Walking Through Shadows (19 page)

Oh, dear Lord, what will you bring down on this family next? It’s only been one week since we buried Sheila, and now this. What have we done to deserve such trouble as you have bestowed on us? Why didn’t you give us some kind of warning that Stoney was the one we should fear? I sit here in this small church, looking at your portrait above Brother Yarbrough’s head, and your eyes have compassion in them; your raised hands with open palms seem to be saying, “Come to me and I will give you ease.” But you haven’t offered any comfort. You won’t even still this baby inside me that keeps flipping around and pulling on my insides so that I can’t get one decent night’s sleep. No, you’re not seeing to your flock. You aren’t listening to my prayers. I may as well be asking one of the cows to help our family overcome these trials you have given us.

And here’s Lloyd sitting here beside me with his chin dropped down on his chest. I’m the one who should be nodding off; he is getting plenty of rest. Annette’s eyes are fixed on Brother Yarbrough, strutting back and forth in front of the pulpit like he was in a marching band. Mama said we weren’t going to be pleased with any preacher under thirty-five, and she was right. I miss Brother Westler. Why’d he have to retire? I guess he’s praying on some white sand beach down in Florida this morning. Well, Annette does like our new preacher, and I need to keep my feelings about him inside. Poor Annette. I think Stoney’s arrest upset her more than Sheila’s death.

Dear Sheila, are you up there in heaven? Can you hear me? Are you an angel now, flying above us, seeing what-all has happened? Can you send me a sign to let me know if Stoney killed you or not? I don’t believe it. The sheriff is wrong. He didn’t do it, did he? Brother Yarbrough keeps talking about forgiveness and turning the other cheek. Did you forgive who murdered you? Was it your papa? Mama told me you were going to have a baby, and when she said that, I cried till my eyes swelled up. To think of a little dead baby. It’s too awful. Stoney wouldn’t hurt you and he wouldn’t hurt his own baby either. If you have any supernatural powers as an angel, could you send us some help? There’s too many shadows to walk through now. And I’ve forgotten how to anyway.

I can feel Mama’s eyes on me, boring right through Daddy’s suit into my head. They both believe Stoney did it. My own parents were the first ones to call him a murderer. They don’t know him like I do. They never saw him kissing you and hugging you, looking at you like you were a special gem that God had sent just for him. But I was with y’all plenty of times to see how it was between you. You wouldn’t have loved him so much if you’d thought for one minute that he was capable of choking another person to death. I wouldn’t love him if I thought that.

Love your neighbor, forgive them that do evil. Ha. What horseshit! I say an eye for an eye, and damn them to hell. If Rowena thinks dragging us to church after yesterday’s mess is gonna change my feelings, she better think another thought. Who knows what’s in her mind these days. She says don’t tell Annette about Sheila’s baby, and then she goes and tells her herself. She says we ought to think like Christians at a time like this, and she says she hopes Stoney gets the electric chair. I know Annette doesn’t believe he did it. She’s hanging on to her innocence, not wanting to see the facts as they are. Well, let her. Stoney can’t hurt her in jail, but it’s gonna go down hard with her when he gets convicted. And he will. I’ll have to hire another hand to replace Stoney for the dairy soon. There’s a lot of work to be done on the place, too. I should have told Digger to make sure that back fence was gonna hold until we get it fixed proper. That’s all I need, half my herd wandering out onto Carterdale Road to get killed by an automobile. I’d say with my luck lately, if Brother Yarbrough ever gets to the benediction, I’ll go home to find my Ayrshires dead in the road.

The Lexie Journal

September 16, 1941

Stoney Barnes Arrested for Murder!

Stonewall Buford Barnes, age 18, was arrested for allegedly murdering his wife, Sheila Carruth Barnes, on August 31. According to Lexie County’s sheriff, Clyde Vairo, Barnes beat and then strangled his wife, and carried her body to the cornfield owned by Lloyd Cotton, who was his employer at Cottons’ Dairy. Barnes, a resident of Lexie County, denies the allegations, but is being held in the Lexie County jail without bail. His lawyer, William Calloway, a native of Zebulon, who is senior partner in the Jackson law firm of Calloway and Green, told this reporter that evidence he will offer at trial will prove his client’s innocence. — Leland Graves

Leland

I had expected my interview with Bill Calloway to be a waste of time. I would listen to him proclaim his client’s innocence in bombastic tones, and I would be back at Mother’s in time for dinner, but my day didn’t go as planned. I assumed that Mrs. Barnes had hired him because the local lawyer, Randy White, the court-appointed attorney, had not managed to get bail for her son. I learned from a secretary down at Mechanics State Bank that Mrs. Barnes had been forced to mortgage their house to pay Calloway’s fee.

