Timepiece (13 page)

“Stand up, Negro.”

Lawrence pushed himself up against the wall. The officer knelt down and placed his fingers on the man's throat. “Everen, you jackass. So you finally got yours,” he said to the corpse. He looked up.

“Who killed this man?”

“I did,” David said.

The officer stood back up. He looked at the firearm on the table. “Whose gun is that?”

David gestured towards the lifeless body. “It's his. I killed him with his own gun.”

The officer noted the look of astonishment on Lawrence's face. He pointed his rifle at David. “You come with me.”

“You won't need the gun.”

The sheriff turned towards Lawrence. “You come too.”

“He doesn't have anything to do with this,” David protested.

“This your home, Negro?”

“Yessuh.”

“You see this man get shot?”

Lawrence glanced over at David. “Yessuh.”

“Then you have something to do with this. Come along.”

A crowd of onlookers had already gathered outside the shack as the two men were led to the horse-drawn paddy wagon and driven off to jail.

The police captain stared at David over a desk cluttered with papers and a dinner of baked chicken, black beans, and Apple Brown Betty. He suddenly smiled. “Mr. Parkin, please sit down.” He motioned to an austere wooden chair. “Please.”

The sudden display of courtesy struck David as rather peculiar and he speculated that someone in authority had called on his behalf.

“Care for anything?” He gestured towards a platter. “Saratoga potatoes?”

David looked at the food and shook his head.

“I just heard from the mayor's office, Mr. Parkin. The mayor wishes to express his personal concern with this matter and hopes that you have been treated respectfully.”

“I have no complaints.”

“He personally vouches for your character and wishes to see you sent on your way. In light of Officer Brookes's report, and your reputation, I see no reason to further detain you.”

David looked back at the door. “Then I am free to go?”

“Certainly. I am curious, though. Do you know the man that was killed?”

“No.”

“Everen Hatt. He was a regular down here. Everyone in this building, including the domestics, knows him by sight.” He leaned forward onto his thick hands. “This affair ought to be very clear, Mr. Parkin.
Hatt was a brawler and a drunk. He was shot in someone else's residence. The only weapon that was discharged was his. What I don't understand is your testimony that you shot the man.”

“Why is that difficult?”

He leaned back, picking his teeth with his thumb. “Witnesses claim they saw you enter the shack after the gunshot.”

“They must be mistaken.”

The police captain looked at him in disbelief. “Yes . . .” His expression suddenly turned grave. “A word of caution, Mr. Parkin. In spite of your connections, these are serious matters. A man has been killed. There will be an inquest and no doubt a hearing.” He pushed his chair back from his desk. “I don't know what this Negro has on you, but I hope to heaven it does not go bad.”

David ignored the warning. “May I go now?”

“You are free to leave.” The Captain
shook a brass desk bell and the officer reappeared at the doorway.

“Brookes, kindly take Mr. Parkin back to his automobile.”

“What about my friend?” David asked.

He rubbed his nose. “And release the Negro.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Brookes, shut the door.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the door had shut, the captain leaned forward to a cold dinner and cursed the mayor for his interference in the affair.

MaryAnne had just heard of David's arrest and was preparing to go to him when he entered the front door.

“David! Are you all right?”

David looked at her blankly. “I will be in my den,” he said as he walked past her. Catherine smiled at MaryAnne sympathetically.
MaryAnne took her hand. “It will be all right,” she said.

An hour later, she entered David's den carrying a silver-plated tea service. Two sconces lit the wall, teasing the darkness with flickering illumination. From outside, the din of crickets sang in syncopated harmony to the voices of the clocks in the room.

“I thought you might like some tea. And perhaps some company.”

He looked up and smiled. “I am sorry. I did not mean to ignore you.”

She handed him a cup, then set the tray on a buffet and sat on the love seat next to him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I am fine.”

She hesitated, gathering courage for her question. “David. Why did you tell them that you shot the man?”

“You do not believe that I did?”

“I do not believe you are capable of killing a man.”

David stared vacantly into space. The room was quiet and MaryAnne looked at him pensively.

“It seems unlikely to me that Lawrence would get a fair trial.”

“Mark told me the police officer said that this was a very clear case of self-defense.”

“Lawrence did not have the mayor vouching for him. If it was Lawrence on trial that clear case would suddenly become very murky.” David frowned. “Even if he was acquitted, the man's family would likely lynch Lawrence for a miscarriage of justice, not because he was guilty, but because he is a Negro. The only way to protect Lawrence is to keep him out of it.”

