Esther's Pillow

by Marlin Fitzwater

  “Well, now he’s back, and in jail,” Ed Jr. said. “And I bet he’s talking pretty fast about all the rest of us.”

  “Hell,” Ed Sr. said, “who cares? You boys were carrying out the will of this community. Besides, far as I know, it’s not illegal to tar and feather anybody anyway. If she had left town the way you told her to, there’d be no fuss at all.”

  Unfortunately for Herbert Forchet, however, County Attorney W.W. McArdle went home from his meeting with Margaret Chambers, kissed his wife at the door, hugged his two small daughters, then collected them on the sofa for a family conversation. The more he told his wife of the Chambers story, the more personal it became, and the more determined McArdle grew. He wanted his wife to know that pursuing this case could affect the family. It could hold them up to ridicule, cause their neighbors and friends to turn against them, cause people to talk about them and shun them in church. But McArdle was certain it was right, and the closer his innocent daughters pressed themselves to his sides, the more his outrage grew over the assault on Margaret Chambers. He would prosecute every last one of the men who participated in this barbaric act. McArdle went to bed eager for the next morning’s interrogation of Herbert Forchet.

  Chapter Ten

  Mrs. Ed Garvey was mad as a hornet. She was so mad that she just sat at the kitchen table, clutching a mug of cold tea and staring vacantly at the tiled wall. She was thinking hard, wondering how things had gone so wrong. Her mind was racing back through time, scanning for some sign, some mistake she had made, some explanation for the events of the last few days. She reached back to the deep past.

  Eunice was raised an only child. Her father, like many others in the county, had come to Kansas after the Civil War, homesteading 160 acres of bottomland along the Saline, living in a dugout etched in the side of a hill that came to be known as Garvey’s Bluff. One of her earliest memories was hiding behind the spirea bushes to watch Ed Garvey ride by on his pinto pony. Ed’s farm was only two miles down the road. As they grew older, Eunice laughed with Ed at church picnics and endured his teasing as if they were brother and sister. From the first beckonings of womanhood, she loved him. Their marriage wasn’t the beginning of their lives together, it was just a milestone, another step in an already intense relationship. Eunice was fourteen, Ed twenty-four. And the marriage had worked. They had forged a partnership, sharing the same ambitions and the same ardent sense of morals, religion, and duty.

  Ed and Eunice Garvey were fiercely loyal to their friends, the community, and to their business. They had started the mill together some ten years after their marriage, when the farm was prospering and the future seemed boundless. It was hard work, but their crops increased every year as Ed added more land to his holdings. Ed had a way with money. He wasn’t afraid of it. He was willing to borrow from the bank in order to take risks. And Eunice encouraged him, assuring him of her support regardless of the consequence. They built farm and mill together, becoming rich and influential in the process. It seemed that nothing could come between them.

  But that loyalty was challenged now as never before. Mrs. Garvey had not known in advance about the tarring and feathering of Margaret Chambers, or she surely would have stopped it. And although she had heard about the attack that morning from the clerk at the dry goods store, only now was she starting to assemble the facts of what had happened, mostly from the ravings of Tiny Tucker and Mrs. Club Wilson. They had stopped by that afternoon, when Eunice was cutting some mid-August zinnias from her small flower bed along the foundation of the house. Zinnias like the heat, and the August sun had burned a brightness into every petal.

  When the two women appeared at the gate, they didn’t interrupt until Eunice had filled her apron with long-stemmed colors.

  “Eunice,” Tiny began matter-of-factly, “I assume you know about getting Margaret Chambers out of the county.”

  “I know,” Eunice answered sadly. “Everybody in town is talking about it.” She was walking toward the house, with both hands holding the corners of her apron. Mrs. Wilson hurried around her to open the screen door. But Eunice stopped cold, turned to her two old friends, and said, “Why didn’t you tell me before this happened? My own husband and son. Your husbands. All conspired behind my back because you knew I would have stopped this terrible thing.”

  As the three moved into the house, Eunice dumped the flowers into her chipped porcelain sink. Tiny stopped at the end of the table. “Eunice,” she said, “we know you have a soft spot for that girl, sending her to college and all, but she’s evil. We’ve all heard about that Swenson boy, and you saw her at the Literary. She’s not one of us. I don’t want our kids going to school there, until she’s gone.”

