It Happened in Silence

by Jay, Karla M

  “Warden said these two come in dead from working the pines,” the smoker says. “Not asking how or why.”

  The hair rises at the back of my neck. Sure, hundreds of work gangs are spread out all over Georgia with logging companies, but far as I know, my work crew’s the only group “working the pines” from County Prison Camp. My guts roll, and a bad feeling settles in my chest. I move closer. A twig snaps under my foot. Dangit!

  The men freeze and slowly look around. Seconds tick by.

  I hold my breath and daresn’t move.

  After what seems like God’s eternity, Smoker Feller says, “Deer.”

  “We done dug deep enough.” The first feller’s voice has gone higher, reaching into gal territory. “Let’s roll them in and beat it back to town.”

  I peek round the building again as the men drop their shovels. While they are situating themselves round the first body, I move closer, slipping behind a big pine. Sideways.

  They lift a body clothed in convict stripes by the legs and hands and swing him to the hole. The moonlight hits him suddenlike. It’s Frederick Sharp, made haintly white in the light. Blood covers the side of his head. Dark stains cover his shirt.

  I hush a gasp. Don’t need to look too close to know the white guy who had the fit is next. The warden shook my hand when I brought these two in. He’s so dishonest I should’ve counted my fingers when we were done just to make sure.

  The two convicts needed doctoring, not killing. Both their heads look smashed in. One guard here is hired to be The Whipper. Loves cutting up everyone with his braided leather crop ’til they’re bleeding like a pig. And laughs all the harder when they beg him to stop. He’s the one I bet done this at the warden’s bidding.

  My stomach’s spinning like an eddy, and I fight to keep my supper down. It ain’t right. But who to tell? I know where I stand on this kind of injustice. It’s plain rotten to the core. And staying silent is a betrayal to my Christian rearing.

  No way I’m approaching the warden here, but Taggert needs to know. His workers didn’t get sent to the State Penitentiary Hospital. They were killed and dumped in a secret grave.

  The men finish up and pack their shovels through the door of the shed. They leave through the woods, a lantern lighting their way, and finally disappear out of sight.

  My legs shake, as if fighting to hold me up, all the way back to the trustee house. One small light burns at the end of the building, and I’m grateful for the dimness as I drop onto my cot. Tuck is snoring and the others are settled under their blankets.

  Being arrested and put on the chain gang was me hitting rock bottom. Or so’s I thought. I never suspected there was a whole nother level below that.

  This must be what hell’s like.

  The morning blooms bright, which makes no kind of sense because of what I know happened after dark. Sometimes I think deep in the night is the hardest time to be alive. All my worries and dark secrets swirl in my mind like in a thick muddy swamp.

  My eyes burn from no slumber while I pull on my pants.

  Tuck is up and running off at the mouth. He looks my way. “What’s wrong?”

  “Didn’t sleep, I guess.” I splash water on my face and use my shirt to dry it instead of that dirty towel everyone else uses.

  “I’ll say. You do look lower than a bowlegged caterpillar.” He chuckles and punches my arm. “You up to driving the wagon?”

  I’m so hopped up to get away from this place, nothing will stop me from leaving.

  “Not a worry. Been steering a mule since I was wagon-wheel high.”

  “Let me know if you need me to take over.”

  After rushing through breakfast, I feed the mule. I push my face into his side and breathe in his strong animal scent, calming my nerves. I gotta pull myself together. Seeing prisoners killed for minor trespasses ain’t new. It happened at the quarry. But two fellers doing their time, needing medical help? It don’t sit right with me.

  Speaking up’s what I should do. Getting through my sentence and leaving here is what stops me though. Only way to get past last night in my mind is knowing one day soon, I can tell. I’ll fly to a bare branch like a crow and scream what I know. Newspapermen are always looking for stories.

  But will anyone listen? This world’s chock-full of despair—yours, mine, theirs. It’s a lot of telling and not enough listening.

  The work groups are counted and sorted for the day’s gangs. Groups mosey off to workplaces within walking distance. Five miles or less.

