Jarrettsville

by Cornelia Nixon

  A chorus of shocked voices asked, “Is that the child? Is that her boy?”

  I sat stunned—from where I sat, the child appeared to have fine pale hair, combed up like a rooster’s crest, and large, pale eyes. It wore what looked like Richard’s white baptismal gown, with lace tatting at the collar I had done myself.

  But could it possibly be Martha’s own? They might have borrowed someone else’s, as a stunt. Richard was not past that, and surely it was ill-advised. Yet the baby seemed to know her. As she took him, his small face broke into a grin, arms waving happily around.

  “Pure Caucasian blood!” called rough male voices below, from the reporters’ bench. “Pure Caucasian blood. Get it on the wire!”

  Paper was ripped from pads, and runners scrambled out with telegrams to send.

  I sat feeling accused, my heart flapping like a flag in a stiff wind. The child was still a bastard, wasn’t it? I had not been wrong to hide it, to salvage what I could of my daughter’s reputation, not that anything was left. But surely it had been a prudent step.

  And yet, and yet—it meant she had told the truth, and Nick was wrong, the liars all exposed. I could not help it, I felt a burning mix of guilt and vindication in my chest.

  The judges were not even gaveling—they stared down from on high as if they’d never seen an infant in their lives. Martha kissed the baby, settled him onto her lap, and smoothed his fine hair, which stood up all the more as her hand passed. I recalled the year she had played Mary in the Christmas crèche, kneeling in a blue hooded robe, holding a doll.

  “We could have searched all over the world and not have found a more perfect Madonna,” someone had said to me when services were done, and I had been so proud.

  Now here she was again, the focus of all eyes. When the trial resumed, she turned the baby to her shoulder and he fell asleep, sprawled like a shield across her chest, and her face relaxed, as if holding him made other feelings dissipate. Yes, let them look at her. Let them see the baby and his mother holding him. The jury, judges and attorneys, all the farmers, all their happy married wives, would see the baby and the murderess, and then they would decide.

  Mr. Archer had to retrace and make Mr. Hutchins tell again what he had seen.

  “And did you know the woman with the gun?”

  “Why, yes. It was Miss Cairnes, there in the dock.” But he could not look at her, and he sounded ashamed to say it now, as she sat with her child.

  “And did you know her before that night?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve known her by sight for twenty years. I’ve never been in her company nor conversed with her, but I have seen her at Bethel Church and met her on the road.”

  “And how did she appear to you that night at the hotel?”

  “When she came on the porch I thought she was crazy and had escaped from an asylum, and I got out of the way for fear of being shot. I didn’t know who she was shooting at. But I was certain she was crazy from her manner. As I was going home a neighbor told me—”

  Mr. Rutledge bolted up. “Objection. Hearsay evidence is not admissible.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Grason said.

  Mr. Archer looked only at the witness. “Mr. Hutchins, have you seen cases of insanity?”

  The attorney general himself shot from his seat with uncharacteristic agitation.

  “I object to these questions. The witness has no knowledge upon which to justify his opinion, and hypothetical facts are not evidence of insanity. No one but medical experts can give an opinion upon hypothetical cases.”

  Mr. Archer countered him earnestly. “Your Honor, this is not a hypothetical case. It is not necessary to be a medical man to know conditions of the mind. Anger, passion, and excitement will change the expression of the countenance, and any man seeing the demeanor, manner, and appearance of a party can form a judgment and state his impressions. It is for the jury to decide.”

  The attorney general refused to sit. “My learned friend and I are at direct issue. The law requires that a higher degree of insanity should be proved as an excuse for the crime of murder, being an act of God in taking away the reason of a person.” He lifted a heavy book and read the statutes that applied, which said the mere opinion of a person not an expert could not be taken as evidence. “The law presumes a man to be sane until he can be proven otherwise.”

  Mr. Archer waited, and his manner radiated calm. “There are settled cases in which the state has been obliged to show the sanity of the prisoner to prove him guilty, as well as the defense to show the prisoner insane at the time of the occurrence.”

