Rafferty

by Bill S. Ballinger

  ‘Because years ago... I was a good friend of Emmet’s. And at that time I knew Swanson, too.’

  ‘But what do you want?’

  ‘To talk about Emmet.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve been away a long time. I can’t believe what I read about Emmet. There’s too much of a difference... between the Emmet I knew and what happened to him. There must be a reason for that difference. ‘She nodded.’ There are probably a hundred reasons: otherwise it doesn’t make sense.’ I paused and looked at the woman seated on the davenport. She lowered her head and looked at her clasped hands. ‘I know it must hurt to talk about it, and if you feel that I am intruding. I apologize. I will go away...’

  She sat motionless for a few moments. Finally she raised her head and looked at me. ‘Parts of it still hurt,’ she said. ‘But other parts are like a dream. I don’t know... I can’t feel it really happened. Sometimes I just sit here and wait for Emmet to walk through that door.’

  I lit a cigarette and then, remembering, hastily offered her one. She refused it. ‘It must have started a long time ago,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. It had been happening a long time and I didn’t know about it. After a while Em told me a little but I didn’t believe it. If I had—if I had really believed it—then things might have been different. I don’t know. It wasn’t until the very end that I knew about it—in my own heart, I mean.’

  I glanced around the little living room. ‘I think you’ve done a wonderful job... this home... two lovely daughters. How do you do it?’

  She smiled faintly. ‘There was nothing else to do. Once, before I was married, I had worked for the telephone company. So I... just went back to work. Maureen got a job, too... and we just kept on as best we could. And—since that last night—when we all went to the Church and prayed, we’ve never mentioned it. Not once...’ her voice trailed away.

  ‘Tell me, what was Emmet like when you first met him... and when you were married. What did he ever tell you about himself when he was a boy?’

  ‘I have some pictures—I couldn’t throw them away.’ She disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a paper-wrapped bundle tied securely with string. Opening it, she displayed several old-fashioned photograph albums. ‘Perhaps these pictures will help,’ she said.

  She began to talk, sometimes gesturing to a photograph. The story she was attempting to tell me concerned years that she had never known. It was the story of Emmet’s family, told broadly and indistinctly through the hearsay that she herself had heard.

  Emmet Quentin Rafferty’s birthplace was a small town in the Middle West, Tomas, with a population of approximately eight thousand persons. The town was located in the fertile Raccoon River Valley region, and was the county seat of a flourishing farming section. It was a town almost entirely dependent on its agricultural economy. He was born in a small, white frame house on the edge of Tomas. The house was perfectly square, with a parlor and kitchen on the first floor and a single large bedroom on the second, which was reached by a narrow stairway, nearly as steep as a ladder, from the kitchen. A small, sagging porch ran across the front of the house. Behind the house, an outdoor privy strived to maintain its balance, and in the far corner of the back yard was a tiny chicken house with a lath-enclosed run for the fowls.

  In 1905, when Rafferty was born, he was the fourth living child in the family. He had also been preceded by a stillborn brother and sister. His father Patrick—a bartender at the local hotel—was desperate for lack of space to accommodate his rapidly expanding family. He had constructed a series of attached single-story rooms to the back of the house. Doing his own carpentering and construction work, the elder Rafferty had managed to erect two additional bedrooms where the children were allocated according to sex—boys in one room, girls in the other, a laundry room, and a canning room where his wife spent the hot summers trying to hoard and store food for the winter. As the years passed, foundations sank and walls warped out of line and the patchwork collection of rooms with flat roofs, built around the original two-story house, gave the impression of a hen surrounded by small chicks.

  After Emmet’s birth, two more children were added to the family, but no additional rooms. The children took their places in the community dormitories, and although his father often discussed the possibility of adding a dining room to the house, no action was ever taken. The family ate in two shifts in the linoleum-covered kitchen, the father and the boys eating first, while the mother continued cooking for the girls and babies who would follow them.

