Genoa

by Paul Metcalf

  BOY, 6, IS KIDNAPPED

  AT PRIVATE SCHOOL

  Son of Wealthy Kansas City

  Family Taken by Woman Who

  Gave False Story to Nuns

  KANSAS CITY, Mo., Sept. 28 (UP)—The 6-year-old son of a wealthy Kansas City business man was kidnapped from a Roman Catholic school here today by a woman who represented herself to be the boy’s aunt.

  The stocky, red-haired woman led Robert C. (Buddy) Williams Jr. from the French Institute of Notre Dame de Sion after falsely telling the nuns that his mother had had a heart attack. Hours later the police had been unable to find any trace of the boy or his abductor.

  The child’s father is the owner of the only Cadillac automobile agency in Kansas City, and has similar interests in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The family has a large, English-style home across the state line in Kansas.

  The police said that there was no indication whether the kidnapper planned to seek a ransom.

  The boy was in the primary grade of the school. He was a half-day pupil and was picked up each school day by the family chauffeur and taken home during the lunch hour. When the chauffeur arrived today the boy was gone.

  FIVE

  KIDNAPPED BOY FOUND DEAD

  AFTER BIG RANSOM IS PAID

  Two Jailed

  In Missouri

  KANSAS CITY, Mo., Oct. 8 (AP)—Little Buddy Williams’ body was dug out of a shallow grave today, ending with sickening tragedy 10 days of waiting by his wealthy parents who paid a record $600,000 ransom for his return.

  Arrested as his kidnappers were the woman who lived in the house in St. Joseph, Mo., where the body was found, and her ex-mental-patient boy friend Carl Austin Mills, 43, whose spending spree in St. Louis led police to part of the ransom money.

  The slightly built, 6-year-old boy had been shot and killed the same day the woman, Mrs. Bonnie Brown Heady, 41, took him from his private school by ruse.

  The city, the Indiana country around us, are dead quiet. Rising, I find my joints stiff, my body tired. I move around, amble to the end of the attic, loosening my limbs . . .

  Carl, stealing a child, attempting by ransom to convert him to his own future, is a little like Melville—un-centered by the failure of MOBY-DICK—clutching Hawthorne: trying to push off on him the “Agatha” story, get him to do Melville’s writing:

  “. . . it has occurred to me that this thing lies very much in a vein, with which you are peculiarly familiar. To be plump, I think that in this matter you would make a better hand at it than I would.—Besides the thing seems naturally to gravitate toward you . . .”

  “. . . it seems to me that with your great power in these things, you can construct a story of remarkable interest out of this material . . . And if I thought I could do it as well as you, why, I should not let you have it.”

  and, perhaps, like Columbus, before or during the 3rd voyage, writing the Letter to the Nurse . . .

  the center-line of communication with the Sovereigns broken: writing, therefore, to an underling, hoping by court gossip to reach the Royal ear . . .

  no longer confident . . .

  Through the little window in the gable end, I can see only darkness . . . staring through the glass, I think of the 1st voyage, return: Columbus on board the Niña, caught in a violent storm, writing “with caligraphic poise” on a single piece of parchment, trying to reduce to this space the content of his discovery . . . and sealing the parchment in a cask, throwing it overboard . . .

  there was the story that came out of Spain: “At noon of August 27 in the year 1852, an American three-masted brig named the Chieftan, of Boston, under command of Captain d’Auberville, found itself upon the coast of Morocco. As a storm was approaching, the Captain determined to increase his ballast, and while engaged in this occupation, the drag brought up what at first glance appeared to be a piece of rock, but, finding it light in weight, the sailors examined it more closely, when they discovered it to be a coffer of cedar wood: opening this, there was disclosed a cocoa-nut, hollow, and containing a document written in gothic letters upon parchment. Not being able to decipher this, it was given to an American bookseller when the ship arrived at Gibraltar. The latter immediately upon glancing at the manuscript offered the American Captain one hundred dollars for the cocoa-nut and its contents, which offer the Captain declined. Thereupon the bookseller read to the astonished Captain the document, which was no other than the holograph relation of the discovery committed to the sea three hundred and fifty-nine years before.” . . . but the fictional parchment disappeared . . .

  and, likewise, “My Secrete Log Boke”—a “facsimile edition” of a version found by a fisherman off the coast of Wales—printed in English, the “universal maritime language”—and appropriately adorned with barnacles and seaweed.

  but—in fact—there was Raymond Weaver—first of Melville scholars—who, in 1919, dug loose the tin bread box from the tight seaweed of Melville’s heirs and descendants, and brought out the crabbed, incoherent manuscript of BILLY BUDD . . .

  I think of Isabella, first permanent settlement in the Indies—swept by epidemic, poverty, and starvation, and rapidly depopulated . . .

