by Bush, Holly
“Uh huh,” the sheriff said as he stood.
“Don’t do this, Reed. You know Jed’s mean enough. You saw him at the Freeman’s that night. You saw what he did to me. If he killed Beulah and Amos, he deserves to die, and you know it,” Belle said but Reed would not meet her eyes.
She ran from the kitchen. The slamming of the door to the bedroom brought Reed’s eyes up to meet the sheriff’s.
“I hear tell your wife is taking in Nathan Black. Any truth to that, Jackson?”
“The boy’s asleep on the floor in the next room,” Reed replied.
“Mrs. Jackson don’t seem like she’d be too overset if that worthless piece of shit, her brother, got strung up. The boy sleeping in the next room is the son of the man that same piece of shit strung up to a tree in front of his eyes. Don’t know what your game is, Jackson, but I’m mighty glad it’s you living here and not me,” the sheriff said as he opened the door to leave.
“Sheriff,” Reed called and the man turned back. He wheeled close. “I don’t want anyone bothering my wife or Nathan Black about any of this.”
The sheriff nodded and pulled the door closed behind him. Reed threw the lock and wheeled to the bedroom. His wife’s muted cries echoed in his ears, and he wheeled back to the kitchen and the amber bottle under the sink.
Reed was up and dressed before the sun rose. He’d slept in his chair and was stiff and sore and thick-headed from booze as well. He caught his reflection in the mirror over the sink where he shaved as he wheeled out the door. It was a red-eyed man with a burden too heavy to carry staring back. He wheeled down the main street before the merchant’s were out sweeping and the women out shopping. Was it shame that propelled him to hide in the predawn shadows? Reed knew it was pride that made him hurry out the door and miss the look of betrayal on Belle’s face.
* * *
Belle slept later than normal. Her eyes were swollen, and her heart near breaking but she knew she couldn’t wallow in bed with Nathan in the next room. She found him at the table drinking a glass of milk.
“Good morning, Nathan,” Belle said.
“Mornin’, Miss Belle,” the boy replied.
Belle dragged the rocker from the sitting room to the kitchen. She sat down slowly, feeling suddenly older than her twenty years. She was a wife, a mother and probably the sister of a murderer. And her husband was going to defend the man who took Beulah from her life with such violence. Tears coursed down her face, and she turned to the expectant face of her new son. Without a word, he climbed into her lap and lay back against her breast. Belle moved the chair slowly and held Nathan.
* * *
“Wake up, Richards. Your brother-in-law’s here.”
Reed wheeled his chair down the narrow hall scraping his hands on the bars of the cells with each turn. Musty, putrid air hit his nose as his eyes adjusted to the weak sunlight filtering through the bars of each passing cell. The sheriff opened the door with a clank of keys, and Reed wheeled himself up to the bunk where Jed Richards lay. The man turned his head slowly and grinned.
“Well, well, well. If’n it ain’t my dear sister’s husband here to plead my case,” Jed said. “Blood does prove thicker than water.”
“How did you get caught, Richards?” Reed asked.
“That’s the thing of it. Widow down at that end of town said she saw my horse near where that nigger done died,” Jed said as a slow smile lit his face. “Thing is though, Widow Monroe can’t see the hand in front of her own face. Hell, everybody knows that.”
“And the witness?” Reed asked.
“You tell me,” Jed said. “We both know that the sheriff is right. There was a witness. He just don’t know who it is.”
“If I choose to defend you, I can’t testify against you,” Reed said.
“Just like I heard,” Jed said and slapped his leg. “The only living human being that could point a finger at me can’t do it. Hell’s fire. That’s a good thing, though, Jackson.”
“We don’t know I’m the only one,” Reed said. “The sheriff may have other witnesses.”
Jed stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Who’s to say some wife or sister or relative or neighbor didn’t see one of you leave with a bull whip and a hundred feet of rope and followed you to my house? Who’s to say that relative or neighbor isn’t tired of being treated like you treated Belle? Maybe they agree with you but don’t think murder is necessary.” Reed sat back in his chair and stared long and hard at Richards. “Who knows if there’s another witness?”
