skeletons

by Glendon Swarthout

  A jury is empaneled. By unremarked coincidence it includes the same four influential citizens who six years earlier served on the jury which freed Buell Wood: Francis Word and Hazen VanDellen, merchants; Dr. Jack Shelley, the general practitioner; and Coye Turnbow, banker.

  This trial is to be even more memorable. The room on the second floor of Harding Courthouse stifles with a capacity audience—an audience which looks upon the prisoners as already dangling from ropes, already twisting in the wind. The logic of this expectation is reinforced by the sounds of saws and hammers through the open windows. Sheriff Gilmore has begun the construction of a gallows in the small park to the west. There are present, too, in large numbers, a dude press representing cities as distant and alien as New York and Philadelphia. Pathé News has the gall to attempt to film in the room itself, and is thrown out by the bailiff on orders of an irate Obed Cox, camera and crew. New Mexico has been admitted to the Union now, and the legal niceties are more consistently and self-importantly observed.

  Finally, the charge itself, read aloud by the Clerk of the Court, is somewhat confusing, hence dramatic, to the layman. The Mexicans are accused of being “principals in the second degree to murder in the first degree”—if they have not killed J. J. Moore themselves, in other words, they have in fact aided and abetted the commission of the homicide for which Francisco Villa had been first indicted.

  Prosecution begins by inquiring if defense will stipulate the raid upon Columbus and its resultant civilian casualties, specifically that of J. J. Moore.

  Defense so stipulates.

  A confident Charles Vaught then calls only one witness: Captain Hedley Carpenter, U.S.A. The officer testifies that at approximately 0715 hours, the morning of 9 March, while seeking enemy approximately one mile below the border, he and his troop apprehended the four Villistas hiding in an irrigation ditch and returned them under guard to U.S. territory.

  “Objection to the term ‘Villistas,’” Wood remarks. “It is assumptive. Prosecution hasn’t—”

  “My next question,” Vaught appeals to the bench.

  “Proceed,” says Cox. “I’ll defer ruling.”

  “Now Captain. Once you had defendants in custody on our side of the line, did you interrogate them?”

  “Yes. They told us they had been horse-holders during the raid. Villa’s outfit dismounted approximately a half mile south of Columbus, and under cover of darkness moved on the town afoot.”

  “They performed, then, a useful military function.”

  “Well, yes. When a mounted force attacks dismounted, someone must see to the animals. You don’t want to use able-bodied—”

  “Thank you, Captain. Your witness, Mr. Wood.”

  Wood stands at his table. “Did you, Captain, encounter any other so-called Villistas that morning?”

  “Yes. Two. Another mile down the road.”

  “And?”

  “We shot them.”

  “Why?”

  “They were armed. They put up a fight.”

  “I see.” Wood reflects. “Were these four defendants armed?”

  “I believe not.”

  “Did they offer any resistance?”

  “No.”

  Buell Wood folds his arms, reflects again. In the six years since his own trial he has aged. His eyes are pouched, his black hair slashed with gray, and he has put on considerable whiskey weight around the middle. But his hair is cut, his mustache trimmed, and he wears a new gray suit.

  “Captain, I’m interested in your use of the word ‘able-bodied.’ What was it you said?”

  Carpenter’s collar is tight. “Well, if you’re dismounted, you hate to use first-line troops to hold horses. You’d prefer to—”

  “Use men like these?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “They don’t seem very soldierly to you?”

  “Objection,” Vaught snaps.

  “Sustained,” says Cox.

  “Let me put it another way, Captain,” Wood offers. “We have here one old man, two of advanced years, and a boy. On the basis of your wide, professional experience, would you reckon these men capable of riding many miles, then skulking into a town by night, shooting it up—”

  “Objection!” cries Vaught.

  “Sustained,” says Cox.

  Defense calls its clients to the stand. Through an interpreter, Juan Sanchez, Taurino Garcia, Jesús Alvarez, and Luis Obedo tell identical stories. They are field hands.

