“Get your fresh hot cracklin’s here!” Rafferty shouted. “Cracklin’s and beer, cracklin’s and beer!”
O’Dell shuffled up to the edge of the deck of the gallows and looked out over the crowd.
“I—bid—farewell—I bid you all good-bye.” He paused for a moment, then swallowed and continued.
“God help any man who goes afoul of the judge and the sheriff in this town. I know you are all afeared to talk, but I ain’t got nothing to be afeared of anymore. What the judge and the sheriff is doing by hanging me now is nothing but murder pure and simple, and that’s the sure and certain truth of it. They’ve got this town and county under their thumb, same as a king of old. And this, being America, that ain’t in no way right.”
After he finished, he turned to the sheriff. “I thank you for letting me say my piece. I figured you would try and shut me up.”
“Seein’ as you are about to be hung, and are goin’ to be dead in a few minutes, ain’t no need for me to be trying to shut you up now,” Sheriff Poindexter said.
O’Dell walked back to the rope, and the hangman, who had been standing to one side, was there waiting for him. He pointed out the exact spot where he wanted O’Dell to stand. While the hangman was adjusting the straps, O’Dell looked around, and as he recognized people he bowed to them and they shouted.
“Good-bye, A.J., good-bye.”
Mingled with the good-byes came the voice of Rafferty. “Get your hot cracklin’s and cool beer, right here!”
“I will remember you, A.J.!” a woman shouted. This came from one of the soiled doves.
“Do you want a hood?”
“No,” O’Dell said. He stared directly at the judge, who was standing in the front row. “I want to be lookin’ directly at the son of a bitch who is murderin’ me.”
The hangman fitted the noose over O’Dell’s head, then the sheriff and deputies stepped away from the trap door. The hangman walked over, pulled the lever, and A.J. O’Dell dropped out of this world.
There was silence for a moment after the fall and then a babble of voices.
“Is he still kicking?”
“Is he dead?”
These questions were made necessary by the fact that O’Dell’s body could only be seen from mid-chest up; the bottom two-thirds of his body was hanging below the open trap and hidden from sight by the curtain that kept the under part of the gallows from view.
The babble continued until at the end of four or five minutes some of O’Dell’s friends shouted out: “All right, you sons of bitches! You’ve let him hang there long enough. Take him down.”
Sheriff Poindexter, perhaps responding to the plea, nodded toward his deputies. “Go ahead, you can take him down, now.”
The body was taken down, lifted into the wagon, and delivered to Nunnelee’s funeral home. Within two hours after he was hanged, he was put into a hole and covered up.
The show was over.
Harold Denham was a newspaper man, and he duly reported the hanging. But he liked to consider himself a crusading newspaperman, so in addition to reporting the news, Harold Denham felt compelled to write an editorial as well.
A.J. O’Dell Hanged
WAS THIS HANGING NECESSARY?
In what has become all too common an occurrence, Mr. A.J. O’Dell, a rancher, became the sixth person to be hanged in Sorrento this year. Mr. O’Dell’s crime, if indeed it could be called a crime, was to take possession of a horse from his neighbor, Clyde Dumey, as a means of reminding Dumey that he owed O’Dell five hundred dollars for an unpaid debt over the sale of a seed bull and six breeding heifers. Ironically, the horse that Mr. O’Dell “borrowed” was valued at no more than one hundred dollars, a sum much less than the amount owed by Dumey.
Judge Dawes, in a trial that had neither jury, nor defense attorney (it is the contention of the judge, prosecutor, and sheriff that O’Dell waived those rights), found Mr. O’Dell guilty of horse stealing. The sentence affixed was death by hanging, and that sentence was carried out, as described in another article in this newspaper.
The question must be asked, why did Mr. O’Dell waive his right to a trial by jury, and to legal representation? In the opinion of this editor, it is because Mr. O’Dell was never informed of the seriousness of the charge against him. Indeed, when confronted by the court as to whether he took the horse, he readily admitted to same, then attempted to use that opportunity to appeal to the court to see to it that the fair debt owed him was paid.
