A Letter Found In My Attic

A LETTER FOUND IN MY ATTIC



By Terrell Manasco




They say confession is good for the soul. I don’t know how true that is, but I want to set the record straight once and for all, on what really happened.

My name is Charles Wayne Price. I was born on March 17th, 1933 in Mobile, Alabama, the only son of Leonard and Velma Price. I have two sisters, Sarah Jane and Rolene. This may be the last letter I ever write so I have to make this one count. That way, you will know what really happened that day in 1947.

First off, let me say that most folks, and my family, (or what is left of them) never called me Charlie or Chuck or Chucky the Ducky or anything silly like that. They just call me Charles. My mother named me after some singer that was popular in the thirties, back when music still sounded all tinny and distant. I had only been in the first grade for a day or two when some snot-nosed little bully tried to make fun of me and my given name. I didn’t quite cotton to his attempts at humor and caught up with him outside at recess. He refused to cease and desist all derogatory references to my moniker so I obliged him with a couple of Jack Dempsey jabs to his nose. It’s amazing what a good poke in the snout will do to change a fellow’s mind. Fact is, I don’t recall hearing any more wise-cracking after that. I guess word gets around fast. I didn’t exactly get off scot-free from that little incident though. The teacher, a robust little woman with brown wavy hair named Miss Perrywinkle or Pennywhistle, some funny name like that, made me spend a week’s detention after school for that one. She wasn’t the only one who refused to let boys be boys. My father took me out behind the barn (we didn’t have a woodshed) and “discussed it with me”. I walked around for a day or two after that since I wasn’t up to sitting. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, but more about that later.

I suppose I should tell you about my sisters. Sarah Jane was about two years older than Rolene and pretty headstrong. Actually she was just plain bossy. She didn’t want anyone doing things for her, but always wanted to do it herself, and she always thought she knew more than anyone else. Rolene wasn’t as independent, but she wasn’t totally helpless either. Both had sandy colored hair and were as pretty as any of the movie starlets at that time and both were a few years older than me so naturally I looked up to them, as little brothers often do, even though I spent a great deal of time in mischief, much of it aimed at them. But if anyone else ever mistreated them, it was a different story. Which brings me to the point of this letter.

I still remember the exact day; May 15th, 1947. I was a lean, lanky fourteen-year-old kid, with a head full of blonde hair and a set of raging hormones that I had not the foggiest notion what to do with. In my opinion, that’s the equivalent of handing over the keys to the family jalopy to a ten-year-old boy and saying, “There’s the keys, over there’s the car, you figure out the rest.” Kinda cruel and very dangerous. But that’s my opinion. Anyway, there I was, fourteen and just beginning to figure out that I knew more than all these stupid grown-ups but they sure don’t like to hear that. Well, I never actually came right out and said I was smarter than them but my father used to tell me I sure acted like it. I can still hear him now. Charles, you act like you got it all figgered out. You think you’re smarter than the rest of us? Is that it, boy? What could I say? As a matter of fact, Dad, yes, I do ? Fortunately for me I kept my fourteen year-old smart mouth shut, which was actually a much smarter thing to do than anything else I could have dreamed up. It also had the added benefit of allowing me to keep my teeth inside my mouth.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was May 15th, 1947. I walked home from school, as I did every day, but for some reason I chose that day to stop at Snappy Lunch and buy myself an ice-cold bottle of orange drink. Folks in the north used to call it “pop”, although I never did figure that one out since I never heard anything pop, even when I opened it. In the South we just called them orange drinks. Looking back, if I had gone straight home, as I did most days, things might have been different. They say hindsight is 20/20 and there’s not much I can do now since I don’t exactly own one of those time machines that you read about in the novels by Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells, though I sometimes wish I did. That way, I could go back to that day and hopefully things might have turned out different. I recall it was a sunny day, one of those days when the sky is so blue it makes you just ache to be outdoors. I took my sweet time that day, drinking that orange drink, savoring every drop, and though it only cost me a nickel then, even today I am still paying for it.

