George & Rue (15 page)

G
EORGE’S trial was really Rufus’s trial, save that Rufus didn’t testify. Fine: for Chaud, Boyd, and his own lawyer, Wilfred Dickey (always celebrated for his Liberal-red ties and anti-Tory wit), Georgie described all he and Rue’d done in luring Burgundy out to the Richibucto Road and beating in his head, or, rather, what Rue had done in slaying Burgundy and what Georgie had done in stealing cash and a car and burning a watch and a ring. A fessed-up Sally Ann Christian, Georgie felt shielded by the truth.

The trial began badly though, for George attempted a comic-book-inspired defence he’d even concealed from Dickey. At the first opportunity in the witness box, he looked over at Chaud, sweltering in the standing-room-only courtroom, and intoned, confidently, “Your Honour, sir, I object of answerin any questions on the ground they might be discriminatin on me.” When the courtroom dissolved into a chorus of hooting, big-top-like laughs, George was mortified.

Chaud had to drive the gavel down and down upon his desk and cry, “Order! Order! Order!” George swivelled around, bewildered.

Chaud then asked him, kindly, “Does the witness seek the court’s protection?”

George nodded vigorously. “I’m pleadin the Fifth Amendment, Your Honour.” More laughter, more gavel bangs.
Chaud explained that this court of law was in His Majesty the King’s Province of New Brunswick, not in rebellious America. Too,
his
own proper
Canadian
address was “My Lord,” not “Your Honour.”

Rufus’s lawyer, thirty-four-year-old Carl Waley, so dashingly Rue-stylish in dress and Rue-cool in rhetoric, grilled George hardest. He had to prove this boy’s testimony balderdash. “You do crime for a living, right? You steal food and firewood.”

George shot back: “I was doing penny-andy—
penny-ante—
crimes because I have a wife and baby boy and a newborn baby girl, but I never stole anything in Fredericton until Rufus come home.”

Chaud harrumphed. “Aren’t you despicably using your wife and babies as alibis?”

“No, Your Hon—I mean, My Lord.”

Waley charged on. “You put all the blame on Rufus. Why?”

“You see, my brother thinks ahead of time. He knows about doing wrong. I thought Rufus was tops until he started acting against me.”

Waley thundered, “Acting against
you
? What? You’re the one who’s testifying for the Crown and trying to hang your own brother. Why?”

“It has to do with the truth.” George paused, and then he said fatal words: “I did my share and Rue did his. I am as much to blame as my brother.”

Chaud, Boyd, and Waley took note of this “admission.”

Questioning George about the testimony of Zelda King, Yamila James, Jehial States, and others, Waley asked, “Is it so difficult for you to accept the word of your Coloured neighbours, even when it counts against you?”

George pondered. “Sometimes, and sometimes ain’t. We are Coloured boys, you see. I don’t trust anyone in Barker’s Point of my own colour. I don’t trust any of em.”

Waley pushed George further: “The fact is, on the night of January 7th, weren’t you ready to hit a man quite dangerously to rob him and run?”

“As I explained before, I wanted to get some money.” George shifted in his seat.

Waley demanded, “Can money bandage up blood? Can it paper over a cracked skull?”

“But I never hurt a fly and never hit a man in my life.”

“Which is worse, to swat a fly or hammer a man?”

“Fly ain’t a man, a man ain’t a fly, but both like to live.”

“When you dropped the hammer, as you claim, why didn’t you let it lay?”

“Well, sir, poor people don’t throw away nothing. Just because the hammer was gone, doesn’t mean I was going to let go of it.”

“You wanted that hammer to bang it on people’s heads.” Chaud intervened: “Did you use a hammer for the same purpose before?”

George said, “Not concerning human beings, Your Honour.” Guffaws convulsed the court. George added, smiling, “My Lord.”

Waley continued his attack. “Didn’t you know all of the taxi drivers in Fredericton personally?”

George was precise. “I knew 99½ per cent of them personable.”

“So, no matter who would’ve answered the call, you would’ve been ready to hit and rob them.”

“Just because I knew every taxi driver in the city of Fredericton, or in the world, does not say I like them all.”

Waley, strut-swaggering back and forth, recovered. “Did you mean if it was someone you didn’t like, you would strike and plunder them?”

“No. Do you like everybody you know personably?”

“What is responsible for the fresh details in your story?” George stared back. “The truth.”

“You claim that you told your brother to pick up the hammer you so coincidentally dropped because you were afraid Silver would see it. Now, why should Silver have been bothered to see you, dressed like a carpenter, with a hammer in your care?”

George inhaled, then half-whistled-exhaled. “We’re Coloured boys, and Silver’s with us on a lonely road with nobody else around and he sees one of us with a hammer: Now, what would you think?”

Waley sparred: “Isn’t that prejudiced, a prejudiced view?” “Depends on your colour.”

Waley scratched for blood. “Didn’t you go to Saint John to try to escape?”

George replied, “If I’d been trying to escape, I would’ve kept on going.”

“You went to Saint John with a murdered man in the trunk of the car.”

George admitted: “There was something wrong with my head.”

