Except there ain’t no cotton to pick, and Louise is gone.
What’ll happen to me after I die, I don’t know. I think more about what’s gonna happen to this country in the years ahead. Seems like in the years before the first World War, families and neighbors helped each other more. Nowadays, it’s ever’body for hisself. Ever’where I look it’s snatch and grab, snatch and grab, snatch and grab. Like Ma said, that’s why you gotta have laws and the Bible. I remember one of Ma’s Bible stories where things got so bad that God destroyed the whole world and had to start things all over again.
Maybe this time God will just let people destroy theirselves.
Whatever happens I won’t be alive to see it. Ever’body who’s born has only so much time on this Earth. I think my time is just about up. I can tell. For the first time in my life I been feeling tired.
Goddamn.
THE STORY AFTER THE STORY
by Claude Stanush
J. “Willis” Newton died in the Northeast Baptist hospital in San Antonio on August 22, 1979. He was ninety years old. It was an irony of fate that his last days were spent in a Baptist institution.
Willis had lived as an outlaw, and he died as one. When I visited him in the hospital in his last weeks, he cussed out the doctors, saying they didn’t know what was wrong with him, and asked me if I would buy him a large bottle of mineral oil. When I did, he tipped it over and drank it all down, saying from then on, he was going to be his own doctor. “This’ll clean me out,” he said.
So far as I know, nobody else visited him in the hospital, not even his brother Joe. I was with him the evening of August 22. When I left, I touched him on his hands, which were crossed on his chest. He didn’t say anything, but there was a searching look in his eyes.
He died later that night, alone.
After a funeral service at the Methodist church in Uvalde, Willis was buried in the family plot in the Uvalde Cemetery alongside his wife, Louise, and only a few feet away from the graves of Pa and Ma Newton and his brothers Jess and Tull and Dock. There was no eulogy preached at the service. What could the minister say about Willis? He only read lines from the Bible.
O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever.
To Him that by wisdom made the heavens: for His mercy endureth forever.
To Him which led His people through the wilderness: for His mercy endureth forever.
To Him which smote great kings …
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; And, behold, all is vanity;
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth
beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath;
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it;
Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.
AUTHORS’ NOTES
ALL HONEST MEN is a biographical novel, firmly rooted in fact, which developed after many years of personal relationships with J. Willis Newton and Joe Newton.
Source material came from taped interviews by Claude Stanush with Willis Newton and Joe Newton at Paisano Ranch near Austin, Texas, in 1973.
Also, from taped interviews by Claude Stanush and David Middleton with Willis Newton and Joe Newton at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in 1974.
Also, from conversations between Claude Stanush and Willis Newton during the years 1973 to 1979, and between Claude Stanush and Joe Newton from 1973 to 1989.
Also, interviews by Michele Stanush with Sheriff Kenneth Kelley of Uvalde, Texas, who knew all four Newton Boys and periodically put them in jail (with the exception of Joe, who had returned to his law-abiding ways).
Also, interviews by Michele Stanush with residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who knew Willis and Louise Newton during Willis’ nightclub years in the 1930s and ’40s.
Also, from police records, newspaper accounts, and historical documents describing the activities of the Newton Boys and their accomplices, many provided by Clark Lee Walker, Keith Fletcher, Michele Stanush, and Ashley Parrish.
Also from interviews with experts to check references to: cotton (Thad Sitton); guns (Pat Stanush); bronc busting (Mark Sharp); trains (Ben Sargent); history of Smackover, Arkansas (Don Lambert); history of Texas prisons (Dr. Robert Pierce); prison hounds (Walker County Sheriff Victor Graham); and the history of Arma, Kansas (Christie Wilson).
We gleaned insight into the era from many books, but want to make special mention of Booger Red, World Champion Cowboy, by Charlsie Poe.
On a personal note, we wish to give particular thanks to Rick Pappas for his untiring and invaluable support of the book. And thanks to David Middleton for his help and for the photograph of Willis Newton as an old man.
For critical reading of the text, we thank Barbara Evans Stanush, who gave a poet’s insight into the language and flow of the story. (She also cooked mustard greens for Willis.) Alex Nixon, with his unerring eye for drama and depth, provided key suggestions. Great thanks also to Bob Banta, Dr. John Edens, Julie Stanush, Pamela Stanush Edens and Margaret Rambie. And finally, to Janneka Hannay, who, after reading an early draft, urged us to “let the wild ponies loose.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Claude Stanush and Michele Stanush
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2845-5
The Permanent Press
4170 Noyac Road
Sag Harbor, NY 11963
www.thepermanentpress.com
Distributed by Open Road Distribution
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
All Honest Men Page 33