  “Now, of course,” Louise Wilson said, “we don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

  Eunice did not look up from her sink.

  “We just came by to say we are going to fight that girl if she has our men arrested,” Tiny said. “My husband sits at home now, cursed by the body of that woman, cursed by her evil. He just holds his hand and walks around aimlessly. I don’t know what to do with him, but I sure know where that woman should be. She should be in jail, not poor Herbie Forchet, or anybody else.”

  “I don’t feel that way, Tiny,” Eunice said calmly. “But I won’t argue about Margaret now. Our husbands have done a terrible thing. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Tiny and Louise Wilson edged toward the door. When Eunice didn’t raise her head or turn to say goodbye, they just pushed the screen open and left.

  Eunice felt guilty for not going straight to see Margaret to offer her support, but first she had to talk with her husband and son. She made herself busy around the house but had no interest in cleaning, and certainly none in cooking. Finally, she sat in her rocker by the fireplace, the same rocker she had known as a child, crawling into her mother’s lap. It felt comfortable in an uncomfortable world.

  Ed and Ed Jr. walked in the house just before dark. Ed didn’t like to argue after dark. Arguments always seemed bigger if they couldn’t be reflected against the backdrop of the day. A disagreement over whether or not to go to church—and Ed usually didn’t—could be angry and mean at night. But if they walked to the barn in the middle of the day to argue, the tension soon fell away. Disagreements simply did not hold up against the world he and Eunice had already conquered. Ed desperately wanted to take Eunice for a walk to talk about Ed Jr. and Margaret Chambers.

  But Eunice had the house in readiness. She had not cried over this incident, because she seldom cried, but also because she didn’t really understand what had happened. She was simply angry that her men could let something like this get out of hand. And she was going to demand answers. She loved Margaret Chambers, she had schooled the girl like a daughter, had urged her off to college, and brought her back to teach. Her men knew this. They had known Margaret since she was eleven or twelve. They knew the Chambers family. It was just inconceivable that this could happen.

  Ed and Ed Jr. entered through the back door and looked at the woman now perched on a kitchen stool, her back straight, her hands clasped precisely on the old oak table, her jaw hard. They saw a stony determination in her face, and also a glint of confusion and fear.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Ed Jr. blurted out. “But she deserved it.”

  Eunice said nothing. She folded her hands on her apron, a habit more than anything else, and looked into the faces she had trusted all her life.

  “Did you do this thing?” she asked.

  Ed sat down slowly but forcefully, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “Junior here and some of the boys set out to teach that Chambers girl a lesson and get her out of Nickerly County,” he said. “You know what was being said about her. We can’t have that kind of person teaching school.”

  “The Lord sayeth thou shalt not bear false witness,” Eunice said.

  Her voice was level, and she let the words out slowly, enunciating each one carefully. “And surely our neighbors have borne
false witness against Margaret Chambers. I do not believe what they say. Margaret is a strong girl, that I taught, and I do not believe she is corrupting the morals of our children or our community.”

  “Mother,” Ed Sr. said, “you know the Civic Improvement Association does not agree with you. Just last week Tiny Tucker prayed for deliverance from this woman. And nearly every family in town knew what these boys planned to do.”

  “They aren’t boys, Ed,” Eunice continued. “They are grown men, with families, with responsibilities. I am as faithful to the Lord as most, but I do not believe the wrath of God goes to the shaming of an innocent woman. This is 1911. We don’t burn people at the stake, whatever their transgressions.”

  “Eunice, don’t you lecture me,” Ed said. “Our boy did the right thing, and I will defend him with every penny I have. The community will stand up for him. We will prevail over this girl no matter what you think.”

  “Ed, this is not a matter of prevailing,” Eunice said, seeming to understand the situation perhaps better than even she realized. “Herb Forchet has been arrested, and he has named every one of you in on this. Fourteen men. Fourteen men, and not one of you had the gumption to stand up and say, ‘This is wrong.’”

  Ed Jr. shuffled in his chair.

