That Night at the Palace (34 page)

“I don’t think we need to,” McKinney answered.

The two policemen followed the old man into the building. Just as they got inside they saw Crawford head out the back door. As he went out he looked back at them.

“Should we try to catch him?” Chief Hightower asked.

“No,” McKinney replied. “He’ll be deep in those woods before we can get to the door.”

“What should we do?”

Cherokee smiled and turned and headed back out. “I’ve got some corn liquor at my place if you boys want talk.”

McKinney looked at the chief. “I’m not sure what that old soldier is up to, but I think we just helped him lay his trap.”

Chapter 13

PLEASANT GROVE,

CHEROKEE COUNTY TEXAS

12:15 a.m., December 6, 1941

C
herokee handed a small glass with homemade whiskey to Brewster McKinney, who sat down on one of the three chairs in the little old house. Cherokee then poured a second glass for Chief Hightower as the policeman looked at all of the plaques, medals, and pictures on the wall above the fireplace that served as a shrine to a long military career. Many of the pictures showed Cherokee in his cavalry uniform standing next to colonels and generals.

“Good lord, Cherokee,” the chief commented. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see a picture of Custer up here.”

The old man settled into a rocker closest to the fireplace and shook his head.

“Custer,” he snorted with disgust. “He was a damn fool. My pa scouted for ‘im. Pa was smart enough to quit before Little Bighorn. Custer got all his men killed, and the papers acted like he’s some kind of hero. If he’d lived he would have gotten court marshalled.”

The chief looked at the old Indian and then at McKinney.

The Ranger just grinned and shook his head. The life this old man must have had.

The chief looked back at the pictures. “Is that Teddy Roosevelt?”

The old man grinned. “Ole Teddy. The Colonel was a born leader. He didn’t know the first thing about fightin’ a war, but his men would have followed him straight into hell if he’d led ‘em there.”

McKinney took a sip of the whiskey while the chief sat down in the third chair. Normally he should have considered arresting a man who was in possession of illegal liquor, but it was late, and the Ranger had much more important things on his mind than some small-time bootlegger. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the stuff tasted pretty good.

“What do you know about Crawford?” Brewster asked the old warrior.

Cherokee leaned back in the chair with his glass resting on his good leg.

“Well,” Cherokee began, “he had a lot to do with that Stoker woman killin’ herself back in ’36. And he wants Jesse dead for killing his brother.”

The chief’s eyes widened as he and the Ranger looked at one another.

“Jesse killed Peterson Crawford?” McKinney asked.

“Yeah, but if he hadn’t’ve I would’ve. I thought he was gonna kill the kid. Took ‘im out to the tracks. I suspect he intended to scare the boy. It was me that he really wanted. He tried to shoot me, but all he got was my peg. I fell down before I could get a shot off. Jesse clubbed him over the head with a piece of Bois de Arc.” The old man grinned, “That Bois de Arc is so hard, it’s like getting hit with a hammer.”

“What happened to Sarah Stoker? You said she killed herself?”

“You remember that lynchin’ up in Jacksonville?” Cherokee asked, seemingly changing the subject while looking at the chief.

“Bucky Davis,” the Chief commented.

“Mert, his pa, is one of my cousins. They said Bucky raped some gal. The boys, Jesse and Clifford, were there at the hangin’. I don’t know how, but they figured out that the oldest Crawford boy was the one who’d raped that poor gal. There was a lot of talk in those days about riots after that, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I asked the boys to keep an eye on Crawford for me. I guess I hoped that maybe we could prove that Crawford did it, I could turn him over to some of the boys here in the Grove. Well, the kids figured out that Crawford was doin’ somethin’ with the Stoker woman. They’d seen him talkin’ to her a couple of times. One day they climbed up on the picture show and saw ‘im hit her.”

“That’s what they were doin’ up there?”

Cherokee nodded. “Well, the night of the carnival she had a fallin’ out with her husband because of the two brothers. Stoker left with their daughter, and the woman went walkin’ down that alley behind your police station all by herself. Jesse followed to keep an eye on her.

“I was sittin’ on my tailgate sellin tomatoes with Clifford when we heard gunshots from that alley. We got there just in time to see the two Crawfords hightailin’ it. According to Jesse, Sarah said she was pregnant. He thinks they had raped her. Well, she wasn’t one to just take it; she pulled a gun and started shootin’ at the two. She hit the younger one, but the older brother got the gun from her and beat her up a bunch. When the brothers took off she shot herself. Jesse and Clifford held her as she died.”

