((or “The Unlawful Death Case of Otis Wilde Mather)
(A Shannon O’Day, four part story))
Parts one thru four:
Cornfield Burner
A Countryside Boxer
The Black Sedan
&
The Corncob Pipe
“Cornfield Burner…!”
1950
Part One of Four
“What proofs have you Mr. Gus O’Day?” ask Judge Finley.
“I told you the nigger got into my cornfield, was drunk waiting for my brother Shannon to show up and he was the only one there!”
Judge Finley hesitated looked at Otis Wilde Mather… “But that isn’t any substantial proof!”
“I told him, warned him not to go in there without Shannon my brother, I knew he smoked that damn corncob pipe, and drank,” said Gus O’Day.
“Shannon, he tells me, your honor, it be O.K., ef-in I goes in dere and waits fer him,” said Otis.
“Who told you that you could talk Mr. Mather, shut up until you’re told it’s your time to talk, you hear me?” said the judge.
“Yessum,” said Otis, and then nodded his head up and down.
“And this here is the man you’re talking about, right Mr. O’Day?” and the judge waved his hand for Otis to standup.
“Yes sir, your honor, that sure is the man who burned my cornfields…” said Gus O’Day, adding, “He’s a strange one, but my brother likes him for some odd reason, comes from down south and causes trouble up here.”
“But you don’t have any real proof,” said the judge, “you can see that, right?”
“Bring that big black nigger up over here, he’ll tell the truth, or else!”
Otis was still standing, big and wiry, in patched trousers, dusty and dirty, and ripped along the ridges, they were too tight for the six-foot six, man, some 220-pounds. With deep dark eyes, unkempt hair, gave him a wild look, yet he was not an uncultivated man per se. He noticed all the white males’ grim faces in the courtroom. And here was a short white, gray haired judge, past middle age, with small gold rimmed glasses ordering him to stand and be accountable.
Otis’ body appeared to be stiff, from sleeping in a cramped jail cell overnight. This was not a court of judgment, just a fact finding court that being of a preliminary hearing to see if it was a case to be taken to court, or could be settled out of court.
Otis, didn’t seem to look at anybody in particular, he just stood there blankly, like the Tower of Pisa.
“What’s your name, boy?” asked the judge.
“Otis Wilde Mather, sir,” said the big Blackman.
“Where is your hometown?”
“Ozark, Alabama, sir.”
“Did you fall to sleep in the cornfields and with a lit pipe, burn Mr. O’Day’s crops to smithereens?”
“Nope. But I done drank some whisky your honor and I done left my corncob pipe at Mr. Shannon O’Day’s apartment, sir.”
There was no sound in the courtroom, you could have heard a dime drop had one dropped; it was absolutely hushed, everyone waiting for the Judge’s decision on the matter.
“So you’re saying you’re not guilty of this crime, is that so Mr. Mather?”
“Yessum your honor, dhats waht I is sayin’ cuz I dont rightly know how dhat dhere fire got a burnin’”
Gus’ face exploded with anger “Damn nigger!” he yelled.
“Case dismissed,” said the judge, adding “I can’t even find you careless, Mr. Mather, but I suggest you leave this city and go on back home where you belong, down to that Alabama place, and right quick. And if I ever see you in my courtroom again, you’ll be in the workhouse faster than you can say Jack Johnson.”
“I aint a-goin’ to stay,” said Otis, “dont care fer this place anymore…”
“That’s enough,” said the judge, “get on your way now, out of my courtroom, case dismissed!”
Shannon O’Day had appeared somewhere in the crowd, saw Otis, and then walked out of the courtroom with Otis, gave him some chewing tobacco, they both had smiles on their faces, everyone else had a grim face.
Out on the courthouse steps were several women, farm folk that lived around Gus’ place, repeating: “Cornfield burner! Cornfield burner!”
Said Gus to his brother Shannon outside in the courthouse, “Brother, you got to learn to stick with your own blood!”
Shannon didn’t say a word, he knew the truth, and the truth didn’t come out in the courtroom, and he knew who had the truth, and if it did come out, Gus would hate him for it. So Shannon just stood behind other folks and listened, and figured, ‘We’ll see what tomorrow will bring.’
Subchapter
The Secret
Shannon gave Gus $500-dollars, every penny he had, it was a gift given to his wife from her father, now separated from Margaret-Rose. Gus took the money saying to his wife, Mabel, “I hate to take it but I got to plant again, I imagine I’ll remain friends with my brother, even if he likes niggers—he didn’t burn my cornfield up anyhow, I know that! And I’ll owe him heart and soul until I pay him back.”