  He too lifted a heavy book and read authorities to show that Mr. Hutchins’s views should be allowed as evidence. Mr. Jones replied to him, and the argument went on for quite some time.

  Heat lay heavy on the room, all the more with so many people packed inside. Yet only the baby in the dock appeared to drowse, because the battle on the floor seemed like the last hope to save my daughter’s life. In the gallery, some women wept openly, clutching handkerchiefs.

  At last Judge Grason intervened. “The defense may ask the witness about his opinion.”

  Mr. Archer looked quite pleased despite his drooping eyes, and prompted Mr. Hutchins.

  “The night of the occurrence, I didn’t know who she was at first,” Hutchins said. “I thought she was a crazy woman. I didn’t know who she was shooting at until after the first shot, when I saw McComas throw up his hands and say, ‘Oh!’ Another shot was fired and it went up into the roof, and I recognized the side of her face. She was firing wild, but she got two shots aimed right at him and I saw one strike him. He fell off the porch, but she followed him down to the yard and went on firing at his body on the ground.”

  “If you had known the relations between the parties and all that had transpired previous to this occurrence, would you still have thought she was crazy?” Mr. Archer asked.

  “Yes, sir, I would. She seemed deranged.”

  Down in the dock, the baby stirred, lifted his head, and made a fretful noise—all heads turned to watch. My daughter kissed his head and rocked him, but his cry grew stronger and the lawyers stopped to wait while she gave him to the nurse to take away.

  When he was gone, her eyes filled with tears, and the stares of the whole courtroom recorded it, some shaking their heads as if she were an actress playing on their sympathies.

  Mr. Archer watched her as the baby’s cry receded from the room. “Your Honor, this concludes the examination in chief on the part of the defense.” He took his seat.

  The courtroom went still, like a huge waiting animal about to spring, and no one seemed to breathe. Would it be over now?

  But the attorney general straightened his cuffs and rose. “Your Honor, the state requests permission to call witnesses to respond to the new line brought forth today by the defense.”

  Judge Grason consulted the other judges briefly. “Granted.”

  Slowly, like a fever dream, it all began again.

  A young man was called up to the stand, and I was so tired by that time, I did not catch his name. He wore blue uniform pants with a plain blue jacket, and his hair stood frizzed around his head like a swarm of gnats. He had been on the hotel porch, and while he spoke he stared straight at the dock, the whites of his eyes exposed all around.

  “Why, she was cool and reasonable as anyone I ever saw. She was right haughty and resolute. I’ve never seen her look any other way. After she killed the man, she looked around at us and said, cool as you please, ‘Gentlemen, y’all know why I did it.’ Never saw the like. Well, her brother thought she was quite cool himself.”

  “How did he show that he thought that?” asked Mr. Jones.

  “Why, after the shooting he asked her to come get on her horse, like she was just gossiping after church and keeping him waiting.”

  Mr. Archer stood up. “Objection. What is the object of these questions?”

  Mr. Jones raised his eyebrows. “To prove that her brother did not regard her as insane
but addressed her as a reasonable person.”

  Judge Grason’s round face remained expressionless. “The prosecution may proceed.”

  Mrs. Street was called back up, grimacing with nerves. “Why, yes, I think she was quite sane. I wish I could say otherwise, but she looked the same as always. She’s my cousin, and I’ve known her a long time. She didn’t seem different to me.”

  Our neighbor Mr. Ayres was called up next, and he strode resolutely to the stand, looking gaunt and uncomfortable in a faded green wool jacket. He clenched and unclenched his big worn hands as he answered each question, his cuffs too short, exposing big-boned wrists with more hair on them than on his head. Gradually Mr. Jones persuaded him to tell his story.