  “It was also said . . . that one day one man or two were walking amidst those buildings of Isabella when, in a street, there suddenly appeared two rows or choruses of men, who seemed to be noble and court people, well dressed, with swords girt and wrapped in traveling cloaks of the kind worn in Spain in those days, and when that person or those persons were wondering how such people so new and well dressed had landed there . . . on asking them whence they came, they answered silently by putting their hands to their hats to greet them and, when they took their hats off, their heads came off also and they remained headless, and then vanished: of which vision the man or men were left nearly dead and for many days pained and astonished.”

  and the Naval expedition, in the year 1891—the year of Melville’s death:

  “Commander G. A. Converse,

  “Commanding U. S. S. Enterprise.

  “Sir:–

  “In obedience to your orders of the 13th inst. we respectfully submit the following report of the results of an exploration of the ruins of the city of Isabella.

  “The party left the Enterprise, then anchored off Puerto Plata, Island of Santo Domingo, at 6:30 on the morning of the 14th of May and proceeded in the steamcutter thirty miles to the westward along the north shore of the island of Santo Domingo. We were accompanied by an old native pilot who was recommended by the U. S. Consul of Puerto Plata as familiar with the coast and such traditions as exist among the natives respecting the first settlement of Columbus. He has piloted vessels to and from the port of Isabella for many years.

  “About eight miles inside the cape now known as Isabella there is a bay of considerable size; on its eastern shore a slight rocky projection of land formed by one of the numerous bluffs was chosen for the first permanent settlement of the Spaniards in the New World . . .

  “No habitations are to be found within a mile and a half of the ruins . . .

  “On landing we turned to the right and ascended a gentle slope to a little plain about two acres in area; this slightly projects into the bay and is bounded on the north and south by two dry water-courses forming natural ditches, or moats, and terminating abruptly on the western, or water side, in cliffs from twenty to thirty feet high formed by large boulders containing fossil coral and shells. Tradition points to this little plateau as the site of the ancient city and here we found scattered at intervals various small, ill-defined heaps of stones, remnants of walls built of small unhewn stones, evidently laid in mortar, pieces of old tiles and potsherds, some of the latter glazed, and fragments of broad, roughly made bricks. There were half a dozen or more blocks of dressed limestone that may have been part of the walls of buildings somewhat finished and permanent in character. The trees, matted roots and trailing vines overspread the ground . . .

  “We overturned all the cut blocks of stone
and examined them carefully in the hope of finding some marks or dates, but without success, and it is our belief that nothing of the kind exists.

  “Should further exploration be made it would be of undoubted scientific interest to examine the fauna and flora of this region and there are evidences of interesting fossil remains. The caves in the cliffs of Cape Isabella and vicinity would probably yield interesting relics of the aborigines—the now extinct Caribs.”

  Melville—Customs Inspector #75—writes a letter to John Hoadley: “By the way I have a ship on my district from Girgenti—Where’s that? Why, in Sicily—The ancient Agrigentum. Ships arrive from there in this port, bringing sulphur; but this is the first one I have happened to have officially to do with. I have not succeeded in seeing the captain yet—have only seen the mate—but hear that he has in possession some stones from those magnifcent Grecian ruins, and I am going to try to get a fragment, however small, if possible, which I will divide with you.”

  and Isabella today: a pasture by the sea, with only a few stones above the ground . . .

  Turning, I amble back to the desk . . .

  WOMAN WHO LURED BOY FROM SCHOOL

  TELLS POLICE HE WASN’T FRIGHTENED

  ST. LOUIS, Oct. 7 (AP)—The woman who lured Buddy Williams from his school in Kansas City on the start of a trip that was to lead to a shallow grave said today the 6-year-old boy wasn’t frightened.

  “He was such a sweet child,” said Mrs. Bonnie Brown Heady.

  “He came so nice. He talked about getting a dog and ice cream.”

  (and there was Billy Budd: “. . . he showed in face that humane look of reposeful good nature . . .”

  (“The ear, small and shapely, the arch of the foot, the curve in mouth and nostril . . .”

  (and he was called by his shipmates, Baby Budd . . .

  PAIR PLEAD GUILTY

  TO KIDNAP CHARGE

  KANSAS CITY, Nov. 3 (AP)—Ex-mental patient Carl Austin Mills and his alcoholic companion, Mrs. Bonnie Brown Heady, pleaded guilty in federal court today to the kidnapping of 6-year-old Buddy Williams and were ordered to trial Nov. 16.

  we thought that, because of his mental record, he would plead insanity, and all of us—Mother, Linda, and I—tried to persuade him to it; but Carl himself insisted against it, and such a plea was never made . . . instead, he took a rigorous psychiatric examination, and conned his way through it . . .

  KIDNAP KILLERS WILL DIE

  DEC. 18; ‘TOO GOOD FOR

  THEM,’ WILLIAMS SAYS

  Mrs. Hall,

  Mills Stoically

  Hear Sentence

  KANSAS CITY, Nov. 19 (AP)—The kidnap slayers of Buddy Williams were sentenced to death today and will go to the gas chamber together for their ruthless crime.

