The King of Colored Town

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The King of Colored Town Page 31

by Darryl Wimberley


  Thurman was wrong. On the last day of June, Joe Billy was indicted. A count for manslaughter was expected. A count for murder in the second degree was unsettling. But Joe Billy was indicted as well for first-degree murder. Homicide with premeditation. Which meant that if convicted Joseph William King would surely face the electric chair.

  Summer brought equal parts heat, humidity, and despair. July passed like a bitch in labor before wilting into August and I was having trouble sleeping. I’d wake up sticky and hot, roused by the nearby lament of the train. That long call. I tried to convince myself that my insomnia could be given to God, that a sacrifice of restful slumber would deliver Joe Billy from the State of Florida, but I knew that in the end there was only one sacrifice sufficient to that task and so began to contemplate a tardy confession.

  “Don’ do it.” Joe Billy stayed that impulse. “Thurman say he ain’t afraid of no trial. He say they ain’t got nuthin’.”

  My hands were tied. At any rate, that is how I chose to regard it, as if I had no volition of my own.

  It helped to get out of town. Professor Weintraub brought me up to Florida State almost every week, which was a godsend. I would perch before my professor with my bassoon for an hour’s practice, sometimes more. Then I would see a speech therapist, a graduate assistant engaged by Dr. Weintraub on my behalf. I was improving my articulation on my own, but the exercises helped. You could do them any time.

  She sells seashells on the seashell shore.

  Dr. Weintraub always took time after practice and therapy to show me around Florida State’s verdant campus. She would engage me in small talk during those perambulations, or at least make the attempt. I was articulating almost well enough to have normal conversation, which was a blessing. But I was constantly censoring my own speech, terrified that some unguarded comment regarding Monk Folsom or murder would get me sacked from the School of Music.

  Dr. Weintraub probed on one occasion. “Cilla, are you okay?”

  “Tired, maybe, a liddle. Bud ahm all right.”

  I am all right/You are all right/He is all right

  We are all right/You are all right/They are all right.

  Joe Billy will be all right.

  I parsed possibilities like verbs on the bus ride back to Laureate. It was not uncommon on my return to find Miss Chandler waiting.

  “Hello, Cilla, honey.”

  She in a print dress by Mr. Land’s SafeWay store. I remember on that occasion that my teacher took my instrument case as I stepped off the Greyhound.

  “How’s my college girl?”

  “Fine, Miss Chandluh. Thag you.”

  She tucked her free arm into mine. “Why don’t we detour by Betty’s? Get ourselves a nice glass of ice tea?”

  A tall glass frigid with ice cubes and sugar-sweet tea is the only sure antidote to August. We entered Betty’s from the rear as was still required in ordinary time, and found a bench. The place was nearly deserted.

  “Just two teas, please,” Miss Chandler deposited my bassoon for me, inquiring as she did so about my sessions with Dr. Weintraub, the progress of my music.

  “Are you composing?” she inquired mildly.

  “Not much,” I confessed.

  “Why not?”

  I didn’t expect that question.

  “I’m just tired.” I repeated the excuse I had only hours earlier given my Tallahassee mentor.

  “Is that all?” Miss Chandler stirred the ice in her tea.

  What a temptation, then, to blurt my awful secret. Surely, Miss Chandler would hear me. Surely she would know what to do. And I wanted to tell her, I did. It would be a joy to cleanse my soul with a simple confession.

  But could I bear the consequences?

  Miss Chandler did not push or prod. She left me at my back porch with a cheerful benediction. I trudged wearily to the kitchen, hefted my instrument onto the table and got mother some supper. I washed the dishes, voided myself and bathed well afterward with a tub and soap and, praise the Lord, plenty of water. Then, making sure there were no immediate responsibilities unfulfilled, I left my home in the light of a vapored moon and walked to town.

  I walked past Mr. Charles’ gas station, past the closed theater and the drugstore, crossing Main Street to skirt the courthouse lawn. I could see then the air-conditioner recently replaced atop the jail’s flat roof. There was a single door for the public, a metal door triple-hinged into a featureless concrete wall that looked over steps stenciled, “Slippery When Wet.” I had never noticed that admonition. Goes to show how much you can miss when you keep your eyes on the ground.

  I entered the jail and got the immediate attention of a deputy propped on raw elbows at the desk sergeant’s formica counter.

  “Whatchu want?” he challenged.

  “See da…see thuh sheriff.”

  I kept my eyes trained on the concrete floor.

  “Speak up, girl.”

  “See the sheriff.”

  “What’s goin’ on, Ronald?”

  That coal-bin voice. I knew it was Sheriff Jackson, but I did not turn around. Or raise my eyes from the stained floor.

  “You need to see me, girl?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come own, then.”

  Collard’s office was accessed through a coded door on a hallway running on the side of the building opposite the cells. Joe Billy said you could see into the office most of the time, if you got past the desk sergeant and into that hallway. Sheriff Jackson apparently did not believe in closing his door.

