Mob/Justice

Trigger Warning: Contains use of racial slurs, racial violence, and murder of a child.

May 21, 1925

Spartan County Sheriff’s Office

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

Sheriff Logan opened the door to the interview room and clicked on the light switch. The single bulb hung from the ceiling directly over the wooden interview desk, and it buzzed as it lit up and cast a hazy yellow light around the small, square room.

He led AJ in by the elbow and pulled out one of the chairs. AJ, whose hands were cuffed, sat. He was dusty and dirty and his hair and clothes both were unkempt from his day and night in the holding cell. The sheriff, by contrast, looked crisp and fresh, clean-shaven, his clothes pressed and crisp, his moustache trimmed and waxed. He sat in the chair opposing AJ.

“Carter says you’ve got some information for me about the nigger-boy got killed.”

“Yes, sir.” AJ’s voice was dull and hollow.

Logan drummed his fingers on the desktop for a moment, then pulled a pen and notebook from his breast pocket. “Alright, son. Go ahead, tell me what you know.”

AJ was just a boy, hardly a year out of college—graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree and all—and the sheriff doubted he had anything of consequence to provide the investigation. But Carter had taken AJ’s words serious enough, and now Logan had to take them serious, too.

AJ looked down at his bound hands, silent for a long while. Then, suddenly, he said, “I was there, sheriff. When the nig— When the Klop boy got killed.”

May 18, 1925

Cooper’s Green Grocers

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

We were all just goofing off, sir, riding around on the highways in Larry Goss’s car, and we pulled up in front of the market. We wanted to stop and buy a couple of soda pops.

Anyway, there was a couple of blacks taking up out in front, hanging around under the awning, chatting and laughing at one of Mr. Cooper’s tables, making a terrible noise and commotion. They were—well, at the time I’d’ve said as they were all tall, big, grown negroes; now, I think they were just all boys. My age, or even younger, all of them.

Me and the boys went inside and got our sodies. When we came back out, there was some gals talking to the blacks. Good-looking gals, and the blacks—they were being all sorts of disrespectful and vulgar. One of them—I remember him being the biggest of them all, but now I think he couldn’t have been any older than my little cousin Carey—was standing up against the railing, talking all loud, and he was making rude gestures to the girls.

So we went over there. The girls was giggling, nervous-like, and one of them—the girl the negro-boy was drooling over—held onto my arm and pulled herself close next to me. I told them negroes to leave the girls be, and Harris—he was there, too—said that if they kept on harassing the girls, there’d be a price for them to pay.

The blacks laughed and hollered at us for a while, but we took the girls inside so as they could get safely away from the blacks. The boys and me went out and sat in the car and drank our pops, and we waited on the girls to finish up inside. When they came back out, the blacks started again. Me and Harris and Johnny and Ernest and Will jumped out the car, and we grabbed the girls and took them with us back to the car, and we all piled in while Ernest got it running. But even over the engine I heard the one blacks call out, “I see you later, white girl. I knowed white girls who like nigger-boys before, and you just like ‘em.”

I wanted to get out and slug the uppity black right then, but Ernest had got the car moving just then and I didn’t have the chance.

Vivian—that was the girl the negro was harassing, sir—she leaned on up against me again, and she thanked me, said I was ever so swell to step in.

May 21, 1925

Spartan County Sheriff’s Office

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

“AJ, I’m not listening to you for a story about romancing a girl. Carter says you’ve got something for me about the lynching.”

“I do, sir.” AJ looked down at his shackled wrists again. “I just thought as you’d like to know what led up into it, you see.”

“I do, AJ.” Logan wiped his palm along his face, and then on his shirt. “I just need to know the important things, though, son. The things relevant to the investigation. I don’t need to know about how she smiled at you, or how you held her close to you on the ride to her family home.”

“I’m sorry, sheriff. I just— I’ll try and stick to the story about the negro, now.”

“Just as well, son. Just as well.”

May 19, 1925

1325 Split-line Avenue

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

Vivian is the mayor’s daughter, sir, in case you didn’t know. The boys and I drove the girls all to her house, and the mayor shook our hands when the girls explained it all. He must’ve known I went to the University, sir, cause he pulled me aside and asked me how they handle this sort of thing down in Iowa City.

I told him I didn’t know anything about blacks acting like that down at the University, and he hoommed and hawed, sir, in that kind of way he does, and he said they must have a way of keeping them in line better as how we do. Anyhow, he thanked us again, and he said he’d have his brother drop by and have a word with me.

