Forgive me, Jesus, I am a fool as well as a sinner. I helped my second husband, Kelly Lawrence Lamb, kill my first husband, Harold McCray, on our own land in a little meadow just north of the fishing hole. I did not start out meaning to hurt anyone, much less Harold. I used to see Kelly at prayer meetings and after his first wife died we’d meet after church. Before long I was giving him more than my husband. He seemed tender to me, even to Butch who amazes me daily with acts of kindness rendered with no ken of getting nothing in return.
Kelly Lamb was always looking to improve his circumstances, and one time after we had slept together he talked to me about what a shame it was me being married to a man of property with no interest in his wife or idiot son. What a waste it was. That planted the seed and it weren't long before we decided what to do.
We waited till deer season. I lured Harold down from his stand with a mess of biscuits and then Kelly shot him. Kelly told me to go back to the camp and wait for him, which I did, and then Kelly tarried a long while before bringing Harold in. Nobody challenged me and nobody would raise a hand to Kelly even if they did suspect foul play, so I thought I was finally free to enjoy my 640 acres of land and my precious boy, not to mention a warm bed.
We were supposed to wait a decent interval and get married, that is what Kelly and me agreed to. But after Harold was buried, Kelly gets me off by Pickett Lake and tells me he won’t marry me at all unless I turn over all my land, every last acre that I inherited at Harold’s demise.
“You need to make a will,” Kelly told me. “In case something happens.”
I didn’t mind about the land, really. I was in love; what did it matter? But Hattie Briar made some remark about Butch being left out of the deal. “A retard can’t inherit,” she said, or something like that and so I told Kelly I would will my house and land to him, but only on condition that he foster my son, and make arrangements for Butch so that he’d not be penniless in his majority.
Kelly did not agree right away. In fact, he said if I got picky he'd tell the sheriff I killed my husband all on my own. What could I do then? Lots of people knew about Harold and me and besides nobody will take the word of a woman over a man, especially a woman sleeping around. If Hattie Briar called me a hussy, I knew others shared that opinion, if silently.
But I stood my ground for my boy. “You take care of Butch or I’m going to the sheriff myself,” I told Kelly, and finally he gave in. Some lawyer from Dixie County drew me up a will that made Kelly my sole heir. Kelly wouldn’t marry until we got the papers witnessed and notarized at the courthouse.
It didn’t take long for me to realize I had misjudged my new husband. Kelly liked me in bed, but that was all. And his boys, those two young hellions, made life miserable for Butch. They’d take him hunting just to have him feed the dogs and clean the guns and then leave him alone in the woods without supper.
I came from behind the crib one summer day to see Butch screaming on a bed of fire ants, Hiram and Roscoe there with tobacco sticks to beat off any retreat. That was the straw that broke. I blistered those boys’ hides and that night Kelly come to me and slapped me across the face and I told him he touched me like that again I’d put us both in jail. “I’ll tell the sheriff how Harold got killed, I will,” I told him. “I’ll go to jail, I don’t care,” and then Kelly, he beat me and there I was, no better off than with my first husband.
That’s when I started taking Butch to work. It wasn’t much pay, being a cook at a lumber camp, but the teachers at Shamrock were nice to me and my little boy. I thank Preacher Odom from the bottom of my heart for all the kindness he has extended to Butch and me and also for guiding my hand in the language of the blind. I wish the mill was not shut down. We could have had a good life in Shamrock.
But Kelly is getting meaner all the time. I came home one day and there's a buck strung up in the smokehouse and Kelly says it would be as easy to gut me or Butch as any deer and that’s when I knew I had to confess my sins and change my will. I may not deserve happiness but my little boy does. He deserves his birthright, even if he is simple.
So now, in sound mind, I do declare that the will executed under my signature in the days before my marriage to Kelly Lamb was made under threat and duress and is null and void, that all properties inherited from my first husband, Harold McCray, and all my personal possessions now and in future are at my death bequeathed solely to my only beloved son, Michael Joseph McCray, nickname of Butch. I swear that I render this will and testament freely, without reservation and under no threat of duress or reprisal.