  People coming into the same place will notice different things. Coming into the sheriff’s office, I was taken with the State Seal badly decoupaged on his government-issue desk. The Seal of the State of Florida features a woman standing erect in a confused iconography featuring among other errors the kind of native garb that might as well belong to Pocahontas as any Seminole. Wearing a headdress, too, which women of that tribe (or any other?) did not do. Perhaps she was a dyke, this Seminole princess or serving woman. Whatever she was.

  Atop the seal I saw a quart jar filled with arrowheads (genuine) and the rattles of the familiar snake, those artifacts set beside a bank of fountain pens never used. There was only the one rigid chair besides the padded recliner behind Collard’s desk. I didn’t have to ask to know which seat was for me.

  “I don’t have much time.” He tossed his Stetson onto a prong of mounted antlers. “What you want?”

  “I know somethin—” I began.

  “I know lots of things,” he snorted. “Makes you think you know somethin’ I don’t?”

  “It’s about Monk Folsom. Mr. Folsom.”

  “Don’t tell me you miss him.”

  “I killed him.”

  Collard swiveled slowly in his highbacked chair. “You what?”

  “I killed Monk Folsom. I shot him. With Joe Billy’s gun.”

  He leaned back. The chair squeaked with his weight.

  “The State’s attorney says different,” Collard tapped a Marlboro from a fresh pack. “For that matter so does Joe Billy.”

  “It was self defense. Sort of,” I said.

  “‘Sort of’?”

  So in a chaotic rush I told him everything, that Monk had jumped me alone in Joe Billy’s car. That I had seen the belt and at first thought it was J.T. Hewitt’s.

  “That snake laid on? All silver? But then he leaned inside the car and I saw it wasn’t J.T. It was Monk. And then when he showed me the razor I knew it was him that cut me, that castrated Joe Billy, and I was so scared! So scared!”

  “Settle down,” Collard rumbled. “Take your time.”

  “Monk, he was mad about the election. Told me he could take me any time he wanted. Said it would be worse than Fort McKoon. Said college wouldn’t help, he’d find me anywhere. Then he mentioned the church, in Tallahassee.”

  “Keep it up,” Collard nodded.

  “He touched me and said if I told anybody, anybody at all he’d come and cut me again.”

  �
��Did he rape you?”

  “He was too drunk.”

  “All right. What happened then?”

  “He just showed me the razor and pinched me—up here. I didn’t expect him to pinch. My knee slammed into the dashboard and the glove compartment door, it just popped open.”

  “That’s where Joe Billy kept his gun? In the glove compartment?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But you didn’t shoot him in the car?”

  “He was strong! He had a razor!”

  “Easy. I’m not judging. I just need a clear picture. So after he threatens you and sexually assaults you, he gets out of the car.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you wait ’till he’s out of reach.”

  “He was two, three steps away.”

  “And then you shot him in the back.”

  “The first time, yes, sir. Then he spun around and I shot again. I shot, I don’t know, three or four times.”

  “There’s a problem with that story, Cilla.” The chair groaned as he leaned forward. “There were powder burns on Joe Billy’s hand. Shirt, too. Classic pattern.”

  “He did that for me.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  So I explained how Joe Billy came stumbling back to the car. How he saw what happened. How he took the gun and rolled Monk over and shot his lifeless corpse.

  “He said you’d be looking for burns,” I told the sheriff. “He knew what to do.”

  A deputy stuck in his head. “Sheriff? Got a call from Abner. Somebody tearing up his deer camp.”

  “Take it for me. Close the door.”

  The door swung shut with a squeak of hinges louder than Collard’s chair.

  “You think you can help Joe Billy? That why you’re here?”

  “Joe Billy didn’t shoot Monk Folsom. He didn’t shoot anybody!”

  “I figured that. Figured it right off.”

  My hand must have covered my heart. “You knew? You know ?”

  “I didn’t know; I figured. But the only person with a motive to kill Monk other than Joe Billy would be you, and I couldn’t figure how you’d get a gun. That business with the glove compartment didn’t come up. Joe Billy couldn’t mention that, could he? Might have pointed suspicion in your direction.” He leaned forward to a phone on his desk. Stabbed a button. “Ronald? Hold my calls till I tell you.”

  He replaced the receiver on its dark cradle. “You willing to swear to what you just said? In court?”

  I affirmed again with a nod and waited for the axe to fall, certain that with this breach my whole dam would collapse and I would be finally and blissfully drowned.

  But that didn’t happen.

  Collard shook his shaggy head back and forth. “If you go out now with this here story folks’ll think you’re only doing it to protect Joe Billy.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Makes no difference. That’s what people—white people, people on a jury—will think.”

  “But I did it. I shot Monk.”

