The Unquiet Grave

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “The sheriff and Harrah started for Lewisburg that evening, but they had to pass the campground in order to get there. They rode past about an hour before the mob was set to assemble there, but some men were there already, and although the sheriff and Harrah got by without incident, somebody in the crowd recognized them, and four of the vigilantes gave chase, caught up with them, and, pistols drawn, they ordered the sheriff to stop.”

  Boozer shook his head. “Sounds like a Saturday morning Western. Did he stop?”

  “He did, and they almost had that Western-movie shootout you’re picturing, but Sheriff Nickell talked about it later. He said he had his pistol out of the holster and was getting ready to shoot the nearest man when he recognized the fellow. He never would say who it was, but apparently it was a close friend or neighbor—maybe even a kinsman. Anyhow, he decided to try moral suasion instead of hot lead to resolve the matter.”

  “I wouldn’t want to lecture somebody who was holding a gun on me.”

  “Neither did Sheriff Nickell. He and Harrah surrendered and let themselves be taken to the nearby home of a Mr. Dwyer. The vigilantes gathered in Dwyer’s parlor, and maybe some of them had sobered up in the interval. Anyhow, the sheriff managed to talk them into disbanding the lynching party and going home.”

  “So the sheriff saved his prisoner’s life.”

  “He never thought so. Sheriff Nickell always said that his deputy back in Lewisburg had already been warned about the lynch mob. Some fishermen on their way home had spotted the well-armed crowd at the campground, and they headed straight into town and warned the deputy. That deputy’s name was Dwyer, too, now I come to think of it. Wonder if he was kin to the man who held the meeting in his parlor? Well, they’re stingy with surnames in Greenbrier County—there’s not that many to go around.”

  Boozer chuckled. “What did Deputy Dwyer do? C ircle the wagons?”

  “No, and he didn’t feel like sitting out a siege in the county jail, either. As soon as he heard that there might be a lynch mob coming, he put Shue in irons and took him out of his cell. Then he and another deputy bundled him into a wagon and took him a mile or two out of town to wait until the storm blew over.”

  “And did that work?”

  “One way or another. Sheriff Nickell talked the mob into disbanding, and somebody fetched Dwyer and the prisoner back the next morning, so it all ended peacefully. The day after that, the sheriff and Dwyer boarded a northbound train with the prisoner, and off they went to Moundsville.”

  “Did you see them off?”

  James Gardner shook his head. “Maybe if it were happening now, I would. Now that I know what it’s like to be shut up in a cage. But in 1897, I was a young man, full of myself and busy courting my Eliza, so I had no thoughts to spare for a man we defended two weeks earlier. I suppose it would have been a kindness to take him a sack of biscuits and a tomato or two, but, you know, he did kill two of his wives, as far as we could tell, so perhaps he didn’t deserve any more mercy than he showed them. You’re the age that I was then. Would you have gone, Boozer?”

  The doctor took a deep breath and looked for an answer in a cloud scudding past the ridge. “I’d like to think I would. But to be honest, I’d have been more likely to do him a kindness if he hadn’t been white. People might have thought I was being arrogant offering him something, and I wouldn’t risk my neck to do any favors for a murderer.”

  “Maybe that’s what I thought, too. Besides, I wouldn’t have risked my life just then for anything. I was too full of myself—new career as a lawyer, new fiancée.” He looked down at the shoots of spring grass just visible among the dead leaves. “It was a long time ago. I guess if I had been of a mind to help anybody, it would have been Martha Jones.”

  “The woman whose son found the body? What became of her?”

  It was a bleak day in late December 1897, when the leaden sky seemed close enough to snag on the church steeple. James Gardner, bundled into his black wool overcoat with a white silk scarf at his throat, had just come into the courthouse on some errand of legal business when he saw Martha Jones, gaunt and tired-looking in a shabby brown coat, coming down the hallway from the clerks’ offices. He was glad to see her. In his current mood of jubilation, he was glad to see everybody. Freed from his customary reserve by the immediate prospect of happiness, Gardner hurried up to her with an open smile and an outstretched hand.

  “Mrs. Jones! I never thought to see you in town. I haven’t seen you since the trial, but I’m glad of the chance to wish you a merry Christmas.”

