Sycamore Row
Page 82
“Do you remember the names?”
“Oh yes. I’ll never forget them, as long as I live.”
“Fair enough. What happened next?”
Another long pause as Ancil fought to compose himself.
Jake looked at the jurors. Number three, Michele Still, was touching her cheeks with a tissue. The other black juror, Barb Gaston, number eight, was wiping her eyes. To her right, Jim Whitehurst, number seven, handed her his handkerchief.
“Sylvester was practically strung up but his toes were still touching the bed of the truck. The rope was so tight around his neck he couldn’t talk or scream, but he tried to. He made this awful sound that I’ll never forget, sort of a high-pitched growl. They let him suffer there for a minute or two, all of the men standing close and admiring their work. He danced on his tiptoes, tried to free his hands, and tried to scream. It was so pathetic, so awful.”
Ancil wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. Someone off camera handed him some tissues. He was breathing heavily.
“God, I’ve never told this story. Seth and I talked about it afterward for days and months, and then we agreed to try and forget about it. I’ve never told anyone else. It was so awful. We were just kids, we couldn’t have stopped it.”
After a pause, Lucien asked, “So what happened, Ancil?”
“Well, the obvious. Mista Burt yelled ‘Go’ and the guy driving the truck lurched forward. Sylvester swung kinda wild at first. The two men on the other end of the rope pulled some more and he shot up another five or six feet, I guess. His feet were about ten feet off the ground. It wasn’t long before he became still. They watched him for a while, no one wanted to leave, then they tied the rope off and left him there. They drifted back toward the settlement, which was probably a tenth of a mile away from the tree, some of the men were walking, some in trucks.”
“How many total?”
“I was just a kid, I don’t know. Probably ten.”
“Continue.”
“Seth and I were creeping along in the trees, in the shadows, listening as they laughed and patted themselves on the back. We heard one of them say, ‘Let’s burn his house.’ And the mob gathered close to Sylvester’s place. Esther was on the front steps, holding a child.”
“A child? A boy or a girl?”
“A girl, not a toddler, but a little girl.”
“Did you know this child?”
“No, not then. Seth and I found out about her later. Sylvester had only one child, the girl, and her name was Lois.”
Lettie gasped so loud that she startled most of the jurors. Quince Lundy handed her a tissue. Jake glanced over his shoulder at Portia. She was shaking her head, as stunned as everyone else.
Lucien said, “Did they burn the house?”
“No, a strange thing happened. Cleon stepped forward with his shotgun and stood between the men and Esther and Lois. He said no one was burning the house, and the men got in their trucks and left. Seth and I took off. The last thing I saw was Cleon talking to Esther on the front steps of their little shack. We hopped on our pony and sprinted home. When we sneaked through the window to our room, our mother was waiting. She was angry and wanted to know where we had been. Seth was the better liar and he said we’d been out chasing fireflies. She seemed to believe us. We begged her not to tell Cleon, and I don’t think she ever did. We were in bed when we heard his truck approach and park. He came into the house and went to bed. We couldn’t sleep. We whispered all night. I couldn’t help but cry and Seth said it was okay to cry, as long as no one else saw me. He swore he wouldn’t tell anyone that I was crying. Then I caught him crying too. It was so hot and these were the days before air-conditioning. Long before daybreak, we sneaked out the window again and sat on the back porch where it was cooler. We talked about going back to Sycamore Row and checking on Sylvester, but we really weren’t serious. We speculated about what would happen to his body. And we were certain the sheriff would come out and arrest Cleon and the other men. The sheriff would need witnesses, and that’s why we could never breathe a word of what we’d seen. Never. We did not go to sleep that night. When we heard our mother in the kitchen, we sneaked back to bed, just in time for Cleon to walk in and yell at us to get to the barn and milk the cows. We did that every morning at dawn. Every morning. It was a tough life. I hated the farm, and from that day on I hated my father like no child has ever hated a parent. I wanted the sheriff to come get him and take him away forever.”
