by S. Smith
But my heart and my thoughts were on Inez and what would happen to her. I knew that this was a huge cow turd for her as it was for me when my mother died. I was determined to help her find the flowers in it, somehow.
I went to the Old Corner Drug Store and picked up a copy of the Iconoclast newspaper that came out the day before on April 1st. I sat at one of the tables and read the entire thing. In it, Mr. Brann was funny, over the top, and excessively critical as usual, but he said a couple of things that caught my eye.
First, in the very last article he wrote called, “Atheism and Orthodoxy,” Mr. Brann belittled religious intolerance and suggested that this intolerance was the cause for atheism. He said the strict rules of the Orthodox Protestant religion repelled people from any type of theism. These strict rules caused them to rebel completely and turn into atheists. Years later, I think about how fitting it was that this was Mr. Brann’s last article. He thought atheism was foolish and shallow and was adamant about God’s presence. He was such a champion against religious intolerance, yet he may have died from its venomous poison.
Secondly, he specifically named Cranny and Big Brother Carroll and called them apes. This was actually a fairly common event in the Iconoclast, but this time there seemed to be a strong correlation to something that happened later. Remember when Cranny was on the train going to Atlanta for a Baptist convention, and got into the fight with Mr. Hayden? He specifically said, “If you ever print or mention my name again, I will kill you.” This incident occurred well after Mr. Brann’s assassination, so I didn’t make this connection until later. But when I did make the connection, a lightbulb went off for me. Had Cranny made this same statement to Mr. Brann prior to the assassination and then acted on it by giving Davis the nod to act on the hit when Mr. Brann printed his name in the Iconoclast? I had no way of knowing if this was the case or not, but Cranny’s statement on the train, “If you print my name, I will kill you,” haunted me.
Chapter 12
MY LOVE, INEZ
It took over a year after Mr. Brann was murdered before Inez and her mother finally picked out the decorative tombstone and had it built at a manufacturer in Waco. It consisted of two marble pieces. The bottom piece had Mr. Brann’s profile engraved onto it and the top piece had an ornate lamp shape with a hollow spot inside for mounting. When the monument was being built, Inez and I visited the shop several times and got to know the folks molding it.
On one of our visits, Inez and I had the chance to put a piece of the blood-stained belt that Mr. Brann wore on the day of his assassination inside of the lamp. We burned the name of who we thought colluded with Davis into the leather belt. It was our way of ensuring that if we did get too close to the culprit and were murdered along the way, we could leave a clue. I had Judge Gerald sign a Last Will and Testament to authenticate it so that if we were killed, someone would open the will and find out where to look for the name of the suspect. I didn’t want the Judge to know who we thought had put Davis up to it, since we believed he would have gone after them. I didn’t put the name of our suspect in the will and the Judge didn’t see the name on the belt. It was our little secret.
As I have probably mentioned too many times before the assassination, I adored Inez. After the assassination, my love for her grew and I believe she loved me because she needed me. With the death of her father, I filled a void in her life and she filled a void in my heart that had been vacant since the death of my mother of pure unconditional love. Ours was a love of common need and longing. It was a love of fulfillment and reciprocity. We loved each other because we longed to be loved. We each knew that our individual love would be amplified through each other and provided back to each in kind many fold.
In the days following Mr. Brann’s assassination, I spent most of my time in or around their house. I would do favors for Mrs. Brann to try to help her out. I would talk to Gracie and Billy and try to cheer them up. I would run messages for them and help in any manner that I could. But mostly I would just spend time with my Inez.
Together we’d talk about what had transpired, dissecting every little bit that happened along the way. At times she was cheerful, with a good attitude about the whole thing, while at other times she would cry her eyes out. Still there were times when she seemed to have this dark cloud of depression hanging over her head. But talk we did, literally all of the time. I was her confidant and she mine.
