I left the courtroom and went to the sheriff’s office. His office was on the same floor, but nearer the entrance to the building. Only two people were still waiting there to see Mapes—juror number ten, a little white lady, wearing a black-and-white checkered suit; and number eleven, Mr. A. Paul Williams. Everyone else had already seen Mapes or had sneaked out while Mapes was in his office. I sat down beside Mr. A. Paul. He had just wiped his face and head with the pocket-handkerchief. He kept it in his hand as though he knew he would need it again. He introduced me to the little white lady. Her legs were so short that her feet barely touched the floor.
“Miss Greta,” Mr. A. Paul said.
“Miss Greta.”
“Please to meet you,” she said. She had rosy cheeks, green eyes, and little red lips.
Juror number six or seven, I forget which, came out of Mapes’s office. He was a tall white man with a long neck and orange-color hair. He told Miss Greta that she could go in now. Miss Greta patted Mr. A. Paul twice on the knee just before she stood up. Mr. A. Paul nodded his head and said, “Thank you, ma’am,” in response. After Miss Greta had gone into Mapes’s office, Mr. A. Paul wiped his face and head again with the wet pocket-handkerchief. He didn’t put it in his pocket.
“Nobody never told me jury was go’n cover all of this,” he said. “I went through enough of this just to vote. ‘How many beans in a jar; how many grains of corn on a cob’—wasn’t that enough to make me a citizen? Now this. ’Round here shooting up the place like he’s some kind of Jesse James. ’Nough to make you sick.”
“Jury duty is not always like this,” I told him.
“Ain’t it?” Mr. A. Paul challenged me.
“After all, you did sentence his son to death.”
“It wasn’t just me,” Mr. A. Paul said. “It wasn’t just me. I went ’long with the rest. So don’t go ’round here putting it all on me.”
“I was using you in the plural sense.”
“I don’t care what sense you was using it in—just don’t go ’round telling people it was just me. I voted like they told me to vote. They all voted the same way. If people had told me jury was go’n be like this, I woulda stayed home.”
“It’s your civic duty to serve on a jury, Mr. A. Paul.”
“Y’all can have all the civic duty y’all want. Just let me stay home and sit in my own chair.”
“It’s going to be all right, Mr. A. Paul,” I said, and patted him on the knee as Miss Greta had done.
“I’m sitting up there, minding my own business, and trying to pay ’tention to what everybody saying—and here he come, shooting up the place.”
He wiped his head again.
“Lucky Miss Greta was there,” he said. “That white lady saved me.”
“Saved you how?”
“Soon’s he shot, she hit the floor. She jerked on my pants leg and told me to get down. I landed right on top of her.”
“What? You got on top of that white lady?”
“Watch your mouth, boy,” he said quickly, and meant it. “I didn’t say nothing ’bout getting on top of her. I landed on her. Landed on her. Now, you just watch your mouth, now.”
“You said she got down first, she jerked on your pants leg and you got down on her. With all that floor, you couldn’t find any other place to fall?”
“I done told you, boy, watch your mouth,” he said, and he was serious. His eyes showed he was deadly serious. “Now, watch your mouth, now.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said. I was grinning inside, but wouldn’t dare grin out. “But it must have felt good there for a second. Like falling on a pile of freshly gin cotton.”
“Boy, I’m tired, I’m scared, I’m weak,” he said, shaking his fist at me. “Now, don’t force me to pop you one.”
I grinned at him this time. “Okay, Mr. A. Paul, okay. I was just kidding.”
“No time to be playing,” he said. “My heart ain’t that strong.”
He relaxed his fist.
Miss Greta came out of Mapes’s office and told Mr. A. Paul that he was next. He pushed up from his chair and walked slowly and stiffly and knocked timidly on the door. Mapes commanded him to come in. About ten minutes later he came out and nodded to me to go in. Mapes had just finished drinking a cup of water, and he crushed the paper cup and flipped it over into the wastepaper basket by the clothes rack. His cowboy hat hung on the rack.
