Esther's Pillow

by Marlin Fitzwater

  Curiously, and in contrast to the first day of the trial, the crowd gathered around the front steps of the courthouse saw the ladies marching toward them and shrank away from the sidewalk, as if afraid the hems of their dresses might burn them. Mrs. Wilson sensed the change in attitude, but it did not deter her. She marched right into the courtroom, dislodged her youngest son, who had been sent ahead to save the row, and ushered the Civic ladies across the front of the courtroom. Mrs. Wilson was determined that the defendants, the men of Nickerly, would see the ladies of Nickerly as soon as they entered the courtroom. Maybe the spectators in this courthouse, or the readers of the Kansas City Star, or the citizens of New York had changed their moral values to accommodate the actions of Miss Chambers, but the Civic Improvement Association’s values would not budge, no matter what the verdicts.

  The last person to enter the courthouse was the only one with a reserved seat, Margaret Chambers. And she was alone. After McArdle’s call, she dressed according to her plan of the morning, told her mother and sister that she wanted to walk alone, and struck out for the courthouse. The crowd was waiting, as if all the preliminaries were over, and it was time for the star to appear. When they first saw her, two blocks away, she was just a blur, although something seemed different about her appearance. It wasn’t her dress, which was a long and gray gabardine with black buttons from her neck to her waist, or her black coat with the boa that she had worn the day before. It was her head and feet.

  The ladies began to gasp as each step brought her more clearly into focus. “My heavens!” they said, and not under their breath. Margaret was wearing black shoes with her ankles showing. No high tops, no laces as were the norm, but open-throated shoes of a kind never before seen in Nickerly, open from the crown of her foot all the way to the hem of her dress. Her ankles were bare.

  And on her head was the most incredible sight of all, a large black hat with a brim bent rakishly to one side under a silver band. “A silver band,” the crowd repeated as if they were reading a fashion review in the Sears magazine. And finally, the item that made the women put their hands to their mouths, a single long white feather. It stuck in Margaret’s hat like a plume or perhaps an enormous specimen from Esther Ennis’s pillow. When Margaret walked into the courtroom with her long strides and commanding figure, every head and eye moved in her direction and stuck. She was like a figure from another time, oblivious to her surroundings, alive to another set of customs, and as self-contained as a pirate ship. She sat without comment.

  The big Irish foreman stood before his jury of eleven and began to read the verdict slowly and with determination: “We find the defendant John Buckhorn not guilty.”

  A chorus of “Thank God’s” and “Bless the Lord’s” went up from the ladies in the second row, and the judge had to rap his gavel and ask for quiet. Mrs. Wilson smiled. Margaret did not change her expression, and the feather did not dip; it held itself erect and proud.

  “We the jury,” the foreman began again, “find the defendants Ben Johnson, Delbert Romberger, Abner Polk, Joe Tanner, Joe Simpson, and Striper Simpson guilty of assault and battery as charged in the information filed in said case, and that they and each of them spend a maximum of ninety days in the Nickerly County Jail, and that they each pay a fine of two hundred dollars to the County of Nickerly in the State of Kansas.”

  The feather bobbed briefly and pandemonium broke out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Still a little groggy from a poor night’s sleep, Buck Lamb pulled his copy of the Kansas City Star off the pile at Callahan’s drugstore in Salina, where nearly seventy copies arrived by train each morning for designated buyers. The story about W.W. McArdle was spread across two columns at the top of the front page and even the headline proclaimed his victory: “Country Lawyer Avenges Tar Party.” And the subhead in smaller type read, “Even Conspirators Convicted.” No regular Star reader needed further explanation, having followed the tar party stories in more than fourteen front page articles by Temple Dandridge, the most widely quoted journalist in the state.

  The minute he saw the article, Buck Lamb had an idea about how to save the Democratic Party of Kansas. Brushing off his sleepiness, he rushed out of the store and headed toward the Farmers Bank and Trust at the main intersection of town, the paper folded haphazardly under his ample arms. His cowboy boots with his initials embossed on the side hit the boardwalk with a rapid thud, and his bolo tie with the silver clasp in the form of a “B” dangled from his neck so that the silver ends bounced off his belly as he walked. Buck was a political leader who often said, “If William Howard Taft can live big, so can I.”

  As the Democratic chairman of the state party, Buck was searching for a candidate for the United States Congress, a spot soon to be vacated by the seventy-three-year-old incumbent, who had recently fallen off his horse and broken his hip. Buck did not expect the old man’s return to Washington, and worse, the Democrats had lost the governor’s race in the last election. In addition, both U.S. senators were Republican. The state party was demanding a turnaround. At least Buck had more than a year before the election. So far there had been no panic about a new slate of candidates.