Judge Dawes dismissed without comment Mr. O’Dell’s petition for redress of his grievance. Instead, he sentenced O’Dell to death by hanging.
Because this case seemed puzzling, the editor of this journal has done some investigation. It is now known that Mr. Dumey, against whom Mr. O’Dell had a claim, is Judge Dawes’s brother-in-law. As Mr. O’Dell has no immediate next of kin, his claim against Dumey for moneys owed has now been dropped.
As citizens of Texas, we are but five years free from the oppressive policies of Reconstruction. But while freedom has reached our fellow Texans, we, in Sorrento, have a yoke upon our necks that is as heavy and tyrannical as anything forced upon us by Reconstruction, or by the Mexicans before we fought for, and achieved, our independence.
The merchants of our town are struggling with a draconian tax burden. The citizens of our town live in fear of the most extreme retaliation for the slightest provocation. No one dare speak their feelings in public, because freedom of speech has been denied them.
Who is responsible for these chains of repression under which our town struggles to find but one breath of free air? The guilty parties are none other than our “elected” leaders. Notice, dear reader, that I put the word elected in quotation marks. I did that to make a point—the point being that while there have been free and unrestricted elections in Texas since the end of Reconstruction, no such freedom has reached Sorrento. Judge Dawes and Sheriff Poindexter, who hold their offices by the ballot, have ensured that they will continue to occupy these offices by intimidating voters.
The sheriff’s deputies watch every polling place, making certain that only those whom they know will vote the way the judge and the sheriff want have free and unfettered access.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I see you are still the crusading journalist,” Doc Gunter said the day after the newspaper came out.
“Are you talking about the story about the hanging, or the editorial comment?” Denham replied.
“Both. You’re taking a chance, you know.”
“Not that big a chance,” Denham said. “Believe me, I’m not that brave. But I figured that if the editorial appeared in the newspaper, enough people would read it that the publicity itself would provide me with some protection.”
“How do you figure that?” Eb Smalley asked. Smalley owned Smalley’s Mercantile, and he, Doc Gunter, and Luke Travers were at “their” table with Harold Denham in the Hog Heaven saloon.
“No, he’s right,” Doc Gunter said. “If a lot of people read this, then something suddenly happens to Harold, it would raise a lot of suspicions, especially since Harold was very specific about naming names.”
“You two were at the hanging, weren’t you?” Smalley asked.
“I had to be,” Doc Gunter said. “I had to pronounce him dead.”
“And I felt that I needed to be there as a newspaperman,” Denham added.
“I didn’t go. I didn’t want to. I’ve seen ’em before,” Travers said.
“Yes, and you can always catch the next one. It isn’t as if it is a rare event in this town, is it?” Doc Gunter replied.
“Did James Earl Van Arsdale argue O’Dell’s case before the jury?” Smalley asked.
“There was no jury trial,” Denham said. “I was there.”
“Yeah, well, the judge, sheriff, and all the deputies are making the claim that before they took O’Dell from the jail down to the courthouse, he said he didn’t want a jury trial,” Doc Gunter said. “I believe he thought that the most
that would happen would be a fine. And I think he thought that he could enlist the court’s assistance in getting back the money Dumey owed him. He didn’t realize that Dumey is one of Judge Dawes’s biggest supporters.”
“It probably wouldn’t have made that much difference if there had been a jury trial. Judge Dawes hand-picks his juries, and they all do exactly what he tells them to do,” Smalley said. “Besides which, I doubt seriously that James Earl Van Arsdale has drawn a sober breath in three years.”
“Van Arsdale’s a good man, though. Drunk or sober, he’s a better man than Gillespie, Poindexter, or Dawes,” Denham said.
“You’ve got that right,” Doc Gunter added in agreement.
