Winding Stair (9781101559239) (29 page)

The people Oscar Schiller led through the streets that bright summer morning created a dazzling scene. They had taken their best from old trunks and cedar chests and paraded it now, the reds and yellows and purples of silk shirts and dresses brilliant in the sunlight. It was a mélange of white man's and traditional Choctaw dress. There were beads of glass or of Indian pipe-stem bone, bracelets of hammered copper wire or trade-store brass. Most of the men had wide-brimmed hats, some with feathers trailing from them, the vanes carefully groomed and waxed. Beneath the broadcloth coats of a few were vests, black silk or scarlet and blue patterned. Their shoes were high-button felt and leather, brushed and polished. One among them wore a turban and below it dangled silver earrings that swung with each step. The women were in mail-order clothes, long, billowing dresses and hats drooped with imitation ostrich plumes. A few had their hair drawn back and hidden under bright scarves tied beneath their chins, and some had hair docked at the shoulders, red ribbons trailing from the nape of the neck. One of them wore eyeglasses.

Charley Oskogee was among them, and, walking with him, his wife. Of all the women, she alone wore a Texas-style man's hat. There were others who had been in the Winding Stair posse and a few from McAlester. Oscar Schiller led them along the sidewalks, and directly behind him came George Moon, Choctaw police chief, and beside him a small, well-proportioned Choctaw woman of about thirty-five years, her face smooth and handsome, her eyes wide and dark. She walked with a distinctive grace, her body seeming to float above her short-striding legs. She wore a flowing cotton dress of subdued blue and a white shawl with delicate beaded designs. Her hair was cut short and it glistened in the sunlight like gunmetal. This was Mrs. Thomas Thrasher. The onlookers that day knew as well as any federal official that on the shoulders of this small woman rested the success or failure of the government's Winding Stair case.

The events of that day and those immediately following came to me later, secondhand, through the words of others who were there. On the morning after I brought Emmitt from Henryetta's a telegram had come advising that my mother had been stricken with typhoid fever. Father was deeply concerned—at that time there was no effective vaccine for the disease. I took the Frisco north at once, with the blessings of Judge Parker and Evans and a fistful of Oscar Schiller's railroad passes I still had in my belongings.

Saint Louis was sweltering, almost as bad as Fort Smith, and my discomfort was not in the least lessened having to leave the border with our case still in doubt. But Evans wired me the day Oscar Schiller came in with Mrs. Thrasher, and that plus the doctor's opinion that my mother was out of danger lifted my spirits for a while. Then I visited the zoo to watch the tigers and to think of Jennie Thrasher. It was a mistake.

Depression increased when I received a surprise letter from Zelda Mores, written I was sure with great effort and obviously without the aid of a dictionary. But misspellings were of little concern as I read it.

Oscar Schiller had taken his charges into the federal compound and through the crowd there—the witnesses, prospective jurors, and hangers-on. Moments after her arrival, Mrs. Thrasher asked about Jennie and the girl was brought down from the women's jail. Zelda was not present at the time and could tell me nothing of their reunion.

Around the compound at Fort Smith, there were a number of small hotels where witnesses and jurymen were housed while in town on official business. In one of these, Zelda wrote, they had taken a suite of rooms for Mrs. Thrasher. She was heavily guarded by marshals and directly across the hall were George Moon and Charley Oskogee and his wife. Mrs. Thrasher insisted that Choctaw policemen be with her, and whenever she left her quarters they were a part of her escort along with the marshals.

On that first day, when the armed men walked with Mrs. Thrasher across the compound to her rooms, Jennie returned to the women's jail. Throughout much of that evening, Zelda Mores reported, she could hear the girl crying.

The grand jury sat on the case the fourth day of August, a Monday. Witnesses and depositions were taken during the morning, and by midafternoon deliberations had been completed. Indictments were brought against the four men we had in jail, for rape and murder. It was only after this became public that the people of the city understood the magnitude of Mrs. Thrasher's reluctance to appear, for it could have been none other than herself who was victim of the first-cited crime.

The following morning, Judge Parker arraigned the four men on the charges and announced September 2 for trial. He would have moved more quickly if for no other reason than to avoid sending witnesses home only to have to bring them back again within a month, all at government expense, but Merriweather McRoy insisted on at least this much time to prepare his case. Part of this involved talking with prosecution witnesses, which meant keeping them in town for two or three days in rooms paid for by the government. It went against Judge Parker's thrifty grain. Moma July was the only Creek involved and although McRoy wanted him brought—his grand jury testimony had been by deposition—Parker refused. The court pointed out that defense counsel had spoken to the little Creek policeman before the Burris Garret murder trial, and that was sufficient.

During this time, I fretted in Saint Louis. It would never have occurred to me when I was fighting loneliness in my Fort Smith hotel room, or drinking by myself in some Garrison Avenue saloon, or riding across The Nations with a posse, that I would someday prefer that little border city to my own Saint Louis. None of my old friends had the faintest idea of what a Choctaw was, or how the Civilized Tribes had been removed from their old homes east of the Mississippi, or how law enforcement worked in The Nations. Their only concept of Fort Smith came from the sensational newspaper accounts of the bloody hanging judge. But once I had talked with Father at length about what I'd been doing, I indeed wanted to be back.

When Evans's telegram arrived, informing me of the date of trial and asking that I try to be there, I was grateful for the excuse.