I have asked that this document be kept secret until my death. Part of the reason for that is that I am a coward. Hattie Briar has always suspected me and Kelly of killing my first husband and I live in fear that one day I'll be found out on that score. And even if I escaped earthly justice for killing Harold, I could not bear the shame of living among neighbors who knew my crime. I could not bear it.
The other reason this document cannot be revealed is that if Kelly knows or even suspects that I am changing my arrangements, I am convinced he will kill me and my only child. For these reasons, I am hiding this will and have prevailed on Preacher Odom to keep its location in confidence until my death.
I further name Preacher Paul Odom my proxy and representative and charge him, at my death, to deliver this final will and testament to the elected judge of Lafayette County, doing all that is legal and proper to ensure that my son, Butch, who is ignorant in these matters, receives his rightful inheritance.
Until then, however, this shawl must stay hid. I trust my confessor to know its whereabouts. No one else.
A word to my precious little boy. I am so sorry I have not been a better mother to you, Butch. You deserve more than what I have given you, but at least now I know you will not grow up a pauper.
I love you now and until the day we meet Our Father in Heaven.
Witnessed this fourteenth day of February 1954,
Paul Odom, Th.D
Chaplain: Shamrock School, Putnam Lumber Co.
Shamrock, Florida
Signed this same day and hour,
ANNETTE ELIZABETH McCRAY
Sheryl Lee finished the reading and for a moment no one said anything.
Butch’s eyes were cups of tears. He looked old and tired. How long had he endured the penury and ridicule his mother had anticipated and contrived to prevent? How was it that we his neighbors or putative friends had not noticed?
“Would you like to hold your mama’s will, Butch?” Sheryl Lee left her chair to press the silk into the old man’s hands and he cradled it reverently.
“Mama’s will,” Butch repeated, but then I noticed Thurman Shaw tapping his desktop with his pen.
“Thurman—? What is it?”
“It’s the will.”
“You think it can be contested?”
“Never get that far. Annie has confessed to abetting the murder of her husband. You can’t inherit your spouse’s land by killing him. Annie never had legal title to the McCray homestead to begin with. None at all.”
“Oh, Lord!” Sheryl Lee sighed.
But Thurman wasn’t finished.
“Hold on, now. I said the will’s no good. But if a court rules this confession valid, that means Annie never had a legal right to bequeath the McCray homestead to her second husband. Old Man Lamb never had legal title to the property. The deed he got from Annie McCray isn’t worth a spoon of salt.”
“Which means—?” Sheryl Lee prompted the attorney.
“Which means that the only person with a clear and legal claim to his father’s property is Butch McCray.”
Sheryl Lee breathed a sigh of relief. Butch looked up briefly with no apparent indication he’d followed our conversation.
Thurman loosened the tie at his neck. “But why didn’t this Preacher Odom do what Annie asked him to?” Shaw wondered aloud. “Cause I guarantee you if that preacher had got this document before Judge Boatwright, Kelly Lamb wouldn’t have got a foot of
Harold’s land. That homestead would have gone to Butch, hook, line, and sinker.”
“I have an idea,” I spoke up. “One of the things I found when poking around Shamrock was Putnam’s published company history. The company still exists in Jacksonville, or a remnant of it, and the archivist over there told me he had a ledger which recorded salaries for everybody at the mill, cooks and faculty and clerics along with everybody else.
“Those records indicated that Annette McCray and Reverend Odom were employed at the Shamrock mill in the early fifties. I thanked the man for that corroboration and was about to hang up when the archivist mentioned that another item saved from the old mill was a ledger from the dispensary.”
“By that you mean their hospital?” Sheryl Lee asked.
“Close to it,” I answered. “And in between snakebites and amputations I saw an entry for Reverend Paul Odom. Turns out Odom died of influenza three weeks before Annette McCray was found hanging in her smokehouse. He carried Annie’s secret to his grave.”
