Trudie Calls Out

Trudie Scofield did her best to savor her final meal. It seemed like someone had put rocks in her rice and beans, which scraped all the way down her throat to sink heavily in her stomach. Her knitter’s fingers rubbed against her thumbs: a familiar sensation that offered her some relief. Too bad knitting was also what earned her a place at the end of the line.

Looking through the bars of her cell, Sheriff Thompson’s boots were just about visible, perched as they were on the corner of his desk. Trudie wryly observed that this was likely the first time she’d ever appreciated Sheriff’s frequent “see-yesters.” But something inside her urged her to move this business further along as best she could.

She held out the tin tray like an offering plate, lifting it first from her lap, and then with a flex of her nimble fingers it fell to the floor with a resolute, metallic slap. “It’s time,” she simply said, hopefully loud enough for Sheriff to hear.

The boots shifted, a wooden chair creaked and squealed against the wooden planks of the floor, and Sheriff Thompson appeared in the doorway. “Is it, now?” Sheriff answered. “Thought you liked my company, Miss Scofield.”

“Pray you don’t take it personal now, Sheriff,” she replied.

Thompson snorted. “Pray! I must say, yer full of surprises. Now scoot back so I can get at that door.”

Trudie lifted herself up from the bench, and stepped to the far side of her cell. The human cage was opened. The Sheriff withdrew a pair of wristcuffs for the woman in front of him. “C’mon, Miss Scofield,” he offered, holding the cuffs out in front of him, key dangling from the little finger of his left hand.

Gingerly, Trudie Scofield slid her hands in such a way that they were about her wrists before Sheriff had opened them. The diameter was sized for the hands of horse thieves and highwaymen, not textile weavers. Sheriff watched her, considering, with his brows cocked and mustache puffed.

“Didn’t see that one comin’,” Sheriff said as he shook his head. “Gimme them.” Trudie extended her arms and narrowed her fingers into points. The cuffs slid off with barely a sound before Thompson stuffed them into his belt. Turning about with a jangle, the sheriff then gathered worn lariat from its hook on the wall.

***

The unlikely pair emerged from the Sheriff’s office, both squinting in the amber sunlight of the late afternoon. It was the “magic hour,” as Mister Frederick Scofield would say. All the shadows stretched forever, the sun casting everything in a rich orange and crimson glow. The shade cast by the dark arm of the gallows, appropriately, reached to Trudie’s feet.

She thought of her Paw and what he would be thinking of her right now.

At Wilkerson’s General Store and Supply Company, a few hundred feet distant, someone rang the bell maybe half a dozen times. Trudie, her wrists now coiled and bound in the lasso strung about her waist, walked slowly, deliberately towards the hangman’s post.

The serene pealing of the church bell rang out, and Trudie froze. That image screamed its way into her mind instantly, though she thought it was tucked safely away in her memory. Preacher’s hands around her neck… His ferocious, unblinking stare that burned holes into her… His normally combed and cultured hair frazzled into a wispy brown mane curled around his sweating, ruddy face… The froth of blood and spittle she tasted in her own mouth…

Sheriff prodded her forward. “Git on, Miss Scofield,” he said. “Ain’t no use waitin’.”

She resumed her walk, the church bell marking the time. Her steps now were less sure, and kicked up dust from the parched roadway. A crowd had begun to gather: a storm whose rumbles spoke her name and that of good Preacher with increasing frequency. It was only a matter of time before the first strike of lightning.

“There she is now!” Trudie grit her teeth at the sound of Marcus Welbry’s timorous baritone. Of all the people to start with the heckling today—

“Venomous serpent!” Welbry declared. Even he couldn’t be swayed from the Preacher’s hallow. “May the good Lord have mercy on your unrepentant soul, Miss Trudie Scofield!” The grumbling of the growing crowd blossomed, fueled by Welbry’s fanciful, God-fearing words.

