Let the Circle Be Unbroken

by Mildred D. Taylor

  “I know a nigra when I see one!” she snapped.

  “Yes, ma’am, no doubt, but could you describe these particular Negroes to us?”

  “They was black, that’s all I know.”

  “But you did not see their features?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “What about other features, such as height? Could you distinguish the height of the intruders at the distance of twenty feet?”

  Mrs. Barnett seemed uncertain.

  “Mrs. Barnett, I wonder if you’d take off your glasses so that we can try a little experiment?”

  Mrs. Barnett turned toward Judge Havershack, a surging rebellion on her face, and Mr. Macabee stood to object.

  “What’s this leading up to, Wade?” asked Judge Havershack.

  “Mrs. Barnett has told us she didn’t have on her glasses. I think that we all need to know just how much she could see.”

  The judge considered. “All right,” he decided. “Take off your glasses please, Clara.”

  Mrs. Barnett let out another sigh and took them off. Mr. Jamison then went down the aisle and spoke to several men seated on a bench near the center of the courtroom. The men stood and came into the aisle; R.W. and Melvin Simms were among them. Mr. Jamison asked Mrs. Barnett if she recognized any of the men. Mrs. Barnett squinted fiercely, but finally admitted she couldn’t see who they were. He then asked if any of the men were the same height as the intruders. She was not to worry, he said, that the men standing were white; they were simply helping out the court. With no hesitation, Mrs. Barnett dismissed three of the men as being either too tall or too short. She said the remaining two were the right height. The two were R.W. and Melvin.

  “And how can you be so certain about the height?” Mr. Jamison asked her.

  “’Cause Jim Lee and them two he was fighting with were near to the same height. Jim Lee was five ten. Them two gentlemen standing next to you look to be near the same height as you from here, and Jim Lee and you was the same.”

  “How tall was the man behind the counter?”

  “Well, I didn’t much pay attention to him. He never got close to Jim Lee.”

  Mr. Jamison turned to Melvin and R.W. and asked them their heights. They blanched, looking uneasy. “It’s just to get a fix on the height of the intruders, gentlemen,” Mr. Jamison assured them. “Nothing personal.” The Simmses glared at him suspiciously, but gave their heights: five feet nine inches and five feet ten and a half inches.

  Mr. Jamison then asked that T.J. be brought down the aisle. Slowly T.J. stood and I saw that his hands, which he had kept under the table, were cuffed; his legs were free. Led by Deputy Haynes, he walked toward Mr. Jamison and stood beside R.W. and Melvin Simms. The courtroom was silent as everyone noted the difference in size. T.J. was much shorter and smaller.

  “Mrs. Barnett, look at T.J. carefully now,” Mr. Jamison directed. “Having just identified men of five ten and a half, and five nine of being the approximate height of the men who fought and struck your husband, can you say that T.J. was one of these men?”

  Mrs. Barnett bit into her lip. There could be only one answer. But Mrs. Barnett said, “I don’t know . . . it was dark. . . .”

  “Not that dark. You yourself said that throughout there was light from the flashlight. That you could see. Now, was T.J. one of the men?”

  Mrs. Barnett put on her glasses and replied crisply, “I can’t be certain.” Mr. Jamison gazed at her with great patience. “Well . . . maybe he wasn’t. . . . I can’t be sure. . . .”

  “Can’t you?” Mr. Jamison’s voice was suddenly stern. “You just told this court that the two men who—”

  Mr. Macabee jumped up and objected. He said that Mrs. Barnett had already given her answer and that should satisfy the court. Judge Havershack agreed. He ordered R.W. and Melvin to sit down and for Deputy Haynes to bring T.J. back to the defender’s table.

  Mr. Jamison turned again to Mrs. Barnett. Softly, he said, “Mrs. Barnett, I know you want—as does most everyone in this room including myself—the murderer of your husband to pay for his terrible crime. Now, with that in mind, I want you to think very carefully about this next question.” He paused as if trying to put the question right in his mind before saying it. But to my surprise, he asked no question right then. Instead, he walked over to the court table and opened a thin box and lifted out its contents. Walking back to Mrs. Barnett, he displayed what was in the box: two black stockings.