Off camera, Lucien seemed to need a break himself. He paused for a long time before continuing with “What happened to the Rinds families?”
Ancil dropped his head and shook it in an exaggerated way. “Awful, just awful. The story gets worse. A day or two later, Cleon went to see Esther. He gave her a few bucks and made her sign a deed to the eighty acres. He promised her she could stay there, and she did for about forty-eight hours. The sheriff showed up all right. He and a deputy and Cleon went out to the settlement and told Esther and the other Rinds folks that they were being evicted. Immediately. Pack up your stuff right now and get off his land. There was a small clapboard chapel, a church where they had worshipped for decades, and to prove he owned everything, Cleon torched it. Burned it to the ground to show what a big man he was. The sheriff and the deputy helped him. They threatened to torch the shacks too.”
“And you saw this?”
“Sure. Seth and I missed nothing. We were supposed to be chopping cotton, but when we saw the sheriff pull up in front of our house, we knew something was up. We were hoping he would arrest Cleon, but that’s not the way things worked in Mississippi back then. Not at all. The sheriff was there to help Cleon clean up his land and get rid of the blacks.”
“What happened to the blacks?”
“Well, they left. They grabbed whatever they could and ran into the woods.”
“How many?”
“Again, I was a kid. I wasn’t counting. But there were several families of Rindses living on the land, not all around the settlement, but they were fairly close to each other.” Ancil took a deep breath and mumbled, “I’m really tired all of a sudden.”
Lucien said, “We’re almost finished. Please continue.”
“Okay, okay. So, they were running away, into the woods, and as soon as a family vacated their shack, Cleon and the sheriff would set it on fire. They burned everything. I vividly remember some of the blacks standing at the edge of the woods, holding their kids and whatever possessions they could grab, and looking back at the fires and the thick gray smoke and crying and wailing. It was just awful.”
“What happened to them?”
“They scattered. For a while, a bunch of them were camping beside Tutwiler Creek, deep in the woods near the Big Brown River. Seth and I were looking for Toby and we found him there with his family. They were starving and terrified. We loaded up the horses one Sunday afternoon, sneaked away, and took as much food as we could steal without getting caught. That was the day I saw Esther and her little girl, Lois. The kid was about five years old and completely naked. She had no clothes. It was just awful. Toby came to our house a couple of times and hid behind the barn. Seth and I gave him as much food as we could. He hauled it back to the campsite, which was several miles away. One Saturday, some men showed up with rifles and shotguns. We couldn’t get close enough to hear anything, but our mother told us later they went to the campsite and ran off all the Rindses. A couple of years after that another black kid told Seth that Toby and his sister had drowned in the creek, and that some folks had been shot. I think by then I’d heard enough. Could I have some water?”
A hand slid a glass of water to Ancil, who sipped it slowly. He continued: “When I was thirteen my parents split. It was a happy day for me. I left with my mother and went to Corinth, Mississippi. Seth didn’t want to change schools so he stayed with Cleon, though they rarely spoke to each other. I really missed my brother, but after a while we naturally grew apart. Then my mother remarried a jackass who was not much better than Cleon. I ran away when I was sixteen and joined the Navy when I was seventeen. Sometimes I think I’ve been running ever since. Once I left, I never had any contact with my family. My head is killing me. That’s all. That’s the end of a really bad story.”
47
The jurors filed silently out of their room and followed the bailiff down a back stairway to a side door of the courthouse, the same route they had taken every day since Tuesday. Once outside they scattered without a word. Nevin Dark decided to drive home for lunch. He did not want to be around his colleagues at that moment. He needed time to digest the story he had just heard. He wanted to breathe, to think, to remember. Alone in his truck with the windows down, he almost felt dirty; maybe a shower would help.
