The Last Will of Lucy Sutton: Chapter Eleven: Yale Testifies at Trial

I have been wanting to share some excerpts from the work in progress of The Last Will of Lucy Sutton and got some inspiration to do so last night.  Here is a portion of Chapter Eleven, the scene in the courtroom when attorney Gregory Yale, who drew up John Sutton's will is called to testify at the trial of the challenge to the will brought by John's brother Shadrack.  This will be familiar to some who have head me speak, as I often read from it during my presentations.  I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it, and I welcome your thoughts and comments.

The Last Will of Lucy Sutton

A Story of Love

Chapter Eleven

Yale Testifies at Trial

     More irascible than usual due to the rising heat that stifled the courtroom, Judge Crabtree wanted to move things along, so he could get done and get out of his judicial robe.  He banged the gavel hard.  "Who is your next witness Mr. Bryant?"

     Bryant, who was short and squat, wheezed and pushed himself up out of his seat to stand at attention at the counsel table.  "We're calling the lawyer who drew up the will, Mr. Gregory Yale, Your Honor."  

     Judge Crabtree nodded at Yale who was sitting on the first row of the gallery.  "Please take the stand, Mr. Yale."

     Yale, fifties and trim, stepped sprightly to the witness stand.  He took out his spectacles from his waistcoat pocket, and after swearing to tell the truth, Yale was asked by Bryant to explain to the Court what happened on the night of January 23, 1846.  Yale began recalling the events of that evening.

     A serious twenty year-old, Joel opened the door to the dark room and somberly ushered in Gregory Yale. Joel pulled up a side chair beside the bed and invited Mr. Yale to take a seat.  Close and stuffy, the room was brighter than the hallway had been but was still dark, illuminated only by a lantern that sat beside the bed.  Yale looked at the bed and had trouble seeing that there was anything on it except for piles of quilts and a feather pillow at the top.  Nestled into the feather pillow was the head of an old man, a ragged halo of fluffy white hair splayed out from the gray drawn face with scruffy whiskers and wrinkled skin mottled with brown age spots.  

     The eyes were closed and Yale wondered if it was too late.  He watched the quilt where the heart should have been but could not detect any movement.  

     "Mr. Sutton," said Yale.  

     "He can't hear too well. You might have to speak up," Joel said over his shoulder.  

     The lawyer leaned in closer and shook the quilt where the arm should be. He could feel through the covers that flesh had been worn down and there was little substance between skin and hard bone.  He spoke louder. "Mr. Sutton!" There was no answer, so he spoke louder still, "Mr. Sutton!" 

     The old man's chin began to quiver, showing the first signs of life that Yale had observed.  The eyelids began to move as well, as John Sutton struggled to open them.  The papery lids cracked open slowly to reveal rheumy eyes the same bright blue as those of the pale yellow young man beside Yale.  John Sutton's dry lips parted slowly, and sticky white saliva showed in the corners of his mouth.  The old man said something that Yale could not make out.  

     "What did you say?" Yale asked.

     "John," Sutton managed to utter.  

     "Hello, John," said Yale as John's eyes closed again.  

     "It don't seem like it, but he can understand you," said Joel.

     "Joel, I need to speak to him alone to make sure that I am doing what he wants and not what anyone else wants." 

     "Alright, then. I'll just be out in the hall.  You let me know if you need anything. Momma is fixin' a plate for when you finish."  Joel left the two men alone.  

     Yale pulled the chair even closer to the bed and spoke slowly but in a loud clear voice.  

     "Mr. Sutton.  John.  Your boys made an appointment for you to come and see me at my office in town. I am a lawyer.  I know you know what that means because I understand that you have been a judge in Georgia.  Your boys told me that you wanted to do a will that will set free your slave Lucy, and her eight children, and her six grandchildren, that all belong to you.  I have written up the paper based on the information they have given me.  But I need to know that this is what you really want and not something that they are forcing you to do."