  Buck Lamb’s first name was actually Horatio. A few people around town called him Lamb, but mostly it was Buck, a no-nonsense, manly name that was easy to shout over the wailing and whining of cows and horses at Buck Lamb’s Auction Barn every Thursday afternoon. Buck had started the auction in 1902 by bringing in buyers from Kansas City and matching them up with local farmers who brought their livestock to his pens for sale and shipment east. As soon as he realized the market between farmers for each other’s livestock was just as great as selling for slaughter, Buck built an auction shed. It consisted of a twenty-foot-square cow ring surrounded by bleachers. Young Buck would stand on a podium he modeled after the pulpit at the First Presbyterian Church, introduce each cow and owner as the livestock was driven from the pens into the auction ring, tell a few stories about the owner to loosen up the audience, and start the bidding. It wasn’t long before every farmer within a hundred miles wanted to take his cattle to Buck’s both because Buck produced good prices and because the auction had become a social event, with Buck’s wife Hettie selling ham sandwiches and homemade ice cream right from the back porch of their home. Buck could look out over his customers and see forty or fifty men in overalls, leaning back on the wide bench seats, adjusting their felt cowboy hats. Their children sat beside them in fascination, waiting for the day when they could raise their finger, or tip their brim, and buy the prancing muscles of a fine new stallion.

  Many of Kansas’ finest young men learned the ways of manhood at Buck’s just by listening to the men’s conversations, watching their fathers spit tobacco and measure cattle for their value. Buck’s auction was also the best breeding ground in the state for politics, with arguments flying left and right about prices, presidents, family gossip, and certainly about the tar party trial. The boys at the auction barn gave it a prime beef rating for high drama, legal wrangling, and sex.

  The auction was every Thursday at one o’clock in the afternoon, and Buck would hold his meetings of the state Democratic Party in the morning. That gave him a chance to show off his operation to the bankers and landowners from other parts of the state, who would drive to Salina the day before and spend a little money in the town. Finally it let his local boys at the auction barn do a little hobnobbing with the party leaders in the afternoon. Everybody benefited, especially Buck, and about all he had to do to maintain this cushy situation was pick Democratic candidates who could win elections. He thought he saw a sure winner in W.W. McArdle.

  “Charley,” Buck said to Charley Hundley, the bank president and major Democratic money raiser, “I got us a man for the fourth district.” And he tossed the Kansas City Star down on Charley’s desk with an exaggerated motion. Charley said nothing, looked down, looked back up at Buck, and said quietly, “Do you think you could get that schoolteacher to campaign for him?” />
  “Let’s not go too far,” Buck said, plopping down in a chair and wiping his forehead with the handkerchief he took from his back pants pocket. “We don’t want a bunch of suffragettes coming in here. We don’t need any women marching in the streets. But I bet that girl would support him.”

  “Well, she ought to,” Charley said. “He not only gave her respectability and sympathy . . . Did you know that I’m holding money here at the bank for her that was collected by two of Taft’s cabinet members, agriculture and interior? They call it a legal defense fund, and the school teacher wasn’t even the defendant. That trial didn’t cost her a penny.”

  Charley was so worked up about the money aspect that it took him a moment to finish his thought.

  “McArdle also got convictions,” he added. “I still can’t believe that nearly ten people went to jail just for watching.”

  “That alone would make him a good candidate,” Buck countered. “It would be good for some of these cowboys to know they can’t just shoot the first thing that makes them mad.”

  Buck had a rather unusual countenance. His potbelly was surrounded by a three-inch-wide leather belt and a massive silver buckle given to him by a pig farmer in lieu of his sales commission. The buckle was polished with the imprint of a wild boar, which Buck rather liked, perhaps because it reminded him of himself. In spite of his girth, Buck’s face was angular and strong, without a trace of fat or a double chin, and some of the church women had remarked on this handsome quality. It was even rumored that some of the farm wives came to the auction just to see Buck in action.

  “How about going with me to see McArdle over at Nickerly next week?” Buck said. “I bet we can talk him into running.”

  “I’ve never seen a young lawyer yet that didn’t dream of spending a little time in Washington, no matter how dreary that swamp of a city is,” Charley said. “They can’t resist the power. Sure, he’ll go.”

  W.W. McArdle stepped onto Margaret Chambers’ porch the day after the trial, expecting her to be a little down. His other clients always were. They became so engrossed in the trial that it became their lives; it changed their perception of themselves; it made them special in some unseen way; and often, even when they won their case, they experienced a period of depression as they returned to routine life.

  W.W. wanted to help Margaret through this period, especially in view of the circus-like environment she had endured over the past three months. Indeed, she had become famous, if not recognizable in person, at least recognizable by name throughout the state and in many parts of the nation.

  Margaret opened the door, threw her arms about the startled McArdle, kissed him on the cheek, and exclaimed, “I love you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  Margaret was sorry that she had rushed out of the courthouse yesterday without thanking anybody. The minute she heard the verdicts she stood up, adjusted her hat and feather, and walked with dignity right out of the courtroom. When she got through the swinging doors, she walked out the courthouse’s front door, down the steps, to the end of the sidewalk. Then she turned and waited. She wanted to be outside, vindicated, free, and in the midst of a courthouse crowd that was stunned by the verdict. She wanted to meet them at the bottom of the steps and see their reactions.

  “Oh, Mr. McArdle,” she began, “it was so amazing. A couple of women actually came over to me and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Others just hurried away. And Mrs. Wilson was spitting and sputtering mad. She came over to me and said, ‘Miss Chambers, you’ve sent all these fathers to jail and left their wives and children home alone. You should be ashamed.’”

