(No!) I dug in my heels. (I want to stay with you!)
“You stay now, you’ll stay here the rest of your life.”
His small hand crushed my arm.
“And what about college? What about music? What chance you gonna have if you stay by me now? ’Cause no way you gonna get by without a trial, Cilla. And it’ll be a trial in Lafayette County, not Leon. It’ll be a white jury. Monk’s neighbors. His kin. What makes you think you’d ever git off? And even if you did what makes you think there’d be a scholarship left for you to take? Innocent or guilty, it won’t matter. A white girl couldn’t come out of this mess clean, let alone a nigger from Colored Town.”
I saw a swatch of headlight cut through the mossy tops of the trees.
“Go on!” Joe Billy turned me toward the depot.
Then I heard the long whistle of the midnight train and thought again and differently of escape.
“Go home.”
I heard Joe Billy behind me.
“Home, I said! And don’t look back. Whatever you do, don’t look back.”
I ran away from Monk Folsom and Joe Billy like Lot’s wife, away from the shroud of moss and the silver tower grinning like a crazy woman. But unlike the wavering woman of old I did not look back. I followed Joe Billy’s command. I did what he told me.
What else was I to do?
I ran all the way home.
And I did not look back.
Chapter twenty
“County Population Decline Grows”
— The Clarion
J oe Billy drove straight from the water tower to the county jail and turned himself in. Collard was over in Taylor County and had to be raised by radio. In the interim, Monk’s body was otherwise discovered, Bonnie Hart and Cody looking for a good time in the park finding something else.
I can’t imagine the scene, Bonnie and Cody rushing back to Betty’s, telling everybody who’d listen they’d found a dead man. The homecoming king and his queen did not know it was Monk, apparently, not right away. By the time Joe Billy convinced the deputy uptown that a homicide had actually occurred, there were twenty cars and forty teenagers cutting doughnuts around the water tower, their headlights lashing the tower’s legs and belly in fleeting, ephemeral beams.
Cody called his daddy from the café. Mr. Hewitt and his posse arrived shortly thereafter at a crime scene already trampled. Thunder rolled as if to announce Garner’s approach, a fork of lightning and fat drops of water spattering from the heavens onto the bloody leaves below. A douche for any evidence clinging to the body, the ground. By the time Collard’s deputy pulled up, a murder, a mess, and a mob were waiting.
“You got to find who did this!” Garner was bullying the lawman before he could get out of his marked car.
Lightning flashing in random frames of blue and white.
“Goddammit, Garner, look at ya’ll, stompin’ all over. Has this body been moved?!”
“What are we supposed to do? Wait for the sheriff?”
“Damn straight. That’s exactly what you do. All of you. Now back up. Give me some room. Who found him?”
“Better question is who killed him,” Garner’s retort cut off Cody’s reply. “’Cause whoever did is loose with a gun!”
“Just settle it down,” the deputy replied, the rain now tapping like a snare drum on the brim of his hat. “You ain’t in any danger. None of you.”
“’Till we find out who did this we are!”
Then the deputy did something either really stupid or patently malicious. Whether in deference to Garner, or thinking to defuse the situation, or out of malice or stupidity, he informed the crowd that Monk’s killer had already turned himself in at the jail, claiming self defense.
“So you got a man? In jail?!”
“Didn’t say it was a man, Garner.”
“Don’t bullshit me. Is he white? Who is he?”
And the crowd took it up.
“Who is he?”
“Who is the son of a bitch?!”
“No, no,” the deputy was by now retreating to his cruiser. “People! We don’t even know if this was foul play. I don’t know. You don’t know. But what I do know is that none of ya’ll are in any danger and that we have a suspect in custody. And Sheriff Jackson is on his way.”
“The sheriff?” Garner snorted. “Well, mother hump I feel better already.”
By the time Collard arrived in Laureate over a hundred people were gathered outside his jail, many of them with shotguns still dirty from deer season. The men were getting liquored up, bottles passed around, every swigging son of a bitch proclaiming undying loyalty to the county’s favorite mechanic. Everyone calling for the name of Monk Folsom’s killer.
Thunder and lightning. Mostly thunder, at first.
Collard had already radioed his desk sergeant to dispatch off-duty deputies to secure the crime scene and take charge of Monk’s corpse. His main concern, he would later say, was not centered at the water tower, but on the streets around his own jail. The sheriff who owed his fourth term to Negroes drove into Laureate knowing that a lynch mob was brewing. He had to trip his cruiser’s siren to clear a path, and lay down on the horn of his car to get inside the chain-link fence that secured the jail’s perimeter.
Pudding’s father was inside that night, inhabiting his usual cell, along with a couple of other drunks. And, of course, there were the deputies. From those disparate reports, it’s possible to roughly reconstruct Collard’s exchange with his deputies.
