Hindsight

by Ronald Kelly

  "He got mad as hell. Tried to come over the bar at me," recalled the roadhouse proprietor. "I had to ward him off with a baseball bat. His buddies dragged him outta there. If they hadn't, he'd have gotten himself hurt."

  "And that was the last you ever saw of C.J. Potts?"

  "Yeah, I reckon so."

  The prosecuting attorney regarded him coldly. "The way I gather it, that was the last time anyone saw C.J. Potts or any of the other boys."

  "Hey, it was only a joke, okay?" stammered Otis Schofield, attempting to defend himself from the lawyer's insinuations. "I just wanted teach the boy not to act like he owned the whole damned town, like his old man does."

  "Practical jokes backfire sometimes," Shaw told him. "Sometimes they can lead to misunderstanding and hard feelings . . . sometimes to violence. That has happened more than a few times at the Bloody Bucket, has it not, Mr. Schofield?"

  The saloon owner felt his gut grow tight with apprehension. "Just what are you trying to say, fella?"

  "What I am saying is that perhaps you should be sitting over there at that table with Hanson and Darnell."

  Otis gaped. All the blood drained from his face, and his temples drummed with the rapid course of his pulse. "Now, wait just a minute—" he gulped.

  But abruptly, the prosecutor withdrew. "No further questions, Your Honor." He returned to his seat, a look of deep satisfaction on his face. He had done what he had set out to do: make Otis Schofield sweat a little for the night of terror inflicted on poor Harvey Brewer. He did not want him feeling that he had gotten away, unscathed, with his drunken harassment of the elderly farmer.

  "You may step down, Mr. Schofield."

  The owner of the Bloody Bucket took the judge's words as a narrow escape in itself, and he nearly ran down the center aisle for the back door. His wild bunch followed, as bewildered by the turn of events as he was. None of them returned for the conclusion of the proceedings that day.

  A.J. Branchworth's final witness was a man whom no one in Bedloe County had any knowledge of. He was a stern man with eyes as cold and gray as granite, his lower face obscured by a full beard of scraggly white whiskers. He sat upon the stand contemptuously, like a man who had more important things to do with his precious time.

  "Would you please tell the court your name, sir."

  The old man glared at the crowd in the spacious room. "Ezekiel Hanson."

  "And what relation are you to the defendant, James Hanson?"

  "I'm his uncle."

  Lawyer Branchworth studied a yellow legal pad for a moment, more for dramatic effect than anything else, then continued. "Where do you live, Mr. Hanson, and what do you do for a living?"

  "I live in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, sir," declared the bearded man. "As for my livelihood, I am a farmer."

  "Did both James Hanson and Claude Darnell come to your residence about the middle of May? And, if so, why?"

  "Yes, they showed up at my place," said Zeke Hanson. "I'd talked to Bully a few months earlier, told him I'd need a hand with my crops come summertime. Both Bully and his friend Claude were right considerate, offered to come up and help me out for room and board."

  "So from the date of May the fourteenth till roughly the last of September, both defendants were in Kentucky, helping you on your farm."

  "They were indeed."

  A.J. Branchworth nodded, satisfied with his witness's testimony. "Your turn, Mr. Shaw."

  Willard Shaw removed his reading glasses and laid them on the table. He approached the stand with a few sheets of official-looking papers in one hand. "You say you are a farmer, Mr. Hanson," the attorney countered. "What sort of crops did you plant this year?"

  "Corn and beans, a little tobacco." Zeke regarded his interrogator with suspicion. "Why do you ask?"

  "Oh, it just seems peculiar, is all," Shaw told him, holding up one of the typewritten sheets. "This is a copy of the deed to your property, Mr. Hanson. I had the Muhlenberg County clerk send it down to me, in anticipation of your testimony today. What this document tells me is that the hundred and fifty acre property you own has no pastureland to speak of. It mostly consists of woods and hills and hollows, doesn't it? Not exactly prime land for corn and tobacco."

  "You calling me a liar?" growled Ezekiel Hanson.

  "Oh, no. I couldn't do that in a court of law. I'm just presenting facts, that is all. Such as this criminal record sheet from the Kentucky Board of Correction."

