The Last Juror (33 page)

“Repent!” Preacher Bob shouted, and heads ducked.

What if the deacon was talking about me? I glanced around and noticed that the door was locked and guarded by two more deacons.

Things finally ran out of gas, and two hours after I sat down I bolted from the building. I needed a drink.

I wrote a pleasant little report about my visit to Calvary Full Gospel and ran it on the Religion page. I commented on the warm atmosphere of the church, the lovely solo by Miss Helen Hatcher, the powerful sermon by Preacher Bob, and so on.

Needless to say, this proved to be very popular.

At least twice a month, I went to church. I sat with Miss Callie and Esau and listened to the Reverend Thurston Small preach for two hours and twelve minutes (I timed every sermon). The briefest was delivered by Pastor Phil Bish at the United Methodist Church of Karaway—seventeen minutes. That church also got the award for being the coldest. The furnace was broken, it was January, and that may have helped shorten the sermon. I sat with Margaret at the First Baptist Church in Clanton and listened to Reverend Millard Stark give his
annual sermon on the sins of alcohol. With bad timing, I had a hangover that morning and Stark kept looking at me.

I found the Harvest Tabernacle in the back room of an abandoned service station in Beech Hill, and I sat with six others as a wild-eyed doomsayer named Peter the Prophet yelled at us for almost an hour. My column that week was quite brief.

The Clanton Church of Christ had no musical instruments. The ban was based on Scripture, it was later explained to me. There was a beautiful solo, which I wrote about at length. There was also no emotion whatsoever in the service. For a contrast, I went to the Mount Pisgah Chapel in Lowtown, where the pulpit was surrounded by drums, guitars, horns, and amplifiers. As a warmup for the sermon, a full-blown concert was given with the congregation singing and dancing. Miss Callie referred to Mount Pisgah as a “lower church.”

On my list, number sixty-four was the Calico Ridge Independent Church, located deep in the hills in the northeastern part of the county. According to the
Times
archives, at this church in 1965 a Mr. Randy Bovee was bitten twice by a rattlesnake during a late Sunday night worship service. Mr. Bovee survived, and for a while the snakes were put away. The legend, however, flourished, and as my Church Notes column gained popularity, I was asked several times if I intended to visit Calico Ridge.

“I plan to visit every church,” was my standard reply.

“They don’t like visitors,” Baggy warned me.

I had been greeted so warmly in each church—black or white, large or small, town or country—that I could not imagine Christian folks being rude to a guest.

And they weren’t rude at Calico Ridge, but they weren’t too happy to see me either. I wanted to see the snakes, but from the safety of the back row. I went on a Sunday night, primarily because legend held that they did not “take up the serpents” during daylight hours. I searched the Bible in vain for this restriction.

There was no sign of any serpents. There were a few fits and convulsions below the pulpit as the preacher exhorted us to “come forth and moan and groan in sin!” The choir chanted and hummed to the beat of an electric guitar and a drum, and the meeting took on the spookiness of an ancient tribal dance. I wanted to leave, especially since there were no snakes.

Late in the service, I caught a glimpse of a face I’d seen before. It was a very different face—thin, pale, gaunt, topped with grayish hair. I couldn’t place it, but I knew it was familiar. The man was seated in the second row from the front, on the other side of the small sanctuary, and he seemed out of touch with the chaos of the worship service. At times he appeared to be praying, then he would sit while everyone else was standing. Those around him seemed to accept him and ignore him at the same time.

He turned once and looked directly at me. It was Hank Hooten, the ex-lawyer who’d shot up the town in 1971! He’d been taken in a straitjacket to the state mental
hospital, and a few years later there’d been a rumor that he had been released. No one had seen him, though.

For two days after that, I tried to track down Hank Hooten. My calls to the state mental hospital went nowhere. Hank had a brother in Shady Grove, but he refused to talk. I snooped around Calico Ridge, but, typically, no one there would utter a word to a stranger like me.

CHAPTER 33

M
any of those who worshiped diligently on Sunday mornings became less faithful on Sunday nights. During my tour of churches, I heard many preachers chide their followers to return in a few hours to properly complete the observance of the Sabbath. I never counted heads, but as a general rule about half of them did so. I tried a few Sunday night services, usually in an effort to catch some colorful ritual such as snake handling or disease healing or, on one occasion, a “church conclave” in which a wayward brother was to be put on trial and certainly convicted for fancying another brother’s wife. My presence rattled them that night and the wayward brother got a reprieve.

