Esther's Pillow

by Marlin Fitzwater

  W.W. walked straight to her, with Temp in tow. “Margaret,” he said, “this is the gentleman I was telling you about, Mr. Temple Dandridge of the Kansas City Star. May we come in?”

  Margaret thought it a strange name, almost like royalty, with too many syllables for a farmer, as if his mother used a last name for a first name.

  “Come in,” she said quietly. She pushed the screen door open and turned to lead the visitors into the living room. Her mother and father were standing in the kitchen, as if caught in mid-conversation.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Chambers,” W.W. said, shaking hands with Mr. Chambers and nodding his head to Mrs. Chambers, “this is Mr. Dandridge.” He assumed they had heard the earlier introduction to Margaret and saw no need to repeat the name of the newspaper. The two parents stepped back, as if turning the conversation over to Mr. McArdle. They didn’t distrust the newspaperman because they had never had any reason to do so. In fact, they had never read the Kansas City Star and certainly had no understanding of the reach and impact of a story in this paper. But no matter. If Mr. McArdle asked them to talk with Mr. Dandridge, they assumed it to be at least one new friendship in a community of people pulling away from them. And if it helped Margaret’s case, so be it. But still, Mr. Dandridge was a city person. You could see that by the cocky way he wore his hat.

  “Please be seated, Mr. Dandridge,” Margaret’s mother said.

  The parents remained standing as Margaret moved to sit in the rocker by the fireplace.

  Temp and W.W. sat side by side on the sofa in front of the windows, where the sun behind them cast their faces in darkness, so Margaret turned her chair to angle the sun away from her eyes.

  Temple Dandridge was struck by her attractiveness. She had said only a couple of words, but she wasn’t what he expected. She had a nice figure, but she was too tall to be considered provocative. She was pretty, but her hair was tightly wound in a bun that choked out any thought of frivolity. Her nose was strong, and when she smiled, as she did briefly when Temp sat on a hard cushion that had to be pulled and stored on his lap, her face grew open and warm. Only in her eyes was there any hint of trouble, a mischievousness jailed by fear, as if she knew a threat was at hand but didn’t comprehend its nature. She seemed wary.

  “Mr. Dandridge is here to write about your case,” McArdle said. “Could you tell him about the College of Emporia and why you wanted to be a teacher?”

  Margaret knew this was just a warm-up question to make her feel at ease, and it didn’t really help because she wanted to talk about what these men had done to her. She hesitated, as if bothered with the wasted effort.

  Temp picked up on her pause. “Miss Chambers,” he said, “I want to write a story about you, about why you went to college, about your life here in Nickerly, and about your interests as a teacher. I want our readers to know that what happened to you, happened to a real person.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dandridge,” Margaret said. She looked at him squarely. “That’s one of the worst parts of all this. I grew up with these men. And Ed Garvey’s mother is my best friend. She helped me get into college and to come back to Nickerly.”

  Margaret took Temp through her college years, the courses, the church parties, the dormitory, the one trip to Wichita with the college chorus to sing at the annual meeting of the United Presbyterian Council.

  “Did you have any boyfriends?” Temp asked gingerly.

  “I knew the boys at college,” Margaret answered openly. “They took me to parties, and sometimes we went to church together. But there was no one special.”

  Temp thought her answer rather open and unaffected, coming from a girl accused by the entire community of having a low moral character. Either Margaret hadn’t picked up on the relationship to today’s predicament, or the gossip was wrong. In either case, she betrayed none of the defensiveness he expected.

  Temp’s article was coming together in his mind. This often happened—that a chance phrase or a quick impression would stir his imagination, and the story would take shape even before the interview was finished. He could see a profile story forming. He would show how an independent girl from a perfectly normal background could find herself ensnared in an iron circle of vicious gossip. But that was getting ahead of himself; this first story would be just about Margaret and her parents.

  Mr. and Mrs. Chambers had seated themselves at the kitchen table, which looked directly into the parlor. Temp thought it strange that Margaret’s father said very little, although he appeared to be listening carefully to every word. Mrs. Chambers got up to make some tea and set the pot on a silver tray on the small serving table near the sofa. Temp noticed there were few pictures on the wall, except for a likeness of Christ and a faded drawing of the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem.

  “Margaret,” Mr. McArdle interrupted, “I’ve asked Mr. Dandridge not to discuss the events of August 7 with you today. When the trial starts, as I’m sure it will, that’s the time to talk about what happened. And I would ask you not to discuss that evening with anyone else, even your parents. Is that acceptable?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “And should I not talk about those hateful women either?”

  “No, Margaret,” McArdle said, realizing that it might be more difficult than he thought to guide his plaintiff. Temp looked up quickly from his notes. What a clever girl, he thought, to introduce the subject of her enemies without actually saying so. He looked forward to their later conversations, when he knew her better.

  “Miss Chambers,” Temp ventured, “do you know the men who did this? I mean from school, or church, or as neighbors?”

  “There were some I didn’t know,” she said. “Some I couldn’t see. It happened so suddenly. I was terrified. I think I know the man in the dress.”

  W.W. intervened before she could speculate on his identity.