“I’ll say,” snapped Waley. “Why did you decide to stop at 47 Moore Street in Saint John?”

George felt shaky suddenly; his nerves were rassling and jangling with each other; his bowels were backin up into his stomach. He said, “I wanted to pay Clarkie—Dutchy—a bill I owed. Clarkie was a great pal.”

“After taking it from the pocket of a dead man? After coming from a car where a dead man’s body was in the trunk? Remember to speak honestly: a half-truth can’t be testimony!”

“I had the money and I had the debt.” George felt a little better: maybe Waley didn’t know about Lovea.

“You ate and drank and played music. Didn’t you have some indigestion?”

“I did not hit Silver. I did not kill Silver.” “You didn’t have any trouble eating afterwards.” “I never killed him. Why should I have indigestion?” “It’s cold-blooded behaviour for a killer.” “Rudy hit that man, not me. Why should I quit eating and drinking?”

“Why didn’t you immediately pay the doctor’s bill for delivering your infant daughter instead of driving to Saint John to shower a murdered man’s money on a whore?”

Blondola’s brown face flushed, then tears rushed her eyes, and she rose instantly and fled the court.

Watching his wife retreat, humiliated, George shouted at Waley, “Why do you need to disgrace me? I am disgraced enough.”

Rue looked at his crying, voice-cracking brother and smiled, coldly, from the prisoner’s box. Much tut-tutting in the courtroom.

“Didn’t you spend the night with a whore? Didn’t you go drinking and sleeping with another woman in Saint John, while your wife lay here confined in the hospital?”

George shouted, “Because of the nervousness of my nerves.”

“You wasted considerable money in Saint John.”

Georgie just shrugged, but he wept silently as he pictured Blondola fleeing the murmuring court.

Chaud said coolly, “The prisoner in the witness box will reply.”

“I give her twenty dollars. There’s no law against it. I’d have given all of Silver’s cash away to get rid of it.”

Waley shot back: “You drove coldly down to Saint John to dash the car and corpse. Instead, you took drinks and a dame at 47 Moore Street.”

Chaud weighed in: “And you only paid the doctor’s bill.”

George nodded. “I bought baby powder, baby oil, flour, sugar, bread, butter, that sort of thing.”

Chaud shook his head. “And you treated the whole Negro camp to booze with a murdered man’s money.”

Next, Georgie was asked to demonstrate on a papier-mâché dummy precisely how Rue had struck Silver. The plaster head busted, disintegrated. It looked like Silver hadn’t just been murdered, but obliterated.

Summing up the case against Georgie, Chaud told the jury, “To me, the crux of the matter is, George practically hands over the hammer to Rue, thus guaranteeing Burgundy’s bludgeoning. Clearly, the brothers were allies.”

Plumsy Peters’s testimony pounded more nails into two metaphorical coffins. He said he seen big spending by Rue on the murder weekend. Yep, Rue’d “got an overcoat out of the Boston Tailors, a new felt hat, a black jacket from Cash and Carry Cleaners on Queen Street, a case of wine (twelve quart bottles), blackberry brandy, and sheets of piano music. I figured he got cash from Georgie. So I asked Georgie, and he said Rue’d hit Silver an awful blow. I asked Rudy about it, he said, ‘I’ll twist Georgie’s neck like a coat hanger.’ I could tell the boys’d quarrelled badly.”

Alphaeus Boyd asked, “Are you positive you were, at this time, sober?”

Plumsy joked: “I ain’t positive cause I was drinkin.”

Boyd offered a slurring aside. “So, you’re a simon-pure Negro?”

Plumsy just shrugged. “You ain’t proved opposite.”

Waley told Plumsy, “You were thieving firewood. You don’t like to work, do you?”

“I bet I worked more in my life than you have!”

Waley asked, “What were you doing the night Silver was murdered?”

“I was out stealing wood that night. I doesn’t take a gang. I goes solo.”

“You didn’t change your clothes. You always wear dress pants when you go out thieving wood?”

Plumsy laughed: “Wouldn’t you? It gives a ready alibi.”

Rufus testified in his own defence at his separate trial, but his speech delivered merely cryptic satire.

Boyd asked, “Why are you here, Rufus?”

Rue explained: “Because my mama and papa made me—just like you.”

Boyd tried again. “Does George wear glasses reading?”

Rue grinned. “I never seen him reading.”

Rufus’ replies so irritated Chaud that he asked Boyd, “How long will you proceed, Prosecutor, with this pilgrimage of the defendant? What has it to do with murder? I’m anticipating the finale of his music and tippling and tomcatting and smoking and so on.”

Rufus sloughed off the proceedings.

Boyd noticed: “You speak almost perfect English, don’t you?”

Rue smiled tightly. “I do.”

Boyd retorted: “Are you allergic to the truth?”

“Ain’t nostalgic for nothin, sir.”

Boyd focused on picayune points. “You didn’t mention you were a pianist at the preliminary hearing.”

“The question wasn’t asked.”

“But you’ve mentioned it today.”

“Because you asked me today.”

Boyd queried Rue about Georgie’s drinking habits.

