COURTHOUSE

RUSK TEXAS

11:45 a.m., December 7, 1941

When Gemma stepped out of the car, she was a bit surprised at the crowd in town on a Sunday. There wasn’t a single parking spot on the square. She parked a block away on Henderson Street in front of the new laundry and dry-cleaning service. There were mostly men huddled in groups. As she past one group it frightened her to hear some man say, “Somebody’ gotta do somethin’ about that kid before he murders any more people.”

She felt the stare of angry eyes as she climbed the courthouse steps. When she got to the door, she saw a line of pickups pull into town, circle the square and then head off to find places to park.

The judge had been very kind to Jesse and Gemma. He had seen to it that Gemma could come and go all she wanted and that she could bring things like food and books. Gemma’s mother had made pot roast, a Sunday tradition at the Crawford house. Normally Gemma would get up and go to Sunday school on a Sunday morning, but the past few weeks had altered her routine to some extent. This morning she waited until the pot roast was fully cooked and packed some into a little Dutch oven to bring up to the courthouse for Jesse.

When she entered the courthouse, a sheriff’s deputy greeted her with some nervousness. All the deputies had been very nice, and this man was no exception, but he stood at the door looking out at the crowd with obvious concern.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” the deputy replied. “They started showing up about a half hour ago. If many more show up I’m gonna have to call for help.”

“Does this have somethin’ to do with Jesse?”

“Have you seen the Houston paper?”

“No,” she replied with growing apprehension.

“It’s on the desk outside the cells. The keys are there, too. I’m gonna stay up here. You can let yourself in.”

Gemma carried the pot down the staircase and into the county sheriff’s office. She passed through the office area to a door that led into the jail cells. Just outside the barred door was a desk with the newspaper sitting on it. She put the cast-iron pot on the desk and sat down on a wooden swivel chair to look at the paper. The cover had horrible pictures of Cliff and Jewel. Gemma’s eyes moistened as she looked at the two friends she’d grown up with. Their bodies were all mangled and bloody. Next to Cliff was a dead alligator. She almost broke down and cried as she realized that the stories she’d heard were true. The C.A. had rambled on and on about it in court, and it was as horrible an image as she could possibly imagine, but until that moment they were only images in her mind. These were clear and up close. Suddenly the ugly truth of Cliff’s slow, brutal death became very real.

Then Gemma looked at the picture of Jewel. Jewel’s face was looking up with her eyes wide open, almost as if she were alive, except there was a sharp tree the size of a baseball bat sticking up through her chest. Her body was suspended there looking back at the camera. Gemma broke down and cried. She and Jewel had never been real close. At one time they started to become friends, but that was the summer that her father had suddenly died. At the same time she began going with Jesse. She remembered how, after her father’s death, Jesse started coming over to the house a lot to help out with chores. One day when they came home from the shop, Jesse had mowed the lawn and trimmed all the trees and hedges. He began coming over almost every day. As a result, Gemma didn’t have much time for other friends. She suddenly regretted not spending more time getting to know Jewel. The poor girl’s mother had run away that same summer.

Gemma heard a noise from the crowd outside. She instinctively looked up, realizing that this was going to be a bad day. Gemma quickly took a handkerchief from her purse and wiped away the tears. She couldn’t let Jesse know she’d been crying, and sure didn’t want him to know what was going on outside. She quickly grabbed the keys and then opened the door to the cellblock and walked down the hall to Jesse’s cell.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said cheerfully as she opened his cell door. “I hope you’re hungry.”

“What’s going on outside? We keep hearing noises.”

“I don’t know,” she lied. “I didn’t hear anything.”

#

MCMILLAN’S STORE

ELZA, TEXAS

12:50 p.m., Sunday December 7, 1941

The chief and Corporal McKinney were having another unfruitful day. They started the morning by driving out to Cherokee-One-Leg’s house, but the old man wasn’t home. On the positive side, his truck wasn’t there, which suggested that he had left of his own volition and wasn’t another one of Richard Crawford’s victims. They then spotted Crawford’s red coupe parked next to a shed behind the house. The chief immediately feared that Crawford had gotten to the old man, but McKinney knew better. That old Indian fighter was too crafty.

As Chief Hightower pulled the prowler into town, they spotted Toad Lowery in front of McMillan’s waving them down. Jefferson feared the worst; the last time he got news from Toad and Hunker on a Sunday morning it was not good.

When they pulled under the awning they saw that Hunker was holding a rifle cradled in the cook of one arm, and over his other shoulder he had a stick with at least five gutted coons hanging from it.

As Toad came to the window Jefferson said, “It looks like you boys had a good morning’.”

Toad shoved a copy of the
Houston Examiner
in the prowler window and asked, “Chief, you seen this?”

The chief looked at the cover pictures in dismay and handed the paper to Corporal McKinney.

“Someone broke into my office. That roll of film was in my desk.”

While the two officers were sitting in the shade, a long line of pickups drove past on the highway toward Rusk. Both lawmen watched with the interest that only a police officer could understand.

“Is it normal to see this much traffic on a Sunday?” McKinney asked.

“No, there’s never any traffic on a Sunday.”

A second line of trucks passed. This time one of the trucks was a Chevy pickup with wooden sideboards. There were five men standing in the back. Two of the men were holding shotguns.

“They’re goin’ to lynch ‘im,” McKinney said.

The chief slammed the prowler into gear and hit the accelerator. As the car sped off, gravel sprayed all over the Lowery brothers.