Blood on the Leaves Part 14

Sinclair sat at the end of the table. "I've heard of tough love, but that strikes me as a bit extreme."

Reynolds edged closer to her and opened to a page in the paperback where he'd previously placed a bookmark. "Matheson quotes Baldwin as saying any black man who saw the world through the eyes of John Wayne wouldn't be a hero but a raving maniac."

"What does that give us?" she asked.

"Motive."

She took the book from Reynolds and started reading.

CHAPTER 29.

PROMISING TO MAKE the trial even more colorful was the a.s.signment of Judge Tanner to the case. To no one's surprise, he refused to allow cameras in his courtroom, preferring instead to protect the State of Mississippi's ill.u.s.trious heritage. A reopening of old wounds would serve no useful purpose other than to give the northern liberal press a series of free shots at a chapter of southern justice better left closed.

Reynolds welcomed Tanner's intervention for reasons more to do with the future than the past. No matter the outcome of the case, the fragile nature of black-white relationships would be forever changed in this community. Better to contain the damage locally than let it spread nationwide.

Reynolds and Miller appeared before Tanner in his chambers. The judge allowed only one representative from the prosecutors' team-a ruling that Reynolds believed reflected no particular evenhandedness on Tanner's part. If anything, it reaffirmed the judge's uneasiness around attorneys who were of the "softer and gentler persuasion," Tanner's term for female counsel. Southern chivalry still existed, and it required women to be grateful as well as compliant toward its most ardent advocates.

"Gentlemen, I want this meeting to remain off the record, so I've dismissed the court reporter for the remainder of the day."

Miller and Reynolds exchanged an uncomfortable look.

Tanner spoke informally. "I'd like to avoid problems, particularly embarra.s.sing ambushes from either side. So I suggest in the spirit of cooperation we conduct a dry run without the pressure of public exposure. That'll give me an opportunity to rule on several motions and get a sense of how vigorously I'll be challenged." He smiled graciously. "It'll also allow you to appreciate how strongly I feel about certain politically delicate issues. Let's just say, if you know where the judicial minefields are located, you'll stay out of those areas altogether. Seem fair enough?"

Both lawyers nodded reluctantly. Reynolds understood that the judge would rather bully the attorneys inside his chambers than come across as obstinate before the jury.

"Splendid," said the judge, who leaned back into his chair. "Now's as good a time as any to test the waters. Mr. Reynolds, you first."

"I ask the court to deny bail for the defendant and to have him remain in custody throughout the duration of the trial."

"Mr. Miller, let's hear your argument."

"Your Honor, since the professor doesn't have significant financial resources and would pose no risk of flight, I request bail be waived entirely or set at a moderately low figure."

"Mr. Miller," Tanner said in a voice that foreshadowed a lecture, "sometimes there's a risk of flight, and on occasion there's a greater risk a defendant will hang 'round and make everybody's life miserable. I believe, given the circ.u.mstances of this crime, the community will be better served by keeping Professor Matheson confined. I'd like to make it easier to guarantee everyone's safety, including your client's."

"Are you really concerned about my client's health, or is this just an effort to prevent Professor Matheson from exercising his First Amendment rights?" challenged Miller.

"He can speak all he wants," Tanner offered. "But, he'll be talkin' to three tiny walls and a row of iron bars in his cell. His days of inspiring students will have to be put on hold for a while, Mr. Miller."

"Your Honor, if my client were white, I doubt very much he'd even be arrested with the relatively minor circ.u.mstantial evidence the state's presented thus far."

"Counselor, if your client were white, he wouldn't have had black students takin' his course, and we wouldn't be here today." Tanner's voice became less strident. "Now, I admit, the state's got a difficult case, but it's not due to the absence of evidence. You and I both know there are plenty of folks dressed in those lovely orange jumpsuits servin' time based on a fiber from a throw rug or a mere strand of hair that appeared to be a possible match." Tanner rubbed against the bottom of his chair.