Jed’s eyes raced back and forth and he rubbed a dirty hand through three days worth of stubble. “Anybody says anything, I’ll kill ‘em. They’ll never even hear me coming.”
“Tough to do from a jail cell.”
Jed’s head jerked up and he narrowed his eyes. “You going to be my lawyer or what?”
It was likely Belle wouldn’t speak to him for some time, maybe never again if he defended her brother. It would be hard for Henry and Mary Ellen to understand. He would expose himself and his ragtag family to some censure from both sides. The Northern sympathizers thinking it would be typical for a Southern lawyer to defend this kind of violence and the man that perpetrated it. The Confederate leaners would dissect his every move in the court room, wondering, he supposed, if his wife or soon to be adopted son had influenced the vigorousness of his defense.
The voice in his head, though, was his mother and her claim of his honor. And his honor required him to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. Reed had taken an oath to do just that with his hand on a Bible in the law office of the man who’d he’d apprenticed under and he meant every word. He always thought or hoped he’d be representing the South in some way as the Union and the Confederacy negotiated and merged again into one nation. But his first real opportunity to fulfill that oath came in the form of defending the worst kind of lazy, violent, purposefully stupid, ignorant cracker that this country could produce. There was enough irony to make a man laugh. But Reed was not laughing.
“Yes. I will represent you in court. But you must do two things, or I will walk away and board a train to Washington, DC where I will tell my Northern brethren, in detail, your actions on that night. If I don’t practice law again, so be it.”
Jed spit a long stream and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “What two things?”
“You’ve got to do as I say, and you’ve got to keep your band of thugs away from Belle and away from my home. Do you understand?”
“I would never let anyone bother my sister,” he said with a smirk.
“And you’ll do as I tell you, which will mostly be to keep your mouth shut.”
“I didn’t do nothing that no God fearing man shouldn’t a done. Folks will be electing me mayor when they hear my side of the story,” Jed said. “They’ll be thanking me.”
“Let me be clear, Richards,” Reed said. “Murder is murder. I’m the only thing standing between you and a noose. I don’t want to hear one word out of you. Not in the courtroom. Not to the sheriff. Not to other prisoners.”
“I hear ya.”
Reed turned his chair and wheeled out of cell, navigated down the hall to where Sheriff Waters sat at a massive wooden desk. The wall behind the sheriff held a long rack filled with rifles. Deputy Pearson sat across the room, slumped with his feet up on a stool and the front two legs of his chair hiked off the floor. Reed wheeled up to the Sheriff’s desk.
“Richards said that a widow woman with poor eyesight is your only witness. It was a dark night, Sheriff Waters. I don’t believe you have enough to hold my client,” Reed said.
“Mrs. Monroe’s eyesight might be failing her, but her hearing isn’t. She was on the way back from her outhouse in the woods behind her house around 9:30, shortly before Amos Black was strung up over your kitchen garden. She saw three horses and three men and heard them making their plans. Two of the men she’d didn’t know, but Jed Richards fixed her shed last fall and did poor job of it.
She recognized his voice because she’d gotten into an argument with him over his shoddy work and he’d threatened ‘to string her up like an uppity nigger.’ She told me what Jed said at the time, and she was scared as a rabbit. Jesamine, the laundry woman in town, was on Mrs. Monroe’s back porch that morning delivering and heard Jed threaten the widow. I asked Jesamine about it, and she repeated everything Mrs. Monroe said that Jed threatened. Jesamine begged me to leave her out of it as she was scared for her life being a colored widow herself with three youngins.”
The sheriff would make a credible witness, no doubt. He’d retold this tale succinctly and would be convincing in front of a jury. “Planning and doing are two different things, Sheriff.”
Waters stared at Reed a moment. “You think there was more than one trio of men out riding that night with the intent of lynching Amos Black?”
“I don’t know, Sheriff. Fact is we just don’t know for sure. What plans did Mrs. Monroe supposedly hear that night?”
