In some ways a love letter, and love letters tell nothing new...
He was the Hanging Judge, Old Judge Jones. He never went to church. The first week he lived there, he had a long talk with the Reverend. While everyone else filed up at the door, his face was never seen, and no one could ever find out why.
He obeyed the laws of his county, and never drank at home. Once a week, he took the train to the next county, and visited an old friend and played chess. Some times they drank a glass of wine together and one night, it was brandy. Coming home, he had trouble finding his way, and that's how he met Mercy.
Her name was Mercy, and she had a heart-shaped face. Her mother had been one of many, who'd daringly crossed the color line, back in the Centenary Year, and she'd paid for it, yes she had. She, like her mother taught school, and in the Darktown she was respected, but no one ever invited her to the teas the other teachers held, but tutored the best of her pupils as well as she could.
But in his library, Mercy saw…Latin. "De re Metallica, translated by Calvin Coolidge." she breathed to herself. She took the book down, and started to read aloud.
"You know Latin, little girl? Are you Catholic?"
"No. My mother taught it to me. I also know Greek, and French." She wrinkled her forehead. "She said I should know German, too, but.." She sighed. "It's so difficult, when there aren't other people.."
"Do you know Hebrew as well?"
"No, but I feel as if I should…So many languages…So much to know..."
"Perhaps, I could teach you. You see, I am a Jew.”
“So it’s true! That’s what happened to the babies!”
He sighed. “I had nothing to do with the babies, but it’s my burden nonetheless. If I’d been a doctor, people would have spoken about my tenth patient being dead. People have strange beliefs about us. But I don't eat children. Believe me."
"So, why did you hang George Green?"
And she showed him his widow and his children, and he learned things, and vowed to make them right. And he longed for Mercy.
There followed a period of strange assignations, of hand signals and chalk marks, of books left on a library shelf, to be exchanged of meetings out of town in his black sedan. They could never be seen together, but they could still be friends.
And what happened of all this?
"Perhaps, in this county, the laws might be a little more just."
And if he prayed to the East, it was in the direction of Mercy, and if he invoked powers beyond control, it was Mercy's love and Mercy's pleasure he obeyed. They say that he fined the widow for spitting on the sidewalk, and the parson, and the Mayor's son, for similar offenses. The facts stand, that they were, in fact, doing offenses--perhaps not exactly as stated-- against the common weal, but had never before been such a judge in that county!
And then there came a day…"I've been saving some money…how would you like to go to Chicago?"
"Chicago?"
"We could make a new start…my retirement is coming up…"
"I'll have to pack…"
"And, would you like to um, spend the night together?
"I thought you'd never ask!”
And they found them.
They hanged Judge Jones, and what they did to Mercy, we do not tell, but she died late the next morning, and we know not her grave.
Their love persists, and so do their spirits.
And so does mine, despite all hurts.
Taken from the song by Les Dudek, My Beloved said it reminded him powerfully of William Fawkner. I've never read him... Odd.