Act of Injustice

by Argyle, Ray

  When Leonard returned to Cook’s cell, he heard further stories of Cook’s boyhood and tales of his life in Vandeleur. Cook raised his voice whenever the sound of hammering in the jail yard threatened to interfere with his recital.

  “Leonard, I’d just as soon hang as spend my life in jail,” Cook said when they were alone. “I’ve been locked up for a year, a year too long. How many more would I have to spend like this?”

  Before Leonard could answer, a guard appeared with a tray covered with a white towel.

  “You’ll enjoy this,” he told Cook, removing the cloth. “Look, a steak, a roast potato, and a big piece of apple pie.”

  “If they’d fed me like this before I would have liked it here,” Cook answered. “Better than that awful bean cake they kept pushing at me.”

  The guard’s keys rattled as he opened the door of Cook’s cell long enough to place the tray on the table next to the cot.

  Cook lifted the cloth off the tray. “I may as well get started,” he said, slicing a large piece from the slab of beef. He chewed vigorously, a dribble of juice running into his beard.

  Cook had cleaned the plate and Leonard was about to leave when James Masson returned. He looked even more shaken than he had this morning, his eyes blood-shot and two days of beard on his face.

  “We’ve received word,” he told Cook. “A decision has been made. The law is to be allowed to take its course. There’s no commutation, Cook. You have until tomorrow morning.”

  Leonard watched Cook as he slumped on his cot. His chin dropped to his chest and he swept a hand across his face, as if to brush away what he had heard. It reminded Leonard of when his friend Tom Winship had been struck by the barrel of steal rods that fell from the deck of the Australasia. Leonard felt there was no longer enough air in the room to allow him to breathe. He hurried to the stairwell and almost fell into the arms of Governor Miller. Leonard apologized, calmed himself, and returned with the Governor to Cook’s cell.

  “We’ll try to make your night as comfortable as possible,” Governor Miller told Cook. “You can have as many visitors as you wish. I’ll send for Mr. Howell and Mr. Scott. I’m sure they’ll bring you comfort. We’ll go at eight in the morning.”

  Cook Teets had wondered for a year what it would be like to endure these last hours. Now he knew. His body was numb, his mind was in turmoil, and the pain too great to bear. He was unable to settle on what he should do or think. The agony of a dying man, he realized. Babington was gone, the Governor had left, and he was alone to confront the spectre of his hanging.

  There was one thing he could do, he decided. Leave something to testify to his innocence. A last statement. That was it. Tell the world exactly what had happened, how an innocent man was going to his death. But how to get it down on paper? He could barely write and even if he could master the mystery of forming letters and words he wouldn’t be able to see whatever he might get down on paper. Where’s that Mr. Howell? He could write it down for me.

  More footsteps in the stairwell. The voice was by now familiar. The Rev. Howell was settling himself on a chair just outside the cell.

  “Cook, have you any last wish?” he asked.

  “My wish is to find a way out of here other than feet first,” Cook said. “But as that’s not going to happen, I’d like you to take down a statement for me.” Cook and the minister spent the next hour on Cook’s last message, Cook talking constantly as the Rev. Howell struggled to copy down every word.

  Cook began by reciting how he and Rosannah had gotten married. “Her mother consented, and was anxious for me to marry her. After all, she said, it would cost no more now than afterwards. She went with Rosannah and me to Robert Trimble’s store to purchase things for the marriage.

  “As far as the death of Rosannah is concerned, I know nothing about it. Thank God I do not die with a load of guilt on my shoulders. I am ready to die. I feel my Saviour say, ‘It is all right, Cook.’ I bid all my friends goodbye and die an innocent man.”

  There were more people arriving to say goodbye to Cook. Soon, the landing in front of his cell was crowded; Cook noted that Leonard Babington was back, as well as James Masson. Nelson Teets was there, along with Robert Trimble and other men he had known. Jokes were made, laughter rang out, and there was a good deal of bantering back and forth. Cook felt the tension inside him ease. He began to tell stories as if he was back at Munshaw’s and was vying with friends to see who could impart the most outrageous tale of encounters with women, survival in the bush, or accomplishments in shooting and fighting. When Trimble said it was unfair that Cook had to hang, he cut him off. “We’re not talking about that,” he said.