Then Shannon showed up at the door, hugged his brother, and they were like two happy hogs again.
“I have some work to do with my new man,” said Gus, “Albert Fitzgerald, we’re going to replant as soon as possible.”
And he left the house.
“Come with me,” said Mabel to Shannon, and they went outside, to make sure no one was listening.
“Yes,” said Shannon.
“Otis,” she mentioned, and then paused as if it was Shannon’s turn to speak.
“I’m supposing he’ll be fine, he’s going back to Alabama on the 7:30 p.m., train this evening.”
“You know I’ll owe you body and soul for as long as I live Shannon!” she said.
They walked up to the burnt cornfields, to its edge, it was a warm day, and as Shannon looked over the field, it was as if he had lost his lover, but he always had his friend’s farm to drink in, right next door to Gus’ place.
“You saved our marriage,” she told Shannon, as he stood foot solid looking at her, she was a nice looking woman, more plain than pretty, but she kept herself up, she wasn’t fat or too thin. Then he turned about, saw her farmhouse, perhaps this was the first time he took a good look at it, and the rose bushes, the wooden gate that was closed tight in the front of the house, the creek that run in the back of the house, and to its side, Gus and Mabel had put a lifetime of work into their marriage, and this farm.
It was a land of small farms, and cornfields, it was his world as well as Gus’. It brought him peace and joy. For no reason he could put into words, his mind being too liquefied from booze for deep thinking, yet he knew Mabel and Gus were safe from divorce now. And her dignity untouched and the buzzing wasps from the courthouse were put to rest, no longer capable of stinging his family.
Shannon knew this was the only way to stop sorrow, certainly raving jealous rage, iron like anger, it would have changed Gus forever, had he known the truth…
Shannon remembered his Negro friend was shouting: “Miss Mabel! Miss Mabel! You-is drunk, go-on back to your house befer youall git us in trouble!”
Gus was passed out in his bed, in the house. And Shannon had just taken a bath in the creek. No one seeing him, not even Otis, still waiting for him to show up, and here he was watching it all, pert near all.
He saw Mabel, in a thin, near see through nightgown, more like a slip, laced around the neck, thrashing like, trying to wipe booze off her lips and face and chin, with the palm of her hand.
After it was all over and Mabel no longer on her back, she stood up, shook herself clean, and headed on back to her house.
Shannon, now looking at Otis, “I tole her no, but…” he said to Shannon, cockeyed and loopy, as Shannon just shook his head.
“I heard yaw!” said Shannon, “now will you please just go away,” he told Otis, holding his breath, and Otis did.
Mabel had carried a kerosene lamp (paraffin style house lamp) the kind where the knob protruding to the right adjusts the wick, and hence the flame size—carried it outside with her, and now was carrying it back towards the farmhouse—heading out of the cornfields, it slipped out of her hands, and she fell a few feet from the fire that had now started, it had started almost instantly when she dropped the lantern—the glass had broken, and the fire escaped, and Shannon could do only one of two things: stop the fire by putting it out with his shirt or pants, or put Mabel back into her house, into her bed with Gus before Gus woke up to find out what all the fuss was about, and hope Otis could find his way back to his apartment in the city, in the dark, but he’d have to let the cornfields burn if he did that. And we all know what he did—what he felt was the lesser of the evils. He did not speak again to Otis until that day at court. He had never seen a man, white or black sweat so hard, as Otis did in that courtroom. But then, who wouldn’t under the same circumstances.
5-12-2009 ••
A Countryside Boxer
((A Shannon O’Day Story) (Follow up to “Cornfield Burner!”))
Fall of 1979
Part Two of Four
In the corn growing farm business, Mrs. Mabel O’Day appeared to prosper (even after her husband and brother-in-law, Gus and Shannon O’Day passed on). That being, she soon eliminated all unneeded expenses, and presently she was out of the farming business, with a hired manager, Mr. Fitzgerald to run it. And we farm folk from that area, figured that we knew what the stepping-stone to the rise of her prosperity was due to. On the other hand we believed it was without a doubt—the evil that brought on Gus’ down fall—likened to the evil that brought on his brother Shannon’s down fall (both being the same evil), was due to, pure and simply, abuse of alcohol. All these lost hours and days, and years, have a bearing upon a man’s prosperity—we told one another—despite his hard labor, he needed a level and clear head, a healthy body; this he seldom had, if he ever had.
