Thoughts From the Front Porch

When I was about two years old, my parents moved us into the house they’d built on Third Avenue, in the same block as the First Baptist Church. And it wasn’t long before I was toddling over the vacant lot to the Kendrick’s house, which faced Highway 231. There were children there; more specifically, there was a girl child my age, Carrie Anne. Carrie Anne became my first friend. We held many a roly-poly funeral under the chinaberry tree on the corner. And the Kendricks’ house became a second home to me.

Of course, when a child is as young as that, she has no notion of any life that came before her own. Back then, it seemed to me that Mr. Kendrick had always been just a daddy, who went to work and came home for supper, fixed what broke and told jokes. I felt close the Kendrick family, even after we moved to a different neighborhood in 1956. A few years later, they moved to our new neighborhood too, and I could once again visit them often. But it wasn’t until a bit later in my life that I became aware of how well Joe Kendrick had known my family and our griefs, long before I was born.

When Carrie Anne and I were in high school, her mother brought out a high school yearbook from 1939 to show us. As we turned the pages, we found photos of familiar townspeople at absurdly young ages. The soft and greying folks of our parents’ generation were caught there in an alternate reality. They were trim, young, strong, beautiful; athletes, scholars, class presidents. All of them, even the shyest wallflower, had been temporary stars in our local corner of the galaxy.  All of them with limitless potential. It was a phenomenon we were quite able to comprehend. Logically, we knew it would happen one day to the football players and beauty queens of our generation. It would happen to us. But at sixteen, we just couldn’t completely believe it ever really would happen.

In one photo near the back of that book was Joe Kendrick standing with my Uncle Ross, arms around each other’s shoulders, best friends, both of them beaming at the camera. Both of them so new to the world, with expectations of nothing but a brilliant, happy future as friends. They didn’t know then that Ross would die at 23 on an island in the Pacific and Joe would live well into that incomprehensible new millennium ahead and die at 84.

In 2004, when Aunt Nancy and I were thinking of people to talk to about the murders, Joe Kendrick’s name came up. So we made a date to see him. He still lived in the house in the our neighborhood, where he and Alice had brought up their family. But Alice had died a year or two before, so now Joe lived alone.

We went to the back door and knocked. Joe was ready for us. He opened the door and waved us in, hugging us as we went by him. The house had gone down a good bit since Alice died, and she been sick a good while before that. Alice had always loved her house and set a high standard for housekeeping. It looked as if Joe was not exactly living alone. He had several dogs he kept as pets now. How many, I don’t know. And he loved his dogs more than his house. But that was all right too.

Aunt Nancy said, “Joe, it is so good to see you. It’s been so many years.”

Joe led us over to the kitchen table, the same one where we had so many fried chicken dinners. It was full of memorabilia now. Joe had been doing “research” since we’d made our date, and he’d drug out all sorts of albums and boxes and memory books. He motioned us to some chairs and asked, “How long has it been?”

“Lord, I can’t imagine,” Nancy said, glancing at the stacks of photos on the table as she sat down. “Have you got a picture of you and Ross in your caps and gowns?”

“I do, but I’ve got to look for it.”

Nancy said, ” I do. I’ve got one right here in this album I brought. Of y’all and Griff Stevens.” Nancy opened her album to the right page and let Joe see. “Oh, you’ve kept a lot of stuff. You look like you’re doin’ good, Joe. How old are you?”

“Eighty-three.”

“Okay that’s what I was guessing. You and Ross were the same age.”

“Now what pictures did you get out?” I asked.

John put an open album down in front of me. “There’s Ross. I got one somewhere of four of us, standing up there on the drugstore corner. But I can’t find it.”

They didn’t talk about how sad it was Ross died so young, and how much Nancy and Joe had missed him. They both were thinking that. But they didn’t need to say it.

So Nancy moved on and said, “Joe, I got to thinking about this lately and I was wondering. How long did you work up there at the movie theater?”

Joe’s eye twinkled at me just a little. He was always ready with something funny, when the sadness got to be too much. “Well, I worked 25 years at the picture show. I worked 25 years a-paintin’ signs. And I worked 25 years at the post office.”

I laughed and said, “Joe, that’s more years than you’ve got.”

He continued. “Two and a half years in the army and three years in the first grade.” We all had a good laugh then.

But I had to get to the point of our visit. I said, “Can you tell me what you remember about Doc and Kathleen dying? Or just about them. Anything about them.”

Joe looked around for something on the table. “I got the clippin’ right here somewhere. Byrd Richardson done it.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “That’s what everybody says. Were you livin’ here when it happened?”

“Yeah. I sure was. What’s so bad, best I remember, Mr. Hart, your gran-daddy, must ‘ve been on the Grand Jury. Kept tellin’ me, ‘Byrd done it. We got to git him.’ And I don’t remember who the DA was. Do y’all know that?”

