George & Rue

by George Elliott Clarke

  The Hamiltons entered the York County Courthouse like a deuce of devils, with George’s piety contrasting unhelpfully with Rue’s disdain, and with George’s religiosity disguising a Rufus-like rufous and ferrous disdain. But nothing could allay public outrage. Whites were feelin shaky now round their Coloured cleaners and cooks and maids: “Negroes could be annihilators—despite their giant smiles!” Whites didn’t like the idea of grinning, killer niggers. So the boys became solid idols for popular fury.

  Newspapers thudded like slabs of beef against the jailhouse floor. They warbled lustily of this murder drama. “Negro thugs with hammers”; “Coloured crooks with blonde tarts.” Reporters called the brothers Scarface Titus and Pretty Boy Macbeth; they mixed “God Save the King” with a few bars of “Dixie.”

  Letter writers to opinion pages cried for blood, as did at least one poet:

  “The brain exploded. The occipital busted ugly /—as if the hammer were of such a gross calibre of overkill, /it was a Hiroshima-style bomb: /Violence to devastate not only a big city, /but much of a country besides.”—The Fiddlehead (Fredericton, N.B.).

  The tabs used scowling photos of them condemned boys. The pics were silvery formaldehyde fixing the cons in brilliant infamy. But editors knew that no matter how bad those negatives were, Silver’s autopsy photos were worse.

  The two Hamiltons appeared as black as sin. No one could whitewash their atrocity into a mere mistake. Two scions of Three Mile Plains had to perish, suspensus per collum. They had to die at the speed of light, shadowed.

  V

  PLUMP, GRIMACING, his Conservative skin tweeded over, Mr. Justice Jeremiah Chaud, under his black robes, presided over York County’s fake Grecian courtroom like a squat smokestack stabbing through a plaster Acropolis. He bossed his realm like a slightly less portly J. Edgar Hoover. Raised in Miramichi, his parley was as beautiful as italic script, but also as dark-edged as letters on a Gothic headstone. Sharp words aimed like knives. As an utterly English Acadian, with not one particle of French that he could pronounce properly, as a soul who was now sycophantically subordinate to the remnants of the original Anglo-Saxon empire, he felt it was his duty to ensure that the poor—and all those who were not purely white and English—stayed in their fetid stations: the Mi’kmak, the Acadians, the Negroes…. Under the twisting fan above his big head, useless in the May heat, he swept his perspiring face incessantly with his napkin.

  For Chaud, as for anyone, the Hamiltons’ alleged crime was senseless; it had left a young father dead on a deserted road. Silver had been struck like he was a domesticated beast, just for a zoot suit, and bejeezly-bad wine. Then followed that Kafkaesque spree with the body. But the killers’ colour was not immaterial: it made a black crime even blacker. Chaud had to wonder, “Is a Negro’s laugh pastoral—or pathological?” That the Hamiltons were Coloured didn’t alter the clear facts that two men had slugged, robbed, and murdered an innocent husband and father, and then outraged his corpse, all in cold blood.

  Chaud’s understanding was that the Hamiltons had got some beer and got fired up with a deadly lust for money to splash on wine and women. The ugly results of an unhygienic paternity, they were a strain of tramps, laggards, dullards, retards, with violent, cotton-picking hands that, if permitted, would level the Parthenon to a sty.

  Chaud also understood that the brothers, if found guilty, would both hang, even if George’d never hit Silver a single lick. Under the Criminal Code of Canada it didn’t matter who’d, individually, killed: the law was remorseless here. It took the view that Silver wouldn’t’ve come to harm later if the boys hadn’t planned on robbery initially, regardless of whether they’d wanted violence. “Good intentions” didn’t count. That George may not’ve meant Silver to die, that he may not’ve struck Silver, that he was remorseful about what Rufus did, all these facts—if true—meant nothing. Section 69 of the Criminal Code was fatally clear on the point.

  Whether or not Silver died instantly or after he was first laid down in the snowy woods for any animal to sniff and gnaw on or whether it was after he was lugged and jammed into the trunk of his own taxi, it was still homicide. Once the brothers formed the common, illegal purpose to use a hammer as a weapon to effect robbery, they should have known that murder would issue: hit a man with a hammer and it’s just blood everywhere.

