Swift Justice: The Southern Way (7 page)

“We’re just going to leave them here for the animals to eat them?”

Sheriff had enough. “Junior, shut the fuck up. Do you think I want to leave them here alone? I have no choice. I think
that
gang of niggers are the ones that killed our boys here. If we don’t help Sam and the others,
they
might be laying down dead. Now, shut the fuck up and let’s help them out.”

Junior remained silent but stared at his father with squinty eyes like he wanted to kill him. He sighed loudly. “Okay.”

~~~~

The Sheriff and Junior emerged from the woods and approached the crowd of cops and Negroes. “Where’s Leon?” asked the Sheriff.

Sam pointed to Leon, who was laying on his stomach.

The Sheriff walked over to Leon and yelled, “You motherfucker.” As he said this, he kicked him in the side then he kicked him again. “You killed my friends.”

As soon as he kicked Leon, Deron, Reggie, and their father started getting up to fight back.

The Sheriff observed this, cocked the hammer on his revolver, and pointed it at Deron, who was closest to the Sheriff. “Get the fuck back on the ground. All of you.”

They all stopped, realizing that the cops might shoot them.

Ryan then kicked Deron on the side and yelled. “Get down, boy! I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Okay, okay,” pleaded James Brooks. “Don’t hurt my boys.”

“Handcuffed them all,” ordered the Sheriff. “Here, take Junior’s and my cuffs.” The Sheriff and Junior handed their handcuffs to the other cops.

“Junior, you go back and secure the crime scene.” The Sheriff paused and looked over at the other cops. “Sam, after you cuff them, take them to jail. Keep them there until I tell you otherwise.”

“Should I arrest them and book them?” asked Sam.

“No, not yet. I’ll let you know.” The Sheriff addressed Junior. “Junior, come over here. I need to talk to you.”

The Sheriff took Junior to the side out of hearing distance from everyone else. “Junior, I have to inform Acton of what happened, and he will probably call the Judge. When I’m done, I’ll return. Don’t mess up the crime scene.”

“Okay,”

“Where’s our car at?”

“It’s over yonder about a half a mile.” Junior said, while pointing in the direction of the car’s location.

Back at where the Negroes lay down, Leon was dazed and couldn’t believe that the nightmare was continuing. His whole body ached from the repeated kicks, and the cigarette burns still bothered him.

The cops had cuffed Leon’s other family members and Mr. Stevens first, and then they approached Leon. Ryan kicked Leon again. Leon screamed in pain. “Aaah.”

“Shut up, boy!” yelled Ryan. “Y’all in a lot of trouble. Y’all going to get the electric chair.”

“Yeah, I hope they fry,” said Sam Clark.

Leon decided that the best strategy was to remain quiet as they were defenseless against the armed cops.

Sam Clark walked over to Deron and stood by his head. He squatted down, grabbed Deron’s hair, and pulled his head up. “You not so tough now are you, boy?”

“Yeah, you’re real tough now that you have me hand cuffed,” replied Deron.

Leon couldn’t believe that his brother said that to Sam. Oh my God, thought Leon. They will certainly kill him now. No way will they let that pass by without repercussions.

Ironically, Sam Clark started laughing and peered over to the other cops. “Hee hee hee. Guys, we got ourselves a dead nigger here—don’t we.” He let go of Deron’s hair, but Deron kept his angry stare at Sam. Sam promptly wound up and kicked Deron in the head. Deron had finally turned his head downwards before the kick came to avoid being kicked in the face. Sam then skipped over to Deron’s side and kicked him repeatedly on his right side. “Now you’re going to respect me boy. You understand?”

“Please, Officer Clark, don’t hurt my boy,” pleaded James Brooks.

“Yeah, the Sheriff said for you to take us to jail right away,” said Leon in attempt to use reason to stop the beatings.

Sam, who was breathing heavily, looked over at Leon and stopped to think. “Okay, boy, you’re right. We’ll take you to jail right now as the Sheriff told us to do, but I’m not finished with your fuckin’ brother.” Sam walked over to Deron, pulled his hair, and looked at his face. “You understand, boy. I’m not finished with you.”

Leon was relieved that Deron didn’t continue his bravery.

Finley finally spoke, “Yeah, we better get them to jail, or the Sheriff will get pissed.”

The cops roughly put the five Negroes in all three remaining police cars.

The Sheriff arrived at Acton Cox’s house at a little past 8:30 a.m. He hoped to catch him before he opened his barbershop. The Sheriff realized that he had to follow the chain of command and had to go to the local leader of the Klan before he could go to the Judge.

He parked his patrol car then walked up to Acton’s front door. After he knocked on the door, Acton’s wife let him in. After some pleasantries with Acton’s wife, Acton appeared in the living room. Acton’s wife knew that she needed to leave the room, which she did.