After I finished, I walked the rest of the way home, my thoughts on nothing more serious than whether the new girl in school, Katie Lamb, liked me or not, and if she would possible consider attending a Saturday afternoon matinee with me. She was aptly named, for not only was she a rather pretty redhead, but she was also meek and rather timid. She spoke to very few of the kids in our class, but I had given her my lunch money once when she had forgotten hers, and we had engaged in small talk a few times. Once or twice I looked up from my science book in class and caught her looking at me. That afternoon, with spring almost gone and summer rounding third and heading home, as I walked under that clear blue Alabama sky with the sun on my face and the smell of honeysuckles in the air, I resolved to ask her to accompany me to the picture show that following Saturday. I never got the chance.

My father, Leonard, was a drunk. Nowadays people say things like. ‘He’s an alcoholic’ but basically it’s the same thing. You drink alcohol frequently, you get drunk frequently, end of story. Down South it was always “he’s just an ol’ drunk”, though it was usually spoken more with hushed tones than out loud as it is today. He was not a bad person when he was sober. In fact, some of my best memories are of him and us kids sitting on the front porch eating watermelon, laughing and giggling until we were as red as the watermelon juice itself. Trouble is, those times were so few and far between, and most were when I was only around six or seven. I think losing his job at the mill played a big part in changing him. After that, he lost a part of himself that he never got back, at least as far as I can tell. He drank a lot more, and when he did fall off the wagon, he had a tendency to be more of a mean drunk. More than once I woke up in the middle of the night, scared, shaking under the covers, hearing him yelling at my mother, screaming words and names that I had never heard before but I knew somehow they were vile and filthy, probably because of the way he uttered them. My mother would whimper like a child and I had a mental image of her cowering in the corner, her nightgown clutched in her hands, crying and shaking her head, begging him not to hurt her, praying that she would make it through this one. The next morning, my father would be either still asleep, snoring loud enough to shake the rafters, or gone looking for a job. My mother’s face was usually dotted with purple and blue bruises and often a few scratch marks. He had a wicked temper when he was drinking, and it soon proved to be his downfall.

I arrived home that afternoon, my belly full of orange soda and my mind full of Katie Lamb. I walked in the house and the first thing that struck me odd was that there were no lights on. Usually Sarah Jane or Rolene would be sitting in the parlor, reading or listening to the radio. That day I clearly remember there was no radio, no lights, no sound. I don’t know exactly how, but I knew something was wrong. Then I heard a sound from upstairs that might have been a slap. Normally I would have run up the stairs, taking two at a time, to see what was going on. That day I felt the tiny hairs on my neck stand up, and I knew something really bad, something evil, was happening. I didn’t hear any voices but if I had, maybe I would have just turned around and went away, maybe gone outside to ride my bicycle. The eeriness of total silence in our house had the opposite effect on me. I couldn’t have left the house if I wanted to.

Climbing the stairs slowly, one at a time, tiptoeing so as not to give myself away, I inched my way up to the top floor, creeping along the wall, wanting desperately to exhale but afraid to even breathe. As I got closer to Sarah Jane’s bedroom door, I thought I heard a sound from inside. Turning the knob slowly, I eased open the door, expecting some robber with a mask to jump out at me. Instead, there was no one inside.

I quietly, carefully closed the door, still tiptoeing down the hall. As I came within a few feet of Rolene’s room, I distinctly heard a sound from inside, something like a whimper or a moan. I held my breath and waited. As I stood there in the hall, my sweaty fourteen year-old hands gripping the doorknob, I had no idea that I was about to take steps that would forever change my life, and those of my family. I took a deep breath, held it, and summoning every bit of courage I could, I turned the knob and shoved open the door. What I saw that afternoon is burned in my brain, like the afterimage your eye sees when you turn off the television. I wish I could make that image fade like the one inside the picture tube.

The only light in the room was a lamp on the nightstand. Rolene was lying on her back, across her bed, her face reddened and wet with tears. Her dress was torn and looked as if it had been wadded up in a corner and then slipped on. My father stood at the foot of the bed, eyes red with liquor, dark hair mussed up, with a sickening evil grin on his lips. He stank of whiskey and sweat. He looked at me in surprise and the smile slowly faded, and said, “Hello, Charles. You home from school?”

