Shadow Country (113 page)

Meanwhile the real killer had gotten himself arrested for carrying an unlicensed pistol and disturbing the peace. In addition, after almost a year, Cox had finally been charged with the murder of Sam Tolen: Julian and Willie Collins and Jim Delaney Lowe, along with the Tolen nephew William Russ, had implicated Leslie on the evidence of his own boasting, overheard while he was showing off for May Collins and other local damsels. This time, even Sheriff Purvis could not ease him out of it.

When Leslie joined us in the Duval County jail, swearing dire vengeance on my nephews, Frank groaned dolefully and shook his woolly head, arm flung up in grief over his eyes. “Lo'd, Lo'd, what a pathetical sight! Nice young gen'leman like Mist' Les Cox in de county
jail
!” Broken-hearted, Frank actually commenced to cough and blubber, and when I laughed, too, he just let go and whooped so hard that he had to lie down on the floor to get his breath back. Leslie said, “If they don't kill you, nigger, I damn well will.” He meant that, too, and Frank knew he meant it, but that was not why Frank fell quiet nor why the tears ran down those scarred black cheeks. Someone would pay for the death of a county commissioner and Reese knew it would be him; he was weeping not because he was afraid but because, facing death, he was free at last, free to say anything he damn well wanted. And so he sat up and wiped his eyes and said in a cold deadly tone, “Not if I ketch you first, Mist' Les, you fuckin po' white moron.”

Cox squinted in disbelief that I could grin at such an outrage. Before stomping off to the far side of the pen, he pointed his forefinger and repeated his death threat in a voice thick and heavy, as if his throat was full of clotted blood—so full, in fact, that Reese and I could not even agree on what he'd said. “Some kind of secret redneck curse, you think?” I asked, watching Les go. Reese looked me over. Then he spoke again in that same furious cold voice. “Redneck, whiteneck—don't make no fuckin difference to us blackneck niggers.”

In early April, thanks to Walt Langford and Jim Cole, the celebrated Senator Fred P. Cone of Lake City had been retained as our defense attorney. Cone was a silver-haired aristocrat, very close to Broward, and scarcely a judge in all north Florida would stand up to him, knowing “Senator Fred” was certain to occupy the governor's mansion in the future and settle up any old scores with the judiciary. But in our first meeting, Fred Cone warned me that the state's attorneys were already claiming “an ironclad case”—just the kind, he smirked, that he most enjoyed smelting down.

On Friday, May 1, in Columbia County Court, the defendants pled not guilty before Judge R. M. Call. Frank Reese was described by the Lake City
Citizen-Reporter
as “a very dark-colored negro wearing overalls. Asked how he pleaded, he was stopped by counsel.” Cone ordered Reese to keep his mouth shut even for his plea, which was all right, I suppose, if he had good reason. But Cone did this with an impatient gesture, not looking at Reese but at me, as if telling me to put a stop to my dog's barking, and Reese muttered something so ugly for my benefit that I had to warn him.

That day the judge asked him to plead was Frank's last chance to stand up as a man and declare his innocence; he was never questioned or even mentioned in the case again. Even his own counsel never spoke to him. Day after day, in courtroom after courtroom, he would sit like a dark knot on the oak bench in the white man's courtroom. Once in a while I caught his eye and winked but he just looked away.

By returning the prisoners to Columbia County Court, Lawyer Cone had provoked the populace into raucous demonstrations in the streets—a clever tactic, I agreed, if we survived it, establishing before the trial could begin the dire prejudice against the suspects in this county. With threats and abuse being shouted through the courtroom windows, Cone prepared his petition for a change of venue, waving a whole sheaf of affidavits; having discussed the case with two hundred local citizens, he had found not one unprejudiced against his clients, and had therefore concluded that it would be impossible to seat a fair and impartial jury in Columbia County. By this, the defense intended no reflection on the residents: “Honest men can be prejudiced as well as other men,” the court was told, “and some men mistake their prejudices for their principles.”

Naturally the state's attorney had sheaves of sworn testimony to the contrary, duly signed by the Herlongs and those others who had howled for my head that afternoon at Herlong Station.