  She shivered a little, and he thought she must have been in the path of the gust of wind that swept through when someone opened the front door. “Good day to you, Mr. Gardner. I hope you don’t hold it against me that I testified for the other side, seeing as how y’all lost the case.”

  Gardner laughed. “That was six months ago, and anyhow the jury agreed with you. Besides, this is a small county—if we lawyers took umbrage at everybody who opposed us in court, we’d get mighty lonely.”

  “That’s so, I reckon.” A flicker of a smile lit her face, but only for a moment. “Are you keeping well, Mr. Gardner?”

  “Oh, better than that, Mrs. Jones. I’m getting married on Christmas Day—to Miss Eliza Myles.” He wondered if he sounded drunk, if this was what being drunk would feel like. He wanted to share his news with everyone; the slightest pretext set him off. “Miss Myles is a lovely lady. I don’t know if you’re acquainted with her . . .”

  “No, sir. I don’t know too many folks outside of Livesay’s Mill. But I wish the both of you well.”

  “Thank you. I hope you can meet her. All of you. We’re having a big old-fashioned wedding at our church in White Sulphur Springs on Saturday next—Christmas Day, that is—and I wanted to invite all of your family to come along to the celebration. It’s a bit far to travel from Livesay’s Mill, perhaps, but we’re hoping that the weather will be fine. There’ll be a big reception afterward in the church hall, and Miss Myles’s mama and my sisters have all been cooking nineteen to the dozen all this month—cakes, pies, and I don’t know what all—so we’ll have enough to feed the heavenly host if they should happen to drop by. You’re more than welcome to come. All of you. There’ll be plenty.”

  Her face creased with bewilderment, but after a moment she nodded to herself, and the bleak expression returned. “You don’t know, do you?”

  Something in her tone stopped his babbling. He blinked. “I beg your pardon? Don’t know?”

  “Well, that’s not to be wondered at. I reckon you couldn’t have known. They’re all gone, Mr. Gardner. All except me and Anderson and the baby Reuben.”

  “All gone? Your family?” At first he thought of asking if they were traveling and when they were expected to return, but her solemn expression made her meaning clear. Dead. He tried to think of some sympathetic rejoinder, but he had been taken by surprise, and the words caught in his throat. All he could think of was that there had been a house fire. Should he ask? He had finally mastered the polite nothings of ordinary conversation, but awkward discussions with people he did not know well were difficult for him. He could chop a cord of firewood and not be as tired as he got from making civil conversation. It was hard to change from his own joyful preoccupations to make the proper responses to an unexpected tragedy.

  Martha Jones wiped her eyes. “I reckon they’re all together in heaven now, and happy with the Lord, but sometimes I wish I could just lay my burdens down right here and now and join them. But the two that are left can’t do without me, so I am keeping on.”

  “But what happened?”

  “Fever. The first one took was Reuben—my husband, that is. Not the baby—the Lord in His mercy spared the little one. My husband came down with the typhoid back in late summer, and we lost him on the twenty-eighth of September. Then Samuel got it, too, and he passed four days after his daddy. I was worn out with nursing by then, but I thought we’d gotten through it. Then Sarah took sick, and she was
gone by the end of October. Last of all was my poor Margaret. She had helped me tend the others night and day until she was worn to a shadow, and she came down with it about the time Sarah died. She passed on the eighth of this month, not two weeks ago.” She tried to smile. “Mary Ellen was spared, though. You remember, she got married back in May, so she’s doing all right with her new husband over at their place. Sometimes thinking about her, and hoping for grandbabies, is all that keeps me going.”

  James Gardner stared at her, trying to shift his feelings from his joy to her great sorrow, and failing to find any words to say. Finally he managed to murmur, “Typhoid? All of them?” The line from Macbeth jangled in his mind: What, all my pretty chickens? At one fell swoop?

  Martha Jones nodded. “I reckon the water was bad. I don’t know why me and Anderson and little Reuben were spared. Seems like the others might have been more needed in this world, than us: an old woman, a lap baby, and a boy who’s never quite going to grow up.”