“Daddy, what’s going on?” I said, my voice coming out all shaky.

“Ain’t none o’ your business, boy. You best git on out and play. You hear?” I looked at Rolene, sobbing quietly, tears rolling down her face, dress in tatters. In my young mind, I thought he had beaten her and that perhaps she had fought him. The full scope of my father’s crime did not become apparent to me until a few years later, yet what I saw then was enough to provoke me to anger. As my face grew hot and the anger surged through my body, I turned and bolted from the room. Perhaps he thought his efforts to persuade me to leave were successful. I am sure Rolene thought as much, but in less than two minutes I returned, this time armed with a .22 caliber pistol, my father’s service revolver. Rolene sat upright on her bed and looked at me, terrified, her eyes widened in fear. As my father stood over her, his hand caressing her leg, I held the pistol in both hands and aimed it at him. He looked up, saw me standing there, my hands shaking, narrowed his eyes and said in a low voice, “Boy, what you doing with that thing?”

I bit my lower lip, my hands shaking like I had the palsy or something, and said, “Move away from her.” He looked at me through those red, glassy eyes, his head cocked almost sideways.

“Do what?” he said, giving me his don’t-you-dare-sass-me tone. He let go of her leg and started walking toward me. The liquor was still in him so he staggered a little bit. He held out his weathered hand, breathing whiskey fumes at me. “Give me that thing right now.” His voice was louder now.

“No,” I said, backing away. He cocked his head again as if he couldn’t believe I was defying him, of all people.

“Boy, you’re gonna bite off more than you can chew,” he said, still in a loud voice. “Drop that pistol now or I’ll take you outside.” I remember hearing footsteps coming down the hall at that point and I turned around and saw my mother standing there.

“What’s wrong?” she said in a timid little voice.

“Charles,” he said, ignoring her, “if you don’t want a good whipping, you best give me that pistol before you hurt somebody,” he said. Rolene peeked out from under the covers and I heard her sobbing quietly.

“Charles,” she said between sobs, “put the gun down. Please?”

“You think you’re a man now just ‘cause you’re holding that?” he said, pointing at the weapon in my hand. “Let me tell you something, boy. I run this house. Not your mama. Not you. If I tell you to jump, by George you better grow some bunny ears and start hoppin’.” He turned around and started back toward Rolene.

“Get away from her,” I said again. He ran his hand across her face, her hair, down her leg.

“What’s in this house is mine, you unnerstand?” he said. As he reached down and started playing with her thigh, I felt the anger burn again inside me like coals of fire and I pointed the gun at his head. He grabbed Rolene by the hair of her head and she let out a scream that I hoped would alert the neighbors. He dragged her off the bed, her dress all wrinkled and ripped, and said, “You want her, is that what you want? You want her? Here, take her,” and he shoved her hard into the wall behind me. She slammed into it so hard it shook the room and two or three pictures fell off the wall and shattered on the floor. Her body actually broke through the paneling and she bounced off the wall, falling onto the floor. To this day that moment is always replayed in my mind in slow motion. I remember watching Rolene bounce a little as she hit the floor, and her eyes were closed for a few seconds. I recall aiming the pistol at the man who was biologically my father. I must have stood there for a full minute, aiming at him but somehow unable to summon enough courage to pull the trigger. What happened next is a little foggy in my memory. I seem to remember someone’s hand reaching out and grabbing the gun from mine. I saw my mother’s face, a mask of fear, disgust, and anger, her mouth open, screaming something. Then the gun was in her hand and she aimed it at my father and fired once. As her arms jerked from the recoil, I watched in horror as his head was thrown backward, and blood and pieces of his brain and skull sprayed across the ceiling and opposite wall. He fell back across Rolene’s bed, the same bed where only minutes ago he had beaten his own daughter, and landed on his back. I don’t remember walking to the bed but I must have, because I have a memory of standing next to the bed over him, a cloud of blue smoke hovering in the air, thick red blood pouring out of the hole in his forehead and thinking Mama has ruined her sheets. His mouth and eyes were both open, and his arms and legs twitched a little for a few seconds as he lay there. I looked down at Rolene, still on the floor, her eyes now wide in horror, then back at him, and I fainted.