We saw Mabel O’Day every Sunday—those of us who went to church that is—saw Mabel behind the last pew in the church—fresh as a daisy—younger looking at seventy-nine, than she was looking at forty-nine; having a rosy kind of rich coloring to her face.
Although Mabel was considered born plain, she somehow—now in her golden-years—brought with her that vast, calm impermeable loveliness. Listening with a slight smile to the corners of her mouth as the preacher preached, the collarless young preacher, of our local countryside church, who this one day gave a sermon on how life is but a flicker of light, from a bonfire—which was the Sunday before all this happened.
That’s why we seldom gossiped about her, when we saw her at the North St. Paul restaurants, or country store, or walking the concrete sidewalks of St. Paul.
We all doubted she was ever, had ever been close to anyone but Gus; for to do her justice we simply didn’t gossip about that—save her husband and Shannon O’Day we had enough to talk about. But there was still that vague, hazy, indefinable, if not intangible thing, a white and gray cloud over her head called Otis Mather, from Alabama. Shannon O’Day’s close Negro friend, the very one Gus took no liking for. Tried to prosecute him for burning his cornfields down one year who had gotten drunk in the cornfields and somehow a fire started.
Certainly it was not his fault that the cornfields burnt to smithereens as it had come out in the court hearing, but we in the countryside felt that the idea of a Blackman visiting Mabel regularly, for a number of years now, almost habitually, something was fishy—that is to say, and I hate to say it, perhaps we were all missing something, perchance what it was, was that somewhere along the line, there had been some kind of adultery in the past with Otis and Mabel.
It seemed absurd at first, even perverted: we could have accepted it, had he not returned to making it more obvious, if not seemingly natural to do so, and now it seemed more logical to think so.
We didn’t try to guess or know her thoughts—not at all, those of us who saw her gaiety when with Otis, walking in the parks, sitting on the benches so close to one another, you couldn’t put an acorn between their thighs, and for hours on end—; hence, she was no longer fooling anyone. We simply said, “She’s not the woman she used to be,” whatever kind of woman or wife she was; now we really didn’t know. For here was a Negro man, with the deceased husband’s wife; a close and dear friend of ours, one of us you might say, and Otis an outsider and a nigger to boot. It was hard for us to make sense of.
Otis was very tall and very black, also very successful, who was from Alabama, who had moved on up to Minnesota a few times, and now it seemed he was more in Minnesota than Alabama, and perhaps thinking of staying on a long term basses in Minnesota, or perhaps even moving to Minnesota on a permanent bases and getting hitched with Mabel. He had never been married.
One afternoon he had just finished raking the front lawn at Mabel’s farm house, and started burning the fall leaves. He was smoking his corncob pipe. The very one Shannon O’Day had given him, when suddenly appeared a black sedan (Otis hadn’t notice the car), but he did the fellow walking towards him. The smell of the fire was rich, fresh and clean and the night part of twilight had just smothered the day part—and there was tranquility in the atmosphere, even the birds seemed to mellow down for the change over of day to night, and the rapid waters from the creek even reduced in sound.
The man approaching had no particular age, heavy boned and broad shoulders, big hands, boxer hands, a broken nose, and a cauliflower ear, a dark shirt on, and a black hat. His face was square and rough looking, he needed a shave. His face looked flat, to absolutely empty. His eyes bloodshot and he staggered just a slight. He seemed lipless, chewing tobacco. He looked up at Otis, about three inches—
“How much did the pipe cost you?” he asked.
“Nothing, it was a gift, why?” asked Otis.
“It must weight a ton for an old man like you to hold onto for any length of time?”
“It’s just a corncob pipe, it don’t weigh nothing!” Otis remarked.
“If it doesn’t give it here, I’ve never smoked a nigger’s corncob pipe before!” the stranger told Otis.
Otis simply continued to look down at the stranger, still holding onto his pipe, then he heard an excruciating sound as if a bone, or bones cracked, a snap here and there, then Otis spit up and out of his mouth blood (it more like poured out), and with a half turn to his right—as the stranger now was walking back to his car, his back to Otis, never once looking back, he knew the damage he had done—Otis having been hit as if by an iron hammer, wobbled, his jaw and neck were broken, he fell onto the ground like boiler room explosion; and expired.