  Thirty-year-old Crown Prosecutor Alphaeus Boyd—bearded, bespectacled, sleek, silk-suited—viewed the two brothers as one deadly criminal: Rufus-George, with suspect clothes, dirty looks, shifty grammar. Boyd heard a scintilla of Africa, of bush, in the boys’ talk; also a hint of red men’s hatchets, from before Europe’s guns and cannons thrust Christ and Shakespeare upon the savages. Considering the case in his law offices, he scrupled to philosophize in his heart: “Are the Negroes oppressed? Yes. But they are not trampled in the streets or brutalized in their houses. Did the Hamiltons impiously procure Silver’s death? The charge is more than credible.” It was his job to coax George’s testimony into a death writ against Rufus—and against the star witness himself. He could not forget either that his looming appointment as the deputy attorney general of the Province of New Brunswick could be withdrawn if the jury was not persuaded by the evidence and his arguments to bring mortal convictions against the boys.

  VI

  GEORGE’S trial was really Rufus’s trial, save that Rufus didn’t testify. Fine: for Chaud, Boyd, and his own lawyer, Wilfred Dickey (always celebrated for his Liberal-red ties and anti-Tory wit), Georgie described all he and Rue’d done in luring Burgundy out to the Richibucto Road and beating in his head, or, rather, what Rue had done in slaying Burgundy and what Georgie had done in stealing cash and a car and burning a watch and a ring. A fessed-up Sally Ann Christian, Georgie felt shielded by the truth.

  The trial began badly though, for George attempted a comic-book-inspired defence he’d even concealed from Dickey. At the first opportunity in the witness box, he looked over at Chaud, sweltering in the standing-room-only courtroom, and intoned, confidently, “Your Honour, sir, I object of answerin any questions on the ground they might be discriminatin on me.” When the courtroom dissolved into a chorus of hooting, big-top-like laughs, George was mortified.

  Chaud had to drive the gavel down and down upon his desk and cry, “Order! Order! Order!” George swivelled around, bewildered.

  Chaud then asked him, kindly, “Does the witness seek the court’s protection?”

  George nodded vigorously. “I’m pleadin the Fifth Amendment, Your Honour.” More laughter, more gavel bangs. Chaud explained that this court of law was in His Majesty the King’s Province of New Brunswick, not in rebellious America. Too, his own proper Canadian address was “My Lord,” not “Your Honour.”

  Rufus’s lawyer, thirty-four-year-old Carl Waley, so dashingly Rue-stylish in dress and Rue-cool in rhetoric, grilled George hardest. He had to prove this boy’s testimony balderdash. “You do crime for a living, right? You steal food and firewood.”

  George shot back: “I was doing penny-andy—penny-ante—crimes because I have a wife and baby boy and a newborn baby girl, but I never stole anything in Fredericton until Rufus come home.”

  Chaud harrumphed. “Aren’t you despicably using your wife and babies as alibis?”

  “No, Your Hon—I mean, My Lord.”

  Waley charged on. “You put all the blame on Rufus. Why?”

  “You see, my brother thinks ahead of time. He knows about doing wrong. I thought Rufus was tops until he started acting against me.”

  Waley thundered, “Acting against you? What? You’re the one who’s testifying for the Crown and trying to hang your own brother. Why?”

  “It has to do with the truth.” George paused, and then he said fatal words: “I did my share and Rue did his. I am as much to blame as my brother.”

  Chaud, Boyd, and Waley took note of this “admission.”

  Questioning George about the testimony of Zelda King, Yamila James, Jehial States, and others, Waley asked, “Is it so diff
icult for you to accept the word of your Coloured neighbours, even when it counts against you?”

  George pondered. “Sometimes, and sometimes ain’t. We are Coloured boys, you see. I don’t trust anyone in Barker’s Point of my own colour. I don’t trust any of em.”

  Waley pushed George further: “The fact is, on the night of January 7th, weren’t you ready to hit a man quite dangerously to rob him and run?”

  “As I explained before, I wanted to get some money.” George shifted in his seat.

  Waley demanded, “Can money bandage up blood? Can it paper over a cracked skull?”

  “But I never hurt a fly and never hit a man in my life.”

  “Which is worse, to swat a fly or hammer a man?”