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My father died within two minutes after she shot him. The medical report states that the bullet entered his forehead, just above his left eye and traveled through his brain, exiting just behind his right ear, and buried itself into the wall. My mother, who by then had become completely hysterical, screaming, crying, begging him to live, was taken to the hospital and treated for shock. She died at home in her bed, a year and three months later. In the fifteen-month period after his death, she spoke only a few words to me. When Royce Dempsey, the local sheriff at the time, came by to take me in to question me, my mother stood in the front doorway of the house and never uttered one word as they handcuffed me and took me away. Rolene hid in her room and Sarah Jane just stared at me with the coldest reptilian eyes I’d ever seen. She was not my sister that day, but an entirely different person, filled with loathing and disgust. As I rode in the back seat of Sheriff Dempsey’s 47’ Oldsmobile, looking out the window at the town passing by, nearly choking on the smoke from his cheap cigar, I kept thinking how just a few words from one of them could have saved me. Those few words never came.

Dempsey sat me down in a squat room with ugly white cinder block walls in a hard-backed old chair with names carved into the wood with a knife, chain-smoked his cigars and questioned me over and over. Initially I told him that I had heard shouts coming from Rolene’s room, and had rushed in, armed with his revolver, and shot him in anger because he had beaten my sister. He later questioned both sisters, (especially Rolene) and as I later learned, their version of the story did not exactly match mine. Rolene told him that our dad was in her room, talking to her, just talking, and that I had burst in and basically gone berserk. In those days they didn’t have the advances in forensic science and DNA technology that we have today or they would have been able to determine that he had in fact, abused and molested her. Sarah Jane told him she was walking home from a friend’s house when it happened. (In truth she was out back, hanging up the day’s wash on the clothesline. She only came in when she heard the gunshot.) Since the stories did not match, I was brought back in again. Though exhausted after being questioned for five hours by Sheriff Dempsey, I maintained my story. Trial was set for April of 1948.

The trial lasted only two days. The Honorable Judge Clarence Wiley, of Limestone County, was the presiding judge. He was a bald, red-faced man with bifocals that seemed to always slide down to the end of his nose, and he spoke with a deep, resonant voice, dipped in a South Alabama accent. As I sat there on the stand, shackled like a common thief, I felt his icy glare on the back of my head. The prosecuting attorney, a smug, hawk-nosed fop named Henry J. Winthorp, who wore thick round-rimmed glasses and dressed in mostly tweeds, paced back and forth on the dusty hardwood floors of the courthouse like a banty rooster let loose in a henhouse. My answers were invariably twisted like verbal pretzels and, without the corroborating testimony I so desperately needed from Rolene, I was found guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced to twenty years in prison. I might have been initially sent to a reform school for boys, but Winthorp was so persuasive in his closing argument he had the jury all but whipped into a frenzy and by George, they wanted me in jail. In fact, he was so influential, it’s a wonder I wasn’t lynched. I remember hearing Rolene sob loudly when the sentence was pronounced and as I was led away I looked at her with what must have been confusion and puzzlement. How could my own sister sit there in silence as I was sentenced to spend the rest of my life with murderers, thieves, robbers, and sodomites? Why did she not speak up and tell them the truth, tell them how our father had treated his sixteen year-old daughter like his own personal concubine? Why didn’t Sarah Jane open her mouth and come to my defense? I wept in silence as the deputies led me handcuffed and shackled back to my cell. I will never forget the sound that metal door made as it clanged shut, sealing my fate for good.




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Five years passed and I adjusted to prison life as best as I could. It was pretty tough at first, and I had to get used to being told when to eat, sleep, exercise, and almost everything else. After a few months I started to get used to it and eventually even welcomed the routine. I stayed out of trouble for the most part, and made a few friends on the inside. One day I got a letter, about three days before my twentieth birthday. It was actually the first letter I received in prison, though I had been there five years. The return address said General Delivery, Macon, Georgia and it was addressed to Mr. Charles Price, inmate at the Alabama State Penitentiary. With some degree of reluctance, and an equal amount of eagerness, I opened it. On the page someone had typed:

Isaiah 53: 7

Never give up hope.




