That Night at the Palace (23 page)

Sarah, upon hearing about the raid, tried repeatedly to visit her mother in jail, but Juanita refused the visits in an effort to shield her daughter from any connection to the farm. But then, three months after arriving at the little prison farm, Juanita received her first and only visitor during her incarceration. Eduardo Carrillo made the trip to the Goree unit to see his daughter. During the visit Juanita sat stone-faced across a table while her father told her how disappointed he was in her and that he hoped she realized how much shame she had brought upon the family. He continued to tell her that there would be no help from her family when she was released.

She never mentioned to Mr. Carrillo that he had a beautiful granddaughter.

Twenty-four hours later Sarah Burney received a telegram informing her that her mother was dead. She made repeated attempts to get someone at the prison to tell her what had happened to her mother, but she was simply told that her mother had taken her own life.

With the money Sarah and Marie got from the sale of the store, the two women settled in the small but prosperous town of Elza, south of Jacksonville and east of Rusk. On Main Street across from the movie theater they opened another produce store. Sarah went to all of the neighboring farmers and cut deals to sell their crops. This business was much smaller than the one in Jacksonville, but they made enough money to survive and live comfortably in the apartment above. The two women attended church on Sundays, and on Saturdays they walked across the street to see the movies. Life, for a time, was good.

One afternoon a new farmer walked into the store asking to do business. He was quite a few years older than Sarah and seemed extremely shy. This behavior baffled the girl who had little experience with men, especially potential suitors, and even less with shy ones. He explained that he had recently been discharged from the army and had moved into his parent’s old place on the edge of town. She naturally signed the man up and began selling his corn, potatoes, and collard greens.

For the next two years he came into the store at least once a week. He always had on clean overalls with his hair slicked back, and he always kept his head down and had trouble looking Sarah in the eye. Marie saw from the start that the man was in love, but Sarah couldn’t believe that it was possible given that he had hardly spoken more than a dozen words since she’d met him. Still he continued to come, and finally one day he swallowed up all of his nerve and asked Sarah to go to the movies with him. The following Saturday night Sarah Burney and Irwin Stoker went on their first date. Four weeks later, when he walked her across the street after their fourth date, he asked her to marry him.

Sarah didn’t know what to say and asked if she could have a few days to think about it. She immediately ran upstairs to tell Marie, who had already surmised that it would happen. Sarah was terrified, but Marie argued that he was a good man who worked hard and would take care of her into her old age. So the next Saturday night Sarah agreed to become Mrs. Irwin Stoker, and two months later at the courthouse in Rusk the two, with Marie as a witness, became husband and wife.

Before they married, Irwin insisted that Sarah would not work, so she and Marie began the process of closing. Marie made arrangements to go live with her sister in Houston. They each shed many tears and promised to stay in touch. They exchanged letters every few weeks until about a year later when Sarah received word that Marie had passed away.

A few days before the wedding, a woman had come to town to buy the store building. Her name was Anna-Ruth Crawford. She told Sarah that her husband was away in the army, and she wanted to open a dress shop so that when he got out they would have a little business to get them started. Sarah sold her the building and promised to come by and visit right after she and Irwin got settled in.

About a week after the wedding day, Sarah dropped by with some freshly picked cucumbers to welcome Anna-Ruth to Elza. Anna-Ruth had not yet opened her store but had moved into the apartment, and she invited her new friend up for a cup of coffee. As they sat at the tiny kitchen table sipping coffee Sarah noticed a picture hanging on the wall. Her heart stopped. She felt a cold chill run through her and almost dropped her cup. Somehow she kept her composure enough to not reveal her feelings as she looked at the picture of Peterson Crawford. Anna-Ruth saw Sarah looking at the picture and took it off the wall and showed it to her. She said that it was her husband who was away in the army.

Sarah had never made the connection with the last name of Crawford. She had probably seen it in the paper, but it never occurred to her that he was Anna-Ruth’s husband. She did know that he wasn’t in the army. After the raid at the farm, she and Marie had kept an eye on the newspapers. One article mentioned the two brothers who were sentenced to five years for assaulting a Texas Ranger. Above the article were two small pictures of the men. At the time she was relieved because she knew that she and Marie would move and she’d probably never see Richard and Peterson Crawford ever again.

