Perish from the Earth

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  “We need men who have no stake in the outcome,” said Prickett. “Nothing more. Since both the victim and the accused were strangers to Alton, the first twelve men we call should be fine. Mr. Lincoln’s trying to make this a good deal more complicated than it needs be.”

  As he had no surface on which to strike a gavel, the judge signaled he had reached a decision by clearing his throat loudly. “I will allow very limited questioning on the subject, Lincoln,” he said. “But you’ve represented we can complete this trial in two days, and I’ll hold you to that. If you spend overly long with the venire, it’s coming out of your time. Call the first potential juror, Clerk.”

  “Adams.”

  There was a shuffling in the anteroom, and eventually a slender man smoking a corncob pipe appeared at the threshold of the back room. He began to make his way toward the judge, but his path was blocked, and none of the men in the audience showed an inclination to rearrange themselves again.

  “Stay put, Mr. Adams,” said Judge Thomas. “If you’re selected for service, we’ll find a way to move you forward. Any questions for Juror Adams, Mr. Lincoln?”

  Lincoln rose, carefully putting his papers and books down on his chair, and looked out across the gallery at the potential juror.

  “Will you follow the law as Judge Thomas here tells you it is?”

  “Yes, I will,” Adams declared with perhaps too much enthusiasm.

  “Now where were you last Saturday night?”

  Adams sucked on the stem of his pipe and looked at the judge. “Answer the question,” Thomas commanded. “No one’s going to be held to pay for anything they admit here. It’s all what we call ‘privileged.’”

  “I suppose I might have visited a grog shop or two,” Adams replied. The crowd murmured appreciatively, and Adams took out his pipe and grinned like a returning war hero.

  “And what did you do that evening for entertainment?” asked Lincoln.

  “No different than what my neighbor did. Whatever that was.”

  “Well—what was it?”

  “Can’t say I remember every last detail.” The crowd laughed, and Adams grinned again.

  “I think we can do better,” Lincoln said to Judge Thomas, who nodded. At least he’s trying to give Lincoln a fair shot, I thought.

  “Hold on a moment, Mr. Adams,” said the judge. “We may come back to you. Who’s next, Clerk?”

  “Ballkins.”

  There was another shuffling of persons in the front room of the shipping offices, and a young farmer in blue jeans, with sandy hair and a bright red pimple on the end of his nose, stepped to the fore.

  “Are you married, Mr. Ballkins?” asked Lincoln.

  “Yes, sir. Newly wed. This past summer.”

  “My congratulations,” Lincoln said sincerely, and Ballkins turned red. “May you have more good fortune at it than does the average man.” A few men in the crowd chuckled. “Now I hope you were home with the new Mrs. Ballkins on Saturday night.”

  “I was, sir.”

  “Good for you. Have you got any particular opinion on what took place in town that evening?”

  Ballkins licked his lips and glanced around the room nervously. “I heard they shot and killed Lyman,” he said. “He did some carpentry for my neighbor. Poor Lyman was scared of his own shadow. He couldn’t never hurt no one, not even an insect.”

  “No, I don’t imagine he could. We’d be pleased to have Mr. Ballkins, Your Honor.”

  “Prickett?” asked the judge.

  “I’ve already indicated I’m happy with the first twelve men who wander in,” the prosecutor said. “It’s Mr. Lincoln who thinks only a few of Alton’s citizens are qualified to give his client a fair shake.”

  “Stay where you are for now, Mr. Ballkins, but we’ll use you,” said the judge. “Next.”

  “Fitzhugh,” called the clerk.

  The examination of the candidates for the jury continued for another hour. When it was over, Lincoln had the jury he wanted—or as close to that body as was available to him in the still simmering town of Alton this November morning. But as I watched from beside him, I feared Lincoln’s achievement had come at a substantial cost.

