The Tarleton Murders

by Breck England

  “Are you gentlemen Republicans?” Tom asked Harris and me, abruptly breaking into the conversation. Tom’s culture evidently didn’t extend to refraining from the taboo subject of politics in polite society.

  Surprised, I tried to sound amusing. “I am an Englishman and a monarchist. I frankly don’t know about my friend Mr. Harris.” The latter squeaked out the word “D-Democrat.”

  “I declare, Colonel Tom, whatever does it matter?” Miz Bea said, pouring out the coffee that was bubbling on the hearth. “In my view it’s time to put our political differences aside. Politics brings war … and war brought us nothin’ but trouble. It’s all in the dead past now.”

  “The past isn’t dead—it’s alive. And it’s not even past.” Tom was being mystical.

  “Good coffee! And this is a fine pudding, ma’am,” the general observed, ignoring his brother’s indiscretion.

  “It’s just humble rice and sugar.”

  “During the war we would have given all our back pay and then some for a little rice and sugar, wouldn’t we, Tom?” the general poked his brother. “And some decent coffee. Remember drinking coffee made out of dried acorns and bacon grease?”

  “And the bacon was wormy,” growled Tom.

  “Of course it turned out our back pay brought us nothing at all,” the general added. As with so many Southerners, the cloud of bitterness at the loss of the war still hung over these men, a gray, drizzling cloud that persisted and would not move on.

  “You’re an Englishman, but your name is French,” Tom remarked to me. “Like our’n—Beaufort. We were Huguenots, chased out of France by the Catholic Church.” And so he brought into our little circle the other great taboo subject: religion.

  Embarrassed by this, the general laughed and said, “My brother is a student of history. We were brought up by scholarly parents who provided well for our education. Unfortunately, my studies began and ended with horses, while my brother learned the Latin and the ‘decline and fall’ and all of that.”

  Tom went on unfazed. He fixed me with his eyes and said, “It was Riche-loo who expelled us from France. He was a Jezzawit. You a Jezzawit?”

  “I am a Jesuit.” Although no more than ordinarily brave, I have never—nor would I ever—diminish my vocation. The man’s opinion meant nothing to me in any case. “And it may interest you to know that the Jesuits were themselves expelled from France for more than fifty years. It seems the French like to be exclusive,” I went on airily, and everyone chuckled except Tom Beaufort.

  I decided to divert the conversation. “So, General, you’ve been touring the South collecting horseflesh?”

  “Every winter since the war, and long before,” he replied. “Charlottesville, Middleburg, Edgefield County over in Carolina, and here. Miz Bea used to have the biggest and best horse farm in the South, so we’re trying to build it up again. We spend a few weeks in each place. Sometimes we buy, sometimes we sell.”

  “Do you ever stop at Charleston?” I asked. I was trying to pin down where and when I might have encountered him before.

  “Yes. There’s a fine equestrian club at the college.”

  Miz Bea broke in. “And my own horses are getting lonely while we sit here conversin’ like a ladies’ sewing circle. Let’s go tend to business, gentlemen. Careen, y’all want to come with us?”

  But Sister preferred to stay behind to work on her rosaries, while the rest of us adjourned to the paddock to marvel at the stock. After an hour or so, Miz Bea pulled Harris and me aside and whispered that she would meet us “at the smokehouse” a little later. So we wandered away and found the place.

  In the shade of two huge pines, the smokehouse was a windowless brick building, the only entrance a door made of wooden slats locked together by ironmongery so rusted it looked like dirt. Harris knocked at it quietly.

  “Who?” came the throaty question from inside.

  “It’s … It’s Joe Harris, James. I’ve brought a f-friend.” The door opened and we were admitted into a treasure house of aromas—salty, smoky hams and wedges of meat hanging like amber jewelry from the rafters. The light from the door fell on a frightened, black man of forty or so huddled against the wall and wielding a pitchfork.

  “James, this is Father Simon”—Harris had given up trying to enunciate my last name—“he’s come to h-help us get you to s-safety.”

