The Prophet of Ammon

I

IN the small town of Winfield, West Virginia, justice, like the gnarled and knotty inhabitants of the surrounding mountains, has ways peculiar to itself. Three times a year a circuit-riding judge comes to town to try the cases that have accumulated since his last visit and his coming is the signal for all the folk for miles around to flock to the courthouse to see the show.

The first day of court is drawing to a close. The afternoon and early evening have been spent trying a murder case — State versus Fitzmaurice. Fitz is my client. Gene Mottlesey of Charleston is associated with me in the case, and we have done our best for Fitz. Whether our best is enough to save him from the gallows is more than either of us knows. Hour after weary hour the sordid details of the shooting have been laid before the jury. Fitz came home one day to find Jep Toothman with his wife, and Fitz shot him dead. The State has asked for a verdict of murder in the first degree. We have built up our defense upon the unwritten law. The jury went out at 9.38, and now the judge and all the lawyers are congregated in the witness room to wait.

In moments like this the judge is mellow and full of anecdotes. He tells story after story, finally coming round to one he has recently heard about that celebrated jurist, Judge Joe Smith of the Kanawha Circuit. Joe Smith, who flourished about fifty years ago, must have been a man worth knowing. His eccentricities have often been related in print. He is known to have walked through the streets of Charleston barefooted because his shoes hurt him, and to have trimmed his beard on the bench while conducting a trial. Withal he was a brilliant and capable judge.

‘They say Evans Doddridge was making a long argument in court one day,’ says the judge, ‘when Joe Smith lost interest. Immediately Joe sank back in his chair and crossed his feet on the desk in front, so that Doddridge, who stood beneath, could see nothing of the judge but the soles of his enormous brogan shoes. Doddridge was an able and distinguished lawyer, noted in debate for his biting and sarcastic tongue. At the appearance of the feet Doddridge made a low obeisance and remarked, “There is evidently as much law at one end of the court as the other.” Wholly unperturbed, Old Joe replied: “Not at all, Doddridge. It’s simply a matter of your being able to convince one end as well as the other.“

The aged prosecutor tells one of his favorite stories, which we have all heard a hundred times. The clock ticks on. At 10.30 the judge sends the sheriff to the jury room to find out if there is a possibility of arriving at a verdict soon.

‘Tell them,’ says the judge, ‘that I don’t want to lock them up for the night, but on the other hand I don’t want to wait here until morning.’

The sheriff reports that the jury thinks it will soon arrive at a verdict. This heartens everybody. Once again the lawyers start yarning. At 11.09 there is a knock at the door. Instantly the courtroom bustles to action. The judge breaks off a yarn to mount the bench. As the news flies about that the jury has reached a verdict, the remaining spectators crowd the front seats. The jury files in slowly, enters the jury box. The prisoner, arriving breathless from the jail house, faces the jury.

‘Gentlemen,’ says the clerk, ‘have you arrived at a verdict?’

‘Yes,’ says the foreman.

He passes a slip of paper to the clerk, who unfolds it deliberately. Not a breath is drawn in the courtroom.

‘ We, the jury,’ reads the clerk, ‘ agree and find the defendant, James Fitzmaurice, guilty of voluntary manslaughter.’

‘So say you all, gentlemen?’

‘Yes.’

The tension passes. Hurried whisperings are heard among the spectators. The prisoner swallows gulpingly.

‘ Cheer up, old boy,’ says Mottlesey. ‘It won’t be more than two years at the most.’

‘I wonder,’ says Fitz, ‘if she got the kids ready.’

‘Sentence will be passed,’ says the judge, ‘to-morrow morning. Court is adjourned until nine o’clock.’

At 11.42 I sit on the edge of my bed and look longingly at Ludwig’s Bismarck. I have reached the place where Bismarck makes himself chancellor. But, chancellor or not, I have another long day ahead.

II

The next thing I know the jailer is there waking me. Fortunately I have always had friends to wake me, for an alarm clock seldom rouses me. The jailer is a huge, portly man with the build of a prize fighter. In his younger days he could lift a farm wagon with eight men on it. Of late years he has become very pious and has confessed to me that he should have gone into the ministry. His reading is confined to the Bible and the Baptist Sunday School Quarterly. Quite often it is necessary for me to read over the Sunday School lessons myself and explain their deeper meanings because the ‘big words’ in them are beyond him. He tells people that I know a great deal.