  “Mrs. Barnett, these as you know are ladies’ stockings. They were found in the trash outside your door the day after your husband was murdered. Such items are, of course, usually worn in times of grief.” He nodded at Mrs. Barnett, who crimsoned just a bit and tucked her own blackened legs farther inward to her chair. “Or sometimes just to give an aura of blackness. Now, ma’am, please forgive the personal question, but outside your time of mourning as now, have you worn stockings of this coloring?”

  Mrs. Barnett said she hadn’t, and to Mr. Jamison’s question as to whether or not she had been in mourning at any time during the past year and had perhaps just thrown away such stockings, she again said she had not.

  “Now, Mrs. Barnett, please look at my hand.” Mr. Jamison held up his hand for her to see, then slipped it inside one of the stockings. “What color does my hand appear to be?”

  Mrs. Barnett looked from Mr. Jamison’s hand to his face, then back to his hand again. “Well . . . black.”

  “Mrs. Barnett, since you yourself said that you saw no features of the men, but that they were definitely black, do you think that it was possible that the men could have been wearing stockings? Black stockings?”

  A murmur rose in the courtroom.

  “That perhaps the men who fought with your husband, who killed him, might not have been black at all, but white men wearing black stockings so that you would think that they were black?”

  A wave of disbelief rose and crescendoed as Judge Have-shack wildly pounded his gavel and threatened repercussions until all was quiet again. Then he glowered down at Mr. Jamison. “Now, Wade, you know all that’s supposition. You got no right to ask this witness to testify to what was in the minds of her attackers.”

  Mr. Jamison nodded. “Then Mrs. Barnett, tell me this. Without having seen any of their features—noses, mouths, eyes, hair—only the blackness of their faces, can you swear that the men who killed your husband were Negroes? Before God Almighty, can you swear that?”

  Mrs. Barnett stared at Mr. Jamison. Doubt had set in. She stared at the stocking still covering Mr. Jamison’s hand, then up at Mr. Jamison. She puckered her lips, wet them, and answered: “No, I can’t say that I can. I surely can’t. . . .”

  R. W. Simms and Melvin Simms followed Mrs. Barnett on the witness stand. Both testified that they had seen T.J. and two other Negroes running from the back of the Barnett Mercantile when they had come into town to shoot pool at Courtney Jones’ place. When asked by Mr. Macabee why they hadn’t become suspicious and stopped them, they told the court that they had recognized T.J., whom they had once befriended, and T.J. had told them that he and the other Negroes had just come from Ike Foster’s shed, where they had been playing cards and had been accused of cheating. They claimed, according to R.W. and Melvin, that they were fleeing with their winnings.

  R.W. laughed. “At the time, I thought it was nigger business. Let them take care of it. . . .”

  To our surprise, Mr. Jamison did not question R.W. or Melvin, but passed over them with what he called the right to recall.

  Mr. Macabee then called the white farmer who had given T.J. a ride back from Strawberry in his wagon on the night of the break-in. He testified that he had picked T.J. up shortly after nine o’clock on Soldiers Road, and that T.J. had told him he was coming from Strawberry. Mr. Jamison asked the farmer if he had noticed whether or not T.J. had been hurt. The farmer said that T.J. had been hurt and that he had said two men had beaten him, but had not said who. Following the farmer, Sheriff Hank Dobbs testified that
the gun Mrs. Barnett had earlier identified as having come from her store had been found by Clyde Persons, a citizen of the town deputized to apprehend the thieves.

  “Deputy, my foot!” I grumbled. “Ole Clyde Persons was one of them lynchmen.”

  “Hush, Cassie,” Stacey ordered. I hushed.

  Clyde Persons was called, and testified that he had indeed found the pearl-handled pistol in T.J.’s corn-husk mattress. Next Dr. Crandon told of Jim Lee Barnett’s and Mrs. Barnett’s conditions when he arrived on the scene. He described Mr. Barnett’s head injury, what treatment he had administered, and told the time of death.

  With his testimony the prosecution rested its case, and Mr. Jamison stood up. “I’d like to call T.J. Avery to the stand,” he said.

  All the fidgeting that had gone on during the last testimonies ceased, and all grew quiet. The faces of the boys around me were tense, anxious, waiting. I stopped breathing as T.J. stood. He looked around the courtroom, bewildered, as if too afraid to move. Mr. Jamison nodded to him; T.J. moved mechanically to the witness stand. He was sworn in, then sat down.

