Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His People

by Irvin S. Cobb

Half an hour later, clear over on the other side of town, two windows of the old court house flashed up as rectangles of light, set into a block of opaque blackness. Passers by idling homeward under the shade trees of the Square, wondered why the lights should be burning in the Judge's chambers. Had any one of them been moved to investigate the whys and wherefores of this phenomenon he would have discovered the Judge at his desk, with his steel bowed spectacles balanced precariously on the tip of his pudgy nose and his round old face pulled into a pucker of intenseness as he dug through one sheaf after another of musty, snuffy-smelling documents. The broad top of the desk in front of him was piled with windrows of these ancient papers, that were gray along their creases with the pigeonhole dust of years, and seamy and buffed with age. Set in the wall behind him was a vault and the door of the vault was open, and within was a gap of emptiness on an upper shelf, which showed where all these papers had come from; and for further proof that they were matters of court record there was a litter of many crumbly manila envelopes bearing inscriptions of faded ink, scattered about over the desk top, and on the floor where they had fallen.

For a good long time the old Judge rummaged briskly, pawing into the heaps in front of him and snorting briskly as the dust rose and tickled his nostrils. Eventually he restored most of the papers to their proper wrappers and replaced them in the vault, and then he began consulting divers books out of his law library—ponderous volumes, bound in faded calf skin with splotches of brown, like liverspots, on their covers. It was nearly midnight before he finished. He got up creakily, and reaching on tiptoe—an exertion which created a distinct hiatus of inches between the bottom of his wrinkled vest and the waistband of his trousers—he turned out the gas jets. Instantly the old courthouse, sitting among the trees, became a solid black mass. He felt his way out into the hallway, barking his shins on a chair, and grunting softly to himself.

When young Jim Faxon's case was called the next morning and the jailor brought him in, Jim wore hand-cuffs. At the term of court before this, a negro cow thief had got away coming across the court house yard and the Judge had issued orders to the jailor to use all due precautions in future. So the jailor, showing no favoritism, had seen fit to handcuff young Jim. Moreover, he forgot to bring along the key to the irons and while he was hurrying back to the jail to find it, young Jim had to wait between his women folk, with his bonds still fast upon him. Emmy Hardin bent forward and put her small hands over the steel, as though to hide the shameful sight of it from the eyes of the crowd and she kept her hands there until Jailor Watts came back and freed Jim. The little group of three sitting in a row inside the rail, just back of Lawyer Dabney Prentiss' erect and frock-coated back, were all silent and all pale-faced, young Jim with the pallor of the jail and Emmy Hardin with the whiteness of her grief and her terror, but the old aunt's face was a streaky, grayish white, and the wrinkles in her face and in her thin, corded neck looked inches deep.

Right away the case was called and both sides—defense and commonwealth—announced as ready to proceed to trial. The audience squared forward to watch the picking of the jurors, but there were never to be any jurors picked for the trial of this particular case.

For Judge Priest had readied the point where he couldn't hold in any longer. He cleared his throat and then he spoke, using the careful English he always used on the bench—and never anywhere else.

“Before we proceed,” he began, and his tone told plainly enough that what he meant to say now would be well worth the hearing, “before we proceed, the court has something to say, which will have a direct bearing upon the present issue.” He glanced about him silently, commanding quiet. “The defendant at the bar stands charged with the death of one Ransom Fleming and he is produced here to answer that charge.”

From the desk he lifted a time-yellowed, legal-looking paper, folded flat; he shucked it open with his thumb. “It appears, from the records, that in the month of February and of the year 1865, the said Ransom Fleming, now deceased, was a fugitive from justice, going at large and charged with divers and sundry felonious acts, to wit, the crime of arson and the crime of felonious assault with intent to kill, and the crime of confederating with others not named, to destroy the property of persons resident in the State of Kentucky. It appears further that a disorganized condition of the civil government existed, the State being overrun with stragglers and deserters from both armies then engaged in civil war, and therefore, because of the inability or the failure of the duly constituted authorities to bring to justice the person charged with these lawless and criminal acts, the Governor of this State did offer a reward of $500 for the apprehension of Ransom Fleming, dead or alive.”

Now, for sure, the crowd knew something pregnant with meaning for the prisoner at the bar was coming—knew it without knowing yet what shape it would assume. Heads came forward row by row and necks were craned eagerly.

“I hold here in my hand an official copy of the proclamation issued by the Governor of the State,” continued Judge Priest. “Under its terms this reward was open to citizens and to officers of the law alike. All law-abiding persons were in fact urged to join in ridding the commonwealth of this man. He stood outside the pale of the law, without claim upon or right to its protection.

“It would appear further,”—the old Judge's whiny voice was rising now—“that this proclamation was never withdrawn, although with the passage of years it may have been forgotten. Under a strict construction of the law of the land and of the commonwealth, it may be held to have remained in force up to and including the date of the death of the said Ransom Fleming. It accordingly devolves upon this court, of its own motion, to set aside the indictment against the defendant at the bar and to declare him free—”