There they hung in cobweb air. In moonlight flawed by old imperfect glass. There they had hung since 11:14 on a night in March in the year of our Lord 1916. Found innocent by a jury of their fellowmen, their fellowmen had that same day killed them. There they had hung for sixty years, suspended between sky and earth. Between justice and injustice. Words and deeds. The ideal and the actual. In sightless, speechless, timeless equipoise between GOOD and EVIL.
Guests of honor at the last necktie party in the American West.
In arid climates the disintegration of the cadaver proceeds slowly. The bodies of the Villistas had dried, shrunk. Growth of the hair had ceased, but each skull was covered with a thick brown bristle. Birds had consumed much of the flesh. Flies, too, had feasted on it, laid eggs in it, and from them teeming maggots had been born to eat their fill as well. The remainder had mummified.
It was impossible to say which of the hanging men was Obedo, which Alvarez or Garcia or Sanchez, which was the old man, blind in one eye, which the boy of sixteen. All had been small, all had been dressed alike in shapeless jackets and trousers, ragged now.
For the luck that they had hung so long in such preserved state the four could thank three circumstances. High in Harding Courthouse, hidden behind a locked door, they had been relatively undisturbed. Second, the noose had been placed around their necks over the turned-up collars of their jackets. The cloth had served as connecting tissue. Third, human bones, because of their mineral content, endure. Each rope, tightening, had lodged at the cervical spine, at the base of the skull, the occiput. Shirts had been supported by clavicles. Trousers were anchored to the pelvis.
Sixty years had taken in other ways, however, a singular toll. Parts of skeletons were scattered on the floor. Legs. Hands. Feet. Disarticulated at the knees, wrists, ankles. One peon’s body had been separated in the region of the lumbar spine. Half of him still hung. His lower half lay on the floor.
Identification of the man seated in one corner, back to the wall, was not difficult. In life he had been big. In death he was not much diminished. Under the black suit his torso seemed intact. His legs were spread before him flat. One shriveled, mottled hand lay on a leg. He had been shot, evidently, in the back. The bullet had exited through the left breast of his coat, tearing a hole surrounded by splayed fibers, indurated bloodstains.
There he sat, placed in position to contemplate forever the irony of fate. It was he, not they, who was guilty. It was he, not they, who should have hung. From his corner, too, he could keep eternal watch over his clients. Four men whose freedom he had won in fair trial. And in the winning, lost.
A futile watch it was. Contemplate he could not. For his skull had toppled in time from his shoulders. To the floor, between his legs, face down. Bare bone upon the barrel of a Colt revolver.
40176? 40178?
I wept. For Sanchez, Garcia, Alvarez, Obedo. For Buell Wood. For those who, sixty years ago, had done this. For those who had lived with it ever since, lived with it still. For mankind, which can come out of caves and build with hope and hands a house of law—then cap its triumph with atrocity. And for myself.
I stood on the topmost step, tears streaming down my cheeks, staring into that museum of mummies. In my soul, time stopped. I cried as a man cried.
For as I stood there, around something in Bertram James Butters, aged thirty-four, citizen of these United States, a rope tightened. The child in me strangled, died. And with that death, the man in me acknowledged what the child had not: the reality of EVIL.
La Mierda de Dios.
The Shit of God.
Footsteps!
I froze.
Footsteps far below me, ascending the staircase between the second and third floors to enter the tower.
Who? To do what? To kill me? What else, now that I had seen?
Forget who.
Shoot first.
Tiptoe to the floor of the clock chamber. Turned, unbuttoned my coat, drew the Airweight from its holster. Sat down, raised my knees, rested the gun in both hands on them, aimed it at the precise point at which his head would appear above floor level.
Footsteps on the iron stairs. Slow. Soft.
Secret steps.
Finger on the trigger.
He reached the landing.
Squeeze, don’t pull.
The second flight. Slow steps. Soft. Grains of sand on stone.
Three more.