“She said she heard Jed Richards say he was going to string up that uppity nigger trying to get out of town and hogtie the preacher and his sister.”
Reed stared at the sheriff. There was little doubt that Jed would have said that and the facts of that night bore out his threat. “I’d like to speak to Mrs. Monroe, of course. And the laundress, Jesamine.”
“I’ll arrange it, Jackson,” the sheriff said and looked at Reed squarely. “But if hear tell that either of those women have been bothered by anyone, and I mean anyone, there will be hell to pay.”
* * *
Belle dressed with care and walked into town, Nathan in tow. She knocked on the Dr. Lowell’s office door and he answered.
“Why, Belle, you’re looking fine today. I hope you’re recovering from recent events,” the doctor said. “Please come in. And who is this young gentleman?”
“My name is Nathan Black, suh.”
“Is it now, young man?” he said.
Belle smiled. “I’ve come to talk to you about my husband’s injuries, Dr. Lowell. Are you busy?”
“No one here right now. Sit down. What can I help you with?”
Belle sat down and Nathan stood close. “Well, Doctor, I’ve been rubbing and working my husband’s good leg every night just like you told me to do. I think it’s getting stronger. I’m not sure Reed noticed, but he uses it more than he did when we first got married and that was only a few months ago. Used to be when he’d get up out of his chair into bed, he just teetered on his leg till he could get turned around and sit down on the edge of the bed. But more and more, he bends his knee as he turns and can stay upright on it for some time.”
Dr. Lowell smiled. “That’s wonderful news, Belle!”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “But I remember when you and I first talked about working the muscles, you said that maybe someday he’d be ready for a wooden leg.”
“Does Reed know you’re here?”
Belle shook her head. “He’d never come. He’s too proud and stubborn, too. But sometimes he listens to me.”
“I’m sure he does,” the doctor said after a moment and stood up from the table he was leaning on and left the room.
When he came back in, he had a wooden leg in his hand with a hinged foot and leather straps at the top. “Reed should really come in and let me measure him, and we could get one specially made for him that would be a perfect fit. But I think this one is about right, maybe an inch too short or less. I ordered it for Mr. Stevens, but he died before he ever tried to use it.”
The doctor showed Belled how to strap the leg on above Reed’s knee and how to situate the stump on the cloth pad. “I don’t know how smooth an amputation they did on Reed’s leg, as he’d never let me examine him. It may be too painful to put weight there. I don’t know. I do know that learning to use one of these is not easy and takes months of practice.”
Belle stood up and took the leg from the doctor’s hands. “What do I owe you Dr. Lowell?”
“Nothing yet, Belle. Let’s wait and see if you’re husband is interested in trying it.”
Nathan looked up at Belle as they left the doctor’s house. “Mr. Jackson is going to be angry about this, I think.”
“I think you’re right, Nathan.” Belle said and took his hand to make the walk home. “I’m sure right.”
Chapter Thirteen
Dinner was cold on the table by the time Reed got home that day. He needed to study some Missouri law in capital cases and had stayed longer at the court house reading than he’d realized, finalizing some deeds for a man he’d met through Henry, who was turning out to be very lucrative client and was introducing him to others in need of his services. As he wheeled home that day, there was a definite fall chill in the air, and he thought about how glad he’d be to get inside, see Belle and hear about her and Nathan’s day if she was speaking to him.
He opened the fence gate and noticed new flower beds Belle had turned over under the windows of the sitting room. If his new clients turned out to have as much work as they implied, he’d have enough to buy their house from Mrs. Walker’s family come spring if they were willing to sell.
“I made stew, but it’s cold,” Belle said and directed Nathan to carry wood to the stove. “Well, did you see Jed?”
“Yes. And I’m going to be his attorney.”
Belle stared at him long and hard, and he wasn’t sure if he saw censure or disappointment in her face, but in any case, he looked away and busied himself behind the curtain where Belle kept the wash bowl. He dried his hands and rolled into the kitchen.