  The four prisoners for our work gang are waiting with a guard by the wagon. Tuck and me let them settle in the back before we leave the prison camp. They looked relieved to be going someplace new, a feeling that’s fresh in my mind.

  Downtown Cartersville is coming to life. People stop and watch us go by. When I was on the quarry gang, we walked in long chained-up lines to Ladds Mountain. Families set up along the roadside with blankets and vittles as if we were a parade to behold. Boys taunted us and some threw bottles. We were told to keep our eyes down and mouths shut.

  I pull to a stop at the J & L Mercantile. Tuck heads inside with the list of eats we need. Don’t know the convicts well enough to leave them alone. After a few weeks together, we learn to trust each other, but that ain’t today.

  Two young women come out of the Ross & Bradley Lunch Counter ’cross from where I parked. I turn my head when they look my way. Even without the striped clothing, they know I’m an inmate.

  One day I’d like me a steady gal. Had one for a time in Nebraska last year until her pa heard I come in on a train. She was a candymaker at the factory pert near my boarding house outside Lincoln. She had these pouty lips that were soft and sweet. I swear, before and after we kissed was like someone parted the air and said you can’t go back to that old way of breathing. We would go for breakfast at a diner like this one ’cross the street. Pancakes and bacon. Lordy I miss hearty vittles like that.

  I miss her too.

  Tuck returns with the grocer at his back. They set five burlap pokes in the wagon betwixt the convicts.

  “Get the bread out,” I say to Tuck. We learned on the last journey to town, we don’t need to watch our backs as much if we feed the convicts. And Taggert didn’t take no notice that a loaf was missing. The convicts nod their appreciation ’cause many ain’t tasted bread for months, or maybe years.

  The next stop is the one I dread. Miss Lily’s Threads & Things is two blocks over and sells hand-tufted bedcovers, a fast-growing at-home trade. So many of these types of stores opened up along the Old Dixie Highway, it got the nickname Bedspread Boulevard. Guess bedspread is what high-minded folk call them. Back home we just call them covers.

  I whoa the mule again and we stop in front of a shop. Fancy wood scrolling gussies up the door and windows. Lacy white curtains hide the fact that in the back rooms, other than deals on covers are conducted.

  “Be back directly,” I say.

  I carry Taggert’s note inside. A young girl with clipped blonde hair sits behind a table, working on a cover. Shelves along the walls are filled with folded ones arranged by color. Other areas sell sewing stuff. Ribbon and pillows and thread.

  “Good morning. Can I help you?” she says. The girl stands and walks to me. She’s wearing a real purty dress that my sisters would label snappy and stylish.

  I slap Taggert’s folded note against my leg.

  “I have a message for Miss Lily.”

  The girl’s gaze hardens a might too quick for my liking.

  Now I’m embarrassed. “Not me. From my boss.” Don’t want her to think I’m hiring gals for wicked purposes.

  She drops her voice so I can barely hear her and looks around in all directions.

  “Give me the paper and get out.”

  I lean forward. She snaps it from my hand faster than a snake striking.

 
“I’m sorry.” My face feels like it’s burning. “I don’t have any choice in the matter.”

  She moves away from me and narrows her eyes so much, all I see is her lashes.

  “Sometimes a hard choice and the right choice are the same thing.”

  Got no time to explain myself or why I’m stuck with no recourse, so I nod and leave.

  “You get in a quarrel in there?” Tuck says as I climb onto the wagon seat. “You look like you wanna kill somebody.”

  “Not hardly.” I slap the reins and steer the mule away from Main Street. “Just feeling cross. Townsfolk guessing what my life’s all about without knowing me.”

  “The martyr type,” Tuck says. “Them’s the sort that get my ire up. Makes me wanna yell for them to climb off the cross ’cause someone else can use the wood.”

  I laugh and it feels good.