“Dear god, they were just boys back then,” the chief commented.

“Yeah, it was pretty hard on ‘em.”

“What about her body?” The chief asked.

“To tell the truth, I don’t know what they did with her. Jesse and Cliff wanted me to leave. Remember now, that lynchin’ was just a few weeks before. The boys were afraid of what would happen if I got seen with a dead white woman. Lookin’ back, I probably should’ve gone for you, but the fact was that I figured that the boys were right. Nobody would have believed what two kids and a colored man had to say when there was a dead, pregnant, white woman layin’ there.”

The chief hung his head down. “You were probably right.”

“That still doesn’t explain what happened to her body,” McKinney added.

“Those boys know every armadillo hole within miles. I suspect they used that old Ford stake-bed and took her deep into the woods someplace. That, or they tied some rocks to her and dropped her in the river,” Cherokee explained.

“Why are you just now tellin’ me this, Cherokee? I don’t care about Irwin, but poor Jewel should have known what happened to her mama,” Jefferson said.

Cherokee leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, holding the glass in both hands. “She begged us,” he answered with a break in his voice.

“She didn’t want her girl knowin,” he continued. “And she didn’t want those two little Crawford girls knowin’ what their daddy had done. She was a good woman. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“Are you tellin’ me that Jesse’s willin’ to face the electric chair to keep Gemma from knowin’ what a louse her old man was?” Jefferson commented.

“We talked a lot about it, but the boy’s got a head harder than that Bois de Arc branch. He won’t budge on that. I think he figures he’s guilty of murderin’ her pa.”

“But you said Peterson was going to kill him. He wouldn’t have gotten in trouble for that,” Jefferson added.

“Either of you ever killed a man?” the old man asked.

Both lawmen shook their heads.

“It stays with you. There’s nothin’ you can do to wash it off. I suspect Jesse’s thought about that night every single day since he was twelve years old. I bet he wakes up at night seeing that guy’s face. I know that I do. And that girl of his, can you imagine what it’s like to love a girl knowin’ that you killed her daddy? All she remembers about her father is that he loved her. She don’t know about his bad side. How do you think she’d feel if she found out that her daddy was a rapist? And how do you think she’d feel if she found out that the man she hoped to marry had killed him? That poor boy ponders on those things every single day. That’s an awful lot of weight for a young man to carry around. He don’t want to die, but he’d rather die than have that girl go through life thinkin’ her daddy was a bad man.”

#

STAFFORD’S BAR,

LUFKIN, TEXAS

2:15 p.m., Saturday December 6, 1941

Irwin Stoker had been off the Cherokee County work farm for a little over twenty-four hours. He had been drunk for almost twenty of those hours. He was surprised when a sheriff’s deputy drove up to the road gang and called his name. The deputy didn’t say much about why he’d been called or why he was being escorted to see Judge Buckner in the back seat of a county sheriff’s vehicle and not one of the school buses used to haul the inmates. All the deputy said was that Buckner had ordered his release.

When he got to the courthouse, the shackles were removed, and he was given his own clothes. He was then taken through a series of offices that led to the judge’s private chambers.

The judge was sitting behind his desk in shirtsleeves. Surprisingly, he stood and came around the big mahogany desk and asked Irwin to sit down with him. He then told the deputy who had escorted Irwin to go. It came as a complete shock when the judge told him that his only daughter, Jewel, had been found dead. He wasn’t told anything else except that foul play was most likely involved. The judge then assured him that the Texas Rangers were on the case and those involved would be apprehended within days.

After leaving Judge Buckner’s office, Irwin was driven home by another deputy. Forty-five minutes after hearing the news about Jewel, Irwin was drunk. He awoke around eleven that morning with a throbbing headache and not a drop of liquor to help him with it.

The closest place to buy a real bottle of whiskey was way down in Lufkin. Irwin didn’t want to make the long drive, but the only other option was to get the corn whiskey they made over in Pleasant Grove. The corn mash would be better than no whiskey at all, but he’d just spent the night drinking that stuff, and the headache he was experiencing was the result. He didn’t want another headache. What he needed was some real whiskey.

Six bottles of Old Crow cost him almost all the cash he had in the house.

