The Last Juror (Page 40)

There was a crowd on Miss Callie’s porch. Al, Max, and Bobby were there along with Reverend Thurston Small and another well-dressed deacon from the church. Esau was in the house tending to his wife. She had been discharged that morning with strict instructions to stay in bed for three days and not lift a finger. Max led me back to her bedroom.

She was sitting in bed, propped up with pillows, reading the Bible. She flashed a smile when she saw me, and said, "Mr. Traynor, so nice of you to come. Please sit. Esau, fetch Mr. Traynor some tea." Esau, as always, jumped when she gave orders.

I sat in a stiff wooden chair close to her bed. She did not appear to be the least bit ill to me. "I’m really concerned about lunch next Thursday," I began, and we laughed.

"I’m cooking," she said.

"No you’re not. I have a better idea. I’ll bring the food."

"Why does that worry me?"

"I’ll buy it somewhere. Something a bit lighter, like a sandwich."

"A sandwich will be fine," she said, patting my knee. "My tomatoes will be ready shortly."

She stopped patting and smiling and looked away for a moment. "We didn’t do a good job, did we, Mr. Traynor?" Her words were filled with both sadness and frustration.

"It’s not a popular verdict," I said.

"It’s not what I wanted," she said.

And that was as close to the deliberations as she would get for many years. Esau told me later that the other eleven jurors had sworn on a Bible not to talk about their decision. Miss Callie wouldn’t swear on the Bible, but she gave them her word that she would guard their secrets.

I left her there to rest and went to the porch, where I spent several hours listening to her sons and their guests talk about life. I sat in a corner, sipping tea, trying to keep myself out of their conversations. At times I would drift away and absorb the sounds of Lowtown on a Saturday night.

The reverend and the deacon left, leaving only Ruffins on the porch. The talk eventually came around to the trial, and the verdict, and how was it playing on the other side of the tracks?

"Did he really threaten the jury?" Max asked me. I told the story, with Esau adding emphasis when needed. They were as shocked as those of us who’d seen it.

"Thank God he’s locked up for life," Bobby said, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth. They were extremely proud of their mother, as they had been forever.

I was tired of the trial. I left around nine, drove slowly and aimlessly back through Lowtown, alone and missing Ginger.

* * *

Clanton seethed over the verdict for days. We received eighteen letters to the editor, six of which I ran in the next edition. Half of it was devoted to the trial, and this of course stirred things up even worse.

As the summer dragged on, I was beginning to think the town would never stop talking about Danny Padgitt and Rhoda Kassellaw.

Then suddenly, the two became history. Instantly, in the blink of an eye, literally in less than twenty-four hours, the trial was forgotten.

Clanton, both sides of the tracks, had something much more important to fret over.

Part Two

Chapter 21

In a sweeping ruling that left no room for doubt or delay, the Court ordered the immediate termination of the dual school system. No more stalling, no more lawsuits, no more promises. Instant integration, and Clanton was as shocked as every other town in the South.

Harry Rex brought me the Court’s opinion and tried to explain its intricacies. It wasn’t that complicated. Every school district had to immediately implement a desegregation plan.

"This’ll sell some newspapers," he predicted, unlit cigar crammed in his mouth.

All sorts of meetings were instantly arranged around town, and I covered them all. On a sweltering night in mid-July, a public gathering took place in the gym of the high school. The stands were packed, the floor covered with concerned parents. Mr. Walter Sullivan, the Times’s lawyer, also served as the attorney for the school board. He did most of the talking because he wasn’t elected in any way. The politicians preferred to hide behind him. He was blunt and said that in six weeks the Ford County school system would open and be fully desegregated.

A smaller meeting was held at the black school on Burley Street. Baggy and I were there, along with Wiley Meek, who took photos. Again Mr. Sullivan explained to the crowd what was about to happen. Twice his remarks were interrupted by applause.

The difference in those two meetings was astounding. The white parents were angry and frightened and I saw several women crying. The fateful day had finally arrived. At the black school there was an air of victory. The parents were concerned, but they were also elated that their children would finally be enrolled in the better schools. Though they had miles to go in housing, employment, and health care, integration into the public schools was an enormous step forward in their battle for civil rights.

Miss Callie and Esau were there. They were treated with great respect by their neighbors. Six years earlier they had walked into the front door of the white school with Sam and fed him to the lions. For three years he was the only black kid in his class, and the family paid a price for it. Now it all seemed worth it, at least to them. Sam wasn’t around to interview.

There was also a meeting in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church. Whites only, and the crowd was slightly upper middle class. Its organizers had been raising money to build a private academy, and now suddenly the fund-raising was more urgent. Several doctors and lawyers were there, and most of the country-club types. Their children were apparently too good to go to school with black children.

They were quickly putting together a plan to open classes in an abandoned factory south of town. The building would be leased for a year or two until their capital campaign was complete. They were scrambling to hire teachers and order books but the most pressing concern, other than running from the blacks, was what to do about a football team. At times there was an air of hysteria, as if a 75 percent white school system would pose grave dangers for their kids.

I wrote long reports and ran bold headlines, and Harry Rex was right. The newspapers were selling. In fact, by late July 1970 our circulation topped five thousand, a stunning turnaround. After Rhoda Kassellaw and desegregation, I was getting a glimpse of what my friend Nick Diener said back at Syracuse. "A good small town weekly doesn’t print newspapers. It prints money."

I needed news, and in Clanton it was not always available. In a slow week, I would run an overblown story on the latest filing in the Padgitt appeal. It was usually at the bottom of the front page and sounded as if the boy might walk out of Parchman at any minute. I’m not sure my readers cared much anymore. In early August, though, the paper got another boost when Davey Bigmouth Bass explained to me the rituals of high school football.

Wilson Caudle had no interest in sports, which was fine except that everyone else in Clanton lived and died with the Cougars on Friday night. He shoved Bigmouth to the back of the paper and rarely ran photos. I smelled money, and the Cougars became front page news.

* * *

My football career ended in the ninth grade, at the hands of a sadistic ex-Marine my soft little prep school had for some reason hired to coach us. Memphis in August is the tropics; football practice should be banned then and there. I was running laps around the practice field, in full gear, helmet and all, in ninety-five-degree heat and humidity, and the coach for some reason refused to give us water. The tennis courts were next to the field, and after I finished vomiting I gazed upon them and saw two girls swatting tennis balls with two guys. With the girls in the scene everything was very pleasant, but what really got my attention were the large bottles of cold water they drank whenever they wanted.