  Just as the last visitor was leaving, Dr. Sproule arrived. “I thought I should come in and have a word with you,” he told Cook.

  “I’ll speak to you as if I were your doctor,” he said. “One of the saddest jobs I ever had to do was conduct that autopsy on your wife. She was a beautiful woman, and too young to die. I’m sure you had nothing to do with it. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  Cook looked at Dr. Sproule, a slight smile on his lips. “You have it right as far as Rosie was concerned,” he said. “She sure was beautiful.”

  Dr. Sproule drew a vial from his coat pocket.

  “I’ve brought you something to help you through these last hours,” he said. “I think you’ve seen morphine crystals before. I had these ground up for you. Don’t take it all now. Save some for the morning.”

  With that, Dr. Sroule departed. The prison guard, who had retreated to the end of the hall, returned to remind Cook the night was half over. “It’s near three o’clock Cook, time you got some sleep.”

  “Sleep? I’ll have no fucking shortage of that where I’m going.”

  Cook lay down on his cot, exhausted from talk and from frayed nerves. He licked a fingertip, put it in the vial, and sucked in morphine. One leg twitched a few times, then quieted. He turned on his side and closed his eyes. He knew he would soon be with Rosannah. Then he saw her, in front of him, and reached out to her.

  Leonard slipped out the front door of Coulson’s British Hotel a few minutes past six o’clock on the morning of the fifth of December, 1884. He was groggy from lack of sleep. He stepped over the thin layer of ice that had collected on the doorstep. In the darkness he set off for the Grey County Court Building, encountering other men bound for the same place. A guard checked the passes of the men waiting to enter. Leonard noticed the line-up had no shortage of doctors and lawyers. He surrendered his ticket, nodded to James Masson who was in line ahead of him, and shuffled past Governor Miller’s office into the snow-covered courtyard. Another guard waited at the cellblock entrance. He was directing the witnesses down a corridor and through a door that opened onto the jail yard.

  The gallows stood in the corner, a construction of raw lumber, ominous in its shape and dreadful in its meaning. A roof had been thrown over it, obscuring any view of the hanging by the crowd gathered on the ridge above the jail. The fact they wouldn’t see anything hadn’t stopped the curious from collecting there.

  Leonard tried to imagine how it had been for Cook Teets this fateful morning. Had the howling wind kept him awake through the night or had a guard needed to rouse him from sleep? Perhaps the guard helped Cook put on the black broadcloth suit Nelson had left him. There’d have been prayers in his cell, led by Mr. Howell and Mr. Scott. Cook might have taken a morsel of food. Then, Leonard knew, Governor Miller and Sheriff Moore would have made their way up the stairs and onto the landing outside Cook’s cell. “It’s time to go,” the Governor might have said. And so the death parade would have begun, down the stairwell, along the corridor, and through a back door into the jail yard.

  A commotion in the crowd interrupted Leonard’s thoughts. “They’re coming,” someone said. He recognized the voice of Scarth Tackaberry. Trust him to show up, doubtless to gloat at the hanging of the man who had bested all Rosannah’s younger suitors. How did he come by a pass? Leonard thought o
f the time he had seen Scarth behave badly at a country dance when a girl scorned his approach. A knowing smile on Tackaberry’s face bore a hint of delight at the prospect of watching a man die.

  Sheriff Moore and Governor Miller led the cheerless parade. Cook followed, with the two ministers, one on either side, each holding an arm. No one faltered in their steps – especially not Cook. The line moved resolutely across the jail yard, stopping only when it reached the stairs at the foot of the gallows.

  Leonard wondered about the hangman. Where was he? He’d seen a stranger in the hotel last night and wondered if it was him. Leonard thought the man had mobile eyes, his glance darting about nervously as if he were being pursued. The hangman’s last deed had been botched, Leonard had heard. The rope had been too long and the condemned man had to be hanged twice.