Acton and the Sheriff shook hands. “Good morning, Sheriff. How did it go last night?”

The Sheriff looked around to make sure Acton’s wife couldn’t hear. In a soft but anxious voice the Sheriff said, “We got a major problem.”

“What is it?”

“Let’s sit down over here,” the Sheriff pointed to the davenport.

They both sat down side by side.

The Sheriff spoke softly, almost in a whisper. “Lucky and his wrecking crew are dead.”

“What! No way … How?”

“I don’t know how, but they’re dead in the woods right now.”

Acton slapped his hand on his forehead. “Wait, how could this happen? How did they die? This can’t be right.”

“It’s fuckin’ right.”

“Is Leon dead, too?”

“No, he’s not fuckin’ dead, but we caught him. My boys are taking him and his buddies to jail right now.”

“Wait, how did he get away?”

“I don’t know. I just discovered the bodies, and I just had Sam arrest Leon and his family and friends.”

“What? You have arrested Leon and some other people as well?”

“Yeah, they were with him when I found Leon. Look, I have to get back and sort things out myself. You’re asking a lot of questions, and I don’t have the answers. I just stopped in my tracks to tell you what happened. Now, I have to get back.”

“Okay, well, I’m in shock. Before you go, we have to call the Judge. Just hang on, and I will get him on the phone.”

The Sheriff waited anxiously while Acton tried calling the Judge.

After a few moments, Acton was able to reach the Judge.

“Atwood, this is Acton. How are you doing?”

“Okay, what’s up?” The Judge never liked small talk.

“Well, we got a major problem up here.”

“What’s that?”

Acton hesitated and spoke slowly, “Lucky and his crew are dead.”

“What!”

“Yeah, they are fuckin’ dead.”

“No fuckin’ way.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened? You know … what happened to Leon?”

“Okay, Leon’s alive. And they’re dead. We got Leon locked up. The Sheriff is here, and he sent them over to jail.”

“My God. I can’t believe this. Holy shit. … Oh my God. This has backfired on us. I just wanted the nigger hung, and now our guys are dead. This is horrible.” The Judge paused. “How did they die?”

“Let me pass the telephone over to the Sheriff. The Sheriff will tell you.”

Acton passed the phone to the Sheriff.

The Sheriff spoke in a somber voice. “Hey, Judge.” Maybe the local leader could get away with calling the Judge by his first name, but the Sheriff was not in a position to do that.

“Hey Sheriff, what the fuck happened?”

“Well, you know, we set Lucky up to do the job, and we didn’t hear anything from him. He never reported to us like he was supposed to do. But we got a call from Leon’s family that Leon was missing too, which made sense. So we waited around figuring that Lucky would eventually show up.”

“And what happened?”

“Well, he never showed up. So then, we started looking around. You know, I went to the spot where I thought he might be at. You know, the place they were supposed to do it with Leon.”

“Okay.”

“And when Junior and I got there, um …they were dead. It looks like they got shot.”

“Shot, like how … with what?”

“We don’t know. It’s too early yet. I’m going to have to get back there. I didn’t spend too much time at the crime scene because I wanted to let you guys know ahead of time, so I got to get back there, actually. Then, I got to interrogate these niggers and get to the bottom of this. You know we arrested—”

The Judge interrupted him. “Wait, wait. Backup a minute. Who do we have exactly?”

“Okay, right now, we got Leon and a bunch of other niggers. I don’t know. There’s four of them. They’re his buddies. I think one is his father.”

“Okay … all right. Well, I’m going to head over there right now. I have something lined up today, but I’m going to cancel it. I will be there. Try to find out as much as you can. Don’t do anything drastic. Don’t kill them. We got forty-eight hours before we have to press charges. We got to think this out. This is not like the 1920s when we could do whatever we want. We have to be careful, but those niggers are going to pay for Lucky. We can’t allow this to happen without serious repercussions to every nigger in town. We have to take swift action.”

“Sure.”

“We’re going to have to schedule a meeting for later today. Go ahead and arrange it, Sheriff.”

“Okay, I’ll do that. See you later this afternoon. I
will
have more information for you when you arrive, Judge.”

The call ended.

“Acton, I need to use your phone to call Billy. I need a coroner out there right away to take away the bodies.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

The Sheriff made the call, informed Billy Stage, the County Coroner, and coordinated for Billy to meet him at the site.

“Acton, can you please inform Lucky’s, Tom’s, and John’s families about what happen. I would, but I got to get on to get some answers.”

Acton sighed. “I guess.” He paused. “I dread it.”

