Dust of Lies

Chapter One - The Poem

    I stood outside in the sweltering heat, patting my forehead with a damp handkerchief, impatiently waiting for the bulldozer to crush the tar out of the old county jail.  I could feel my cheeks begin to flush bright red as tiny rivulets of sweat made their way down my temples.  Not a pretty sight.  This was my first assignment with the Barber Gazette and I wanted to make a good impression.  Cool, calm, collected – these were the adjectives I had in mind.  Instead, I could safely say that none of these applied.





    In a small community like Barber, the destruction of the old jail was a big event. Since I was the only reporter for the Barber Gazette I felt it was my duty to record the demolition of one of the few remaining landmarks in Barber, Arkansas. I’d take a few pictures, write my column, and Thursday’s weekly paper would have its headline.





    A small band of locals milled about impatiently as Skeeter Crawford aligned his ancient machine head-on with the crumbling structure. He revved the engine a couple of time sending puffs of black smoke rolling out the tailpipe. The air with the acrid smell of diesel. With great deliberation, he inched the lumbering dozer toward its target. The blade caught the rickety structure lifting the stucco and timber off its foundation. As the ground rumbled and shook,  the walls and roof caved in.  A large pile of rubble encased in a powdery fog of dust was all that remained of the Barber county jail.





    That concluded the show. The hundred-year-old house of incarceration was now a junk heap.  Traces of soot from the dozer exhaust and some of the powdery residue stuck to my face.  I wiped my forehead and cheeks quickly, hoping to restore my appearance. My handkerchief was streaked with black, white and an orangey substance that could only be my makeup.  My only thoughts were to finish the job and go.  I took my pictures quickly, interviewed a couple of spectators, and turned to leave when a crudely scrawled words, on what was once a wall in a jail cell, caught my eye.





                                       Here I hang


                                       With my face to the wall


                                       Ora Price was the cause


                                       Of it all!





      I stopped and stared at the poem, the words whispering in my head. What had happened here?


My knowledge of community lore was weak. I’d moved to Barber a few weeks ago so my husband could care for his elderly mother, and really had only taken this job with the newspaper to keep from going crazy. Local lore or no local lore, I was pretty sure that the story surrounding the poem would be better than any article I could write about sticks and stones—and I intended to find out what it was.





      Skeeter was backing his trailer up to a dirt ledge, preparing to load the dozer. He’d lived in Barber all his life and if anyone would know about the poem, I thought, he would: the man was almost as old as the jail he had just torn down. I waved my hand wildly to flag him down over the noise of his machine. He turned the engine off. With short choppy steps he made his way towards me.





    When Skeeter reached the sidewalk in front of the rubble he stopped and surveyed his work with pride. A grin spread across his craggy face, exposing glimpses of broken, discolored teeth. Bib overalls ballooned over his portly frame like a tent held up by single strap over his left shoulder.





    “What’s does this mean?” I asked, pointing to the slab with the poem.


Skeeter’s face tightened and his lips draw into pencil-thin lines. Eyes that had always been friendly were now cold and vacant.





      “I don’t know nothin’ about that, miss. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will go on about my business.” He turned and was gone.





        Wow! What a strong response to a simple question. Or was the question simple, after all? More curious than ever, I got in my car and drove over to my mother-in-law’s house. Although she wasn’t a lifer in Logan County, she’d lived here for the last eighty years—and small towns aren’t leak proof! If the poem had any significance, she would have some clues.





    I knocked lightly on Viva’s door, and then turned the knob to let myself in. She was sitting as usual in her Lazy Boy recliner with the TV blaring at a fairly healthy volume and hadn’t heard me enter. Although her hearing had greatly diminished with time, her mind was unfaltering. If she’d ever been told anything about the poem, she would remember it, I was sure. I pulled the small rocker from the corner of the room as close as possible to her chair.





      “Viva, I need your help with an article I’m writing,” I said.





    That was a slight stretch of the truth, but would work nicely to lead me to the topic of the poem. I took a breath and went on.


   


      “I watched the demolition of the old jail today. I saw this poem on the wall. It said “Here I hang...”





      Before I could finish, Viva picked up the recitation. “With my face to the wall, Ora Price was the cause of it all.”





    “That’s it!” I exclaimed. “Do you know this Ora? Do you know the man who wrote this poem?”





      I watched recognition light up the pale blue eyes, watery with age.





    “Yes” she said slowly, “I knew Ora.” Her eyes redirected to the TV.





    After a few seconds of impatient silence on my part, I prodded her. “And?”





    “And what, dear?”





    “What do you know about Ora and the poem?” I used my sweetest voice but patience was not my long suit. “Why would Ora Price be the cause of a man hanging himself?”





    Viva picked up the TV control, switched the power off and turned to face me. She studied my face intently for a few moments as if to determine what it was that I really wanted to know.