There was no signature, no name included anywhere in the note to tell me who the author was. I got out the Bible the prison chaplain had given me when I had first arrived and looked up the passage. It read:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.




The irony of that passage was lost on me until the following week when I received another letter with the same return address. This one read:

Matthew 5:11

Never give up hope.


Again, I checked the King James Bible in my cell and read thus:

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.



I had not heard from either of my sisters since I was imprisoned, so I began to wonder if one of them was trying to communicate with me. I thought perhaps it was Rolene, that maybe she had felt guilty for not speaking in my defense, but if so, why didn’t she sign her name? It didn’t make sense. It sure didn’t sound like Sarah Jane. She thought I had killed our father, and hated me for it. I wrote letters to them both, asking them why they didn’t tell the truth, proclaiming my innocence, asking for their prayers on my behalf. None of the letters were ever answered. I clung to the hope that one day perhaps Rolene would come forward and tell the truth, that one day she would tell Sarah Jane, and that they would send word that all was forgiven. But hope is a funny thing. After a while, if not nourished, it begins to die. The mysterious notes came at a time when hope for my emancipation was dying on the vine, and suddenly it bloomed again.

The notes had begun arriving weekly at first, then bi-weekly, then finally once a month. There was always a Bible verse, and always a brief note of encouragement underneath. Sometimes it was similar to the early ones and urged me to keep hoping. Often it was something about pressing on and persevering when you are mistreated. It was always positive, encouraging, and it was always welcome. The after several months, one arrived with this verse:


2nd Corinthians 8-9

The verses read:

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair
persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;



As I was reading them, something tugged at my subconscious. I felt as though something was different, that I’d overlooked some small yet important detail. I opened the note up again and scanned it carefully. At the bottom of the page was a name:

Kathryn


No last name, just Kathryn. The name was familiar in a sense, yet I could not recall where I had heard it. Kathryn who? I gave it quite a lot of thought and finally decided I didn’t know anyone named Kathryn but whoever she was, I was still grateful for the correspondence. She continued to send notes once a month for years and I cherished every one. I kept them safely tucked away in an old shoebox. Whenever I felt depressed or sorry for myself, I would take them out and read them. They always made me feel better.

Time marched on, as time usually does, and I grew older. In 1968, when I was 35 years old, I was released from Alabama State Penitentiary, having served my sentence. One week before my release date I received the last note. Here is what it said:

Charles,

It has been over twenty years since we last saw each other. I have thought of you every day. You were so kind to me when I felt alone, and I firmly believe that kindness begats kindness. I would very much like to see you again, and perhaps catch up on old times. If you are interested, please call me at the number listed below. Until then, may God be with you.


Kathryn Lamb
Macon, Georgia



P.S. You used to call me Katie.


I was both stunned and excited. It was so hard to believe. Katie Lamb, who I’d had a crush on when I was in the 9th grade. Katie Lamb, a shy young fourteen year-old girl at James A. Garfield High School in Mobile, Alabama, who I had wanted to ask to a Saturday afternoon matinee way back in 1947 but had been suddenly and unexpectedly detoured by the death of my father and a free twenty-year stint in the state pen. Katie Lamb, whose monthly letters of encouragement had sustained me for two decades and kept the hope alive in me that someone on the outside knew I was innocent and that I would be released from prison if I just waited long enough. That afternoon when I was allowed to make outside calls, I nervously dialed the number she had provided, not knowing what to expect. A man answered the phone on the third ring. When I asked for Kathryn, he seemed rather cold and asked me who I was. When I told him my name, he was silent for a moment and then I heard him speaking to her. In less than half a minute a woman’s voice said hello.

“Hello, Kathryn?” I said. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer and my mouth felt like cotton left out in the desert sun.

“Yes?” She said.

“It’s been a long time. Twenty years, in fact.”

“Charles? Is that you?” she said, sounding very pleased.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Charles Price, how are you?” I could hear a clock chiming in the background. Time marches on.

“Well, I’m two decades older, but I guess I’ll live.” We both laughed at that. “I am being released in a few days.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” she said. Her voice had a cultured, almost regal sound to it.

