Swift Justice: The Southern Way (30 page)

Junior continued to ax his father repeatedly. Blood splattered all over the garage and on Junior’s face and clothes. He finally stopped and dropped the ax to the floor. He was breathing uncontrollably.

“There … how does that feel,
Dadeo
?” he said, while hovering over his father’s mutilated body. “That’s for whipping me for all those years.”

Junior nudged his father with his foot but there was no reaction from the Sheriff. “Dad, get up. Come on, get up.”

Junior exhaled and looked at his hands that were covered with blood and then he looked at his father. He stared straight ahead. He finally realized what he had done—he had just killed his dad! Oh my, what did he do? This was not part of his plan. He hated his father, but he never intended to kill him.

Why did he have to show up? Why did he have to figure out that it was me?

Oh well, it did feel
so
good to slaughter him and watch him beg for mercy, Junior thought.

Shit, he had to think—and think quickly. He did not want to go to prison. He was still breathing heavily, but he had to gather his senses and figure out how to clean the mess. It was hard to focus, though. He had just killed his father. But if he didn’t shape up, he would surely go to prison and be a disgrace in Dodge County.

Calm down
, he told himself.
Get a hold of yourself
. He wiped the blood from his watch. It was about five minutes pass eight. Fortunately, it was completely dark outside.

Okay, the first thing Junior had to do was get his father’s car. His father must have brought it, he figured. He jogged out to the front of the house, saw the patrol car, looked around to see if anyone was around, and got into the car, but he didn’t have the keys. Damn, he would have to go back into the garage and get them. He did not need this delay. He ran back into the garage, retrieved the keys from his dead father, ran back to the car, and drove the car to the garage. He got out, swung open the garage doors, and carefully parked the car into the garage.

Junior studied the crime scene. It was a mess. There was ton of evidence in the garage to pin his father’s murder on him. But who would suspect him of killing his father? No one would suspect him. They would never have a reason to search his garage, but he had to get rid of his father’s body. Although no one would have a reason to inspect his garage, he still needed to make an attempt to clean it up to erase the obvious evidence.

He was feeling better now that he was actually formulating a plan. His breathing started to return to normal. He needed to be calm; he thought better that way.

Junior was impressed with his ability to develop instant detail plans. Once he found out that Lucky, and his crew, were going to kill Leon, he knew he had to get back at Lucky for torturing Jerome. He quickly developed his plan, which he was proud of. He would disguise himself completely with a hood, overalls, and gloves, so Leon wouldn’t be able to identify him. Plus, Lucky would probably think that Junior was part of the Klan with the hood and all. Also, as part of his plan, he would not say a word—that was key. This way Leon wouldn’t be able to tell whether he was white or black.

But there were two problems that he overlooked on the first set of murders. First, he should have worn a black mask under his hood, so the white from around his eyes couldn’t be seen. Although Leon couldn’t tell, or, at least he didn’t say anything about the eyes, Junior considered this a mistake. Second, he left the tire marks. Damn, he thought that was a mistake, but he thought he had parked far away, so no one would discover the tire marks. Actually, he never considered that the truck would even leave tire marks. His father had surprised him that he figured out to look for tire marks so far away. The tire marks are what could possibly bring him down. Damn, he should have thought about that beforehand.

Similar to Leon’s situation, once he found out that Cueball was going to kill Deron, he would kill Cueball because Cueball was also at Jerome’s lynching. Junior would seek revenge on anyone involved in Jerome’s lynching. There must have been about fifty white people at his lynching.

It was weird. Junior truly hated niggers. He thought they were dirty, stupid, and violent. He was actually scared of them, as well, because they were usually much bigger than most white people were. He hated them all—except for Jerome. He didn’t consider Jerome a nigger. Jerome was family to Junior. He was a farm hand. Jerome loved to play baseball. He was a retired professional baseball player from the Negro Baseball League. Jerome was a tall thin man in good physical shape for a person in his late forties.