Inez didn’t believe for one second that Davis shot her father by himself, because his daughter was slighted as a Baylor student in the Iconoclast. She firmly believed that someone had put him up to it. She wanted to know who did this and why. Looking back, I don’t know why she needed to know. Did she want to try to strike back at the person or persons who did it, or was it part of her healing process? Maybe she just had an unquenchable curiosity, but she wanted to know. I became her tool, her mechanism, her partner in this endeavor. She hoped to find the truth about what really happened to her father. I didn’t mind at all; in fact I welcomed her requests.
The connection between my mother getting shot in the back and Mr. Brann getting shot in the back helped me to finally bring closure to this ugly event in my own life. I’d been searching for this closure for years. I had been looking for the sweet flowers that my mother always spoke about. And thus far in my life the biggest cow turd had been her murder. I’d searched for meaning in vain for years, but now I could see the beauty of the flowers, which was my Inez.
I have to be frank. I felt a bit guilty that I was seeing beauty out of the ugliness of the assassination. I thought that perhaps I was being ghoulish, but I couldn’t help myself. It was perfect symmetry and beautiful in its nature. I could relate to her as my mother had also been murdered. She helped me overcome my sadness, anger, and resentment towards the man that murdered my mother. In turn, I helped her get over the same emotions. We had this common bond that others didn’t have. Frankly, I cherished this bond even though it was born of morbid events. Not that we didn’t have a love for each other before, but now our nascent seedling was growing into a lush flowering love that I believed would last forever.
Beauty isn’t always born of beauty. Sometimes, and even many times, beauty is born of vile ugliness that morphs over time into something beautiful that could never have happened without the ugliness. The beauty of flowers grows from the fertilization of the nasty foul manure. A beautiful baby is born out of the ugliness of the mother’s labor pains and occasionally even the mother’s death. Christ’s beautiful resurrection occurred from his ugly but necessary crucifixion.
I hated the ugliness of the assassination of Mr. Brann. I hated Davis and whoever put him up to it for what they did. I hated that Inez was sad and upset. I hated the cruelty and permanence of death. But I loved the beauty of what it now brought me: the closure and significance of my mother’s death; the love of my beautiful Inez; and the meaning of the remainder of my life.
Yes, I hurt for Inez, but I was elated that we had this common bond that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world, not even for Mr. Brann’s life. I had finally found the pathway for my life. I should have had faith enough all along to know the flowers that my mother had spoken to me about all those years ago would finally appear. How beautiful they were.
Chapter 13
BRANN’S REVENGE
Davis, by doing this reprehensible deed, obviously thought a good shot or two in Mr. Brann’s back would inflict a mortal wound. With his statement already planned, he would be free from the chains of the real estate forgeries and eventually from the debt he owed. He may even have become a Deacon in the church. He didn’t realize that Mr. Brann wasn’t going to go down easily. In fact, Brann got his revenge by calmly pulling out his pistol and providing a deadly response to Davis’ assassination attempt.
At Davis’ funeral, some people said what a “good man” he was, including some of the Baylor trustees. I thought to myself, he shot a man in cold blood without even warning him, to make it a fair fight. He wasn’t a goo
d man. He was a murderer and got his just reward. I was angry at Davis, and yet extremely proud of what Mr. Brann did in the face of the cowardly Davis. I repeatedly let Inez know how proud I was of her father. I told her he was able to get even with Davis.
I did feel sad for the Davis’ family. They suffered terribly due to his stupidity. Whenever I saw them around town, I tried to be kind. I never had anything I could offer, except a smile and a pleasant hello. I would say, “I hope y’all are getting along OK.” Mrs. Davis ever so nice, responded back in kind. I knew several of the Davis kids, but I always kept my opinion about their father to myself. It appeared to me that all the kids got the good Davis blood and not the sour blood. I do have to say that when it came to the Baptists and the good folks of Waco, they took care of Mrs. Davis. She and her kids never had a want for food, clothing, or shelter afterward.