Sarah tossed and turned all that night. Sooner or later the two men she feared most would be right there in little Elza. She was fraught with despair. Should she tell Irwin? He would surely protect her, but then she would have to tell him about The Farm. Would he understand that she never worked there? Would he believe her?

After two sleepless nights she sat her new husband down and told him where she grew up. Irwin was infuriated. She never got to the part where she told him about Mr. Crawford and his brother. From that moment on he hated her and everything about her. He began to drink, and from time to time, in fits of anger, would strike her. Their life was that of two people who shared a house and a bed but never love. She did all that was expected of a farm wife, and he put food on the table. He worked the fields and rarely spoke to his wife.

A little over a year later Jewel Stoker was born. Irwin, who had so little love for his wife, had nothing but love for his baby girl. Sarah, who until then had so little reason to live suddenly had every reason to live.

That same day, unbeknownst to Sarah, Peterson Crawford and his brother Richard were paroled from prison.

Chapter 10

301 RED OAK AVE. ELZA TEXAS

12:00 p.m. November 19, 1941

J
esse and Gemma slowly climbed the steps to the porch and approached the front door of the house. Jesse was wearing the same jeans and t-shirt he’d had on the day Brewster and Jefferson arrested him. Gemma was wearing her best Sunday dress. There were some cars out front, and Jesse prepared himself for what he knew was going to be a difficult encounter.

The two days with Cherokee-One-Leg had mostly been spent trying to figure out what had happened and who had killed Cliff. Both he and Cherokee missed their friend and had shed some tears, but they also knew that there was work to be done; they knew that business they had hoped was long-since behind them had come back and cost Cliff his life. Cherokee blamed himself. Deep down he knew that the things from the past weren’t finished. The boys had been too young at the time to understand, but he knew better. Inside he knew that they should have told everything to the Texas Ranger years ago, but that would have hurt the two people Jesse cared for most`, so he wouldn’t allow it then, and he wouldn’t allow it now.

It was Cherokee who had come up with a plan. Jesse was determined to be at Cliff’s funeral and, of course, so would the C.A. and some sheriff’s deputies.

After Jesse left his office with Corporal McKinney, and after the C.A. had left, Jefferson went to Gemma and told her that Jesse was hiding. She didn’t have to think about it to know where he was. Cherokee-One-Leg was Jesse’s one and only hero. Whenever Jesse had a problem, no matter how big or small, he always went to Cherokee.

It had taken several years for Gemma to understand the relationship Jesse had with the old black man. In a small East Texas town in the 1930’s, you rarely saw a young white boy even speaking to old black men, let alone run and hug them as if they were long lost uncles. But as Gemma began to see the relationship Jesse had with his parents, she slowly understood. In the same way that Cliff’s dad had taken the place of a father to Jesse, Cherokee took the place of a grandfather. She had heard, through the Elza gossip mill, how Jesse’s real grandfather had killed himself before Jesse was born because he’d had some connection to a prostitution business. Naturally, as a boy, Jesse was drawn to the old man who was part Indian and had fought in wars, not to mention that he wore an alligator’s tooth around his neck. As they grew to adulthood, Jesse and Cliff had come to love the man as if he was family.

Gemma, of course, was a little afraid of an old man who rarely smiled and always seemed a bit gruff. He was kind to her, of course, but distant. She especially could not understand why Jesse put so much faith in him. But Jesse was steadfastly insistent upon spending as much time as he could with the old soldier rather than with his father’s lawyers. On that point Jesse was unyielding. He constantly reassured Gemma, “Don’t worry, Cherokee will know what to do.”

Jesse was nervous when he reached for the doorknob. He expected there to be lawyers, of course. It was possible that there would be sheriff’s deputies. Sooner or later he was going to have to face them, but what made him the most nervous was that behind the door was his mother.

Gemma had come by Monday after seeing Jesse to tell them, as per his specific instructions, that she had heard from him and that he was okay and would come home soon. He had specifically told her not to say that she had seen him. If she did, his mother and his father’s lawyers would not leave her alone. None of this information sat well with Garvis, but there was nothing she could do, which irritated her all the more.

