CHAPTER 2
WE CAME into the outskirts of New York along Route 46, which connects the New Jersey Turnpike with the George Washington Bridge. Once again logic was raising difficulties. What was I going to do once I got to the other side of the bridge? I didn’t know.
We needed gasoline, so we pulled into a station just short of the bridge. While Miles stayed with the car, I took the Life article, went into a phone booth, and called the District Attorney named in the article. When I finally reached the proper office, I tried to sound like a dignified pastor on a divine mission. The Prosecutor’s Office was not impressed.
“The District Attorney will not put up with any interference in this case. Good day to you, sir.”
And the line went dead.
I stepped out of the phone booth and stood for a moment beside a pyramid of oil cans, trying to recapture my feeling of mission. We were 350 miles from home and it was getting dark. Weariness, discouragement, and a faint fright gripped me. I felt lonesome. Somehow, standing in the neon dusk of the filling station, having experienced the kind of rebuff I must expect, the guidance I had received in the security of my mountain parish study didn’t seem so convincing.
“Hey, David.” It was Miles calling. “We’re blocking the exit here.”
We pulled out onto the highway. Instantly we were locked in a gigantic traffic flow; we couldn’t have turned around if we had wanted to. I had never seen so many cars, all in a hurry. They pulled around me and honked at me; the air brakes on gigantic trucks hissed at me.
What a sight the bridge was! A river of red lights on the right—the taillights of the cars in front—and the white glare of oncoming traffic and the immense skyline looming out of the night ahead. I realized suddenly how countrified I really was.
“What do we do now?” I asked Miles at the end of the bridge, where a dozen green signs pointed us to highways whose names meant nothing to us.
“When in doubt,” said Miles, “follow the car ahead.”
The car ahead, it turned out, was going to upper Manhattan. So did we.
“Look!” said Miles, after we had gone through two red lights and nearly run over a police officer who stood sadly shaking his head after us. “There’s a name I know! Broadway!”
The familiar street name was like a face from home in a strange crowd. We followed Broadway past numbered street signs that worked steadily downward from over 200 to under 50, and suddenly we were in Times Square. We thought of quiet evenings in Philipsburg as Miles read out words from the marquees: “Naked Secrets,” “Loveless Love,” “Teen-age Girl of the Night,” “Shame.” Great white letters at one theater spelled out “For Adults Only,” while beneath them a man in a red uniform kept a crowd of restless, pushing children in line.
A few blocks later we came to Macy’s, then Gimbels. My heart leaped at the sight of them. Here were names I knew. Gwen ordered things from these stores: the warm socks she’d made me promise to wear came, I thought, from Gimbels. It was a point of contact with the old and tried. I wanted to stick close to those stores.
“Let’s look for a hotel near here,” I suggested to Miles.
Across the street was the Martinique; we decided on that. Now there was the problem of parking. There was a car lot across from the hotel, but when the man at the gate said, “Two dollars overnight,” I backed hastily into the street again.
“It’s because we’re from out of town,” I told Miles as I drove away with what I hoped was indignant speed. “They think they can get away with anything if you’re a stranger.”
Half an hour later we were back at the parking lot again. “All right, you win,” I said to the man, who didn’t smile. A few minutes later we were in our room on the twelfth floor of the Hotel Martinique. I stood at the window for a long time, looking down at the people and cars below. Every now and again a gust of wind blew clouds of trash and newspaper around the corner. A group of teen-agers were huddled around an open fire across the street. There were five of them. They were dancing in the cold, holding out their hands to the blaze and wondering, no doubt, what they were going to do. I fingered the page from Life, in my pocket, and thought how a few months earlier seven others, perhaps something like these boys, had wandered in a cloud of anger and boredom into Highbridge Park.
“I’m going to try the District Attorney’s office again,” I said to Miles. To my surprise it was still open. I knew I was making a nuisance of myself but I could think of no other way to reach those boys. I called twice more, and then a third time. And at last I annoyed someone into giving me some information.
“Look,” I was told shortly, “the only person who can give you permission to see those boys is Judge Davidson himself.”
“How do I get to see Judge Davidson?”