  “I ain’t goin’ to no jail,” said James.

  “It’s the safest … place for you. The Fulton sheriff will p-protect you.”

  “No sheriff ever protect no black man.” I thought James had a good point.

  “Y-you’re in jail here, James,” Harris replied. “But this jail ain’t safe like the one in A’lanta. You only got a … a old woman and her darkies betwixt you and the K-Klan. The Fulton sheriff doesn’t like Sheriff Wallop from down here. He’ll be more’n happy to t-take you in, just to t-tweak ol’ Wallop’s nose.” Harris too had a good point. I began to understand his canny way of dealing with Georgian realities.

  We all jumped at a noise from outside, but it was just a thin black boy of about fourteen carrying a panier of hot, fresh cornbread. James kissed the boy and gobbled the bread.

  “This is my son James Albert.” He looked longingly at his son and then shook his head. “If I go to jail I never get out, except for hangin’.”

  Harris gave a bleak sigh. “Looky here, James. You’re stuck betwixt two wolves that h-hate each other. You gotta throw in with one of them and h-hope he’s happy just watching the other one howl. You got … no choice.”

  I thought I’d add a sliver of hope, although even I was skeptical. “James, I don’t know Atlanta, but I trust you’d get more justice in town than out here in the country amongst these Klan scoundrels. After all, there may not even be a prosecution. They have only some baseless rumor to try you on—no evidence at all.”

  James looked wistfully at me. “No, suh, Mister Priest. You sure don’t know A’lanta. In this world the black man got no rights. Evidence … trial … none of that don’t matter at all. They’d lynch me of a Sunday afternoon comin’ out of church just to entertain the ladies.”

  James’s young son trembled at this, and I saw bitterness awakening in his eyes. “Daddy, why do white folks treat colored folks so mean?”

  At that moment I had never wished for anything so much as that Sherlock Holmes were there.

  Chapter 19

  After Miz Bea had seen the Beauforts off, she came rustling down to the smokehouse. “James? James?” Her whisper was so loud I would have preferred her ordinary voice.

  “I reckon you should go to Atlanta with these gentlemen, James. I can’t protect you here. You just think you got endless pasturage here, but once them roarers get drunk enough, my snapping at ‘em won’t keep ‘em away. Not the next time. And you know what’ll happen then.”

  James looked miserable.

  “What is a ‘roarer,’ ma’am?” I asked, unconsciously echoing her whisper.

  “A roarer is a horse with a sick lung. Also a drunken, no ‘count grayback with leather for brains and revenge in his soul—a big old boy that hides under a flour sack in the dark, bless his heart.”

  “Do you know these scoundrels?”

  “There’s a tall ugly one with one arm from over in Edgefield, named Wash Thurman. He drags a bunch of juveniles from his so-called ‘rifle club’ around with him. Then there’s a state senator they call General Mart that keeps men like Thurman busy terrorizing the black folks.”

  Joe Harris interrupted. “We need to … get going. Before it’s dark.”

  “Yes, you do,” our hostess agreed, all business and giving orders. “Albert, you fetch down a ham for your daddy. James, you run over and tell your family you’re going and be back here in a half hour. Joe, Reverend, let’s get that wagon packed up and light a fire under Careen and that silly little hack of yours.”

>   James shot off on a run without hesitating, which surprised me. As we walked back to the house, I asked Miz Bea, “Why was James so willing to come with us when you told him to? Our arguments seemed to carry no weight with him.”

  “Arguments? With a Negro? You can’t argue them into anything. They take no thought of the morrow. They just sleep and feed and do as they’re told, as they always have.”

  Evidently, our hostess saw no appreciable distinction between her horses and her ex-slaves, except that she could still buy and sell the horses. I reflected that it would be a long time—if ever—before things changed in the South.

  Within the hour, we were taking our leave of the big hill farm. Marta drove with Sister next to her on the spring seat, Joe Harris and myself riding in the wagon bed, and James concealed in a supine position under a pile of quilts Miz Bea had given us.

