Christmas in the Lone Star State

by Jason Manning

  When he heard the door to the street open and close, Eddings forgot about breathing, wondering if it was Purdy come to see him. But it wasn’t Purdy, and the mind-numbing sorrow that had resided in him for two years felt like an invisible fist squeezing his heart. He was so close to her in terms of physical distance and yet she felt so far away. Tom Rath was conversing with another man whose voice he didn’t recognize. The latter wanted to see “the prisoner” and Rath was reluctant to accede to the request. The other said, “This is very important to me, Tom. I would be willing to make it worth your while. And be sure, I will mention you often in whatever I write as a result of the interview.” A moment later the cell block door creaked open and Rath preceded a slender young man wearing a straw boater, yellow duster, and mud-caked boats. Eddings sat up.

  The young man smiled brightly and stuck a hand between the bars of Eddings’s cell. “Mr. Eddings, my name is Emmett Placer. How are you today?”

  Incredulous, Eddings stared at Placer, then at the proffered hand. He didn’t bother getting up to shake it. “Is that some kind of joke?”

  Placer suddenly looked flustered. “My apologies. I am a newspaperman and would just like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

  “Don’t stick your hand in there,” barked Rath. “They call men like him desperadoes for a reason, Placer.” His tone dripped with sarcasm. Stepping into the front room, he returned a moment later with a wooden chair, which he set with its back against the door of the empty cell across from the one occupied by Eddings. “You sit in this chair and don’t get any closer, you hear? I’ll be right outside.”

  Placer nodded meekly. He didn’t want to do anything that might set off the mercurial sheriff and cost him this one chance to talk to Cameron’s most notorious son. He sat in the chair and waited until Rath had left the cell block before leaning forward, one arm draped over the other with elbows on his knees, peering through the bars with keen interest. “So tell me, Mr. Eddings, are you a desperado?”

  Eddings shrugged. “Does it matter what I think I am?”

  “Indeed it does, indeed it does. Mr. Eddings, you may not be aware of it, but this is a rare opportunity for both of us.”

  “An opportunity to do what?”

  “For you to tell your side of the story. About the crime you committed, your capture, the trial, your incarceration, all of it. And for me to write it all down and present it to the public. Now, I would never be allowed to enter the prison at Huntsville to listen to your story. But as luck would have it—here you are.” Placer paused to study the expression on Eddings’s face. “Of course one would wish it had happened under happier circumstances. I am truly sorry for your loss, sir. Truly sorry.” He paused, giving Eddings a chance to speak, but the prisoner sat there silently, staring morosely at the floor. Placer decided to try a different approach, hoping to coax at least an opinion from Eddings. “Temple Hanley rode all the way to Austin to make the case for you. He’s a good man, Lawyer Hanley. But Governor Coke?” Placer shook his head. “Never met him but from what I’ve heard he is a hard man. Maybe he was susceptible to Lawyer Hanley’s oratorical skills, which are considerable. Or maybe he was moved by the spirit of the season. Christmas is just a few days away, you know. Regardless, you must be grateful.”

  “Sure,” said Eddings, flatly.” It’s always nice to be treated like a person and not an animal. You talk a lot.”

  Placer chuckled. “Yes, yes, that’s true. Words are my stock-in-trade.” He had been willing to rattle on until he struck a nerve, or at least found something that animated the prisoner. Sensing that he had succeeded, he leaned forward a bit more. “Do they treat you like an animal in prison, Mr. Eddings?”

  Eddings sat there a moment, brooding, then got to his feet without a word, letting the blanket slide off his body onto the bunk. He unbuttoned his shirt to shrug it down off his shoulders, revealing a webbing of scars on his back.

  “Jesus,” muttered the newspaperman.

  “They like the whip,” said Eddings, matter-of-factly.

  “What did you do to warrant such punishment?” Placer assumed the scars were the result of multiple whippings. He didn’t think any man could survive taking all that punishment at one time.

