The Last Juror (26 page)

We roamed the streets of Clanton in his car. He wanted to know about Sam, and I told him everything. In my opinion, whatever that was worth, it was too dangerous for him to enter Ford County.

And he wanted to know about the trial of Danny Padgitt. I had sent copies of the
Times
to all of the Ruffins. One of Baggy’s reports had emphasized the threat made by Danny to the jurors. The exact quote had been highlighted, “You convict me, and I’ll get every damned one of you.”

“Will he ever be released from prison?” Leon asked.

“Yes,” I said, reluctantly.

“When?”

“No one knows. He got life for murder, life for rape. Ten years is the minimum for each, but I’m told weird things happen in the Mississippi parole system.”

“So it’s twenty years minimum?” I’m sure he was thinking about his mother’s age. She was fifty-nine.

“No one’s sure. There is the possibility of good time, which reduces the minimum.”

He seemed as confused by this as I had been. Truth
was, no one connected to either the judicial system or the penal system had been able to answer my questions about Danny’s sentence. Parole in Mississippi was a vast dark pit, and I was afraid to get too close.

Leon told me that he had quizzed his mother at length about the verdict. Specifically, did she vote for the life sentence, or did she want death? Her response had been that the jury vowed to keep its deliberations a secret. “What do you know?” he asked me.

Not much. She had strongly implied to me that she had not agreed with the verdict, but it was nothing definite. In the weeks after the verdict there had been an avalanche of speculation. Most courthouse regulars had settled on the theory that three, maybe four, of the jurors had refused to vote for the death penalty. Miss Callie was generally considered not to be in that group.

“Did the Padgitts get to them?” he asked. We were easing into the long shaded front drive of Clanton High School.

“That’s the prevailing theory,” I said. “But no one really knows. The last death penalty in this county for a white defendant was forty years ago.”

He stopped his car and we looked at the stately oak doors of the school. “So it’s finally integrated,” he said.

“It is.”

“Never thought I’d see it.” He smiled with great satisfaction. “I used to dream of going to this school. My father worked as a janitor here when I was a little boy, and I would come over on Saturdays and walk those long
hallways and see how nice everything was. I understood why I wasn’t welcome here, but I never accepted it.”

There was not much I could add to this, so I just listened. He seemed more sad than bitter.

We finally drove away and crossed the tracks. Back in Lowtown, I was amazed at the number of fine automobiles with out-of-state tags that were parked tightly in the streets. Large families sat on porches in the frigid air; children played in the yards and the streets. Other cars arrived, all with brightly wrapped packages in the rear windows.

“Home is where Momma is,” Leon said. “And everybody comes home for Christmas.”

As we stopped near Miss Callie’s, Leon thanked me for befriending his mother. “She talks about you all the time,” he said.

“It’s all about lunch,” I said, and we both laughed. At the front gate, a new aroma wafted from the house. Leon froze, took a long whiff, said, “Pumpkin pie.” The voice of experience.

At various times, each of the seven professors thanked me for my friendship with Miss Callie. She had shared her life with many, had lots of close friends, but for more than eight months had especially cherished her time with me.

I left them late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve as they were preparing for church. Afterward, there would be gifts and singing. There were more than twenty Ruffins staying in the house; I couldn’t imagine where everyone slept, and I was certain no one really cared.

As accepted as I was, I did feel the need to leave them at some point. Later, there would be hugs and tears, and songs and stories, and, though I was certainly welcome to experience all of it, I knew there were times when families needed to be alone.

What did I know about families?

I drove to Memphis, where my childhood home had not seen a Christmas decoration in ten years. My father and I had dinner at a Chinese joint not far from the house. As I choked down bad wonton soup I couldn’t help but think of the chaos of Miss Callie’s kitchen and all those wonderful dishes being pulled from the oven.

My father worked hard to seem interested in my newspaper. I obligingly sent him a copy each week, but after a few minutes of chitchat I could tell he had never read a word. He was concerned with some ominous connection between the war in Southeast Asia and the bond market.

