Theo hammered away. 'Maybe if he'd gone to law school in Mississippi instead of Tennessee then he'd understand our laws!'
He was famous for such public butcherings. He'd once humiliated an opponent who'd left the pulpit under a cloud. Pulling an 'affidavit' from his pocket, Theo claimed he had proof that the 'ex-reverend' had an affair with a deacon's wife. The affidavit was never read.
The ten-minute limit meant nothing to Theo. He blew through it with a series of promises to cut taxes and waste and do something to make sure murderers got the death penalty more often. When he finally wound down, he thanked the crowd for twenty years of faithful support. He reminded us that in the last two elections the good folks of Ford County had given him, and Rex Ella, almost 80 percent of their votes.
The applause was loud and long, and at some point Warren disappeared. So did I. I was tired of speeches and politics.
Four weeks later, around dusk on the first Tuesday in August, much of the same crowd gathered around the courthouse for the vote counting. It had cooled off considerably; the temperature was only ninety-two with 98 percent humidity.
The final days of the election had been a reporter's dream. There was a fistfight between two Justice of the Peace candidates outside a black church. There were two lawsuits, both of which accused the other side of libel and slander and distributing phony sample ballots. One man was arrested when he was caught in the act of spray painting obscenities on one of Theo's billboards. (As it turned out, after the election, the man had been hired by one of Theo's henchmen to defile the senator's signs. Young Warren still got the blame. 'A common trick,' according to Baggy.) The state's Attorney General was asked to investigate the high number of absentee ballots. 'Typical election,' was Baggy's summary. Things came to a peak on that Tuesday, and the entire county stopped to vote and enjoy the sport of a rural election.
The polls closed at six, and an hour later the square was alive and wired with anticipation. People piled in from the county. They formed little groups around their candidate and even used campaign signs to stake off their territory. Many brought food and drink and most had folding lawn chairs as if they were there to watch a baseball game. Two enormous black chalkboards were placed side by side near the front door of the courthouse, and there the returns were tallied.
'We have the results from North Karaway,' the clerk announced into a microphone so loud it could've been heard five miles away. The festive mood was immediately serious.
'North Karaway's always first,' Baggy said. It was almost eight-thirty, almost dark. We were sitting on the porch outside my office, waiting for the news. We planned to delay press time for twenty-four hours and publish our 'Election Special' on Thursday. It took some time for the clerk to read the vote totals for every candidate for every office. Halfway through she said, 'And in the Sheriff's race.' Several thousand people held their breath.
'Mackey Don Coley, eighty-four. Tryce McNatt, twenty-one. T. R. Meredith, sixty-two, and Freck Oswald, eleven.' A loud cheer went up on the far side of the lawn where Coley's supporters were camped.
'Coley's always tough in Karaway,' Baggy said. 'But he's beat.'
'He's beat?' I asked. The first of twenty-eight precincts were in, and Baggy was already predicting winners.
'Yep. For T.R. to run strong in a place where he has no base shows folks are fed up with Mackey Don. Wait'll you see the Clanton boxes.'
Slowly, the returns dribbled in, from places I'd never heard of: Pleasant Hill, Shady Grove, Klebie, Three Corners, Clover Hill, Green Alley, Possum Ridge, Massey Mill, Calico Ridge. Woody Gates and the Country Boys, who seemed to always be available, filled in the gaps with some bluegrass.
The Padgitts voted at a tiny precinct called Dancing Creek. When the clerk announced the votes from there, and Coley got 31 votes and the other three got 8 combined, there was a refreshing round of boos from the crowd. Clanton East followed, the largest precinct and the one I voted in. Coley got 285 votes, Tryce 47, and when T.R.'s total of 644 was announced, the place went wild.
Baggy grabbed me and we celebrated with the rest of the town. Coley was going down without a runoff.
As the losers slowly learned their fate, they and their supporters packed up and went home. Around eleven, the crowd was noticeably thinner. After midnight, I left the office and strolled around the square, taking in the sounds and images of this wonderful tradition.
I was quite proud of the town. In the aftermath of a brutal murder and its baffling verdict, we had rallied, fought back, and spoken clearly that we would not tolerate corruption. The strong vote against Coley was our way of hitting at the Padgitts. For the second time in a hundred years, they would not own the Sheriff.
T. R. Meredith got 61 percent of the vote, a stunning landslide. Theo got 82 percent, an old-fashioned shellacking. We printed eight thousand copies of our 'Election Edition' and sold every one of them. I became a staunch believer in voting every year. Democracy at its finest.
Chapter 28
A week before Thanksgiving in 1971, Clanton was rocked by the news that one of its sons had been killed in Vietnam. Pete Mooney, a nineteen-year-old staff sergeant, was captured in an ambush near Hue, in central Vietnam. A few hours later his body was found.
I didn't know the Mooneys, but Margaret certainly did. She called me with the news and said she needed a few days off. Her family had lived down the street from the Mooneys for many years. Her son and Pete had been close friends since childhood.
I spent some time in the archives and found the 1966 story of Marvin Lee Walker, a black kid who'd been the county's first death in Vietnam. That had been before Mr. Caudle cared about such things, and the
So a young man who couldn't go to the better schools, probably couldn't vote, and more than likely was too afraid to drink from the public water fountain at the courthouse, had been killed in a country few people in his hometown could find on a map. And his death was the right and proper thing. Communists had to be fought wherever they might be found.
Margaret quietly passed along the details I needed for a story. Pete had graduated from Clanton High School in 1970. He had played varsity football and baseball, lettering in both for three years. He was an honor student who had planned to work for two years, save his money, then go to college. He was unlucky enough to have a high draft number, and in December 1970 he got his notice.
According to Margaret, and this was something I could not print, Pete had been very reluctant to report for basic training. He and his father had fought for weeks over the war. The son wanted to go to Canada and avoid the whole mess. The father was horrified that his son would be labeled a draft dodger. The family name would be ruined, etc. He called the kid a coward. Mr. Mooney had served in Korea and had zero patience for the antiwar movement. Mrs. Mooney tried the role of peacemaker, but in her heart, she too was reluctant to send her son off to such an unpopular war. Pete finally relented, and now he was coming home in a box.
The funeral was at the First Baptist Church, where the Mooneys had been active for many years. Pete had been baptized there at the age of eleven, and this was of great comfort to his family and friends. He was now with the Lord, though still much too young to be called home.
I sat with Margaret and her husband. It was my first and last funeral for a nineteen-year-old soldier. By concentrating on the casket, I could almost avoid the sobbing and, at times, wailing around me. His high school football coach gave a eulogy that drained every eye in the church, mine included.
I could barely see the back of Mr. Mooney, in the front row. What unspeakable grief that poor man was suffering.
After an hour, we escaped and made our way to the Clanton cemetery, where Pete was laid to rest with
