From the Improvement Era, 1929-1930 –

Out of the Burning

By Ivy Williams Stone

Chapter One

JAMES FLEMING HARRISON, JR.
Attorney-at-Law

It was a neat sign, done in clear, black type on the Florentine glass. It led into a well-appointed office. It introduced a well-groomed man, not young, not old, eyes a trifle puffy, as if their owner were under-exercised or over-fed; hands a little too white, as if unaccustomed to menial tasks; chin indecisive. James Fleming Harrison, Jr., was an understudy; a lawyer still waiting for his opportunity, unassertive, undecided. In the tones of his voice, the movements of his body, he revealed a studied desire to please others, to avoid criticism. All his life he had been an understudy to an irascible, dominating father — Judge James Fleming Harrison. Judge Harrison had come West when he was merely Jimmie Harrison. He had come seeking quick fortune and adventure; he had stayed to prosecute the cattle-rustler and the claim-jumper. In the establishing of the new state’s machinery of government, he had been elected judge of the district court. He had held that office through sheer force of will and iron determination. He had sentenced the first prisoner to enter the state’s prison, and had continued to meet out justice for forty years. Then suddenly, in the midst of a hectic pronouncement of sentence, he himself had answered the call of the Greatest of Judges.

Thus young James sat in his office, waiting the arrival of his sister, to open their father’s will. He was a trifle dazed at the suddenness of his release. The mind that had been forced to cow before the older brain for so many years did not at once find its moorings. He groped about among chaotic thoughts. He reached for his penknife, thinking to scrape the Junior from the office door. Then he reflected that it would appear unseemly; too eager. The janitor could do that later. He felt sure the Governor would appoint him to fill the unexpired term vacated by his father. Now, at thirty-five, he would come into his own. He would seek election himself. He would establish a platform of strict observance of prohibition. He had always felt his father to be too lenient toward liquor offenders. He, young Jimmy, would punish these offenders as severely as his father had dealt with cattle thieves in by-gone years. It would be good politics.

Miss Eunice Harrison came promptly at eleven. Her hair was gathered into a neat knot at her neck, her skirts were decidedly not too short. She did not wear black, but her clothes revealed their selection for service rather than style. Her mild blue eyes bore a far-away, visionary expression. Her hands, unlike her brother’s, were not too white. Miss Eunice, five years older than her brother, had played the role of docile-daughter-housekeeper in her father’s old rambling, southern-style home.

“Good morning, Eunice,” James waved his sister to a seat. “I am glad to see you prompt.”

“Good morning, brother.” Miss Eunice sat on the edge of the proffered chair, and glanced half timidly, half deferentially toward her brother. He would inherit the property; she had been led to expect that. She had been reared with proper respect for the sterner, stronger, more intelligent sex. On those rare occasions when her father had praised her, it had been that she realized the limitations of feminine intelligence and capabilities.

Young James reached into his desk and drew forth a long, legal envelope, heavily sealed.

“I brought this down this morning, Eunice. It is the will. Father placed it in my care. I have no real knowledge of its contents, but it is reasonable to suppose I will inherit considerable. Calm yourself, sister. Even if father did leave all his property to me, there will be provision for your life-time support.” Miss Eunice’s hands trembled in her lap. Anticipation of continued masculine dominance was not pleasant.

The will was ironically brief. A fifty-thousand dollar life insurance policy was equally divided between the two heirs. The home and all its furnishings went to Eunice. The son received, in its stead, title to certain mountain lands located in Crow’s Nest, which held promise of coal. This title had been obtained through tax sales; was valid, unquestionably legal. The single sheet of paper with its sparse lines was properly signed, attested and witnessed.

As he finished reading the brief paper, young James Harrison glanced toward his sister. She was no longer sitting on the edge of her chair. Her hands no longer trembled.

‘There is — there must be some mistake,” James almost stammered in his chagrin. “I want the home. My position — my family will demand it. You can live with us, Eunice,” he added as an afterthought.

“But brother, you received other lands. Where are they?”