  Both Patrick and Maureen Rafferty, his wife, were stern disciplinarians. Patrick’s salary offered no leeway for the luxuries of life, and the children inherited each other’s neatly patched clothes, kept them clean, and passed them on, in good condition, to the next in line. On Sundays they attended Mass, without complaint and with a knowledge there was no escape. The Catholic Church at that time, and in that section of the country, was passively tolerated by the Protestant community, although viewed with some suspicion concerning possible papist activities, and in Tomas the social line was carefully drawn between Catholics and Episcopalians.

  The Rafferty family life quickly became organized into strata of authority, with each child immediately supervising the activity of his next younger brother or sister, and also in turn responsible to the next oldest sibling. The rank of authority stretched to Maureen Rafferty who was outranked only by Patrick. Patrick administered justice with a fast and flashing hand, and little dispute was ever held concerning his decisions. Right was right; wrong was wrong. In this life, right was white, wrong was black. Consequently, there was only white or black. It was as simple as that.

  The older Rafferty was not illiterate, having had several years’ schooling in the old country, and he could read with ease, although writing was difficult. Like many of his class and station, he had a great respect for education and was determined that his children should attend school and pursue their educations as far as they were financially able. Consequently, when Emmet was five years old, he was entered in the Tomas public grade school. At this age the boy was sturdy, and had light-colored brown hair (which later was to become sandy) and direct, level, brown eyes. He possessed a quick and agile mind and did well in his grades.

  In time, Emmet was joined in school by his brother Sean, three years his junior. Sean, the last of the children born alive to Maureen and Patrick, was a fragile, delicate child with a cast in one eye. Although he was the darling of the Rafferty family, he quickly became the butt of his classmates. Taunted and ridiculed, nicknamed ‘Cat-Eye,’ his life in the school playground was a miserable one. Emmet unhesitatingly became his guardian and protector, fighting Sean’s tormentors.

  Time after time the victor in these fights, Emmet would rise to his feet and dust the dirt from his clothes, take Sean’s small hand in his own and lead him to a corner of the playground. ‘We showed the old bully, Sean, we showed ’em.’ He would wipe the red nose and grimy face of his little brother. Gently he would pat the scrawny shoulder. ‘Now you gotta stop crying, Sean...’ Sean would look up at his older brother in adoration.

  By the time Emmet was ten, he was an expert warrior and an experienced wager of battles. Leaving no insult unchallenged, Emmet fought Sean’s oppressors as he found them—large and small—until at twelve he was the unchallenged champion of the school, and Sean was permitted to walk in the peace provided by the shadow of his brother.

  In 1918 Emmet entered high school and immediately became one of the stars on the school’s baseball team. Amateur rules scarcely existed, and after two years with the high-school team, Emmet began playing second base for the local Tomas semipro nine which met the teams of neighboring small towns at the fairgrounds each Sunday during the summer. Furnishing his own equipment, Emmet was paid two dollars and fifty cents for his professional services.

  As prohibition had now closed the bar at the old Hough House, Patrick Rafferty had difficulty finding employment. He occasionally worked as a part
-time policeman in Tomas during county fair week, filled out as an extra postman during illnesses and vacations, and from Thanksgiving to Christmas clerked in one of the local dry-goods stores selling hardware. With all the children now working, with the exception of Sean who he hoped would enter the priesthood, the elder Rafferty still managed to keep his home together, proudly and fiercely, with his children’s contributions and his own efforts.

  In 1922, when Emmet was graduated from the high school, time and events had started to make many changes in Tomas. Physically it was much the same, except that autos were now common, and the roads leading to Tomas were being paved. The men returning from the First World War brought back with them a restlessness and a sense of changed values. The business life of Tomas still centered around ‘the square’—a plot of ground, a small city block square, in the middle of the town. The square, in the summer, was shaded by great, old trees and the grass was cut, each week, by the fire department. In the exact, mathematical center of the ground was a round, white wooden bandstand—roofless and open to the skies. On alternating Saturday nights, when the Elk’s band gave a public concert, the open stand was covered with a tarpaulin as a protection against possible rain. Young couples strolled the streets surrounding the square, stopping in the candy stores and the soda fountains, shifting into changing street-corner groups, talking, chatting, laughing—and staying away from the square where (most likely) they would run into their parents or younger brothers and sisters.