Trudie made it up the narrow staircase, one quavering step at a time, while Sheriff stood at the bottom, hand resting on the revolver holstered at his belt. She looked up to the platform’s lone other occupant. A burlap sack covered the poor bastard’s head. He stood oddly slanted, even wilted. The headsman raised a leather-gloved hand over where his mouth must have been, and did his best to stifle a hacking cough.

Well, thought Trudie. At least Gil Barnes had the good sense to keep his mouth mostly shut today. Trudie tried to look in Gil’s eyes, but the burlap sack seemed to conveniently look somewhere else: the wrap of the noose, the craftsmanship of the gallows arm above their heads, the battered edges of the trapdoor at their feet. His darkened eyes looked everywhere except at the daughter of the man who nursed him out of his addiction.

As she alighted the trapdoor next to Gil, she couldn’t help herself. “I’ll be seein’ ya, Cold Turkey.” The headsman froze a moment, noose in his hands, then seemed to shiver as the loop effortlessly swallowed Miss Scofield. Trudie’s gaze scanned over the current hullabaloo of the town’s one road and it’s anxious, staring occupants, up to the solitary building atop Beckett’s Hill. The bell still tolled her death knell while the headsman shrank back as best he could to the furthest corner of the platform.

Trudie’s fingers and thumbs began knitting again, and she stood pigeon-toed and alone, drained of nearly all her courage. “Put a bag on her head!” Some compassionate woman in the rabble called out. Gil turned her way, and nodded.

He crept again to Trudie Scofield’s side, withdrawing a used flour bag from his trouser pocket. It slid easily over the tightly-wrapped bun of black hair, small ears, freckled brow, narrow nose, and frowning lips. “So, so sorry, Miss Trudie,” stammered Gil, as he tucked the flour bag into to loops of the noose. She managed slight nod of acknowledgement.

Her final words to the judge echoed in her mind at that moment: I ain’t done the Lord’s work in years, and you all know that. But I know what I done, and I know I done right. Those were likely the last words most anyone in that crowd, now hissing at and heckling, would remember of her. But the time for talking things over was done. She wondered if they still hung the tapestry with their savior emblazoned on one side, and their shepherd to wickedness on the other.

Sheriff Thompson cleared his throat and raised his hands for attention. The crowd simmered down. “No use standin’ on ceremony. Y’all know the charges leveled against this woman.” Thompson’s gaze rose to the amber streaks of cloud painted across the azure sky. He recited the charges, the crowd punctuating each with murmurs of assent and reproach. “Slander. Defamation of character. Perjury. Misuse of church property. Conspiracy to delegitimize a man of the cloth.”

“Blasphemy!” Welbry shouted from somewhere in the crowd. “Mocking our savior – and your God-given talents, used to spread evil!”

The crowd groaned and catcalled, smothering Trudie Scofield with shame and scorn. Though she could not see them, Trudie’s eyes were wide-open and staring. She imagined the sight of the roiling scrabble of townsfolk champing at the bit to see her punishment. Meanwhile, Sheriff Thompson raised and waved his arms to settle the crowd before continuing.

“With these charges levied against you, and no true and justifiable defense provided for during your trial, our Judge has declared you guilty of all these crimes. Our office sees fit that you be hung from yer neck until yer dead.”

Murmurs erupted once again from the crowd. Thompson leveled his gaze upon the setting sun. “Hangman, proceed in your duties.” He reflexively grimaced, some compassion squeezing through his typically soldierly manner.

All eyes turned toward the worn and weathered lever used to activate the gallows trap door. Called to active duty, the hangman, Gil “Cold Turkey” Barnes stuttered forward with a phlegmy cough. With two ashy, knobby clumps of leather that could hardly be called “hands,” Gil clasped the lever, and heaved.

Trudie stood there, shaking like a lone leaf. The crowd gasped. Gil pushed again. The handle refused to budge.

“Pull it,” called Sheriff. “Just pull it, Gil.” Thompson’s tone was the one he used with his four-year-old nephews when they needed to feed the dog. The hangman replied with a frantic tugging of the lever, followed closely with a paroxysm of wracking hacks and coughs.