“That is merely title to some old codger’s homestead up in Crow’s Nest, that lamentable sub-division of our county. He got stubborn, or couldn’t read, or something, and didn’t pay his taxes. Father got title through tax sale deeds. Some day it will be a valuable coalfield. But now — ” he waved his hands deprecatingly. “If I asserted my ownership and went up there, some old duffer would likely peck me off. They’re pretty fussy about their holdings, those old mountaineers. They pay no attention to law. They grow poor corn and make good moonshine. When I’m judge I’ll put some of ’em where they belong.”

“Perhaps they’re too poor to pay their taxes,” ventured Miss Eunice, all sympathy. “Perhaps they can’t read —”

“I want the home, Eunice,” countered James. “It has poise you might say. It carries family history. It is the typical home for a judge. You would be too lonesome there.”

“You can live with me, James,” countered Eunice.

“As you possibly know, Eunice, I – we — that is, I am about to become a father. It is my wish that my son be born in my ancestral home. Echo concurs with me in this wish.”

“The child might better be born in a hospital. The roof leaks and there isn’t a clothes-closet in the entire house.” Eunice Harrison sat erect, her timidity slipping from her like a loosed cloak.

“You have no imagination!” cried her brother, exasperated. “No respect for the home our father copied from one of the finest mansions of the old South. Those walls are two feet thick.”

“All those old fireplaces consume a lot of coal,” suggested Miss Eunice practically. “It needs endless repairs to make it habitable.”

“I can repair it. I will be in a position to maintain it properly,” persisted James. “You can continue to live with us.”

“You and Echo can live with me,” smiled Eunice.

“Fortunately, I chose for a wife a lady whose sole ambition is to rule her own home,” answered James with dignity. “She has the respect for those ancestral walls which you seem to lack. She will be grieved if our son cannot be born as we have planned.”

“Echo is a dear girl — just the wife for a Harrison,” mused Miss Eunice. “She eats when you tell her she is hungry.”

“I will buy the home from you, then.”

James,” Miss Eunice stood up defiant, self assertive. “I’m forty years old. I was never forgiven for being a girl until you came. Then I was tolerated as a body-guard for you. I was a cowed child — a subdued young woman, a dominated old maid. Just sort of a duenna. In this last gesture, my father has partially atoned for the higher education he denied me — I always wanted to be a nurse. For years I have humored his every whim. Now I am going to remodel that old barn of a house. I’ll rip out those fireplaces and put in a furnace and closets and bathrooms. I’ll turn it into a home for under-privileged girls. The Harrison Home!”

“Our home!” gasped James Fleming Harrison. “Working girls. You wouldn’t dare!”

“Just you watch me!” flashed Miss Eunice Harrison. “Your baby won’t worry about not being born there. When it grows up, perhaps it will never give the house a second glance. Be sensible, James and modern. Give Echo a checking account, and let her breath for herself. I shall have perfectly wonderful times, fixing up that old house and making life easier for deserving girls. My youth is gone — I can never have a daughter. So I shall spend my life and my money, serving daughters of other women.”

James Fleming Harrison felt the full surge of his newborn seniority. He assumed his most dignified attitude and gave solemn utterance.

“If you desecrate our ancestral home in that manner, I shall never cross its threshold,” he threatened.

“And if you rob some old mountaineer of his cabin and corn patch, just because he can’t read and doesn’t understand the crooks and turns of law, I’ll be ashamed to have you come,” flashed Miss Eunice. Her voice was not solemn, nor her manner dignified.

“You have no respect for heritage, Eunice.”

“You are like the law; no respecter of persons, James.”

“I’ll buy the home from you.”

“I’ll buy your mountain coal-field,” retorted Eunice.

Brother and sister faced pach other defiantly, unwaveringly. Each suddenly knew that the iron will and determination of the old Judge had not perished with his death.

Miss Eunice threw herself whole-heartedly into the work of remodeling her inheritance. For the first time in her memory she could do as she willed. The high mirrored fireplaces were torn ruthlessly out; alcoves and winding staircases gave up the precious space they had monopolized; bay windows became sun parlors. Plumbers and furnace men came marching in; carpenters and interior decorators gave the old walls new beauty; porches and fresh paint transformed the entire appearance. And Miss Eunice lived gloriously free, directing, changing, planning, accomplishing a long-cherished dream. It would not be difficult to fill the house. Factory girls from the country, orphans from the city, would welcome the opportunity. A few venturesome girls from Crow’s Nest might be persuaded to come into the city in search of better living conditions and education.