“And I suppose you have the same story—you didn’t see anything?”
“I told you that in the courtroom, Sheriff.”
“Yes you did,” Mapes said. “And I didn’t believe you then either. Sit down.”
I sat in the chair across the desk from him.
“How long had you been there?”
“Maybe half an hour. I got there late.”
“You were there half an hour, then what?”
“They had just come in with the verdict. The foreman read it. Guilty. Judge Reynolds spoke to the prisoner couple of minutes. Then the sentence. The chair. The two deputies took the prisoner by the arms. Made a couple of steps. I heard the word ‘BOY.’ Just, ‘BOY.’ Then, BAM.”
“After that?”
“People were screaming, some getting down on the floor, others were running out of the place. Then another, BAM. I don’t want to ever hear that sound again.”
“He shot at Claude?”
“I think he shot down into the floor. There was dust and smoke everywhere. I suppose the dust came up from the floor.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“That’s what I saw, Sheriff.”
Mapes sat back in his chair, looking over his desk at me.
“Most of them said the same thing. You’re sure that all y’all didn’t get together to cook up this same story?”
“I didn’t get together with anyone. The only person I talked to was Mr. Abe, and I called him on the phone from the drugstore.”
“Anyone else out there?” Mapes asked, nodding toward the door.
“I didn’t leave anybody else out there.”
Mapes leaned forward and pounded his fist on the desk.
“Damn! I hate this.”
“Sir?”
“Damn, I hate this,” he said. “He’s been in and out of this jail as long back as I can remember. My daddy put him in jail, my granddaddy put him in jail, and Guidry had to put him in jail. Now I have to do the same. But this time he’s going up for good. Only time he’ll come out of Angola again will be in a box. God damn him—why me? Why me?” He pounded his desk again. Then he looked at me as if he was seeing me sitting there for the first time. “What are you doing here?”
“You told me to come to your office, Sheriff.”
He continued to look at me as though he was trying to figure me out. We had never spent this much time with each other before. I knew he had watched me, but he never had a reason to question me about anything.
“You’re that Guerin boy, ain’t you? Samuel and Rachel’s grandson? Went away for a while?”
“California—after I finished the eighth grade. I couldn’t go to any more school down here and—”
Mapes waved me off. “Yeah, yeah, I know all about that. What brought you back here?”
“I majored in journalism. I wanted to get a job on a newspaper.”
“And old good-hearted Ambrose Cunningham gave you that chance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you think of the shooting? Enough for a story?”
“Mr. Abe is going to write about the shooting. He wants me to do a profile—a human interest story.”
“I thought all of them were human interest,” Mapes said. “How’s yours going to be different?”
Before I could answer him he had taken a glass and a half bottle of whisky out of the desk drawer. He first blew into the glass before pouring a couple of ounces of whisky into the glass. He downed the drink in one swallow and put the glass and the bottle back into the drawer. He took out a roll of Life Savers, flipped one of the little white round candies into his mouth, threw the rest of the roll back into the drawer, and looked at me.
“Well?”
“He wants to know why you’re giving Mr. Brady two hours.”
Mapes looked at me. He moved that little piece of candy around in his mouth.
“And when does he want this human interest story?”
“On his desk tonight.”
“Tonight?” Mapes was looking at me like he wanted to choke me. “Both you and Ambrose Cunningham are crazy as hell. Both of you ought to be locked up.”
“I’m just a reporter, sir. On an assignment.”
“I know damn well that Cunningham doesn’t know anything about Brady. Do you know anything about him?”
“A little bit.”
“A little bit? A little bit?” His hard gray eyes concentrated on me a moment, then he laughed, a short, humorless laugh. “Get out of here. Get out of my office.”
“I’m only a cub reporter, sir, and I do the best—”
“Take your cub reporter ass out of my office, and go find that crazy Cunningham and take him to Jackson with you. Get out of here.”
“Yes, sir.”