“Well,” I said, gently as I could, “Joe, I don’t think they ever had a trial or a Grand Jury hearing. My other granddaddy, Mama’s daddy, was on the Coroner’s Jury.”

Nancy said, “Yes. They had a Coroner’s Jury to meet on it.”

But Joe was certain. “No. This was the Grand Jury. They never returned a bill against him. Whoever was the DA pushed it through. But evidently, Byrd must’ve made a play for Kathleen and that’s where it started. He killed ‘em, and he burnt the house down.”

I wondered if Joe was confusing this case with another, later one. But I surely didn’t want to argue with him. It’s not much use to try to change folks’ minds after fifty or sixty years. Besides, maybe he was right. I’d have to look into that. I decided to move the topic along a little.

“We’re trying to get people to tell us what they remember, Joe, because the people who were old enough to understand back then, they’re leavin’ us. And I know nobody we’ve talked to, except that they felt like Byrd did it. Nobody’s left alive that was there that night.”

“Who was there?” Joe asked.

“Well, they said Lavinia McCollum was there and Howard Malloy. He was a single man then. We’ve talked with his widow. She didn’t know anything. Or wasn’t willing to talk. There was a couple I’ve never heard of and Nancy doesn’t remember them either. And then Will and Lois Yates. And I feel like anything that they knew, they would’ve told Daddy or Mama. They were all such close friends. Then Will was killed in that car wreck. He was goin’ so fast. In 1952, just a day before Nancy’s wedding. Daddy always grieved about Will dying. He said he thought maybe Will had a seizure or somethin’ that caused him to lose control of the car. Left Lois with five children. One of them just a baby.

“But, you know? We don’t have anything except what we remember hearing Daddy or Big Mama say. Mama never said much about it. Lois was in the nursing home at the same time as Mama. Whenever I went in to see her, would go by to speak to Lois. All those times we’d talk. And her mind was good, too. But I didn’t realize then that she was there at Kathleen’s that night. That she had anything to do . . . not that she anything to do with it, but that she might be able to tell me anything about it. So I never asked her.”

Nancy said, “Did you say something about-? What was  it your Daddy said about-Didn’t Lois and Will say somethin’ to your Daddy about that night?”

“Well, all I remember is they just said what Joe said. That Byrd made an overture or a play for Kathleen. He must’ve been unusually drunk and obnoxious. And she didn’t like it at all. Doc didn’t like it either. Not one bit. So he got mad and threw Byrd out. Or tried to. I guess Byrd wasn’t accustomed to being thrown out of places. He was probably shocked by that. I don’t know. Seems to me Byrd had such a powerful place around here. Or his family did. They had so much more money and power than anybody else. He was used to doin’ as he pleased. Thought he was entitled to have what he wanted, when he wanted it. So, to be rebuffed like that. And in front of all those people. It was humilating. And he lashed out.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, “He must’ve thought he was. I used to run with him, when I was real young and didn’t know better. Drinkin’ and gamblin’. He was always doin’ crooked stuff and gettin’ away with it. I remember one time, he come to pick me up and took me up to a house over there near the county line. Close to the Black and White. They was playin’ poker that night in there. High stakes. So I sat down and played with ‘em.

“All of sudden here come this bunch in there a-shootin’. Byrd took off like a shot and hid under a bed and I got there ahead of him. I was purty quick in them days. I don’t know what that was about. I guess they took the stakes off the table. Wasn’t no money or people left in there when we come out. But that was the last time I run with Byrd. He wasn’t no way worth gettin’ killed for. They had money though. That family. You remember, his uncle, Mr. Pete, had control of the bank back then.”

“Somebody else said that. Said Mr. Byrd, Sr. never went to the bank much. Didn’t seem that interested in it. He had his farmland and his rents. He had his store and his gin and his cotton warehouse. That’s where the money was made back in those days.”

Joe said, “I had somebody tell me one time, if a farmer in the county tried to take his cotton to another gin, Byrd, Jr. would kill ‘em. They didn’t get no warning. It didn’t take many killin’s before they got all the ginnin’ and warehouse business.”

“But the real money,” I said, “the big money, that came from what Byrd, Jr. made in the stock market. I understand that was considerable. Mr. Byrd, Sr. was probably the richest man in the state after he got Byrd that seat on the stock exchange. But somehow or other along the way, Mr. Pete lost control of the bank.”

Joe said, “Well, now. That right there. That’s a long story.”

“Is it?” I asked and sat up to listen.

“Let’s hear it,” said Nancy.

But Joe was making a motion, waving his hand at  the tape recorder.

“You don’t want to be recorded?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Cut it off.” So I did.

Later that afternoon I went to see a good friend, an old friend I could talk to about anything. And we talked.

I said to her “Now, your Mama and Daddy lived here in town when this murder happened. What did they say about it?”

“They talked about it. They said Byrd did it.”