I, myself, have always tried to be a gentleman, with malice towards no one. Even when I realized what my mother was and how she was being used by these strange men, I wasn’t angry. I just accepted it. One thing my mother taught me before she died in the bawdy house on 2 street was to always be content and grateful for what you have. Look for the flowers. But some folks don’t always see things this way. Some want retaliation.
I remember years later when Prohibition was passed into law. A lot of the businessmen in town bitterly complained. Many of the local Baptists celebrated. I thought some of them may have secretly dipped into their private collection of spirits to deplete it before the law started heavily enforcing the measure.
Cranny had long ago moved to Dallas and I’d lost touch with him. I remember thinking to myself that old Cranny must be really proud. He and his Temperance folks had finally done it. Then came the subsequent Prohibition violence and ardent disrespect for the law and finally the repealing of the law. I thought, well if Cranny wasn’t dead before, he likely is now. Brann was certainly right about the whole Prohibition mess. If Mr. Brann were still alive, he’d be shouting at the roof tops about how he was right and Cranny was wrong.
The whole town was abuzz after the Brann-Davis shootout. Whether they were on the Brann side or the Davis side, the townsfolk just wanted the violence to stop. There had already been four men killed and multiple others hurt. We just wanted it to stop and fortunately it did stop.
But I kept hearing the voice of Inez, asking me if I could try to find out who killed her father. If Davis acted alone, then he got his payback when he was killed along with Mr. Brann. That made everything even. But what if? What if....someone else had paid Mr. Davis to kill Mr. Brann? Things wouldn’t be even, would they? No, things wouldn’t be even at all, and this was what I was really concerned about, injustice! When he was alive, the thing that drove Mr. Brann was justice and truth. If someone had hired Davis to kill Mr. Brann, there would be a continuing disparity of justice.
Being a Christian of good standing in the church, I knew I should not be a man of revenge. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about the “what if.” My concern was if there was any way possible, either through one of Mr. Brann’s friends, or through his family, Mr. Brann would get revenge. The revenge would likely be violent and frighten the entire community. I kept thinking that Judge Gerald would surely find out who killed Mr. Brann and would promptly kill them to avenge his friend’s murder. He was never one to take a slight of any type against him or his friends. However, at that point, I think the Judge was growing weary of the violence as well.
One day a year or so after the shooting, Inez and I went out to Oakwood cemetery. Mr. Brann’s widow and friends had put up the very ornate lamp stone marker on his grave. It had Mr. Brann’s profile engraved into the stone. It had only the initials WCB etched into it and the word “Truth.” On top of the base stone was the ornate lamp. To me it always looked like a genie’s lamp that you could rub and out would pop a genie to grant you a wish. Inez would often take a cloth out and rub the stone clean. I kept thinking to myself, don’t be surprised if Mr. Brann comes out of that lamp like the genie of Ali Baba. It was a beautiful marker. I always felt Mr. Brann would be quite proud of it.
Anyway, that day, as we were coming upon it, I noticed that right at the temple of Mr. Brann’s profile was an indentation that looked like it had been made with a bullet. Someone had taken a gun to Mr. Brann’s tombstone and desecrated it.
When she saw it, Inez immediately started to cry. She asked, “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” Then a few minutes later, she got uncharacteristically angry and said, “We have to do something about this. We have to strike out and make this right. My father was all about settling things and making it right and now it’s up to us to do this! We need to get revenge!” I didn’t know what to say. I’d never known her to be vengeful before. Yes, she wanted to know who killed her father, but she never said anything about seeking revenge for it. This was the first time that I’d ever heard her utter the word “revenge.”
I kept thinking about what she said, revenge, revenge, revenge. Was there any way possible to settle up with whoever shot the monument? If Mr. Brann was still alive, he would certainly get even with him and take his revenge, using his Iconoclast newspaper. Inez and I had no such resource to draw from. How were we going to be able to settle this?