  Eddings buttoned up his shirt, draped the blanket back over his shoulders, and sat down. “Didn’t move fast enough. Didn’t get enough work done in a day. One time I got sick, puked in a basket of raw cotton. Couldn’t help it. But that cost them so they made sure it cost me too. They put us to work in there, you know. Dawn to dusk, seven days a week, unless the preacher from town came in to hold services on Sunday. Then you could get out of working until noon. Some prisoners were taken out to work as lumber crews, or to lay rail for a railroad. Or they used to. Lay rail I mean. Seems hard times have hit the iron roads too. Me, I usually worked in the prison textile mill, and sometimes on the farm.”

  Placer nodded. “The idea, I suppose, is that you have to earn your keep.”

  Eddings smiled bitterly. “Yeah, we earn a lot more than our keep. That company, Ward-Dewey, makes a tidy profit off what we make inside that prison, or the work we do outside of it.”

  “Well, that’s as it should be, don’t you think? Ward-Dewey is not a charitable institution. Besides, it’s generally believed that giving prison inmates work to do keeps them healthier and makes the time go by faster for them. Some might even learn a trade that will stand them in good stead once they get out.” He studied Eddings’s expression. “You don’t agree?”

  “They treat us like slaves. Worse. Slaves were an investment. Inmates, well, they don’t care if we live or die. Not really. Always new labor being brought in.” Eddings sighed, thinking he was wasting his time complaining to this wordsmith, who didn’t know what a hard day’s work was anyway. “Point is, we’re treated like … like…” He couldn’t think of the word.

  “The dregs of society. At least you’re still alive, Mr. Eddings. You are better off than your partner—what was his name? Underhill?”

  “Am I? I wonder sometimes.”

  Placer had hoped to get a different response from Eddings on the topic of his imprisonment. Instead of the defiant, unrepentant rogue shaking his fist at society and vowing vengeance for all his suffering, which he thought would make good copy and titillate his readers, he had a broken and embittered man on his hands. He tried a different approach. “When you’ve served your sentence, what do you intend to do? Do you think you will return to a life of crime, as so many others do?”

  Eddings sat silent for a moment, elbows on knees, hands tightly clasped, head down. He tried to see himself thirteen years into the future, walking out of Huntsville Prison’s West Gate a free man. But he couldn’t. Some things he could envision. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “Thirteen years from now that farm won’t be mine anymore. I don’t expect Purdy will be mine anymore either.” He paused and cleared his throat. “But then, in thirteen years I’ll probably be eating dirt in the prison cemetery anyway.”

  Tom Rath had kept the door to the office open so he could keep an eye on Placer and listen to the conversation between the newspaperman and his prisoner. Eddings was grateful for that, since some of the warmth previously confined to the front room had begun to permeate the cell block. But now Rath appeared in the doorway, leaning with arms crossed against the frame, chuckling as he looked at Placer while directing his comment at Eddings.

  “I think Mr. Placer here had hopes you’d turn out to be Cameron’s very own version of Jesse James, or some such—instead of a man with no gumption who’s just waiting to die.”

  Even though Rath was right, Placer waxed indignant. “That’s uncalled for, Sheriff. I simply wanted to interview one of Cameron’s own, a man who has gone astray and is now paying the wages of sin. I think this man’s story is a cautionary tale my readers will appreciate and perhaps benefit from.” He stood and looked at Eddings, trying to think of what to say in parting, and settling on, “I would pray for you, sir, except that I don�
�t believe there is a God. I have heard and read and seen with my own eyes too much senseless tragedy to believe that a caring God watches over us. But I digress. Thank you for your time, Mr. Eddings.”

  “He’s got time,” said Rath, chuckling. “That’s one thing he’s got plenty of,”

  Placer smiled faintly—clearly he wasn’t as amused by Rath’s attempt at humor as the sheriff himself was—and quickly left the jail.

  Rath remained in the doorway for a moment, staring smugly at his prisoner until finally Eddings looked up. “I could use some food and water,” he said.