“O’Dell wasn’t exactly what you call a sterling citizen,” Smalley said. “I know damn well he has stolen from me a couple of times. And there’s some that swear he’s the one that held up the stage from Commerce City a couple of years ago. But it doesn’t seem to me like he deserved to hang. Especially since he didn’t really steal the horse; he just took it to hold until he got the money that was owed to him.”
“I think at least three of the previous five who were hanged would not have been hanged in any other court. And even the two who probably did deserve to hang didn’t exactly get what you could call a fair trial,” Denham said.
Across the street from the newspaper office, upstairs over the hardware store, James Earl Van Arsdale had his office and his living quarters. At one time he had a house on the north end, in the more affluent part of town. But three years ago a fire had destroyed his house and taken the lives of his wife and infant son. The house lay in burned cinders for more than a year afterward until Van Arsdale finally succumbed to the neighbor’s pressure to get it cleaned up.
He still owned the lot on which the house had stood, but he had no plans of rebuilding. Instead, he moved a cot into his law office and that’s where he lived. Van Arsdale started drinking soon after that, and his law practice, which was once very profitable because he had been a good lawyer, was now barely making enough to sustain him.
Tonight, Van Arsdale was sitting in the dark, drinking, and looking through the window, when he saw two of the sheriff’s deputies stop in front of the newspaper office. They stood there for a moment, looking up and down the street, then, when they determined that they weren’t being watched, they threw a brick through the front window of the newspaper office. Even from up here, and across the street, Van Arsdale could hear the crash of glass.
The two deputies, whom he recognized as Harry Toombs and Josh Peters, ran quickly away from the newspaper office, then darted up the gap that separated the apothecary from the gun store. They disappeared in the shadows, so that by the time the sound of the crashing glass brought others to the scene, they were gone.
“Who did this?” someone asked. “Did anyone see it?”
“Someone better go tell Mr. Denham.”
“I’ll tell him,” another said. “He ain’t goin’ to like it, though. He ain’t goin’ to like it one little bit.”
Back in the saloon, Denham, unaware of the attack on his office, was involved in a discussion about Dawes and Poindexter with the others at his table.
“Somebody should do something,” Travers said.
“You think we haven’t thought about that? Yeah, we want to do something, but the question is, what? What can we do?” Smalley asked.
“I don’t know, maybe Harold’s editorial will wake some people up,” Doc Gunter said. “It isn’t just the fact that Dawes is on a hanging spree, it’s everything he does. The way they fine the whores once a month, the way they collect taxes on every business in town. And not just retail business, mind you. I’m having to pay thirty-five dollars a month just to practice medicine.”
“Yeah, fifty a month for me to keep my mercantile store open,” Smalley said.
“I haven’t been here for a month yet, but apparently it will be costing me that much to run the feed and seed,” Travers said.
“Don’t think I’m exempt,” Denham said. “I’m paying thirty-five dollars a month to publish my newspaper.”
“Harold, you know what you should do? You should send a copy of your newspaper to the governor,” Doc Gunter suggested.
“Yeah!” Smalley added enthusiastically. “If the governor read your article, he would maybe do something about it.”
“The governor is an elected official just like the judge and the sheriff. He’s not going to take a hand in dealing with other elected officials,” Denham said.
“How about the Texas Rangers?” Doc Gunter asked. “If we could get a Texas Ranger here, could be he could straighten a few things out for us.”
“Good idea,” Smalley said. “I know a ranger; I’ll send him a telegram.”
“Better not send it from here,” Denham cautioned.
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
“Hey!” someone shouted from the front door. “Denham! You better come quick! Someone just threw a brick through your front window!”
Denham did get up quickly, followed by Doc Gunter, Smalley, and Travers. The four men hurried down to his newspaper office. The front door was still locked, with the sign turned to read CLOSED. But there was a big, gaping hole in the front window. Denham unlocked the door, pushed it open, then stepped inside. He could see a brick on the floor, surrounded by bits and pieces of the glass that had come from his broken window.
