A Solomonville Hanging

He said, “Well, goodbye all” and then the drop
was sprung and everybody thought
the execution had gone well. “Certainly neat”
according to Ranger Holmes, and one
of the best Sheriff Thompson ever had
the pleasure of witnessing. William Baldwin
hadn’t intended to drink, but when Sheriff Thompson
offered him a flask of whiskey, he accepted
and eight forty-five in the morning
isn’t too early when it’s the last Friday a man
will ever see. Two hundred and fifty invitations
had been sent, and a fine crowd was assembled
to see the negro die a Catholic, having
converted to the faith and recommended it
to others in his position. The priests
said nothing about a confession, although
Sheriff Thompson was convinced of one,
the facts in the case having been sufficiently
in doubt, and nobody could prove
that the wounds to Baldwin’s face and the cut
at his throat had really been inflicted by
the victim, Mrs. Morris, and not the two Mexicans
Baldwin said he found and tried to stop
from raping and killing the woman and her daughter.
The ground still soft with rain
gave up the tall  man’s tracks, and all the intuition
of an Indian scout led nowhere except back
to the accused. After the arrest, a mob
tried to lynch the prisoner, but Sheriff Thompson
intervened in a manner befitting
an officer of the law. By July twelfth, in the year
nineteen hundred and seven
nobody spoke any more about the accusations
that Ranger Holmes had exercised
undue violence on Baldwin, of which
he’d been found innocent when he said he simply
“hit him once or twice with a light tin dipper
on the head,” and the public concern
shifted to the state of the aging gallows. These
were announced to be serviceable
while William Baldwin took
a break from the merriment that was the manner
of his fellow prisoners, even though his smile
was described as “a little wan,” to pose
for the photograph sent back to Alabama
where his mother might accept it
as his soul. She’d hear second hand
the story that her son had been arrested when
he went to report the crime, and about
the suspects whose disappearance
made the whole case so confusing, right up
to the end, which at least proved to be
“certainly neat.”

© Copyright, 2012, David Chorlton.
All rights reserved.