The Last Juror (Page 68)

Others were watching as well. After Miss Callie went to bed, Esau pointed across to the street to the darkened screened porch where the Braxtons lived. "Tully’s over there," he said. "Watchin’ everythin’."

"He told me he’d stay up all night," Sam said. Lowtown would be a dangerous place to start a gunfight.

I left after eleven, crossed the tracks, and drove the empty streets of Clanton. The town pulsed with tension, with anticipation, because whatever had been started was far from over.

Chapter 38

Miss Callie insisted on attending the funeral of Lenny Fargarson. Sam and Esau objected strenuously, but, as always, once she made up her mind, then all conversations were over. I discussed this with Sheriff McNatt, who summed things up by saying, "She’s a grown lady." He knew of no other jurors who planned to attend, but then it was difficult to monitor such things.

I also called Pastor Cooper to forewarn him. His response was, "She will be very welcome in our little church. But get here early."

With rare exceptions blacks and whites did not worship together in Ford County. They fervently believed in the same Lord, but chose very different styles of worshiping him. The majority of whites expected to be outside the church building at five past noon on Sunday, and seated for lunch by twelve-thirty. Blacks really didn’t care what time the service broke up, or what time it began for that matter. On my church tour I visited twenty-seven black congregations and never saw a benediction before 1:30 – 3 P.M. was the norm. Several simply went all day, with a short break for lunch in the fellowship hall, then back to the sanctuary for another round.

Such zealotry would have killed a white Christian.

But funerals were very different. When Miss Callie, along with Sam and Esau, walked into the Maranatha Primitive Baptist Church, there were a few quick stares but nothing more. Had they walked in on a Sunday morning for regular worship, there would have been resentment.

We arrived forty-five minutes early, and the lovely little sanctuary was almost filled. I watched through the tall open windows as the cars kept coming. A loudspeaker had been hung from one of the ancient oaks, and a large crowd gathered around it after the building was full. The choir started with "The Old Rugged Cross," and the tears began flowing. Pastor Cooper’s soothing message was a gentle warning for us not to question why bad things happen to good people. God is always in control, and though we are too small to understand His infinite wisdom and majesty, He will one day reveal Himself to us. Lenny was with Him now, and that was where Lenny longed to be.

They buried him behind the church, in an immaculate little cemetery inside a wrought-iron fence. Miss Callie clutched my hand and prayed fervently when the casket was lowered into the ground. A soloist sang "Amazing Grace," then Pastor Cooper thanked us for coming. There was punch and cookies in the fellowship hall behind the sanctuary, and most of the crowd hung around for a few minutes to visit, or to have one last word with Mr. and Mrs. Fargarson.

Sheriff McNatt caught my attention and nodded as if he wanted to talk. We walked to the front of the church where no one could hear us. He was in uniform with his standard toothpick in his mouth. "Any luck with Wilbanks?" he asked.

"No, just the one meeting," I said. "Harry Rex went back yesterday and got nowhere."

"I guess I’ll talk to him," he said.

"You can, but you won’t get anywhere."

The toothpick shifted from one side of his mouth to the other, in much the same way Harry Rex could slide his cigar over without missing a word. "We got nothin’ else. We’ve combed the woods around the house, not a track or a trace of anything. You’re not printin’ this, are you?"

"No."

"There are a bunch of ol’ loggin’ trails deep in the woods around the Fargarson place. We’ve tiptoed everyone of ’em, found absolutely nothin’."

"So your only evidence is a single bullet."

"That and a dead body."

"Has anybody seen Danny Padgitt?"

"Not yet. I keep two cars up on 401, where it turns to go into the island. They can’t see everything, but at least the Padgitts know we’re there. There are a hundred ways off and on the island, but only the Padgitts know them all."

The Ruffins were slowly moving toward us, talking to one of the black deputies.

"She’s probably the safest one," McNatt said.

"Is anybody safe?"

"We’ll find out. He’ll try again, Willie, you mark my word. I’m convinced of it."

"Me too."

* * *

Ned Ray Zook owned four thousand acres in the eastern part of the county. He farmed cotton and soybeans, and his operations were large enough to maintain sufficient profits. He was rumored to be one of the few remaining farmers who made good money from the soil. It was on his property, deep in a wooded area, in a converted cattle barn, that Harry Rex had taken me nine years earlier to watch my first and last cockfight.

Sometime during the early hours of June 14, a vandal entered Zook’s vast equipment shed and partially drained the oil from the engines of two of his big tractors. The oil was collected in cans and hidden among the supplies, so when the operators arrived around 6 A.M. for the day’s work there was no sign of foul play. One operator checked the oil as he was supposed to do, saw the shortage, thought it odd, said nothing, and added four quarts. The other operator had checked his the afternoon before, as was his habit. The second tractor ground to a sudden halt an hour later, as its engine locked up. Its operator hiked half a mile back to the shed and reported the breakdown to the farm manager.

Two hours later, a green-and-yellow service truck bounced along the field road and maneuvered itself close to the disabled tractor. Two servicemen slowly got out, inspected the hot sun and cloudless sky, then walked around the tractor for an initial look. They reluctantly opened up the panels of the service truck and began removing tools and wrenches. The sun baked them and they were soon sweating.

To make their day somewhat more pleasant, they turned on the radio in their truck and cranked up the volume. Merle Haggard could be heard wafting across the soybean field.

The music muffled the crack of a distant rifle shot. It hit Mo Teale directly in the upper back, ripped through his lungs, and tore a hole in his chest as it exited. Teale’s partner, Red, said over and over that the only thing he heard was a fierce grunt just a second or two before Mo fell under the front axle. He thought at first that something from the tractor had snapped loose in a violent way and injured Mo. Red dragged him to the truck and raced away, much more concerned about his buddy than what might have injured him. At the equipment shed, the farm manager called an ambulance, but it was too late. Mo Teale died there, on the concrete floor of a small, dusty office. "Mr. John Deere" we’d called him during the trial. Middle of the front row, bad body language.

At the time of his death he was wearing the same type of bright yellow uniform shirt he’d worn every day of the trial. It made for an easy target.

I saw him at a distance, through the open door. Sheriff McNatt allowed us inside the shed with the now standard prohibition against taking photos. Wiley had left his cameras in his pickup.

Once again Wiley had been monitoring the police scanner when the report came across – "Got a shooting at Ned Ray Zook’s farm!" Wiley was always near his scanner, and in those days he wasn’t alone. Given the high state of anxiety in the county, every scanner was being listened to and every possible shooting was reason to hop in the pickup and go for a look.