"Yes, Your Honor, we can agree on that," Miller said, "but we can also agree those defendants were poor and uneducated."

"Prison ain't made 'em no richer, so I hope for their sake they picked up some books while they've been incarcerated and gotten smarter." Tanner mumbled something and rocked forward. "Now, as far as this case, I'm expecting a rather speedy trial. Mr. Reynolds, I hope you don't intend to draw this out."

"No, Your Honor," agreed Reynolds. "We don't antic.i.p.ate calling any more than six to eight witnesses."

"Fine and dandy." Tanner jotted a note. "I don't want any comparisons to that case in California whose name I dare not mention. Suffice it to say, you can't put jurors through a case that lasts as long as the Nuremberg trials and expect one or more won't find a doubt and call it reasonable." The judge sharpened a pencil. "And don't allow your cocounsel to change her hairdo or wardrobe more often than you change your theory of the case." Tanner tried the new point on his legal pad. It broke off when he used it, and he grudgingly put it aside for a pen.

"Judge Tanner," Miller interjected, "I object to you providing advice and encouragement to the state designed to help achieve a guilty verdict against my client. I find that highly inappropriate and potentially prejudicial against the defense."

"No need to get all riled up or try to establish a misleading record as a basis for your possible appeal." Tanner rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Now, Todd, don't you go on and get your feelings hurt; I'm about to give you some helpful advice, too. You're as free as Mr. Reynolds to cherish it and draw it to your bosom or reject it and risk havin' it come back to seek revenge on another part of your body."

"Your Honor, I'll be grateful for any insights you have to offer that will ensure my client receives a fair trial."

"Wonderful," punctuated Tanner. "My recommendation is that you don't p.i.s.s me off in front of the jury."

"That's it?" asked a frustrated Miller.

"I can expand it to include my private chambers."

"That won't be necessary, Your Honor," Miller capitulated. "I appreciate your first offer and will consider it seriously."

"It's advice you can take to the bank. And if you don't follow it, that's precisely where I'll send you to pay any fines I impose for contempt of court." The judge turned around his yellow legal notepad and displayed it on the outer lip of his desk so that both Miller and Reynolds could see it. He pointed to the left margin. "Now that I've given you both the benefit of my substantial wisdom, I call counsel's attention to the two letters runnin' down the side of my paper right next to your motions. You with me?"

"Yes, Your Honor," both attorneys answered.

"R.R.-got several of them already." Tanner's fat little fingers played the accordion alongside the paper's edge. "You see all these?" He pointed out the initials. "That's my abbreviation for Reserved Ruling." He put the notepad down. "As long as y'all don't give me too many convoluted citations to look up, or ask for too many complex decisions before we even start the d.a.m.n trial, I promise to rule on your requests in a timely fashion." He cleared his throat. "Follow me thus far?"

The two lawyers looked at each other a bit confusedly.

Tanner took a drink of ice water and ran the liquid over his teeth before swallowing. "However, if I start havin' to write a lot of these twin Rs, that's when life gets unduly complicated." He leaned back in his chair and flapped his arms, freeing s.p.a.ce for his black robe to spread its wings and fly. "I discovered a long time ago, the best solution for a complicated problem is to apply a simple remedy. So once I fill up a whole legal page with my Reserved Ruling initials, this is what I'm gonna do." He took a red marker and started circling the initials. When he finished an entire page, he once again showed the pad to both attorneys.

"I've just changed my exceedingly patient and cooperative twins into a series of dangerous railroad warnings." He fanned himself with the pad. "I'm not responsible for what happens to anyone who wants to risk crossin' the tracks or challengin' the train to a race. However, that's a contest you can't win." He rested the pad against his stomach and folded his arms around it in a loving embrace.

"So, gentlemen, don't complicate this case any more than necessary. If you do, I guarantee you won't see what hit you-but rest a.s.sured, the damage inflicted will be quite severe." He tossed the pad in front of him and leaned forward. "The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but trust me, they do grind." He smiled warmly. "Do either of you have any further motions you'd like me to consider at this time?"