  I made several trips—to St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City—but on all occasions Carl refused to see me, or acknowledge me . . .

  PENITENTIARY GATES

  CLOSE ON KIDNAPPERS

  No Appeals Planned

  JEFFERSON CITY, Nov. 20 (AP)—The Buddy Williams kidnap killers reached the Missouri Penitentiary tonight where they will die together in the gas chamber one week from Christmas.

  Carl Austin Mills, 43, and Mrs. Bonnie Brown Heady, 41, were received at the grim gray-walled prison in gathering darkness at 5:35 P.M. They arrived in handcuffs and chains after an automobile trip from Kansas City . . .

  On Thursday, the 20th of May, 1506, in the city of Valladolid, Christopher Columbus died . . .

  (Melville:

  (“Like those new-world discoverers bold

  Ending in stony convent cold,

  Or dying hermits; as if they,

  . . . . . . . . .

  Remorseful felt that ampler sway

  Their lead had given for old career

  Of human nature.”

  and Melville, in 1891, the year of his death, set aside BILLY BUDD, as finished—and picked it up again: added a chapter—afterthought to an afterthought—BILLY IN THE DARBIES:

  “. . . Sentry, are you there?

  Just ease these darbies at the wrist,

  And roll me over fair.

  I am sleepy . . .”

  There was the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, discussing a possible article on Melville:

  “I can’t help thinking that there must be some good material on the subject, though probably it would be better still if Melville would only let go of life. So much more frankness of speech can be used when a fellow is apparently out of hearing. What you say of his aversion to publicity makes me pause . . .

  “On second thought therefore, I believe we had better wait for our shot at Melville, when his personality can be more freely handled.”

  . . . like Ovando, sending a ship to rescue Columbus on Jamaica: standing off shore, hovering, hoping him dead . . .

  and Melville writes DANIEL ORME:

  “But let us come to the close of a sketch necessarily imperfect. One fine Easter Day, following a spell of rheumatic weather, Orme was discovered alone and dead on a height overlooking the seaward sweep of the great haven to whose shore, in his retirement from sea, he had moored. It was an evened terrace, destined for use in war, but in peace neglected and offering a sanctuary for anybody. Mounted on it was an obsolete battery of rusty guns. Against one of these he was found leaning, his legs stretched out before him; his clay pipe broken in twain, the vacant bowl and no spillings from it, attesting that his pipe had been smoked out to the last of its contents. He faced the outlet to the ocean. The eyes were open, still continuing in death the vital glance fixed on the hazy waters and the dim-seen sails coming and going or at anchor near by. What had been his last thoughts! If aught of reality lurked in the rumours concerning him, had remorse, had penitence any place in those thoughts? Or was there just nothing of either? After all, were his moodiness and mutterings, his strange freaks, starts, eccentric shrugs and grimaces, were these but the grotesque additions like the wens and knobs and distortions of the trunk of an old chance apple-tree in an inclement upland, not only beaten by many storms, but also obstructed in its natural development by the chance of its having first sprouted among hard-packed rock? In short, that fatality, no more encrusting him, made him what he came to be? Even admitting that there was something dark that he chose to keep to himself, what then? Such reticence may sometimes be more for the sake of others than one’s self. No, let us believe that the animal decay before mentioned still befriended him to the close, and that he fell asleep recalling through the haze of memory many a far-off scene of the wide world’s beauty dreamily suggested by the hazy waters before him.

  “He lies buried among other sailors, for whom also strangers performed one last rite in a lonely plot overgrown with wild eglantine uncared for by man.”

  and on the 28th of September, 1891, Melville—unwilling to face another northern winter—died . . .

  there was the dedication of BILLY BUDD: to an old shipmate, Jack Chase, “wherever that great heart may now be . . .”

  and Melville’s physician signed the certificate, ascribing death to “Cardiac dilitation . . .”

  ENLARGEMENT OF THE HEART

  I get up, stand by the desk, and turn off the light. A thin bit of gray comes through the attic window. There is a strange smell of gas, sulphurous, that I had smelled earlier, much earlier in the evening . . .

  WILLIAMS KIDNAPPERS

  DIE SIDE BY SIDE IN

  MISSOURI GAS CHAMBER

  Mrs. Heady,

  Mills Chat

  Before Death

  From UP And AP Reports

  JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., Friday, Dec. 18—Bonnie Heady and Carl Mills died side by side in a swirl of poison gas early today for kidnapping a little boy and killing him.

  In the last hours before they were taken to the death house, the killers had kept a strange composure.

  . . . deadly fumes with the faint scent of almonds.

  the daylight is getting stronger . . .

  treading softly, I go
downstairs, both flights, and into the kitchen. I stand by the table, resting one hand on it, trying to listen to the silence. The refrigerator motor turns on, becomes a steady hum. I hear one of the children, Jenifer, stirring . . .

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