Sometimes I think he suspects me of heathenism because I wrote a paper called ‘The Bearing of the Theory of Evolution on Social Problems,’ and left it lying about where he saw the title. He did not read it.

The common ground where we meet most in conversation is the war. We have fought it through from beginning to end several times. Both of us were at Nantillois the night the Germans sent over the terrific bombardment. That was the night when Sid Thomas of Denver, pointing to the cemetery above us, said to me, ‘It’s too hot here. I’m going up there, and sleep with the stiffs.’ He is still sleeping there.

It is 7.14. Fortunately, the first day of court has passed, so that I need not be at the office at an unearthly hour. My room is over the jail kitchen; I can hear Pauline, the maid of all work, dishing up breakfast for the jailbirds. Through the open door comes the smell of bacon and eggs, and buckwheat cakes, and strong, black coffee.

My toilette finished hurriedly, I descend to the floor below. The family, consisting of the jailer, his wife, their two-year-old son George, and Pauline, the cook, is already at table. Muttering a perfunctory ‘Good morning,’ I sink into my chair. All of us, including the baby, bow our heads reverently.

‘Our heavenly Father,’ says the jailer, ’we thank thee for this and other expressions of thy mercy. Forgive us our wrongs and save us through Christ, our Redeemer. Amen.’

Scarcely has the jailer finished when the baby springs a surprise. He has heard Pauline refer to various persons as ‘pills.’ A good many persons are pills to Pauline. Now out of a clear sky the baby remarks gravely, ‘You pill, Weed.’

This sends everybody into guffaws of laughter. Joining in the mirth, I deny the accusation vigorously while the baby repeats it again and again. The jailer suggests that perhaps it is really Pauline who is a pill, whereupon the baby shifts the attack to his father, saying, ‘You pill, Dad,’ which starts the merriment all over again. Altogether the day starts off auspiciously.

Breakfast at the jail house is not one of your tomato-juice affairs for the sake of the stomach. It is a solid meal with plenty of starch and carbohydrates. There are four griddle-size buckwheat cakes, two or three eggs, and half a dozen strips of bacon for every person at the board. In addition there is milk or coffee, buttered toast, if you want it, watermelon preserves, maple syrup, canned peaches, pears, blackberries, and apples. If these are not sufficient, one may have any or all of a dozen breakfast foods, clusters of grapes, bananas, oranges, three different kinds of cheese, and half a chicken left over from yesterday’s dinner.

This family enjoys eating, and looks it. The jailer and his wife weighed together will knock down close to a quarter of a ton. Pauline is no sylph. George has all the appearance of a giant in embryo. Many a time, sitting at this table, I have wished myself back in those days when I was in prep school and had an appetite that was positively unappeasable.

During all meals most of the conversation is directed at George, and, once he sets himself to eat with a gusto suggesting an inherited characteristic, there is nothing further to talk about. Toward the end the jailer says, ‘Al Whiting wants to see you this morning. It’s about that offer to sing over the radio.’

III

This amuses me, although in reality the situation is tragic. Al is in jail charged with killing two ‘scab’ miners during a strike. The killings were unique in that but two shots were fired from ambush nearly half a mile distant from where the men were, and each bullet killed a man. As a feat of marksmanship it is perhaps unsurpassed in the history of murder.

Al is being defended by the miners’ attorney, so that his relationship with me is purely social. It began when I heard him singing down in the cell block one night and went down to investigate. For some reason nearly all jailbirds have good singing voices, but Al’s voice is really exceptional.

I had a couple of songbooks filled with mountain ballads; we brought in a high-school boy who played the guitar; old Sam Johnson was there with his banjo. Of an evening the four of us, seated at one corner of the bull pen with the songbook propped up in front of us, would render a concert. Often the rest of us would remain silent while Al sang by himself. I have seen nearly a hundred villagers on the lawn outside the jailhouse listening to these concerts.

Somehow or other, news of our singing got abroad, with the result that a man came to see Al and wanted him to sing over the radio. At the time he mentioned something about all four of us, and this it is that has tickled my sense of humor. In my time I have been assailed by divers and conflicting ambitions, but singing over the radio has not been one of them. But it is real tragedy to Al, because it may be the opportunity of a lifetime, and it comes when he is in jail charged with murder.