  “This was not wrong, Mom,” he said. “Ask anyone in town. Margaret Chambers tried to seduce that Swenson boy. She flirts with all the men. She doesn’t know her place.”

  “You don’t know any of that,” Eunice said. “That’s town gossip.”

  “What about her mother and Johnny Hargrove?” he countered.

  “That was twenty years ago, and we surely don’t know what happened that night. Probably nothing.” Eunice was flabbergasted at this accusation. “That was twenty years ago, and you still bring it up.

  We see the Chambers family every week. They helped build our school. They raised two fine girls. They are honest and decent people, yet you bring up that silly shivaree. And for that you want to tar and feather their daughter.”

  Ed decided it was time to change the conversation, move away from what had happened, which couldn’t be changed now anyway, and consider the present.

  “Eunice,” he said, “the sheriff will be here tomorrow for Junior. I have hired John Engle to represent us, and he’s going to get the best lawyers in this state to help us. My boy will not go to jail for this. We should be proud that our community has stood up for its Christian principles.”

  Eunice hadn’t really considered the possibility of jail. “What will the charges be?” she asked. Her voice was quiet and low.

  “The sheriff says this new county attorney, McArdle, is going after everybody,” Ed said. “That little weasel of a Frenchman is sitting in jail right now claiming that our boys made him do it. The sheriff went out to Twelve Mile Run this afternoon to look the place over. They’ll be down at the mill tomorrow. But I don’t believe there’s a jury in Nickerly County that would ever convict these boys of anything.”

  The knock at the door was faint, but clearly discernible, even through the fog of family argument. Nobody moved. They sat still, silent, not believing that anyone would be coming to the house after dark. Then Ed Sr. heard the knock again and pushed his chair away from the table. Ed Jr.’s shoulders sagged as the air slid out of his body like tension suddenly gone from a wire fence. He felt limp. His father opened the door. It was Easy Tucker.

  “Your wife was here earlier, Easy,” Ed said, without even waiting for a greeting. He just wanted to get rid of Easy and return to his conversation.

  “Can I see you a minute, Ed? Outside?”

  Ed looked helplessly back in the house, catching Eunice’s eye. Although her expression never changed, Ed turned and walked outside. Easy took a few steps away from the house. It was the first time that Ed noticed Easy’s hand, tucked behind his hip, and it looked in the dark like he might be wearing a glove.

  “Ed,” Easy said, looking hard at the ground, “if anything happens to me will you take care of Tiny?”

  “Sure,” Ed responded. “But this is going to blow over. Don’t you worry. Now go on home.” Ed turned to go back in the house.

  “Wait,” Easy said. “I already sold the lake to Jack Butter down at the ice house, just in case I need a lawyer. But will you see that he gets the ice if anything happens?”

  “Sure, Easy, but you’ll be here.”

  Easy sold his ice every year to Jack Butter. Jack came to the farm in the coldest part of winter, usually February, to cut the ice with long handsaws. He hired a half-dozen farmers, who often sought part-time jobs during the winter, to work two saws and load the ice squares onto sleds pulled by mules or horses. Jack dragged the ice to the ice house, stacked it layer upon layer, with sawdust between each layer to insulate against a thaw, and then sold it throughout the summer in three-foot squares. By the end of the summer, when most of the ice was gone, the sawdust was four or five feet high in the ice house, and just finding the remaining ice took some serious digging. Ice was a valuable commodity, and Easy’s lake had provided ample income ever since Jack Butter’s ice house was built.

  “I just want to make sure everything is right,” Easy said, and turned to leave. It looked to Ed like Easy grabbed his right hand with his left as he turned, but it was too late to ask about the glove, and Ed wanted to get back inside to his more immediate problem. When he stepped back in the kitchen, no one had moved. Ed sat back down at the table.

  “What was that all about?” Eunice asked, smoothing her apron with both hands.

  “Easy is worried,” Ed said. “You know how he is about Tiny. Very protective.”

  “What’s Tiny done?”

  “Nothing, he just wanted me to know he’s already sold his ice to Jack Butter.”