  “Fly ain’t a man, a man ain’t a fly, but both like to live.”

  “When you dropped the hammer, as you claim, why didn’t you let it lay?”

  “Well, sir, poor people don’t throw away nothing. Just because the hammer was gone, doesn’t mean I was going to let go of it.”

  “You wanted that hammer to bang it on people’s heads.” Chaud intervened: “Did you use a hammer for the same purpose before?”

  George said, “Not concerning human beings, Your Honour.” Guffaws convulsed the court. George added, smiling, “My Lord.”

  Waley continued his attack. “Didn’t you know all of the taxi drivers in Fredericton personally?”

  George was precise. “I knew 99½ per cent of them personable.”

  “So, no matter who would’ve answered the call, you would’ve been ready to hit and rob them.”

  “Just because I knew every taxi driver in the city of Fredericton, or in the world, does not say I like them all.”

  Waley, strut-swaggering back and forth, recovered. “Did you mean if it was someone you didn’t like, you would strike and plunder them?”

  “No. Do you like everybody you know personably?”

  “What is responsible for the fresh details in your story?” George stared back. “The truth.”

  “You claim that you told your brother to pick up the hammer you so coincidentally dropped because you were afraid Silver would see it. Now, why should Silver have been bothered to see you, dressed like a carpenter, with a hammer in your care?”

  George inhaled, then half-whistled-exhaled. “We’re Coloured boys, and Silver’s with us on a lonely road with nobody else around and he sees one of us with a hammer: Now, what would you think?”

  Waley sparred: “Isn’t that prejudiced, a prejudiced view?” “Depends on your colour.”

  Waley scratched for blood. “Didn’t you go to Saint John to try to escape?”

  George replied, “If I’d been trying to escape, I would’ve kept on going.”

  “You went to Saint John with a murdered man in the trunk of the car.”

  George admitted: “There was something wrong with my head.”

  “I’ll say,” snapped Waley. “Why did you decide to stop at 47 Moore Street in Saint John?”

  George felt shaky suddenly; his nerves were rassling and jangling with each other; his bowels were backin up into his stomach. He said, “I wanted to pay Clarkie—Dutchy—a bill I owed. Clarkie was a great pal.”

  “After taking it from the pocket of a dead man? After coming from a car where a dead man’s body was in the trunk? Remember to speak honestly: a half-truth can’t be testimony!”

  “I had the money and I had the debt.” George felt a little better: maybe Waley didn’t know about Lovea.

  “You ate and drank and played music. Didn’t you have some indigestion?”

  “I did not hit Silver. I did not kill Silver.” “You didn’t have any trouble eating afterwards.” “I never killed him. Why should I have indigestion?” “It’s cold-blooded behaviour for a killer.” “Rudy hit that man, not me. Why should I quit eating and drinking?”

  “Why didn’t you immediately pay the doctor’s bill for delivering your infant daughter instead of driving to Saint John to shower a murdered man’s money on a whore?”

  Blondola’s brown face flushed, then tears rushed her eyes, and she rose instantly and fled the court.

  Watching his wife retreat, humiliated, George shouted at Waley, “Why do you need to disgrace me? I am disgraced enough.”

  Rue looked at his crying, voice-cracking brother and smiled, coldly, from the prisoner’s box. Much tut-tutting in the courtroom.

  “Didn’t you spend the night with a whore? Didn’t you go drinking and sleeping with another woman in Saint John, while your wife lay here confined in the hospital?”

  George shouted, “Because of the nervousness of my nerves.”

  “You wasted considerable money in Saint John.”

  Georgie just shrugged, but he wept silently as he pictured Blondola fleeing the murmuring court.

  Chaud said coolly, “The prisoner in the witness box will reply.”

  “I give her twenty dollars. There’s no law against it. I’d have given all of Silver’s cash away to get rid of it.”

  Waley shot back: “You drove coldly down to Saint John to dash the car and corpse. Instead, you took drinks and a dame at 47 Moore Street.”

  Chaud weighed in: “And you only paid the doctor’s bill.”

  George nodded. “I bought baby powder, baby oil, flour, sugar, bread, butter, that sort of thing.”

  Chaud shook his head. “And you treated the whole Negro camp to booze with a murdered man’s money.”

