The Devil Amongst the Lawyers

by Sharyn McCrumb

  It was a lifetime ago now, and she had put it out of her mind. There was no use in speaking of it now. This shiny-faced young cousin would be courteous if she spoke of it, but he couldn’t care about any of it. To him, World War II was a black-and-white movie on late-night television. The trial in Wise was the only part of the past that interested him. She directed her thoughts back to that.

  “There was an older man there at the trial. I think he was a famous reporter.”

  Kyle nodded. “Henry Jernigan? He was the big celebrity there. And Rose Hanelon, one of the sob sisters. That’s what they called women reporters back then, because they wrote about the emotional angles. I know what happened to almost everybody in that case. I looked them up online. It’s easy with the famous ones.”

  “Yes.” She looked up from her knitting. “I suppose World War II hit Mr. Jernigan hard?”

  “Broke his heart, from what I can tell. As a young man, he had spent about five years in Japan, and, by all accounts, when we went to war with them, he was devastated.”

  “Did he go to the Pacific?”

  “No. He wanted no part of it. In the end, he went to an internment camp out west to report on how the Japanese detainees were being treated. He died in a fire in the camp.”

  “Was the little girl saved?”

  “Little girl? It was a boy, I thought. There wasn’t much about it that I could find. When the hut caught fire he went in . . . Did you read something about it? I could use another source for my paper.”

  She shook her head.

  He looked at her curiously for a moment, and then seemed to dismiss the idea. He flipped through his notes. “There weren’t many happy endings for the people in the Morton case, I can tell you that for a fact. They say the sob sister—Rose Hanelon—died of a liver disease or something, which is a polite way of saying that she drank herself to death. I think it was suicide, though. Did you see that piece she wrote in Life Magazine about the pilot?”

  “Not that I recall,” said Nora. “I don’t think I met her.”

  “She was famous, though. I bought that issue of Life Magazine on eBay. In one account of Depression-era journalists I read, they said she was romantically involved with that pilot she did the article about. During the war, he got shot down in the Pacific, and she didn’t last long after that.”

  Nora Bonesteel nodded. Such a lot of lives laid waste by that war, but she’d had a lifetime to get used to that fact. This boy had other things on his mind. She had been a child when she knew those people. Like as not most of them would be dead by now, anyway, war or no war, so what did it matter?

  “But you actually saw Erma Morton,” the boy was saying. “You spoke to her.”

  “I did. Yes.”

  “Did she strike you as a murderer? Did she look like one?”

  “She looked tired. Sad, maybe.” Nora thought about it. “She looked like somebody who had made a decision and was bound to see it through. Determined. What happened to her after the governor set her free?”

  Kyle Holloway shrugged. “She disappeared. She didn’t go back to Wise County, of course. Nothing for her there.”

  “There was a brother, wasn’t there?”

  “Yes, but she didn’t go to stay with him, either. I think the prison people got her a job in the Midwest somewhere as a condition of her release. She changed her name, of course, because she’d had enough of the press by then. Got married, maybe. Some of her distant cousins say that in the 1950s she ended up in Florida, and that she’s been dead now for twenty years. She probably wouldn’t have talked to me anyway.”

  “No. I doubt she ever spoke of it again. I wouldn’t.”

  Kyle nodded. “There seem to be two sides to this story. The local people thought she was guilty, and the reporters thought she was being persecuted for being educated and modern. What did you think?”

  Nora considered it. “Carl tried to be impartial in his stories, but he thought she was guilty. I believe he was sorry for her, though. And other than thinking it was nonsense to suggest that people up there took against her for being educated, I guess it didn’t matter to me. I was so young, and away from home for the first time. The way I looked at it: nothing was going to bring the dead man back. I just wanted Carl to do well on his first big assignment. I tried to help him.” She spread her hands helplessly. “I don’t know what I can tell you. I was twelve.”

  Kyle Holloway stood up, smiling politely, and walked toward the door. “Well, it was a long shot. You’re the only one I can find who actually talked to her.”

  “You’re not leaving, are you? I got out some newspaper clippings and old family pictures. I baked a cake special for your visit.”

  The boy opened the screen door and let it swing shut again. “No, I’m not leaving. I can sit a spell, as my Grandma Bonesteel used to say. I was just getting up to let your cat out. He was sitting there by the door like he wanted to leave.”

  Nora sat very still. She looked at the open door and the empty porch and walkway beyond it. “A big white cat?”

  He nodded. “Yes. That one there.” He was pointing to the empty porch.

  Nora got up and walked over to the sideboard to cut the scripture cake. She said, “You’re a Bonesteel right enough, boy. I think you ought to go over to Pound and see where it all happened. I think that will tell you more than I can.”