The next morning we were just finishing the milking when Karl Myerhoff found us in the barn. He was Mr. Davis’s uncle. My heart jumped when I saw him in that dim light, thinking Mr. Davis had come back to life. There was a resemblance between the two, although Mr. Myerhoff was older and his clothes were clean and neat and he wasn’t a drunk.
He followed us back to the house. My mama asked him to come in and sit down, but he wouldn’t do that. He would never set foot in our place even when he came to see Mr. Davis. It was plain from the time my mama married his nephew that Mr. Myerhoff didn’t have any use for her. He would speak his business on the front porch and then leave.
This time he asked my mama straight out where his nephew was. When she said he’d gone to Denville, he said, “You’re telling me he walked twelve miles to Denville?”
I knew why he said that. He’d seen the horse in the barn.
My mama was just his size, so she could look him straight in the eye. She wrapped her shawl tight around her and said, “He told me he was going to Denville, and when I came back from carrying the eggs to Foster’s, he was gone. Maybe someone came for him with a wagon. I don’t know and I don’t care how he got there. I’m just glad to have the peace and quiet.”
That last part sounded like she was speaking the truth, so I was glad she said it. For the rest, I was afraid that Mr. Myerhoff knew she was lying.
When he left, my mama and I went inside and she started frying meat for our breakfast. I was surprised. I thought the meat was for our dinner. My mama said that if Mr. Myerhoff went straight to the sheriff, we might not be having dinner at our place. Then she said we’d better have our story straight.
I know the story, I said to her, the story about him going off with another woman.
Not that story, my mama said. If the sheriff and his men came and searched the place, she worried that they’d find the bones she’d buried in the barn cellar. If that happened, she was going to have to tell them that she’d shot Mr. Davis by accident.
“But, Mama…,” I said, and she stopped me from saying more.
“That’s how we’re going to tell it, Lucy Ann.” She fixed me with her eyes, so I would know there was no arguing.
Then I started trembling and crying and couldn’t get myself to stop.
“There’s nothing to go on about,” my mama said. “It was nobody’s fault but his that the revolver went off. That’s what I’ll tell them, the sheriff and all, and they’ll believe me because everyone around here knows what that man was like, the temper on him and the things he did to me.”
Then why did we tell the story about him going off to Denville? I wanted to ask. And why did you chop him up and burn him? I didn’t ask those questions, because I knew the answer. In her heart she was afraid that no one would care what he had done to her and no one would believe that he got shot by accident.
Later that day, when we came back from Foster’s, the sheriff and his men were waiting.
“Are you Mrs. Margaret Davis?” the sheriff asked my mama. He was a sour-looking man with a pockmarked face.
She answered that she was and that this was her house and she would like to go inside. But they wouldn’t let us in, only kept us out on the porch. I could see through the window that they’d turned the place upside down. Then two men came out of the barn. One of them had something in his hand. I knew before he got close enough for me to see that they’d found Mr. Davis’s bones.
____
WE RODE INTO town with the sheriff, the cold wind whipping against us so it was hard to catch a breath. As soon as we got there, they took my mama away. For a long time I’d been thinking that as soon as I had my own money, I’d get as far from her as I could. But that day, when they took my mama down off the wagon, I cried like a baby. My mama had no family, and my father’s people were out in Pennsylvania. They didn’t want to know us after my mama married Mr. Davis. If the sheriff put my mama in jail, I had no home, no place to go to at all.
They put me up for a few days at Tyler’s Hotel, with a woman called Miss Carter in charge of me. Then Mr. Myerhoff came to see me and said I was to go home with him. Before we rode out of town in his wagon, we stopped at Kaufman’s Dry Goods. Mr. Myerhoff gave me five dollars and sent me inside to buy some things. I got a thick wool shawl and a blue skirt and some other things. I never before had so many new things at the same time.
Mr. Myerhoff had the feed-and-grain store in town. When I saw his big white house, clean and warm inside, with carpet on the floor, I thought he must be a rich man. His wife took me to a small room in back of the kitchen and said that’s where I would sleep. I never before had a room all to myself.