“I hope I didn’t call at a bad time. Your husband sounded a little annoyed.”

She laughed. I have never taken any kind of illegal drugs but the euphoric sensation I felt when I heard that laugh was indescribable. “ Husband? Oh you mean David? He’s my brother. Don’t mind him, Charles, he’s just cranky today. And no, you didn’t call at a bad time. I was just about to put away some groceries but that can wait. I could use a break.” She laughed again and once again I got that sensation, the one that kids sometimes call a “rush”.

“Oh,” I said. “Well I won’t take up too much of your time, I promise. I just called to ask if you were still interested in catching up on old times.”

“Well, of course I am, Charles. Would you like to meet somewhere for coffee?” I said I would and we arranged to meet a week later at a place she knew in Mobile.

The day finally came and I was released. They gave me a new suit, as is the custom, and a few dollars in my pocket, asked me to sign some forms, and sent me on my way. I stopped by each of my buddies’ cells, the ones who were still there, and said goodbye before I left. Freedom can be a two-edged sword. I was so nervous I kept looking over my shoulder as I walked out, wondering if maybe they had made a mistake and released the wrong man, half-expecting to hear the crack of a rifle behind me and feeling a bullet deep in my back. I was glad the suit they gave me was dark. I sweated so much, by the time I made it outside and got on a bus, my shirt was sopping wet.

I caught a bus, rode downtown and found a cheap hotel. I used part of the money I got from the prison to pay for a week’s rent. My first night of freedom was spent tossing and turning in a strange hotel bed with a hard mattress and listening for a guard to call “Light’s out!” The next few days I went job-hunting and after several negative responses, I landed a job as a janitor at a local high school. The pay wasn’t great but it would keep food in my stomach and I was grateful to have it.

The day finally came to meet Kathryn and I barely slept the night before. The next morning I was up before sunrise and after showering for thirty minutes and a hot shave, I put on my prison issued dark suit and shined my shoes until they were like mirrors. Then I walked the seven blocks to the diner she had mentioned, found a booth, and ordered a cup of coffee. The place was rather busy, even at nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning. I leaned back in the booth and pretended to be relaxed, while inside I was a nervous wreck. I had finished my cup and was about to order a second when I glimpsed a young woman walking through the front door. As she got closer I could see that she had the same auburn hair, though now it was worn in a sixties flip, and she looked a little taller and slimmer. She appeared to be looking for someone so I coughed and cleared my throat. Her eyes met mine and she smiled and mouthed my name with raised eyebrows. I nodded and she smiled and sat down opposite me in the booth. She was even prettier than I remembered. She was wearing a navy blue dress and a string of pearls hung around her swan neck. Her green eyes shone like emeralds, and her smile was as bright as a summer day at the Gulf. It had taken twenty years to get here, but it was well worth the wait.

We talked about old times and she told me she had graduated from Auburn University and was now running her own real estate business. She had never married and lived alone with her border collie, Elvis. She asked me if I had heard from my sisters lately and when I said no, I hadn’t heard a word since the trial back in 1948, she was appalled. “You mean to tell me neither one has contacted you since then?” she said, her mouth opened in disbelief.

“That’s right,” I said. “They evidently still think I did it. Well, Sarah Jane does anyway.” She nodded.

“So it wasn’t you after all? I knew it, Charles. I knew you were innocent all along. I can’t understand how or why they could let you go to prison for something you didn’t do.”

“It happens all the time. As least, that’s what I’m told.” We went through several cups of coffee that Thursday morning in ’68, talking, laughing, catching up on old news, and enjoying each other’s company. When it was time for her to go, I confess I thought we’d only been sitting there five minutes. When I checked the clock on the diner wall, I saw we had been there almost two hours. We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet again in a week or two.

Kathryn and I were married in June of 1971. We bought a house near Gulf Shores and I found a good job working for the power company there. She eventually sold her real estate business and years later used the money to purchase several hundred shares of stock in a company called Microsoft. We were as happy as you could imagine. Then one Monday evening in May about a year later, out of the blue I received a call from Rolene in Philadelphia. She had somehow managed to track me down through a few old friends and family members I had contacted just before we moved to the Gulf. She said Sarah Jane had passed away a few days before in Santa Barbara, California. She said Sarah had been battling bone cancer for the last seven years. I waited to see if she mentioned anything about Dad’s murder. After I saw that she was avoiding it, I said, “Rolene, you knew I was innocent. Why did you let them lock me up?”

