We ate quickly and went in different directions. Sadly, neither of us had given any thought to exchanging gifts.
Christmas lunch was with BeeBee, who, unlike my father, was delighted to see me. She invited three of her little blue-haired widow friends over for sherry and ham, and the five of us proceeded to get tipsy. I regaled them with stories from Ford County, some accurate, some highly embellished. Hanging around Baggy and Harry Rex, I was learning the art of storytelling.
By 3 P.M., we were all napping. Early the next morning, I raced back to Clanton.
Chapter 25
One frigid day late in January, shots rang out somewhere around the square. I was sitting at my desk, peacefully typing a story about Mr. Lamar Farlowe and his recent reunion in Chicago with his battalion of Army paratroopers, when a bullet shattered a windowpane less than twenty feet from my head. A slow news week thus came to a sudden end.
My bullet was either the second or the third in a fairly rapid sequence. I hit the floor with all sorts of thoughts — Where was my pistol? Were the Padgitts assaulting the town? Were Trooper Durant and his boys after me? On my hands and knees I scrambled to my briefcase as shots continued to crack through the air; they sounded like they were coming from across the street, but in the horror of the moment I really couldn’t tell. They sounded much louder after one hit my office.
I emptied the briefcase and then remembered the pistol was either in my car or my apartment. I was unarmed and felt like such a weakling for not being able to defend myself. Harry Rex and Rafe had trained me better.
I was scared to the point of not being able to move. Then I remembered Bigmouth Bass was in his office downstairs, and like most real men in Clanton he had an arsenal close by. There were handguns in his desk and he kept two hunting rifles on the wall, just in case he got the urge to run out and kill a deer during lunch. Anyone trying to get me would encounter stiff resistance by my staff. I hoped so anyway.
There was a pause in the assault, then shouts of panic and chaos on the streets. It was almost 2 P.M., normally a busy time downtown. I crawled under my desk like I’d been taught in tornado warning drills. From somewhere below I heard Bigmouth yell, “Stay in your offices!” I could almost see him down there, grabbing a 30.06 and a box of shells, ducking into a doorway in great anticipation. I couldn’t imagine a worse place for some nut to start shooting. There were thousands of guns within arm’s reach around the Clanton square. Every pickup had two rifles in the window rack and a shotgun under the seat. These people couldn’t wait to use their guns!
It wouldn’t be long before the locals returned fire. That’s when the war would really get ugly.
Then the shots resumed. They weren’t getting any closer, I decided as I tried to breathe normally under the desk and analyze things. As the seconds slowly ticked by I realized that the assault was not aimed at me. I just happened to own a nearby window. Sirens approached, then more shots, more shouting. What in the world!
A phone rang downstairs and someone grabbed it quickly.
“Willie! You okay!” Bigmouth yelled from the bottom of the steps.
“Yeah!”
“There’s a sniper on top of the courthouse!”
“Great!”
“Stay low!”
“Don’t worry!”
I relaxed a little and emerged just enough to grab my phone. I called Wiley Meek at home, but he was already headed our way. Then I crawled across the floor to one of the French doors and opened it. Evidently this caught the attention of our sniper. He shattered a pane four feet above me and the glass fell like heavy rain. I dropped to my stomach and stopped breathing for what seemed like an hour. The gunfire was relentless. Whoever he was he was certainly perturbed about something.
Eight shots, each sounding much louder now that I was outside. A fifteen-second pause as he reloaded, then eight more. I heard glass shatter, bullets ricochet off bricks, bullets split through wooden posts. Somewhere in the midst of the barrage, the voices became silent.
When I could move again, I gently pulled one of the rocking chairs over on its side, then crawled behind it. The porch had a wrought-iron railing around it, and with that and the chair in front of me, I was concealed and protected. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to move closer to the sniper, but I was twenty-four years old and owned the newspaper and knew that I would write a lengthy story about this dramatic episode. I needed details.
When I finally peeked through the chair and the railing, I saw the sniper. The courthouse had an oddly flattened dome, on top of which was a small cupola with four open windows. He’d made his nest there, and when I first saw him he was peeking just above the sill of one of the windows. He appeared to have a black face with white hair, and this sent more chills through my body. We were dealing with a world-class psycho.
He was reloading, and when he was ready he rose slightly and began shooting completely at random. He appeared to be shirtless, which, given the situation, seemed even stranger since it was around thirty degrees with a chance of light snow later in the afternoon. I was freezing and I was wearing a rather handsome wool suit from Mitlo’s.
His chest was white with black stripes, sort of like a zebra. It was a white man who’d painted himself partially black.
All traffic was gone. The city police had blocked the streets and cops were darting about, squatting low and hiding behind their cars. In the store windows an occasional face popped out for a quick scan, then disappeared. The shooting stopped and the sniper ducked low and disappeared for a while. Three county deputies dashed along a sidewalk and into the courthouse. Long minutes passed.
Wiley Meek bounded up the steps of my office and was soon beside me. He was breathing so hard I thought he’d sprinted from his house out in the country. “He hit us!” he whispered, as if the sniper could hear. He was examining the broken glass.
“Twice,” I said, nodding up at the broken panes.
“Where is he?” he asked as he moved a camera with a long-range lens into position.
“The cupola,” I said, pointing. “Be careful. He hit that door when I opened it.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Male, white, with black highlights.”
“Oh, one of those.”
“Keep your head down.”
We stayed huddled and crouched for several minutes. More cops scurried about, going nowhere in particular and giving the distinct impression that they were thrilled to be there but had little idea what to do.
“Anybody hurt?” Wiley asked, suddenly anxious that maybe he’d missed some blood.
“How am I supposed to know?”
Then more shots, very quick and startling. We peeked and saw him from the shoulders up, blazing away. Wiley focused and began taking pictures through the long-range lens.
Baggy and the boys were in the Bar Room on the third floor, not directly under the cupola, but not far from it. In fact, they were probably the closest humans to the sniper when he began his target practice. After the shooting resumed for the ninth or tenth time, they evidently became even more frightened and, convinced they were about to be slaughtered, decided they had to take matters into their own hands. Somehow they managed to pry open the intractable window of their little hideaway. We watched as an electrical cord was thrown out and fell almost to the ground, forty feet below. Baggy’s right leg appeared next as he flung it over the brick sill and wiggled his portly body through the opening. Not surprisingly, Baggy had insisted on going first.
“Oh my God,” Wiley said, somewhat gleefully, and raised his camera. “They’re drunk as skunks.”