“What if they want to lynch you?”

David thought for a moment. He had not considered this possibility. “A man cannot live his life by the calculations of
retribution. I did what I had to do and hope the consequences are kind.”

“You are a good man, David. I pray that God will be good to us in this matter.”

“I am disinclined to think God takes notice of such things.”

MaryAnne took a sip of tea. “Then you believe it a mere coincidence that you arrived when you did?”

David found the query intriguing. “I had not considered it. I don't know, MaryAnne. I really do not know if God or fate meddles in our affairs.”

“It seems to me that there is a ‘divinity that shapes our ends.' ”

David contemplated the assertion. “If this is true, then you must accept that this God, or fate, also besets our species with great calamities.”

“It is our lot . . .” MaryAnne replied solemnly. She set down her cup. “I cannot answer for the whole of human suffering. I
can only speak from my experience. But I have found that my pain is instructive. That through it I become more than I would otherwise.”

David considered her argument. “To become . . .” He rubbed his forehead. “I think oftentimes that instruction is too hard to bear.” He looked at his wife, then smiled in surrender. “I have become much too serious in my matrimonial state. And perhaps fatalistic. If that same divinity has brought you across the sea to me then it must be of some good.”

“Or at least have good humor,” she said, suddenly laughing at her husband. She kissed his cheek and laughed again.

David lay back in the plush seat. “Oh, MaryAnne, that laughter. How I need it.”

“Then you shall have it.” MaryAnne fell laughing into his arms as David covered her face with kisses.

“I confess that I find it difficult to take this affair seriously, and were it not for MaryAnne's anxiety, I would, perhaps, not concern myself with it at all.”

David Parkin's Diary. November 22, 1913

David received notice of the trial two weeks after his arrest and regarded it with little more concern than a coal bill. The trial had been set for the third of December and though it was not of any great interest to David, it provided ample fodder for the local tabloids, which increased circulation with sensational headlines:
LOCAL MILLIONAIRE TRIED FOR MURDER.

The city became caught up in the scandal and nowhere more so than at the bar Everen Hatt had frequented with his soul mate and mentor, Cal Barker.

Everen Hatt's disposition could not be
blamed entirely on Barker. Hatt was a self-made loser even before he met the man; a year after Hatt's parents died and he was taken in by his only living relative, the wealthy widow Maud Cannon. The widow learned with great distress of the shallowness of her nephew's character and, with Christian resolve, set about to reform the boy, leading to squabbles that increased daily in frequency and rancor. It was months before she began to learn the extent of his depravity. He readily took from her with no thought of gratitude or obligation, and when she finally refused to further finance his incessant drinking, valuables began to disappear from around the house. She confronted him with the losses, to which he responded so violently that she feared for her safety and never mentioned the subject again, quietly hiding the pieces with the greatest sentimental value. So when a few years later he begged a sizable stipend with the promise
that he would leave her life forever, she gave him the money and considered it a small price to rid him from her life. Not surprisingly, he was not true to the arrangement and descended upon her at least twice a year for additional subsidy.

So it was for nearly a decade. Hatt had enjoyed a sense of celebrity among his friends as a relative of the rich, with an occasional allowance to prove it. As the widow's only relative, he, and Barker, erroneously assumed that Hatt would be the only heir of her estate and fantasized about the day when the old lady would die and they would live a glorious lifestyle of unlimited gratification. The fantasies filled the men briefly with delusions of wealth, but left them all the hungrier at the reality of their present circumstance.

Growing increasingly impatient with the woman's longevity, Barker had offered to hasten the happy occasion by helping the widow on her way. It was not a surprise
to anyone that Barker would make such an offer. Cal Barker lived his life in darkness. As a miner, his days were spent in the belly of the earth and his nights on the darker parts of its surface.

He was married, though there was little evidence of his marital status, and he returned home just often enough to force himself on his wife, a plain-faced woman who feared the large man and tacitly accepted his abuse and neglect. She had borne four children which she provided the sustenance for through hiring herself out for domestic chores and occasionally from what was left of Barker's wages after the gambling and alcohol had taken its due.

Barker's life of darkness was more than one of locale. He lived his life in sole pursuit of its baser desires, discovering that pleasures diminish with indulgence and become harder to come by. And as those who chase the unattainable do, he
grew meaner with age. Mean enough to kill a widow.

Hatt, on the other hand, though unfettered by moral turpitude, feared the possibility of a noose. “She's an old-enough bag of bones,” he told Barker. “Ain't hardly got another year left in her. Let God do the dirty work.”