  Lincoln questioned every potential venireman on his whereabouts on the night of the Lovejoy riot. No one listening—certainly not the group of prospective jurors, who jostled in the front room of Ryder’s offices and watched as Lincoln questioned their number one by one—could have failed to comprehend that Lincoln was attempting to eliminate men who had participated in the mobbing. As far as I could tell, none of the Lovejoy mobbers made it onto the jury. But it was a fair bet that every man selected either sympathized with or was afraid of those mobbers. And surely Lincoln’s questioning caused them, at the least, to wonder where his own sympathies lay.

  Just as Bingham and Jones were strangers to Alton, so too was Lincoln. This was his first trip here with the circuit. The Lincoln who examined the potential jurors this morning was the same lawyer I’d always seen in action in Springfield—tall and a little stooped, a high voice, with his hands clutched behind his back. Yet when he wandered about the courtroom in Springfield, he carried with him the credibility of personal relationships built up over the years he had lived in Sangamon County. By contrast, in Alton he was, as the lawyers sometimes like to say, a tabula rasa.

  Lincoln’s questioning of the potential jurors had chalked the slate. Whether favorably or unfavorably we would only learn at the end of trial.

  CHAPTER 30

  Lincoln stood tall beside Bingham, his large hand resting on the painter’s rounded shoulder in a kind of paternal gesture. Prickett’s opening statement had been short but forceful, laying out Bingham’s apparent motive for killing Jones—their competition for the hand of the beautiful daughter of a wealthy planter—and his failure to deny he had acted upon that motive. Prickett asked the jury to find Bingham guilty of murder, a verdict, he assured them, that would produce a quick trip to the gallows. Now as the twelve gentlemen of the jury resumed their seats after a short recess, everyone waited to see how Lincoln would rebut the charge.

  “You may proceed, Mr. Lincoln,” said Judge Thomas when the crowd had come to as much order as the makeshift courtroom allowed.

  “This is George Bingham,” began Lincoln, patting his client’s shoulder. “He was born and bred in Missouri but fate has brought him to this courtroom, in which he sits to await your judgment. He humbly asks that you listen to the evidence brought forth in this courtroom today and tomorrow and that you base your verdict on that evidence and no other fact, feeling, or prejudice.

  “The young woman sitting next to Bingham is Tessie Roman,” Lincoln continued, gesturing toward her. Tessie looked out at the jury with a pure and steady face. She was wearing a demure peach-colored gown with a narrow waist and a full skirt. “She is here in support of her intended, her beloved, and you may hear from her later in the case. Miss Roman’s unwavering support for Mr. Bingham should make you doubt the theory of the People’s case you just heard from my brother Prickett.

  “George Bingham did not murder the decedent John W. Jones. I will not claim to tell you who did kill Jones, or why he was killed, because the law does not impose that burden on me, and I do not assume it voluntarily. I realize, gentlemen”—Lincoln looked directly at the jury—“you naturally would like to discover the full truth of what happened to Jones, so my saying you will not may be unsatisfactory, but it is the reality, and I plainly acknowledge it at the outset.

  “Out on the streets, men sometimes act out of emotion and without full consideration of the consequences of their actions,” Lincoln continued. There was a low murmur from the crowd; no one could mistake his reference. “But here in Judge Thomas’s courtroom, you must be guided by evidence and logic and those factors alone. The evidence will show you—logic will dictate to you—that whoever it was who killed Jones, it was not Mr. Bingham.”

  As I had noticed on prior occasions, Lincoln’s naturally reedy voice becam
e deeper, more resonant, as he settled into his argument. He continued: “Mr. Bingham is an artist, which is to say, he’s a seeker of beauty in its many varied and wondrous forms. He looks at the world differently than you and I might. You and I take the world as we find it and think primarily about how we might improve our own lot in it. Mr. Bingham is a different sort. He looks at things as they are and ponders what they might become.”

  Lincoln had left Bingham’s side and was wandering near the gallery. Judge Thomas had, after jury selection concluded, ordered the crowd to push back toward the front room of the shipping offices so that the lawyers were afforded a small space to move around as they practiced their craft. Tessie, Bingham, and I sat in the front rank of the gallery, looking up at the towering Lincoln.