“Well, that’s about all Joe would say. Oh, he did tell this story. Said ol’ Fitzhugh Montgomery had just set up his law practice. Was young and new in the business. So Byrd called him up one day and said he wanted some legal work done. He wanted Fitzhugh to fix him up some papers and come and meet him somewhere. And when he did, they took off together, just them, in Byrd’s car. No driver or anything. So Byrd drove ‘em down to his old home place in Cropwell, where his daddy lived.”

“The big house.”

“That’s right. The big house. And Byrd said, ‘Come on. We’re goin’ down there. And he took Fitzhugh with him down to the big house. I reckon they, or rather Byrd, had picked a time of day when nobody much would be around. Nobody, but the afflicted boy.

“And Byrd had told Fitzhugh ahead of time what he wanted, and he’d made him up a power of attorney or some sort of instrument or paper like that. Whatever it took for the afflicted boy to sign, givin’ his bank stock over to Byrd. And said, Byrd forced that poor afflicted boy to sign that paper. Forced him. So Fitzhugh did whatever it was he was supposed to do so that Byrd could begin to get controllin’ interest in the bank.”

“What about that sister that never married?”

“Fern.”

“Yes, Fern.”

“I reckon they made her sign somethin’ too. On another day. ”

“Fern and the afflicted boy and Byrd. That was all the children. And the afflicted boy slept in a back room?”

“Well, that’s what they told. They kept the afflicted boy in a back room, because they were ashamed of him, people said. Maybe they just thought he’d rather not go in public. You know, they probably had him back there, ’cause of the wheelchair. It was a room he could have, without anybody having to carry him up the stairs. Anyway. I think that’s awful. That nobody ever saw him. The afflicted boy was the oldest, you know, and Fern the youngest, by quite a few years. He was probably nearly fifty when this happened. I wonder why nobody in town ever called him by his name?”

“What was his affliction?”

“I don’t know. I had an idea it was somethin’ like what-”

“What Larry had. Cerebral palsy.”

“Yes. Maybe because I have this image of him-of Larry at home and in town. At least his parents were proud of him and brought him out in public. I always looked for him when I was little, at church, so I could give him a little smile. Or just acknowledge him, somehow. He remembered me from when I was four and went to his mama’s pre-school at their house.”

“But this boy, the Richardson boy. His mind was good?”

“Yes. I think so. It’s so tragic. It was a different time, I guess.”

“Not that different. How did you find out who was oldest?”

“I -weIl-Nancy and I went out to the cemetery and looked at their gravestones. There was all that family in the same plot as the great-grandmother and granddaddy. The maiden aunt, you remember, that lived with ‘em? She lived to be 88. Died in ‘73. And that boy, the afflicted boy, he outlived all of ‘em. Died in 1978. Lived to be 70 years old.  Outlived the sister too. She died at 55 in 1975. Byrd died at 53. And all the rest of the family were long-lived people. Mr. Byrd, Sr., he lived to be 90. Outlived all his children, except the afflicted boy. There must be a lesson in that somewhere.

“You know, they are all there, buried together. Looks like they started that plot in 1919 with the great-grandmother. And Mr. Pete took himself and Miss Theodora over to another part of the cemetery. Away from his mama and daddy. Wouldn’t be caught dead with the rest of his family. Mr. Pete outlasted all of ‘em. He died in 1977 at 94. Then, no grandchildren. No nieces and nephews. No family left except him. That is so sad to me.”

“It is. At least the afflicted boy had a good caretaker, everybody always said.”

“I guess he was a good one. Better than anybody ever figured he could be. Yes. And, Byrd made provisions for the afflicted boy’s care in his will.”

“You saw Byrd’s will?”

“Sure. Anybody can see anybody’s will. Just up at the courthouse. I guess he wasn’t all bad. Just mostly. Guess who witnessed that will?”

“Who?”

“Lavinia McCollum.”

“What? She was there the night of the murders.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I’ll declare. She wasn’t named in it though, was she? Didn’t have anything left to her?”

“Oh, no. That wouldn’t fly. She didn’t have to be though.”

“Um-hm. Well. What happened then, after the boy signed the papers?”

“Well. So, then, Joe said that Fitzhugh and Byrd, they did their business, and they were goin’ back towards the car. And Fitzhugh was busy thinkin’, ‘Now for most folks, I’d charge maybe $15 dollars for this. But I b’lieve I’m gonna charge Byrd $25.’ Then, when they were back in the car, Byrd threw a hundred dollar bill down on the seat. And Fitzhugh told him, ‘Now, you know I hadn’t got change for that.’ And Byrd pulled out two more hundred dollar bills and threw them down like the first one and said, ‘Here. Take that. One thing you better know right off the bat. I ain’t havin’ no cheap-ass lawyer.’”

The Right Southern Corner is a series by Sara Rast
Copyright: 2009 Sara Love Rast. All rights reserved.

The Right Southern Corner