Later than night, while me and dad were listening to the Centuries game—Centuries at Kernels, sir—someone knocked on the door. I answered it, and it was the mayor’s brother alright. He had something for me, too, just like the mayor said he would—a coil of rope. He’d left his truck running, and there was some other guys in the back. He asked if I was going to come, only as the mayor had said I wanted to join in. So I called in to dad that I was going out for a while, and I jumped in the back of the truck, with the others.

May 22, 1925

Spartan County Sheriff’s Office

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

Carter and Hogan led in two men, and Logan looked at young AJ. The boy nodded somberly.

“They was there, sheriff. Them, and the others you brought in. Only one you’re missing now is the mayor’s brother.”

“I know you said it was Mr. Aetos, AJ. But I want to make sure you’re certain before I go and disrespect the mayor’s family in that way. Ain’t no negroes been lynched—Hell, ain’t been nobody lynched in Iowa in more’n a decade. It’s a serious charge you’re laying out against the man.”

“I’ve told you the whole thing, sheriff, clearly as I could.”

Logan wiped sweat from his face. He was waiting to hear back from the judge about an arrest warrant. He didn’t need one: AJ’s story was more than enough for cause; but for the mayor’s own brother, Logan wanted to do everything as closely to the letter as he could.

“Tell me again about that night, AJ.”

May 19, 1925

2934 Hurst Drive

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

We pulled up outside the house, sir, just like I said. There was no light on inside, and we didn’t have the lamps on the truck, so it was awful dark.

Everyone had something to hold on to: I had the coil of rope; the mayor’s brother had a gold club; a couple of other men had bats; one man had a shotgun, all worn-down and brassy with tarnish.

We all hopped out of the truck and went on up the front path, and onto the porch. One of the men booted the door in. It made a God-Almighty awful noise, sheriff. The others all stormed inside the house, all noise and scare. I heard voices from upstairs, and some of the lights in the house turned on.

I don’t know what happened inside exactly, sheriff, as I was told to stay on the porch and make sure the black didn’t try and get out that way. I heard a few things breaking, glassy and such, and shouting, from the men I was with and the niggers inside, but I didn’t hear the shotgun go, and I don’t think anyone was hurt too bad.

Except the boy who’d come after miss Vivian. When they brought him out, they was dragging him by the collar of his night shirt. His face was all swollen and out of shape; I saw light flicker against blood oozing out of his cheek and lip. His arm was bent funny. And he was moaning something awful, but not saying anything really at all.

The man with the shotgun kept waving it back at the negroes, shouting they’d best keep back, and the fellas as was dragging the boy hefted him up into the back of the truck. And then we all piled back on, too, and the mayor’s brother drove us away.

He took us to one of them parks the niggers hang around at, just a sweeping empty lot of dust and grass, with a wooden play set for the little negroes. This park had a stand of trees along one side, old oaks, I think. Anyways, the mayor’s brother parked out there in the grass, and the men pulled the boy from the back. He didn’t fight back, not even a little. Heck, sheriff, I don’t half-wonder if he weren’t already dead by then. He wasn’t moaning no more, and he fell onto his broke arm three feet without a sound.

They dragged him across the grass, which I know is all full of broken grass and nails and such. They were grunting and groaning about how the negro couldn’t walk now cause one of them had hit him too hard in the head—I think it must’ve been the mayor’s brother, sir, but I can’t say for certain.

Once we reached the trees on the other side of the park, they told me to tie the boy up. I thought at first they meant to tie his hands together, like my hands are now, sir, but when I reached for his hands one of the men made a motion towards his own neck, and I got a shiver inside me. But I’d already gone on so far, so I tied the rope on around the boy’s neck.

May 23, 1925

Spartan County Sheriff’s Office

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

Mr. Andreas Aetos was smiling as he was shuffled into the sheriff’s office. Smiling, even though he’d come to the station in the back of Sheriff Logan’s cruiser, and he was cuffed with his hands behind his back, and he’d been placed under arrest, as he’d been told when the cuffs had been placed on his wrists, for illegal murder and with the approval of the court. Smiling.

He wore a gross, broad, toothy, wide-mouthed, greasy smile; a smile like a toad that’s bathed in motor oil, then been left in the sun to dry and tan its skin.

His smile slipped, very slightly, when he saw the men piled atop one another in the open-air cell, men he knew. But he put the smile back on right quick.

He was led into the little interview room, and he sat down opposite the sheriff.

“I hope you’re pleased with how you’ve done as sheriff, sheriff.”

Even with his wrists bound together behind his back, his handsome suit jacket ruffled, his forehead slick with sweat from the hot and stuffy sheriff’s office, he looked collected. Cool as a pickle, Logan might have said.