  “I saw Miss Cairnes that night, all right,” he said gruffly. “She came to my house just after dark. She was on foot and no one with her. I went on in to supper and spoke to her and she answered in the usual manner, the way she always has. I’ve known her more than twenty years, since she was a child. I asked her how she did and I think she replied, ‘I am well.’ There was nothing strange in her manner from what it previously was, and I had not the slightest idea that anything had happened. My wife spoke to her, too, and saw nothing different about her. I asked Miss Cairnes some questions about her brother, who was digging a well and so forth, and she answered as usual. There was nothing to indicate she was insane. Then my youngest son came home from the village and told his mother what had happened, and my wife got very much excited. Finally, Miss Cairnes’s brother and her cousin came to my house to get her. She was there about an hour and left between eight and nine o’clock.”

  Mr. Archer cross-examined him. “Could you describe her manner for the court?”

  Mr. Ayres stuck out his thin gray beard and worked his jaw. “I tell ye, it was the same as it has always been and not two hours after the shooting. There was nothing to show anything unusual. It’s ridiculous to say she was insane.”

  A rumble from the crowd agreed.

  “Silence!” the court crier called. This time a few members of the audience joined in.

  “Be quiet!”

  “Keep your opinions to yourself!”

  Soon the judge’s gavel pounded to silence the silencers.

  Mr. Jones called Asbury Ayres to tell his part. He was an ordinary-looking young man with heavy cheeks and bark-brown muttonchops, his clothes serviceable brown except for the looping blue silk tie he had put on, I suppose to show his Union sympathies.

  His face went fish-pale as he described how my daughter had looked to him in his mother’s kitchen, and he could hardly speak for stuttering. “Th-th-there she was—c-c-cool as you p-p-please and all—c-c-covered in his b-b-blood.”

  I winced. Had there really been blood on her dress?

  Mr. Archer declined to cross-examine Asbury, perhaps to stop him saying more about the blood. Dismissed, he walked quickly up the aisle and out the door, as if afraid to be in the same room with her.

  “Your Honor, we have no more witnesses,” Mr. Jones announced.

  But the defense was allowed to make a rebuttal, and Mr. Archer called his famous cousin, Dr. George Archer, a physician respected all over the state. Everyone craned their necks to get a look at him. He was a thin man with a long white beard and kindly round blue eyes.

  “I’ve been a practicing physician for twenty years,” he said. “And I have to say, from my experience, the fact of the girl’s having been collected and calm an hour or two after the shooting would be no indication of soundness of mind—rather, the reverse. Women’s minds are extremely fragile, and they are always delicately balanced over the abyss. They should be thought of as more fragile than infants and more prone to unbalancing when violation touches them. A complete collapse of reason may be expected anytime such a thing occurs.”

  A cloud seemed to settle on the judges and the jury, all of them frowning at such contradictory evidence. The prosecution waived its right to cross-examine Dr. Archer, and it soon became evident that neither side had further witnesses to call. The audience held its breath, consulted watches on fobs. Could it really be almost over with?

  At long last, the judge declared it time to make the closing arguments. The prosecution would begin and end the summaries, with the defense lawyers sandwiched between.

  Mr. Rutledge stood up first for the state. He seemed reasonable and methodical as he laid forth the case in his deep, soothing voice. Point by point he showed her act was willful and premeditated, her mind quite sane, and therefore she would have to hang.

  “I remind the jury that with the alleged crimes and wrongdoings committed by the deceased we have nothing to do. Rather, we are here to vindicate the insulted majesty of the law. No grounds can excuse outright killing, except for self-defense, which no one has argued in this case. The state freely admits that Nicholas McComas committed a great wrong against the prisoner, but this does not justify her becoming the avenger. McComas was a decent son and brother, and for years he was the only support of an aged mother, an aunt, and three delicate sisters. The only error he seems ever to have committed was in regard to Miss Cairnes, and when the state brought suit against him for the upkeep of the child, he agreed to pay for it, tacitly admitting it was his.