Shoot first.
One.
Had to know.
Two.
Bent forward.
Who?
I I: 14
11:14
11:14
TYLER!
In gray light a gray woman on the stairs. Gray eyes open, staring into mine, but a woman walking in her sleep. I almost fell apart.
“Tyler! What in hell are you doing here?”
My hiss stopped her. And I had to stop her. I dropped my feet to the top step, leaned out and over to block the aperture.
“Tyler, why did you—”
“Jimmie?”
I thrust the gun into its holster, reached down, took her by both shoulders. “Stay where you are, Tyler. You mustn’t see.”
Now I stepped down to her, put an arm about her waist, t urned her. “Let’s go down, shall we? I don’t want you to see what’s up there. Please.”
“I don’t need to,” she said.
“Need to what?”
“I know what’s there.”
“Sure you do.”
“I do, Jimmie. I’ve been up there before.”
“Sure you have.”
She made no sense whatever, but it was no time to debate. I urged her slowly down the iron steps to the landing.
“There. Good girl.” I blew relief, put my arms around her, laid my head on her shoulder. “Tyler, why are you here? Why aren’t you in El Paso, waiting for me?”
Under the St. Laurent suit her body was as brick, as inanimate, as the wall behind us. She’d been uneasy, she said, after our phone conversation last evening. We were losing each other, losing what we’d had together, and it was her fault. And she’d been restless, tired of her hotel trap. So she rented a car and drove over, planning to persuade me in person to stay another day or two, beg me on bended knee if necessary.
“Or bended bed,” I said.
She went to the Ramada, found my door barricaded, my window open, my luggage gone. Then, instead of retreating to El Paso, she cruised the town. She hadn’t set foot in Harding for fourteen years, she was curious to see how it had changed. “Then it happened. Passing the courthouse. I can’t explain it, Jimmie, but it happened. Just the way it did when I was a girl, when Pingo Chavez showed me my grandfather’s gun that night in the patrol car—I told you, remember? I knew the second I saw it— I’d seen that gun before. And tonight I knew I’d been in this courthouse before, in the tower. You can’t imagine the sensation—something so long ago, something buried so deep in me. I thought of my mother. For a minute I was afraid I might turn out like her.”
You have, I almost said. You’ve flipped, freaked out, Tyler, and I have to whip on a white jacket and handle you as delicately as I did her tonight.
“But I parked the car and came in. I seemed to know the way. Up the stairs to the second floor, then the third, then into the tower. It was all familiar somehow. I started up the stairs to the clock chamber. I knew what I’d find there, see there, because I’d been there before—Jimmie, I have been, I have. But I didn’t know it till tonight, till I saw the courthouse again, and the tower. I’d forgotten it. Or put it away, deliberately, like a bad dream.”
“All right,” I said, playing along. “You’ve been up there before. Why?”
“I can’t remember.”
“When?”
“I can’t remember.”
“That iron door’s been locked for years and years, I’m sure of it.”
“Even so.”
“All right. But convince me.” She might shape up if she could be shown
how mistaken she was. “Prove it. Tell me what’s there.”
“The Mexicans,” she said.
“My God,” I said.
“And my grandfather,” she said. “
My God,” I said.
“I told you,” she said.
“Oh my God,” I said. Then let go of her, whispered I. “Tyler ssssh. Move behind me, slowly. Just do it.”
She moved behind me.
I drew the Smith & Wesson again, raised it in both hands, aimed. This damned tower was drawing more damned traffic tonight than Grand Central Station.
Below us, the iron door was OPENING.
“Don’t shoot!”
Ahead.
“Please don’t shoot, Mr. Butters!”
I groaned. “Judge, what in hell are you—”
“I was in my chambers, working late.”
He sidled from behind the door. “I turned out my light, and stood at he window when I saw you cross the street and enter the, courthouse. I heard you pass my door and take the stairs to the third floor and unlock this door. I couldn’t prevent you, physically, but I would have followed had I not heard someone else on the stairs. Excuse me, the light here—is someone with you?”