Thompson was stung. “Aw, for the love a’—“ he muttered, then stopped. “Frank!” He called in the direction of the livery stable. “Bring out Honeydew. And fetch the longest rope you can lay yer hands on!”

I could scarcely believe it, thought Trudie Scofield. Sheriff’s donkey is gonna drag me to hell.

Things were studiously quiet atop Beckett’s Hill, inside the chapel. The offending tapestry still displayed its heavenly scene from a wall rack. It depicted the crucifixion of Jesus, with Mary at his feet. Scarlet embroidery thread detailed his various wounds: hands, feet, ribs, forehead. The landscape spanned the entire spectrum of colors: browns, black, and yellows formed the earth at the base of the cross in the foreground. A brilliant rainbow streaked across the sky, framed with billowing clouds pierced by lemon-yellow beams of divine sunlight.

The tapestry would have impressed the most accomplished weavers of the time, or even those since. Even Charles Drummage McFee was surprised at the extent of the painstaking detail. “Hey Abe,” he warbled. “This guy kinda looks like you. But skinny. Ya know that?”

Abraham Pinkney forced a laugh, tucking his curly locks behind his ears. He suddenly wished Preacher would show up, and assign him some other duties conspicuously outside the sanctuary. Didn’t the front steps need scrubbing after Tuesday’s dust storm? Couldn’t he be out there, painting the window shutters right now? And all those shingles on the roof… Surely there was some leak up there, somewhere, that he could fix regardless of his fear of heights. Abe wanted to do something somewhere else, anywhere but here.

“I know you wanna look at it, Abe.” Charles jabbed an elbow at his partner.

“Shut it, Charles!” replied his round-faced partner. “I’ll do no such thing. Preacher said it’s unforgivable sin.”

“And here it is, still sittin’ up on the wall in a House of the Lord,” offered Charles.

“It stays up agin’ the wall, undisturbed. The back side is the dark side. Preacher says it stays, but it stays like this.”

“I heard you the first time, Abe. But – and this is important – Preacher ain’t here. No one else is. She’s strung up now, as we speak. Ain’t no one gonna be the wiser.” Charles took a couple steps closer with his words, further convincing himself.

“Preacher says it’s the Devil’s work!” Abe’s response was an adamant – but fruitless – warning.

“The Lord’s work on this side, in the House of the Lord,” Charles considered aloud. “I reckon I’m protected from the Devil.” He stepped forward again, and sniffed. “At least fer one little peek, anyway.”

Charles reached for the hem of the four-foot-wide tapestry: a final gift from weaver Trudie Scofield and the estate of Doctor Frederick Scofield. They were Godless heathen, but they had money. And until this hornet’s nest was pissed on, they never did any wrong by the town.

He considered the heavy fabric and hundreds of hours of work as critically as his young mind could manage. He was mightily impressed. “I’m-a take a look, last call,” Charles announced.

“Don’t want no part of it!” Abe snapped back. Abe had since moved to the nave of the church, peering through the narrow windows by the front door, anxiously spying for anyone coming up the dirt path.

Charles lifted the edge of the tapestry, craning his neck, twisting his head, to peer at the backside with an upside-down view. His breath stopped at the sight. “Would’ja… Naw…” he muttered. He raised the hem more, then finally flipped the tapestry and its hanger so he could see the entirety of the work.

A rainbow of colors infused the stained-glass window, framing Preacher’s head like a halo. His normally well-kept hair was a study in detailed chaos. His eyes blazed with blues and reds, and his white collar was unbuttoned and askew. Preacher’s fist was raised, and embroidered with dots of red.

That’s our chapel window, observed Charles. And he ain’t got no pants on.

The lower edge of the tapestry was framed in browns, blacks, and yellows. Trudie Scofield’s unmistakable profile – and her old blue housedress, in shreds – lay at Preacher’s feet.