The two lawyers didn't respond.

"I thought not. May G.o.d bless you and keep you from harm." Tanner tucked his yellow legal pad under his right arm. He carried it in the manner of a football headed for a trophy case and walked to a cabinet. He slid open a door, lowered a drop shelf, and removed a bottle of brandy and three gla.s.ses.

"I don't do this often," the judge announced, "but it might be a good idea if we share a toast, since I have a queasy feelin' this case might test our skills and collective patience beyond all reasonable limits." He filled the gla.s.ses halfway.

"Judge Tanner," said Reynolds, "I'm afraid I don't drink."

"That's as good a reason to have fear as any I've heard." Tanner pulled out a can of c.o.ke.

"I'll drink his, Your Honor," volunteered Miller.

"Spoken like a true defense lawyer. But I don't want you leavin' here and causin' any accidents." He handed Miller his drink. "'Specially in that car you drive." The judge gave Reynolds his soda. They stood in a three-spoked circle as Tanner raised his drink. "To the pursuit of justice."

They clinked together their two gla.s.ses and a can and declared in unison, "To justice."

CHAPTER 30.

DURING HIS FIRST three weeks of confinement, Matheson remained in solitary, totally isolated from the general inmate population. Several white prison gangs had threatened his life. Blacks, who greatly outnumbered all other ethnic groups combined, issued a retaliatory warning that if the professor was harmed in any way, the lives of all whites, including correctional officers and staff, would be endangered.

Matheson insisted he be allowed to partic.i.p.ate in public activities and eventually signed a waiver agreeing not to hold the state liable for any injury sustained while outside protective custody. During meals in the cafeteria, black prisoners offered the professor their desserts or extra portions of meat. They'd gather around his table and ask questions about his college course and the nature of the crimes committed by the men on the list. Instead of answering, Matheson discussed matters of greater concern.

He started with the inst.i.tution of slavery. If it existed today, he hypothesized, blacks would be quartered in housing much like these prisons; the latest and most advanced technological equipment would be utilized to monitor their movements and quell any potential uprisings. He speculated how drugs would be used to control the most defiant among them. The irony wasn't lost on these inmates, most of whom had lost their freedom due to the use or sale of narcotics.

He asked how many of them had children and how often their sons and daughters had seen them before they'd been incarcerated. He wanted to know if they supported them, financially or emotionally. Many of the men stared at the floor they were forced to disinfect twice each day. "Imagine a time when children were ripped away from their parents," he told them, "and sold to anyone who had money in their pockets or hatred in their hearts." He wanted them to envision their daughters being brutalized in the middle of the night and contemplate "how their voices sounded when they screamed for help." Then he posed the question: "Were those screams any different than the ones you elicited from your black victims?"

He talked about the Diaspora and the journey across a mysterious ocean during which their ancestors were chained together, huddled in darkness within the bowels of a ship. He described the slaves "lying among the dead and the dying, sleeping in their own defecation and sharing a nightmare tame in comparison to the reality that awaited." He suggested they look around the room at each other and consider the environment they'd created for those who shared their name and, in all probability, their fate.

"The worst type of slaves," he claimed, "were the ones who not only volunteered for the job but also enlisted the people who trusted and loved them."

Did they know that less than two centuries ago masters inserted iron devices inside the mouths of field hands so they wouldn't be able to communicate with one another while working? And were they aware that the "sun heated the metal so intensely it tore away dry skin from blistered tongues each time it was removed"? He inquired if anyone wished to hazard a guess as to how those slaves might feel if they knew their burned-out throats were sacrificed so that their offspring might have the freedom, if not the luxury, to call their brothers "n.i.g.g.e.rs" and their sisters "b.i.t.c.hes and wh.o.r.es." How many of these inmates, he wondered aloud, had knife or gun wounds inflicted by the descendants of slaves? "Would those scars have hurt any more had they been caused by the lash of a bullwhip or the burning metal of an owner's branding iron?"