Breakfast over, the jailer unlocks the door to the cell blocks. Nearly all the jailbirds are known to me by name. There is Fitz leaning against the bars with his hands above his head, and the Prophet of Ammon sitting silent in a corner. Fitz is blue; I speak to him gently. The Prophet of Ammon stares me down as if I were a being from another planet, not even taking the trouble to return my greeting. Near the prophet, and facing him, sits my friend, old Sam Johnson.

There has never in my experience been another person quite like Sam. A towering giant of a man, with a noble forehead suggesting the early Romans, and long, delicate fingers still deft on a banjo, Sam is not the man one would expect to meet in a jail house; yet he is the most persistent jailbird of them all. If six months passed without his showing up at the jail house, a search would be started for his corpse.

Sam Johnson has never been accused of a vicious crime; I doubt if he could commit one. A kindly man, full of quaint sayings and a tolerant philosophy, he is one of the best story-tellers I have ever listened to. Many a time I have faced him in the bull pen, when the jailbirds were gathered round him, marveling at the play of emotions on his features as he told a yarn of the faroff days of his youth. A consummate actor, he can mimic the way his characters speak and gesture until one can almost see them striding across the bull-pen floor. His philosophy of life is summed up in his own statement: —

‘What does it profit a man to amount to somethin’? Any young man startin’ life in the twenties will be dead in fifty years. What’s the difference?’

After all, what is the difference?

IV

Al Whiting is waiting at the lower end of the bull pen at the place set aside for consultations with attorneys. The jailbirds have a rule, rigidly enforced in their ‘kangaroo court,’ that a man talking to his lawyer is entitled to absolute privacy. As I approach, the others in that cell block move to the other end of the bull pen.

Al and I face each other with the bars between us. He is a young man of twenty-five, medium in height and build, with a sharp, narrow face upon which the long nose and protruding chin are most prominent — not exactly what one would call handsome, yet there is something fine about his big brown eyes suggesting his love of music. These are the eyes, too, of a man who easily convinces himself he is right and does not hesitate at settling differences in his own way. Whether or not he committed these murders, he could have committed them and felt that he was doing the world a good turn when he did so.

‘What I want to see you about,’ says he, ‘is this. Jankins [his lawyer] told me last night the State will take a plea of guilty to second-degree murder. It means fourteen years. All the evidence they’ve got on me is circumstantial. They can prove I won the shootin’ matches at Logan four years in succession, and that the bloodhounds wound up at my house. They’ve got the gun; it belongs to me. My wife talked more than she should have. What would you do about it?’

Since I am not Al’s attorney, I say, ‘Your attorney ought to know about that.’

‘I understand that,’ says Al, ‘but I’m askin’ you. And I might as well tell you I’m halfway tempted to take the stretch. Do you know why? They’ve got a broadcastin’ station up there.’

I do not know whether Al is guilty, although I suspect that he is, but it does seem a shame that the opportunities of life have passed him by until he looks on fourteen years in the penitentiary with a gleam of hope. In my mind’s eye I see the background of his life. A gray-black mining village perched on stilts at the foot of a mountain; razorback hogs wallowing in the mudholes in the streets; dirty, halfnaked children shrieking in the doorways; smudgy-faced men entering the coal bank in the morning and returning black as Satan at night to drink, carouse, fight, and beget more children. And, in the midst of the sweat and the grime, the furtive ‘speakeasies,’ the narrow, circumscribed, primitive existence of an obscure mining village, a boy with the love of music in his soul and a golden voice that, properly trained, might have thrilled countless thousands throughout the world.

‘Well, Al,’ say I, ‘I’m very sorry, but I don’t see how I can help you. If you plead guilty, you know what to expect; if you go to trial and are convicted, it may mean a lot more. All I can say is, it’s your problem, and you will have to decide it in your own way. Talk it over again with your lawyer, and do whatever he advises you.’

‘I’m up this afternoon,’ says Al. ‘Maybe I won’t see you again. Would you mind if I kept those songbooks?’

‘Not at all. Take them with you. And wherever you go, remember that we used to sing those songs together.’

We shake hands through the bars. His hand trembles. I think there is a tear in his eye. (Al later went to trial, was convicted, and sentenced to eighteen years at hard labor.)

‘When do I come up?’ says Fitz, as I pass him on the way to the door.

‘First thing when court opens.’

‘What time is it now?’

‘Just 8.28.’