Gemma knew that she wasn’t one of Garvis Rose’s favorite people. Garvis was always exceptionally kind and polite when Gemma was around, but venom has a way of working its way out, and Gemma had felt the bite of Garvis Rose more than once. When she was younger Gemma tried especially hard to be accepted by Garvis, and it bothered her that Mrs. Rose seemed to look down upon her. But in time she had learned that Jesse had little regard for his mother’s opinions. Conversely, he had the highest regard for Cliff’s parents’ opinions, and Mrs. Tidwell treated Gemma like she was a daughter.

Sure as he expected, when he opened the door, Garvis wrapped her arms around him, sobbing and insisting that he should not have hidden out from them. Jesse simply accepted the rebuke. He’d been dealing with Garvis all of his life and knew that there was no point in fighting over something as minor as this. There would be other fights before the day was over.

Also as expected, the house was full of lawyers, all anxious and happy to meet Jesse and all assuring him that he had little to worry about. The C.A.’s case was far too weak, and they were confident that they could keep him from spending a single night behind bars.

Jesse went upstairs to take a bath and dress for the funeral while Garvis and Gemma made sandwiches for Murdock and the lawyers. When Jesse returned, he grabbed a quick bite and then announced that he and Gemma were leaving for the funeral. Garvis, naturally, protested. She insisted they would attend the service as a family, and afterward he would surrender to the sheriff or C.A., with his lawyers present, of course. The lawyers would negotiate with the C.A. to allow Jesse to return home and await the arraignment and, heaven forbid, trial.

Jesse had other plans.

#

TIDWELL FAMILY FARM

ELZA, TEXAS

3:54 p.m. November 19, 1941

Cherokee County Attorney Nathaniel Cockwright was furious. Nothing had gone as planned. First, the family of the deceased refused to allow him into their home before the funeral. Cockwright had met with this poor family immediately after that stupid Texas ranger and idiot police chief had let the murderer run away right out of their jail. Actually, that wasn’t an accurate description of what had happened. Those two fools released him and sent him away as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Then, during his first meeting with the family, as Nathaniel assured them that the kid who had killed their son would get the electric chair, the father, in an excellent display of how the uneducated think, insisted that the fugitive was not the killer and that Nathaniel was after the wrong man. The father seemed to think that somewhere out there was some unknown assailant. Obviously he had been talking to that incompetent police chief, even though he claimed he hadn’t. Nathaniel, naturally, understood the delusion the man was under. In all small towns, Elza being no exception, everyone knew one another. It was understandable that they would have trouble accepting that one of their own was capable of committing such a crime. From all the interviews that his two deputies had conducted, not a single person in Elza believed that this Jesse kid was responsible, even though almost half of them had heard him threaten to do it just a couple of hours before the murder. In his years as Cherokee County C.A., Nathaniel had run across this kind of backwoods mentality before, but never to this great of an extent. The people of Elza were so confident in their belief that they began to refuse to even talk to the deputies.

Then came the funeral. Nathaniel had planned every minute of the event. First he was going to arrive with the family in a limousine rented at the C.A. office’s expense. That part went out the window when the family had refused to see him or let him into their house.

Nevertheless, the day could still be salvaged.

He had spent more than an hour the previous day with the pastor and the funeral director. The funeral director agreed to help the C.A. make sure that the funeral went smoothly and without any problems. By smoothly, the C.A. meant that if the murderer happened to show up, which was unlikely, the pastor would have someone point him out to one of the two C.A.’s office deputies who would be discretely standing in the back of the church. The brutal killer would then, again very discretely since it was a funeral, be taken into custody by one of the sheriff’s department deputies.

That morning the two deputy C.A.’s made the appropriate calls, and thus the press had arrived, this time in far greater numbers than before. There were easily fifty or more reporters and photographers out front when Nathaniel arrived. As he predicted, the wire services had picked up the story of the “Alligator Killer.” By Tuesday evening Vivian and Anita were fielding calls from as far away as Atlanta and Denver. Everyone wanted to see this evil kid go down.

The funeral director’s other job, which he had failed at miserably, was to make sure to arrange the seating so that County Attorney Cockwright would sit next to Cliff’s mother. Nothing would look better on the cover of the papers than for the next Texas Attorney General, or possibly even Governor, to be at the funeral consoling the grieving mother. Unfortunately, the idiot running the funeral couldn’t even get that simple task correct.