Then he stopped talking and requested the men share their stories. He listened carefully and without judgment to several multigenerational tales of families who'd been in and out of prisons their entire adult lives. Sometimes father and son, or brother and brother, or uncle and nephew would be serving time together, separated by the distance between similar county, state, or federal facilities but united by equally harsh sentencing for identical crimes. A grandfather spoke of waiting for a grandson to join him in prison. He recounted the day the boy lost his name to an a.s.signed number, the last three digits of which he'd frequently played and twice won in the poor man's illegal lottery.

Mothers and wives and sisters and daughters increasingly acquired their own unique numerical "ID bracelets," thereby repeating the multigenerational prison ritual. Only this time it wasn't the men but the women recycled rather than rehabilitated.

Those who escaped the harshness of imprisonment suffered the indignities of visiting their loved ones in a cold, guarded room, forced to endure the mechanical rape of handheld metal detectors moving relentlessly across their bodies and between their legs. They took off sweaters and discarded belts. They removed jewelry from their wrists and around their necks and stored it in lockers to be supervised by guards who deemed prisoners of no value. Before receiving authorization to enter the visitation area, old women pulled out their bobby pins and hoped they still looked presentable. Young girls left behind plastic barrettes or colorful hair ribbons and exchanged them for embarra.s.sment and tears, which their mothers quickly ordered them to conceal.

Before too long these visitors, who'd grown accustomed to their dignity being stripped away, asked to meet Professor Matheson. They'd read so much about him from letters sent home, as well as from newspaper accounts of his impending trial, they now thought of him as family. On regular visits they brought him books and extra magazines. They asked for permission to write to him and ended each letter with the a.s.surance he'd always be in their prayers. On special visits they baked him coconut cake, his favorite, and a variety of pies and cookies he shared with everyone, even the guards. He'd been invited to become their children's G.o.dfather. They hugged him when they arrived and wept for him when they left.

One Sat.u.r.day evening after visitations had ended, a Muslim inmate approached and offered to convert Matheson to Islam. He replied that they should all set aside their G.o.ds and discover if love was possible without the existence of a deity. "G.o.d's been used so often to tolerate evil," he said, "to accept it as a plan conceived by a divine force, designed to test the depths of one's faith." For a moment he wanted them to conceive of a world without G.o.d's will-a time when they had to a.s.sume responsibility for acting without a grand design or an all-powerful being recording their actions for the specific purpose of rewarding or punishing them in an afterlife. What would happen if this life was all they had? If their immortality existed only in the hearts and minds of those whom they'd touched with honor and respect?

"Would you love differently?" he asked each man. "Would your good deeds be less worthy or important? And if you lived without a belief in G.o.d yet acted the way a G.o.d would demand, wouldn't you reap and possibly deserve even a greater reward?"

The Muslim thanked Matheson for posing questions that caused him to rethink and renew his faith, then asked if he could leave a copy of the Koran for the professor to read at his convenience. Matheson indicated he'd already read it several times but would accept the book as a gift that reflected the good wishes of a friend. That night Matheson opened the holy book and found a newspaper clipping of a burned-out house. The brick structure remained intact with two sets of windowless frames supported by steel bars. The front entrance also had been consumed by fire except for an iron gate inserted within the doorway.

At breakfast the next morning, Matheson asked the man why he'd kept the article. He answered that as a teenager he'd robbed the home several times. There wasn't much worth stealing, he said sadly, "a radio, an old television, some CDs." A woman lived there as a single parent raising three young daughters including an infant. She had evidently spent two weeks' salary to purchase and install the steel bars inside her windows and front door in order to protect her belongings.

Less than two days after the installation, an electrical wire overheated and caused a fire to spread quickly throughout the small home. The mother grabbed her three children and attempted to exit the burning house but remained trapped by the very system designed to protect them. Neighbors tried frantically to remove the screaming children, to no avail. By the time firefighters entered the home, the entire family had perished in the blazing inferno.