No: 516 (11-16-2009)
The Black Sedan
1981
Part Three of Four
After Otis’ death Mabel built this invisible stone wall that seemed to encircle her—slowly. But then it is always strange to what a simply community of farmers—their methods—what they will resort to in order to punish someone—anyone, dissimilar to them. It was as if there was some unseen force that seeped into the atmosphere and bombarded her; disabling her own level-headedness in business, as if she was working against her better judgment, the very thing that brought her, her prosperity. She fired Mr. Fitzgerald, the very one person, man that had he not picked up where Gus (her late husband) and Mabel herself left off and carried pert near the farm on his own, there would not have been a farm to farm. If anything, he showed high vision, and confidence and courage, where there was none to be found.
Her dream at first—after Gus’ death, and her brother-in-law’s death, Shannon O’Day—was not so high, it was no higher than a casual –common-day laborer’s. Just enough to get by on, eat, and pay for the gas to heat the farmhouse, and buy some feed for the chickens, and seed to plant with; because she didn’t hire Mr. Fitzgerald until the first months of 1968, after Shannon had died.
“She almost came to the point back in the late ‘60s, where she had to sell the farm,” I remember the sheriff had said that, he also told us folks she hadn’t paid her taxes, property taxes going on seven-years. And then we all said, “That damn midnight black nigger—Otis,” and then the last straw was seeing the nigger raking her leaves in the front yard, right out in the open for everyone to see, he must had been gloating, I mean what was next—god forbid!
And so Truman Quinn, got his son, Joe Quinn, the ex boxer, that couldn’t even read an 8th grade text book or the time on a clock properly, to throw a few punches his way. Oh, well, we never believed Otis would get killed over it all, our intentions were to intimidate him, drive him back to where he came from, Alabama. So when Joe hit him, Otis’ head spun to the right, like a dial flying off a speedometer, out of control—something snapped, and then cracked, Joe had broken his jaw and neck—Joe then turned about, came back to the car, we all left Otis there, right where he lay, all four of us in that black sedan of Finley’s, not even willing to see how he was, nor call an ambulance, or to notify his next of kin, we believed they lived in Alabama, and we didn’t want to become a suspect. Plus, it was a cold fall evening, we all wanted to get home, get settled in for the night.
We all assumed, Mrs. O’Day must have dragged that loose and heavy black body, inch by inch, into her home, hoping he would open those dark eyes, and so did the sheriff.
“What in the hell happened?” asked he Sheriff to Mabel.
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you I found him this way, I just don’t know,” and she didn’t know, only four people knew, and three were in the car at the time, the sedan, the black sedan of Finley’s, and the other, the forth one was Joe, and had Otis lived, oh well, why speculate.
She had fired Mr. Fitzgerald, so he couldn’t say a word on the matter, and we four, shut-up about it—the burden was heavy enough, without projecting. Although we were afraid Joe would get drunk and spill the beans, start whispering something out loud about it, some night, and that something would float over to the sheriff’s office, and who knows where else, but it didn’t.
“You mean—” said the sheriff, “that as far as you know, you don’t know anything about this?”
She just nodded her head up and down, holding back, a flood of tears, so the sheriff said.
Up to that night I slept well, and so did Truman, and Joe and our Lawyer friend, George Finley Jr. (the son to the late Judge Finley). We all had been catching our forty winks or so—but now things appeared to be in disarray, you can bet I never slept a whole night through that year of 1979, I always felt I was on a pile of coals, hot coals.
In time we all did—or was able to—shut our eyes and mind to the issue of Otis’ death, as if we had washed our washtubs with Spick and Span (dirt free), and now we could all take a clean bath…
But that disappeared after Mabel died in 1981, at the age of eighty-one years old. She had done exactly what she had done a few decades previously, that being, when she dropped the lamp in the cornfields and burnt them all up; the very ones Otis got blamed for. She had fallen and smashed it on the floor this time, and the house went ablaze. She simply retired into a dim corner of the house, behind some of the junk in the pantry: junk Gus had left piled up before he passed on. Things for the car like bolts, and fitting, and so forth. She just kneeled there, touching those pieces as if sorting them out until the smoke and fire covered her like a foot inside a shoe, removing the last of life from her, tossing it—like a kick from a mule behind her, as if she never was.
That’s the way we all figured it was anyways. That’s how the sheriff saw it likewise. When he looking down on her, after the fire settled, chewing his tobacco as usual, checking his timepiece out as usual, and making out his report as required, the report read “No evidence of foul play,” likened to the report he made out pertaining to Otis Mather’s death.
No: 517 (11-17-2009)
“The Corncob Pipe.”
Winter of 1982
(Part Four of Four)
Joe Quinn stood there with his huge broad, hulk of a body, with his hard square large fists.
“What are you up to?” asked Sheriff Donavan.
