SMOLDERING CINDERS TO THE CHAIR

SMOLDERING CINDERS TO THE ELECTRIC CHAIR







Old Bud Haily saw a small dim light on the fartherest hill one night when he was walking his dog, Bully. “See that, Bully Boy, for some reason the Johnson’s still have a light on. It looks like it’s in the barn. It’s a bit late. I wonder what’s happenin’.” He continued to walk toward his mailbox at the end of the lane. Bully kept trying to chase a rabbit from the bushes that grew alongside the graveled lane. Before Bud went into the house, he again looked across the darkened space at the light. “Hmm, that’s so strange. Never seen it that way before.” Soon he turned his own light off and went to bed.

The next morning Bud got up, made coffee and had a cup before frying some bacon and eggs to start his day. He fed Bully on the porch before he picked up his bucket and went to milk his cow. “Prissy, are you goin’ to give me a full bucket of milk today. I damn sure hope so.” He slapped the cow on the rump and pushed her away until she settled with her feet away from where he needed to put his milk bucket. With his left hand, he held the bucket and with his right hand, he held the one-legged stool which he put under himself as he sat down facing Prissy’s teats.

It never took Bud long to milk old Prissy. He propped the bucket between his legs; used one hand to squeeze then pull on the left teats; and, with his right hand he squeezed and pulled the right two teats, one at a time. Squirt. Squirt. The first two streams of milk always made the most noise as they hit the empty bucket. By the time he finished milking the two back teats, the bucket was full, and only a slight sloshing sound could be heard with each pull of a teat.

Tiger, his cat, arrived in time to get the final squirts of milk straight from the teat to his mouth. Bud laughed at Tiger. “Cat, you get the cream of the crop every mornin’ and evenin’. You’re so damn spoiled.” He laughed as he watched the cat lick the milk that had landed on its face.

As he left the milk barn, Bud looked again toward the Johnson’s hill. “What the hell?” He saw that it looked different and it took a few seconds before he realized that their house was gone. That moment, he ran to the house to refrigerate the bucket of milk and rushed to his pickup. He didn’t even take time to pour the milk in the ceramic milk jars.

It took Bud about seven minutes to drive from his house to the Johnsons. Bill and Noreen Johnson had been his neighbors for years; their sons grew up there and were now living in Maysville with young children of their own.

The closer he got to the Johnsons, the scarier he became. The house had burned to the ground. The Johnson’s pickup was parked near the barn, its usual place. He did not see anyone anywhere; and, he thought the worst. “Oh God, don’t let them be there. Let them be anywhere else, but not there.”

As he slammed on the brakes, he opened the door and quickly got out and ran toward the black cinders of what used to be a little white house on the hill. Curls of smoke were still seeping from the largest pieces of wood or furniture. He slowed down and walked to the back quarter of the blackened area where he knew the bedroom was.

The iron skeleton of the bed was upright. “God. No!” he yelled. “They never got out!” Tears filled his eyes when he saw the black, charred remains of two people lying on the metal springs of the bed. He turned away and vomited.

Bud realized that the first thing he needed to do was to get to a telephone and call the sheriff to bring the coroner because two people were dead. Hurrying to his pickup, he got in, started it up and headed down the lane toward the road. Just as he got to the road, Rod Simplar was driving by. Bud hailed him down. “Rod! I need your help!” he called out.

Rod heard him, stopped his truck and backed to where Bud was. “Rod, can you get to a phone and call the sheriff. He and the coroner need to be here. The Johnsons have burned up in their house durin’ the night.” Rod nodded and turned around in the middle of the road and headed to Wycuska to call the sheriff.

Bud put his pickup in reverse and returned to the Johnson’s house. There was nothing he could do except to make sure that nobody interfered with the bodies. He hoped that the Johnson boys did not come for a visit at that time.

He wandered toward the barn and realized that the cows were bellowing. It was clear that their bags were full of milk and they were in pain. Many times, he had heard his own cows bellow loudly when he was late getting them milked. He looked around for a bucket and planned to milk the four cows as soon as possible. Every farmer knows not to be too late for the ‘ladies’. He decided to hold off on the milking until somebody else arrived on the scene. There was a good chance that another neighbor would see the same thing he did and come to check on it.

About an hour later, Ransom Southland came driving the lane to see what had happened. With him there, Bud excused himself to go milk the cows and let Ransom oversee the fire situation. He found the milk buckets all cleaned and in the old ice box in the barn. It was a clean place to keep them. Bud remembered that the Johnsons had bought a little electric refrigerator earlier in the year and laughed when they moved the ice box to the barn. Like everyone else, they were glad that REA bought electricity to their homes just three years earlier. That was in 1946.

Rod brought two buckets of milk with him to his pickup and was disappointed that the sheriff and coroner had still not arrived. He planned to drop off the milk for the Mrs. Guise, for her three young children. More than two hours later, the sheriff arrived. Not far behind was the coroner with his truck to haul the bodies back to the County Offices.