  Once again, Marta talked us to death. Now that the wind had ceased, she warbled like a crazed bird in the still afternoon air. “I knows where to hide James. I knows all about A’lanta, bettern anybody, I knows every street and street corner, I can take you anywheres you wants to go in A’lanta. We’ll find a good place for James, he’s the foreman, he deserve better, he the king of the Hill Farm, that’s what they calls him, James, King of the Hill Farm.”

  “Shush!” Sister Carolina snarled at her. “You’ll bring the devil and all of hell down on us! Can’t you be quiet?” Marta went into a sulk.

  I found the ensuing silence disturbing. The cotton fields had been picked over, frost had parched what was left, and a wintry slumber was descending over the rumpled blanket of the hills. We were evidently alone on the road, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else was out there with us.

  All at once I was frightened by a thunderous sound rising from a thicket down the road, and then I saw spreading across the sky a cloud like a disintegrating rainbow. It was a flock of the most unusual birds, sparkling in the late sun like the points of color I had seen in Mary Cassatt’s painting.

  “Buttons!” Marta cried, throwing her arms wide. “Buttons!” James poked his head up from his quilts and smiled cautiously at the heavens.

  “Buntings,” Sister Carolina corrected Marta. “Painted buntings moving south for the winter.” I had never seen such birds. They did look painted—even splashed—with streaks of red, blue, and gold as they flowed like a river of flowers through the air.

  “It’s a sign. A good sign,” Marta dared a shout and then fell silent again.

  But to Joe Harris it was a sign that something had startled the birds out of the woods ahead of us. He grasped my forearm and held it tight, pushing James down again and covering him with his other hand. “I’d hoped … I’d hoped …” he repeated over and over.

  “What did you hope?” I whispered.

  “That they w … wouldn’t come after us. The Klan.”

  “I thought the Klan operated only at night?”

  “They operate when they p-please,” murmured Harris.

  Soon we arrived at the ravine where the stream of red mud crossed the road, and again the horse stopped to lick at the water. When the Klansmen came upon us, their approach was so silent I wasn’t even startled.

  We were surrounded.

  Three men, clearly the leaders, sat astride their horses in identical long white robes trimmed with a scarlet cross that shimmered in the afternoon sun. Each wore a horned hood with holes for the eyes and mouth, edged with red like circles of blood, and each carried a sleek carbine in one hand. One of the horsemen had only one arm. A dozen or so others were afoot, draped with dirty robes of all kinds—calico, burlap, old bedsheets—and their heads covered in flour sacks perforated with long holes that made their eyes look as though they were melting.

  And we were absolutely in their power. I cursed myself for a fool—I realized I had blundered blindly into this predicament. Holmes would never have allowed it to happen.

  The one-armed horseman cantered up to me. “You was warned, you Irish pot-licker.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” I replied. “And I’m not Irish, I’m an Englishman.”

  “You was warned to let things lie. And we give only one warning.”

  “Again, you have the advantage. I know nothing about any warning, nor do I know what you are talking about.”

  “I’m talking about this,” the ruffian said, pushing the quilt away from James’s terrified face with the end of his carbine. “As you well know.”

  I decided not to give these men the satisfaction of showing the very real fear that I felt. “We are escorting James to the city, where he can receive a fair hearing.”

  “Where he can get justice. Proper justice.” Sister Carolina cut in. “I want to see him hang just as you all do.” I thought the tone of her plea rather passive, as if the means to achieving her goal mattered far less than the end.

  “He’s gonna get justice right here, ma’am,” he snarled. “And we’ll do it proper, you can be sure.”

  “How is that possible?” I interjected. “Where is the law? What is the charge? Where are the judge and jury, prosecution and defense, and the presentation of evidence?”

  At this, a second horseman lumbered toward us. When he spoke, he sounded unexpectedly literate: “We believe that the administration of justice is best left to popular opinion. Vox populi, vox dei.”

  I appealed to him. “And you pretend to be the voice of the people? Isn’t that wildly presumptuous on your part?”