For the most part, I limited my study of comparative religions to the daylight hours.

Others had different Sunday-night rituals. Harry Rex helped a Mexican named Pepe lease a building and
open a restaurant one block off the square. Pepe’s became moderately successful during the 1970s with decent food that was always on the spicy side. Pepe couldn’t resist the peppers, regardless of how they scalded the throats of his gringo customers.

On Sundays all alcohol was banned in Ford County. It could not be sold at retail or in restaurants. Pepe had a back room with a long table and a door that would lock. He allowed Harry Rex and his guests to use the room and eat and drink all we wanted. His margaritas were especially tasty. We enjoyed many colorful meals with spicy dishes, all washed down with strong margaritas. There were usually a dozen of us, all male, all young, about half currently married. Harry Rex threatened our lives if we told anyone about Pepe’s back room.

The Clanton city police raided us once, but Pepe suddenly couldn’t speak a word of English. The door to the back room was locked, and partially hidden too. Pepe turned off the lights, and for twenty minutes we waited in the dark, still drinking, and listened to the cops try to communicate with Pepe. I don’t know why we were worried. The city Judge was a lawyer named Harold Finkley, who was at the end of the table slogging down his fourth or fifth margarita.

Those Sunday nights at Pepe’s were often long and rowdy, and afterward we were in no condition to drive. I would walk to my office and sleep on the sofa. I was there snoring off the tequila when the phone rang after midnight. It was a reporter I knew from the big daily in Memphis.

“Are you covering the parole hearing tomorrow?” he asked. Tomorrow? In my toxic fog I had no idea what day it was.

“Tomorrow?” I mumbled.

“Monday, September the eighteenth,” he said slowly.

I was reasonably certain the year was 1978.

“What parole hearing?” I asked, trying desperately to wake myself up and put two thoughts together.

“Danny Padgitt’s. You don’t know about it?”

“Hell no!”

“It’s scheduled for ten A.M. at Parchman.”

“You gotta be kidding!”

“Nope. I just found out. Evidently, they don’t advertise these.”

I sat in the darkness for a long time, cursing once again the backwardness of a state that conducted such important matters in such ridiculous ways. How could parole even be considered for Danny Padgitt? Eight years had passed since the murder and his conviction. He had received two life sentences of at least ten years each. We assumed that meant a minimum of twenty years.

I drove home around 3 A.M., slept fitfully for two hours, then woke up Harry Rex, who was in no condition to be dealt with. I picked up sausage biscuits and strong coffee and we met at his office around seven. We were both ill-tempered, and as we plowed through his law books there were sharp words and foul language, not aimed at each other, but at the blurry and toothless
parole system passed by the legislature thirty years earlier. Guidelines were only vaguely defined, leaving ample wiggle room for the politicians and their appointees to do as they wished.

Since most law-abiding citizens had no contact with the parole system, it was not a priority with the state legislature. And since most of the state’s prisoners were either poor or black, and unable to use the system to their advantage, it was easy to hit them with harsh sentences and keep them locked up. But for an inmate with a few connections and some cash, the parole system was a marvelous labyrinth of contradictory laws that allowed the Parole Board to pass out favors.

Somewhere between the judicial system, the penal system, and the parole system, Danny Padgitt’s two “consecutive” life terms had been changed to two “concurrent” sentences. They ran side by side, Harry Rex tried to explain.

“What good is that?” I asked.

“It’s used in cases where a defendant has multiple charges. Consecutive might give him eighty years in jail, but a fair sentence is ten. So they run ’em side by side.”

I shook my head in disapproval again, and this irritated him.

I finally got Sheriff Tryce McNatt to answer the phone. He sounded as hung over as we were, though he was a strict teetotaler. McNatt knew nothing about the parole hearing. I asked him if he planned to attend, but his day was already filled with important meetings.

I would have called Judge Loopus, but he’d been dead for six years. Ernie Gaddis had retired and was fishing in the Smoky Mountains. His successor, Rufus Buckley, lived in Tyler County and his phone number was unlisted.