A bored reply: “He’ll be at the trial tomorrow morning. One hundred Court Street. Now good-bye, Reverend. Please don’t call here again; we can’t help you.”
I tried one more call, this time to Judge Davidson. But the operator told me that his line had been disconnected. She was sorry, no, there was no possible way of getting through.
We went to bed, but I, at least, did not sleep. To my unaccustomed ears every sound of the city at night was filled with menace. I divided the long hours about evenly between wondering what I was doing here and fervent prayers of thanks that, whatever it was, it couldn’t keep me here long.
The next morning, shortly after seven o’clock, Miles and I got up, dressed, and checked out of the hotel. We did not eat breakfast. Both of us felt instinctively that some sort of crisis was ahead of us, and we felt that this fast would leave us at our mental and physical best.
If we had known New York better, we would have taken the subway downtown to the courthouse. But we didn’t know New York, so we got our car out of the lot, asked directions for Court Street, and once again headed down Broadway.
One hundred Court Street is a mammoth, frightening building to which people flock who are angry with each other and want vengeance. It attracts hundreds every day who have legitimate business there, but it also draws curious, gawking spectators who come to share—without danger—in the anger. One man in particular that day was sounding off outside the courtroom where the Michael Farmer trial was to be reconvened later in the morning.
“Chair’s too good for them,” he said to the public in general. He turned to the uniformed guard stationed outside the closed door. “Got to teach them a lesson, young punks. Make an example out of them.”
The guard hooked his thumbs in his belt and turned his back on the man, as if he had long ago learned that this was the only defense against the self-appointed guardians of justice. By the time we arrived—at eight thirty—there were forty people waiting in the line to enter the courtroom. I discovered later that there were forty-two seats available that day in the spectator section. I have often thought that if we’d stopped for breakfast, all that has happened to me since that morning of February 28, 1958, would have taken a different direction.
For an hour and a half we stood in line, not daring to leave, since there were others waiting for a chance to step into our places. Once, when a court official passed down the line, I pointed to a door farther along the corridor.
“Is that Judge Davidson’s chambers?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Could I see him, do you think?”
The man looked at me and laughed. He didn’t answer, just gave a grunt that was half scorn, half amusement, and walked away.
At around ten o’clock a guard opened the courtroom doors and we filed into a little vestibule where each one of us was briefly inspected. We held out our arms; I took it they were looking for weapons.
“They’ve threatened the Judge’s life,” said the man in front of me, turning around while he was being searched. “The Dragon gang. Said they’d get him in court.”
Miles and I took the last two seats. I found myself next to the man who thought that justice should be faster. “Those boys should be dead already, don’t you think?” he said to me even before we were seated, and then turned to ask his other neighbor the same question before I had a chance to answer.
I was surprised at the size of the courtroom. I had expected an impressive room with hundreds of seats, but I guess that idea had come from Hollywood. Actually, half of the room was taken up by court personnel, another fourth by the press, with only a small section in the rear for the public.
My friend on the right gave me a running commentary on court procedure. A large group of men strolled in from the back of the court, and I was informed that these were the court-appointed lawyers.
“Twenty-seven of them,” my friend said. “Had to be supplied by the State. Nobody else would defend the scum. Besides, they don’t have any money. Spanish boys, you know.”
I didn’t know, but said nothing.
“They had to plead ‘not guilty.’ State law for first degree murder. They ought to get the chair, all of them.”
Then the boys themselves came in.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Men, I suppose. After all this was a murder trial, and it had never really registered with me that children could commit murder. But these were children. Seven stooped, scared, pale, skinny children on trial for their lives for a merciless killing. Each was handcuffed to a guard and each guard, it seemed to me, was unusually husky, as if he had been chosen deliberately for contrast.
The seven boys were escorted to the left of the room, then seated and the handcuffs taken off.
“That’s the way to handle them,” said my neighbor. “Can’t be too careful. God, I hate those boys!”
“God seems to be the only one who doesn’t,” I said.
“Wha...?”
Someone was pounding on a piece of wood and calling the court to order as in walked the judge, very briskly, while the entire room stood.
I watched the proceedings in silence, but not my neighbor. He expressed himself so emphatically that several times people turned around to stare at us. A girl was on the stand that morning.