  "Objection, Your Honor!" called out Branchworth. "It is not my witness who is on trial here. His occupation and past history have nothing whatsoever to do with this case."

  Judge Mullen would not be bullied however.

  "No, but the credibility of this man's testimony does have a great bearing on the proceedings at hand. Objection overruled!"

  The prosecutor continued his onslaught of damaging material. "You have quite a rap sheet here. Known as Ezekiel "Red-Dog" Hanson, you've made yourself quite a name as a moonshiner in western Kentucky. Three convictions during Prohibition, served a total of seven years in the state penitentiary for manufacturing and selling bootleg whiskey, transporting it across state lines, assaulting a revenue agent with intent to do bodily harm..."

  "All right!" snapped Zeke Hanson. "Everyone gets the picture. No need to drag all my dirty laundry out into the open!"

  "Then you do not deny the facts that I've just presented?" Shaw asked him. "You do not deny that you are not a farmer, but rather a known bootlegger in three Kentucky counties?"

  Hanson said nothing. He just sat there, red-faced with fuming anger.

  "No further questions."

  On his way back to his table, Willard Shaw gave his opponent Branchworth a big grin of triumph. The defense lawyer pretended not to notice, but he did. Just as Branchworth had sabotaged the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses, Shaw had thrown a legal monkey wrench into the defense's game plan, destroying the credibility of both their witnesses.

  "Payback is hell in the legal profession," Hamilton Shaw had always told his son. Willard agreed with his father's wisdom. But he only fought dirty when circumstances demanded it, like the chance of cold-blooded murderers being set free.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  At the end of every trial there is a time of waiting. Sometimes the period is brief, sometimes horrendously long. As the hands of the big wall clock neared two-thirty in the afternoon, the Bedloe County jury had been in the deliberation chamber for nearly three hours. It was a promising sign for both prosecution and defense alike, for it showed that the twelve men were going over the testimony carefully, making sure they came up with the right verdict, one that they would be able to live with for the rest of their lives.

  The gallery was a mass of milling conversation and opinion. Children ran up and down the aisles, screaming and laughing, until their mothers made them stop their shenanigans. Some folks sat quietly during the wait, like the families of C.J., Johnny, and Billy. Lester Mullen and Sheriff White played checkers, trading moves across the broad oaken top of the judge's bench.

  The attorneys, Willard Shaw and A.J. Branchworth, also sat silently, each one immersed in his own private thoughts. Each man experienced the strain of the past two days, feeling both mentally and physically exhausted and, yes, even spiritually so. Their final arguments had both been powerful; both had summed up the merits and inconsistencies of the testimony presented. But in the end, both men knew that only one factor would eventually determine the fates of Bully Hanson and Claude Darnell. That factor was the plain old, common horse sense of those twelve men in the jury box.

  It was shortly after three o'clock when the bailiff led the twelve back into the courtroom. Judge Mullen quickly stashed the checkerboard beneath the bench and rapped his gavel, calling the court back to order.

  "Gentlemen, have you reached a verdict?" he asked gravely.

  "Yes, Your Honor," confirmed the jury foreman, Garret Gentry, who ran Gentry's Hardware & Farm Implement on Jefferson Street. "We find the defendants,
James Hanson and Claude Darnell, guilty of three counts of murder in the first degree."

  A tremendous rush of excitement overcame the spectators. A great relief seemed to spread through, out the courtroom, for the majority had figured the men to be guilty all along. However, no group there was more relieved at the outcome than Clayburn Biggs and his clan. Maudie wept openly, thanking the good Lord for the justice bestowed on the ones who murdered her firstborn. Clay closed his eyes, mouthing a silent prayer of his own, devoid of tears, but choked with emotion nevertheless.

  Judge Mullen allowed for the sudden outburst, then called for order. When some semblance of calm had returned, he centered his attention back to the jury. "Mr. Foreman, have you come to a decision as to the sentence for these two men?"

  "Yes, sir, we have. We have voted the death penalty for both defendants."

  More excited talk. More banging of the hardwood gavel.