  My body relaxes as we leave the last houses behind and climb Old Goode Road. I steer the wagon through coltsfoot. The small, green, leafy plant blankets the forest this time of year and fills the air with a balsam scent. The trail crosses a small wooden bridge, and the clomp clomp of the mule’s hooves on the timbers echo like thunder through the woods. Moss and fern line the path in shades of bright green that stand out even more against the iron-rich orange dirt. The convicts are singing folk songs behind us, the fresh air a liberating feeling, I guess.

  About five miles to the new camp, we break free of the trees and into a meadow. A ways off, a storm is fixing itself in a mighty form, like a monstrous big gray genie, filling the sky with angry black clouds. Lightning spikes toward the ground, announcing its intention to set our nerves on edge. With the heaping gloom, it’ll be dark-thirty before we reach the camp, and the men in the forest could be struck if they don’t hustle outta there.

  Taggert’s gonna be furious if he loses another day of nicking trees.

  “Will we beat it?” Tuck says, his face turned to the sky, thumb and pointer finger pinching the skin on his throat.

  I raise my eyebrows and offer a maybe, maybe not look.

  “My poppy used to say, ‘If’n you want help, look to the ends of your arms first.’ I’m gonna give it my purest effort. Hang on.” I flick the reins and yell, “Giddy Up!”

  The mule sets off at a faster clip, bouncing us on the seat. The prisoners grip the wagon sides and hang on for dear life.

  Blue-white stingers knife down from the mean-looking clouds and nearly singe the treetops with crooked fingers. I push the mule harder, and we finally leave the open pasture and get into the blackening forest. Now we are in danger. Thunder grumbles and growls. Probably angry that lightning is always the spectacle, while thunder trails behind rumbling a late-to-dinner warning.

  Day’s light turns to dusk. Ground twisters full of leaves spin inside the woods, and I squint to keep the flying bits outta my eyes.

  “Almost there,” I call over the rumbling storm. The first drops splat big and fat against my skin, and I turn in my seat. “Hunch over them bags back there. They need to stay dry.”

  The fellers do just that.

  Up ahead I see the blurry shapes of the convict cages.

  “We’re here,” Tuck calls out.

  I get the mule stopped. The ground’s now covered with little streams and puddles. The trustees come running through the mud to grab the sacks and hustle them to a dry tent. Protecting the food above the convicts. But when you’ve known hunger for days, I reckon it’s the natural first choice.

  The girl’s words from Miss Lily’s Threads & Things come back to me. “Sometimes a hard choice and the right choice are the same thing.”

  Right now, I got no choice. I’m riding out my sentence.

  Taggert struts toward the wagon like a cantankerous hell-bent rooster, whip coiled in his hand. He always likes to greet the convicts thisaway. Rain pours off the back of his hat.

  “You S-O-Bs are mine now. The warden might have picked you, but don’t mean I gotta like you.”

  He hooks a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Get on over to the cages.”

  He turns to me as I unfetter the mule.

  “You get that note to Miss Lily?”

  I hate the guy. These young girls are all he can think about, though he’s married and all.

  “Yes, sir.” A fenced-in area has been built since the gang got here this morning. I hustle the mule there and run back, heading for the trustee tent.

  Taggert meets me there, standing under a tarp the fellers raised above the door flap.

  “Everything else work out?”

  I need to tell him ’bout the warden killing the convicts. But a strain in his voice stops me cold. He’s testing out what I know.

  A chill sweeps clean through me. The letter I handed Warden Hauser from Taggert. What did it say? “Yup. All fine and dandy.”

  Maybe the warden was abiding Taggert’s orders to kill the workers. Then I recollect something Taggert said before I left with the maimed convicts, and I know my hunch to be true. He was mad ’cause the two men couldn’t work no more. Muttered something ’bout it costing thirty cents a day to treat them at the hospital. Money that comes out of his earnings.

  I duck my head to hide my look of shock but reckon I shouldn’t be surprised. The feller’s heart pumps pure deceit instead of blood.

  He’s side-eyeing me like a hunting hawk. In his mind we are like mice, his to do with as he sees fit.

