Quiet Dell: A Novel (55 page)

“William, please sit with us for the verdict. I want you near.” Emily pulled them both to her and linked her arms in theirs. She could not imagine who she was before she stood between them, these tall men in their big coats and snow-covered shoulders. Life was merciless, and then briefly miraculous, for all was so brief. Their own lives, together and apart, would last the blink of an eye.

“Whatever happens,” William said, “you both must know—no one could have done more, so constantly, than you have done.”

The statement was oddly mournful. Emily was suddenly afraid. “We must get back. We should not have left. We—”

“Emily, we are a block away.” Eric was ushering them through groups of spectators that seemed to flow from one end of the street to the other.

Emily supposed the car to whisk Powers away was waiting as usual at the rear of the opera house. Police drove through the Central Garage, up Fifth Street to the jail, avoiding drifted snow, crowds, and enterprising photographers at the stage door.

Inside, time crawled. Emily waited, William to her left, Eric to her right, watching Powers, who sat with his back to them and occasionally looked around like a man waiting for a bus. Law paced, or sat by Powers, legs crossed, shaking his foot nervously. He borrowed a newspaper from a reporter in the front row and perused it intently with Powers, as though reviewing the coverage.

It was nearly five; the audience had begun to dwindle. Rumor had officers bringing in supper and bedding for the jury, and the jury requesting a minister, or summoning the minister who’d counseled Powers after his “confession” in August.

Another half hour; nearly two hours. Judge Southern came to the bench, seemingly to adjourn for the night. Three loud raps suddenly rang out, almost like a theatrical effect.

The jury was signaling their entrance from the dressing room. Powers remained expressionless. The jury walked in. They didn’t look at him, and took their seats.

The court clerk intoned: “Harken to your verdict, gentlemen.”

The jury foreman read: “We, the jury, find the defendant, Harry F. Powers, alias Cornelius O. Pierson, guilty of first-degree murder as charged in the indictment within.”

Emily listened for the additional phrase, but the clerk read the verdict again immediately, inserting the indictment number. Cheers rang out from the lobby and the crowd in the street. She felt William take her hand as state troopers rushed the prisoner from both sides of the stage. Powers merely waited as his various chains were fastened. Law stood to make a formal motion for a new trial as the audience raced for the exits and the lobby doors opened wide to applause and shouting. A wild glee seemed to pour
down the aisles. Emily looked behind her. Spectators rushed out as others rushed in, finally allowed entrance.

“We will not embrace,” Emily said, “we will not shake hands.” She felt William pulling her to her feet.

“No, but we must leave by the back.” Eric led them toward a rear exit as the houselights flashed rapidly. All was confusion until they were through a narrow passage onto a metal fire escape. Others had cleared the snow, and they walked down into an alley.

“I must file immediately at the Gore.” Eric set off.

William caught her arm. “Emily, this will take time to be over.” He touched his warm mouth to her forehead. “You must try to push the sadness away, for Mason.”

For you, she thought, looking up into his warm brown eyes.

Snow fell in the gathering dark. All was before them, but she pulled him back, under the snow-shrouded fire escape, against the sheltered wall of the opera house. They must end in embraces after all.

State Prison, Moundsville, March 18—Harry Powers went to the gallows here tonight protesting his innocence. . . . It is reported that [he] received $600 for the story to be “sold to the highest Bidder” after his death. . . . A half-smile played on the lips of the man who lured women to their deaths with love correspondence. . . . A few seconds later, the black death hood was placed over his head.

Among the men crowded at the foot of the gallows were Sheriff W. B. Grimm, Chief Deputy Simeon C. Bond, Police Chief C. A. Duckworth. . . .

Powers’ body was not claimed by his widow, and will be buried . . . in the prison Potters Field.

—
The Clarksburg Telegram,
March 19, 1932

Annabel, borne up, sees lantern light amidst the valleys and rumpled mountains. The prison potter’s field is marked, a name and a box for the murderer, but those gathered above Quiet Dell are nameless. Taken, they fell apart like fruit in muck and water, barely hidden or never found. Now they lift and swirl, a cumulus of air and cloud, a charged flow drawn to that place, below. Night furls down over the dirt road and abundant hills, the runnel of creek, the hunched garage.

The black hood over his head eclipses the fixed blue stare, the cunning shift of gaze. The spring of the trapdoor, the click of the hinge, the taut drop of the rope are like claps of thunder.

Annabel sees him falling in his own dark hole. He plummets in air that tosses and whirls like water dredged with earth, thick air dense with the soil of the ditch. He drowns, never to stop falling or drowning. No pain, only terror; he remembers this thickened water and reaches, thrashing, lungs bursting, for his father. He is in that moment: his father hesitates, plunges toward him in the lake. He reaches, flailing, and the fire in his hands ignites. Now he burns, long and bright in the black air, for the speed of his descent feeds the flames, lengthens the crackling roar. He cannot die and so he burns.

