The Last Juror (27 page)

I heard laughter in the distance.

Without a trace of mercy, Wiley recorded the entire spectacle. The photos would be furtively passed around Clanton for years to come.

For a long time Baggy didn’t move. “Leave the sumbitch out there,” I heard a cop yell below us.

“You can’t hurt a drunk,” Wiley said as he caught his breath.

Eventually, Baggy rose to all fours. Slowly and painfully, he crawled, like a dog hit by a truck, into the
boxwoods that had saved his life, and there he rode out the storm.

A police car had been parked three doors down from the Tea Shoppe. The sniper fired a burst at it, and when the gas tank exploded we forgot about Baggy. The crisis stepped up to the next level as thick smoke poured out from under the car, then we saw flames. The sniper found this sporting, and for a few minutes he hit nothing but cars. I was certain my Spitfire would be irresistible, but perhaps it was too small.

He lost his nerve, though, when fire was eventually returned. Two of Sheriff Coley’s men stationed themselves on roofs, and when they unloaded on the cupola the sniper ducked low and was out of business.

“I got him!” one of the deputies shouted down to Sheriff Coley.

We waited for twenty minutes; all was quiet. Baggy’s old wing tips and black socks could be seen from under the boxwoods, but the rest was hidden. Occasionally, Major, glass in hand, would look down and yell something at Baggy, who could have been dying for all we knew.

More cops sprinted into the courthouse. We relaxed and sat in the rockers, but we did not take our eyes off the cupola. Bigmouth, Margaret, and Hardy joined us on the balcony. They had watched Baggy’s descent from the front window downstairs. Only Margaret was concerned about his injuries.

The police car burned until the fire department eventually showed up and doused it. The doors of the
courthouse opened and some of the county employees came out and began smoking furiously. Two deputies managed to retrieve Baggy from the boxwoods. He was barely able to walk, and was obviously in great pain. They placed him in a patrol car and took him away.

Then we saw a deputy in the cupola, and the town was safe again. The five of us hurried over to the courthouse, along with the rest of downtown Clanton.

The third floor was sealed off. Court was not in session, so Sheriff Coley directed us to the courtroom, where he promised a quick briefing. As we were walking into the courtroom, I saw Major, Chick Elliot, and Wobble Tackett being escorted down the hall by a deputy. They were obviously drunk and laughing so hard they had trouble staying on their feet.

Wiley went downstairs to sniff around. A body was about to be removed from the courthouse, and he wanted a shot of the sniper. The white hair, black face, painted stripes—there were a lot of questions.

______

T
he deputy sharpshooters had evidently missed. The sniper was identified as Hank Hooten, the local lawyer who had assisted Ernie Gaddis in the prosecution of Danny Padgitt. He was in custody and unharmed.

When Sheriff Coley announced this in the courtroom, we were shocked and bewildered. Our nerves were pretty raw anyway, but this was too much to believe. “Mr. Hooten was found in the small stairwell that leads up to the cupola,” Coley was saying, but I was too
stunned to take notes. “He did not resist arrest and is now in custody.”

“What was he wearing?” someone asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing. He had what appeared to be black shoe polish on his face and chest, but other than that he was as naked as a newborn.”

“What type of weapons?” I asked.

“We found two high-powered rifles, that’s all I can say right now.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Not a word.”

Wiley said they wrapped Hank in some sheets and shoved him in the backseat of a patrol car. He shot some photos but was not optimistic. “There were a dozen cops around him,” he said.

We drove to the hospital to check on Baggy. His wife worked the night shift in the emergency room. Someone had called her, woke her up, summoned her to the hospital, and when we met her she was in a foul mood. “Just a broken arm,” she said, obviously disappointed that it was not more serious. “Some scrapes and bruises. What’d the fool do?”

I looked at Wiley and Wiley looked at me.

“Was he drunk?” she asked. Baggy was always drunk.

“Don’t know,” I said. “He fell out of a window at the courthouse.”

“Oh, brother. He was drunk.”