Denham bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I’m sorry, Harold,” Doc Gunter said.
Denham looked back toward his composing room, the press, the table, his trays, and the type drawers. Except for the shattered glass, nothing else seemed to be disturbed.
“It could have been worse,” he said.
“Have you got a broom? I’ll help you get this mess cleaned up,” Smalley offered.
“No,” Denham said, holding out his hand. “Leave it be.”
“What do you mean, ‘leave it be’? You’ve got to get it cleaned up,” Smalley said.
“No, I don’t. I don’t want it cleaned up. Evidently someone did not like what I wrote. I intend to leave it just like it is—as a badge of honor.”
“Harold, you be careful,” Doc Gunter said. “I mean it. I don’t put anything past Dawes or Poindexter.”
“If he thinks throwing a brick through a window is going to keep me quiet, he has another thing coming,” Denham said. He pointed his finger into the air, then, and as if giving a speech, bellowed out: “Preserve the freedom of the human mind and freedom of the press. Every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.”
“Those are some words,” Smalley said.
“They are indeed, sir, but I cannot take credit for them,” Denham replied. “Those words, sir, were uttered by Thomas Jefferson.”
Van Arsdale took another swallow of his whiskey and sat in the dark loneliness of his room, looking down onto the street. He saw Harold Denham the newspaper owner come, along with Doc Gunter, Mr. Smalley, and the new man who had bought the feed and seed store from Donald Lewis.
“Who did this?” one of the other townspeople asked aloud.
“It was our noble sheriff,” Van Arsdale answered quietly in the dark of his room. He held the bottle out toward the window as if in salute. “Our noble sheriff did it.” And though he spoke the words aloud, he did not say them loudly enough for anyone to hear.
James Earl Van Arsdale, son of Congressman Van Arsdale of the 1st Congressional District of Virginia, graduated from William and Mary with honors. He had a bright future ahead of him, a future planned by his father.
“I may seek a seat in the Senate,” the senior Van Arsdale told his son. “And when I do, you will take my seat in the House.”
James Earl didn’t want to run for congress. He wanted to marry Martha Jane Malcolm. Martha Jane was a beautiful girl, but Martha Jane had a flaw in her past that the s
enior Van Arsdale could not overlook. Indeed, the flaw in Martha Jane’s past was such that not even the State of Virginia could sanction the marriage. Martha Jane’s beautiful dark eyes and golden skin were the result of her grandmother. Martha Jane’s grandmother was a black woman.
Determined to marry the woman he loved, James Earl Van Arsdale left Virginia and moved to Texas. Of course, Texas also had a law against miscegenation, but who, here, was to know?
The marriage had been happy, and Van Arsdale’s law career had been very productive, until the night of the fire. Van Arsdale had been in Austin when the fire broke out. He knew nothing about it until he returned home, to find his house in ruins and his wife and child dead.
The cause of the fire was never determined, but it didn’t matter. Van Arsdale blamed himself, not for causing the fire but for not being there when it happened. He was sure he would have been able to save them. And if he couldn’t have saved Martha Jane and James Earl junior, then better he would have died with them.
He got drunk that very day and had been drunk ever since.
Now, as he sat here in the darkness, looking down on the newspaper office, he felt a begrudging respect for Harold Denham. Denham was a decent man, and a man of courage. Denham, almost single-handedly, was fighting the corrupt policies of Judge Dawes, Sheriff Poindexter, and Prosecuting Attorney Gillespie.
Van Arsdale knew what they were doing and knew that if he had as much courage as Denham, he could write a brief and submit it to the State Supreme Court.
Ah, but there was the rub.
Van Arsdale’s courage was in the bottle. And, right now, that bottle was empty.
Van Arsdale went to his cabinet for a new bottle. He wondered how much of this one he would have to drink before his mind would turn everything off enough to buy him another night of relative peace. He held the bottle up and looked at it for a moment.
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