We ate quickly and went in different directions. Sadly, neither of us had given any thought to exchanging gifts.

Christmas lunch was with BeeBee, who, unlike my father, was delighted to see me. She invited three of her little blue-haired widow friends over for sherry and ham, and the five of us proceeded to get tipsy. I regaled them with stories from Ford County, some accurate, some highly embellished. Hanging around Baggy and Harry Rex, I was learning the art of storytelling.

By 3 P.M., we were all napping. Early the next morning, I raced back to Clanton.

CHAPTER 25

O
ne frigid day late in January, shots rang out somewhere around the square. I was sitting at my desk, peacefully typing a story about Mr. Lamar Farlowe and his recent reunion in Chicago with his battalion of Army paratroopers, when a bullet shattered a windowpane less than twenty feet from my head. A slow news week thus came to a sudden end.

My bullet was either the second or the third in a fairly rapid sequence. I hit the floor with all sorts of thoughts—Where was my pistol? Were the Padgitts assaulting the town? Were Trooper Durant and his boys after me? On my hands and knees I scrambled to my briefcase as shots continued to crack through the air; they sounded like they were coming from across the street, but in the horror of the moment I really couldn’t tell. They sounded much louder after one hit my office.

I emptied the briefcase and then remembered the
pistol was either in my car or my apartment. I was unarmed and felt like such a weakling for not being able to defend myself. Harry Rex and Rafe had trained me better.

I was scared to the point of not being able to move. Then I remembered Bigmouth Bass was in his office downstairs, and like most real men in Clanton he had an arsenal close by. There were handguns in his desk and he kept two hunting rifles on the wall, just in case he got the urge to run out and kill a deer during lunch. Anyone trying to get me would encounter stiff resistance by my staff. I hoped so anyway.

There was a pause in the assault, then shouts of panic and chaos on the streets. It was almost 2 P.M., normally a busy time downtown. I crawled under my desk like I’d been taught in tornado warning drills. From somewhere below I heard Bigmouth yell, “Stay in your offices!” I could almost see him down there, grabbing a 30.06 and a box of shells, ducking into a doorway in great anticipation. I couldn’t imagine a worse place for some nut to start shooting. There were thousands of guns within arm’s reach around the Clanton square. Every pickup had two rifles in the window rack and a shotgun under the seat. These people couldn’t wait to use their guns!

It wouldn’t be long before the locals returned fire. That’s when the war would really get ugly.

Then the shots resumed. They weren’t getting any closer, I decided as I tried to breathe normally under the desk and analyze things. As the seconds slowly
ticked by I realized that the assault was not aimed at me. I just happened to own a nearby window. Sirens approached, then more shots, more shouting. What in the world!

A phone rang downstairs and someone grabbed it quickly.

“Willie! You okay!” Bigmouth yelled from the bottom of the steps.

“Yeah!”

“There’s a sniper on top of the courthouse!”

“Great!”

“Stay low!”

“Don’t worry!”

I relaxed a little and emerged just enough to grab my phone. I called Wiley Meek at home, but he was already headed our way. Then I crawled across the floor to one of the French doors and opened it. Evidently this caught the attention of our sniper. He shattered a pane four feet above me and the glass fell like heavy rain. I dropped to my stomach and stopped breathing for what seemed like an hour. The gunfire was relentless. Whoever he was he was certainly perturbed about something.

Eight shots, each sounding much louder now that I was outside. A fifteen-second pause as he reloaded, then eight more. I heard glass shatter, bullets ricochet off bricks, bullets split through wooden posts. Somewhere in the midst of the barrage, the voices became silent.

When I could move again, I gently pulled one of the rocking chairs over on its side, then crawled behind it.
The porch had a wrought-iron railing around it, and with that and the chair in front of me, I was concealed and protected. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to move closer to the sniper, but I was twenty-four years old and owned the newspaper and knew that I would write a lengthy story about this dramatic episode. I needed details.