  “You presume to absolve or condemn in the name of God, don’t you, Father? Isn’t that just a little presumptuous as well?”

  Joe Harris had at last mustered his voice. “I … I represent the Atlanta C-Constitution. If you lynch this man, we-we’ll publish the at-atrocity from coast to coast.”

  “From c-c-c-coast to c-c-c-coast,” One-Arm mocked Harris. “You’ll stay quiet enough, you stammerin’ little scalawag. You got a wife and daughters to think about. And your noosepaper ain’t so stupid as that. Did you hear that boys, I sald ‘noosepaper!’”

  There was a good deal of haw-hawing.

  It was a nightmare. I struggled with my fear and tried to focus my mind on what Holmes would do. He would be alert for opportunities to escape or at least to persuade. He would be attentive to every detail of their dress, manner, and speech. If I get out of this alive, I thought, at least I want to be able to identify these ruffians in some future court of law.

  The third horseman was getting impatient. “Let’s get on with this. Make these men fast to those bitts over there.”

  A half dozen louts descended on Harris and me, forced us to the ground, and tied us to a pair of dead tree trunks. I have always had a horror of being constrained, and I clamped my teeth shut to control myself. I tried to concentrate my mind on details about the three leaders.

  Of course, One-Arm I felt I could easily recognize again: his tongue bespoke homemade liquor and the backwoods. The literate man controlled his horse with a certain flair and wore elaborate spurs on his boots. The third man used nautical language—“make fast” instead of tie, “bitt” instead of tree trunk. He must be a sailor or an officer of a ship.

  They tied Sister and Marta more lightly, leaving them on the wagon, while they literally threw James to the ground and roped him up head to foot.

  Again I cried, “This is an outrage! That man is innocent.” I must have been in a self-sacrificing mood. “I know who killed the Tarletons, and he is not here.”

  “You know? You know?” One-Arm snarled at me. “Them that knows too much sleeps under the ash-hopper. Gag them two.” Cotton rags were rammed into our mouths.

  The literate one dismounted and stood towering over me. He spoke calmly. “That black soulless beast is going to pay the price for that crime, just like the scapegoat paid for the sins of the old Jews in the Bible. He is the one for Azazel. And then it will all be expiate
d. You’re a priest, you should understand expiation.”

  I understood the reference to the scapegoat that was sacrificed to pay for the sins of Israel, and that this man was cruelly distorting the Bible. I wanted to inform this calm villain that he was Azazel, the devil himself, but the gag prevented me.

  Instead I memorized details of his hands and feet. The most striking detail was his spurs—though they were muddy and scratched, I suspected they were made of gold, or at least gold-plated. The rowels were intricately made; instead of six or eight rough barbs, dozens of finely etched points radiated from each.

  I had seen them before—only hours before. This man was one of the Beaufort brothers, probably Tom, who had asked me if I were a “Jezzawit.”

  “You have opened Pandora’s box, Reverend,” he said quietly, “but by our sacrificial rites, we will close it again. For good.” He walked away.

  Taking draughts from a bottle, building a bonfire, kicking twigs into it, the ghouls—as the Klansmen called themselves—seemed in no hurry to carry out their awful sacrament. The sun went down early and the humid cold went right to my bones as darkness gripped the pine grove. I could smell the pitch in the burning wood and wondered if I would live to see morning.

  Well, a Jesuit is made for martyrdom, I thought, and there are worse ways to end a life than in trying to save one.

  Chapter 20

  “If this ain’t the thunderinest dreary place,” one of the lesser ghouls complained. It was true. In the creek bottom among these naked pines, the winter night grew intense. Lying in the dirt, poor, frozen James had ceased struggling against his bonds. The leaders, crouched round the bonfire with their men, were waiting for something, I didn’t know what.

  “I wished I was a button!” came a shriek from the wagon. It was Marta. She had spent several fruitless hours denouncing our captors, but we hadn’t heard her noisy trill for a while.

  “I wished I was a button! I could fly away from here.” She sounded a bit strange, her voice strangled.