I stepped aside.
“Judge, this is Tyler.”
“Tyler?”
Father and daughter.
“Here?”
Fourteen years.
“Oh my poor girl,” he said.
Neither the sight of each other nor the sound of each other’s voice in fourteen years. He waited, I waited, for her to speak to him.
SHE WOULD NOT.
He sighed. “Please put your gun away, Mr. Butters.”
“Gun? Oh yes, my gun.” After two or three tries I managed to shove the thing into its holster.
“Thank you. You’ve been upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“Inevitable someone would, someday. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? I’ll never be the same.”
“I suppose not.”
“Judge, when I talked to you before, you stonewalled. Don’t you think this is the time?”
“Of course. The damage is done. To you and to Tyler.” He moved to the wooden column of the cable cage, leaned wearily against it. “They’d have hung anyway. Throughout the trial, I understand, you could hear sawing and hammering outside the courthouse —raising the gallows. Everyone expected them to hang, wanted them to. The raid on Columbus had really been very bloody. Unconscionable. Then the verdict. Not guilty. Then the fury. That evening a crowd gathered in the yard here, with guns. They formed a line of automobiles, headlights on. Blaise Gilmore was sheriff. The court ordered him to escort the Mexicans to the border—Blaise couldn’t have saved them with the National Guard. They were doomed. During the evening a certain man went to four of the jurymen and—”
“Word. Turnbow. VanDellen. Doc Shelley.”
“Yes. How do you know?”
“Go on.”
“This individual said they had made a second mistake. They’d been on the Wood jury, too. They let him go, and he was guilty. Now they’d found in favor of the Mexicans, who were guilty. And they’d hang before the night was done. Better for the sake of the town, he said, that they do it themselves, secretly, than let an armed mob have its way in public. Besides, he said, if they wished to stay in Harding and raise their children and prosper, better admit their error and rectify it with their own rope. Not much argument was needed, I guess. The five of them came to the courthouse a little before eleven. They told Gilmore what they intended. He brought the Mexicans up from the basement, into the tower. The clock was stopped by removing the weights. Then. One by one.”
“And Buell Wood?”
“They were just finishing the job when he appeared. Up there. Two revolvers in his belt—the ones the town had given him. He had defended the Mexicans, gotten them off. He was an awesome man. He said he would not use his guns on them, but they would pay the price. He would go if necessary to the governor, in Santa Fe. He turned to go down those stairs. A certain man shot him in the back, killed him. The same one who had got the jurymen together. Then this individual dragged Wood to a corner and sat him up so he could see.”
“Then.”
“They went back down. They told the crowd that Blaise had let the Mexicans run a Texas horse race with his deputies and they had lost. That it was all over, and they could go home knowing justice had been done. And they did. But of course it wasn’t over. It isn’t yet. It may never be.”
We had not moved, Tyler and I. We stood on the landing above him, listening.
“‘A certain man,’” I said.
Charles Vaught was silent.
‘This individual.’
Charles Vaught was silent.
“Judge,” I prompted.
Charles Vaught was silent.
“My grandfather,” said Tyler.
“My father,” said Charles Vaught.
HER GRANDFATHER.
HIS FATHER.
I took hold of the iron rail. I shook my head. I addressed the man below me. “You’re saying—you’re saying your father, Tyler’s grandfather, the judge before you—was the man responsible for the lynching?”
“I am.”
“And that—that he killed Tyler’s other grandfather, Buell Wood, in cold blood?”
“I am.”
“My God.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We underrate hatred, Mr. Butters. Wood had whipped him twice in court, in much-publicized trials. We underrate ambition. He was county prosecutor, but he was determined to run against Obed Cox for district judge in the next election. He did, too, and won. He stayed on the bench for thirty years.”
“But why weren’t they buried?” I burst out. “Why leave them hanging up there? Why leave Wood sitting in a corner?”