  During his progress through Chihuahua, Villa took them from the fields and force-marched them to the border, along with others of the gente. One evening they were ordered to hold horses till the soldiers returned. If they let them go, they would be shot. They did not know where the soldiers were going or what they proposed to do in the night, did not even know they were near the border, for they had never before been far from their homes. During the night they heard gunfire, could see flames in the distance; they would have released the animals and fled, but they were tired and footsore and had no wish to be shot. At dawn the soldiers returned, took the horses, and rode away. The four began to walk south, but seeing mounted soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms nearing them at a gallop, they hid in an irrigation ditch. And that was all.

  When the last is finished, it is afternoon of the second day of the trial. Buell Wood looks round the courtroom. Repetition has put it to sleep.

  “Defense concludes,” he says.

  Scattered applause. Obed Cox uses his gavel.

  Defense addresses the jury. He speaks calmly. He asks them to judge the accused reasonably rather than emotionally. On the testimony of the most knowledgeable witness, a witness for the prosecution, the four cannot qualify as able-bodied men, certainly as soldiers. Taken from their fields against their will, marched miles from all they knew, ordered to hold horses or be executed, left then in total ignorance of what that simple task connoted, how can they be found guilty of “aiding, abetting, assisting, and being concerned with and engaged in the unlawful and felonious killing of J. J. Moore?” The charge is absurd on its face. Let there be no misunderstanding—he is as aroused, as angered as anyone by the outrage at Columbus, and he is resolved to see punishment meted out to those who participated in it or conspired to perpetrate it. But these are not the men. He knows it. The jury knows it. If a guilty verdict is returned, what Harding will have to live down is a lynching, not an execution. And lynchings, like all the raw, retributive justice of days long gone, can no longer be condoned. “These are not killers or revolutionaries,” he finishes. “They are poor, simple men of the soil. So let them go home to their fields and families. They have done us no wrong.”

  Charles Vaught has committed to paper and memorized his plea. None can recall his ever having been as fervent. Many are reminded of the late Harry Emlyn. The prosecutor grants defendants are neither killers nor revolutionaries, grants they are poor, simple men of the soil. But he insists they have indeed “aided” and “abetted” and “assisted.” Did they not by holding horses release the men —perhaps the very man—who fired the fatal round into the breast of Mr. Moore? “Find them not guilty? Let them go home? If you do, gentlemen, what will you say to a stricken widow? How will you console her children? Even more crucial, what will such a craven act reveal of your own character to your own land? Lest we forget— Pancho Villa crossed the line. On the night of March 8 we were invaded by the armed forces of a foreign power. Should this crime go unavenged, what village, what town, what city will be next? Columbus a second time? El Paso? Our own imperiled community? I warn you—if you do not set a stern example here, no citizen of this great nation old or young will sleep soundly in his bed.”

  Vaught pauses, the taste of triumph in his mouth. He lays hands on the rail, bows his head, raises it.

  “To put defendants at the end of a rope is not to lynch them. It is to obey the commandment of the law. It is to serve justice in the truest tradition of the West. Yet, at the root, it is to defend ourselves and those we love. By that defens
e, we preserve and protect the territorial integrity of these United States. If we fail, it is a failure close to treason. Cast your verdict in your souls, I beg you. ‘In God We Trust’—that is our motto. Do not betray that trust. God be your guide.”

  One cheer, choked off.

  Counsel for the defense comes to the jury for his summation. What he says is incomprehensible to those not resident in Harding or thereabouts. He stands at the rail, close to them. He looks at only four men, in turn, speaks to only four.

  “Haze,” he says. “Francis. Jack. Coye. Six years ago you sat in this box and found me not guilty of murder. I was guilty as hell.

  And you knew that night you’d made a mistake. Well, all I ask is—don’t make the same mistake twice. Never mind what people may say. Probably, when you vote, you’ll be alone. But if you talk sense, and listen to your honor, and hold out, the rest will come around. Do what’s right, that’s all. These four men are as innocent as I was guilty, and you know it. I wish to God I’d plead guilty six years ago. But I didn’t, and. I never had a second chance to set things right. You do.”

  The sound of saws and hammers through the open windows. No other.