He burns through winter’s end and a slow cold spring, through summer and harvest and another winter of ceaseless storm, into spring and summer and a clear October week.

The blond grandson walks home from the field. Annabel walks with him to the white farmhouse. She sees smoke curl from the upstairs window, a winding tendril like a scrap of slow-burned curtain; the boy, nearly a man, runs up the stairs to his grandfather’s room, into the acrid smell.

Instantly, the plummeting fire is taken up: the endless fire is nothing, only smoke, curling from a window in Iowa.

Annabel hears a cold storm of many whispers, a sea of drifting, flurried tears. The snow on the giant trees is falling. Slides and shifts, a pounding fall, a cloud released, white as the long silk scarf she pulls about her.

He brought them here, all of them, even those who never saw this place, who slipped from him elsewhere and were found or never found; all are gone beyond him and are only aware of some disturbance ended, folding into itself in endless penance.

The stream meanders, shines with snowmelt; the water, shaken in ripples, warms suddenly, as though some seismic shift deep in the earth moves time forward. The air breathes and the trees stir, tossing their limbs, opening every bud and folded leaf.

The bells on the wind are calling her, and she goes.

People come and people go

The earth goes on and on

the wind blows round, round and round

it stops, it blows again

these things make me so tired

I can’t speak, I can’t see, I can’t hear

what happened before will happen again

I forgot it all before

I will forget it all again

—“again (after ecclesiastes),” words and music by David Lang

That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.

—Hermes Trismegistus,
The Emerald Tablet,
translated from the Latin by Dennis W. Hauck

For love is strong as death . . .

like a seal upon thine arm . . .

like the best wine for my beloved

that goeth down sweetly,

causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.

—“for love is strong,” words and music by David Lang

Emily meant to stop in the office only briefly, and so had Duty with her on the leash. She paged through her
Tribune
mail to find a special delivery letter from Marta Baertman, postmistress, Oran, Iowa. It was a clipping from the Sumner paper; the note enclosed said simply, “I thought you would want to know. He was much respected and the funeral well attended.” Emily read the clipping through once, and then again, conscious of the floor beneath her feet; she was so taken aback that the room seemed to swim around her.

Sumner Gazette,
Sumner, Iowa

12 October 1933

A Suicide by Using

. 38 Caliber Rifle

Fires Shot into Chest
at Home of Son-in-Law
in Leroy Township, Friday

Wilko Drenth, 71, who has made his home with his son-in-law, Evert Schroder in Leroy Township for the past four years, committed suicide Friday afternoon by discharging a .38 caliber rifle bullet through his chest. First intimation that he had taken his own life
was gained about 3:15 when Evert Schroder, Jr., who was returning home from a field, noticed smoke coming from one of the upstairs windows. He rushed upstairs and found the body of his grandfather slumped on the floor and clothing surrounding the wound smoldering from being ignited from the shot, which was apparently fired at close range. Coroner F. C. Koch of Waverly was called, but considered there was no need for an inquest, the circumstances being clearly that of suicide. The aged man came in for some notoriety about two years ago when his name was connected with that of Harry Powers of West Virginia, who was accused of numerous killings of wives whose bodies Powers is said to have buried under the floor of his garage. It was quite definitely established at the time that Powers was Mr. Drenth’s son, who he had not seen for a number of years after the boy ran away from home. While Mr. Drenth is said to have brooded somewhat over the waywardness of his son, relatives do not believe that this had any connection with his suicide. He had been enjoying good health and had experienced no financial difficulties. He and his son-in-law had been planning a trip to Michigan with the expectation of leaving Saturday. Drenth had been a widower for five years, living in the vicinity of Oran until he moved to the Schroder home about four years ago. Surviving are his son-in-law and two grandsons. His daughter, Mrs. Evert Schroder, preceded him in death. Funeral services were held Monday afternoon from the Schroder home.

He’d waited two years since the September she found him, a year and a half since the execution. No one would bother the family now or address the facts. Private misfortune, private grief, and the glorious flat land bathed in Indian summer. News of Wilko’s death was front page in Sumner, the larger town near Oran, but Marta Baertman knew no one would hear of it from Emily.

She looked up from her desk to see Eric at his, across the room.

He saw her expression and came over immediately. “Emily? I’m surprised to see you in the office. Aren’t you and William going to Paris tomorrow?”

“Yes, but I wanted to check the mail. I’ve had a letter from Iowa.” She held it out. “I don’t want it known. Here, pull a chair next to me. There, Duty.”

He read the clipping through. “I would not have thought—”

“Eric, we started the clock ticking.”

He put his hand on her wrist, as though to delay an action already begun. “We do not start clocks, Emily, or stop them.”

“It’s dated October twelfth, last Thursday, and happened on Friday, the sixth.”

“The date is not in question,” Eric said, “but why.”

“We will not know,” Emily said.

He looked up at her. “I will say what you’re thinking. For a man so concerned with shame—he said that word, in Dutch—to do this. Small towns know such histories for generations.”