“You don’t see?”
“No I don’t!”
“Consider. Is there another room like that one in America?”
“No, probably not.”
“In the world?”
“No, probably not, but—”
“Extortion.”
“Extortion?”
‘Turnbow and VanDellen and Word and Dr. Shelley were men of means. Threaten to reveal what they had done up there—taken the law into their own hands, lynched four innocent men—keep the room intact, keep your exhibits under lock and key—and my father could have whatever he wanted from them. And he did. Ruthlessly. For years. Bled them white. He bought elections, he bought land, he died wealthy. Do you know about Tyler’s trust?”
“Yes. But how could a ghastly thing like this be hidden so long? What about the clock? People were bound to notice it had stopped.”
“He was a meticulous man. He had the wooden door replaced with an iron. He forced Word or VanDellen or Turnbow to run for Board of County Commissioners every term, and made sure he was elected. So that one of them was always in a position to veto the use of county money to repair the clock—Donald Turnbow is a commissioner now. I have no doubt it was my father who stole and disposed of the trial transcripts. By the way, Mr. Butters—how did you obtain a key?”
“From your wife.”
“Helene? How?”
“She came to my room tonight, at the motel.”
I heard Tyler draw breath.
“No. Oh no,” said the judge. “My poor dear.”
“She’s all right, and on her way back to San Carlos. Say—I just thought of something. How could she have a key?”
“She must have stolen mine, years ago. The blacksmith could have made her a duplicate.”
“Then she knows what’s upstairs.”
“Then.”
“They went back down. They told the crowd that Blaise had let the Mexicans run a Texas horse race with his deputies and they had lost. That it was all over, and they could go home knowing justice had been done. And they did. But of course it wasn’t over. It isn’t yet. It may never be.”
Tyler whimpered, swayed into me. I put my arms around her, held her.
“Helene had her own key by then, must have had. Perhaps she wanted her father to see you. To see his grandchild. You won’t remember it, of course, my dear—though I don’t know how massively a sight like that might traumatize an infant.” Judge Vaught hesitated, uncertain whether or not to conclude. “Well, in any case. Wood had been dead then for thirty years. Your mother had placed you in his lap.”
She shuddered. Behind her, I put the entire back of my hand in my mouth.
“Mr. Butters,” her father said, “do you mind if we go downstairs? I can’t bear to be in this place another minute.”
“Neither can we,” I said.
Walking wounded.
Her father in the lead, me with an arm around her, pausing to close and relock the iron door. Then, suddenly, when we reached the second floor, Tyler pulled away from me, walked into the courtroom. We strayed after her, curious.
She stood at the rear, looking around. I could guess her thoughts, if she were capable of thought. The light was better here, less spectral, for there were more and higher windows. Oblivious to us, she seated herself like a spectator at a trial.
Judge Vaught watched her, then entered the room, opened a gate in the oaken rail, shuffled to a chair, sat down at a table used by attorneys for defense or prosecution.
I watched him, then entered the room, started for Tyler, changed my mind, started for the judge, then stopped at the rail, between them. I waited for someone to say something. Waited in vain. Began to do a slow burn. The man in the middle again. Damned if it was my duty to reconcile daughter to father. I owed them nothing, really. They owed me. If I had gone into the tower of Harding Courthouse a retarded child, I had come down from it a sad adult son of a bitch. Then be a son of a bitch, Butters, I said to myself. Tyler and her old man and practically everybody else around here have ripped you off irreparably. Played games with you and lied to you and tried to terrorize your ass and finally, for a capper, after you paid a high enough price for admission, let you open up their goddamned closet and have a look. Okay. From here on, get your goddamned knuckle out of your mouth. Hang tough. Take no prisoners. You’ve got a courtroom—use it. You’ve got a judge off the bench and into the box—try him. Lead him, sucker him, cross-examine the JUDICIAL SHIT out of him, but get it, get it all. You’ve got it coming.
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