     Yale waited for John to respond.  He shook his arm again "John, can your hear me?" There was no reaction this time and he shouted "John Sutton! Can you hear me? It is very important that you respond to my questions." Still, there was no reaction.

     "He can hear you, but he may not be able to understand."  Yale was startled by the voice coming from the doorway.  He looked over and saw Lucy standing there, holding two glasses, each quarter filled with an amber liquid.  "I brought him a glass of whiskey.  That will help wake him up. I have a glass for you too."

     Lucy walked over and handed a glass to Yale, and went to the other side of the bed, pulling a chair up close to John's head.  She sat beside him, then lifted his head and brought the glass to his lips.  He opened his mouth a little, and Lucy wiped it with a towel, before John took a sip, but his eyes remained closed.  Yale took a sip of his own whiskey and felt it burn as it went down his throat. "I have to tell you that if I can't talk to him alone, and be confident that he wants to do what I was called here to help him do, that I won't be able to write this will."

     "I understand Mr. Yale," Lucy said. She had the whiskey glass in her hand.  "I will leave you alone with him.  But may I tell you something before I go?"

    "Yes." 

    "I object," shouted Shadrack's lawyer, Joe Lancaster, "to this hearsay testimony from a negro, who isn't competent to testify against the claims of white man in this court."

     "This is a court trial, Mr. Lancaster," Judge Crabtree said.  I'll hear what Mr. Yale has to say and decide what to let into evidence."

     Yale looked at Bryant, his raised eyebrows asking if he should go on.

     "Continue, Mr. Yale," Bryant said.  

     Lucy inhaled deeply before she spoke to Yale.  "I was not a child when I came to live with John Sutton.  I was close to eighteen years old at that time.  My master was Ezekiel Adams.  Master Adams was also my daddy. I suspect like any woman, my comings and goings were always controlled by a man.  But it is a special thing to know that the man who controls you can sell you, or give you away, no different than a pot or pan, or a chicken or a sow."  Lucy bent to check the chamber pot beside John's bed, and, finding it empty, shook her head and put it back on the floor.
     "But Master Adams was a good man.  He was more kind than cruel to all his slaves, and I just feel that he had special affection for me since I was his blood.

    "The first time I saw John Sutton I was about twelve or so.  He and Master Adams were part of a group of men who were fighting the Seminoles and running them off of the land so the white folks could farm and raise cattle in Irwin County, same as they did in Carolina before they moved to Georgia.  And John Sutton had come out to the Adams plantation to meet with the other members of the militia to make plans for a raid.  I was helping to serve food to the men and I seen how John Sutton looked at me.  And it scared me.  And I could tell that Master Adams saw how John Sutton looked at me too.  And Master Adams was scared for me too.  From that point on, Master Adams made sure that John Sutton was never near me alone."

     "But when Master Adams died I was supposed to belong to his son, William.  But William wasn't but seventeen years old, a year too young to own property in his own name.  By that time, John Sutton was the probate judge and one of the first things he did as a judge was to become the guardian of Master Adams' son William.  And that meant that anything that William owned, John owned.  And that included me. It is a strange thing to be owned by your own daddy, it is an even stranger thing to be owned by your own younger half-brother who himself has no control over you.

     "So I was about eighteen when I went to live with John Sutton.  Folks thought it was strange that John hadn't never married a white woman. His family could not understand it. It was one thing to keep a negro woman making babies but it was another thing entirely to treat her with kindness, or as if she was anything more than livestock.

     "John Sutton was kind to me.  He only beat me once, and then only to prove to his own father that I was his property and that he was not treating me like a proper wife.  It ain't right for a man to cry.  But he did, after that beating.  And he made me a promise that he would never beat me again.

Lucy dipped the edge of a tea towel into a bowl of water that sat on a table beside the bed.  She wrung out the excess liquid and gently wiped John's forehead.