Mista Burt. Mista Burt. Somewhere on the shadier side of his wife’s family tree, there had been a great-uncle or a distant cousin named Burt. Many years ago he lived near Palmyra, and there had always been whispers about Burt’s involvement with the Klan.
It couldn’t be the same man.
In his fifty-three years in Ford County, Nevin had heard of only one other lynching, but he had almost forgotten the story. It supposedly happened around the turn of the century. All witnesses were dead, and the details had been forgotten. Nevin had never heard a description of such a killing by a real witness. Poor Ancil. He looked so pitiful with his little round head and oversized suit, and wiping tears with a sleeve.
Disoriented by Demerol or not, there was no doubt Seth knew what he was doing.
Michele Still and Barb Gaston had no plans for lunch, and they were too emotional to think clearly. They jumped into Michele’s car and fled Clanton, taking the first road out with no destination in mind. The distance helped, and after five miles on an empty county road they were able to relax. They stopped at a country store and bought soft drinks and crackers, then sat in the shade with the windows down and listened to a soul station out of Memphis.
“We got nine votes?” Michele asked.
“Girl, we may have twelve.”
“Naw, we’ll never get Doley.”
“One day, I’m gonna slap his ass. Might be today, might be next year, but I’ll do it.”
Michele managed to laugh and their moods were lifted considerably.
Jim Whitehurst also drove home for lunch. His wife was waiting with a stew and they ate on the patio. He had told her everything else about the trial, but he did not want to replay what he had just heard. But she insisted, and they hardly touched their lunch.
Tracy McMillen and Fay Pollan drove together to a strip mall east of town where a new sub shop was doing a booming business. Their “Juror” buttons got a few looks but no inquiries. They got a booth so they could talk and within minutes were in complete agreement. Seth Hubbard might have been fading in his final days, but there was no doubt he planned things perfectly. They had not been too impressed with Herschel and Ramona anyway. And, they didn’t like the fact that a black housekeeper would get all the money, but, as Jake had said, it was not for the jurors to decide. It wasn’t their money.
“Oh yes. I’ll never forget them, as long as I live.”
“Fair enough. What happened next?”
Another long pause as Ancil fought to compose himself.
Jake looked at the jurors. Number three, Michele Still, was touching her cheeks with a tissue. The other black juror, Barb Gaston, number eight, was wiping her eyes. To her right, Jim Whitehurst, number seven, handed her his handkerchief.
“Sylvester was practically strung up but his toes were still touching the bed of the truck. The rope was so tight around his neck he couldn’t talk or scream, but he tried to. He made this awful sound that I’ll never forget, sort of a high-pitched growl. They let him suffer there for a minute or two, all of the men standing close and admiring their work. He danced on his tiptoes, tried to free his hands, and tried to scream. It was so pathetic, so awful.”
Ancil wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. Someone off camera handed him some tissues. He was breathing heavily.
“God, I’ve never told this story. Seth and I talked about it afterward for days and months, and then we agreed to try and forget about it. I’ve never told anyone else. It was so awful. We were just kids, we couldn’t have stopped it.”
After a pause, Lucien asked, “So what happened, Ancil?”
“Well, the obvious. Mista Burt yelled ‘Go’ and the guy driving the truck lurched forward. Sylvester swung kinda wild at first. The two men on the other end of the rope pulled some more and he shot up another five or six feet, I guess. His feet were about ten feet off the ground. It wasn’t long before he became still. They watched him for a while, no one wanted to leave, then they tied the rope off and left him there. They drifted back toward the settlement, which was probably a tenth of a mile away from the tree, some of the men were walking, some in trucks.”
“How many total?”
“I was just a kid, I don’t know. Probably ten.”
“Continue.”
“Seth and I were creeping along in the trees, in the shadows, listening as they laughed and patted themselves on the back. We heard one of them say, ‘Let’s burn his house.’ And the mob gathered close to Sylvester’s place. Esther was on the front steps, holding a child.”