“So when Odom died, her confession and will stayed hidden in the travel trunk,” Thurman said, picking up the thread.
“Good Lord,” Sheryl Lee sighed. “All these years gone by, and nobody knew?”
“Maybe not ‘nobody’,” I cautioned.
“What do you mean?”
“Hattie Briar,” I replied. “Hattie didn’t know exactly what was in that chest, but she knew something was there and that it was important. And she knew Hiram Lamb was after it, too. That’s why she pushed it on me.”
“Maybe Kelly Lamb suspected something all along,” Thurman speculated. “Maybe he told Hiram.”
“Or maybe Hattie shot off her mouth,” I said, shrugging. “We’ll never know.”
This whole time Butch is holding his mother’s comfort in his hands, oblivious to new revelations.
“I wonder,” Sheryl Lee mused, turning privately to Thurman. “Would a jury in those years and in that community take Annie’s word over Kelly Lamb’s? Would Annie’s confession have been enough to convict the old man of Harold McCray’s murder?”
“Hard to say,” the attorney shrugged, and then I interjected—
“But it might have prevented Annie’s.”
Thurman and Sheryl Lee swiveled to face me like a pair of owls.
“Are you suggesting Kelly Lamb murdered Annette McCray?!” Thurman mouthed quietly.
“I think it’s possible,” I replied. “I’m not sure I ever fully bought the story that Annie hanged herself. A woman who, in her own words, was afraid of a noose?”
“Good Lord,” Sheryl Lee whispered.
“Well, the old man would have had a strong motive,” Thurman mused. “He had means.”
“He certainly did,” I agreed. “And he had killed once before—in cold blood.”
“Lord, Lord!” Sheryl Lee said.
I turned to Thurman. “So tell me, counselor. How’s this confession going to affect Hiram Lamb in the here and now?”
“It’ll put Hiram in court, for sure,” Thurman predicted. “The title for the property will be in dispute, certainly, and my guess is Hiram’s either gonna have to pay Butch for the land or lose a big chunk of it or come up with some combination of the two.”
I nodded. “We have to get this confession to somebody in authority.”
“Not a prosecutor,” Thurman said, reaching for a legal pad and pen. “Before I go to a state attorney, I want Judge Walker’s opinion and he’s out on a deer lease for the next week, at least. But b’fore anybody sees anything, we all need to remember that this shawl belongs to Butch McCray. Neither you nor I nor anyone here can give that silk to anybody without Butch’s permission, we clear on that. We can advise Mr. Butch what we think is best, but it’s his property. I’ll get to work on a brief for Judge Walker. Meantime, I vote we keep this business to ourselves.”
“Absolutely,” Sheryl Lee agreed, and I raised a hand to second the motion.
Butch had not followed a word of our conversation, of course. He had the shawl pressed to his face as if searching for his mother’s smell.
“Butch?” I walked over to get his attention. “Butch, we need to put it back in the trunk.”
“No. I’m owna keep it myself.”
“You can keep it here. See, it’s a very important kind of letter, Butch. It’s a letter we have to be careful doesn’t get lost or damaged in any way.”
Butch looked to Thurman for help.
“We really do have to take special care of it, Mr. Butch. It’s yours, no question, and you can see it any time you want, but for now it needs to be kept here.”
“You understand, Mr. Butch?” I asked, but the concern seemed past the old man’s comprehension.
“Let me.” Sheryl Lee squatted beside the old man. “Butch, you love your mother, don’t you?”
“Yessum.”
“And you love her words. But you need me to read them, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, these are very special words, Butch. And your mother’s letter is special too. I can’t read it anywhere but here. But, like Mr. Thurman says, you can see your mother’s confession anytime you like, and I can read it whenever you want me to, but it has to be in Mr. Shaw’s office.”
She disengaged the shawl from his hand gently. Butch gave it up, finally.