I gave a quick version of Baggy’s escape and tried to make it sound as if he’d done something heroic in the midst of all that gunfire.

“The third floor?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“So he was playing poker, drinking whiskey, and he jumped out of a third-floor window.”

“Basically, yes,” Wiley said, unable to stop himself.

“Not exactly,” I said, but she was already walking away.

Baggy was snoring when we finally got back to his room. The medications had mixed with the whiskey and he appeared comatose. “He will wish he could sleep forever,” Wiley whispered.

And he was right. The legend of Bouncin’ Baggy was told countless times in the years that followed. Wobble Tackett would swear that Chick Elliot let go of the cord first, and Chick would argue that Major’s good leg buckled first and caused a chain reaction. The town quickly believed that, whoever let go first, the three idiots Baggy left behind in the Bar Room had intentionally dropped him into the boxwoods.

______

T
wo days later, Hank Hooten was sent to the state mental hospital at Whitfield, where he would remain for several years. He was initially indicted for trying to kill half of Clanton, but with time the charges were dropped. He allegedly told Ernie Gaddis that he was not shooting at anyone in particular, didn’t want to
harm anyone, but was just upset because the town had failed to send Danny Padgitt to his death.

Word eventually drifted back to Clanton that he had been diagnosed as severely schizophrenic. “Slap-ass crazy,” was the conclusion on the streets.

Never in the history of Ford County had a person lost his mind in such a spectacular fashion.

CHAPTER 26

O
ne year after I bought the newspaper, I sent BeeBee a check for $55,000—her loan plus interest at the rate of 10 percent. She had not discussed the matter of interest when she gave me the money, nor had we signed a promissory note. Ten percent was a bit high, and I hoped it would prompt her to send the check back. I sent it, held my breath, watched the mail, and sure enough, about a week later there was a letter from Memphis.

Dear William: I enclose your check, which I was not expecting and have no use for at this time. If, for some unlikely reason, I need the money in the future, then we shall at that time discuss this matter. Your offer of payment makes me extremely proud of you and your integrity. What you have accomplished in one year down there is a source of great pride for me, and I delight in telling my friends about your success as a newspaper publisher and editor.

I must confess that I was worried about you when you came home from Syracuse. You appeared to lack direction and motivation, and your hair was too long. You have proven me wrong, and cut your hair (a little) to boot. You have also become quite the gentleman in your dress and manners.

You’re all I have, William, and I love you dearly. Please write me more often.

Love, BeeBee

P. S. Did that poor man really take off his clothes and shoot up the town? What characters you have down there!

BeeBee’s first husband had died of some colorful illness in 1924. She then married a divorced cotton merchant and they had one child, my poor mother. The second husband, my grandfather, died in 1938, leaving BeeBee with a nice bundle. She stopped marrying and had spent the last thirty-odd years counting her money, playing bridge, and traveling. As the only grandchild, I was set to inherit all she had, though I had no clue as to the extent of her fortune.

If BeeBee wanted more letters from me, then she could certainly have them.

I happily tore up the check, walked down to the bank, and borrowed another $50,000 from Stan Atcavage. Hardy had found a slightly used offset press in Atlanta, and I bought it for $108,000. We ditched our
ancient letterpress and moved into the twentieth century. The
Times
took on a new look—much cleaner print, sharper photos, smarter designs. Our circulation was at six thousand and I could see steady, profitable growth. The elections of 1971 certainly helped.

______

I
was astounded at the number of people who ran for public office in Mississippi. Each county was divided into five districts, and each district had an elected constable, who wore a badge and a gun and whatever uniform he could put together, and if he could afford it, which he always managed, he put lights on his car and had the authority to pull over anyone at any time for any conceivable offense. No training was required. No education. No supervision from the county Sheriff or the city police chief, no one but the voters every four years. In theory he was a summons server, but once elected most constables couldn’t resist the powerful urge to strap on a gun and look for folks to arrest.

The more traffic tickets a constable wrote, the more money he earned. It was a part-time job with a nominal salary, but at least one of the five in each county tried to live off the position. This was the guy who caused the most trouble.