  Then Leonard saw him. It was the man he had seen last night. He’d come out from behind the gallows. It seemed as if he was skipping about, first on one foot and then the other. Leonard thought he looked to be the most nervous man in the yard. The crowd became aware of church bells ringing and Leonard looked at his watch. It was exactly eight o’clock, the time set for the hanging. It was barely light now and someone pointed to the jail’s flagpole, just visible over the wall. A black flag had been run up, signaling the deed about to take place.

  No sound, not even the intake of breath of the nearly sixty men in the jail yard, could be heard. Leonard stood not more than ten feet from the gallows. The hangman ascended the stairs first, taking care to see the rope was free of any interference. When it was Cook’s turn to take the stairs, Leonard watched him move steadily from one step to the next. Were there thirteen? Leonard wasn’t sure. A few words were spoken. Someone said the Governor had asked Cook if he had any last words. He did not. He said he just wanted to get it over with; he would die an innocent man. When the hangman bent to tie Cook’s legs, the Rev. Howell recited the Lord’s Prayer. That done, the hangman put a black hood on Cook’s head and made a final adjustment to the rope. He nudged Cook forward onto the trap door. Leonard saw Cook turn to one side and he detected a shudder pass through his body.

  “Well gentlemen,” Leonard heard Cook say, “this is the fatal board.” Mr. Scott began to read the twenty-third psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” The sky darkened, its blackness matching that of the spirit of the crowd. Leonard detected a blurred movement as the hangman reached to pull the bolt on the trapdoor. The bolt slipped free and the trapdoor opened, followed by a sickening thud.

  That was when Leonard remembered that today was Cook Teets’s birthday. No mention had been made of it last night. His fifty-fifth birthday, December 5, 1884. His last.

  A fluttering of wings sounded from atop the prison wall. Dozens of passenger pigeons roosting there had taken flight, disturbed by the noise from the prison yard. Leonard saw the birds, majestic in their blue crowns and wine red breasts, rise and wheel off in the direction of the ridge above the jail. Cook’s drop had ended with the thick knot of the noose lodged against his neck, breaking it. His body quivered as he hung a few feet from the ground, swaying slightly as he died.

  As Leonard watched, he heard gunshots in the distance. Men out on the ridge, denied the chance to see Cook hang, were taking out their frustrations on the birds.

  It’s done, Leonard thought, how will we ever know the truth? The men in the jail yard began to wander out but Leonard felt rooted to the ground. Cook’s body continued to hang; fifteen minutes passed before a guard, supervised by the hangman, cut the rope and allowed him to slump to the ground. Leonard heard a large double door in the prison’s outer wall creak open. A man drove a horse and wagon into the jail yard. The wagon contained a coffin.

  Nelson Teets waited outside to claim his brother’s body. “We’ll bury him in the Greenview Cemetery,” he told Leonard. “They won’t be able to get at him there, he’ll rest in peace. Mother and Sarah couldn’t bear to be here. They’re waiting at the cemetery.”

  Across the street, Leonard saw James Leppard talking with another man. When Leonard approached him he heard Leppard say, “Good thing they hung the son of a bitch.” Leonard asked him whether he had seen the hanging. “That I did. A terrible sight. But the poor fool’s just as well off dead. He was screwed well and proper from the age of twelve, blind and all.”

  A cruel comment, Leonard thought, but true. It wasn’t as if Cook was some dumb farm animal. There’d probably been a lot of joy in his life, as least when he was with Rosannah. But James Leppard walked away before Leonard could say anything further.

  Leonard turned his attention to James Masson who had just come out of the prison, his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets and his head down.

  “I should have been able to save him,” he told Leonard. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t commute his sentence.”

  Leonard was about to return to his hotel when Dr. Sproule spoke to him.

  “This has been an unhappy affair,” he said. “I wrote to the Minister of Justice but he chose to ignore me, a Member of Parliament. I’m saddened.”

  Leonard, already feeling dejected, found himself overcome by despair. Everything that had happened was wrong, Rosannah’s death, Cook’s arrest, the one-sided trial, and now this hanging. If they would not listen to Dr. Sproule, they would have listened to no one. Leonard looked at Dr. Sproule and took a deep breath before he spoke.