     "We moved further away from his family, and all the pointing fingers and wagging tongues by folk who said there was something wrong about the way that we lived.  And in the end, his father cut him off and all the land that belonged to the Suttons went to John's four brothers, Absalom, Moses, David and Shadrack.

     "But John didn't much mind.  He was happy.  By then we were both happy.  And then along came Easter and I swear that when John saw that baby's eyes he fell in love all over again.  And then came Maria, and Joel, and Mahala and Sarah, and Jack, and Benjamin and David."

     As Lucy spoke, she rose from the seat she'd taken on her chair, and Yale watched as she lifted the blankets at the foot of the bed.  She vigorously massaged the pasty skin of John's legs, and briskly rubbed each of his feet in turn and they reddened as the blood began to circulate.

     "We lived a quiet peaceful life and nobody bothered us or messed with us or even cared much about us.  We didn't ask for nothing from the Suttons, and they did not think there was anything that we could do for them, so they let us be."  Lucy pulled the covers back over John's feet and tucked the blankets under the thin mattress.

     "But when John's daddy died we went to pay our respects.  We didn't want nothing or need nothing but it was just right to pay our respects.  But while were there, I saw how John's brother Shadrack looked at my daughter Sarah and there was something evil there.  Something evil and nasty.  And I told John and John seen it too.  And John made me another promise - - that he would protect Sarah and all of us.  That was about two years ago.  And we packed everything we had, everything.  You should have seen us - - all of our clothes and household things and chickens and four hundred cows.  We packed it all up and left Georgia and came here to Duval County.

     "John had heard that Florida was a place where he could set us free.  It wasn't until we got here that we learnt different.  We found out that it ain't legal to set negroes free in the State of Florida, and then we didn't know what to do."  Lucy begged Yale's pardon as she walked past him to the left side of John's bed.  She plucked the covers loose and leaned down, sniffing, hoping that three days of constipation had come to an end.  Smelling nothing sharp, she took John's right hand.  Lucy pulled a small bottle from the pocket of her apron, and from it poured liniment into her palm.  Then she rubbed her hands together before smoothing the ointment on John's dry arm and down to his fingertips.

     "John promised me that he would see a lawyer and find a way to keep his promises to me and Sarah and to all of us.  And I knew he meant to keep his promise.  But then he got sick, and every time we tried to make an appointment to come into town to see you, he was too sick to make the trip.  We had a doctor come out and they say there is nothing much they can do to help him.

     Lucy walked past Yale, excusing herself again, and went back to the other side of the bed, and rubbed liniment on John's left arm and hand before tucking it back under the covers as she had done with the right.

     "He has been in this bed for the last two weeks and that is why Joel and Jack came out to fetch you and bring you out to the house." 

     Lucy crossed her arms and stood over John as she continued to speak.

     "John Sutton is a good man.  And I don't know what the law says about a promise that a white man makes to a slave.  But I know that John Sutton made promises to me in his life.  He promised to take care of me and our children, and to protect me and our children, and our children's children too.  And he told me that these promises that he made in his life, he would keep in his death."

Yale had sat quietly holding his whiskey in his hand as he listened to Lucy tell her story.  The room had remained still, save for Lucy's ministrations captured in the shadows flickering in the light of the lantern.  But Yale sensed before he saw a movement on the bed -- the old man's hand struggling to emerge from the layers of quilts and squeeze Lucy's hand.  

     Fanning himself, and loosening the closure on his robe, Judge Crabtree asked, "Anything else?"

     "Miss Lucy was a wise old negro."

     "Objection, your Honor!" snapped Lancaster. "I move to strike that opinion testimony."

     Wearily, Judge Crabtree intoned, "That comment is stricken.  Anything else, Mr. Yale?"

     "It was late, so I stayed with the family overnight.  The next morning, John was feeling better.  I went over the Will with him twice, and when I was done, he marked it with his "X".  And I was a witness to that mark."