When I finally peeked through the chair and the railing, I saw the sniper. The courthouse had an oddly flattened dome, on top of which was a small cupola with four open windows. He’d made his nest there, and when I first saw him he was peeking just above the sill of one of the windows. He appeared to have a black face with white hair, and this sent more chills through my body. We were dealing with a world-class psycho.

He was reloading, and when he was ready he rose slightly and began shooting completely at random. He appeared to be shirtless, which, given the situation, seemed even stranger since it was around thirty degrees with a chance of light snow later in the afternoon. I was freezing and I was wearing a rather handsome wool suit from Mitlo’s.

His chest was white with black stripes, sort of like a zebra. It was a white man who’d painted himself partially black.

All traffic was gone. The city police had blocked the streets and cops were darting about, squatting low and hiding behind their cars. In the store windows an occasional face popped out for a quick scan, then disappeared. The shooting stopped and the sniper ducked
low and disappeared for a while. Three county deputies dashed along a sidewalk and into the courthouse. Long minutes passed.

Wiley Meek bounded up the steps of my office and was soon beside me. He was breathing so hard I thought he’d sprinted from his house out in the country. “He hit us!” he whispered, as if the sniper could hear. He was examining the broken glass.

“Twice,” I said, nodding up at the broken panes.

“Where is he?” he asked as he moved a camera with a long-range lens into position.

“The cupola,” I said, pointing. “Be careful. He hit that door when I opened it.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Male, white, with black highlights.”

“Oh, one of those.”

“Keep your head down.”

We stayed huddled and crouched for several minutes. More cops scurried about, going nowhere in particular and giving the distinct impression that they were thrilled to be there but had little idea what to do.

“Anybody hurt?” Wiley asked, suddenly anxious that maybe he’d missed some blood.

“How am I supposed to know?”

Then more shots, very quick and startling. We peeked and saw him from the shoulders up, blazing away. Wiley focused and began taking pictures through the long-range lens.

Baggy and the boys were in the Bar Room on the third floor, not directly under the cupola, but not far
from it. In fact, they were probably the closest humans to the sniper when he began his target practice. After the shooting resumed for the ninth or tenth time, they evidently became even more frightened and, convinced they were about to be slaughtered, decided they had to take matters into their own hands. Somehow they managed to pry open the intractable window of their little hideaway. We watched as an electrical cord was thrown out and fell almost to the ground, forty feet below. Baggy’s right leg appeared next as he flung it over the brick sill and wiggled his portly body through the opening. Not surprisingly, Baggy had insisted on going first.

“Oh my God,” Wiley said, somewhat gleefully, and raised his camera. “They’re drunk as skunks.”

Clutching the electrical cord with all the grit he could muster, Baggy sprung free from the window and began his descent to safety. His strategy was not apparent. He appeared to give no slack on the cord, his hands frozen to it just above his head. Evidently there was plenty of cord left in the Bar Room, and his cohorts were supposed to ease him down.

As his hands rose higher above his head, his pants became shorter. Soon they were just below his knees, leaving a long gap of pale white skin before his black socks bunched around his ankles. Baggy wasn’t concerned about appearances—before, during, or after the sniper incident.

The shooting stopped, and for a while Baggy just hung there, slowly twisting against the building, about three feet below the window. Major could be seen inside,
clinging fiercely to the cord. He had only one leg though, and I worried that it would quickly give out. Behind him I could see two figures, probably Wobble Tackett and Chick Elliot, the usual poker gang.

Wiley began laughing, a low suppressed laugh that shook his entire body.

With each lull in the shooting, the town took a breath, peeked around, and hoped it was over. And each new round scared us more than the last.

Two shots rang out. Baggy lurched as if he’d been hit—though in reality there was no possible way the sniper could even see him, and the suddenness evidently put too much pressure on Major’s leg. It collapsed, the cord sprang free, and Baggy screamed as he dropped like a cinder block into a row of thick boxwoods that had been planted by the Daughters of the Confederacy. The boxwoods absorbed the load, and, much like a trampoline, recoiled and sent Baggy to the sidewalk, where he landed like a melon and became the only casualty of the entire episode.