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-feathered 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.
I put that idea aside for just a minute. Buddy’s shoe slaps were pounding down on us, our meeting was coming to a close. I put my face close to the bars and fixed Jim’s eye and muttered fast and cold, “If I were you-and by that I mean a thieving white-trash Tolen-I would clear out of Fort White, because folks who have already had enough of your ratfuck family might just want to finish up the job.”
To talk in that disgusting way once in a while does the heart good.
Tolen cocked his head back like a musket hammer and snapped it forward, shooting his chaw into my face. My hand darted through the bars and grabbed his stripy shirt, and the cheap cloth tore as the guard spun him away, exposing a chicken chest so white under his red neck that a man might almost imagine he had bathed.
“Naw!” Jim howled. He was clawing at that tear like he’d been scalded. “That’s my new shirt!” I cackled just to rub it in, reeling back and rolling off my wall, making the most of it. But life is peculiar and the truth is I felt bad about Tolen’s cheap shirt. I wanted to tear his rodent head off but tearing a poor man’s Sunday shirt was something else.
Then it hit me like a mule kick: Jim Tolen was not a poor man, not anymore. His dirty pockets were stuffed with money that rightfully belonged to Watsons and he was still selling off our land. The blood rush to my temples nearly felled me. “You and your brothers stole our plantation and you will pay for that the same way they did.” Those words escaped my tongue beyond recapture and my desperate laugh to divert attention clattered like an empty bean can on the concrete floor.
I pressed my forehead hard to the cold steel. My foe stood dim and ghostly, making no sound. The prosecutor’s shadow neared, the guard behind like Death’s attendant, as if all listened to the echo of those dire words, as if the People of the State of Florida stood in judgment on this caged human being. I felt not lonely but cut off from humankind.
Then time resumed, the morning fell back into place, the redbird sang anew outside my cell window, the prosecutor smiled thinly. “The same way they did? Guard? You heard what the prisoner said, correct?”
“I ain’t deaf.” Buddy gave me a reproachful look, shrugging his shoulders.
“Remember his words carefully, Guard. You’ll be called to testify.”
“How about me?” Tolen complained. “I sure ain’t likely to forget them devil’s words!” When Buddy grumbled, “Can’t write nothin except only my X,” Tolen instantly produced a scrap of paper and a pencil stub and started scrawling, to prove that he suffered no such limitation.
The prosecutor tipped his hat. “Three witnesses to an unsolicited admission of a deadly motive. I am confident, Ed, that the jury will see it that way, too. I advise you to accept the State’s generous offer-”
“Generous offer?” Jim shrilled in alarm. “Goin to turn that killer loose? He’ll hunt me down and shoot me in cold blood like he done my brothers!” But thin Jim wasn’t afraid of that, not really. When the guard dragged him away, he wore a twisty grin, hard as a quirt.
Bad as it looked, I concluded that Ed Watson would not hang. For all his bluster, this state’s attorney was a stupid man. His political career was the carrot rigged in front of the donkey, it was all he saw. In his effort to cajole me, he had lunged after that carrot, scared of losing.
I got a whiff of what was in the wind from Carrie’s note as well as from Walter and Eddie: better a jailed father than a hanged one. They were dead scared of the scandal of a public execution. The guilty plea they wanted me to make would cut their losses, get the black sheep locked away. I could make the mistake of pleading guilty only if I was so greedy for survival that I would accept a life of being caged and fed and watered behind bars like a wild animal. I was not that greedy, or at least not yet. If I kept my head, I was going to be acquitted, because none of my family had the guts to see me hung.