  Mr. Jamison started his questioning of T.J. by asking him to tell all that had happened that evening. T.J. began with the revival meeting when R.W. and Melvin had brought him up to Great Faith in their pickup. T.J.’s words were halting and unsure, all the cockiness gone.

  “And just how did you come to be with R.W. and Melvin Simms that evening? Was that unusual?”

  T.J. looked out over the courtroom, then quickly down at the floor. Throughout most of his testimony, he kept his eyes there. “N-no, sir. I’d been with ’em mos’ of the time for the last four or five months. They even give me stuff, too, cap and tie. I . . .” His last words were mumbled.

  “Speak up, T.J.,” Mr. Jamison admonished kindly, “so the court can hear.”

  “I—I said I thought they was my friends.”

  A knot formed in my throat.

  “Did you stay for the revival service?” Mr. Jamison asked.

  “No, sir. R. W. and Mel—” T.J. stopped and looked around, realizing his mistake. R.W. and Melvin had told him he could address them using only their given names, but like everything else they had said, that too meant nothing. T.J. lowered his eyes again. “I mean Mr. R.W. and Mr. Melvin, they said to come on and we gone right to Strawberry and—”

  R.W. jumped up. “That’s a downright lie!”

  Judge Havershack pounded his gavel and ordered R.W. to sit down and be quiet. Sullenly, R.W. looked around the courtroom, then back at the judge, and sat.

  Mr. Jamison resumed his questioning. “T.J., what was your purpose for going into Strawberry?”

  “Mr. R.W. and Mr. Melvin, they said they was gonna get me that pearl-handled pistol at the Barnett store. Said they’d take me up to church like I wanted, but then we was gonna go on into town to get that pistol.”

  “When you got into town, was the store open or closed?”

  “It was closed. Mr. R.W. and Mr. Melvin said there was no sense in comin’ back for the pistol after we’d come all the way into town jus’ to get it. Said we’d jus’ go in and get it, and if Mr. Barnett or Miz Barnett come down, we’d jus’ tell ’em we was plannin’ on payin’ for it come Monday.”

  “Did you go directly into the store?”

  “No, sir. We waited ’bout an hour first till the lights upstairs gone out and we figured the Barnetts was gone to sleep.”

  “How did you enter the store?”

  “Through the back. There was a window there, real small, and I got through it and opened the door for Mr. Melvin and Mr. R.W.”

  “Was the window big enough for a person the size of Melvin or R.W. Simms to get through?”

  T.J. shook his head. “It was tight jus’ for me.”

  “When you opened the door, was there anything different about the Simmses?”

  T.J. nodded. “They was wearing black stockings over their heads and they had on gloves. I got scared then, ’fraid they was gonna do more’n take the gun, and I wanted to leave, but they told me to stay. Then they broke the lock on the gun case and they give me my pistol.”

  “And just what happened then?” Mr. Jamison asked.

  T.J. answered, but the boys and I couldn’t hear what he said; for coming across the courthouse lawn, fussing at the top of his voice, was Joe McCalister.

  “Ah, Lord, no,” sighed Little Willie. We had lost all track of the time.

  Stacey looked from Joe to T.J. and started down. “Well, we better go try and shut him up ’fore we get in more trouble than we already in.”

  Little Willie, Clarence, and Moe followed him down. Christopher-John, Little Man, and I stayed behind in the tree.

  “It’s way past time to go!” Joe cried. “I told y’all younguns on the way down here my Aunt Callie get after me I ain’t home ’fore dark and I just’ been a-waitin’. Y’all knows I don’t like to be down here in the white folks’ street!”

  I was afraid that the people inside the courthouse would hear Joe’s hollering, but no one seemed to notice.

  When the boys reached him, they turned him back toward the wagon. But Joe stopped halfway there, waving his arms angrily in the air. After a minute or so, Stacey left the group and went over to the wagon, where Wordell was haunched by one of the wheels staring silently out at the scene. Stacey haunched beside him, then stood again, waiting. Wordell looked up at him, got up, and walked over to Joe. There were several more long moments of hefty yelling by Joe before finally he turned with Wordell and went back to the wagon. Stacey, Clarence, Little Willie, and Moe came back to the tree.

  “What happened?” I asked Stacey as he settled onto his branch.