Bud shook hands with Sheriff Brian Killingsly. “Sheriff, I saw a small light over here late last night and wondered about it. When I looked at this hill this mornin’, I could tell that there was a fire. There’s no tellin’ what caused it. Maybe it had somethin’ to do with the electricity; or maybe they still used an oil lamp or a candle in the house. I hope you can figure it out. It just don’t seem right for a house to burn like that.” He put his hands into his blue overalls pockets and leaned against his pickup to wait for word from the Sheriff.

The coroner and Sheriff Brian walked around the house slowly; then, they walked what would have been from the front door to the bedroom and then to the front door. They picked up a few little things along the way. Bud, Rod and Ransom watched them intently.

Bud kicked a clod of dirt away with his toe. “I wonder what they’re thinkin’ the way they’re walkin’ around and pickin’ up things. There’s no way anythin’ could have escaped that fire.” Rod and Ransom just grunted something that sounded like “don’t know’ and kept watching the county officials.

Sheriff Brian approached the three men. “Did either of you see anyone around here last evening, or even in the afternoon?” Rod and Bud nodded a no to the sheriff but Ransom had something to say.

“Long about 4:00, I saw a tan pickup parked out front. I just saw it once as I was headed home from town.” He didn’t identify the driver but acknowledged that there was a man walking toward the house. “I didn’t think a thing about it. You know, all of us have family or visitors come over anytime.”

The Sheriff wrote a note in his little paper book. “Both of the Johnsons were shot in the head. Obviously, they died in the bed, but it wasn’t because of the fire. We need to find that pickup you saw, Ransom. Would you draw a picture of it here on my paper.” He handed his paper book to Ransom. “Oh, and write down whatever you can remember about the man. His hat, what he might have been wearing. Stuff like that. We need to find him.”

Ransom walked over to use his pickup fender as a table so he could draw what the sheriff wanted. Soon he returned the paper book to Sheriff Brian who put it into his shirt pocket.

Sheriff Brian went to his pickup and brought a roll of red ribbon. “Bud, maybe you and rod can help me with this. I need the ribbon circled clear around the house and maybe six feet out on all sides. Appreciate if you can help. Try not to get your boot tracks any closer than six feet of the house; maybe more than that near the doors.” They took the ribbon and Rod found some wire in his pickup to use for the project.

When they finished, the sheriff asked if they could help keep an eye on the burned out place so that nobody entered the area for any reason. Bud and Rod told him they would take different shifts to keep the area under wraps. They helped the coroner and the sheriff as they loaded the bodies into the covered van on the coroner’s truck. He drove away and left Sheriff Brian and the two men at the site.

The sheriff looked around the outhouses, the barn and the driveway before he went to his pickup to go back to town and do some detective work. He found tracks made by pickup or auto tires. “I’ll draw these in my little paper pad here and maybe, just maybe, we’ll find the truck or auto that made them. These just might turn out to be the mistake made by whoever fired those gunshots.” He waved at Rod and Bud as he drove away. The two of them made arrangements about guarding the crime scene.

Sheriff Brian drove directly to Maysville to tell the Johnson boys about their parents. He asked that they stay away from the place for two days until he had finished his investigation; and, he told them to contact the coroner to make arrangements for the burial. From there he stopped at the gas stations in the area just in case a tan pickup had stopped for gas before or after the fire. He had some good luck with those contacts and ended up with some detailed information about the driver and the pickup.

He contacted the motor vehicle office downstairs from his office in the courthouse and asked if they could provide him any information about the ownership of the pickup. He figured that there couldn’t be too many tan pickups in the county.

From there, he went home to be with his family. The events of the day reminded him of the dangers that could interfere with life and his family.

Rod relieved Bud at 2:00 in the morning to oversee the place for the rest of the night. After a short sleep, Bud returned to the scene by 10:00 because he want to see the sheriff if he came by after that. Rod went home to have breakfast.

Sheriff Brian showed up at the crime scene a little after 4:00. He had learned the name of the probable owner of the pickup by comparing the possible names with gun owners in the area. The coroner had determined that a special pistol had been used in the murders; and, one of the tan pickup owners in the county owned such a pistol. Henry J. Pearson had been arrested and charged with the double murder.

The Johnson boys came by shortly after Sheriff Brian and they were glad that the probable murderer had been arrested. Bud told them that he would call up some of the men from the area to help clean up the blackened cinders and things but that he believed it would be better if they did it the day after the funeral. They agreed, thanked Bud and returned home.

The funeral was held three days later.

The next day Bud and twelve men with their trucks or pickups arrived before nine in the morning to help clear the area and do what they could to help the Johnson boys lay the foundation for a replacement house. Some of their wives showed up at noon with sandwiches and fixin’s for lunch.

A few weeks later, Henry J. Pearson was found guilty of murder and sentenced to be executed in the electric chair. The jury felt that the horror of the crime merited the death sentence and the judge agreed.