I heard a heavy sigh in the phone and she said, “Charles, what was I supposed to do? Let them take Mama? Just lock her up? Besides, I didn’t want to talk about it then. You know, what Daddy did to me? I still don’t wanna talk about it, so let’s just drop it. You’re out now, so let bygones be bygones.”

“Bygones? How can you say that to me? Rolene, we’re not talking about a few harsh words. I spent twenty years locked up for something I didn’t do.”

“She was our mother.”

I didn’t know what else to say then. She told me the funeral was to be the following Friday in Santa Barbara, and asked me if I was coming. I said I didn’t think I could make it on such short notice. She said she understood and hung up. Kathryn was in the living room and came in then.

“That was Rolene,” I said.

“I thought so. What did she say?”

“She said Sarah Jane died a couple of days ago in California. Wanted to know if I would be at the funeral.”
“So when do we leave?”

“I’m not going,” I said. She furrowed her brow.

“Not going? Charles, she was your sister. How can you not go to your sister’s funeral?”

“How can I not go? They let me go to prison, I don’t get a letter or a phone call for twenty years, like I’m some kind of criminal? Then all of a sudden I’m supposed to be part of the family again?”

“I know you are still bitter about that, but no matter what has happened, Charles, Rolene is family. She may be the only family you have left. I know you, and you’re better than that.” She started back to the living room, but stopped in the doorway. “You really should go, you know. Besides, it’s the Christian thing to do.” I didn’t reply, but I knew she was right.




Kathryn and I left the following morning on an early flight for Santa Barbara. We got a nice hotel and started unpacking, then took a nap to get over the jet lag. I decided not to call Rolene and tell her I had reconsidered.

Friday afternoon, Kathryn and I arrived by taxi at the cemetery, a large plot of ground outside the city limits that appeared to be half the size of the one at Arlington. Kathryn wore a black dress and pillbox hat while I was dressed in a black suit with a navy blue tie. We didn’t see Rolene at first but then I spotted her standing off to one side with a dark-haired man who bore a strong resemblance to Peter Sellers. We approached her cautiously and she met my glances once or twice but I could tell she didn’t recognize me. The man who looked like Peter Sellers said something to her, shook her hand, then walked away. Rolene looked at me again but this time she nodded politely.

“Hello Rolene,” I said.

She turned her head at an angle, trying to place my face. “Yes?” she said. She would have been in her mid or late forties by then but she looked ten years older. I could tell by the lines in her face and the way her mouth drooped at the corners that she’d had a hard life. Later I heard that her first husband was a drunk who used her for a punching bag when the mood struck him and that her second husband wasn’t much different. Her hair was shorter and dominated mostly by gray.

“I’m Charles,” I said. “I’m your brother.”

Her eyes widened and her hand went to her mouth. “Charles? You said you couldn’t make it-“

“I changed my plans,” I shrugged. “So how are you?”

She looked down at her shoes for a second, then back up at me. “I’m doing okay. Is this your wife?”

“Yes, let me introduce you. Rolene, this is my wife, Kathryn. Kathryn, this is my sister, Rolene.”

Kathryn smiled, offered her hand and said, “Wonderful to meet you.”

Rolene shook hands and nodded. “Nice to meet you too.” There was a brief pause in the conversation. “So I guess you want to go see her,” she said to me.