The word “Junior” disappeared from the law office door. The governor, after a brief period for appearances, duly appointed the son to fill his father’s vacancy. Then young James moved into the Judge’s Chambers and removed the word “Senior” from that office door. Judge James Fleming Harrison had no senior, had no higher authority to account to. With the same zest that had prompted his father to prosecute cattle thieves in the early days, he threw himself with vengeance into the work of ferreting out liquor offenders. With the purpose of proving himself a worthy candidate for the next election, he was determined to make an example of the first offender to come up for sentence. Unofficially, he sent for the sheriff.

“I want you to arrest Silas Hoggan,” he admonished. “That old profligate has disgraced this town ever since I was a boy. The passing of the Prohibition Law made no difference to him. I doubt if he has ever missed a Saturday coming into town in a state of complete inebriation. He defies the law.”

“No, he don’t aim to go agin the law, Judge. He just don’t know about laws and rules. He can’t read. Most of the old folks up Crow’s Nest don’t know much ’bout larnin’. Old Silas don’t know he shouldn’t make whisky. He makes his little bit right along. Got a little corn patch, what the old woman hoes, and a little two-gallon still. Every week he drinks one jug and brings the other to town to trade for snuff and coal oil. A pair of overalls and a shirt does him a whole year. Doubt if his old woman gets that much.”

“I intend to make an example of him,” continued the Judge with austerity. “You have your orders. He will be given a proper jury trial, found guilty and sentenced according to law. Hereafter, this community will know that a fearless judge holds this dignified office.”

“I ain’t got no craving to stir up that Crow’s Nest,” the sheriff was plainly displeased with his task. “Them old fellers stick together like molasses. They’re darn good aim. What they lack in book-learnin’, they sure make up in target practice.”

“You have your orders,” reiterated the Judge. “He will be made an example. My platform will be certain conviction. Old Silas will be certain conviction with minimum expense. Our town will shortly be free of liquor offenders.”

“I guess you know what you’re aimin’ at,” mumbled the sheriff, scratching his head dubiously, “but I got my doubts.”

As “The Harrison Home” progressed under untiring effort, Miss Eunice was assailed with conflicting emotions concerning her brother. She was glad he was judge. Glad he was to have a child. She hoped it would be the desired son, but smiled indulgently at his assurance. Ever she had a growing unrest over his inheritance of mountain property. It had been rather unfair of her father to take advantage of his keen knowledge of law, and buy tax sale deeds. These people were ignorant mountaineers. Perhaps they were too poor to pay; perhaps they didn’t know the law; perhaps they couldn’t read the notices. Maybe, even, the notices had been lost in the mails. But for ten years they had been living on property to which they held no title. They eked a meagre existence from the unproductive ground which did not belong to them. It was waiting. A game of waiting, until the opportune time when capital could be interested to develop the holdings. Miss Eunice pondered and worried, puzzled and studied how she could persuade her brother to relinquish his title to another’s home. Through the county records she learned her brother held title to the lands of Steve Turner. He had inherited it from his father, who homesteaded in the days of the state’s infancy. Steve Turner, she learned, was dead; but his aged widow and her married son lived on in the mountain home, clannish, suspicious, superstitious.

Perhaps,” mused Miss Eunice, “if I went to see them I could tell James their story. He might relent. He might let me buy out his interest. Maybe the Turners could get enough money together to pay James back the taxes Father paid. Maybe they would move into town; maybe they would let me bring their daughters down to ‘Harrison Home.'” The pent-up desires and emotions of her youth were coming forth in one great flare. With her, to think was to act. She must see the Turner family in their home environment.

Within a week her plans were complete. She divulged her purpose to no one. Leaving “Harrison Home” to catch its breath, she engaged a staid old driver and his car to take her into Crow’s Nest, that neglected community which was almost cut off from the accessible world by means of topography, and the great desire of its inhabitants to live their own lives, unmolested.

(To be continued)