The Boaz Scorekeeper, written in 2017, is my second novel. I'll post it, a chapter a day, over the next few weeks.
For forty-four years Matt had participated in the Boaz High School Career Day program. He had graduated Valedictorian from Boaz in 1954, the University of Alabama in 1959, and Emory University’s School of Law in 1962. Matt practiced in Atlanta for nearly ten years before returning to his hometown and starting his solo law practice in January 1972. My case in the fall of 1972 was Matt’s first Alabama murder case.
Matt’s forty-fifth Career Day appearance was scheduled for today at 9:00 a.m. At 8:05 a.m., I received a call at the law office from a nurse in the Emergency Room at Marshall Medical Center South Hospital stating that Matt had asked her to call and tell me to go to Boaz High School to fill his spot. The nurse also instructed me to find Mrs. Southerland and explain to her that Matt was unable to attend Career Day because he had been in an auto accident. The nurse assured me that Matt had run off the road, hit a tree, and had a non-life-threatening cut on his forehead that had to be sewn up. She said that he was under heavy medication and wouldn’t be released for several hours.
I grabbed my coat and drove to Boaz High School. After locating Mrs. Southerland and explaining why I was there, she walked with me to the English Department on second floor where students interested in a legal career would come by to chat with me, Circuit Court Judge Henagar, and District Attorney Charles Abbott. She said there was coffee in the lounge and provided directions. I told her I would just wait here.
After she left I walked out into the hall and saw Room 201. My mind jumped backwards forty-six years to 1971, January 3rd to be exact. I went into the empty room, sat down at the first student desk in the third row, and closed my eyes. I had a good memory of what had happened in my Junior Year English Literature class the first day after returning from Christmas holidays.
Mrs. Peterson, our teacher, was absent, something about a weather-related delay returning from Chicago. We had a substitute, a Miss Barnes I believe. She was a recent college graduate with very little ability to control thirty or more energetic teenagers. She seriously attempted guiding the class in a reading of Shakespeare’s Macbeth but soon lost control. John Ericson was the ring-leader in flirting with Miss Barnes. She was probably only four or five years older than we were and could easily pass for a classmate. She was, as they say, drop-dead gorgeous. John, egged on by Randall Radford and Fred Billingsley, asked her if she had a boyfriend. The more she ignored him and tried to maintain classroom order John continued to badger her. I remember him saying, “I don’t care if you do have a boyfriend. After a roll in the hay with me you will never think of him again.” One of the five or six girls in the class chimed in with, “John, I hear you’re about to be a father. I doubt you’ll have time for Miss Barnes.” John looked dumbfounded.
His puzzled look turned to terror when the door opened and two police officers walked in. One of them asked John to come into the hallway. At first, he just stood frozen. Finally, one of the officers walked over to him, took hold of his arm, and walked him outside the classroom. As the other officer was pulling the door shut, he told Miss Barnes to keep the rest of us in the room until the bell rings.
Eerily, the classroom fell quiet. The girl, Janice Brewster I believe, who had claimed John was about to be a father, spoke out after a few minutes of total silence. She said, “Big Bad John is in some deep shit.” Miss Barnes tried her best to assert control, even warning Janice and the rest of us not to use foul language. She finally said that we could talk if we were civil and not too loud. Janice said that her mother had told her that John had gotten a ninth grader, Jesse Dawson, pregnant, and that he was going to be charged with rape, something about him being over 16 years old and having sex with a girl that is more than two years younger.
Fred spoke up and said that little Jesse should be charged and not John, that she looked like she was eighteen and had seduced John into having sex. Randall said that John had been dating the ninth grader for over a year and nothing would ever have come of this if Doc Yelling hadn’t blabbed to social services who in turn blabbed to an Assistant District Attorney. Jesse had thought she was pregnant but had learned she wasn’t.
Noise from the hallway roused me up and brought me back to the present. I looked at my watch and it was nearly 9:00 a.m. I walked back across the hall and spent the next three hours sitting beside the Judge and the DA in front of a revolving door of students each with some curiosity of what working in the legal field is all about. After the last group of students left, Mrs. Southerland came and reminded us that a special lunch had been prepared in the cafeteria for all who had come and participated in Career Day. I thanked her, but declined. I had a 2:00 p.m. hearing in Guntersville.
During my drive to court, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to John and his statutory rape charges. He truly was charged, but like it always seemed for members of the Flaming Five and their families, they were slick as eels, always finding a way to avoid the reality the rest of humanity must deal with.
Even before John’s preliminary hearing, which is mandated 20 days after an arrest, Jesse Dawson and her mother had told both the Boaz Police Chief and the District Attorney that she had never had sex with John Ericson and that she was not pregnant. The only thing she would say is that she had had sex with a 9th grade boy, but she refused to disclose his name. John never spent a night in jail and the charges against him were dropped soon after Jesse’s statement. I never heard how close John came to facing justice but I do remember that Jesse and her family moved to Fort Payne. At least that’s what I heard. I suspect that John’s family was instrumental in showing Jesse’s parents the light, including the opportunities in Dekalb County.
The only thing I remember hearing John say about this dark little chapter in his life, was during a basketball game our senior year. Boaz was playing Fort Payne at Fort Payne High School. As I always did, I rode the bus with the team, not for official score keeping purposes but simply to keep Coach Pearson’s stats report, what he called, ‘The Shit Sheet.’ I was sitting on the bench watching our team warm-up after halftime had ended. John and Fred were on the court taking long shots from right in front of where I was sitting. I heard John tell Fred that Jesse Dawson was on the second row behind the Fort Payne cheerleaders. Fred warned John to leave her alone. As John took his final shot within my hearing I heard him say, “Our eyes locked a few minutes ago. I can tell she will be up for a quickie right after the game. She never could resist my flame.”
As I pulled into the courthouse parking lot, I was unreasonably mad at Matt for making me return to Boaz High School. I doubt that I would have remembered how arrogant and powerful John had been even as a high school student. Graduation night was not the first time he had raped an innocent girl. I guess if I knew the truth, there were many young girls who had melted to his flame.
The son of a bitch will not escape real justice.
The Pencil Driven Life 