I knew by Mrs. Myerhoff’s face that if it was up to her, I wouldn’t be there. She told me I would have to make myself useful in the house. I said I wasn’t afraid to work. I was used to it.
Working for Mrs. Myerhoff was nowhere near as hard as what I had to do at home. And when she saw I knew how to do the washing and keep the place clean, she didn’t seem to mind that I was there. In that house, I got to see how things could be when no one was drunk or swearing or breaking up the chairs. I made up my mind that someday I would live like that with my own family. If someone had said to me, Lucy Ann, you’re going home with your mama today, I would have begged to stay on with the Myerhoffs. Every day I worried that I’d do something wrong and they’d send me away, so I tried to do just like they said.
In those months before the trial, Mr. Myerhoff would take me to see Mr. Sullivan, the district attorney. The two of them asked me questions, the same ones over and over. I figured that they were going to keep asking until they got the answers they wanted.
How did Mr. Davis come to get shot? It was an accident, I said. What had my mama done with Mr. Davis’s body? I don’t know, I said. That was partly true. I’d only seen her sharpen the ax and carry the tub back and forth from the shed to the stove.
Then they twisted the questions around, and it got harder for me to answer.
“Wasn’t it true there was a lot of yelling and shouting?” Mr. Sullivan asked me. “Weren’t you scared and confused? Can you say for certain that you didn’t see your mama pull the trigger?” Then: “You saw Mr. Davis dead and you saw the ax and you saw your mama covered with blood. How do you suppose that blood got on her?”
When I didn’t answer the way he wanted, Mr. Sullivan talked to me about the oath. He said when the trial came I was going to have to swear on a Bible that I would speak the truth. He said, “Lucy Ann, if you see someone shoot and kill another person and lie about it, you can go to prison just the same as if you pulled the trigger yourself.”
In the end I was afraid that if I didn’t answer the way they wanted me to, Mr. Myerhoff would send me out of his house and Mr. Sullivan would make sure I went to prison.
One time, before the trial, I was taken to see my mama’s lawyer. I answered his questions the way Mr. Sullivan had taught me. I could see Mama’s lawyer wasn’t pleased with me. I told myself that I hadn’t put my mama in jail. From the time I was ten, I’d begged for us to run away. If she’d listened to me, Mr. Davis would never have got shot. And I told myself that when the trial started, the judge would hear about the beatings and the black eyes. Then he’d know that Mr. Davis got what he deserved.
____
IT WAS SPRING when the trial started. People were lined up on the grass outside the courthouse waiting to get in. Mr. Myerhoff and I didn’t have to wait. We went right in and found our seats in the courtroom. That place looked to me like a church for rich people, with its marble walls and dark wooden benches and tall windows.
Every person stopped talking when my mama walked into the courtroom that first day. The sheriff was right beside her, like they were afraid she’d bolt and run. The people all stretched their necks to see her, some standing up until they were told to sit back down.
My mama walked with her head up, looking straight ahead. This was the first I’d seen her since the day we rode into town i
n the sheriff’s wagon. Her hair was nice, combed back and twisted up neat in the back. She wore clothes I had never seen, a red shirtwaist trimmed in black and a black skirt. They wrote about it in the newspaper. That was one thing they got right. Later I found out that Mr. Hackett, her lawyer, helped get those clothes for her.
We had to stand up when the judge came in. Even in his black robe, you could tell he was a heavy man. He didn’t have much hair on his head, but his eyebrows were the thickest I’d ever seen.
Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Hackett made their speeches, but I hardly heard a word they said. I knew any minute they were going to call me to put my hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth. My mama and I never went to church much after she married Mr. Davis, but still I wondered what happened to people who swore on the Bible and then told a lie.
When the speeches were done, the other witnesses were made to leave the courtroom. Mr. Sullivan asked that I be allowed to stay since I would be the first to testify, and the judge agreed.