“Can I get you some water, Mr. Aetos?”

“You’re going to be out on your heels, mighty soon.” The mayor’s brother didn’t deign to acknowledge the sheriff’s offer. “The Mayor—” Logan had never heard him refer to his brother as anything other than ‘The Mayor’ “—is a’ready on his way to see the judge at the courthouse about this. I should think he’ll be here not too soon, and kick your sorry self out of the office. Arresting me, and on The Mayor’s front stoop, no less.”

“I’m an elected official, just like your brother, Mr. Aetos.” Sheriff Logan pulled the little notebook out of his breast, and opened it, and flipped slowly through the pages. He paid only a little attention to the contents of the notebook, focusing more on the svelte man across the table.

“As well as may be, sheriff, but The Mayor—”

“Did you kill young Gasey Klop on May the nineteenth?”

“Lord, what could’a given you that idea, sheriff?”

“Just an answer, sir.”

“No. I was home, with my brother, and his wife, and the children.”

“Were you aware that Gasey had had an altercation with Vivian earlier that day?”

“She mentioned some trouble with a nigger. I was told some young neighborhood boy had settled the matter.”

“He settled the matter.” Logan stood, and went to the door. He held the knob without turning it for a moment, and without turning to look at his prisoner he said, “You’re sure you didn’t have anything to do with Gasey’s killing?”

“I already said my piece, sheriff.”

Logan opened the door. AJ was standing outside it. His wrists were still bound together, but Logan had taken him home for a shower and some fresh clothes, and he now looked clean and well-mannered.

The sheriff sighed. “AJ, is Mr. Aetos here the man who took you to lynch Gasey Klop?”

“That’s right, sheriff.”

“And Aetos gave you the rope you strung the boy up with?”

“Yes.”

“And he told you to string the boy up?”

“I can’t say for sure about that, sheriff. But he was there, and I’d put paper money up that he said it.”

“The boy’s talking horse puckey,” the mayor’s brother said. “I was home. My brother will vouch that.”

“And I’ve got eight men in holding as’ll say you rounded them up, told ‘em your niece was attacked by a negro-devil, and said as you meant to bring him to justice.”

“Just a bunch of gypsum, sheriff.”

“I thought as you’d say so.” He stepped out, and pushed AJ into the room by the elbow. “Go on and wait in there, son. I’ve got some forms to fill out. Unless you’d rather wait in the cell with the rougher boys.”

“No, sir, I’d like to stay in here just fine.”

When the door was shut, AJ sat where the sheriff had been sitting. The mayor’s brother glared hard at him without saying a word for some time; and AJ sat, staring at his bound wrists.

“Why’d you turn us in, AJ?” Mr. Aetos said. He shot a glance to the door, and his voice was lowered to a hiss.

May 20, 1925

McKinley Park

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

I got up early, Mr. Aetos, and I went back out to that park as you took me to. Where we strung the negro up. I got up before the sun was up, and I was at the park when it was just getting bright. I stood across the road, but I could see it all plenty clear: the boy hanging from the tree bough I threw the rope over and you and the others hauled him up to, and the path you dragged him along, and the tracks of the truck where you parked it.

I was there when the first negro came outside, and they shouted loud about O Lawd’s a-Mercy. And before the sun was even up the Klop boy’s momma and poppa was there. Them and some others cut him down, and they was crying. Crying, Mr. Aetos. The nigger-woman, she was crying hard as my own momma woulda for me, if it had been me and her right there.

I think some of them niggers saw me standing there, watching ‘em. None of them said anything. I think the Klop man, Gasey’s poppa, saw me. But none of them saw me that night, at the house. They might’a just seen me standing there, as if I’d stopped just when they’d cut the boy down.

But I watched his momma cry and hold him like, just a little babe; and he looked awful small in her arms, just like a little babe.

May 23, 1925

Spartan County Sheriff’s Office

Cyprus Bend, Iowa

“Aught we did was bring justice to a negro, son. Little bastard threatened my Viv, or don’t you recall? Not a one of them don’t grow up and try and push themselves onto a white woman; not a one of them don’t grow up to be a nuisance, or a threat, if they get even half the chance for it.”

“Weren’t justice, Mr. Aetos. I saw the way his momma cried. You cain’t cry that way for someone as gonna hurt a pretty white girl. He was just a boy.”

“The nigger-loving judges won’t put them away, boy, and the Congress out in Des Moines say we cain’t treat ‘em the way they ought to be treated. Justice only comes from the mob, anymore.”

“Weren’t justice,” AJ said again.

He stood up and knocked on the door. “You hear all that, sheriff?”