Reed ate while Nathan sat at the table with chalk and slate and drew his letters. Belle leaned against the big porcelain sink and dried her hands.
“Why do you have to do this? Why do you have to defend him? I don’t understand.”
Reed mashed the softened potatoes in the stew gravy. “To become an attorney, I went and ‘read the law’ for a man who was already an attorney. His name was Jeremiah Bastille. I was an apprentice and literally read law books and did all manner of scut work for him. I was very fortunate to read for him. An aunt on my father’s side knew his family and set up and introduction for me after I finished college at Richmond Academy. An apprenticeship in his office was much sought after.”
Belle was staring at him and waiting, he supposed, for an explanation. Nathan wrote his name, but Reed thought he was listening intently to his and Belle’s conversation. He tore a piece of bread in half and dunked it in the stew gravy.
“After two years with Bastille, right before the start of the war, he said I was done. That I was competent in the law. He knew I was getting ready to join the Confederate Army and tried his best to convince me to move to one of the new states, like California. I wish I’d listened to him.”
“But then you would have never married Miss Belle,” Nathan said with a smile that faded as he looked at Reed.
“True enough, Nathan,” Reed said. “Bastille held a ceremony for me before I left, and he had me put my hand on the Bible and swear to defend and uphold the U.S. Constitution. My father wanted him to use the newly-minted Confederate Constitution but he refused.”
“You’re going to defend Jed because of that?”
“Yes,” Reed said. “The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that someone accused of a crime retains some rights. A throw-back, I suspect, to when our founding fathers’ ancestors were thrown in chains with no recourse. They wanted the citizenry of our new republic to have rights. Even citizens who had been accused of a crime. Even those who were guilty of a crime.”
“And you’re going to defend Jed because of something you said years ago?”
He looked up at her. “I put my hand on the Bible and said I would, Belle. If that doesn’t mean something to a man, I don’t know what does.”
The kitchen was silent other than Nathan’s scratching and Reed’s spoon scraping the last of the stew from the bottom of the worn china they’d found in Mrs. Walker’s cupboard.
/> “My Pa always said you got to do what you say you’re going to do,” Nathan said finally and looked up at Reed.
“Your Pa was right,” Belle said to Nathan and then turned to Reed. “But I still don’t like this. I have trouble understanding why someone as mean as Jed deserves anything. But I do understand you made a promise, though, and you’re dead set on keeping it. I have to live with that, I suppose, Reed.”
Some great tension eased out of Reed. “I thank you. Nathan, I’m not defending this man because I think it was right what happened to your Pa. It was a terrible crime, and I wish it wouldn’t have happened. I’m doing it because I said I would.”
“Have you talked to Henry and Mary Ellen?” Belle asked.
“No,” Reed said. “I don’t imagine they’ll be thinking any more kindly of me than you are.”
“You saved me from my Pa, and I think you did that for the same reason you’re defending Jed. Because you think it’s the right thing to do,” Belle said and picked up his dirty dish. “I can’t be wanting you to do the right thing only when it makes me happy. But if Jed did this, and he walks away from it without any punishment, then I don’t know what to tell you. Because that sure isn’t the right thing either.”
“I’ll stop by and talk to Henry and Mary Ellen tomorrow. They deserve some explanation,” Reed said and backed away from the table. “I’ve got to do some reading before tomorrow. The trial is set to begin on Wednesday.”
* * *
“So soon?” Belle asked.
“Yes, very soon,” Reed said. “Could you see if my black suit jacket and pants need airing out? I’ll want to wear it for the trial, and I haven’t looked at it since I arrived in Fenton.”
“I’ve got it hanging outside to air, and I’ve brushed it good,” Belle said.
“And there’s a leather satchel somewhere that I’ll want to take with me to the courthouse.”
“It’s in your office. It needs some mink oil. I’ll go to the general store tomorrow and get some,” Belle said.
Reed stopped wheeling and looked at her. “I appreciate you helping me get ready for this trial, especially as you feel so strongly I shouldn’t do it.”