  “I just laughed, Mr. McArdle,” Margaret said. “Not at those poor women without their husbands, but at Mrs. Wilson. She’s home alone because of what her husband did to me. I don’t hate her; I just think she’s nuts.”

  That made McArdle smile. He took his gray fedora off and followed Margaret into the house, his black hair indented along the sides where the hatband had rested. He was still dressed as elegantly as black would allow, with a long black topcoat to guard against the November winds which were starting to carry a foreboding chill. The first snow usually hit Kansas before Thanksgiving, and the perennials had already wilted under an October frost. He was thankful the trial had ended before a hard winter.

  As W.W. greeted Margaret’s parents and accepted the offer of hot tea, Margaret began to see the county attorney in a different light, as a man with his own life, family, and ambitions. Until yesterday he was just her prosecutor, the man who would exact justice, the legal force that would guide her through the process, and a rather one-dimensional character at that. Margaret had met his wife, of course, but never his daughters, and she had never been in his home. Now she wondered about those matters, especially his little girls, and what they might think of her. As W.W. moved to the living room, set his cup and saucer on the corner table, and tugged at his vest before sitting, Margaret realized she not only owed this man a lot, she really liked him.

  “Margaret,” McArdle began, “I wanted to talk with you about a couple of matters. First, I think it will take a little time for you to adjust to things now that the trial is over.”

  “Well,” she said, “I know I don’t want to teach anymore.”

  “I hope you don’t rush off somewhere,” he said. “Unless, of course, you know what you want to do.”

  “I don’t, sir,” she said. “I haven’t thought about my future for the past three months.”

  W.W. was a little hesitant with Margaret because he didn’t want to take advantage of her, or even have her believe that he would try, but he had to raise this new subject anyway.

  “Margaret,” he said, “I got a call today from Buck Lamb over at Salina. He’s the chairman of the Democratic Party in Kansas, and he wants to come talk to me this week about politics.”

  “What does he want?” she asked.

  “He says he wants to talk about me running for the United States Congress.”

  Margaret’s eyes flew open. She took her cup of tea from her lap and slid it onto the table, then clasped her hands in front of her, and exclaimed, “That would be wonderful. Would you go to Washington?” “There’s a lot that would have to happen, Margaret,” he said.

  “The election is a year from now. I’d have to campaign, maybe even quit my job at some point. But there is another problem I want to discuss with you.”

  “Oh, I think it’s wonderful,” she said hurriedly.

  “This is about you,” W.W. said. “I’m at least wise enough to know that Buck Lamb wants me because of your trial and all the publicity. I also know that if I run for Congress, this tarring and feathering business might not die down so fast.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “First of all, I’ll be known as the ‘Tar Party Prosecutor,’ so you’ll see that name in the newspapers, maybe even on campaign posters. How would you feel about that?”

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “We won. Those men were convicted, and I don’t mind at all if this town is reminded of it.”

  “Yes, but the Civic Improvement Association won’t like it.”

  “I don’t care a whit what they like.”

  “There is one other thing,” W. W. said. “Someone will run against me. And those boys from Garvey’s Mill are never going to like me. You could hear some pretty nasty rumors, or even public charges, if I run.”

  “Like what?” Margaret asked.

  “They could say your whole trial was just trumped up to make me famous, to get me into Congress,” he said.

  Margaret said nothing.

  “They could say you’re going to Washington with me,” he added, avoiding the more direct charge that he really feared, which was gossip that he and Margaret were romantically involved. W.W. had talked this over with his wife last night, and she was reluctant to put the girls through that kind of campaign, although she assured him she would never believe such malicious mudslinging.

  “Margaret,” W.W. sa
id, “I have to tell you that this trial has not been easy on my family. Louise has received the cold shoulder in church. And she knows how people look at her on the street. I’ve been the center of attention, but Louise is trying to make new friends. It hurts to have a store clerk throw her change down on the counter without even saying hello.”

  “But people like you, W.W.,” Margaret suggested. “They’re taken with how you stood up for me. People in this county have never heard a speech before like the one you gave in summation. It was glorious.”

  “It may have sounded that way to you,” W.W. said. “But it didn’t sound that way to the families of the defendants.”

  “And it shouldn’t,” Margaret jumped in. “They should feel scorned. But people here should know you’ll fight for them. You’ll uphold the law. And when we all get to Washington, I bet Louise will have more friends than ever.”

  “Margaret,” he said, “we shouldn’t be presumptuous about Washington.”

  “That’s OK,” Margaret said. “I might just go to Washington with you, if you’ll take me.”

  W.W. was a little nervous about Margaret’s tendency to blunder ahead, even if she hadn’t thought through all the consequences. Going to Washington might be in that category. But he also knew that he couldn’t run for Congress without her. His fame was her fame, and that’s why the party wanted him to run. At least he was pleased that she supported him and that her family voiced no objections, although her mother and father listened to the entire conversation from the kitchen with a worried look on their faces. As he left, Mrs. Chambers said only, “Good luck, Mr. McArdle, and thank you for taking care of our daughter.” So far, this matter had gone much better than he expected.