He'd had nothing to do with setting the fire and therefore technically hadn't killed them. Yet, he knew if it weren't for his continued thefts, she wouldn't have needed the security gates that turned her home into a prison and her prison into a death trap. To a truthful heart, that made him as responsible for taking their lives as if he had started the fire himself and barricaded all the exits to their salvation.

He'd placed the article inside the Koran in the hope that Allah would grant him forgiveness. When the professor first asked the men to imagine the screams of their children being brutalized in the middle of the night, the inmate had thought of that mother and her three little girls. He heard their screams and felt the fire that consumed their lives erasing an entire family from the face of this earth.

He looked at Matheson with tears in his eyes and asked the professor if he'd felt responsible for the murders of those white men on his list. Without any hesitation Matheson answered yes, and further replied that he'd never ask his G.o.d for forgiveness, only understanding and, perhaps, mercy. He returned the Koran to the young Muslim brother but asked to keep the newspaper article.

"I'd be grateful to you, Professor, for relieving me of my grief," said the prisoner.

Matheson posted the article on the cell wall over his bed, where it would remain until he learned his fate.

At the end of the professor's first six weeks virtually every black inmate had attended at least one of his regularly scheduled sessions. They sat in foldout chairs or on long metal benches or on the floor. When a particularly large crowd a.s.sembled, they stood quietly along the walls, with the tallest inmates in the back. They abstained from smoking in the meeting room and agreed not to retaliate against any warring factions for the duration of the talks plus one hour. They found the additional grace period unnecessary since there were no reports of violence among blacks on the days that Matheson spoke.

They listened attentively to the professor and often took extensive notes that they later studied and often committed to memory. Each subsequent question-and-answer period lasted increasingly longer. Matheson encouraged the men to seek answers within the group and to take comfort in the knowledge they weren't alone in their problems or in the common struggle to find meaningful solutions.

The guards allowed the meetings to go beyond designated time curfews since to do otherwise risked negative reactions from those present. Black guards volunteered for extra duty on nights the professor conducted his business. On more than one occasion, what Matheson said to the men or what they said to him moved a few officers to tears.

As the trial date approached, the prisoners became increasingly anxious regarding Matheson's future. While they wished him freedom, they also thought about their own lives and the possibility of enduring prison without him. He'd promised not to forget them, but they'd heard that before, from spouses and mothers and brothers and children who'd suddenly stopped visiting or writing or accepting collect phone calls. They were related by blood and yet had been abandoned, betrayed. They'd no such claim on the professor, so "why should he be any different?" they asked.

"Because he is," the Muslim told his fellow inmates. "Because he is."

They nodded in agreement and shared a prayer.

CHAPTER 31.

REYNOLDS LOST TRACK of the time he'd been in his den reviewing the photos taken from Matheson's home. It had been dark outside when he started, but now the sunlight forced him to close the drapes.

When he'd first sat down, he removed everything from his desktop except for a lamp. He opened several photo alb.u.ms and stacked them on top of each other. He selected pictures from the largest one and spread them out in front of him so he could take notes. He didn't write a single word for a long while. He didn't do much of anything except stare at the gallery that lay before him.

He didn't want to stare at the photos, but the harder he tried to look away, the longer the horror held him, drawing him closer to a place he feared he'd never leave. The images had a hypnotic quality. If he didn't know better, he'd swear he saw the victims' eyes move to avoid his, as though they were ashamed of their bodies now contorted by an unprovoked collision with hate. Their deaths were grotesque, yet in their anguish he found a stunning silence that converted rage into an illusion of peace.