“Where you got him?” Collard asked first.
“Drunk tank.”
“Good. Tell those folks outside to go home.”
“We have.”
“Then start cracking heads.”
“Sheriff—there’s a lot of heads out there.”
According to Pudding, Collard showed no sense of alarm or pressure at all. He just paused a moment. “Call Sheriff Polk in Taylor County. Tell him to send every man he can spare. Call the Highway Patrol. Tell them the situation and arrange for an escort.”
“Escort?”
“Just tell ’em we’re gonna need to transport a prisoner, Ronald.”
By that point the mob on the streets could be heard, even through the obstacle of the calaboose’s concrete walls.
“Steady by jerks, gentlemen,” Collard grabbed a shotgun off the rack. “This ain’t no big thang.”
Joe Billy had been thrown in the drunk tank, alone and left to imagine the worst from the signs around him—hostile deputies who would not inform, and a mob outside. When Collard opened the cell toting a shotgun, JayBee told me he expected to be executed on the spot.
“What’s this bullshit about self defense?” were the first words out of Collard’s mouth.
“He had a razor, Sheriff. Said he was gonna cut more than my nuts!”
“Your nuts? Are you saying it was Monk Folsom strung you up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he told you so? He told you himself?”
“Yes, he did. You can see the razor. And he got a belt, too. Just like J.T.’s. The snake and ever’thing.”
“What’s that on your head? Your scalp?”
Joe Billy tested the backside of his skull gently. “I ’magine it’s blood.”
Collard grunted. “What I thought. Now git up.”
“Suh?”
“Get off your ass. We’re gettin’ you out of here.”
Collard was not about to wait on Taylor County’s lawman or the Highway Patrol’s or anyone else’s. What was later proven, what the sheriff already suspected, was that he could not trust his deputies. Someone on the inside, one of the deputies, telephoned every instruction Collard gave inside his jail to West’s Drug Store, from where it was relayed to Garner Hewitt. Garner knew Joe Billy was inside that cell. It was no protest he had organized. It was a lynching.
Whatever deputies remained loyal to Sheriff Jackson must have been as surprised as the mutineers when Joe Billy came out of the tank handcuffed in Collard’s
custody.
“Sheriff?”
“My car in the sallyport? Ronald? What about it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, then, listen up. I am transporting the prisoner to Suwannee County. Call Buddy Williams. Tell him to meet me at the bridge with an escort.
“I can make the bridge in five minutes from the fenceline. If I see a single goddamn headlight I will know that one of you pukes has told Garner and his men outside what I’m up to.”
“No reason to say something like that, Sheriff. No reason!”
“I’ll be lookin’. And I will tell Sheriff Williams to shoot any son-of-a-bitch tries to get between me and his jail. Is that clear?
“So if there is a Judas in this jailhouse, just wait five minutes. Then you can tell Garner anything you want because I’ll be to the bridge before he can do anything about it. Nobody’ll have to get hurt.”
“What about the Highway Patrol, Sheriff? What about Sheriff Polk?”
Collard smiled. “If Garner and his boys want to mess with that bunch, they’re welcome to it.”
Collard did not even hit the siren or lights as he pulled slowly from the fenced protection of his jail. He deliberately turned on the dome lights so that the mob pressing close could see the car’s interior, see the passenger cage in the back, that it was empty.
He actually stopped the car at one point, and rolled down his window in the rain to address Garner Hewitt.
“You need to tell your people to break this up, Garner.”
“I don’t have that authority, Sheriff.”
“Tell ’em anyway.”
And with that Sheriff Jackson drove off calmly, deliberately. He didn’t even pick up speed after the red light. Joe Billy would have to stay in the locked trunk of that cruiser the full five minutes that it took to reach the Hal Adams Bridge. Once there he was transferred into the custody of the Suwannee County sheriff.
“How you want him booked, Collard?” Buddy Williams came out himself to ensure the safety of the transfer.
“Suspected manslaughter,” Collard said after a pause. “He’s claiming self defense.”
“Don’t they all?”
“Might be some truth in this one, Buddy. Just so you know.”
“I’ll be damned. You got a statement?”
“A start. I’ll be over tomorrow for the rest. If you’ll just watch him for me.”
“Glad to oblige.”
“I really appreciate this, Buddy.”
“I know you do.”
“May I have just a short word with the suspect?”
“Certainly. No hurry.”
Joe Billy would recall the details of that harrowing escape many times over the next few weeks. But the thing I remember most vividly from his report, the thing he recalled acutely, were Collard’s parting words on the bridge.
“All right, Joe Billy. Now you need to get some things straight.”