“That’s the gang’s doll,” I learned from next door. “A doll is a teen whore.”
The girl was shown a knife and asked if she had recognized it. She admitted that it was the knife from which she had wiped blood on the night of the murder. It took all morning to achieve that simple statement.
And then, quite suddenly, the proceedings were over.
It took me by surprise—which may, in part, explain what happened next. I didn’t have time to think over what I was going to do.
I saw Judge Davidson stand and announce that the court was adjourned. In my mind’s eye I saw him leaving that room, stepping through that door, and disappearing forever. It seemed to me that if I didn’t see him now, I never would.
“I’m going up there and talk to him,” I whispered to Miles.
“You’re out of your mind!”
“If I don’t ...” The judge was gathering his robes together, preparing to leave. With a quick prayer I grasped my Bible in my right hand, hoping it would identify me as a minister, shoved past Miles into the aisle, and ran to the front of the room.
“Your Honor!” I called.
Judge Davidson whirled around, annoyed and angry at the breach of court etiquette.
“Your Honor, please would you respect me as a minister and let me have an audience with you?”
But by now the guards had reached me. I suppose the fact that the judge’s life had been threatened was responsible for some of the roughness that followed. Two of them picked me up by the elbows and hustled me up the aisle, while there was a sudden scurrying and shouting in the press section as photographers raced each other to the exit trying to get pictures.
The guards turned me over to two blue uniforms, out in the vestibule.
“Close those doors,” ordered one officer. “Don’t let anyone out of there.”
Then, turning to me, “All right, Mister. Where’s the gun?”
I assured him that I didn’t have a gun. Once again I was searched.
“Who were you with? Who else is in there?”
“Miles Hoover. He’s our Youth Director.”
They brought Miles in. He was shaken, more with anger and shame, I think, than with fear.
Some of the press managed to get into the room while the police were questioning us. I showed the police my papers of ordination so they’d know I was a bona fide clergyman. They were arguing among themselves about what charges to book me on. The sergeant said he’d find out Judge Davidson’s wishes, and while he was gone the reporters pumped me and Miles with more questions. Where were we from? Why had we done it? Were we with the Dragons? Had we stolen those church letters or forged them?
The sergeant came back saying that Judge Davidson didn’t want to prefer charges, and that they would let me go this time if I agreed never to come back.
“Don’t worry,” said Miles. “He won’t come back.”
They escorted me brusquely out to the corridor. There a semicircle of newsmen were waiting with their cameras cocked. One man asked me:
“Hey, Rev’rn. What’s that book you got there?”
“My Bible.”
“You ashamed of it?”
“Of course not.”
“No? Then why you hiding it? Hold it up where we can see it.”
And I was naive enough to hold it up. Flash bulbs popped, and suddenly I knew how it would come out in the papers: a Bible-waving country preacher, with his hair standing up on his head, interrupts a murder trial.
One, just one, of the reporters was more objective. He was Gabe Pressman, NBC News. He asked me some questions about why I was interested in boys who had committed such a heinous crime.
“Have you ever looked at those boys’ faces?”
“Yes. Sure.”
“And you can still ask that question?”
Gabe Pressman smiled ever so slightly. “I see what you mean. Well, Reverend, you’re different from the curiosity-seekers, anyway.”
I was different all right. Different enough to think I had some special divine errand, when all I was doing was playing the fool. Different enough to bring shame to my church, my town, and my family.
As soon as they let us go, we hurried to the parking lot where our car had earned another two-dollar charge. Miles didn’t say a word. The minute we got in the car and closed the door, I bowed my head and cried for twenty minutes.
“Let’s go home, Miles. Let’s get out of here.”
Going back over the George Washington Bridge, I turned and looked once more at the New York skyline. Suddenly I remembered the passage from Psalms that had given us so much encouragement: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
What kind of guidance had that been? I began to doubt there was such a thing as getting pinpointed instructions from God.
How would I face my wife, my parents, my church? I had stood before the congregation and told them that God had moved on my heart, and now I must go home and tell them that I had made a mistake and that I did not know the heart of God at all.