  Obed Cox instructs the jury. He reads to it the statute which defines murder in the first degree, emphasizing the differences and similarities between “principals in the first degree” and “principals in the second degree”—the latter referring to those “aiding and abetting at the commission of a felony”—that felony being, in this case, the killing of J. J. Moore. He distinguishes between “actual presence” and “constructive presence.” He illustrates for it the term “reasonable doubt.”

  He removes his spectacles, rubs the bridge of his nose. “Finally,” he says, “ignore the rhetoric, gentlemen. Decide on the basis of the facts. The facts.”

  The jury retires.

  Everyone expects a verdict as swift as that rendered after Buell Wood’s trial. An hour passes, however, then two. City-slicker newsmen wander in and out of the room to smoke cigarettes and use the spittoons. The locals sit like disbelieving bumps on a log. Defense and prosecution wait at their tables. Confined to the dock, the four Mexicans doze. The carpenters building a gallows cease to hammer and saw. Late afternoon dims to evening. Lights are turned on.

  Then the jury returns. Francis Word, the foreman, reads its verdict. It finds Juan Sanchez, Taurino Garcia, Jesús Alvarez, and Luis Obedo—not guilty.

  Consternation. Rage. Uproar.

  Obed Cox gavels in vain, orders the bailiff eventually to clear the room of press and spectators. When this is done, he refuses to dismiss the jury. Infirm he may be, but the voice with which he excoriates the twelve fairly rings with contempt. As far as he is concerned, and the law is concerned, they have bungled as badly as the jury in Wood’s case six years ago. In trying to make amends for a simple miscarriage of justice then, they have aborted justice now. If holding bandits’ horses so that said bandits could go kill innocent people is not “constructive presence,” what is? If this verdict isn’t an open invitation to Villa to dance a bloody fandango up and down the border, what in hell is it? And when he rides into Harding some dark night burning and looting and slaughtering, what will they do—elect him mayor?

  “Judge, I object to—” Wood begins.

  “Overruled!” cries Obed Cox, and goes into a fit of coughing.

  Charles Slocum Vaught tries to rise, but is unable. His face is ashen, his shoulders slump. He can comprehend what has happened, but cannot measure the magnitude of it. Twice defeated. In the most publicized cases in the county’s history. By the same man. A drunk. A murderer. If he does not destroy that man, he will be destroyed. Seated, he stabs a finger at his nemesis.

  “Buell–”

  He is hoarse. He cannot even utter the name clearly.

  “Buell, if you think these murdering—greaser—bastards—will go free the way you did—you are—”

  “Look.” Blaise Gilmore interrupts from a window. “You better have a look. Everybody.”

  All go to the windows—Wood, the judge, Captain Carpenter, Word, VanDellen, Dr. Shelley, Turnbow, the other jurymen, the bailiff, Charles Vaught. In the dusk below them, in the yard before Harding Courthouse, a crowd has assembled. There are at least a hundred, preponderantly male.

  “I knew it,” says the sheriff. “Goddam, the minute I heard that verdict, I knew it.”

  More men can be seen crossing the street to join the crowd. Some are armed.

  I I : 14

  I I : 14

  I sat on a rock.

  That afternoon I left the interstate a few miles out of El Paso and drove the same sand road into the desert and stopped the car and got out and sat on the same rock. I wanted to let a sense of mission seep into me.

  I was appropriately attired. I wore a black Huddlesfield jacket of superfine worsted, and with it gray flannel slacks by Caraceni of Rome. Turnbull & Asser, London, had done my shirt in random stripes of black, purple, and white, and the tie I had selected after much indecision was a Paisley of lilac and purple silk. My black, golden-buckled loafers were Gucci, as was the ostrich belt over which I had clipped my Smith & Wesson. A black homburg hat by Cavanaugh topped the total effect: a dark and dedicated DIGNITY.