  Judge Mullen regarded the men at the defense table with his usual attitude of neutrality. "Please stand and accept your sentence." When the two had done so, the judge continued. "James Hanson and Claude Darnell, this court has found you both guilty of three counts of first degree murder. For these heinous and unforgivable crimes, you will receive the death penalty. You will be incarcerated in the state penitentiary in Nashville until January the first, the scheduled date of your execution. At twelve o'clock midnight you will be strapped into the electric chair and electrocuted until you are pronounced dead."

  Claude slumped back into his chair, pale and trembling with a palsy of bad nerves, his eyes glazed in disbelief. Bully seemed to take it better, but not by much. His huge face grew beet-red with sudden rage, but he said nothing, made no outburst. He turned his eyes on the Biggs family and glared murderously at little Cindy. The red-haired child shrank from the man's awful hatred, glad that she would soon never have to lay eyes on either man again.

  Lester Mullen thanked the jury for doing their civic duty, then adjourned that session of the Bedloe County Court.

  Taylor White shook the prosecutor's hand in congratulation, then went over to help his deputies prepare Bully and Claude for custody. He clapped his own nickeled handcuffs over Bully's thick wrists. "You boys have got a nice long ride to the state pen. In fact, we're gonna make sure you get there tonight."

  Hanson grinned hatefully. "To hell with you, fat boy," he growled over his shoulder.

  The sheriff lifted upon the chain sharply, purposely digging the steel of the bracelets into the murderer's flesh. "Move it, you sonofabitch."

  In the front pew, Clay wiped away his wife's tears with a calloused finger. "You all right, Maudie?"

  She smiled up at him, then gave him a quick hug around the waist, something she rarely did in public. "I'm just happy, that's all. For a while I was afraid they were gonna go free."

  "God was on our side all the way," he told her. "Maudie, why don't you take the young'uns on out to the truck. I wanna go out back and watch them take that trash to their just reward."

  "Can I come with you, Pappy?"

  Clay looked down at his youngest daughter. Cindy stared up at him with those soulful, hazel eyes — eyes that possessed the sweet innocence of a nine-year-old, yet also held an underlying maturity brought about by things that no adult should ever have to experience, let alone a child. He considered telling her no, but knew he did not have the right. In a way, she was just as much a part of this whole horrible event as was Bully Hanson or her brother Johnny. Perhaps even more so, in some disturbing way.

  When they got to the rear door of the brick courthouse, it appeared as though a lot of people had the same idea as Clay. Dozens of citizens stood along the sidewalk, some spectators, some of them jurors. There were young boys who loitered in hopes of seeing two murderers being escorted to the cars that would take them to the "big house" in Nashville. Reporters from some of the state's biggest newspapers stood nearby, wearing PRESS cards in their hatbands and toting big flashbulb cameras.

  There was small talk during the brief wait, concerning everything from who was the better lawyer to the mechanics of the electric chair. Clay and Cindy found a spot midway down the concrete sidewalk. The farmer shook hands with old acquaintances, then grew quiet. The girl leaned against her father's leg, surveying the growing crowd of onlookers. She picked out familiar faces, dismissing the ones strange to her. One in particular caught her attention and held it.

  Ransom Potts stood down near the very end of the pathway. His three-piece suit of gray material hung off him in wrinkled folds. Above the wilted collar hung a slack and pallid face with sad, hound dog eyes. Cindy was intrigued by the great change in the banker's appearance. She remembered him as a huge, foreboding man, a man frightening in the power he had over other people's lives. She recalled playing over at Elsa Collins' house two summers ago, when Potts came rolling up in that big tan LaSalle of his. There had been some heated talk on the front porch with Elsa's parents, the flash of paper with small print. Then havoc broke out. Mrs. Collins began to cry, and her husband followed Potts to the car, cussing him for all he was worth. But the banker had simply ignored the man as if he weren't even there. Potts had climbed calmly into his auto, a smug little grin on his face. The Collins had moved to Georgia only a few days afterward, the bank having foreclosed on the property that Mr. Collins had owned for thirty years.

  The Ransom Potts that Cindy had witnessed that distant June morning, the pompous miser with the life-shattering slip of paper, no longer existed. He had been swallowed up, digested, and then spit out by a devastating emotion known as grief. The death of his only son, C.J., had hit him incredibly hard. He now seemed like a shallow ghost, his hollow eyes glued to the steel door that led from the basement of the courthouse.