  “Cook never had a chance,” he said. “He was just too different from the rest of us. But that wasn’t his fault, it was ours. We’re all to blame for this act of injustice. None of us know the truth. I’ve made up my mind to find it, no matter how long it takes.” For a moment, Leonard regretted his choice of words, spoken hastily and without much thought. He’d been reckless in asserting his determination to prove an innocent man had been hanged. Then he thought, just as well, he had left himself no choice. He had made his commitment, and there would be no going back on it.

  PART II

  A NEW WORLD AWAITS US

  It is in literature that true life can be found. Under the mask of fiction you can tell the truth.

  Gao Xingjian

  What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.

  Bliss Carman

  Chapter 21

  REMEMBERING ROSANNAH

  December 24/25, 1884

  It was time for Leonard Babington to put the death of Rosannah Leppard and the hanging of Cook Teets behind him. The day before Christmas, he walked into the woods behind Vandeleur Hall, selected a suitable pine tree and severed a dozen limbs, each with a single careful swipe of his hatchet. His mother had always decorated the house with pine boughs at Christmas and he intended to do the same. Their fragrance would remind him of happier days.

  While Leonard was collecting pine cuttings others went about their preparations for Christmas. James Leppard beheaded a goose. John Brodie, the cheesemaker, wrapped cloth around new rounds of cheddar cheese. There was a heavy call at James Henderson’s store for raisins and holiday candies. When Leonard went there on Christmas Eve he felt warmed by the smiles of shoppers who crowded around the Chrusrtmas delacies set out on the store’s counters. Children laughed as they played tag between barrels of pickles and molasses. Their games reminded Leonard of the happy Christmases he’d enjoyed as a child. He was thinking of those days when he felt a touch on his arm. It was Amanda Brodie, the cheesemaker’s wife. Leonard knew her from his schoolteaching days. She was shopping for Christmas dinner.

  “Come and join us, Mr. Babington,” she said. “No need to spend Christmas on your lonesome. The children would love to see you.”

  Amanda Brodie had grown into a handsome young woman and her husband was known to serve a tolerably good home brew. Leonard didn’t even mind the children. Why not get a good meal into himself, on Christmas of all days?

  It was dark when Leonard reached the Brodie house just after four o’clock on Christmas Day. The house gave off a cheerf
ul glow from coal oil lamps at each of its two front windows. Inside, Amanda Brodie hurried from the kitchen to welcome him. The house was filled with the smells of Christmas. Leonard absorbed the pungent scent of spiced gravy and the aroma of a cooked bird and mincemeat pie. He was glad he had come.

  Leonard brought with him a gift for each of the children – paper cutouts and a doll – and Amanda placed them beside the stockings set out at the hearth. They contained the remnants of treats which had been excitedly extracted early Christmas Day. Small candles burned on the mantle of the hearth and pine boughs had been set out in windows, over doors, and on the stairway. In a moment John came clattering down the stairs, a bottle of whisky in hand.

  “Just in time for a nip afore supper,” he chortled. “Nothing better to raise up an appetite.”

  The conversation during the meal was about the joys of Christmas, the weather, and the likelihood of trouble with the Indians in the North West. Nothing was said of the Cook Teets trial. John Brodie refilled Leonard’s glass several times and then brought a tankard of ale from the kitchen. The room grew warmer as the meal proceeded, and Leonard felt himself sweating. He was finding it difficult to grasp what his host was telling him. Long after Mrs. Brodie had shooed the children from the table, John rose, staggered, and clumped away down the hall.

  “He’s gone for the night,” Amanda Brodie told Leonard. “Let’s sit in the parlour. We can have a visit and all.”

  It didn’t surprise Leonard that Brodie had gotten himself so drunk that he had to go to bed. Strong drink in large amounts was common among the people with whom Leonard had grown up. He wondered what Amanda meant by her invitation to move into the parlour.

  “If you’re feeling warm you can take off your jacket and loosen your collar,” Amanda told him. She helped him shuck his coat and when he put his hands up to free his collar, she pulled them to her breast. Her breath was hot and inviting. Feeling a little dizzy, Leonard kissed her and let his hands explore her breasts. She offered no resistance. Leonard worried that Brodie might reappear at any moment, and silently cursed his host for getting him into a condition where he was losing control of himself.