Mockingbird (24 page)

As she watched Truman in the seat opposite hers, musing out the window of the train, it probably seemed incredible that her novel would be in bookstores in a few months. Then she would have the right to call herself a writer, though not in Truman's league by any means. All she hoped for was a “quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers.”
121

The Super Chief was delayed for six hours along the route, and when they arrived in Chicago, they had already missed their New York Central connection. They stayed in the city overnight and departed the next day, arriving in New York on Wednesday, January 20.

“Returned yesterday—after nearly 2 months in Kansas: an extraordinary experience, in many ways the most interesting thing that's ever happened to me,” Truman wrote to his friend the photographer Cecil Beaton. “But I will let you read about it—it may amount to a small book.”
122

*   *   *

While she was waiting to return with Truman to Kansas, Lee had the bittersweet experience of reading the galleys of her first novel. This is how it would look, for better or worse. Although she was cautioned not to make significant changes, she kept seeing places she wanted to change.
123

Also while she was home, she wrote a long feature story, which has only recently come to light, for the March 1960 issue of
Grapevine
, the magazine for members of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. Headlined “Dewey Had Important Part in Solving Brutal Murders,” the two-thousand-word article is an overview of how the case developed, step by step. It's the most comprehensive summary available of the investigation. As a piece of journalism, it's on a par with anything that might appear in a national newspaper: fact filled, tightly written, and in the voice of a reporter who isn't part of the story—the focus is entirely on Dewey. It demonstrates that although Lee needed quite a bit of editorial help with her fiction, she was a natural reporter.

However, it also creates a mystery of its own.

To begin with, why isn't it bylined? It was customary for the magazine to identify contributors; Lee must have requested that her name not be used. But for what reason? Probably it's another example of her not wanting to upstage Capote, who was on assignment for the
New Yorker
—the Clutter case was his story to tell. His “research assistant” is deferring to him, even though a
New Yorker
piece and a feature story for
Grapevine
would be miles apart in style.

Then why did she bother to write it at all?

As a kind of crib sheet for Capote—an outline of everything up until the trial—it's valuable. Weeks of detail-gathering are telescoped into an article that Truman could refer to without flipping through Lee's extensive typed notes. Its scope ranges from major events (“Dewey and his associates went into action. They discovered no alibi for the suspects from noon, November 14, to noon the next day. In Kansas City, warrants were out for the pair on bad check charges”) to smaller human interest details that Capote could use (“Al Dewey, 12 pounds lighter from his exertions, looks forward to settling down again with his family at 602 North First Street in Garden City. Dewey's family consists of his wife, the former Marie Louise Bellocq, who was a secretary in the New Orleans FBI office, their sons, Alvin Dewey III, 13, and Paul David Dewey, 9, plus Courthouse Pete, the family Watch-cat. Pete, age 4, weighs 13 pounds, is tiger-striped and eats Cheerios for breakfast”).

Ostensibly, the piece is about Dewey's legwork on the case. But it's quite flattering to Capote. The fourth paragraph includes a marquee announcement about how he has staked his claim to the story: “Truman Capote, well-known novelist, playwright, and reporter was sent by the
New Yorker
to do a three part piece of reportage on the crime, which will be later published in book form by Random House.” This is stealing a march on another freelance journalist, Mack Nations, who was trying to sell his book proposal, too.

But as the subhead suggests—“Resident Agent for Kansas Bureau of Investigation Helped Bring to Justice Killers of his Neighbors”—the article's primary aim is to please Alvin Dewey. Capote would need his cooperation while
In Cold Blood
was being written. No other law enforcement personnel are mentioned in the article. Dewey, as Lee describes him, is a dedicated lawman—a modern Pat Garrett pursuing Billy the Kid. “Asked if he would pursue the case to its conclusion, Dewey said, ‘I'll make a career of it if I have to.'”

*   *   *

Two months later, Harper Lee and Truman Capote were back in Kansas for the trial, scheduled to begin the third week of March. By coincidence, the Clutters' farm was going up for auction the same week.