  “Your hat, madam, as an example,” said Lincoln, gesturing toward a woman of middle age sitting in the second row, who was wearing a wide-brimmed bonnet with a high crown of pink paisley. The woman recoiled in surprise, but Lincoln appeared not to notice. “I will presume you chose to wear that bonnet today to keep the sun from your face, or perhaps as a statement of your sobriety and decorum. In any event, you had a practical, earthly reason for your choice. But Mr. Bingham, I believe, would look at your bonnet and see the spreading out of a peacock’s plumage. Or perhaps the fan of an Oriental tea servant.”

  The man sitting next to the woman in the wide-brimmed bonnet leaned over and whispered in her ear and she smiled.

  “Or take the two vertical rows of brass buttons on your coat, Captain,” Lincoln continued, pointing this time to Captain Pound in his seat at the side of the courtroom. Pound put his ringed hand to his belly and frowned. “For you, Captain, those buttons reflect the dignity of your esteemed office. For Mr. Bingham? Perhaps they are eight suns rising at dawn above a distant planet.

  “In short, gentlemen,” Lincoln said, turning to the jury again, “Mr. Bingham is a dreamer of dreams. He is not a killer. He spends much of his time inhabiting a different world. A better world, you might believe, if you possess an artistic yearning yourself. If you do not, you might dismiss Mr. Bingham’s world as a frivolity. Either way, I don’t much mind as long as you understand Mr. Bingham’s world is unmistakably a different one.

  “As I think of it, Mr. Bingham reminds me of a boy I once knew a long time ago. A boy who also inhabited a world of his own creation. I ask you to indulge me a minute as I relate a story about him.

  “At the time of my story, this boy was about eight years of age. He was living with his family beside a forlorn little trickle of water called Pigeon Creek in the southern aspect of the state of Indiana. He had many chores to perform for his father, as I know all of you”—Lincoln gestured to the gentlemen of the jury—“expect your sons to help out around your farm or your business, as the case may be, and as you expect your daughters to help with the cooking and the mending.

  “Now this boy—as you may have guessed, his parents called him ‘Abe’—one of his chores was to take the corn harvested on their small farm and bring it to Gordon’s mill, which was a few miles distant, in order that it be ground into meal. Gordon’s was a crude little mill, but it was the best they had close at hand, and Abe was used to bringing the corn there to be ground. His family had an old mare, an old bag of bones of a horse, but she was too broken down for him to ride, so he put the sack containing their harvest over her back, and he led her by the bridle to the mill, walking alongside her on foot. This particular day I’m thinking of, we must have got a late start on the trip to the mill, as I remember the sun was already starting to set as we walked off, me and the horse, toward the mill.”

  The courtroom remained silent as Lincoln spun his story. The jury seemed transfixed, and even the judge had stopped fiddling with his cigar and was listening intently.

  “After we had walked for forty-five minutes, we finally came upon the mill,” Lincoln continued, “and I lifted the sack from the horse’s back and hoisted it onto my shoulder and carried it up to the sack floor and dumped it into the bin. This took a good deal of effort, but even at eight years I was a pretty large fellow, so it wasn’t more than I could manage. Then I went back down to the ground, and I took the spoke coming from the wheel and secured it to our mare’s harness. And she knew her job, and she started walking in a circle, slowly, because that was the only speed she could manage, and slowly the mill began to grind our corn.

  “But all this while, the sun was going down and soon dusk was approaching, and only half of the corn had been milled. And I knew that after the milling was done, I still had to put all the meal back in my sack and walk with my horse back to our farm. And I knew that if I got home too late, my father would be angry, and he would correct me.

  “So I had what seemed like a pretty good idea. I got my whip and I stood in one place, and every time that old mare of ours came around the circle to where I was standing, I gave her one lash of the whip on her hind side. I meant it as a friendly piece of encouragement to the old girl, a reminder that it was getting dark and we might want to hurry up a bit so we could head home in time.

  “But the old girl, she didn’t like this much. She was happy going at her own pace, and it must have been the fourth or fifth time I lashed her that she kicked out her hind legs toward me. Now I knew a fair bit as a lad of eight, but one thing I didn’t know was how far or how hard a horse could kick. So I didn’t see her hoof coming, didn’t see it at all, and it caught me square in the forehead and knocked me unconscious.”