“A child? A boy or a girl?”
“A girl, not a toddler, but a little girl.”
“Did you know this child?”
“No, not then. Seth and I found out about her later. Sylvester had only one child, the girl, and her name was Lois.”
Lettie gasped so loud that she startled most of the jurors. Quince Lundy handed her a tissue. Jake glanced over his shoulder at Portia. She was shaking her head, as stunned as everyone else.
Lucien said, “Did they burn the house?”
“No, a strange thing happened. Cleon stepped forward with his shotgun and stood between the men and Esther and Lois. He said no one was burning the house, and the men got in their trucks and left. Seth and I took off. The last thing I saw was Cleon talking to Esther on the front steps of their little shack. We hopped on our pony and sprinted home. When we sneaked through the window to our room, our mother was waiting. She was angry and wanted to know where we had been. Seth was the better liar and he said we’d been out chasing fireflies. She seemed to believe us. We begged her not to tell Cleon, and I don’t think she ever did. We were in bed when we heard his truck approach and park. He came into the house and went to bed. We couldn’t sleep. We whispered all night. I couldn’t help but cry and Seth said it was okay to cry, as long as no one else saw me. He swore he wouldn’t tell anyone that I was crying. Then I caught him crying too. It was so hot and these were the days before air-conditioning. Long before daybreak, we sneaked out the window again and sat on the back porch where it was cooler. We talked about going back to Sycamore Row and checking on Sylvester, but we really weren’t serious. We speculated about what would happen to his body. And we were certain the sheriff would come out and arrest Cleon and the other men. The sheriff would need witnesses, and that’s why we could never breathe a word of what we’d seen. Never. We did not go to sleep that night. When we heard our mother in the kitchen, we sneaked back to bed, just in time for Cleon to walk in and yell at us to get to the barn and milk the cows. We did that every morning at dawn. Every morning. It was a tough life. I hated the farm, and from that day on I hated my father like no child has ever hated a parent. I wanted the sheriff to come get him and take him away forever.”
Off camera, Lucien seemed to need a break himself. He paused for a long time before continuing with “What happened to the Rinds families?”
Ancil dropped his head and shook it in an exaggerated way. “Awful, just awful. The story gets worse. A day or two later, Cleon went to see Esther. He gave her a few bucks and made her sign a deed to the eighty acres. He promised her she could stay there, and she did for about forty-eight hours. The sheriff showed up all right. He and a deputy and Cleon went out to the settlement and told Esther and the other Rinds folks that they were being evicted. Immediately. Pack up your stuff right now and get off his land. There was a small clapboard chapel, a church where they had worshipped for decades, and to prove he owned everything, Cleon torched it. Burned it to the ground to show what a big man he was. The sheriff and the deputy helped him. They threatened to torch the shacks too.”
“And you saw this?”
“Sure. Seth and I missed nothing. We were supposed to be chopping cotton, but when we saw the sheriff pull up in front of our house, we knew something was up. We were hoping he would arrest Cleon, but that’s not the way things worked in Mississippi back then. Not at all. The sheriff was there to help Cleon clean up his land and get rid of the blacks.”
“What happened to the blacks?”
“Well, they left. They grabbed whatever they could and ran into the woods.”
“How many?”
“Again, I was a kid. I wasn’t counting. But there were several families of Rindses living on the land, not all around the settlement, but they were fairly close to each other.” Ancil took a deep breath and mumbled, “I’m really tired all of a sudden.”
Lucien said, “We’re almost finished. Please continue.”
“Okay, okay. So, they were running away, into the woods, and as soon as a family vacated their shack, Cleon and the sheriff would set it on fire. They burned everything. I vividly remember some of the blacks standing at the edge of the woods, holding their kids and whatever possessions they could grab, and looking back at the fires and the thick gray smoke and crying and wailing. It was just awful.”
“What happened to them?”