A week later, as I was delivering a package to Baylor and talking with some Baylor kids, they told me about an accidental shooting of one of the Baylor freshmen. They said the boy heard from his father about all the terrible things Mr. Brann had said and done to Baylor, so being a bit of a hot head, he went out to Oakwood cemetery with a pistol in his hand. He knelt down so he was almost even with the monument but about twenty feet away. He shot at the stone, and the bullet ricocheted and hit him right in the left shoulder, breaking his collarbone and landing close to his heart. He was lucky it didn’t penetrate his heart and he was able to make his way back to Baylor before bleeding out. The Baylor folks were able to get him to a local hospital where they treated his wound. He barely made it.
When Inez heard this she said, “He did it!” I had no idea what she was talking about, so I asked, “Who is he and what did he do?” She said, “My father.”
I looked at her rather crazily and asked, “What are you talking about? No one can come back from the dead and do something like this. This is just crazy talk.”
She said, “I am 100% sure that he did it. He was always one to settle the score with whoever he had a beef with. He was somehow able to get back at this kid and settle the score with him. I just know it!”
I didn’t want to offend her by blatantly disagreeing with her, but I did disagree. I thought perhaps the stress of the entire thing was just getting the best of her and she needed a rest from all of it. I took her to Molly’s house where she was able to get some rest and nourishment. Molly was still a reliable friend.
The three of us talked well into the night about all the events that had been occurring. Molly agreed with our assessment that Davis did not act alone. Afterward, we met often at Molly’s and considered her house a place of refuge and solace, even though at night we knew what went on inside of it. In her backyard were a couple of pin oak trees. One had three trunks coming out of a single root. We called it the loveseat oak, as someone had placed a couple of slats between the trunks so that a person could sit between each trunk, making it into something of a loveseat. We would sit for hours on the loveseat oak, talking, and slowly becoming intimate with each other, all within Molly’s backyard.
Another year went by, and no other shootouts occurred. Waco got back to being a bustling place. I breathed a sigh of relief, as I thought to myself that the entire sorry mess was finally over.
I saw Inez every day and we talked. I continued with my courier business and was very busy delivering packages. It was becoming quite a lucrative business. This was the first time in my life that I actually had money. I had no big expenses so I saved almost every penny that I earned. Gleefully I watched as it accumulated into a bundle of money like I’d never seen before. Inez a
nd I talked constantly about our future. I would use the money I was saving to attend Baylor to become a lawyer. I wanted to be able to prosecute whoever did this to Mr. Brann as well as to provide his daughter with a comfortable living once we got married. I never proposed to her, but when we talked it was always “we” would do this and “we” would do that. Now the “we” was no longer the “royal we,” but instead was a “you and me” we. I always assumed we would get married and I believe she did as well. Over the years, I’d treat her to an occasional modest dinner here and there but mostly I was saving up for my education. We started acting more and more as a couple and spent hours and hours at Molly’s place. We knew all the ladies by first name and most of the johns that would visit.
I was seventeen at the time and she was nineteen. We were both busy asking around town who knew about the assassination of Mr. Brann. We enquired to the point of making pests of ourselves. Many people tired of discussing it. I think some people purposely did not engage with us or sent us on wild goose chases, as they knew more than they were telling. However, we were determined to get to the truth of the matter. Some of the folks we suspected of being complicit in the assassination started spreading rumors about us, particularly as we were spending a lot of time at Molly’s house. We didn’t care. They could talk all they wanted. They were not going to stop us from getting to the bottom of it.
But one day, my world came crashing down on me. Mrs. Brann had a brother living in Oklahoma and she decided that she and the children were moving there. When Inez told me, I looked at her and asked her what she was going to do. She said she didn’t know yet. I said, “Let’s get married so that we can move in together and start our own family.” She didn’t say a word but I could tell that she was thinking about it. She just didn’t have an answer yet. I asked her to think about it, and of course she said that she would. I knew that she would say “yes.”