When I heard my name, I was trembling so hard I thought my legs wouldn’t carry me to the front of the courtroom. My hand shook when I put it on the Bible. I looked to where my mama was sitting, then quick looked away.
Mr. Sullivan’s questions were easy at first. Was my name Lucy Ann Simpson and was I Margaret Davis’s daughter and was I acquainted with George Davis? I just had to say yes, sir, but even so the judge kept telling me to speak up.
Then Mr. Sullivan asked me about the shooting, about how I heard shouting from the other room and ran in and saw Mr. Davis waving the revolver around. He asked about Mr. Davis and my mama fighting for the revolver and about how I was so scared I couldn’t be certain whether it went off by accident or on purpose.
That was true, I said. I kept my eyes on my lap because I was afraid to look up and see my mama’s face.
“And when Mr. Davis lay dying on the floor, you saw the revolver in your mother’s hands?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. By this time truth and lies were so mixed up in my head, I hardly knew one from the other. But I do know I never said those things they put in the newspaper, that my mama’s eyes were blazing like a cat’s and that she pulled the trigger again and again. Ever since my mama’s trial, I don’t believe a word I read in the newspaper. If they say the sun is shining, I think to myself it must be raining.
Then Mr. Hackett, my mama’s lawyer, asked me questions. He was a tall man with a thick mustache that he kept stroking like it was a furry animal.
“Do you like living in Mr. Myerhoff’s house?” he asked. “Are you treated more kindly than you were by Mr. Davis? Do they buy you nice clothes? Would you choose to stay with the Myerhoffs as long as you could?” All I could answer was “Yes, sir.”
When the judge finally told me I could step down, I was crying. As I went back to my seat, my mama and I looked at each other straight on for the first time. I expected to see pure hatred on her face, but it wasn’t like that. Whatever she was feeling didn’t show at all.
Other people put their hands on the Bible and swore to tell the truth. I suppose some of them did. One man talked about the blood in the cellar. With all my scrubbing that night, we didn’t think about the blood dripping down between the floorboards. He talked for a long time, telling how he knew it was human blood and not from a pig or a cow. Another man went on about the bones that were under the barn, how he knew without any doubt that they were human bones.
I was glad when they called up Mr. Ed Buckley. He was a farmer who had known my mama since she was a girl. I didn’t think he would say anything to harm her, but that wasn’t how it turned out. He told how the sheriff asked him to come up to the jail and visit with my mama even though he didn’t want to. He told how he and Mama just sat talking about one thing and another.
“She talked to you about killing George Davis, did she?” Mr. Sullivan asked.
Mr. Buckley said, “Well, she said something about red-dogging George Davis and I told her I could hardly blame her, the way he treated her.” Then Mr. Buckley looked straight at the sheriff and said that if he’d known the reason for his visit was to get evidence against my mama, he wouldn’t have gone in there.
____
ON THE THIRD or fourth day, I don’t remember for certain, Mr. Hackett called my mama up to testify. She was wearing a different dress that day, a black calico with white trim. I suppose he got that for her too, because I had never seen it before. When Mr. Hackett called her up, people got so noisy, commenting to each other, that the judge had to bang his gavel again and again.
Mr. Hackett asked my mama about the things Mr. Davis had done to her, the beatings and so forth, and how she was afraid for her life. This was where I had put my hope. I thought that if the judge heard what kind of man George Davis was, he’d say he deserved to die ten times over. But it didn’t happen that way. Mr. Sullivan and the judge wouldn’t let Mr. Hackett ask my mama those questions. Those questions weren’t proper, they said.
Mr. Hackett argued with the judge, saying the questions were proper, that my mama feared for her life and that was why she tried to get the revolver away from Mr. Davis. But the judge had another idea. He said it didn’t matter that my mama was afraid, because she didn’t say she was trying to protect herself. She said the gun went off by accident. They went back and forth on this. At first I didn’t understand what it all meant, but then I got the gist. The judge didn’t care about the things Mr. Davis had done to my mama.