The Mechanics State Bank, an impressive two-story building on the corner of Second Street and Locust, is where we met. Calloway was using the offices of his friend, Jeremy Foxx, and Foxx’s secretary ushered me in to the conference room, which was furnished with a mahogany table and forest-green leather chairs. On the credenza there was a magnificent brass lamp. Calloway looked exactly right in the surroundings. When I entered the room, he was seated at the end of the table in front of a stack of legal pads, blue-backed vellum documents, and a silver cylinder filled with pens and pencils. As I came toward him, he rose and offered his hand. He was an imposing man. Fifty-plus years old, solid, a bit too thick in the middle, with a mane of hair, not silver, but white. His three-piece suit, of a dark blue hue, covered most of a lighter blue shirt with long collar points. The red and black striped tie was, in my mind, a fashion misstep.

His heavy gold ring cut into my hand. “Leland Graves from the newspaper, correct?”

“Yes. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Calloway,” I said while taking the seat he indicated. His big teeth shone in the dimly lit room, and suddenly I felt small and insignificant in his presence. I gave myself a quick pep talk by reminding myself that Napoleon was several inches shorter than I. “I’ve been assigned to follow the trial, as I told you on the telephone, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about your client.”

Bill Calloway was relaxation in the flesh. He leaned back in the big leather chair and crossed his legs. “Fine. Will this be your first murder trial?”

How did he know this wasn’t a routine assignment for me? “Yes. I was on the society page, but the hard news reporter moved away. I expect my position is temporary.” I hoped so.

“But aren’t you the fellow who found out that Stoney Barnes is sterile and reported it to the sheriff? That’s not cub reporter work. You’re obviously an astute young man.”

I swelled a little with the compliment, but then wondered if he were saying that — if not for me — the sheriff wouldn’t have arrested his client. I had told Sheriff Vairo that here was Stoney’s motive. I had said, “Here’s our Othello snuffing out the life of his Desdemona.” Then, when the sheriff had looked at me with blank eyes, I said, “Jealousy! Murderous jealousy.”

“Mrs. Barnes is the one who told me about Stoney’s condition,” I said.

Calloway leaned forward and clasped his hands over the legal pad in front of him. “Yes, and I’m grateful for her assistance in helping our case along.”

I didn’t understand his cheerful tone nor how her blunder could be construed as something to be grateful for. “Helping your case?” My pen was poised on my pad, but I hadn’t stroked the first curve of one letter until now. I wrote, “Mrs. Barnes helping how?”

“Yes, since the child wasn’t conceived by the husband, painful as it is for Stoney Barnes, he now knows that a love triangle existed. His wife, Sheila, such a pretty name, had taken a lover.” He smiled at me like he was about to hand me the keys to a new automobile or give me some other extravagant gift. “She had unwisely taken a lover, who went up to her house for a forbidden tryst after her husband left for work. When she rebuffed him and threatened to expose him, he murdered her.”

I was writing as fast as my pen would allow. My voice came out loud and adolescent. “Who? Who was the lover?”

Calloway’s smile stretched wider. “Oh, we’ll find out eventually. I’ve got an investigator working on it. For now, you just print what you have there. That’s the true story of what really happened to that poor girl.”

After I left the bank offices, I drove straight to the jail and told Clyde Vairo what Calloway had said to me. “Who do you think it is? Who’s the lover?”

Clyde looked annoyed. He needed a shave and he rubbed his cheeks like the stubble was worrying him. “Hell, I don’t know. I don’t have any evidence of who was sleeping with her, except maybe the papa, and I haven’t any hard proof of that.”

“Can I see Stoney? Interview him in his cell?”

“Yeah, you can go back there, but he ain’t talked much since I locked him up. Just sits on his cot kinda staring at the floor like he don’t know where he’s at. His lawyer was here a long time this morning. I reckon he talked to him, but he hasn’t spoke more’n a few words to me or Sam.”

I’d never gone through the locked door that led to the cells behind the sheriff’s office, and I wasn’t prepared for the stench of urine and stale whiskey and unwashed armpits that assaulted us when the sheriff opened the door. Sheriff Vairo motioned me to follow him down the dark hall that divided the two cells. I looked first to my left where I saw two Negroes sitting on the floor throwing dice. A third black man lay on the stained mattress with his forearm resting across his eyes. They were all barefoot. The man holding the dice wore overalls with no shirt; his hair was shot with gray patches around his temples and ears, and he cocked his head and nodded to me as we passed. The man sitting across from him was much younger and his unbuttoned shirt revealed a huge raised scar that crossed his chest like a hyphen. He greeted us with a lift of his hand and the word “Boss.” The third prisoner ignored us, and I decided most of the liquor smell was rising from his damp khaki pants.