“Yes, suh.”
“’Cause once you cross this bridge there ain’t no turning back.”
“No, suh.”
“So before we go to all that trouble I want you to tell me again—did you kill Monk Folsom?”
“Yessuh. In self defense.”
Collard spat on the road.
“I don’ believe it.”
Joe Billy floundered.
“I…I did kill him, Sheriff. I did.”
“You told me he had a razor.”
“He did, Sheriff! You’ll see!”
“Oh, I’m sure I will. I also see a gash along your skull. Dried blood. Wasn’t scalping you with that razor was he, boy?”
“He…he hit me.”
“You didn’t say anything about him hitting back in the jail. You just said he threatened you with the razor. Words to that effect.”
“Threaten, yes, Sheriff. Said he was the man cut my nuts and he was gone finish the job.”
“Uh huh.”
Collard leaned over. Joe Billy could hear the report of rain, the engorged drops splattering one by one on the broad brim of the Sheriff’s hat.
“Now you listen to me, boy. Sheriff Williams is a good man. You don’t need to be afraid. But you don’t say a thing to him or anybody else about what happened tonight. You understand? Anybody asks, you just tell ’em I said wait for me.”
“I got it, Sheriff.”
“Tomorrow I’ll be back with Thurman Shaw. He’s an attorney. You better have a story makes sense and you better stick to it, every damn detail. Thurman’s good. He’ll walk you through it. You understand what I’m tellin’ you to do? Well, do you?”
Joe Billy was so astounded at that point that he could not reply.
The sheriff paused to locate the other lawmen on the periphery of his vision. There was no one standing close. No one in ear-shot, anyway.
“Awright,” Collard seemed satisfied. “One last thing. Word of advice. Whatever you say. Whatever yarn you come up with?”
“Yes, Sheriff?”
“Keep it simple.” Collard turned away. “Simple is best. Juries hate to think.”
Monk Folsom’s homicide generated tensions exacerbated by the fury still felt by white citizens over losing an election to black votes. Garner Hewitt’s supporters stirred that boiling pot, those white folk religiously incensed that a nigger who wasn’t even local had shot one of their own, and furious with Sheriff Jackson for ferrying the suspect beyond the reach of their ropes.
Thurman Shaw urged the State’s attorneys to drop all charges against his client, insisting that whatever forensic evidence was not washed away or trampled backed up a claim of self-defense.
“There is no mens rea here, gentlemen. Joe Billy was attacked. He used the force allowed by law. This boy should not be tried for any crime.”
Thurman went on to point out that Monk’s fingerprints were found on his razor blade. Fresh, even after a heavy rain.
Prosecutors replied that of course Folsom’s prints were on the razor, he shaved with the damn thing every morning.
Did he shave under the water tower? Thurman countered. In black dark?
The State was not moved to dismiss and a grand jury comprised entirely of white citizens was swiftly impaneled. Mr. Shaw did everything he could to illicit sympathy for Joe Billy while painting Monk Folsom as a monster, but it was rough going. No member of the Klan was about to corroborate Joe Billy’s claim that Monk burned churches and crucified Negroes. Joe Billy’s castration could be objectively established, of course, but a grand jury convinced that Folsom was responsible for that terrible scission could not fail to see that it also gave the accused an excellent motive for murder.
In consultation with his attorney Joe Billy stuck to the script that Monk had bragged about castrating him and said he meant to finish the job.
“Those were Monk’s words, ‘finish the job’?”
Thurman jotting notes on a long, yellow pad.
“Yes, suh. Then he swiped at my head with his razor and I ducked over to the glove compartment for my gun. I don’t know how many times I shot him, or where. I just kept pullin’ the trigger.”
“Okay, that’s too much,” Thurman coached his client shamelessly. “Keep it simple.”
“He came at me with the razor. I shot him,” Joe Billy rehearsed his reply. “How’s that?”
I, of course, knew that the evening’s events were not quite so simple, but I was never called before the grand jury. Nobody questioned my whereabouts that evening, which was not surprising. Half the town, after all, shook my hand at Betty’s Café and no one saw me leave that graduation night, though Pudding knew I had skipped the dance.
“You should of boogied with us, Cilla.”
“You’d ask a girl with a face like this?” I replied coyly.
“Sure, I would,” he lowered his eyes.
“I was too tired to dance. I went home to my bed.”
I tried to believe it was all right to lie. I was only following Joe Billy’s strict instruction, wasn’t I? And anyway my old beau
was going to be fine. Told me so himself.
“Thurman say they ain’t enough to make a trial,” Joe Billy declared when I visited him in his Suwannee County cell. “He say the Grand Jury got to see it was just self-defense.”
The King of Colored Town Page 30