  Gardner thought of the happy, laughing family crowded into that little house in Livesay’s Mill back in the spring. Gone now. He couldn’t take it in. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones. I hardly know what to say except just that, and it doesn’t seem like enough.”

  She patted the sleeve of his overcoat. “It’s a lot for a body to hear all at once. I’ve had three months to get used to it, but I’m sorry for springing it on you all of a sudden when you were so happy there, talking about your wedding and all. I didn’t mean to cast cold on your joy, Mr. Gardner. I’m real glad for the good news about you and your wife-to-be. Real glad. A Christmas wedding.”

  “You’re . . . you’re all still welcome to come, of course.”

  She shook her head. “Reckon we’d just be specters at the feast. I ain’t done with my mourning yet, and maybe I never will be, but I’ll get through it somehow. I’m glad to hear your good news, Mr. Gardner. I shore nuff am. It’s a fine thing to know that there’s weddings and babies and joy to offset all the rest.”

  Still at a loss for words, Mr. Gardner dug into his pocket and found a crumpled dollar bill. “Christmas is coming, too, Mrs. Jones. I’d be glad if you’d take this and buy your two boys a present and something good to eat for the holiday. And yourself, too, of course. It isn’t much, but—”

  “It’s a kindness, Mr. Gardner, and that means the most to me.” She put the bill in the pocket of her coat. “You know, every now and then I get to thinking about Mr. Trout Shue, shut up there in that cold, dark prison. Have you had any word lately about him?”

  “No. I doubt that we ever will. He declined a new trial, you know, and we did not appeal the verdict, so I don’t suppose there is anything more to be said. As far as the world is concerned, he is as dead as . . . as his wife,” he finished hastily, thinking it would be rude to connect the convicted felon with her own recent losses.

  “He was such a strapping fellow, so fond of the outdoors and near to bursting with health. I don’t say he didn’t deserve it, but it seems a waste to shut him away in the dark for the rest of his days. I wonder if he would rather be dead and buried himself.”

  “I don’t think he has much to look forward to in the hereafter, Mrs. Jones.”

  Again someone opened the outside door of the courthouse, hitting them with another blast of cold air. Martha Jones shivered, seeming to shrink down into her cloth coat. “It’s getting late. I need to be heading home before we lose the light. I wish you joy and sunshine for your wedding, Mr. Gardner. Joy and sunshine.”

  She looked up at him with a tremulous smile, and then she was gone.

  “So that was it then?” Dr. Boozer gazed at the burning tip of his cigarette.

  James P. D. Gardner nodded, staring at a bare patch of ground in the grass near the bench. “That was it. I never saw her again. Eliza and I got married on Christmas Day, but none of the Joneses came to the wedding. A little while later, we moved to Bramwell over in Mercer County, and I started my own law practice there. Later on, we moved to Bluefield, and I’ve been there ever since—well, except for now. But the law practice prospered, and I never regretted the move from Greenbrier. I lost Eliza, though. She passed on Valentine’s Day in 1911. Holidays make me sad now. I don’t care to celebrate any of them. I thought the feeling might go away after I married Alice, but I still get restive before a holiday, even if it takes me awhile to realize why.”

  “I married Dorothy on the day before Valentine’s Day. That didn’t work well, either. But let’s stop looking backward. Dr. Barnett summoned me to his office today to tell me that he got a big brown envelope in the mail yesterday. It was full of letters of recommendation from people petitioning for your release.”

  Mr. Gardner struggled to keep from smiling. “Went over your head, did they?”

  “Straight to the boss man himself. He wasn’t too happy about it.”

  “Those letters—did they come from lawyers?”

  “Some of them. They threatened to sue on your behalf, of course, but I think Dr. Barnett was more concerned about some of the politicians in Charleston who championed your cause. He very pointedly asked me if I thought you were well enough to leave, the implication being that I would be wise to say yes.”

  Now Gardner did smile. “Well, don’t be too hard on your boss. He has to be a bit of a politician himself to run this place. He’s probably afraid that if he doesn’t cooperate, the powers-that-be in the state government will remember that when it comes time to vote on the funding of this fine establishment.”

  “Your brother Masons are behind this, aren’t they?”

  “Some people think they’re behind everything.”

