Stella was touched almost to tears and thanked them all, then left Roanoke on the train with Ginger Reed, perhaps her best friend, and headed to Alexandria, Virginia, for a week of partying in D.C. She had been once before, with Ginger, and she was enthralled by the big city. Though she had not told her parents, nor Joel, she planned to graduate as soon as possible and follow the bright lights. New York was her first choice, D.C. her second. New Orleans was a distant third. Long before the killing, she knew she would never again live in Ford County. After the killing, she wanted to stay as far away from the place as possible.
Though her dreams had been interrupted, she was still determined to become a writer. She adored the short fiction of Eudora Welty and the bizarre and colorful characters of Carson McCullers. Both were strong southern women writing in authentic voices about families, conflicts, soil, and the tortured history of the South, and they were successfully publishing in a time when men dominated American fiction. Stella read them all, men and women, and she was convinced there was room for her. She might start with stories about her own family, she often thought to herself, now more than before, but knew that would not happen.
She would land a job with a magazine in New York, and live in a cheap apartment in Brooklyn with friends, and she would begin her first novel as soon as she settled in and inspiration hit. She was reasonably certain that her parents and her aunt Florry would support her if necessary. Being a Banning, she had been raised with the unspoken belief that the land would always remain in the family and provide support.
Enjoy life in New York, work for a magazine, start a novel, and do it all with the knowledge that there was money back home. The dream was exciting and it was real, until the murder. Now home was far away and nothing was certain.
Ginger’s family lived in Old Town, in an eighteenth-century mansion on Duke Street. Her parents and younger sister had been briefed on the details of the Banning family nightmare and it was never mentioned. Stella was treated to a week of cocktail parties, long dinners, walks along the Potomac, and a string of clubs frequented by students where they smoked cigarettes, drank too much, listened to swing bands, and danced through the night.
On Thanksgiving Day, she called Aunt Florry, and for ten minutes they talked as if there was nothing out of order. Joel was the guest of a fraternity brother’s family in Kentucky, and Florry reported that he was hunting nonstop and enjoying the break. They would be together for Christmas, she promised.
Later in the afternoon, Florry loaded up a small tub containing two roasted turkeys, with potatoes, carrots, beets, and turnips, along with a pan of dressing, giblet gravy, yeast rolls, and two pecan pies. She drove the feast to the jail, where she supervised the carving of the turkeys by her brother. The meal was for all prisoners, and for Mr. Tick Poley, the ancient part-time jailhouse guard who worked nights and most holidays so Nix and his men could take the day off. Florry and Pete dined alone in Nix’s office, with his unlocked gun case in plain view. An unsecured door opened to the gravel lot. Tick was content to eat by himself in the jail’s lobby as he guarded the front door.
Pete took a few bites, then lit a cigarette. In spite of his sister’s efforts, he was still eating little and looked thin, and because he never went outside his skin was pale. As usual, she had commented on this. As usual, he ignored her. He did manage to perk up when she replayed the calls from Stella and Joel. In Florry’s version, they were doing quite well and enjoying the season. Pete smiled as he smoked, his eyes drifting to the ceiling and beyond.
Chapter 10
By Thanksgiving, the cotton had been picked for the third and final time and Pete was pleased with the harvest. He watched the markets and reviewed the books each week when Buford came to the jail. He signed checks, paid bills, reviewed deposits and accounts, and directed the selling of his cotton through the Memphis exchange. He ordered the reopening of the colored school on his property, and approved pay raises for the teachers and the installation of new stoves for winter heat. Buford was itching to buy the latest model John Deere tractor. Many of the larger farmers now owned them, but Pete said not now, maybe later. Facing such an uncertain future, he was reluctant to spend a lot of money.
The price of cotton was also being watched closely by Errol McLeish. Georgia produced almost as much cotton as Mississippi, so he was no stranger to its economics. As the spot price on the Memphis Cotton Exchange rose, so did his commitment to the welfare of Jackie Bell.
After weeks of discussion and research, John Wilbanks and his brother Russell finally decided the trial of Pete Banning should not take place in Clanton. They would seek a change of venue and try to have it moved somewhere far away.
Initially, they had been encouraged by the courthouse rumors that Miles Truitt came close to a mutiny with his grand jury. Evidently, their client had some friends and admirers who were sympathetic, and the vote to indict barely passed. Only rumors, of course, and since grand jury proceedings were not recorded in any fashion, and supposedly confidential, they could not be sure about what really happened. With time, though, they grew skeptical about the impartiality of a trial jury. They and their employees talked to countless friends around the county in an effort to judge public sentiment. They consulted a few of the other lawyers in town, and two retired judges, and a handful of former deputies, and a couple of old sheriffs. Since the jury would consist of white men only, and virtually all would claim membership in a church, they chatted with preachers they knew, men from all denominations. Their wives talked to other wives, at other churches, and at garden clubs and bridge clubs, and almost anywhere the conversation could be initiated without being awkward.
It became clear, at least to John Wilbanks, that sentiment was running strongly against his client. Time and again, he and his staff and his friends heard folks say something to the effect of “Whatever conflict those two had, it could have been settled without bloodshed.” And the fact that Pete Banning was saying nothing to defend himself made it even easier to convict him. He would always be a legendary war hero, but no one had the right to kill without a good reason.
Under John’s guidance, his firm conducted thorough research of every venue change case in American law, and he wrote a masterful fifty-page brief supporting his request. The endeavor took hours and hours, and eventually led to a heated discussion between John and Russell regarding the pressing matter of their fees. Since Pete’s arrest, John had been reluctant to broach the matter. Now, though, it was inevitable.
Also eating up the clock was the not insignificant matter of mounting a defense. Pete had not minced words when John mentioned a claim of insanity, but there was nothing else to argue before the jury. Obviously, a perfectly normal human who shoots another three times at point-blank range cannot be in possession of his full mental faculties, but to build such a case required the defense to inform the court with a notice and a brief. John wrote one, along with supporting case law, and was prepared to file it at the same time he filed the motion for a change of venue.
Before doing so, however, he needed his client’s approval. He haggled with Nix Gridley until he got his way, and late one afternoon a week before Christmas, Nix and Roy Lester left the jail with Pete Banning and drove him to the square. If he enjoyed his first breath of fresh air, he did not show it. He did not take in the festive decorations on the storefronts, did not seem at all interested in what the town was doing, did not even seem appreciative that he was being allowed to meet his lawyer in his office, as opposed to the jail. He sat low in the rear seat wearing a hat and bound by handcuffs, and stared at his feet during the brief ride. Nix parked behind the Wilbanks Building, and no one saw Pete enter with a cop at each elbow. Inside, the handcuffs were removed and he followed John Wilbanks to his office upstairs. Wilbanks’s secretary served Nix and Roy black coffee with a pastry in the downstairs foyer.