V

From the front windows of the jailer’s residence I see that Beckett, my law partner, is busy at the office with clients. It is too near court time for me to help him, but I must go to the office for my brief case. I try to breeze in as if I were in a great hurry. My speed is unavailing; Okey Kinder is waiting for me.

Okey is a flat-chested little man with a hacking cough and a voice that whines even in those rare moments when he is not asking for something. He removes his feet from my blotter and shakes hands like an old politician.

‘I’m doin’ a little talkin’ among the boys,’ says he, ‘and they’re all mighty favorable to the idee of you bein’ our next prosecutin’ attorney. The old man is all right, say I, but he’s too old. What we need is young blood. They fall for it, too. The biggest trouble is Hathaway. He’s got lots of friends if he runs, but the way things are linin’ up now it’s a walk-away.’

People often approach me in this fashion. Usually they want something. Okey switched ten votes in the last school-board election, and changed the outcome. He has a large number of relatives under his control, and bleeds the office seekers mercilessly.

‘I wonder if you’ve got a five-spot handy,’ says he. ‘I forgot my pocketbook this mornin’ and have to pay Old Man Roberts for some cow feed.’

The reason he touches me for a five-spot and not five times as much is that he is not certain that I will be a candidate. I am not certain myself. Many of my friends are urging me to run, but the election is still a long way off. My first impulse is to tell him to go to the devil; my second is just the opposite. It would be foolish to make an enemy of this man over such a small matter. I produce the five-spot.

We leave the office together just as the bell rings.

‘I’ll be seein’ you,’ says Okey. ‘And remember, I’m puttin’ in the licks where they count.’

Passing the prosecuting attorney’s office on my way to the courtroom, I bump into Hathaway. We mount the steps together.

‘As soon as you get a little time,’ says he, ‘I want to see you in my office. I think the judge is going to work in a short divorce case as soon as Fitzmaurice is sentenced. If he does, meet me at the office.’

Hathaway is often mysterious. He seems especially so this morning. We enter the courtroom together.

‘Did I see you talking to Okey Kinder?’ says he, as we park our hats in the witness room.

‘Yes.’

‘How much did he touch you for?’

‘A five-spot.’

Hathaway chuckles. ‘You’re lucky. He’s my man, you know. He’ll cost you several five-spots before you’re through with him.’

VI

The courtroom looks about the same as it did the day before, except that there are not quite so many spectators on the benches and fewer lawyers within the railing. The jailer has opened court; the judge is leafing through his docket.

‘The first item of unfinished business,’ says the judge, ‘is the case State versus Fitzmaurice. There is also set for to-day the case of Ateley versus Ateley, a divorce case that I am going to move to the head of the docket as a favor to Mr. Moran, who represents one of the parties and whose son is dangerously ill at home. After the divorce case we shall proceed with the regular criminal calendar, the first case being that of State versus LeMasters. Where is Fitzmaurice?’

The sheriff has him in the witness room at the judge’s right. He is led in to face the judge, and to hear his sentence. Fitz is pale, but holds himself in perfect control.

‘Have you anything to say, Mr. Fitzmaurice,’ says the judge, ‘before the sentence of the court is passed?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Very well.’

The judge glances at the open code book before him.

‘The jury has brought in against you, Mr. Fitzmaurice,’ says he, ‘a verdict of guilty of voluntary manslaughter. That verdict, it seems to me, is eminently just. They could have found you guilty of a much more serious crime, but they were influenced, no doubt, — as I confess I myself am influenced, — by a certain sympathy toward you because of the unfortunate situation in your family.

‘You do not look like a bad man to me, Mr. Fitzmaurice, but in the eyes of right-minded citizens and in the eyes of the law you stand condemned of an indiscreet and hasty action. Human life is a precious thing not lightly to be taken away. You have taken the law into your own hands and blotted out the life of a fellow man. That is an act the law does not tolerate. It is also an act for which you must answer in judgment before the throne of Almighty God.

‘Under the law it is discretionary with the court to fix the penalty for voluntary manslaughter at not less than one nor more than five years in the penitentiary. The law says, Mr. Fitzmaurice, that I must punish you in accordance with the crime you have committed. There is no such word as mercy in our statutory penalties. And yet there is a Higher Law which imposes mercy upon us. Even as I hope some day to find favor with that Greater Judge, so must I now be merciful.