~~~~

The Sheriff arrived back at the crime scene at about 9:15 a.m., and Junior was still there. Damn, the Sheriff thought. His son still hadn’t put yellow crime scene tape to seal the area.

“Where’s the fuckin’ crime scene tape?” asked the Sheriff. “How many times do I have to ask you?”

“I never made it to the car, and you left,” Junior said defensively. “You left with the car before I had a chance to bring it.”

The Sheriff sighed. “All right, I brought some with me, so seal it off now. Make a wide perimeter. Do not allow anyone passed the perimeter unless they get permission from either you or me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

As Junior stretched the tape across trees, the Sheriff observed the scene. The scene was more horrific than before because the bodies and bugs looked worse, but the Sheriff kept his composure this time. Again, he couldn’t look weak in front of other people, especially his son.

The Sheriff pondered what happened and what he would expect to see. Then, he thought about it. He yelled to his son. “Junior, did you see any gun shells?”

“No, I looked, but I couldn’t find anything.”

The Sheriff continued to inspect the area. He saw the noose wrapped around the thick branch just hanging, almost touching the ground. He noticed that it was a perfect tree for a hanging. It was an old oak tree with a large trunk and thick branches that extended outwards. He saw a burnt out torch placed into the tree. He figured the guys must have used a torch and that it must have burnt out long ago.

Junior returned. “So what do you think, Dad?”

“Well, you’ve been here a lot longer than me. Why don’t you describe what you have noticed?” It just dawned on the Sheriff that, even though he was the sheriff, he knew very little about investigating. He thought he would see if his son maybe had a better clue on how to investigate.

“Sure,” Junior said enthusiastically, “but I really don’t know that much. They obviously drove here and probably had Leon in the trunk. They parked the car over there.” Junior pointed over to the car. “Then they probably dragged Leon to the tree. My guess is that a group of niggers must have followed them and snuck up and killed them all.”

“So that means that they must have had guns.”

“That is one thing we know for sure because Lucky’s shotgun is still here. Plus, there had to be more than one person. There’s no way that one person could handle three armed men.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

The Sheriff paused because he heard a noise like footsteps approaching. He gazed over to the entry point and saw that Billy and his assistants had arrived.

“Hey, Billy, over here,” the Sheriff directed Billy to come over to the Sheriff.

“Holy shit, Sheriff,” said Billy. “We got ourselves a mess here. Do you know who did it?”

The Sheriff didn’t want to leak any information to a non-citizen of the Klan. Billy was not a citizen and was a borderline nigger lover, but he was an excellent coroner. That was why the Sheriff tolerated him.

“No, not yet,” the Sheriff responded.

Junior, with a puzzled look, glanced to the Sheriff.

“Billy, Junior and I have to get back to the station,” said the Sheriff. “Can you handle it from here?”

Billy hesitated. “Um … yes.”

“Great. Please call me with your preliminary results as to the cause of death. Junior and I think they were shot, but we want to make sure.”

“Sure.”

~~~~

“Clank, clank, clank.” The Sheriff dragged his billy club across the iron bars of the jail cell.

“Wake you up you fuckin’ niggers. Wake up!”

Leon snapped out of his deep sleep. He must have passed out. He was exhausted from the previous night and realized that he had been awake for over twenty-four hours. Even though he slept on an uncomfortable metal bed frame, with no mattress, he must have fallen asleep right away. He noticed that his brothers, his papa, and Mr. Stevens must have fallen asleep as well as they were yawning and stretching.