The Devil's Tickets by Gary M. Pomerantz

Author:Gary M. Pomerantz [Pomerantz, Gary M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-46036-3
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2009-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

“The defense calls Mrs. Alice Adkins.” Whether it was the sound of those six words or the appearance of the old Mississippian walking in small steps toward the witness chair, or the very idea of her mother coming to her rescue, Myrtle went to pieces. Tears stormed down her cheeks and fell to the table. Her anguished sobs filled the courtroom. Quietly, Page asked Latshaw to send the jury from the room “until the defendant can calm herself.” “I’ll be all right,” Myrtle protested as jurors walked out, but her sobs grew deeper. Jim Reed’s eyes filled with tears. O’Sullivan threw his arm about Myrtle’s shoulder as she slumped over the table. O’Sullivan waved for Myrtle’s bridge friend Mrs. Benjamin Shires. In her wide-brimmed hat, Shires sat beside Myrtle until finally she quieted.

On the witness stand defending her only child, wearing a dark overcoat with fur collar, and a bulky wool hat that perched curiously atop her head like a thick biscuit, Alice Adkins seemed a tower of strength. Each day, she came to court prepared to testify, mounting two flights of stairs, jostled by curiosity seekers in the hallways. Her craggy face suggested the rocky soil of Arkansas, her voice the rural rhythms of her native Coahoma County, Mississippi. The sympathies of spectators were with her.

“They were a loving couple; never had any serious trouble of any kind,” Adkins testified about Myrtle and Jack. Reed asked if once, when Myrtle had returned from a business trip with Jack, one of her eyes was discolored. “Yes,” Adkins replied, “and he apologized to her about it after they got home and said he was sorry he had struck her in the eye.”

Reed: “Then how were they after that?”

Adkins: “Fine and loving toward each other.”

Once, Adkins said, Jack turned his temper on her after she had tailored his lounging pajamas. “He wanted them taken up a little in the waist—Mr. Bennett was small in the waist—and when I had them done they weren’t small enough, and they didn’t please him. I said to him, ‘Jack, I fixed them the best I could,’ and he said to me, ‘Well, I guess I’m a liar then,’ and he got mad.”

Reed asked, “He swore at you?”

Yes, Adkins said.

Reed: “What about after that?”

Adkins answered, “Oh, he was just quick-tempered. He soon got over it and was very nice to me.”

Reed turned to the night of Jack’s death. Adkins testified to watching the bridge game before turning in. Much later, awakened by a bright light in her bedroom, she testified she heard Myrtle rummaging through her chest of drawers. She asked Myrtle what she was after. “Jack wants his gun. He is going to St. Joe,” Myrtle replied. Her daughter, Adkins testified, was sobbing when she took the pistol. Moments later Adkins heard two gunshots. She rose from her bed and, in her confusion, ran through the wrong door—into her bathroom—before turning and running down the hallway toward the bright light of the living room. Reed pulled out the diagram of the apartment and Adkins put on her tortoiseshell glasses.

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