That morning the court was informed by Mr. Charlie Eaton, a special investigator appointed by Nap Broward, that he had heard about a lynch raid on the jail planned for 3:00 a.m. on Thursday night in the week previous. The defendants, he testified, had been in such peril of mob violence that he'd rushed to the Elks Club to alert Lawyer Cone, and these two agreed that the state militia should be called out to guard the prisoners. Cone told the court he had gone to Sheriff Purvis and demanded protection for his clients and that Purvis responded that those “ol' boys” in the mob had given him their word that the accused were in no danger, since the evidence against them was so strong that they would hang anyway. Purvis admitted he had ordered extra guards around the jail but only as a courtesy to the defense attorneys. If the truth be known, declared this lawman under oath, real trouble was far more likely to arrive with Defendant Watson's friends from southwest Florida. Even now, he said, crowds of dangerous men were on their way north by sea and rail to effect his rescue.

This mendacity so astounded my attorney that he smote his marble brow. He invited the sheriff to admit that he'd confided to Detective Eaton that he feared for his prisoners' lives. Purvis denied this, saying, “If I told you that, I told you a lie.” The witness was thereupon informed that the defense had no confidence whatever in his truthfulness and even less in the intentions of his deputies, several of whom had been identified as members of the lynch mob. Purvis cheerfully agreed that he had heard that, too.

Lawyer Cone's assistant now advised the judge that when he'd gone to Purvis and the prosecutor to express concern about the prisoners, they had merely laughed at him. Hearing this complaint, those two men laughed at him again in open court, behavior which struck me as so outlandish that I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing with them. “Are you crazy, Watson?” Fred Cone whispered irritably behind his hand.

Next up was Will's brother Jasper Cox, who testified he'd been solicited to join the lynch mob by none other than Mr. Blumer Hunter, a member of the coroner's jury which had held impartial hearings on the case. Politely, Jasper had declined, explaining to Mr. Hunter that he “was not in that line of business.” Next morning, according to the Lake City paper, Mr. Hunter came to town (in brown coveralls smeared with wet cow dung, if I know Blumer) and informed the court stenographer that the testimony of Jasper Cox was “an unqualified fabrication.” Even John Porter had to smile at the idea of such fine words emerging from the brown tobacco teeth of Blumer Hunter.

That afternoon, my son-in-law arrived from Fort Myers with a note from Carrie:
Oh Daddy, we all know that you are innocent! Eddie has written us about those dreadful Tolens!
On the witness stand, Langford declared, “Why yes, I am his son-in-law, but that don't mean I am a stranger to the truth. And the truth is that ever since my arrival, what I have heard over and over is, ‘That murdering skunk should be hung on general principles!' ” When I told Walt later that quoting my ill-wishers with such vehemence might not help my case, the banker flashed me kind of a scared grin. Walt could never quite make out when his father-in-law was being serious and when he wasn't.

Meanwhile, Mr. Eaton passed the word that the governor was following the case and meant to take “all appropriate measures to ensure the safety of the accused.” However, with that mob out there, we defendants felt like rat cheese. Our attorney could not deny there was a risk but saw the change of venue as our only hope.

On Monday morning the sheriff came to Jacksonville to escort us back to Lake City, and this day I rode handcuffed to Les Cox. For all his big talk, Leslie was pale and nervous. Fred Cone had made him get a haircut and put on his daddy's Sunday shirt but the collar was tight and the new hairline gleamed on his sunburned neck and for all his good looks, he appeared kind of green and weedy. When he bragged that some church lady had told him he looked like Billy the Kid, I said, “Correct. William Bonney looked like weasel shit last time I saw him.” Les cackled, thinking I was kidding.

“Well, somebody done a good deed on them Tolen sonsabitches, and I sure ain't sorry, how about you?” he chortled, and I said, “You are not sorry, son, because you think Fred Cone will get you off. You might repent of your black sins if you feared you might be dancing on a rope until you died.” But all attempts to improve his attitude were wasted on this criminal young man.

On May 4, Attorney Cone won the release of John L. Porter, establishing that he had been seized unlawfully without a warrant and held unlawfully without a formal charge. Persuading Judge Call that one Tolen case might prejudice the other, Cone got Sam's case held over till the summer term when the climate in the county might have cooled a little. Last but not least, he won that crucial change of venue for defendants E. J. Watson and F. Reese.

