Brutal Wretch.” Despite a grueling chase, the rapist eluded
capture. In such cases, Tom’s father withdrew into himself, as if
tormented by some dreadful sickness. Once, before he
apprehended a fugitive, a reporter observed, “Truth to tell, Sheriff
White’s every thought day and night” was of the man, so much so
that “his capture soon became a part of Sheriff White’s very
existence.”
Every time the sheriff headed out into the dark, the
bloodhounds howling, Tom had to live with the terrible
uncertainty that his father might never return—that, like Tom’s
mother, he might disappear from this world forever. Though it
took enormous courage and virtue to risk your life in order to
protect society, such selflessness also contained, at least from the
vantage point of your loved ones, a hint of cruelty.
Once, a desperado put a gun to Emmett’s head; somehow, he
managed to wrestle the weapon free. Another time, at the jail, a
prisoner pulled a knife and stabbed his father from behind. Tom
could see the knife protruding from his father’s back, blood
gushing onto the floor. It was amazing how much blood was inside
a man, inside his father. The prisoner tried to twist the knife, and
his father seemed ready to give up the ghost, when suddenly he
drove his finger into the prisoner’s eye, causing the eye to pop out
—Tom could see it dangling from the socket. His father subdued
the prisoner. But Tom would relive that scene all his life. How
could one forgive a sinner who tried to kill one’s own father?
The first hanging that Tom witnessed was carried out in January- A nineteen-year-old black man, Ed Nichols, had been
convicted of raping a girl and sentenced to be “hung by the neck
until he is dead.” The duty of performing an execution, which
hadn’t occurred in the county for a decade, fell to the sheriff.