  “Have you ever had any trouble like this before?” Temp asked, getting closer to his real question. He couldn’t seem to find any basis for the rumors about Margaret Chambers. She seemed every inch a lady, but he did notice that she wasn’t afraid of men, at least not of him, and she had touched his arm as they sat down. Some men might interpret that as flirting.

  “Mr. Dandridge,” Margaret said, “this was hateful violence, not something I am familiar with.” Margaret had locked the incident at Emporia in the hinterlands of her mind. Sometimes at night she would recall the rough hand that had invaded her blouse, but she had never uttered a word about it to anyone, and she never would. She understood the adversarial nature of her present position, having to defend her reputation in spite of the violence against her, and there would be no cracks in her armor.

  But this was not the trait that intrigued Temp Dandridge. It was her smile, the innocence of her toughness. He scanned his memory of other women he had known, and none could temper an iron will with humility in the manner of Margaret Chambers. Margaret did seem humble, but she clearly would not betray her sense of purpose.

  Temp decided to change tack. “Have you ever been to Kansas City?”

  “Oh no, Mr. Dandridge,” Margaret said with enthusiasm, a broad smile crossing her face. “But I want to. I want to go to the theatre. I want to go to church on Easter Sunday in a sanctuary that is so big a thousand people are there, wearing beautiful straw hats and flowers in their hair. Do you go there?”

  Temp was surprised by the question. Not its substance, but that she had turned the interview. In spite of her situation, she wanted to learn, to know about Kansas City. She had a journalist’s curiosity, and it excited him.

  “I love Kansas City,” Temp said. “I will show it to you sometime.” Then he caught himself and returned to the subject at hand.

  “It is said that you are too familiar with your students,” Dandridge said, searching for the right euphemism.

  “I am not,” Margaret responded quickly. “I respect them, and I have never even touched a boy improperly.”

  Temp raised his head quickly when he heard her go to the heart of the
matter.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I know there are rumors about me and young Mr. Swenson,” she said, glancing at her sister to see if she recalled any conflicting statements. Of course, Margaret had told Ileen that the boy was cute, but she had never touched him.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” W.W. McArdle said. “I’m sure Mr. Dandridge has enough for his story.”

  “Thank you, Miss Chambers,” Temple said. “I’ve enjoyed meeting you very much.”

  On the way back to Nickerly, over the intermittent explosions of the pistons, W.W. McArdle outlined the thrust of his case against the leading citizens of Nickerly, a conspiracy case that would prove fourteen men set about to run Margaret Chambers out of town, at the urging of their wives and with the general consent of the community.

  “Five men,” the county attorney said, “including that lifeless barber, were directly involved, and the rest were too; they stood around watching like voyeurs at a carnival peep show. There were even some who didn’t get there in time to watch, but who wanted to be there; they helped plan the whole thing. Worse, none of them tried to stop it, and I intend to prosecute every one of them.”

  Sitting in his hotel room at the small writing table between the two front street windows, Temp started to write. He had four hours before the teletype office closed, plenty of time to record his impressions from the morning visit. He took his favorite pen from his coat pocket, dipped it in the hotel ink, and started to write, stopping only briefly after the first sentence. The story began:

  NICKERLY, KS.—Margaret Chambers, the eighteen-year-old schoolteacher who was tarred and feathered by leading citizens here last week, has a soft demeanor and says she was terrified when attacked in the shadows on the road.

  The attack on Miss Chambers happened August 7, last, near Nickerly, in Nickerly County, where she lives with her parents. Herbert Forchet, the barber, took her buggy riding to a lonely point in the road where several men took possession of her team. Forchet immediately left, it is said, and hid in the ditch along the roadside while a crowd of men pulled the girl from the buggy and applied tar to her body. It is said she was otherwise uninjured.

  In the terrifying affair, the men threw the girl to the ground, tearing her clothing partly from her body, and smeared her with tar, a mix for painting barn roofs. One man held her prostrate, another held the tar, a third smeared the black mess over Miss Chambers’ body and limbs, from her neck to her knees. Then they emptied the bucket over her body. Then they released her. Forchet slunk from the weeds and helped the schoolteacher back into the buggy. She was so badly frightened that she could scarcely speak, but she was not weeping. The tar dripped from her clothing and her body and smeared Forchet’s clothing and the buggy seat. On her bare arms and neck were the tarry prints of the hands of the men who had held her.

  The only conversation that passed between the two during the drive home was one question and an answer.

  “What did they mean?” Miss Chambers asked Forchet.

  “I think,” he replied, “they meant the tar as a hint for you to leave the county.”

  The only excuse for the act was that a number of suspicious, meddling women had whispered evil of the girl and had incited their “menfolks” to punish her.

  Herbert Forchet was the first man arrested. It was charged that he entered into a conspiracy to entice the girl to the spot where the gang was waiting to attack. He pleaded guilty and on promise of a light sentence, gave the names of all the others concerned.