“They scattered. For a while, a bunch of them were camping beside Tutwiler Creek, deep in the woods near the Big Brown River. Seth and I were looking for Toby and we found him there with his family. They were starving and terrified. We loaded up the horses one Sunday afternoon, sneaked away, and took as much food as we could steal without getting caught. That was the day I saw Esther and her little girl, Lois. The kid was about five years old and completely naked. She had no clothes. It was just awful. Toby came to our house a couple of times and hid behind the barn. Seth and I gave him as much food as we could. He hauled it back to the campsite, which was several miles away. One Saturday, some men showed up with rifles and shotguns. We couldn’t get close enough to hear anything, but our mother told us later they went to the campsite and ran off all the Rindses. A couple of years after that another black kid told Seth that Toby and his sister had drowned in the creek, and that some folks had been shot. I think by then I’d heard enough. Could I have some water?”
A hand slid a glass of water to Ancil, who sipped it slowly. He continued: “When I was thirteen my parents split. It was a happy day for me. I left with my mother and went to Corinth, Mississippi. Seth didn’t want to change schools so he stayed with Cleon, though they rarely spoke to each other. I really missed my brother, but after a while we naturally grew apart. Then my mother remarried a jackass who was not much better than Cleon. I ran away when I was sixteen and joined the Navy when I was seventeen. Sometimes I think I’ve been running ever since. Once I left, I never had any contact with my family. My head is killing me. That’s all. That’s the end of a really bad story.”
47
The jurors filed silently out of their room and followed the bailiff down a back stairway to a side door of the courthouse, the same route they had taken every day since Tuesday. Once outside they scattered without a word. Nevin Dark decided to drive home for lunch. He did not want to be around his colleagues at that moment. He needed time to digest the story he had just heard. He wanted to breathe, to think, to remember. Alone in his truck with the windows down, he almost felt dirty; maybe a shower would help.
Mista Burt. Mista Burt. Somewhere on the shadier side of his wife’s family tree, there had been a great-uncle or a distant cousin named Burt. Many years ago he lived near Palmyra, and there had always been whispers about Burt’s involvement with the Klan.
It couldn’t be the same man.
In his fifty-three years in Ford County, Nevin had heard of only one other lynching, but he had almost forgotten the story. It supposedly happened around the turn of the century. All witnesses were dead, and the details had been forgotten. Nevin had never heard a description of such a killing by a real witness. Poor Ancil. He looked so pitiful with his little round head and oversized suit, and wiping tears with a sleeve.
Disoriented by Demerol or not, there was no doubt Seth knew what he was doing.
Michele Still and Barb Gaston had no plans for lunch, and they were too emotional to think clearly. They jumped into Michele’s car and fled Clanton, taking the first road out with no destination in mind. The distance helped, and after five miles on an empty county road they were able to relax. They stopped at a country store and bought soft drinks and crackers, then sat in the shade with the windows down and listened to a soul station out of Memphis.
“We got nine votes?” Michele asked.
“Girl, we may have twelve.”
“Naw, we’ll never get Doley.”
“One day, I’m gonna slap his ass. Might be today, might be next year, but I’ll do it.”
Michele managed to laugh and their moods were lifted considerably.
Jim Whitehurst also drove home for lunch. His wife was waiting with a stew and they ate on the patio. He had told her everything else about the trial, but he did not want to replay what he had just heard. But she insisted, and they hardly touched their lunch.
Tracy McMillen and Fay Pollan drove together to a strip mall east of town where a new sub shop was doing a booming business. Their “Juror” buttons got a few looks but no inquiries. They got a booth so they could talk and within minutes were in complete agreement. Seth Hubbard might have been fading in his final days, but there was no doubt he planned things perfectly. They had not been too impressed with Herschel and Ramona anyway. And, they didn’t like the fact that a black housekeeper would get all the money, but, as Jake had said, it was not for the jurors to decide. It wasn’t their money.