On the way back to Elza he decided to spend what was left on a hamburger and a couple of drinks at Stafford’s Bar on the north end of town. But before going in he managed to drink down about half of one of the bottles of Crow.

He was sitting at the bar finishing up his hamburger when he overheard two men at the end of the bar talking to the bartender about those murders up in Elza. Irwin’s ears perked up when heard them first mention Elza, but they had his full attention when they said that the second kid killed was a “pretty young blonde-headed gal.”

Irwin sat there with his head down and began to weep.

The bartender was the first to notice the man at the middle of the bar crying over his hamburger. He didn’t think much of it at first. It wasn’t unusual to see a man crying in Stafford’s, especially in the afternoon. Most of the time it was because some poor farmer got his note called in by the bank or some poor oil field worker got fired, leaving him with a house full of kids to feed and no paycheck. This one was obviously a farmer.

Finally the bartender went over to speak to the man. Usually these guys needed someone to talk to. If you give them a couple of drinks and an ear, they would go on their way.

“You want another drink, fellow?”

“No, I ain’t got no money for no more.”

The bartender looked at the man, who was obviously torn up.

“Here,” the bartender said as he refilled Irwin’s glass, “this one’s on me.”

Irwin took a swig, “Thanks.”

“You hang out as long as you want. Did you hear about those killins up in Elza? We was just talkin’ about it. That ‘Alligator Killer’ done it again. Got him some gal this time.”

Irwin stared at the man without saying a word.

“You okay, fella?” the bartender asked.

“That gal was my daughter.”

Suddenly the room fell silent as every head turned his direction.

The bartender was stunned. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Here have another.”

He poured another drink as the two men from the end of the bar moved down next to Irwin.

“My god, man. I’m sorry about your girl. Charlie pour him one on me,” one of the men said.

“They can’t let that kid get away with this. They ought to go up there and lynch ‘im. That’s what they ought to do.”

#

MAIN STREET,

ELZA, TEXAS

11:00 a.m., Saturday August 15, 1936

It had been another boring morning for Jesse and Cliff. For the third straight day there hadn’t been any deliveries. Mr. Washington had said that he thought there would be some in the afternoon. So the two boys were back to sweeping and stocking shelves at the feed store and McMillan’s.

They had just finished and were heading up Main Street to see what was happening at the domino hall when Jewel turned the corner right in front of them, just a block past the Palace. It had been three weeks since they had seen her. That had been the night of the carnival - the night her mother had died. Jewel, of course, didn’t know her mother was dead.

Jesse and Cliff had both wondered what they would say whenever they saw her again, though they had never discussed it. The fact was that discussing Jewel would just make them think about that night, and both of those boys wanted that memory out of their minds.

Jewel walked up to them with her hands in her pockets. “Hey.”

“Hey,” the two boys replied simultaneously.

For a moment the three just stood there without saying anything. By now everyone in Elza had heard the story that Sarah Stoker had run off with some carnival worker. Of course, only Jesse and Cliff knew the truth.

Jesse finally broke the silence and said, “I’m sorry about your mom.”

Jewel just shrugged. There wasn’t much to be said on the subject.

After another moment of silence, Cliff suddenly reached into his pocket and said, “I’ve got your money.”

“What money?”

He handed her some cash. “From the deliveries. You weren’t around the last couple of weeks to get your share.”

Across the street Gemma came walking out of Anna-Ruth’s and headed toward them.

“But I wasn’t here,” she said to Cliff, somewhat confused.

“We’re all partners, remember. The business is part yours.”

She smiled and looked at Jesse. “He’s just doing this ‘cause he’s afraid I’ll beat him up, isn’t he?”

She and Jesse laughed and Cliff frowned as Gemma joined them.

“Hi,” Gemma said to Jewel.

Jewel smiled back and said, “Hi.” There was a new connection between the two girls that hadn’t existed before.

“You guys makin’ deliveries today?” Gemma asked.

“Mr. Washington said he may have some this afternoon,” Jesse replied.

As they were talking, Peterson pulled up and parked in front of Anna-Ruth’s. He looked at the kids gathered together, climbed out of the car, and walked across Main Street toward them.

“If some afternoon you don’t have anything to do, you can come over to the shop. I’m there every day,” Gemma said to Jewel.

“Okay, thanks. Maybe this afternoon if we don’t have a delivery,” Jewel replied.