“Yes,” I said and followed her to the gravesite. About forty or fifty people stood around talking, mostly in quiet tones but I caught a few snatches of conversation here and there. I heard the words “so sad” and “bone cancer” and “for a long time”. The casket was open and Sarah Jane lay inside it with her hands crossed over her stomach. I confess I felt a lump in my throat when I saw her. She was wearing a dark green dress and what hair she had left after the chemotherapy was mostly white. I stood there under the blue Santa Barbara sky that afternoon in May, fighting back tears and gazing at my sister who had once picked me up when I’d gashed my leg on a barb wire fence and bandaged me up, telling me corny jokes all the while to make me laugh, my sister who had helped me with my homework more times than I could remember, my sister who had stared at me on a dark day in 1947 with cold eyes and a tight mouth, believing I had murdered our father, the sister who had fought a battle for the last seven years as cancer ate at her bones, and lost, who was now lying still in a coffin in the middle of a huge graveyard in Santa Barbara. I felt Kathryn squeeze my hand and I tried to swallow the lump. We must have stood there for several minutes and then I was watching them lower her into the ground. As the casket descended lower into the earth and the pallbearers began shoveling the dirt on top of her, I bit my lip and tried hard to be the strong man Kathryn saw me to be. I heard someone gasp next to me and I looked up to see Rolene sobbing into a handkerchief. I looked at Kathryn, who nodded, and I put my arm on Rolene’s shoulders.

“I am so sorry, Charles,” she said between sobs. “I am so sorry for everything.”

I wanted to be angry with her. I wanted to show her how bitter I was for having to serve twenty years of my life in a state prison for a murder I didn’t commit. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and ask her why she let me go to jail when she could have prevented it all along if she had been honest and told the truth. I wanted to scream and yell at her and demand she give me back those twenty years I lost. Instead, I patted her back with my palm and nodded. “It’s okay, Rolene. We’re family.” The Bible says we’re not to hold a grudge.

“That’s right. And we’re all that’s left.” She buried her face in the handkerchief and sobbed again.

“I know.”

She removed the hanky and said, “She knows.” Thinking she meant Sarah Jane knew we were finally patching up old wounds, I nodded.

“Good,” I said.

“She knows the truth,” she said and looked directly into my eyes.

“She knows…knew…everything? How long?”

“I told her a week before…before she passed,” she said and had to use the handkerchief again. When she looked up, her eyes were red and her mascara was starting to run. “I felt I owed her the truth.”

“I see. What did she say?” I said.

“She said she couldn’t believe I would let you go to prison, knowing you were innocent. She got mad at me and wouldn’t talk to me for a few days. That was hard.”

“I am sorry.”

“When she decided to talk again, she said she wanted to see you again. She said she wanted…to apologize.” Rolene sobbed again and covered her face with her hands. I pulled her closer and she threw her arms around me and hugged me.
“It’s alright,” I said, patting her back. “It’s forgotten. The Bible says turn the other cheek.”

“I love you, Charles,” she said in my ear.

“I love you too, Rolene.”



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I am watching the sun come up over the trees as I write this. I may not see many more sunrises so I like to get up early every morning before dawn and wait for them. I have the blinds open in my window here and the rays are streaming through unobstructed. It is a truly beautiful morning and I hope I see many more like it.

I have passed the autumn of my life and now have my feet firmly planted in the winter. I cherish every day like it was a newborn child. I have tried to make up for the twenty years I lost so long ago but I have learned that the best remedy is to make the most of the time we do have. Breakfast will be coming soon and I will have to take my medicine, so I will close this letter now. Kathryn will be here in a few minutes for her daily visit and I look forward, as always, to seeing her pretty face. She is not the young auburn-haired girl she once was, but as they say, time marches on. I like to tell her that I was once lost, but a Lamb saved my life. She thinks I’m being funny, but I’m not.

One more thing I feel I should tell you. Rolene passed away in Philadelphia in 1994. The doctors said her heart gave out on her. I think she just carried the guilt as long as she could. Since she was the only other person who knew the truth besides me, I felt like I should tell you all so you would know what really happened to your great-grandfather and how he died. I will be gone in a short time, and there will be no one left who was there who can tell the truth about the matter. The wise man said, “Buy the truth and sell it not.” That’s in the book of Proverbs, chapter twenty-three. You can look it up.

Kathryn, your grandmother, is here now so I will lay down my pen and visit with her. Remember the things I have told you, and do not forget them. And remember this: love each other, no matter what. Family is family. Don’t let anything or anyone take that from you.

Be kind to each other, children, for kindness begats kindness. You will be old, as I am, one day. And kindness is a good thing to have when you’re old. I must go now.

Time marches on.




The End