  Next, Georgie was asked to demonstrate on a papier-mâché dummy precisely how Rue had struck Silver. The plaster head busted, disintegrated. It looked like Silver hadn’t just been murdered, but obliterated.

  Summing up the case against Georgie, Chaud told the jury, “To me, the crux of the matter is, George practically hands over the hammer to Rue, thus guaranteeing Burgundy’s bludgeoning. Clearly, the brothers were allies.”

  Plumsy Peters’s testimony pounded more nails into two metaphorical coffins. He said he seen big spending by Rue on the murder weekend. Yep, Rue’d “got an overcoat out of the Boston Tailors, a new felt hat, a black jacket from Cash and Carry Cleaners on Queen Street, a case of wine (twelve quart bottles), blackberry brandy, and sheets of piano music. I figured he got cash from Georgie. So I asked Georgie, and he said Rue’d hit Silver an awful blow. I asked Rudy about it, he said, ‘I’ll twist Georgie’s neck like a coat hanger.’ I could tell the boys’d quarrelled badly.”

  Alphaeus Boyd asked, “Are you positive you were, at this time, sober?”

  Plumsy joked: “I ain’t positive cause I was drinkin.”

  Boyd offered a slurring aside. “So, you’re a simon-pure Negro?”

  Plumsy just shrugged. “You ain’t proved opposite.”

  Waley told Plumsy, “You were thieving firewood. You don’t like to work, do you?”

  “I bet I worked more in my life than you have!”

  Waley asked, “What were you doing the night Silver was murdered?”

  “I was out stealing wood that night. I doesn’t take a gang. I goes solo.”

  “You didn’t change your clothes. You always wear dress pants when you go out thieving wood?”

  Plumsy laughed: “Wouldn’t you? It gives a ready alibi.”

  Rufus testified in his own defence at his separate trial, but his speech delivered merely cryptic satire.

  Boyd asked, “Why are you here, Rufus?”

  Rue explained: “Because my mama and papa made me—just like you.”

  Boyd tried again. “Does George wear glasses reading?”

  Rue grinned. “I never seen him reading.”

  Rufus’ replies so irritated Chaud that he asked Boyd, “How long will you proceed, Prosecutor, with this pilgrimage of the defendant? What has it to do with murder? I’m anticipating the finale of his music and tippling and tomcatting and smoking and so on.”

  Rufus sloughed off the proceedings.

  Boyd noticed: “You speak almost perfect English, don’t you?”

  Rue smiled tig
htly. “I do.”

  Boyd retorted: “Are you allergic to the truth?”

  “Ain’t nostalgic for nothin, sir.”

  Boyd focused on picayune points. “You didn’t mention you were a pianist at the preliminary hearing.”

  “The question wasn’t asked.”

  “But you’ve mentioned it today.”

  “Because you asked me today.”

  Boyd queried Rue about Georgie’s drinking habits.

  “It’s a habit of his. When he takes a drink, he believes in taking a good one. He goes straight for the hard liquor and will not pause for God—or man.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Maybe I am wrong and maybe I am right. But it’s a sobering thought to see him intoxicated.”

  Boyd then probed Rue’s interest in India States. “Is she a white woman?”

  “She is not Caucasian.”

  “Why haven’t you mentioned her before now?”

  “I’ve done everything I can to keep Miss States out of this turbulent situation. She is a respectable woman. We wanted to marry here at the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel, in a two-piano ceremony. She was going to wear a ritzy, white lace Victorian gown, while I put on jazz.”

  Boyd approached Rue with an exhibit, asked, “Do you recognize these buttons? They are from Silver’s coat.”

  “These buttons could be off anything.”

  Chaud interjected, “I am comfortable letting the jury decide.”

  Boyd demanded, “Why did you use a dead man’s money to buy clothing?”

  Rue said levelly, “I didn’t know the money belonged to Burgundy. The only face on it was the King’s.” The courtroom snickered. “As a Coloured man, I always strive to make a good impression.”

  Boyd asked, sneeringly, “Are you as delicate as a baby, Rufus?”

  “My hands are priceless.”

  At the trial’s end, George told the court, “The words in my mouth are too sad to speak…. When the court finishes, I will show that it was an accident. What happened. I study the Bible. It’s horrible to look at the ground and just see dirt.”