They left behind a late snowy season in New York. A wet, warm spring had come to western Kansas. Nelle and Truman drove out to River Valley Farm on Sunday, March 21, to witness the sale. Bumper-to-bumper traffic met them at the entrance to the lane lined with elms, which were just beginning to cast a hint of shade. After crawling toward the house at a speed slower than a walk, they were waved into a muddy parking area strewn with hay. The sunny weather in the low seventies had brought out more than four thousand people for the largest farm auction in western Kansas history. There were cars and trucks from Colorado, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, and practically every county in Kansas west of Newton and Wichita. Auctioneer John Collins, his white shirt shining in the sun, sold everything of value to a swarm of men in coats and Stetsons—tools, tractors, and farm implements. “Herb had a lot of good stuff,” Clutter's brother, Arthur, commented.
124
Two weeks earlier, the Clutter sisters, Eveanna and Beverly, had leased the land, the house, and all the buildings to a businessman from Oklahoma. Inside a big Quonset hut forty yards from the house, the Ladies Circle of Holcomb Community Church sold $500 worth of hamburgers, ham sandwiches, and pieces of pie.

On Tuesday, jury selection began. For the first time since the courthouse was erected in 1929, the varnished church-type pews were slid to the sides and rear to leave room at the front for a special press table and thirteen chairs. Bill Brown of the
Garden City Telegram
handed out press passes, including one apiece for Truman and Nelle identifying them as representatives of the
New Yorker.
Truman had brought along the photographer Richard Avedon, who had to be content to sit on the side. The men at the press table, pleased to see Nelle back, had taken to calling her “Little Nelle.”
125
Someone asked, tongue-in-cheek, whether Nelle and Truman would be coming back for the trial of the screwball that was poisoning dogs in Garden City—a total of twelve, according to the front page of the day's
Telegram.

A little before ten o'clock, District Judge Roland Tate entered—a changed man, most folks noticed, since the death of his small son several years before—and took his seat on the bench. The courthouse custodian, Louis Mendoza, had spent most of Monday unsuccessfully trying to locate a U.S. flag with fifty stars on it, until Judge Tate instructed him to put the one with forty-eight back up. While Nelle and Truman had been out of town, Tate had weighed the youth and lack of experience of Finney County prosecutor Duane West and appointed a special prosecutor to assist him: Logan Green, who “looks like a mottled tough old piece of steak and has the voice to go with it,” Nelle wrote. “He is going to be hell on the defense witnesses. Has a remarkable ease of delivery, of forming questions, of saying exactly what he wants to say exactly how he wants to say it.”
126
The court-appointed counsel for Richard Hickock's defense, Arthur Fleming, nodded to Logan Green and said, “Cool morning.” Perry Smith's attorney, Harrison Smith (no relation), also court appointed, pulled a chair up to the defense table, dressed like a “symphony in blue-gray,” in Nelle's estimation.
127
Overhead, the telltale metallic clank of the jail door announced that Smith and Hickock were coming down.

The effects of sitting in jail for two months told on the two men. Nelle noticed Smith was softly rounder. “His thighs are like Lillian Russell's.” Dick Hickock: “fatter, greener, and more gruesome.”
128
Outwardly, the two men seemed bored, covering perhaps for being stared at by the forty-four prospective jurors who had assembled in the courtroom to be sworn in and questioned. District court clerk Mae Purdy called the jurors' names in a droning voice. Only four were women.