I took the train on the same schedule that had first brought me to The Nations' border. The daylong trip across southern Missouri and northern Arkansas in the heat seemed endless. But finally, I was walking across the familiar Frisco depot platform, smelling the river, seeing the lights of the railyard switch engines in front of Henryetta's. I could not help but recall the first night I had walked across that platform and seen Johnny Boins and Milk Eye Rufus Deer as they passed me in the lantern light.

Evans was still in his office, working furiously over his notes for the trial. He stared at me over his nose glasses, smiled, and handed me the piece of paper we had all wanted so badly. The grand jury indictment.

William Evans

United States District Attorney, Western District of Arkansas.

W
hen William Evans rose to present the government's case that September day, the courtroom was cool. Rains driven before high winds out of Indian Territory had broken the August drought. Too late to save much of the truck-garden crop around Fort Smith, it served at least to dispel the humidity that had hung like damp cotton gauze over the Arkansas Valley for more than a month.

For days people had been coming into the city, by train and riverboat, wagon and horseback. Some walked. Hotels were full, saloons did a boomtown business, and each night the city jail was overflowing with drunks. One café on Rogers Avenue offered a Winding Stair Special consisting of spareribs and red kraut with hill-grown huckleberries and cream for dessert. By midafternoon each day, chili vendors had run out of their fiery brew and trundled their carts home to refill. It became difficult to find ice cream in the city, and late-grown watermelons were selling for as much as twenty-five cents each.

People from The Nations went to the Choctaw Strip to camp in the streets or sleep with relatives. Indian children played around the courthouse compound as though it were a schoolyard, mothers in groups seeking shade under trees along the walls, watching the small ones roll hoops or play tag along the gallows fence.

A group of lawyers upriver from Little Rock held forth each night in the Main Hotel dining room. Eastern newspapermen were in town as well, anxious to interview the Hanging Judge, but he disdained them.

When the doors to the main courthouse hall were opened that morning, seven a.m., the mob surged inside like a stampede of mules. Although a good many deputy marshals had been alerted to assist the bailiff, they had difficulty managing the crush of people and keeping citizens out of the pews reserved for the press. When Judge Parker saw the throng in the hallway, with the courtroom already jammed to capacity, he ordered the building cleared of anyone not already in a seat. Some of those forced out were witnesses, and they had to be retrieved from among the crowd along the front veranda and in the compound, then were herded into an assistant prosecutor's office guarded at the door by a deputy.

Johnny Boins led the defendants into the courtroom, leg-irons clanking. He looked well scrubbed and brushed, his blue eyes shining in a face freshly shaved and baby pink. He was smiling, and as they moved him to the defense table, he looked boldly about the room like an actor counting the audience. His eyes fell on me for a moment, but he showed no sign of recognition.

Behind Johnny Boins marched Skitty Cornkiller, shuffling with head down, his hair in his face. He was wearing the same duck trousers and jacket he had worn when we brought him in, but they had been recently laundered. Next came Nason Grube, looking grayer than I remembered him. He seemed in a trance, beads of sweat standing across his black forehead like chips of glass. The welts along both cheeks had a purple tint and rose from his skin like the sword scars of some Heidelberg duelist. His eyes sought Cornkiller's, but the young Creek ignored him.

The last was Smoker Chubee, almost as tall as Johnny Boins but looking more solid and heavy. He moved with grace despite the irons at his ankles, and his head was up. There was a cud of chewing tobacco in one cheek, the bulge emphasizing the deep pockmarks. His eyes met mine, and incredibly, he winked. He sat a little apart from the others as though they might have some contagious disease.

The jurors trooped in and took their places in the box. They were twelve solid citizens, selected the day before from a panel of western district of Arkansas voters. It struck me once more, the unique quality of this court. Three of the four defendants were citizens of The Nations, but not a single juror came from Indian country.

Even after Judge Parker entered the room, the crowd took some time to settle down. Throughout the reading of indictments and opening statements there was the muffled noise of scuffing feet, coughs, and whispers. I glanced back through the spectators, looking for Johnny Boins's parents. I had seen them in Fort Smith a number of times, a quiet and well-dressed couple of middle age. But they were not here this day, and before I could wonder at that, my attention was brought back sharply to the trial. Evans had called Jennie Thrasher. The newspapers had been calling her “the Woman in the Attic.” Now everyone watched the door into the jail corridor with eyes shining, mouths agape. I have since seen the same expression of morbid curiosity many times in a courtroom. But on that day it was particularly disconcerting because the one they waited to see was Jennie Thrasher.

She wore a new gingham dress, blue with white flowers and ruffles across the front, a bow behind. Her hair was done away from her ears and allowed to fall loose down her back. On her head was a small bonnet, with a ribbon that matched the blue of her dress and of her eyes. About her long, slender neck was a single strand of tiny pearls. When she stepped to the stand, I could see black patent leather shoes with a strap across the instep.

She was calm. Her cheeks were creamy white, her curved lips a delicate pink. As she stood with her right hand raised, I had the feeling she knew exactly where I was sitting behind Evans, but her eyes never sought mine. She looked directly at the clerk as the oath was read, and when she affirmed, I hardly heard her voice. She was for all the world like a schoolgirl.

“Miss Thrasher,” Evans said in a courtroom gone completely still, “are you the daughter of the late Thomas Thrasher?”

“I am.”

“Do you recognize any of the accused?”

Her blue eyes moved slowly from one face to the next along the defense table, a steady gaze returned challengingly by Johnny Boins and with utter detachment by Smoker Chubee. The other two defendants sat leaning against each other, as though they were no part of all this.