“It’s a habit of his. When he takes a drink, he believes in taking a good one. He goes straight for the hard liquor and will not pause for God—or man.”

“How do you know?”

“Maybe I am wrong and maybe I am right. But it’s a sobering thought to see him intoxicated.”

Boyd then probed Rue’s interest in India States. “Is she a white woman?”

“She is not Caucasian.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned her before now?”

“I’ve done everything I can to keep Miss States out of this turbulent situation. She is a respectable woman. We wanted to marry here at the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel, in a two-piano ceremony. She was going to wear a ritzy, white lace Victorian gown, while I put on jazz.”

Boyd approached Rue with an exhibit, asked, “Do you recognize these buttons? They are from Silver’s coat.”

“These buttons could be off anything.”

Chaud interjected, “I am comfortable letting the jury decide.”

Boyd demanded, “Why did you use a dead man’s money to buy clothing?”

Rue said levelly, “I didn’t know the money belonged to Burgundy. The only face on it was the King’s.” The courtroom snickered. “As a Coloured man, I always strive to make a good impression.”

Boyd asked, sneeringly, “Are you as delicate as a baby, Rufus?”

“My hands are priceless.”

At the trial’s end, George told the court, “The words in my mouth are too sad to speak…. When the court finishes, I will show that it was an accident. What happened. I study the Bible. It’s horrible to look at the ground and just see dirt.”

Rue pictured Chaud and Boyd as squid-like, inky, jetting Atlantic cold and darkness. When Chaud asked him to speak
before the jury weighed his guilt, Rue said, with distinct gusto, “Nope.”

Chaud had the last word: “George and Rufus Hamilton apparently hadn’t worked for some time, but nevertheless had apparel and lots of feasting and alcohol—immediately after the crime. Silver is deceased due to the hammering of his skull. These two lusty Negroes
cannibalized
poor Burgundy. The verb is not too strong. One followed the other like a dog.

“Gentlemen of the jury, we have now reached the last scene of the last act of the tragic drama which was unfurled before you during the last four days; and this last scene is the rendering of the verdict—the true statement—by the jury, whose august solemnity will give the appropriate weight to the truth.”

George glanced at the jury nervously. Their faces were all scrunched up. In the prisoner’s box, Rue sucked his teeth and eyed the grimly praying, cockamamie, foolhardy George.

A
FTER THE JURORS reported, Chaud prepared to pass sentence. He began gently, professional. “George Hamilton, have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you according to law?”

“I am a converted and convicted Christian, sir.”

“Rufus Hamilton, do you have anything to say?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Chaud glared at the obstinate man. “Nothing?”

Rufus stared back. “Nope.”

Chaud harrumphed and launched into his lethal sermon. “It is a satisfaction to know that the poorest man, whether he belongs to the Caucasian race or not, may expect an able defence, which you lads have received. You are not of our race. That is no fault of yours. Whether it be a misfortune, it may be a matter of opinion. Your people were not brought here at your own instance or desire. Your ancestors were forced from their native homes, brought here to this land, no doubt against their own will. You are not to blame; you may be pitied for your colour and your race, but you and we have this satisfaction, that the Coloured man, the Negro, has precisely the same rights in a British, a Canadian, court to Justice that the purest white man could have.

“Indeed, I am glad that my people, the Canadian people, have that self-restraint which is characteristic, I think, of our people, and they refrained from doing violence to you, leaving
you in the hands of the law in the regular administration of the law. That is a great object lesson to other people, south of the border, by whom you people are less humanely treated. You differ from most of us in blood, in race, but no man can say that you have not had a fair trial.

“Now, I must carry out my duty as prescribed by that impartial law that smiles upon all British subjects. After your fair trials, your juries have spoke, and so must I.

“Your deed constitutes a sickening chapter in New Brunswick history. You were without money, which is unfortunate; you were without mercy, which is unforgiveable.

“George, you say you have been converted. Good. Now, you will meet your Maker. I hereby sentence you, George Hamilton, and you, Rufus Hamilton, to be hanged on July 27, 1949, between midnight and noon, by the neck, until dead. May God have mercy on your souls.”

George wept and shouted, “Praise Jesus!”

Chaud retorted, “Your brother may have trapped you into this final downfall, but you were already imbrued in
crime.
You carried the hammer—the very instrument of this homicide—so you could help your brother rob and murder an innocent man. And it was you who took the slain man’s money, divided it callously, and then helped to wash away and burn up evidence. If Rufus is the physical killer, you, George Hamilton, are guilty of making murder possible.”

George fell to his knees. Rufus smirked.

Pandemonium rocked the court. Creaky old men leapt to their feet and cheered; one excited young blonde woman yelled, “We’ll kill them in their very souls.” Savage applause, whoops, cheers, with Chaud slamming his gavel ineffectively down and down.

Detective Stark, standing behind the weeping, crestfallen George and the nonchalant Rufus, leaned over and whispered,
“The gallows’ll gut your necks, boys. You’ll twitch, jig, piss, shit, sigh, and wheeze, and that’s it.”

Rue turned to Stark and said, smiling, “I’m ready to die. Are you?”