By day's end, the jury was composed entirely of men, including the reserve of alternates. Half were farmers. Smith, an amateur artist, had passed the time sketching on a legal pad. Hickock chomped relentlessly on a wad of gum, his chin resting on his hand now and then. The two men had implicated each other in their confessions, but there seemed to be no visible rupture in their relationship. Nelle saw Hickock glance at Perry Smith just once, “the briefest exchanges of glances, and the old eye rolled coldly.… Perry looked at him—gave Hickock one of his melting glances—really melting in its intensity—Hickcock felt eyes upon him, looked around and smiled the shadow of a smile.”
129

As expected, the turnout for the trial exceeded the courtroom's capacity of 160 persons. “Our trial was more like a circus than anything else,” Dick Hickock complained to Mack Nations while they worked together on their book. “It took only one day to choose the jury.… The courtroom overflowed with spectators and the halls were lined with photographers and newspaper reporters. Every exit was covered by a pair of highway patrolmen. Extra deputy sheriffs were brought in from neighboring counties.… I never did think much of the Finney County Attorney and I sure liked him less after our first day in court. He kept pointing his finger at me and telling the jury how no good I was. I resented it.”
130

At the press table, Associated Press reporter Elon Torrence noticed that Truman, dressed in a blue sports jacket, khaki trousers, white shirt, and a bow tie, spent most of his time listening, while Nelle, bringing to bear her incomplete law school training, “took notes and did most of the work during the trial.”
131

There were no surprises. “How cheap!” exclaimed special prosecutor Logan Green in his closing argument to the jury. “The loot was only about eighty dollars, or twenty dollars a life.” Harrison Smith and Arthur Fleming, attorneys for the accused, did not contest the state's evidence but pleaded for life imprisonment. Smith argued that capital punishment is “a miserable failure.” The jury deliberated less than two hours.

On Tuesday, March 29, Judge Roland Tate sentenced both men to hang. As he thanked the jury, Hickock, with characteristic bravado, claimed he felt only contempt.

I thought that these pompous old ginks were the lousiest looking specimens of manhood I had ever seen; old cronies that acted like they were God or somebody. Right then I wished every one of them had been at the Clutter house that night and that included the Judge. I would have found out how much God they had in them! If they had been there and had any God in them I would have let it run out on the floor. I thought, boy, I'd like to do it right here. Now there was something that would have really stirred them up! When the jury filed out of the courtroom not one of them would look at me. I looked each one in the face and I kept thinking, Look at me, look at me, look at me!
132

This jury was no different from others in not looking at the defendants, Nelle wrote. “Why they never look at people they've sentenced to death, I'll never know, but they don't.”
133

Back in his cell, Perry Smith slipped a note with his signature on it between two bricks in the wall: “To the gallows … May 13, 1960.”
134

 

nine

Mockingbird
Takes Off

A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere 18 ounces of new fiction bearing the title
To Kill a Mockingbird.

—
The Washington Post
, July 3, 1960

Harper Lee presented Capote with one hundred fifty pages of typed notes, organized by topics such as the Landscape, the Crime, Other Members of the Clutter Family, and so on. Truman, feeling expansive as he rested in Spain after several months of working on the outline for
In Cold Blood,
was suddenly in the mood to make one of his gossipy pronouncements, for it was immensely satisfying to him that his protégée—which is how he now regarded her—had written a publishable novel in which he was an important character. He urged his friends, film producer David O. Selznick and Selznick's wife Jennifer Jones, to watch for it. “On July 11th [1960], Lippincott is publishing a delightful book: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee. Get it. It's going to be a great success. In it, I am the character called ‘Dill'—the author being a childhood friend.”
1

*   *   *

In the meantime, in Manhattan, the freezing air rang with the cries of snowball fights between children. From the window of her apartment, Lee could see ambushes about to be sprung from behind doorway stoops, and retreats made to the safety of parked cars. During her eleven years in New York, she had never witnessed such deep snow accumulating over a single night.

Somehow, though, a surprising spring snowstorm seemed in keeping with the dramatic, absolutely unexpected events that were turning the thirty-three-year-old woman's life around. Reader's Digest Condensed Books and the Literary Guild had chosen
To Kill a Mockingbird
as a selection for subscribers, meaning thousands of instant sales. Maurice Crain called and read to her over the phone the introduction written by the editor of the Literary Guild, John Beechcroft.