  “Don’t try to palm off a persecution complex on me. You’re still the patient. I’m glad you have friends looking out for you, but surely your health ought to come first.”

  “You’ve had a good many months to minister to a mind diseased, Boozer. I may not be the happy-go-lucky man you seem to want me to be, but then I never was. It will be better for both of us if you just sign the forms and trust me to look after myself from here on out.”

  Boozer sighed. “Well, we do need the bed space. But I don’t want you on my conscience, Mr. Gardner. Can you give me your word that you won’t try suicide again?”

  “In fact, I can, Doctor. I am a cautious man, and suicide attempts run the risk of failure. Much as I’ve enjoyed your company, I don’t want to end up here again.” He glanced out the window, at the view that never changed except for the seasons.

  Mr. Gardner struggled to his feet. “Let’s go find those papers, Dr. Boozer. You’ve got some forms to sign.”

  James Boozer nodded. “We’ll do that, Mr. Gardner, but first, why don’t we go across the road and take a look at the river?”

  * * *

  James P. D. Gardner was released from the hospital in Lakin after 1930, and returned to Bluefield, West Virginia, to resume the practice of law. In 1935 he was elected corresponding secretary of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Mystic Shrine and the Mountain State Consistory 32nd degree FAAY Masons. He died on August 13, 1951, at Welch State Hospital, McDowell County, West Virginia. He is buried in an unmarked grave in the Old Lewisburg Cemetery, Lewisburg, West Virginia, across the street from the graves of his fellow attorneys John Alfred Preston and William P. Rucker.

  Dr. James Boozer died in July 1978 in New Rochelle, New York.

  twenty-five

  STATE PENITENTIARY, MOUNDSVILLE, WEST VIRGINIA

  1898

  THE OHIO RIVER was only a couple of blocks west of the prison, but he knew he would never see it. The exercise yard, surrounded by high walls anyhow, faced the hills in the other direction. The staff offices and living quarters on the upper floors of the prison might have windows offering views of the river, but he would never go there. It seemed little enough to wish for: just a glimpse of that broad flat stretch of water, conveying boats and ore barges to faraway places. Imagining the peaceful river scene helped to take his mind off his hunger, but he might as well dream abou
t a South Sea island or even the moon; he would never see any of them. For him, the river’s only presence was a faint stench on the hottest days of summer, and the bone-chilling dampness that seeped into everything in the icy winter air.

  Somehow he had forgotten the stupefying cold. Strange that the memory of the prison had faded from his mind after a decade. At the time his sentence had seemed to last forever. Two years for horse-stealing, and every day in Moundsville then had felt like a month. He had paced the tiny cell like a caged bear, trying to keep track of the dates, counting the days until he would be free again. He hadn’t missed Allie and the baby while he was inside; in fact, he had hardly thought about them. What he had missed most were the wide green meadows and the wooded hills of home, the taste of apples and cold clear water from a mountain stream.

  All he really remembered about his previous stint in prison was the constant, gnawing hunger. There was never enough food, and what they were given was hog swill. Foul as it was, though, he could never get enough, and when he was finally released, he could become enraged simply by having hunger pangs because that feeling brought back the nightmares.

  Now that he was entering his second winter of a life sentence, he had become well acquainted again with all the things he had mercifully forgotten before. The darkness for sixteen hours a day, when the prisoners were locked in small stone cells with barred metal doors. When the door slammed shut at dusk, the rising panic of knowing that he was trapped in a dark space scarcely longer than his body and only the width of his outspread arms made him want to scream and throw himself against the door until they came and let him out. Except that they wouldn’t.

  Sometimes men did go mad in the cold darkness, and they shouted until their throats bled, silenced only by exhaustion. After a few days, those men would be gone. Word spread among the prisoners that there was a worse place of confinement in the prison. From the exercise yard, you could see a flight of narrow steps leading down to a locked door. The old-timers claimed the passage led to a windowless cellar, forever dark and cold, and that if they put you there, you stayed there around the clock—no tasks to perform during the daylight hours, no meals in the mess hall, no brief stretches in the exercise yard with its view of a rounded green hill against the sky. Nothing but darkness until they let you out again—if they did.