  Temple Dandridge put down his pen and read the story once more. This would get the town stirred up, he thought, although it was a far cry from the gentle profile story he had intended to write. No matter, he fully intended to see more of Miss Chambers, and the next story could have a more personal touch.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Reverend Aaron Langston spread the Kansas City Star on the kitchen table, poured himself a glass of tea, unbuttoned the white collar that pinched his throat, and sighed. This Sunday’s sermon on the sins of avarice was not what the congregation had wanted to hear. He had avoided the only moral issue of any interest, and he felt guilty about it; worse, he didn’t have a moral answer. He knew his friends and neighbors were looking to him for guidance. It showed in their faces and in their silence. After the service, the parishioners had filed past Aaron Langston, shaking his hand and repeating the mantra, “Praise the Lord,” but they clearly weren’t certain of the Lord’s position on the men of Nickerly County. There were no picnics after church. Instead, parishioners murmured their goodbyes in hushed tones and made a beeline for their buggies, where they were out of earshot and could argue openly about the virtues of Margaret Chambers versus the tar party.

  Aaron hated himself for letting them down, and it weighed on his mind all the way home.

  “Mother,” he said to Ivy, “come read this article with me. We have to decide.”

  Ivy had gone to the bedroom to remove her black bonnet and jacket. She didn’t comment on Aaron’s request. She came to the table with her hair in a tight bun, her blouse still stiff and clean despite the two-hour church service and the ride home. When Ivy was angry, her body became a limestone post, never bending, never showing a scratch. She was appalled by the righteousness of the tar party and their wives. Indeed, she had yet to hear a God-fearing explanation from her own son for this act of violence against a woman.

  Aaron started to read the story by Temple Dandridge. When he came to the paragraph about tearing her dress and smearing tar on her body, he could not say the words. He pushed the paper across the table so Ivy could read the lines for herself.

  “What shameful things to put in the paper,” Ivy said, pushing the Star back.

  The Reverend Aaron found it much more comfortable to discuss these matters in a biblical context, rather than in secular reality. But first things first.

  “Ed Garvey and Club Wilson put up the bond for Jay,” Aaron said. “We’ll have to pay them back the five hundred dollars.”

  “Jay can pay them back,” Ivy said without emotion.

  “We must stand behind the boy,” Aaron said.

  “And he must take his punishment,” Ivy replied.

  Aaron worried that the iron in Ivy’s spine would never bend. He realized she had reasoned out the right and wrong of this matter, but he had not fully decided. Aaron made his own calculations, subtracting the community’s responsibility to protect its shared moral values, from his love of his son. The math had slowly come out in the boy’s favor.

  “There may be a trial, Ivy,” Aaron said. “And we must stand with Jay. He will need our support.”

  “Aaron, I’ve never trusted those boys, his friends,” she said. “I knew they would get him in trouble.”

  “Mother, those boys are the children of our best friends. Most of them aren’t boys at all. They have families of their own, and they were just trying to protect them.”

  Ivy looked down at her hands and saw the lines of toil, the long days in the fields, picking rocks from the soil so that the hand plow could turn the earth behind their horse. She remembered the heavy stones that hurt her back and the sharp ones that scraped her hands, leaving her fingers rough and aching. She remembered the time she helped Aaron put the harness on a pair of mules, years ago when her parents were still alive. A possum scared the mules, causing them to rear up, pinning her between their haunches. Aaron had yelled at the mules and yanked hard on the harness to get them apart. But the confusion only frightened the animals more. As Ivy fell to the ground, her chest hurting from the collision of moving muscles, she felt a hoof hit her leg, then Aaron’s strong hand grabbing her ankle and pulling her under the mules to safety. Her physical damage was mostly bruises, and maybe a cracked rib that the doctor couldn’t diagnose for certain. But psychologically, she was shaken by this demonstration of life’s fragility. She often remarked to Aaron that if that beast had stepped on her stomach instead of her leg, she would be gone. The myriad
of uncontrollable violences in farm life often left her trembling. That’s why she hated human violence so much; it was controllable. It seemed so senseless to add another threat to those already abiding.

  Finally, she looked up at Aaron. “Let’s go for a walk,” she said.

  Ivy liked to stroll past the barn, through the pasture, and down toward the small creek where the cows stomped to the water’s edge, leaving waffle patterns in the mud. Aaron took her hand as they started through the wild daisies, not blooming as vigorously as in July, but bending gently over the natural grasses, as if holding umbrellas for their late summer seedings. The flowers and weeds brushed against the hem of Ivy’s dress, reminding her of their intrusion into God’s territory.

  “Aaron,” she began. “I have followed God’s law all my life. All the years that you and I have known each other, we have tried to walk the path of righteousness. But there are also our own laws that protect us from our weaknesses, our sins. We must keep those laws. I judge not my son’s motives. I know that we must protect the morality of our families and our communities. But we cannot excuse this thing that has happened. Those boys had no right to tear her clothes or to put that horrible tar on her. It’s just shameful.”

  Aaron hadn’t heard Ivy talk so purposefully, or at such length, for some time. Her slow, deliberate words made him feel the shame of what had happened. Perhaps his first blush of pride in protecting the community was not quite appropriate.

  “I am a leader in this community, Ivy,” Aaron said. “My sermons lay out the word of God, the rules to live by, the Ten Commandments that guide our daily lives. I cannot ignore this thing. The community must stand up for itself.”