Turning to my right I saw Stoney Barnes leaning against the back wall of his cell. Like the sheriff, he needed a shave, but his beard was much darker and heavier. When he saw me, he pushed himself off the wall and walked on his sock feet across to the bars between us. Behind him I could see a mattress partially covered with a rumpled tan blanket, a pillow with no case, a tin slop bucket, a roll of tissue paper beside it, and beyond that a small cardboard box with the words “Astor Golden Delicious” written on its side. Barnes wore loose-fitting jeans with no belt, a blue and green checked shirt with gray buttons, and white socks. He stepped back when Sheriff Vairo opened the door to the cell. “Call me when you’re done,” he said to me, closing the door behind me.

I stood, uncertain as to jailhouse etiquette. After a moment, I stretched out my hand. “You may not remember me. I’m Leland Graves, reporter for The Lexie Journal. I spoke with you at your house, the day of… the day your wife was found.”

The boy smiled at me and took my hand. “I remember now. Yeah, you was asking me about how was I gonna feel that night.” He leaned against the bars and crossed his ankles. “I reckon you want to know how I feel now being locked up in here.”

I pointed to the cot. “May I?” He nodded, and I straightened the blanket a bit and sat on the very edge of the cot and took out my pen and pad. “Yes, I am interested in how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking.”

He began to pace, completing a square. He walked past the bars to the back wall, in front of the bucket and box, back toward the bars inches from my feet. I followed him with my eyes up, across, down, across. I tried not to breathe too deeply each time he passed. Looking around the cell, I saw that there was nowhere to wash. “So you were taken by surprise when you were arrested?”

“Yeah. I reckon I was. Didn’t know anybody thought I done it, except old man Carruth.” He stopped pacing and looked at me. “I didn’t do it. Write that down.” Then he continued on his route around his cell. “I was in the peanut patch, pulling peanuts for Mr. Cotton. He said it was best for me not to come down to milk yet what with Sheila’s memory still there. So I was out pulling peanuts, the sun weren’t high yet, it weren’t hot, and I was kinda enjoying being out there alone, and then I looked up and seen the sheriff and Mr. Cotton coming. The sheriff had his hand on his hip like he was ready to draw on me. I ain’t sure ’bout what he said for exact, but he said something like, ‘Stoney, I got to take you in.’ And I says, ‘What for, Sheriff?’ and he says, ‘Murder.’” He shook his head and his dark hair fell across his forehead. “I couldn’t get my mind around what he was saying, but I held out my wrists for them cuffs and said, ‘All right then. Let’s go.’”

The sun, which had been obscured by cloud cover all day, suddenly broke out and an elongated rectangle of light shone through the window, and now Stoney walked in and out of the light as he traversed his course. Dark, light, his face clear and vivid and then shadowed and dim. His monologue followed the same pattern. He smiled speaking of his mother, telling me that she brought his supper to him every night. Then his voice slowed and his tone was mournful. “But I didn’t get no bail. I ain’t never going home again unless a jury says I’m innocent.”

“You think you’ll be found not guilty?”

He hesitated. His mouth moved and he nodded as if a disembodied voice was telling him what to say. I suspected the person who was speaking was Calloway. “Can’t nobody prove I done it.”

Stoney’s voice held no conviction and brought to my mind a child’s voice denying his naughtiness. “I spoke with your lawyer, Mr. Calloway, and he says that you weren’t aware of your wife’s infidelity. You didn’t suspect that she was having an affair with someone, some other man?”

Stoney walked to where I sat and stood looking down on me. His eyes frightened me, and I’m sure I shrunk back from him just a bit. “No! She never let on nothing. She and me, we, we was happy.” He looked up at the ceiling as though his wife was there nodding agreement. “She were happy, said so all the time. I satisfied her in ever’ way.” He looked back down on me. “Ever’ way. She didn’t need no other man for that.”

His reaction was, I knew, typical of a man cuckolded by another. Although I had only experienced a physical relationship with a woman twice, I understood how painful it must be for him to realize that his wife had lain in another’s arms.

The stench was getting to me, and my stomach wasn’t going to stay settled in place much longer. I needed to ask the question I’d come here for. “Do you know who your wife was seeing? Who the father of the baby is?”

Stoney held onto the bars and turned his back on me. His voice was low and angry and frightening. “Yeah, I know all right. I know him. It’s his fault Sheila’s dead. He killed her, not me.”

I stood up, but stayed safely away from him. “And what is his name?”

Stoney turned and stared at me with such intense hatred spread over his face that I thought for a moment he was going to say my name. But he lifted his hands to his head and ran his fingers through his thick mane of blue-black hair. It was as if he’d just awakened from sleep and realized where he was. His eyes opened wider, revealing his fear. “I ain’t supposed to be talking to nobody about my case. You better go.”