‘The judgment of the court is that you be confined in the penitentiary of this state for the period of one year, and that the sentence begin immediately.'

This is really better than we hoped for. Fitz will get two months off for good behavior and two months more if he works on the roads. He may be back at the end of eight months. Of course, he will probably lose his job and will always have the stigma of a convict upon him, but his lawyers are not responsible for that. He is young enough to pull out of it.

The sheriff takes Fitz back to the jail until his transportation to Moundsville can be arranged. The judge looks about for Mr. Moran, who has the divorce case.

‘Owing to the large number of witnesses,’says he, ‘the case of Ateley versus Ateley will be heard in open court rather than in chambers. Are you ready?’

‘ Let’s go below,’ says Hathaway.

VII

Hathaway still has that look of deep mystery on his face which I cannot fathom. We descend the stairway to the prosecuting attorney’s office, where a young girl of about twelve years is sitting. She is a dreamy-eyed child dressed in white with two pigtails braided down her back. Her profile is classic; the Greeks would have called her beautiful. She is the daughter of Elijah Smith, the Prophet of Ammon — his prosecuting witness. The Prophet is charged with attacking the child, and the whole countryside is worked up about it; there has been talk of lynching him.

I think I understand Hathaway now. I have asked permission on several occasions to interview this witness, and have been refused. Perhaps Hathaway realizes that he ought to have been more courteous.

‘Elsie,’ says Hathaway, ‘I want you to tell this gentleman that story just the way you told it to me.’

She is playing with a new doll that comes from the State Board of Children’s Guardians, which has her in charge. I have seen these dolls before. Obediently she lays the doll aside and begins her story.

‘We were working in the tobacco field,’ says she, ‘high up on the hill above the house. My father and I were suckering the tobacco plants. We would work out two rows across the field, then turn and work back two. There was a rail fence covered with ivy and wild grapevines at one end. It was shady there, and no one could see us. About ten o’clock in the morning, as we neared this fence, my father touched my arm. We sat down to rest in the shade, and remained there a long time.'

More damaging testimony I have never listened to. The girl is so young and has such dreamy, innocent eyes that I begin to wonder if I may not be wrong about the Prophet after all. I can see how a jury will react to this evidence. So far I have never defended a man who has received the death penalty, but the chances are about ten to one here that the Prophet’s stretch will be that sudden one with a beam and a man at the ends and a rope in the middle.

All this while Hathaway sits puffing his cigar with an amused look on his face, enigmatic as the Sphinx. It is not like him to gloat over a hanging, yet I can interpret his attitude in no other way. When the girl finishes, he reaches in his desk drawer, extracts a paper, and hands it to me.

‘Take this over to the jailer,’ says he. ‘Elsie, I want you to go along with this gentleman.’

I look at the paper and get the shock of my life. It is an order releasing Elijah Smith from custody!

‘Don’t ask questions,’ says Hathaway. ‘He’s your client, is n’t he? Tell him to beat it.’

Hathaway must have his little joke, I suppose, though for the time being I am not certain of his sanity. I march over to the jail house, leading Elsie by the hand.

The jailer is as much surprised as I am, but the order is authoritative and must be obeyed. After some hesitation he unlocks the door and calls the Prophet. Elijah emerges into the waiting room, stooping through the doorway.

‘I am happy to inform you,’ say I, ‘that I have your release from custody.’

‘Thank you,’ says he gently.

He does n’t even ask how it happened, nor do I tell him. I don’t know myself.

‘I am at liberty to go now?’ says he.

‘Yes.’

‘And Elsie, does she go with me?’

‘Yes, that is my understanding.’

‘Thank you.’

He takes the child by the hand; together they leave the jail house. The jailer and I step out to the yard and watch them out of sight. It is a picture I shall always remember — the picture of the giant Prophet dressed in white, his red whiskers flowing in the breeze, holding the hand of the little girl with her doll.

The jailer, for the only time I can remember, descends to profanity. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ says he, scratching his head in puzzlement.

Hathaway is still in his office.

‘I suppose,’ says he, ‘you can’t contain yourself much longer. Look at this.’

He hands me a folded paper, bearing the style, ‘Report of O. G. Meadows, M.D.’ The report is long, covering several typewritten pages, but I don’t need to read it. On the back, in Hathaway’s handwriting, is this inscription:

‘The sum and substance of all this is that the prosecuting witness lied.’