Bootlegger's Other Daughter

Murder or Accident?

M urder or Accident ? – while daddy was still in arizona and after the excitement of our acquisition of electricity, events returned to normal. Day melted into day; nothing different and exciting ever happened. Then suddenly, Roy Branson, who ran the general store, shot and killed his new wife, Faye, while she stood at her ironing board pressing clothes. Someone came to school in the middle of the morning to get Miss Faye’s two children, a boy and a girl I had hardly had time to get to know since their mother had married Roy Branson and they had moved to our little community from Dallas. Daddy and Roy Branson had been friends and business associates. One day before Daddy left for Arizona, Roy Branson had brought his wife and her children with him when he came to see Daddy about something.ThemenwentoffinRoy’struckandMissFayevisitedwith Mama while the children and I played outside. I do not know what the women talked about, but I think Mama must have sensed some fear in Miss Faye and became uneasy herself, especially in Roy Branson’s presence or even when his name was mentioned. When Mama became uneasy , so did I. Early on the day of the shooting, some men from the community drove up in the school yard and began to talk in quiet, serious voices to our teacher and then drove away with the two children. The day was exciting in its difference but worrisome. I became agitated and started to worry that my Daddy was somehow involved. From Mama I had picked up this habit of connecting Daddy to unsettling happenings in the world beyond our family. I went home sick in the middle of the day and told Mama what I had just heard at school, “Miss Faye’s dead. Roy Branson shot her accidentally .” Mama said she was afraid something like that was going to happen. “It was an accident. My teacher said it was an accident,” I answered. Mama said she wished Daddy would not have anything to do with Roy Branson because there were plenty of people in the community who thought that that man had killed his first wife, Billie Sue. All his first wife’s sisters thought so, Mama told me. “When did that happen?” I asked. Mama said that it happened a long time ago before we moved to Seymore. According to her sisters, Billie Sue was about to have a baby, and Roy Branson would not let them come to be with her when she was about to deliver. Finally, Roy let his wife’s sister-in-law come to help with the delivery, and after she went home, his wife died. “Died? Did having the baby kill her?” I asked. Mama told me no, it was not like that. His sister-in-law said the woman was perfectly all right when she left the house. All the sisters thought he might have poisoned his wife because they knew there had been some rat poison in the house. I knew Mama never carried tales, and I could hardly believe she was telling me this. If what the sisters told Mama had happened was actually true, I thought, surely someone would have reported it, and he would have been arrested. But Mama would not talk about it anymore . There was no more to be learned from Mama about the mysterious circumstances that clouded the case. And of course, I could not ask Billie Sue’s relatives, our neighbors, such a question. Roy Branson had moved to Dallas after the death of his first wife and stayed there while his son was growing up. He had come back to run the general store at about the same time we moved to Seymore. He had married again, and now this tragedy. When the case came to trial, Roy claimed that the shooting was accidental—he had been cleaning his gun when it suddenly disT he B ootlegger’s Other Daughter 118 charged. “Accidental or not” was the prime topic of discussion for months among the adults in Seymore. “Well, I don’t know if he’s guilty of cold-blooded murder or not, but I’d vote to hang him on general principles,” said our hired man to Daddy one day in the winter when they were cutting wood. Rumors, such as the following, began to circulate through the community grapevine. Miss Faye was...