But Junior’s old man, the Sheriff, was never around. Or when he was around, he would usually be drunk. He would drag Junior to Klan gatherings to instill the brainwashing of hating niggers into his son. It worked. Junior learned to hate and fear niggers growing up. All his friends were taught the same, and they all shared the same learned hatred. If Junior stepped out of line, even in the slightest bit, his father was quick to whip him with a belt. Junior estimated that his dad whipped him over a hundred times during his childhood.

Jerome witnessed some of these beatings and must have felt sorry for Junior because he took Junior under his wings. At first, Junior was skeptical of interacting with a Negro, especially if his friends saw him. If his friend saw him playing with a Negro, he would be an outcast and a laughingstock in town. He wouldn’t have any friends. No one would associate with him.

But Jerome seemed to realize this too. Jerome noticed that Junior liked baseball. One day, Junior was throwing a rubber ball against a wall. Jerome gracefully walked up to him and said, “Hey, Mr. Tyler, nice throw.”

“Thanks,” Junior replied.

“You know I used to play professional baseball in the Negro league,” said Jerome. “Did you know that?”

“No,” Junior replied.

“Hey, I tells you what, why don’t you grab that bat over there, and I’ll pitch to you.”

Junior remember vividly that he just stood there for what was an unusually long time staring at Jerome. All he wanted to do was pitch him a baseball, but it felt like this was the most important decision of Tyler’s ten-year-old life at the time. This was unheard of for a white kid to play baseball with a Negro. Junior remembered that he looked around to see if anyone could see him and noticed that no one was around. “Okay,” Junior said hesitantly.

“Okay, go on and get over there.”

Junior ran to the side of the infamous garage, grabbed the bat laying on the ground, and got into his right-handed batting position. His batting stance was awful.

Jerome noticed and said, “No, no, we gots to do something here.” He walked up to him. “You gots to bat lefty.”

“I don’t know how to bat lefty. Why do I got to bat lefty?”

“You be like me. I throw righty and bat lefty. This way you’re closer to first when you bat. You hit a ball down the third base line; you might be able to beat out the throw. I’ve seen you run. You’re fast.”

So Jerome showed him how to bat lefty and showed him how to pitch. When no one was around, they would play for hours. Junior became pretty good at baseball and eventually played for the high school team.

Junior used to steal money from his parents all the time. It wasn’t that hard. His father and mother both put their wallet and purse on the kitchen counter. Junior would usually just steal some change, but on one day, while he was thirteen, he stole a ten-dollar bill. His father noticed it was missing. His father never even accused Junior. His father just assumed that it had to be Jerome, who was the only male Negro that worked on the farm.

That night, several Klan members came to their house in the evening, and Lucky was one of them. Junior’s father gathered everyone in a small room in the house.

“Okay, my nigger, Jerome, has been stealing money from me for a long time. I noticed that I’ve been short on change a lot lately, but now the nigger has stolen a ten-dollar bill from me.”

“You’re kidding,” Lucky had said.

“Yes, I think we have to discourage this type of thing from happening to anyone else,” the Sheriff had said, though he wasn’t the Sheriff back then.

“You bet yah,” Lucky had said enthusiastically. “Let’s string him up.”

Junior remembered that he froze in that room. He wanted to say something. He wanted to say:
Stop, don’t do it. Jerome didn’t steal the money. I stole the money
. But the words wouldn’t come out. He was too chicken to say anything because he knew that he would have been whipped himself and in a whole lot of trouble. But he couldn’t let them hang his best friend, Jerome. He couldn’t.

But he did.

And he regretted it the rest of his life. It gnawed at him. He hated himself, but he also hated everyone involved, especially his dad for initiating it. He fantasized about hanging his dad, Lucky, and the whole Klan. See how they liked being hung, he thought. These feelings of hatred simmered for years, but he did nothing. Instead, he, himself, rose up in the Klan ranks. He participated in violent acts with the Klan, though his role was usually minimal.

But he had to do something for Jerome’s sake and for his own sanity. He had to get revenge for Jerome, eventually.

That time came on October 19, 1954. He saw that opportunity, and killed Lucky and his crew. Then another opportunity presented itself two nights later, with Cueball and his evil brothers.