“Thank you, Mr. Butch.” Thurman accepted the closely woven text and with that delicate negotiation completed, I ushered Butch McCray out of his lawyer’s office. It was a Saturday. Even so, we all had work to do. Sheryl Lee with final exams to grade. Me with a paper to print. But first I had to get Butch settled.
“Let’s get you home, mister.”
“Be fine,” he assented without enthusiasm.
Sheryl Lee trailed us out the door. We reached the curb and she peeled off, and when I turned to offer a parting thank you I caught the glare of the morning’s bright sun on a windshield. I shaded my eyes and there was Hiram Lamb’s pickup, directly across the street from Thurman Shaw’s office.
It was Hiram in the cab, for sure. Even if you didn’t know his truck you could not mistake that rock-star hair, or the blotch that marred his face from birth.
“Come on, Butch.” I eased Annie’s precious son toward my foreign ride. “Let’s get you home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Fatal Accident Shocks County
The Clarion
The week following the meeting in Thurman Shaw’s office was hectic for the Clarion’s doughty staff, which means Randall and I were swamped. Seemed like everything was hitting us at once. A grand jury indicted Roscoe Lamb for trafficking crystal meth, which was a huge story for our local paper and one I ached to cover in detail, but then there was Heritage Week to cover as well. Heritage Week comes smack between homecoming and Christmas at the height of deer season, and already folks were calling me from City Park where vendors and other enthusiasts were erecting booths to sell everything from mayhaw jelly to handcrafted banjos and bowie knives.
Other people had booths set up to demonstrate early crafts and carpentry, every farrier, wheelwright, and knife maker clamoring for a photo or article, and then the county commissioners, who never do anything, picked that very week to announce a proposal which would move Heritage Week from its early December slot to early summer, which generated howls and counter howls, all sides demanding the Clarion’s endorsement.
I was busy as a bee in a tar bucket and to be honest didn’t think too much about Butch McCray, or the fallout sure to follow from the discovery of his mother’s confession. In my own defense, I had done all I could do. Thurman Shaw was actively pursuing the matter and was more than competent to represent Butch’s interests. Sooner or later the dispute would reach a court, and when that happened I’d be ready to cover the story. Until then I was at Laureate’s city park shooting reconstructions of sawmills and sharecropper shacks, and sampling venison sausage as kids and grownups fletched homemade arrows to attack silhouettes of bears painted on bed sh
eets.
“Come on, Clara Sue, give her a try,” Sheryl Lee Pearson said, teasing me, and I had about made up my mind to take a shot when I felt the tickle of my phone’s familiar vibration in my pocket.
“One second.”
I pulled out my mobile and recognized Thurman Shaw’s number.
“Mr. Shaw. What can I do you for?”
“You need to get over here.” His voice was tight. “Hiram Lamb came in ten minutes ago with a court order and Butch McCray. I had to give ’em the confession, Annie’s confession.”
“How the hell did that happen?!”
“Hiram talked Butch into it. Wasn’t hard, I don’t expect.”
“Hiram’s going to destroy that shawl, Thurman. That’s got to be his aim.”
“I considered the possibility. I even called Judge Walker to voice that concern. But it’s Butch’s property, ultimately. Not a damn thing we can do about it.”
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
I stalled over my phone a moment. “But wait a minute. Even if Hiram destroys Annie’s rag, we could be deposed, couldn’t we? You and Sheryl Lee and me? We can swear under oath to the contents of Annie’s confession.”
“We could, but Judge Walker is not about to take a section of land away from Hiram Lamb and give it over to Butch on the basis of what we say was in a missing confession. No way. Won’t happen.”
“We’ve got to get the judge to read Annie’s confession, Thurman. We’ve got to convince Butch to turn it over.”
“Good luck with that.”
“You say Hiram brought him to your office?”
“He did.”
“Any idea where he is now?”
“You mean Butch? He’s still with Hiram.”
“You sure?”
“I am, but you’re not likely to find ’em.”
“Why?” '
“They’re off hunting.”
“You’re shitting me.”
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