At eight o’clock, I jumped in my car with a biscuit and a cup of cold coffee.

______

A
n hour west of Ford County the land flattened dramatically and the Delta began. It was a region rich in farming and poor in living conditions, but I was in no mood to take in the sights and offer social commentary. I was too nervous about crashing a clandestine parole hearing.

I was also nervous about setting foot inside Parchman, a legendary hellhole.

After two hours, I saw fences next to fields, then razor wire. Soon there was a sign, and I turned into the main gate. I informed a guard in the booth that I was a reporter, there for a parole hearing. “Straight ahead, left at the second building,” he said helpfully as he wrote down my name.

There was a cluster of buildings close to the highway, and a row of white-frame houses that would fit on any Maple Street in Mississippi. I chose the Admin A building and sprinted inside, looking for the first secretary. I found her, and she sent me to the next building, second floor. It was just about ten.

There were people at the end of the hallway, loitering
outside a room. One was a prison guard, one was a state trooper, one wore a wrinkled suit.

“I’m here for a parole hearing,” I announced.

“In there,” the guard said, pointing. Without knocking, I yanked open the door, as any intrepid reporter would, and stepped inside. Things had just been called to order, and my presence there was certainly not anticipated.

There were five members of the Parole Board, and they were seated behind a slightly elevated table with their name plates in front of them. Along one wall another table held the Padgitt crowd—Danny, his father, his mother, an uncle, and Lucien Wilbanks. Opposite them, behind another table, were various clerks and functionaries of the Board and the prison.

Everyone stared at me as I stormed in. My eyes locked onto Danny Padgitt’s, and for a second both of us managed to convey the contempt we felt for the other.

“Can I help you?” a large, badly dressed ole boy growled from the center of the Board. His name was Barrett Ray Jeter, the chairman. Like the other four, he’d been appointed by the Governor as a reward for vote-gathering

“I’m here for the Padgitt hearing,” I said.

“He’s a reporter!” Lucien practically yelled as he was standing. For a second I thought I might get arrested on the spot and be carried deeper into the prison for a life sentence.

“For who?” Jeter demanded.

“
The Ford County Times,
” I said.

“Your name?”

“Willie Traynor.” I was glaring at Lucien and he was scowling at me.

“This is a closed hearing, Mr. Traynor,” Jeter said. The statute wasn’t clear as to whether it was open or closed, so it had traditionally been kept quiet.

“Who has the right to attend?” I asked.

“The Parole Board, the parolee, his family, his witnesses, his lawyer, and any witnesses for the other side.” The “other side” meant the victim’s family, which in this setting sounded like the bad guys.

“What about the Sheriff from our county?” I asked.

“He’s invited too,” Jeter said.

“Our Sheriff wasn’t notified. I talked to him three hours ago. In fact, nobody in Ford County knew of this hearing until after twelve last night.” This caused considerable head-scratching up and down the Parole Board. The Padgitts huddled with Lucien.

By process of elimination, I quickly deduced that I had to become a witness if I wanted to watch the show. I said, as loudly and clearly as possible, “Well, since there’s no one else here from Ford County in opposition, I’m a witness.”

“You can’t be a reporter and a witness,” Jeter said.

“Where is that written in the Mississippi Code?” I asked, waving my copies from Harry Rex’s law books.

Jeter nodded at a young man in a dark suit. “I’m the attorney for the Parole Board,” he said politely. “You
can testify in this hearing, Mr. Traynor, but you cannot report it.”

I planned to fully report every detail of the hearing, then hide behind the First Amendment. “So be it,” I said. “You guys make the rules.” In less than one minute the lines had been drawn; I was on one side, everybody else was on the other.

“Let’s proceed,” Jeter said, and I took a seat with a handful of other spectators.

The attorney for the Parole Board passed out a report. He recited the basics of the Padgitt sentence, and was careful not to use the words “consecutive” or “concurrent.” Based on the inmate’s “exemplary” record during his incarceration, he had qualified for “good time,” a vague concept created by the parole system and not by the state legislature. Subtracting the time the inmate spent in the county jail awaiting trial, he was now eligible for parole.