  “Sake of argument, let’s say you did. But Joe Billy’s got a stronger case for self-defense than you do. Fortunately for him there’s not a whole lot of forensic evidence. He can probably get away with claiming to have shot Monk in the gut, first, from the front. That’s got more of the taste of self-defense than your version. Layin’ down on a man with his back turned.”

  “He said he’d be back! Said if I told anybody it’d be worse than last time! What was I supposed to do?!”

  “I ain’t talkin’ about supposed-to, girl. Far as I’m concerned you had a perfect right to tie Monk to a tree and saw his legs off. Far as ‘supposed-to’ goes. What I’m talking about is what you got to do. And now that Joe Billy’s gone this far, you cain’t help him.”

  “I have to!”

  “You do and, at best, what will come out of this is both you and Joe Billy will be charged with homicide and a jury will be called to sort it out. Now, I don’t doubt for a minute that Joe Billy got knocked upside the head; I saw the scalp wound. But most people will attribute that to some kind of fight or altercation around the car. They’ll say Monk was mad about the election, sure. Maybe he even threatened you. Threatened you both. But Joe Billy made a mistake, Cilla, when he was trying to make a case for self defense.

  “There was no blood on Monk’s razor. It was clean as a whistle. Now, that don’t mean he didn’t threaten you with it. But if Joe Billy’d thought or been able to cut himself, or if you’d had the sand to cut him, it’d be a lot harder for a jury to discard a plea of self-defense.

  “As it is, it’s gonna be hard. Gonna be hard for Joe Billy. Would be harder, for you. Don’t think there aren’t a passel of whites would love to see you fall, Cilla. Would take any excuse to put some uppity nigger back in her place. ’Cause however you see this or I see this, a jury in this county is going to see a dead white man with lots of friends killed by a nigger from Colored Town.

  “That’s what they’ll see. And they won’t be buying self-defense when you admit yourself that the man was walking away. That you shot him in the back.”

  The phone rang. Collard collected the receiver.

  “What is it? Tell him I’ll call him back.”

  He hung up the receiver. Folded his hands. “You told anybody anything about this except me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Not any of your people? Not even Miss Chandler?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So you been carryin’ this all on your own?”

  “I guess. Yes, sir.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to carry it a while longer. Now, let me tell you what I’m going to do. Look up at me. Look.”

  I raised my eyes.

  “I am going to do all I can to help Joe Billy. First off, he’s charged with two counts, but one of ’em is manslaughter. Big difference between manslaughter and murder in any degree and easier to claim self-defense. I’ll tell ’em there was definitely an assault with battery of some kind. I can make the argument that the rain washed all the blood off Monk’s razor. That the wound I saw on Joe Billy’s head might have come from a swipe of that blade. The State will demonstrate to the contrary, but that will still leave the jury with two opposed opinions. Which they hate.

  “That’s what I can do. All you can do to help this boy is to keep your mouth shut. I don’t have the authority to let him go on anybody’s word, most especially yours. And it is my judgment that if you come out like this, the only thing that will happen is that you will be found guilty of some degree of homicide. That means jail. Hard time. No college, no music. No goddamn future.

  “Monk Folsom will laugh in his grave if you take up for Joe Billy King. I’m not saying you shouldn’t of tried. You brought me some information, as you ought. You did your duty. But you ain’t the law, young lady. In Lafayette County, I am the law and what I do with your information or anybody else’s is my call. And my call is this: That justice will not be served by pursuing the information you have given me.

  “Joe Billy’s got a stronger case to make than you, and easier for a jury to believe. If he goes free, you will have got away with a lie. If the boy is convicted, it will be a sorry day, but no sorrier than seeing you in jail. Or seeing you both in jail. Or seeing the first real hope from Colored Town sacrificed over the slaughter of a fucking Klansman.

  “I ain’t saying that what you’ve done is right, or what I’m doing, for that matter, is right. But it sure as hell is legal. Far as I’m concerned you just came in here with a story you made up to protect your boyfriend. If any word whatever of our conversation this evening ever came out, that’s exactly what I’d say. ‘Girl plays the bassoon, for God’s sake. She didn’t take no gun to Monk Folsom. You’d have to be a fool to believe that story.’ That’s what I’ll say, or something like it.”

  “They won’t let go, will they? Not Joe Billy. No matter what you say.”

  That face, so lined, was hard as flint.

  “Then you better not let it go to was
te.”

  The next day, I journeyed across the bridge to Suwannee County and Joe Billy’s cell. Joe Billy, recall, was not incarcerated locally. It was about thirty miles to the city of Live Oak where Suwannee County kept its inmates. From the time of Monk’s murder until the end of July I visited Joe Billy exactly twice. To visit more often would seem suspicious, he said, and with that slender excuse I too readily acceded. But after my confession to Collard Jackson I needed one last attempt to clear my soul with the man who now risked the electric chair on my behalf.

 

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