  “Dad,” Ed Jr, interrupted, “did you see his hand?” Ed Jr. had stared through the screen door as Easy and his father talked. He tried to imagine the last time he saw Easy, wearing a dress and sunbonnet, tearing Margaret’s blouse, then wandering off into the night. He wondered what was going on in Easy’s mind. Easy was such a complex character, quick to temper but long on compassion. He had once pulled a neighbor out of a threshing machine after the man’s arm caught in the drive belt, tearing it off. Easy carried the man to his wagon, drove him to the small hospital in Nickerly, and stayed with him for three days while the doctor sewed up the stump and kept him from dying.

  “Easy seems real upset,” Ed said, “but I told him to go home and not to worry.”

  “Can you say the same for us?” Eunice asked sharply.

  “What does John Engle say?” Ed Jr. inquired, going directly to the point.

  “Engle says this will never go to trial. There is no law against tarring and feathering. And Margaret Chambers is a tart. Our boys were carrying out the wishes of the community and the will of God. You’ve seen how this girl walks down the street, inviting men to flirt with her. I hear she’s been with half the men in Ellsworth.”

  “Margaret is not a tart,” Eunice said forcefully. “And if you boys try to destroy her, after all you’ve already put her through, I’ll be on her side.”

  “Now, Eunice,” Ed Sr. said, “don’t get worked up. Let’s talk about this tomorrow when the sheriff comes.”

  “When is that?” she asked, surprised.

  “At dawn,” Ed said. “He said he’d be here at dawn.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Temple Dandridge strode into the newsroom of the Kansas City Star and announced to his colleagues, more than twenty editors and reporters bent over scarred wooden desks in a newsroom with a washboard floor that hadn’t seen varnish in decades, “The story of the century is mine.”

  Nobody looked up. The city editor was shouting a story assignment across the room to three reporters gathered around the New York Times, which had just come in by train. None of them looked up either. But Temp Dandridge didn’t care. He walked straight into Nate Cabot’s office, pulled up a chair, and waited for the editor to stop scribbling. Cabot look
ed even more like a painted Easter egg than usual, principally because he had no neck, a fifty-two-inch waist, and a wide-brim felt hat permanently fixed to his head, even in August and even at ten o’clock in the morning.

  “Nate, old man,” Temp began, “I got a call last night from someone I haven’t seen since Topeka, when I spoke to that law school about the Star. Anyway, this kid calls me last night and says he remembers me from the speech, and then he says, ‘I want to tell you about my case.’”

  Cabot had not yet looked up from his editing.

  “‘Sure, kid,’ I say,” Temple continued. “Of course I don’t remember him from Adam. But it turns out he’s a county attorney in some place out west called Nickerly, and then he tells me the whole town has tarred and feathered their schoolteacher.”

  Nate glanced up, or at least his hat moved, and Temp pushed on. “This kid is gonna prosecute fourteen guys, not just any guys off the street, but the cream of the town, for pouring a little tar down this lady’s dress. Can you beat that for a story?”

  “So, let’s see your copy,” Nate grunted.

  “Sure,” Temp said, “sure. But boss, I want to go to this trial. We could get a story every day. I want to see this lady who could get the whole town riled up.”

  “What’d she do?” Nate asked.

  “I don’t know,” Temp said. “The kid says it was gossip. Something about seducing a boy.”

  “How young?” Nate asked.

  “The teacher or the boy?” Temp smiled. “Haven’t the faintest.”

  “Arrests?”

  “The trial hasn’t been set yet,” Temp said. “In fact, they’re just arresting people now. I wish I could remember this little county attorney. I can’t picture him at all.”

  “Get us a piece for tomorrow,” Nate said. “We’ll worry about the trial later.”

  Temp walked back to his desk, plopped down, and shuffled through the papers stacked haphazardly around his typewriter. Temp’s management technique was to write addresses and phone numbers on a scrap of paper, usually a corner of the Star he tore off while he was standing at the wall phones installed along the back of the newsroom. He then threw the scraps in the shoe box he kept in the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. Since the scraps didn’t always make it into the box, every couple of weeks he would reshuffle his books and papers, picking out the unfiled scraps of names and numbers, and discarding them or placing them in the shoe box. It wasn’t perhaps the most efficient system, but it worked well for Temp.