Then it was Mr. Sullivan’s turn. When he asked my mama how she came to shoot Mr. Davis, she stuck to her story about how he waved the revolver around, threatening to shoot her, and when she tried to grab it, it went off. “He got shot purely by accident,” she said.
Then Mr. Sullivan asked whether she had chopped off Mr. Davis’s head.
The courtroom was so quiet then you could have heard a leaf fall to the ground. Everyone was waiting for my mama’s answer.
She finally said, “I don’t see what difference it makes, once a man is dead.”
Mr. Sullivan asked his question two or three more times, and each time my mama gave him the same answer. By then there was laughing in the courtroom, not out-loud laughing, but snickering and the like.
Then Mr. Sullivan said, “I expect you know what a man’s head is, Mrs. Davis.”
My mama said, “I expect so.”
“I will make my question very plain,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Did you pick up an ax and chop Mr. Davis’s head off?”
“Not when he was still living,” my mama said.
“Am I to understand that you chopped off his head when he was no longer living?”
“That was when I did it,” my mama said.
The judge had to bang his gavel then and tell the people that if the commotion didn’t stop he was going to throw the bunch of them out of the courtroom.
After my mama stepped down, Mr. Hackett told the judge that he had a list of names, more than twenty, I think, of people who were ready to speak up for my mama. Two of them were justices of the peace my mama had gone to at different times, swearing an oath against Mr. Davis so they would put him in jail for beating her, but it never did work. The others were neighbors, people from town who’d seen her with her eyes blackened and clumps of her hair torn out.
But the judge wouldn’t let Mr. Hackett call a single one of them up to speak. “Improper, improper,” he said again and again. Listening to him, something changed in my heart. I stopped hating my mama. After all the beatings she had taken from Mr. Davis, here she was taking a beating from the judge, this time with his words.
____
THE NEXT DAY Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Hackett and the judge made long speeches. Then the jury went out to decide if my mama was guilty. I knew what they would decide before they even came back. I guess everyone else did too. There was no hope for my mama, not with the judge forbidding Mr. Hackett’s questions.
____
MR. MYERHOFF TOOK me over to the jail in his wagon so I could spend time with my m
ama before they sent her to the prison up in Auburn. I was scared to see her, but I went anyway. When I walked in, the first thing she said was “Lucy Ann, you’ve gotten so fat I would hardly know you.” Then I knew it would be all right, that she didn’t hate me.
I cried and told her I was sorry I hadn’t stuck to the story the way we planned. She said I wasn’t to worry about it, that she knew what those people were like, how they twisted things around. Then she laughed and said she’d never had things so easy in all her years with Mr. Davis as she did in that jail. I suppose she was scared about going to prison, but she didn’t let me see it.
Then I spoke up and told what had been on my mind for some days. “I want to tell Mr. Sullivan the truth about that night,” I said.
“And what would come of that?” My mama’s eyes were blazing then. “Nothing you say is going to make them set me free.” Then she made me swear to her that I would never say a word to Mr. Sullivan.
I had to make another promise too. When I said that if I got money of my own, I would take the train up to Auburn and visit her, she got all riled up. She didn’t want me to see her in that place, she said.
I asked if it was so terrible there, but she wouldn’t answer, just made me promise that I never would come. Then she said she would be happy to have my letters, and I promised to write to her every month.
The woman who was a keeper at the jail had showed her how to do fancy stitching, and my mama wanted to teach me. That was how we spent the rest of the morning, stitching on muslin, and talking just as if it was not the last time we would ever see each other.
____
I STAYED ON working for Mrs. Myerhoff until I was sixteen. Then I got work at the hotel, where I met Samuel McCoy, the man I married. I wrote to my mama every month, only missing one now and again. Sometimes she answered and sometimes she didn’t, depending on if she was sick or if they punished her by not letting her write to me. She was a big, strong woman, but she became sickly soon after she got to Auburn.
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests Page 24