  “Joe wanted to go right now, but Wordell got him to stay. What’s happening down there?”

  “He did? He actually talked?” I asked, my fascination for Wordell momentarily forcing out more important matters.

  “Course he talked,” Stacey snapped. “Now be quiet.”

  I turned my attention back to the trial.

  “—and you say it was R.W. Simms with a black stocking covering his face who hit Jim Lee Barnett with the axe, and that it was R.W. who shoved Mrs. Barnett, rendering—leaving—her unconscious.” Mr. Jamison leveled his gaze at T.J. “Is that correct?”

  “Y-yes, sir.” T.J. went on to explain what had occurred after both the Barnetts had been knocked out. He told of his trying to run, his threat to tell of what had happened, and the Simmses beating him.

  Mr. Jamison turned so that the spectators could see his face. His look was thoughtful, concerned. “T.J., you’ve said that R.W. and Melvin Simms told you they were going to get the pearl-handled gun for you. And you’ve said that you reached the store after closing and that R.W. and Melvin Simms said that you would just go in and take the gun.” Mr. Jamison turned back toward T.J. and lowered his voice so that it was softer, confidential, but could still be heard. “Now, T.J., I want you to be very truthful, both with yourself and with the court. Did you realize you were doing wrong?”

  T.J. looked at Mr. Jamison. He bit into his lip, then looked back at his cuffed hands. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then why did you do what you did? Why did you break into that store?”

  T.J. looked up, his eyes wide, as if he was sure everyone had already understood. He hesitated a moment, then said meekly, “They told me to. . . .”

  “At any time, T.J., for any moment, did you do physical harm against either Mr. Barnett or Mrs. Barnett?”

  “No sir, I didn’t! I never did! I ain’t never lifted a hand ’gainst neither of ’em and I wish—I wish to God I ain’t never gone in there. . . .”

  Mr. Jamison sat down; Mr. Macabee stood up. For an interminable time he gazed at T.J. and T.J. cowered under that gaze. Then Mr. Macabee approached the witness stand.

  “You’ve done a lot of talking, boy . . . about the Simmses and yourself,” said Mr. Macabee. “About what-all they done for you and about what they told you to do. In fact, you’ve done so much talki
ng, a body would just about suspect that you didn’t have much to do at all with the murder of Jim Lee Barnett . . . that you are simply a victim of circumstances. But what I want to know is why you have chosen to malign two hardworking young men who only did good by you?”

  “I—”

  “You say R.W. and Melvin Simms gave you things—a cap, a tie—and this is how you repay them? By trying to put the blame on them when it was actually two of your own kind who killed Mr. Barnett?”

  “No sir, it was—”

  “I say it’s so. That you’re protecting the two other nigras who took that money—”

  Tears began to roll down T.J.’s face.

  “—and killed Jim Lee Barnett—”

  Mr. Jamison stood swiftly. “Your honor—”

  “—and I also say that you knew exactly what you were doing when you entered that store, and that you are guilty of murder—”

  “I object, your honor!” interceded Mr. Jamison.

  “—because whether or not you actually was the nigra who dealt the death blow, the blood on your black hands is just as red and it won’t wash off—”

  T.J. was sobbing hysterically.

  “Judge Havershack!”

  “All right, Hadley, that’s enough now,” Judge Havershack reprimanded him without enthusiasm. But it seemed to me that Mr. Macabee couldn’t have cared less about the reprimand. He had said what he had set out to say. He continued to question T.J. in a less dramatic fashion, contending that the beating T.J. had incurred was indeed the result of a falling-out among thieves: black thieves. The money had never been found; neither had the two other murderers. T.J. had just been unlucky enough to be caught, and he contended that T.J., no matter what he said, was guilty of murder. When T.J. was led sobbing back to his seat by Mr. Jamison, I noticed that the faces of the spectators had hardened, and I had the sinking feeling that it was all over.

  Reverend Gabson was then called to the stand. Mr. Jamison asked him if he had seen T.J. on the night of the burglary. Reverend Gabson said that he had seen T.J. at the Great Faith revival meeting with the Simms brothers, but that none of them had stayed; all had left together. He added that most of the congregation had seen them, for they had come just before the service, which began at seven o’clock. Mr. Jamison asked if he had overheard anything that had been said between the Simmses and T.J.