  An altered man was I. Gone my bounce and bubble, gone my natural ebullience—abraded away under an automobile, washed away by a woman’s tears, blown away by a single shot at a target. I pushed aside my coat, made contact with the cold aluminum alloy of the Airweight. We both had guns now, Tyler and I. For hers she had been required to cash in her cherry. Mine had been free, forced upon me. I had fired it only once, missing the target utterly, after which Hank Snackenberg importuned me to keep trying, round after round, until I achieved a minimum marksmanship. I refused. The time of a man who can fire the imagination of the young, I informed him, is too valuable to society to squander firing lethal weapons. One Frisby the Fly on the shelf is worth a thousand bull’s-eyes in the bush. I am a creator, I said, not a destroyer. I give Me, I do not take it. It was the truth. And he gave up on me, sighing he had never heard such horseshit. We parted outside the Border Patrol HQ.

  You realize, he said, you realize in this operation you are now our plant. Your pigeon, I corrected. All right, he said. And what will you do if someone draws a gun on you? I will PRAY, I said. And the Lord of Little Children will look after me.

  I had told him the truth, too, about why I had changed my mind. Omitting only the lascivious details. Tyler had literally painted me into a corner. It had been, after her cataleptic story about Chavez and her grandfather’s Colt, a long and kinky night in our room at the Paso del Norte. In the end, with most males a hard pecker takes precedence over a hard heart. But what about a PAINTED PECKER? That’s right! While we were bedded down in the buff, she took her applicator and the red nail enamel she used on coins and painted IT! She waited till IT was dry, then foreplayed around till IT achieved a state of what the porn writers call “tumescence.” What a SENSATION! Then she urged me on to intercourse. How would you like, men, to go into combat with a BRIGHT RED WARHEAD? ZOWEEE! After that I folded. In dawn’s early light we came at last to terms. I’d go once more to Harding for her, this time concentrating on the trials. She would wait for me, leaning like Elaine from the hotel window for her Lancelot. I would tough it out for two days. Then, successful or not, I would reclaim her and together we’d shake the dust of these damned deserts from our shoes and souls and tear for New York, stopping somewhere to exchange vows before some JP and to start, that very night in some bridal bed in some motel, because I yearned someday to have my own roomful to read to, our very own juvenile.

  And so, once more unto the breach, dear B. James Butters, once more. Absent thee from felicity awhile. Why? For what? Sitting on my rock in the sun, I put it all down on mental paper. I was going back to Harding for three good reasons.

  One, TO SAVE TYLER VAUGHT’S SANITY. On the evidence of her performance in the Paso del Norte it seemed to me she might be hoverin
g on the same brink over which Helene, her mother, had long ago fallen. When I asked her why she had induced three men to risk their lives, what she had REALLY wanted them to find out for her, her words were “Who I am.” Followed by, “I’ve never really known.” Which put us even—neither had I. Although I understood now what was implied by the term femme fatale. But there had to be an explanation for her haphazard years between the back seat of a patrol car and Max Sansom’s bed. And mine. There had to be some kind of KEY to her hereditary hang-up. There had to be a hammer, tucked away in Harding’s municipal toolbox, which would nail down her identity. And for two more days I would do my human damnedest to unearth them. I had to. For my own sake if not for hers. What rational man considers remarrying a lady, however beautiful, however chic, however pioneer in bed, whose clock keeps irrational time?

  Two, TO PIN TWO MURDERS ON PINGO CHAVEZ. Balled my baby, had he, when she was sweet sixteen? And given her, in lieu of candy, an antiquated gun? And killed two guys from New York whose only crime was looking for a book? And dragged a third half to death under a fuzzmobile? Well, I’d show the sadist son of a bitch—I’d put Pingo in the pokey for life. As far as Cross-worth and Sansom were concerned, it wasn’t that I owed them anything, but they had been WRITERS.

  I was trained to organize, to produce a coherent whole, and with luck, in two days I’d prove I could put bits and pieces together as ingeniously as Phil and a hell of a lot more artistically than Max. Pride.

  Three, a footnote to peril, TO PASS ON ANYTHING PERTINENT TO THE U. S. BORDER PATROL. As payment for my pistol. And because I’d been smitten by Annie Snackenberg. And because her husband was a nice guy. And if I had time.

  And how would I proceed? This time, rather than beating my head against a stone wall of silence, zigging here and zagging there and making a spectacle of my colorful self, I’d stalk the shadows, lurk the archives, keep a low, Lew Archer profile. I’d be cool, ever cool. CEREBRAL.