It was odd-remarkable, even-that once emotions moved beyond terror and sadness, something indescribably beautiful entered. Perhaps it was faith, or maybe a profound connection with the oneness, the sacredness, of life. Whatever it might be, this much was certain: It raced to fill the void that, if allowed to exist a moment too long, would be occupied forever by madness. He understood that no one with an ounce of pa.s.sion could study these photos without being consumed by them. And once they absorbed your spirit, it would be difficult if not impossible ever again to distinguish between vengeance and honor.

Reynolds touched the first picture and paused briefly over each body. He went on to the next, then the next, continuing until he felt them die again. He caressed each frozen image: someone's child, somebody's father, a wedding ring on a charred finger, a face without eyes, an infant savagely separated from its mother's protective womb with one merciless swing of an ax, destroying any chance that it might survive long enough to learn why it was despised with such viciousness.

He turned the pages of one alb.u.m to reveal additional atrocities so great they numbed his senses. That very numbing provided him the necessary power and courage to proceed. He saw a woman and her son hanging perfectly still from the same bridge that once connected and often welcomed strangers to a safe harbor and the community they'd desired to call home. Their necks were bent and broken. The sides of their faces touched their shoulders, seeking support or comfort but finding only despair.

He saw what was left of a man roasted alive. His blood had been boiled so hot by the burning embers of hatred that it exploded and splattered a crowd still busy distributing severed fingers and other prized body parts as souvenirs.

He stared at a bent serrated knife usually reserved for splitting and gutting hogs. It protruded from a young girl's abdomen. An oversized corkscrew of twisted steel had punctured her thighs numerous times and ripped away her flesh and muscles by repeatedly pulling out large chunks of her body. Her insides were randomly flung across the earth like red-stained ripened crops to be harvested by the devil himself.

He traced the scars on the back of a young boy whipped to death then mutilated beyond recognition except for the remains of his skull. It had been fractured with such force that one eye dangled outside its socket while the other lay buried beneath a blood-soaked eyelid swollen shut by the brutality of what it had seen.

He'd become a vulture cautiously circling to inspect the dead and dying before acquiring the nerve to move more closely and feast off their remains. Was he violating them, or paying tribute? He turned his attention away from the victims and studied the crowds, whose only apparent anxiety came from the fear they wouldn't be included in any subsequent photos taken near their slaughtered prey. Their frenzied white faces blended into one lurid and psychotic smile, which transformed a scene of debauchery into a tragic rendering that made forgiveness impossible and the future unworthy of hope.

What would possess a group of people, even one that had become a vile mob, to descend into such a deep depravity that they'd invite their own children to attend and actively partic.i.p.ate in the butchering of a human life, then proudly pose so that the evil act might be recorded forever, if not in the annals of history, then at least in their cherished family alb.u.ms?

Reynolds waited for an answer but knew none would be forthcoming no matter how many pictures he studied or how long he stayed in this photographic mausoleum of the violated and defiled. He wanted to cry somehow, but couldn't. He wanted to kill someone, but that would make him just like the smiling white men he now despised. He thought of his precious children and wondered what he'd have done had their faces been among the victims in these photographs. He had no doubt he was capable of killing anyone who harmed his family; the only question was how long he'd make them suffer.

So, if he'd do that for his children, why wouldn't he do it for the children in these pictures, or for the fathers and mothers who would never hold them again? Weren't their lives important, too, their suffering worthy of redress? And if he failed to protect them, wouldn't all children, including his own, be less safe? What if Matheson had in fact freed him from the obligation of ever having to answer those questions for himself? Did that make the professor a criminal, or did it turn Reynolds and countless others like him, who subst.i.tuted outrage for action, into cowards?

He delicately arranged the photos in three equally s.p.a.ced rows that formed one large, shattered portrait of pain. This time the eyes of the dead refused to turn away, forcing him now to feel ashamed. The image slowly blurred as the newly created mosaic of murdered men, women, and children began to be filtered through the tears of a prosecutor whose duty required him to punish them again. Except now, he'd rob them of their right to feel vindicated by denouncing, then penalizing the only person in this world who'd convinced them their lives mattered and their deaths merited avenging.