“Paw left up in the night, gone fishing I suppose, and it got cold here in the house, and things so quiet, I couldn’t sleep none last night. I spent the whole night trying to fix this here boiler Sheriff, what brings you out this way?”
“Can’t get enough steam in that big old boiler haw?” remarked the Sheriff.
“By the time I shut my eyes last night I could hear the steam shutoff, and I woke up myself chilling like a freezing pigeon. Then after a spell, I couldn’t sleep again.”
“Did you relight that pilot-light underneath the boiler?” Asked the sheriff (smoking a corncob pipe that looked as if it was the very one old Otis Wilde Mather had on the night he was beat to death, that appeared to catch the eye of Joe.
Joe stepped back into a dim lit corner of the basement where the boiler was, where the sheriff had seen him through a window of the basement where a light was on—he came to pay them a visit, was hoping to find Otis alone, knowing these winter months his pa did a lot of night and early morning fishing on the frozen lakes (there in Minnesota), he’d drill a hole in the ice, sit in his icehouse, and drink his beer, fish with his friends, and to him that was heaven on earth.
The Sheriff had simply opened up the outside door, walked into the house, and down the steps to the basement where Joe was (kind of inviting himself in, knowing they usually didn’t keep the doors locked there in the countryside).
“Boy, your pa’s got a lot of junk down here, but I suppose one accumulates it after a life time of miscellaneous collecting everything and thinking one day you’ll going to use it (there were valves and rods and so forth, piled here and there).”
Then the sheriff kneeled down to check the pilot-light, a piece of round metal (like a small cylinder) with a hole in its center, which lit the boiler, and its heating pipes above it, and he lit it, then saw the water gauge to the boiler, a glass flask, brass on the top and bottom, showing the water level, which was perhaps less then ten-percent filled, meaning the boiler was per near dry.
“You’re going to blow this boiler sky high,” said the sheriff, if you don’t refill it with water, cold water, not hot water—hot water will make it crack in this cold. The pilot’s lit now. Once it’s filled gradually heat it, do you understand Joe?”
Joe didn’t want to wait—he just wanted to turn the attached knobs on the water pipes to the boiler, to get it going, operating. Then the sheriff told Joe, “That’s what you got to do, so are you going to fill this thing properly, or blow us up to kingdom come?”
Joe glanced once more at the boiler, then opened its iron trap door, into its round like enclosure, then spat on it, to see if it was hot, and of course it wasn’t hot. Then he glanced again at the corncob pipe, “That corncob pipe sure looks like I saw it before,” remarked Joe, with a frown, “didn’t it belong to that there Negro from Alabama?”
“You mean Otis Wilde Mather?”
“I tends to my own business, I don’t know a thing about what happened to him—ain’t no trouble of mine.”
The sheriff stood there eagle-eyed, chewing his tobacco, and looking at his watch, “Tell me what you know about the unlawful death of Otis Wilde Matter? I’m just trying to get enough facts so I can close this –reopened case, his family from Ozark, Alabama wants a new, and improved investigation, they said the last one was the worse one they had ever heard of—I mean read. And to be honest, we didn’t do much look into.”
Joe had waited until the sheriff had finished, then said—blinking his eyes slowly, and taking in a deep breath—surprisingly said, “Okay, okay, just fix the boiler before paw comes home, he’ll have a fit.”
But the sheriff had already started filling the boiler with water—having had already connected a hose attached to one of the pipes to the boiler, and to the sick, turning on the water, opening up the valves to the boiler, and watched the water level in the glass tube rise, filling the boiler up to a half-inch below the top, allowing a free flow of water throughout the boiler. Then he turned the water off, by turning the two knobs counterclockwise, tightening up the valves, so the water would not drain back out.
“What then?” the Sheriff said.
Joe didn’t answer. He stood large and faceless, too quite, a little cold.
“Yes, yes,” Joe said, “we did it. I hit him, paw told me to scare him, so I hit him, and I guess I hit him too hard.”
Now the sheriff turned on the furnace and it lit up boldly.
“You got anything else to say on the matter?” asked the sheriff.
“No,” said Joe, relieved.
“You do as I say, unless you want to spend the rest of your life in jail (Joe nodded his head up and down, indicating he understood; he was tired of it).
“Who else was in that black sedan of Finley’s, Mabel O’Day’s neighbor said she saw a black sedan that night parked out by the fence, behind that large old oak tree, suspicious like, but hadn’t come forward with the information, knowing it was old Judge Finley’s son’s car?”
Grimly Joe named all four men in the black sedan, to include his self.
No: 517 (11-18-2009)