Since he couldn’t get into the parents’ house, Nathaniel’s backup plan was to stand out in front of the church to greet the family when they arrived. He would open the car door for the mother, give her a consoling hug, all before the cameras, and then escort her and the senseless father into the church where he would continue to hold the mother’s hand throughout the service. As arranged with the funeral director, a few photographers, chosen by the two deputy County Attorneys, would be allowed to come around to the front for a few minutes, take a few pictures, and then leave, all as discretely as possible to avoid disrupting the service any more than absolutely necessary.

Apparently, even though the funeral director and this Reverend Anderson had both sat through the planning session and had seemingly understood the importance to the citizens of Cherokee County to see the pain this family was experiencing and see how their elected officials were making sure justice was being served, both men deliberately went to great lengths to ensure that the press was not allowed inside the building. In hindsight, Nathaniel thought he should have put his own people in charge of managing the funeral. The hillbilly preacher and funeral director probably played pinochle with the dimwitted police chief who had his own deputies at the door keeping the press out.

Of course, none of this mattered, anyway. First, the family, in another display of the mindless mentality of the uneducated, chose not to take advantage of the limousines that Nathaniel had so graciously sent, opting instead to attend their son’s funeral in their own pickup trucks. By the time the C.A. realized that the people getting out of the dirty old farm truck was the deceased’s family, the press had rushed in before Nathaniel could get anywhere near the door to console the mother and escort her into the church. As Nathaniel was fighting his way past the press, some kid got out of the first truck, holding his arm around the mother, and walked into the building with her and the father and their two younger children behind. Once inside the church, this same unknown kid and some teenaged girl took the seats that should have been reserved for Nathaniel. The C.A. still tried to work his way in the pew, but thanks to that kid and the girl there was no room. Nathaniel then tried to get a seat in the back of the church, but by that point the place was so packed with dirt farmers that there was simply no room. As a result, to his utter humiliation, the Attorney for Cherokee County had to spend the funeral standing outside with the reporters, who naturally wanted to know why he wasn’t attending the service.

When the funeral was over, the entire church full of people proceeded to their cars and drove over to the Elza Cemetery for the graveside service. This time, Nathaniel was better prepared. He had made sure that his county car would be at the head of the prerecession, right behind the family. He also made sure that the press had maps and plenty of lead-time to allow them to be waiting, cameras in hand, when he got out of his car and met the family before any of the rest of the mourners got in the way. Again, this would have made for great pictures had it not been for the idiotic behavior of the police chief.

When the hearse carrying the deceased and the two vehicles with immediate family (and that unknown kid and his girlfriend) arrived, the police chief sent them along a service road up the back of the cemetery, well away from the awaiting journalists. When Nathaniel’s car got to the turnoff, he rolled down his window and insisted on being allowed to join the immediate family, but that stupid police chief steadfastly refused the County official entrance, claiming that the family wanted it that way. So Nathaniel, like everyone else, parked out in front of the cemetery. Then when he got to the gate, two police deputies refused to allow the press and county officials in, again claiming to do so at the family’s request. Nathaniel tried to explain that such exclusion couldn’t possibly apply to the County Attorney, only to have one of the two irrational hillbilly halfwit cops, one of whom curiously had no neck and looked somewhat like a toad, insist that it applied to him specifically.

So understandably, Nathaniel Cockwright was in an ill mood when he approached the Tidwell family home after the graveside service. Not only had every opportunity of a quality cover photograph already been lost, all of the press had already left town to submit their stories without a single photograph of County Attorney Nathaniel Cockwright. However, knowing that they had purposely kept him out of the funeral, he still felt obligated to pay his respects because there was no way he could prosecute the killer without several more encounters with these daft farmers.

There were at least twenty-five or thirty cars parked around the house. Many of the men, all wearing their Sunday best, were standing out front smoking cigarettes and eating anything from fried chicken to pork chops. Among those standing out front holding a plate of chicken was Police Chief Jefferson Hightower and the two impudent deputies who had refused to allow Cockwright into the cemetery.

Nathaniel nodded his head as he passed the chief and the other farm folk hanging around the front of the house. He preferred not to have to speak to the illiterates of Cherokee County. That was partly due to the fact that he hated the way these dumb East Texans abused the English language, but the real truth was that he always felt like these cow herders and chicken farmers were laughing at him behind his back. He didn’t fit in with these people, and he knew it as well as they did.