  But this old pattern was slowly being changed. Now each concert night, groups of the young people would leave the square and drive to the Hollow, a dance hall situated some five miles outside Tomas in a bend of the Raccoon River. A lightly constructed wooden building, squatting on posts projecting over the water, the Hollow featured a five-piece dance band. Rolls of tickets were sold at the door, and inside—at tables—’setups ‘of ginger ale could be ordered. The summer he was graduated from high school, Emmet was hired as a ticket taker on Saturday nights at the Hollow, but his real job was that of a private policeman and enforcer of peace, a ‘bouncer’ maintaining discipline in the hall of music. For his services, he was paid five dollars the night.

  On Sundays, that summer, he continued to play baseball. Returning to town from the Hollow in the early Sunday hours, he would attend Mass and then continue home to sleep until theafternoon. Around 2:00 P.M. he would report to the ball park. That summer, the Tomas Tomahawks won the pennant in their rural league and earned some attention in the larger daily papers in the state. Emmet Rafferty received personal publicity as the star second baseman of the pennant-winning Tomahawks, which culminated in an offer of a scholarship to play ball for the State Teachers College at Amesville.

  Both the older Raffertys, as well as young Sean, urged him to accept the scholarship which included tuition, books, and room in the men’s dormitory. Also the assistant athletic coach, who made the offer to Emmet, assured him that he could earn his meals by waiting on tables in the college dining room. After a series of family conferences, Emmet accepted the offer, and that fall he was enrolled at Amesville.

  Although the young Rafferty, as an athlete, majored in physical education, the college made a deep impression on him. Possessing a quick, native intelligence, he did well in his classes and, while not an honor student, he stood well in the listing of his class. He easily made the ball team, and forfour years played his old position of second base. Between his studies and athletic activities, and the summer jobs from which he turned his complete earnings over to his family, Emmet had little time for girls. Although the college was coeducational, the men at that time outnumbered the women students some four to one. No girl pushed herself into his attention, and he in turn sought no one out.

  His entire college career was pleasant and uneventful, and might pass without additional comment except for one incident. This incident might conceivably be interpreted as indicative of the course of his future life. It might also have been nothing but outright coincidence. But on the other hand, it must have had some bearing on Emmet’s selection of a career.

  During the winter of his third year at the college, a rash of petty burglaries broke out among the small shops of Amesville. Stores would be broken into at night by a prowler, or prowlers, and ransacked for small sums of cash or merchandise. The police force of the small town was unable to cope with the situation, and the funds allotted for the three-man force did not permit the hiring of a fourth man to patrol at night. Consequently, the merchants banded together to raise a small fund to hire a merchant patrolman to check their shops at night. Emmet Rafferty, hearing of the job, applied for the position and was accepted. The businessmen left the details of his patrolling to him, and he covered the small downtown area three times each night at irregular intervals between the hours of 10 P.M. and 5 A.M.

  Rafferty, now twenty years of age, was a well-conditioned athlete, quick of foot, and of tremendous strength. Carrying a weighted night stick and flashlight, he might easily have been a terrible man to meet. Whether the prowler was discouraged with the prospect or whether he left town or channeled his abilities in another direction is not known. He was never apprehended, but the burglaries stopped at the time Emmet began his patrolling, and that was what his employers wanted. He held the job throughout that winter. The following year the burglaries were not resumed, and Rafferty was not re-employed by the association.