  She watched as his pudgy hand shifted in his jacket pocket, as if getting a firmer hold on some object. It hit her then. There was a rush of motion before Cindy's confused eyes, much like the dizzying rides they had at the county fair. Suddenly, she was looking at Potts from a different perspective. It was as if she were watching from overhead, perhaps sitting on the limb of that big oak nearby. With a strange mixture of fascination and horror, she once again became the lone spectator of sights and sensations that no normal person could experience.

  The sheriff was there, escorting Bully and Leon down the sidewalk. Flashbulbs popped; catcalls followed the convicted felons on their brief walk to the patrol cars. Then, when they neared Ransom Potts, there was an abrupt flurry of movement. The banker fumbled with something in his pocket. He withdrew his hand. It held a gun, one of those little snub-nosed revolvers, barking flame and belching smoke. Claude Darnell dropped in his tracks, a neat hole in his forehead. Bully turned to run and took two in the lower back. But Potts did not stop there. Like some lunatic out of control, he continued firing. A bullet found the massive belly of Sheriff White. Blood spurted down the front of the lawman's khaki shirt. Then the gun was lifted, away from the three blood-splattered men. The muzzle was directed toward the dispersing crowd. It shifted from a mortified reporter, to Amos Foster the school janitor, and then settled on a lone, lanky tobacco farmer in a crisp Sunday suit.

  Her father!

  Then the awful vision was gone. She stood where she had before, The sidewalk was bare except for a few dead leaves and cigarette butts. The courthouse door was still closed and locked. Trembling, she slumped against her father's leg.

  Clay noticed her sudden agitation. Crouching, he turned her to him, concern on his lean face. "Cindy . . . is something wrong?"

  It took her a moment before she could answer. "It's Mr. Potts . . . he has a gun."

  Clay surveyed the gathering until he spotted Potts on the far side of the walkway. "Come on, Cindy." He took the girl's hand and headed in that direction.

  A few minutes later, the heavy door opened. Out stepped Claude and Bully, followed by the sheriff and his deputies. Reporters readied their cameras, while towheaded boys squeezed through to get a look-see. And Ransom Potts stood waiting, his hea
rt pounding wildly, his hand sunk deep into his side pocket.

  "You don't wanna do that, Ransom." It was Clayburn Biggs' baritone voice in his ear. The banker struggled to pull the gun from his pocket, but the farmer's strong hand held his wrist secure.

  "What the hell are you doing?" he huffed. "Let go of me this instant!"

  "I won't let you do it." Clay's voice was calm, almost soothing. "I don't like you one damned bit, but I won't let you throw your life away. Bully and Claude, they've already been sentenced to death. If you do this, you'll only be destroying yourself."

  But they killed my son! he wanted to plead. They murdered my Clarence ... my poor, poor boy! But his stubborn pride would not allow him to show such weakness. "I don't know what you're talking about!" he spat, then stormed off across the courtyard, his fancy French loafers swishing through the dead leaves.

  With a sigh of relief, Clay ruffled his daughter's fiery red hair. "Thanks a lot, pumpkin." He smiled gratefully.

  Hard soles clacked on concrete as the men advanced down the sidewalk. Insults were hurled at the two felons. A boy with a slingshot sent a shard of rock at Claude with dead-eye accuracy, cracking him across the shin. The gawky man howled with pain, but soon forgot his agony as they neared the sedans that would carry them to the state pen.

  Then, abruptly, there was Bully, halting long enough to confront Clay, face to face. "I'm gonna kill you, farmer. Somehow, I'll get out and then you're all dead meat!" The murderer displayed an extra evil grin for Cindy. "Especially you, little bitch!"

  Cindy shrank back from the big man, but her father quelled her fears, his hand settling comfortingly on her narrow shoulder. "Don't pay him any mind, darling. He's finished."

  Onward the two men were herded, like cattle driven to the slaughter. Pushing them into the backseat of separate cars, Taylor White and his men waved to the crowd gathered there. "I'll be over to the store for some hot coffee and a moon pie when I get back," the sheriff called to Woody Sadler as he climbed into a car himself.