  Rath shrugged. “Maybe in the morning. If you’re still around.”

  “Seems like I recall Mr. Hanley paying for some food and water for me.”

  “Stop your whining. Hanley likes to throw his money around. Makes him feel important. Truth is he’s weak. Soft. That you’re even here and not still behind bars in Huntsville Prison where you belong is proof of that. What I can’t believe is that the governor turned out to be soft too. Maybe the next one will be made of sterner stuff when it comes to dealing with no-account vermin like yourself.”

  Eddings sighed and resumed his inspection of the cell floor. There was no point in debating with a self-centered man like Rath, who not only wasn’t interested in another person’s opinion but didn’t really listen to what others had to say anyway. But his silence failed to get rid of the sheriff, who settled into the chair recently vacated by the newspaperman.

  “You know,” Rath drawled, “you’re right about your farm. And your woman. Neither one is going to belong to you by the time you get out of prison, if you ever do.”

  Eddings didn’t look up. He knew from previous experience that the Cameron sheriff was a bully with a sadistic streak who enjoyed goading people. Some of the guards at the prison fit the same mold. The best course of action was to ignore them, or just take it and keep your mouth shut. Rath’s comment cut him deeply, and he bristled, but he let a bitter retort die stillborn on his tongue.

  “Your wife paid the banknote last year,” continued Rath. “Brought in a crop with a little help from your neighbor, that fellow Norris. Maybe you knew about that. Maybe she wrote you about it. She does write you letters, doesn’t she? By all accounts he stays over at your place from time to time, if you know what I mean.” He chuckled. “My guess is now that she’s all alone, and him being a widower, they’ll get joined up in more ways than just under a blanket one of these days.”

  Eddings’s hands curled into fists. The sheriff’s words seemed to knock the wind out of him. He pressed those fists against his temples while slowly leaning forward until he was doubled over at the waist. The anguish he experienced at that moment made all the other pain and misery he had endured these past two years pale in comparison. It was like a white-hot blade twisting in his heart. Hot tears brimmed in eyes he squeezed shut. His guts were tied up in an excruciating knot so intense it made him gasp for breath.

  The thought that Purdy might take up with another man while he served his time had crossed his mind. One of his greatest fears had been that she would not wait for him. Was it even fair to expect her to? But he had hoped. That fear had really come home to roost when her letters stopped coming. She had written a few, in response to his. He had asked how she and Joshua were doing, how they were faring with the farm, had begged for forgiveness, had pleaded for patience, had told her how much he loved and needed her. Her letters answered his questions. She had forgiven him. She promised she would wait. She told him that she loved him. But there was something missing. The Purdy who was so full of the joy of life had not written those letters. Even her “I love you too”s had been perfunctory and rather lifeless responses. No I love you so much or I will love you forever. He had tried to convince himself that it was only because writing letters under the circumstances was difficult, if not gut wrenching. This he knew from his own experience.

  When her letters stopped coming he told himself it must be because writing had become simply too painful for her to endure. That she had met someone else and did not love him anymore was a possibility he couldn’t bring himself to accept or even think about. Then he had received word from Temple Hanley that his son had died. Purdy had not even written him to tell her Joshua was ill. He decided she had kept quiet to spare him the anguish of being unable to be with Joshua in his son’s time of greatest need. More and more he wondered if Purdy would ever be able to forgive him.

  Eddings remembered all too well how the widower had looked at Purdy. Norris had come by the farm quite often—too often, in Eddings’s book. Purdy was indulgent, reminding her husband that Norris was just a very lonely man, with no offspring and a wife who had died in childbirth. Horribly, the baby she carried died with her, strangled by its umbilical cord.