He corrected his mistake from the first crime scene because he wore a black mask under his hood, but he had actually more problems on the second night than the first night. He left gun shells, he left footprints, and he let one of the guys get away. He allowed Deron to get a real good look at him because the lighting was better than in the woods for Leon. He also didn’t have an alibi for either night, which was another mistake. He needed a better excuse of where he was at besides just being home alone.

So what was he to do? His initial plan, before his old man showed up, was to blow up the stage at the KOT meeting. He got this idea for the same reason why he burned down the Social Club: a divergence. He wanted the National Guard to march into town. He wanted everyone to think that a Negro did it, and the town was in the midst of a racial riot. He needed to get his dad and the FBI off the idea that a white person did the crimes. What better way than to blow up the stage at a Klan meeting. Of course, the Klan leaders would be hurt and probably even killed from the explosion, but he was fine with that outcome. Of course, his father, if he was still alive, would probably have been one of those victims, and he was fine with that as well.

He had devise a simple time bomb. He tightly, but carefully, wrapped five sticks of dynamite with electrician’s black tape. He cut off the wicks for the dynamite, so they were only about two inches long. In the middle of the wrapped dynamite, at the top, he rigged up a special timer. He had to be very careful not to accidentally set it off on himself. The rear of the timer was exposed. Whatever he set the timer for, it would strike a wire that was connected to a special type of switch that would close a circuit and create a small spark. The spark would be enough to ignite the wicks. He tested this process with firecrackers, and, after making some modifications, it worked perfectly every time.

But that was his plan before his father showed up. He wondered if he had enough time to get rid of his dad’s body and still plant the bomb. He looked at his watch. It was 7:45 p.m. The KOT meeting was at 10:30 p.m. If he was to blow up the stage, he would need to get there at least an hour before the meeting. That meant he only had about an hour to get rid of the body, and the car for that matter, and get to the KOT meeting by 9:30 p.m. He figured that the number one priority was to get rid of the body. If he ran out of time to plant the bomb, then that was okay.

A thought just occurred to Junior’s. If he played his cards right, he could end up being the Sheriff and possibly the new leader of the Klan. Wow, wouldn’t that be great, he thought. The person, who was killing the Klan and the Sheriff, ends up being the Imperial Wizard and the Sheriff. People would sympathize with him as he lost his father to a brutal murder done by a bunch of dirty niggers. This was perfect.

But how does he get rid of the body and where would he put it? He had to brainstorm. He sat down on the bloody bench stool. He felt that he needed to sit down in order to think clearly. The first thing he would have to do is to quickly clean up the obvious bloodstains. He wouldn’t have time to do a thorough cleaning, though, but he would do the best that he could.

But where and how to get rid of the body? Okay, he had to think of some ideas. Keep the body where it was at and say someone came in and killed his father and spared him? No. But wait, what if he had injuries that he could self-inflict, maybe that would convince someone. After all, no one is going to suspect a father’s son. He didn’t like this idea, but he wasn’t going to rule it out.

The next scenario he could think of was to put his father’s body in the back of pickup truck and dump it somewhere. But what would he do with his dad’s patrol car? He would have to separately get rid of the patrol car without being noticed. Or maybe he could put his dad’s body in the trunk of the patrol car and dump the patrol car along with his dad’s body somewhere. But how would he get back to his house or back to his pickup truck without someone noticing him.

This was not going to be easy. There were so many problems to work out. Did he want someone even to discover the body? Perhaps he could bury his dad and the patrol car on his property. Perhaps even bury him in the garage. But he would prefer to blame, somehow, this murder on the Negroes. Ideally, he would like to dump his father’s body on the other side of the railroad tracks. This way people would definitely think it was the Negroes who did the crime. But how would he get back. It was at least ten miles from where he lived. Perhaps he could put his father’s body in the trunk of the patrol car, drive it to the railroad tracks, dump his body, and drive back to near his house. Then, get rid of the car near his house. This was not a bad idea, but it had so many problems as well.