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.