  I need to hold that in my mind the next four months.

  Ardith Dobbs

  “Pay better attention, Oliver.” We’re almost to William’s office, and I swear the child has stumbled every time the sidewalk changes from wood to cement to brick. I grip his hand tighter while I carry the basket of food in the other. “Daddy has a nice surprise for you as soon as we get there.”

  “My legs are walking as fast as they go, Mommy.”

  In one hand he holds a toy dirigible the Marx Toy Company sent to William’s advertising office. I need only to write to a company and tell them my husband has a popular advertising company in Atlanta, and they send samples of what they’re promoting. Oliver is dressed in brown tweed shorts and knit sweater two-piece romper from The Charles Williams Stores of New York City. With boys’ clothes running up to $4.89 for a good suit, and the way he grows out of them so fast, I have no problem writing letters every day. I already have a bureau drawer full of baby gowns for when Katherine arrives. I keep the fancier ones with the pastel lace and embroidery, and the plain ones I give to the women I visit for insurance collection or send them to the New Hope Charity Home we sponsor.

  We walk by the Walthour & Hood Bicycle Company. William says the main building in Atlanta is almost a city block long and five stories high, built from local bricks like most of Atlanta. The window displays the newest in Roadsters, Bikeabouts, and the specialty bicycle called the Motorbike. William threatened that he will get one for me if I ever dent the car again. I knew he was teasing. It’s such a small ding, and the black paint to fix it is the same one everyone uses.

  I slow as we start to pass the Ludlow Steamship and Train Travel Adventures shop. The Great White Fleet has a poster for a twenty-five-day cruise to Cuba, Jamaica, and the Golden Caribbean “where the pirates hid their treasure.” I once suggested a steamship tour to William, and he was aghast that I would ever get on a ship after what happened to my parents. That Titanic lie worked when I needed it, but it circles back like bad cider when my memory gets unreliable.

  Displayed are brochures from all the major railways. See Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier National Park. Book a luxury train from Chicago this summer!

  “Let’s go in here for a second.” I pull Oliver inside the travel company and approach the man behind the counter. “How are you?”

  “Fine, ma’am.” He sets his wire-rimmed reading glasses on the counter. “May I help you with something?”


  “Yes. I’m curious about the train trips for this summer. What would something like that cost for my husband and me?”

  “For you?” He studies my swollen midsection.

  I pull Oliver in front of me to try to hide. How impertinent. “Yes. My husband and I have often talked of travel. You may know him. William Dobbs, two doors down?” I will have to ask William what he thinks of this man.

  “Of course. He has two fine companies.” He clears his throat and reaches for a leaflet behind him, showing Yellowstone National Park. “This trip takes fifteen days from Chicago and includes all of the meals and a sleeper car with a private sitting room. That’s two hundred and twenty-one dollars a person.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” William would choke on that amount, considering he just paid $465 for our new Ford. “I’ll take that information, and William and I will discuss it.”

  He hands me the brochure before we leave.

  “Are we going on a train?” Oliver asks, his tipped-up face full of delight.

  “Mostly mommies and daddies go on these tours.” His face falls. “But when you’re older, we can all go on a trip. Okay?” I picture the four of us and a nanny traveling across the country. This baby will be my last. Miss Barr’s final words to me ring in my head every day. “It’s your job from now on to not misunderstand anything you see.” I can’t stay vigilant with a passel—I mean a large family of children, now can I?

  “Okay.” Oliver takes my hand, and we head to William’s building. It’s a two-story structure with a fifteen-foot black water tank perched on the roof. Two large windows offer views from the first floor, and the second floor has four taller, more narrow windows. That’s the insurance company, accessed by climbing a flight of interior wooden stairs.

  We enter and Oliver yells, “Daddy!” Noisy printing machines are clacking in the back room, and the place smells of ink and paper, not an unpleasant scent.

  William scoops up Oliver, who throws his arms around William’s neck and snuggles close. My husband sends me a dimpled smile. “We’ll be right back. I have something for our little man.”