Each district had an elected Justice of the Peace, a judicial officer with absolutely no legal training, in 1971 anyway. No education was required for the job. No experience. Just votes. The J.P. judged all the people the constable hauled in, and their relationship was cozy and
suspicious. Out-of-state drivers who got nailed by a constable in Ford County were usually in for some abuse at the hands of the J.P.

Each county had five supervisors, five little kings who held the real power. For their supporters they paved roads, fixed culverts, gave away gravel. For their enemies they did little. All county ordinances were enacted by the Board of Supervisors.

Each county also had an elected sheriff, tax collector, tax assessor, chancery court clerk, and coroner. The rural counties shared a state senator and state representative. Other available jobs in 1971 were highway commissioner, public service commissioner, commissioner of agriculture, state treasurer, state auditor, attorney general, lieutenant governor, and governor.

I thought this was a ridiculous and cumbersome system until the candidates for these positions began buying ads in the
Times.
A particularly bad constable over in the Fourth District (also known as “Beat Four”) had eleven opponents by the end of January. Most of these poor boys eased into our offices with an “announcement” that their wives had handwritten on notebook paper. I would patiently read them, editing, decoding, translating along the way. Then I would take their money and run their little ads, almost all of which began with either “After months of prayer …” or “Many people have asked me to run …”

By late February, the county was consumed with the August election. Sheriff Coley had two opponents with two more threatening. The deadline to file for office was
June, and he had yet to do so. This fueled speculation that he might not run.

It took little to fuel speculation about anything when it came to local elections.

______

M
iss Callie clung to the old-fashioned belief that eating in restaurants was a waste of money, and therefore sinful. Her list of potential sins was longer than most folks’, especially mine. It took almost six months to convince her to go to Claude’s for a Thursday lunch. I argued that if I paid, then we wouldn’t be wasting her money. She wouldn’t be guilty of any transgression, and if I got hit with another one I really didn’t care. Dining out was certainly the most benign in my inventory.

I wasn’t worried about being seen in downtown Clanton with a black woman. I didn’t care what people said. I wasn’t worried about having the only white face in Claude’s. What really concerned me, and what almost kept me from suggesting the idea in the first place, was the challenge of getting Miss Callie in and out of my Triumph Spitfire. It wasn’t built for hefty folks like her.

She and Esau owned an old Buick that had once held all eight children. Add another hundred pounds and Miss Callie could still slide in and out of the front seat with ease.

She was not getting smaller. Her high blood pressure and high cholesterol were of great concern to her children. She was sixty years old and healthy, but trouble was looming.

We walked to the street and she peered down at my car. It was March and windy with a chance of rain, so the convertible top was up. In its closed state, the two-seater looked even smaller.

“I’m not sure this is going to work,” she announced. It had taken six months to get her that far; we were not turning back. I opened the passenger door and she approached with great caution.

“Any suggestions?” she said.

“Yes, try the rear-end-first method.”

It worked, eventually, and when I started the engine we were shoulder to shoulder. “White folks sure drive some funny cars,” she said, as frightened as if she were flying in a small plane for the first time. I popped the clutch, spun the tires, and we were off, slinging gravel and laughing.

I parked in front of the office and helped her out. Getting in was far easier. Inside, I introduced her to Margaret Wright and Davey Bigmouth Bass, and I gave her a tour. She was curious about the offset press because the paper now looked so much better. “Who does the proofreading around here?” she whispered.

“You do,” I said. We were averaging three mistakes per week, according to her. I still got the list every Thursday over lunch.

We took a stroll around the square and eventually made it to Claude’s, the black café next to City Cleaners. Claude had been in business for many years and served the best food in town. He didn’t need menus because you ate whatever he happened to be cooking that
day. Wednesday was catfish and Friday was barbecue, but for the other four days you didn’t know what you would eat until Claude told you. He greeted us in a dirty apron and pointed to a table at the front window. The café was half-full and we got some curious stares.