  “What more properly concerns us is that Miss Cairnes’s premeditation is quite clear. The prisoner inquiring for McComas when she came to Jarrettsville, her cool manner while she shot him, and the declaration she made afterward all show she planned to kill. And if the jury sees there was a plan, then that disproves the idea she was insane. Every man is presumed sane until proven otherwise, and has there been sufficient proof of insanity in this case? Some witnesses have said that she was wild and excited, but others noticed she was singularly calm, and she spoke to the bystanders the moment she first shot in a way that shows her mind was clear and that the act was done in revenge, which makes it murder under the law. The defense has not been able to find a single witness to give evidence of her insanity prior to the shooting, and the conclusion must follow, there is no such evidence. Therefore she is guilty of murder.”

  The audience nodded like a wheat field in the wind, and my daughter nodded, too, closing her eyes, as if they were right to convict her. Behind her, the reporters shook out their cramped hands and prepared to write again, recording the next flow of words.

  Colonel Stump had been saved for just this moment. Preening his mustaches, he strode with gravity into the center of the open floor, where he stood with warrior calm and no notes.

  “It is an honor to be called upon to defend such innocence,” he said softly. “The deceased was an enemy to the human race, deliberately marking his prey, deceiving the trusting girl. He was worse than the serpent that entered Eden. There is a written law, but there is also a law in the human breast. I myself believe the act was justified and that the prisoner is guilty of no crime under heaven. But if the jury differs from me, then the evidence will show the prisoner was knocked from her ordinary orbit by his perfidy, and she was not responsible for her actions at the time. The prisoner is now in the felon’s dock, but she has made it almost sacred by her presence there. Virtue and chastity sit on either side of her. Gentlemen of the jury, I appeal to you to bring in a verdict that will be a protection to your own homes and firesides, give assurances to every mother, and be a shield to every daughter.”

  He went on to enumerate my daughter’s virtues for an hour. When he stopped, cheers rang out from the lobby, and someone raised his voice into the eerie ululation of the Rebel yell.

  “Bailiff, find the man making that awful caterwaul and arrest him,” Judge Grason said calmly. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to remind you that no demonstrations of enthusiasm will be tolerated in this court. If necessary, I will clear the room.”

  A hush fell, since no one wished to miss the efforts of the speakers still to come, especially now that the grand white visage of Mr. Farnandis was rising into view.

  So great was his renown that ladies put away their fans
to help keep silence, and some rough men from the lobby crowded in, removing hats and holding them as they stood along the walls. Farnandis made his way toward the jury box, where he stood humbly and spread his hands. His great voice began quite low.

  “I find myself somewhat embarrassed, because the awesome duty laid upon me here has nearly paralyzed my energies. My friend the attorney general stands first in the brotherhood of the bar, but by the merits of this cause I advocate, I can only hope the pebble will weigh against the boulder. I am not here to invoke your mercy. I will make no appeal to your feelings. All that the defense wants is the truth. I know the learned attorney general. I know that while his head is full of legal lore, his heart is full of manly impulses, and no money could have induced him to appear here in the capacity of prosecutor if his official duty had not called him.

  “Gentlemen of the jury, the prisoner before you has suffered the worst wrong a woman can, worse than can be suffered under any circumstances by any man, and when she acted, it was with no wickedness of heart. If you can find it in your consciences to trench the rigid bearing of the law, you will bring in a verdict pleasing to men and angels. Treat this girl as if you were her father. What father, if his home had been invaded in this manner and his daughter made a social outcast, would not have shot down the destroyer as a dog?”

  Applause rippled from the lobby, and Judge Grason banged his gavel. But even he leaned forward, listening. Mr. Farnandis looked exhilarated and a patch of pink crept into his aging cheeks.

  “God knows I hate to contemplate such a contingency in my life, but had it happened to me, good citizen as I endeavor to be, venerator of the law as I am, I would have had his heart, or my own life would have been offered up.”

  Louder applause from the lobby, and the gavel banged again. But Farnandis did not stop.

  “Do you recollect the case of Virginia, whose own father stabbed her in the heart to save her from the ravisher Appius Claudius? The Roman people gathered around that poor father and overturned the government. Are we at this advanced age and in this Christian land to say he was a murderer? May a man enter your home and steal not your gold, but what is of far more value: the choicest jewel of your heart?