  Lincoln touched his hand to his temple to indicate where the blow had struck. The gallery was so still it seemed no one was breathing.

  “Now old Gordon, the miller, he came upon me presently, and he was convinced I was dead, since I was lying on the ground and not moving at all. He sent for my pa, and they even had my angel mother come as well, and they told my pa that his son Abraham had died. And when my parents reached the mill, they saw their eldest son lying lifeless on the ground, and they put their arms around each other and they cried.”

  Lincoln paused as if overcome by the emotion of the moment. The courtroom was clinging to his every word, and it paused with him.

  “And just then, just when my father was thinking to himself that he’d better find a minister to give my body a proper blessing, I started breathing again, and I opened my eyes. I couldn’t speak for a couple of hours still, but eventually I recovered that ability as well. I know you’re regretful about that part, Your Honor,” Lincoln added, looking at the judge. Thomas chuckled and the rest of the courtroom joined in. Even Prickett was unable to suppress a smile.

  “But my story’s not quite done,” Lincoln continued when the crowd had quieted down, “and I’m getting to the part that’s stuck with me for all these years. Two months after the accident at the mill, that old mare of ours came up lame, and my cousin Dennis Hanks—he was a few years older than me, and he was living with our family at the time—Dennis said it was my fault. Dennis said the accident had caused the mare’s defect. And Dennis told my father that I should be punished because we had to put our old mare down.

  “And I will never forget that moment when Dennis said I was the one to blame, that it was my fault our mare had been lost. I tell you, I will never forget the sting of being unjustly accused.” Lincoln’s voice cracked, and no one present could doubt the true emotion he felt. “I will never forget the feeling. The horse’s kick I could survive, but I did not know how I was going to survive the agony of being accused of something I did not do. Even at eight years, I knew I didn’t want to be tied to Pigeon Creek for the rest of my life. And I remember wishing there was some higher authority who could say, ‘Don’t worry, Abraham, you’re innocent. It’s not your fault the horse had to be put down, and you’re not going to be punished on account of something you did not do.’”

  Lincoln returned to where he had started, standing beside Bingham, his hand resting on the accused’s shoulder. “Gentlemen of the jury, today you are that higher authority. George Bingham sits before yo
u, suffering the sting of being accused of something he did not do, just like little Abe Lincoln suffered that same sting a score of years ago. And he has aspirations far beyond mine. He has paintings to create, peacocks to conjure, suns to watch rising over distant planets. And he has you. You and you alone have been given by the State of Illinois the awesome power to determine whether he’ll see that future. We ask only that you use your power wisely.”

  As Lincoln resumed his seat, I marveled at the performance. As much as he told the jury to concentrate on evidence and logic, he also appealed to their sentiment. No one listening could doubt that the emotion he showed was genuine—even if the particulars of his story might not be accurate in every last detail—and I felt sure that through the speech he had succeeded in transferring to Bingham the good feeling the audience naturally felt for little eight-year-old Abe. It was quite a neat trick, a sleight of hand Devol himself would have been proud of, and yet Lincoln had performed it in open court for everyone to see.

  Freed from the spell of Lincoln’s speechmaking, the jury stretched and talked quietly among themselves. Then the prosecutor Prickett rose and called his first witness.

  CHAPTER 31

  Avocat Daumier perched on the edge of the witness chair that had been placed alone at the front of the makeshift courtroom. His hands were folded on top of his black gown, and his smooth face was framed by his lavender bonnet. He looked up at Prickett expectantly. The leading role he had craved since he’d first come up the shoreline to view Jones’s corpse had finally arrived.

  “Your name, sir,” began Prickett.

  “Avocat Dominique Daumier, deputy chief constable of the levee police, law graduate of the Lycée Fabert, former jugé auditeur of Versailles.” Daumier could not resist arching forward with pride as he enumerated his qualifications.

  “You examined the body of the decedent Jones soon after he was pulled from the river?”