  Thus, and here I interpolate, from the very beginning years of Rafferty’s life, he seemed to associate himself with the preservation of law and order. As a youngster in grade school, he fought to protect his brother; as a high-school youth, he worked at the Hollow preventing fights and maintaining order; in college he became a merchant policeman.

  It is little wonder then that in 1926, when he was graduated from the State Teachers College, he applied and took examinations for the State Police, which was then being formed. The State Police, or Highway Patrol as it was commonly called, was a new theory of law enforcement at that time in the Middle West, although several such organizations had been in operation in the East for a few years. The requirements for eligibility were high: at least two years of college education, excellent physical condition, and good character references.

  Rafferty passed both the examination and rigid requirements, and then underwent a vigorous six-month trooper training course. The course was conducted by state-paid experts and covered the latest of law-enforcement techniques. The first class contained only sixty troopers, but within two years the force was increased to a total of two hundred and sixty men.

  At first the men covered the busy highways of the state on motorcycles. This, however, quickly proved unsatisfactory. Not only was it highly exhausting to the men, but the high incidence of accidents rapidly decimated the list of men on active duty. It was also found that in the performance of their duties, two men working as a team were more effective than two working separately. Consequently, the men were removed from the motorcycles and put into automobiles. Two to a car, spread thinly over the ninety-nine counties of the state.

  His first partner, a young law school graduate from the state university, was named Vernon Leroy. Rafferty and Leroy, in the close day-to-day intimacy of their cruising car, became close friends. Long hours spent on the endless highways, the desolate nights of winter, and the burning summer days cemented their friendship. Such friendships were not unusual on the force where men were compelled to spend so much of their life together. Close friendships were the rule rather than the exception. If antagonism existed, confined by the close quarters of the car, it was soon necessary to separate the men and transfer them to other districts to prevent head-on collisions of temper.

  Rafferty and Leroy shared adjoining bunks in the trooper barracks on the Third Highway Patrol, with headquarters at Gilmore Springs. Many of their off-duty hours they spent together, dressed in civilian clothes, driving to the nearby city of Marshall.

  On a bleak fall day, patrolling the busy U.S. highway which originates in Chic
ago and heads straight west to Denver, the two men were passed by a car driving at an excessive speed. The car, swinging out to pass them, nearly collided with another auto approaching from the opposite direction. The offending driver continued his breakneck speed without a backward glance. Rafferty and Leroy took up pursuit and trailed the car for ten miles, passing through several small towns during the chase, before closing in. The single occupant of the car, the driver, did not arouse undue suspicion in the two troopers, who believed him to be either drunk, reckless, or both. On a straightaway stretch of the highway, the offending machine was overtaken, and the troopers’ car—angling in against the front fender—forced the driver to pull over to the shoulder of the road and come to a halt. Leroy, seated beside Rafferty who was at the wheel, slipped from his seat on the right side of the car and approached the waiting driver. As he reached the back of the troopers’ car, he crossed over to the left side and stepped on the running board of the strange car. Immediately the driver lifted a revolver which he had been holding on his lap and poured two shots into the unsuspecting trooper’s head. Leroy dropped in the road.

  Rafferty, in the meantime, had relaxed from his grueling chase, and was lighting a cigarette when the shots rang out. Surprised, and with his back turned to the stopped car, he did not see Leroy fall. Instinctively, he opened the door on his side of the car and a third shot ploughed the length of his left arm from the elbow to the wrist. With his right hand, he released the service revolver from the holster attached to a belt on the outside of his tunic, and plunged through the open door, which Leroy had not closed, on the right side. The suspect, in the meantime, had started the motor of his car, backed away to clear the police machine, and was attempting to pass it and continue down the highway. The car passed Rafferty, who was now pulling himself to his feet, by only a few feet. He fired three shots, one of which punctured the front tire of the escaping machine. It swerved crookedly, held to the road for only a moment, then plunged out of control into the ditch where it turned over. As the driver climbed from the crumped machine, Rafferty shot him in the chest.