    It has to be noted that Viva and I were really strangers. I’d married her only son two months ago, my first marriage and his second. When Darrel’s first wife, Kindra, had died of cancer five years ago, Viva was devastated. And Kindra is still very much with us. Pictures of her taunt me from their perch on the fireplace mantel. Sometimes, when no one is around, I stare at them.  She was a tall, slender blonde with a smile that radiated warmth and confidence.  I couldn’t help but like her and I had never met the woman.  Could I fault Viva for feeling the same? My mind says “No” but my heart can’t help but wonder if I can ever mean as much to Viva as Kindra did.  She has never offered to take the pictures down and I have never asked. I simply accept that I am engaged in tug-of-war with the ghost who refuses to relinquish her hold on our elderly mother-in-law.





    Viva isn’t totally at fault. I am a self-professed nerd; a studious introvert who devoted most of her life to teaching chemistry at the University of Arkansas. I hid behind books, research and projects.  They were my family.  Sometimes I felt as if I were viewing life through a window with my nose pressed against the pane, seeing but not touching the lives of people around me.  When I married Darrel, I was ready to relinquish the burden of ambition and replace it with a real life, but I am afraid that Viva may never approve of Darrel’s choice.  I want to be on the other side of the window pane.  I want in!





      After a long, unrelenting silence Viva rose slowly from her chair, allowing her arthritic bones to adjust to her weight before walking down the hall to her bedroom. She returned shortly with a tattered cardboard shoebox under her arm. She sat down again and put the box on the coffee table; it was filled with old newspaper clippings she had collected over the years. I quickly thumbed through the stack until I found the clipping Viva intended for me to see.          


                   


                                      “EZRA HACKER SELF-EXECUTED”





                                      Ezra Hacker, son of the Rev. A.C. Hacker,


                                       hanged himself in jail here last      Saturday night.


                                     He had been jail for several days on a


                                       charge of wife abandonment, and Saturday


                                      told his father he would kill himself if he


                                      did not get out but he thought he was joking.


                                      He cut the ropes from the window weights


                                      and tied one end to the top of the sill and the


                                      other around neck and drew his feet up from the floor.


                                      He was dead when jailor Caps went to


                                      feed him Sunday morning.


                                      Justice Castleberry summoned a jury and


                                      held an inquest which after viewing the body


                                      rendered a verdict to the effect that he came to


                                      his death by his own hands.





      In the upper-right corner, someone had written the date: 12-19-1919.





    I was a little disappointed. A man hangs himself with a window weight over wife abandonment and there was not one mention of a poem in the article. What a waste of curiosity! I shared my disappointment with my mother-in-law.


    Her eyes widened. “And you call yourself a reporter?” She laughed before continuing. “Ezra Hacker was only nineteen when he hanged himself,” she began. “He and Ora married when she was fifteen and he was eighteen. They had a baby boy named Joseph who was born in November … Just a few weeks before the hanging.”





    I felt excitement stirring inside me. I knew I was about to hear a story.





    "I met Ora about that time,” Viva said. “We’d just moved to Barber so Papa could begin his ministry with the First Baptist Church. Ezra Hacker was the first funeral he’d ever preached! I remember Ora coming with her stepdad, Ben Townsend, and her mother to make the funeral arrangements.” She shook her head. “She was a pitiful slip of a girl who hung in her mother’s shadow, just like her mother hung in Ben’s shadow. Ben, on the other hand, was a blustery, self-righteous—and, forgive me for saying so—pompous ass.”





    I’d never heard Viva use any vulgarity. My interest perked up. She must feel strongly about this!





    “He strutted into Papa’s office at the church and began expounding loudly on whether a suicide should be given a Christian burial,” she said. “I was just watching through the keyhole, you understand, but I could see it all, and I can tell you that Papa was not pleased with Ben. Ora stood there, frozen, just staring at the wooden floor, but her mother kept talking, kept pleading with Ben, until finally his tirade stopped and the plans for the service continued.” She glanced at me. “That was my first encounter with Ora and her family, but it wasn’t my last.”





    I wanted to hear more, but it was clear that Viva was exhausted and it seemed a good time to give her some space. As I was getting up, she grabbed my arm and said, “Kay, there’s more to this than anyone would ever suspect. I’ve kept Ora’s story to myself for so many years … maybe this is a sign, you coming here like this. Maybe it’s time for the truth to be known. Promise me you won’t let it die or be influenced by the others. You’ve started this. Please finish it.”





    “Of course, Viva,” I said, but I had no idea what I’d started, or what I would need to finish. And who on earth were the “others” to whom she referred? 





    “And dear”, she called to me as I was leaving.





    “Yes?”





    “You might want to wash your face.”





    “…..oh…yeah, thanks”  I stuttered as I continued my exit. How could I have forgotten what a mess I was?  What a stark contrast between the picture perfect images of Kindra and me.