We were tried next in Jasper, in Hamilton County, where we traveled from Jacksonville on a warm Tuesday of late July. Eddie and Kate Edna and my sister Minnie with Julian and Willie came there to testify, also Jim Delaney Lowe, old Calvin Banks, and others.

Peering around for a place to spit his chaw, Deputy R. T. Radford related the heroic saga of how he had stumbled over the defendant's revolver in the woods. Next, Dr. Nance described with due pomposity how Watson's shotgun, “primed for mayhem,” had been “craftily concealed” in the furrow being plowed by “that hard-faced negro.” Here Nance pointed a bony finger at defendant Reese, who sat at the farther end of the defense table, hunched into himself like some gnarled woodland growth. Finally, my nervous nephews and their friend revealed how the accused, arriving in their farmyard less than half an hour after the victim's demise, had lingered just long enough to solicit their support of a false alibi.

Neither Julian nor Willie cared to meet my eye. True, their daddy had never been fond of the defendant, but Billy Collins would have horse-whipped his two sons before permitting them to stand up in court and betray their own blood uncle in this manner. Knowing this, my fragile sister went sniffling to pieces upon hearing her sons give evidence against her brother. Almost inaudible on the stand, Minnie attested in tremulous tones that their kindly uncle Edgar, “ever generous with his time and means since Mr. Collins passed away,” had arrived at the Collins house well before eight to teach her fatherless boys how to dress a hog and had not left until close to noon, when he went home to get his dinner.

When Prosecutor Larabee, loud and sarcastic, demanded to know why she was weeping—
Are you perjuring yourself, ma'am, as it appears? Objection, Your Honor! Sustained!
—I feared Ninny would blurt something that might get me hung; instead, she murmured that she wept because it broke her heart to see her family torn in two. Plainly the jury was affected—hurrah for Ninny! But when she shuffled back to her seat like a sick old woman, nobody in the Collins row could look at anybody else, and as for me, I was truly upset to see further damage to my poor sister's low opinion of herself. Here she was, a faithful Christian, not only lying under oath but making liars of her sons, though they spoke the truth. This ordeal might finish her.

Prosecutor Larabee did not call my wife or son lest they support my sister's story but he made a bad mistake when he excused my mother. Granny Ellen Addison would banish me to Hell before she contradicted her precious grandsons and lied to save me.

In the recess, the prisoners were taken to the latrine. (Frank was marched to
colored only
.) I stepped right up behind Jim Delaney Lowe and slapped his shoulder with my chains like some old dungeon ghost. That boy jumped a mile, I hope he wet himself. I whispered, “Jim, the day they turn me loose, I aim to take care of those who did me wrong. So keep a real sharp eye out, boy, you hear?” Jim would pass that message to my nephews, give 'em something to pray about in church. I would never harm my sister's sons but they didn't know that, and truth be told, there were nights in those hot smelly cells in that long Florida summer when their uncle Edgar wasn't so sure about it, either.

Throughout our trials, Frank Reese remained inert. He was there as “Watson's nigger,” nothing more. If I was guilty, he was, too, and if I was innocent, the same, and so he waited for these white folks to decide my fate. Sometimes after the court cleared for a recess, he remained in his place like a sagging sack of turnips in a field; they had to prod him to stand up. The prosecutor forgot him, so did the defense, and there were days when I forgot him, too. Because it made me feel bad when I thought about him, I mostly didn't. Reese didn't count—the common fate of Injuns and nigras in our great democracy. But this man and I had ridden a long road, he had stood by me.

Frank understood that I could not swear to a soul, not even our attorney, that my codefendant was innocent: how would I know any such thing if I were innocent, too? However, I gave him my solemn promise that if we were found guilty and Cone lost on the appeal, I would notify the court that Defendant Reese had never been an accomplice in the crime and could not have known that a loaded weapon would be dropped where he was plowing. I guess Frank appreciated my good intentions, but he also knew—I knew it, too—that even if my statement was believed, the state would not go to the expense of a new trial for a black man. Having already convicted him, it would simply be much too much trouble not to hang him.