  That another man lusted after one’s wife fed the egos of some men and the self-doubts of others. Eddings fell into the latter category. He had always wondered how it was possible that the most beautiful and alluring girl in Texas could have fallen in love with him. After letting the problem fester for a while, he called Norris on it. Norris deflected his anger and avoided a confrontation with assurances he meant no harm, and then, in a good-natured way, chided Eddings for his jealousy since it was obvious Purdy loved him and only him. Eddings derived some solace from the knowledge that his wife didn’t care for Norris—this she had made abundantly clear on more than one occasion and with such sincerity that he never had cause to doubt her. Purdy didn’t have a deceitful bone in her body. She could not tell a lie without him knowing.

  Even so, Eddings believed that what Tom Rath told him about Purdy and Norris was true. Maybe that was why she had stopped writing. So that she didn’t have to lie. He drew a ragged sigh. He wasn’t angry at Purdy. He couldn’t blame her. How could he? It was his fault. Like Ranger Sayles said, he’d made a choice, the wrong choice, and everything that happened as a result of that was on him. He hadn’t always thought that way. At first he blamed God, had started blaming God during the hard times that led him to take the outlaw trail out of desperation. What had he done to deserve all that had befallen him? It was a question he asked countless times, at least as many times as he cursed the Almighty for all these unfair afflictions that had been cast upon him. Over time he changed. Self-recrimination rather than self-pity seemed a better fit in his case. He realized now that it wasn’t God who had done this to him. Instead, God had simply abandoned him.

  The jangle of keys, the rasp of metal against metal, the clatter and clunk of a lock being unlocked drew him out of his grim reverie. He looked up. Rath was at the cell door, was opening it an inch, leaving the key in the lock, the big ring of keys to which it was attached chiming as it bounced off the stout iron bars of the door. The sheriff had a pistol in his right hand, held down at his side as he took two steps back.

  “I take it from the look on your face that she neglected to write you about all that,” murmured Rath. His eyes were gleaming “Guess maybe she was trying to spare you.” He shrugged his indifference.

  Eddings sat up, looking at the door, then at Rath. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m doing you a favor, though you don’t deserve it.”

  “You’re not letting me go,” said Eddings, skeptically.

  Rath smiled. “Not exactly. I’m giving you a choice. It’s been a while since you’ve had one, hasn’t it? Don’t ask me why, but I feel like you should have the right to die a free man. To be buried here at home and not in that prison cemetery you mentioned when you were talking to Placer. All you have to do is step out of that cell. Then you’ll be free. All you got to do is step through that door and your troubles are over. It’s that or just sit there, and spend the rest of your life in a cage. Because we both know you won’t walk out of prison alive. You don’t have the grit to live through an ordeal like that. And why should you? What have you got to live for now?”

  Eddings stood there, staring at the floor just outside the cell, at the spot where he would place his foot if he stepp
ed out. He tried to sort through his thoughts. The space outside the cell held a very strong allure, even though he knew it contained the bullet that would end his life. He didn’t believe for a minute that Tom Rath really cared if he died a free man. Rath was a cold-blooded killer. He got something out of taking another’s life. There had been incidents in the past involving Rath and the death of men held in one of these jail cells. A crotchety old local drunk who always gave the sheriff what-for ended up hanged in one of them. A two-bit rustler who threatened Rath in the presence of others ended up being shot to death “trying to escape” that very night. Eddings had never given much thought to those events, but now he was on the verge of becoming the next prisoner to die in this cell block.

  What Tom Rath wanted to do now was nothing short of murder, but because of the badge he wore he wouldn’t lose his life or freedom or even his job for committing it. Eddings didn’t waste time speculating on what story the sheriff would concoct to justify the shooting. It didn’t matter. What mattered to Eddings was that he had just been offered a way to escape the pure misery and heartbreak that resided like a big cold black aching hole in the middle of him. He had just been envying Underhill for spending the last two years in a grave rather than prison, and here was his chance to join his former partner in crime. The only reason he hadn’t wanted to die in prison was the hope of one day being reunited with his family, and then, after Joshua’s death, with his wife. But now that hope seemed to have been taken from him too.