Ghosts of the Southern Mountains and Appalachia

Chain Gang Man

Chain Gang Man Decatur, Alabama It was Sunday morning and he had been sitting on the porch of his Pa's cabin back up in the Alabama hill country strumming his guitar and singing to himself. "0 hand me down that corpse of clay That I may look upon it. I might have saved that life, If I had done my duty." The tune was, "Barbara Allen," and a sad one, but for some reason the twenty-year old boy with curly black hair and gentian blue eyes had always liked it. To his surprise he saw a cloud of dust with a black Ford in the midst of it come jouncing along the seldom traveled dead-end road. Two law men got out of the car. "You Lonnie Stephens?" 38 Chain Gang Man 39 "Yeah, I'm Lonnie." "Then come with us, an' if you come peacable, you won't get hurt." Lonnie stood up in surprise and they took it for assent, but when they tried to put handcuffs on him he fought hard. It was not until they subdued him that he found out why they were here. "We know you done killed her and you mought as well make a clean breast 'a it." "Killed who?" "Cordelia. Ain't that your girlfriend?" "Dead? She can't be!" "It was your gun what shot her. We done identified that and it wan't no trouble 'cause you dropped it in the woods right near her body." Lonnie lifted both arms to bring the handcuffs down on the head of one of his captors but the other lawman saw his intention and butted him in the side so that he lost his balance and fell to the ground. "He resisted arrest all right," the man who had very nearly worn handcuffs on his head later testified at the trial. "He was like a wounded bobcat struggling to get shed of a trap! Scared me, he did." Lonnie was brokenhearted over the murder of his sweetheart, but the law would not believe him. He hadn't killed her, he loved her and they were planning to get hitched come summer. How could the law convict him for something he hadn't done? But it was his gun and his girl and that was enough for the sheriff. When the judge delivered the sentence it was fifteen years on the chain gang. Lonnie was enraged for he knew that the real murderer was out there free as a mountain rattler while the 40 Ghosts of the Southern l\Iountains and Appalachia best part of his own life would be gone. Sticks and stones can break your bones but words, he thought, yes, words can hurt you just the way you'd take a sharp knife to core an apple and throw the core on the ground to rot. That's what had happened to his life. It was almost a matter of hours from that courtroom to the chain gang. He could scarcely get out of the big metal cage at the prison camp because of the chain and the steel cuffs around each ankle; and he almost pitched forward on his face when he took his first step. His smile made you feel like smiling back. His eyes crinkled up at the corners when he was amused and his parents never had a lick of trouble with him. If anything he was almost too softhearted and would expend hours trying to nurse an animal back to health when it mightjust turn out to be a sickly critter at best. Lonnie Stephens didn't act like a killer. It was his first day on the Alabama chain gang. Gripping the calves of his legs were leather straps meant to hold the steel cuffs up but they still scraped his ankles. The chain between the cuffs was shorter than a man's steps and was designed to keep him from running, but for Lonnie who was a tall fellow with a long stride, every step he took was like being in a sack race with a midget. Alabama had lots of rocks and all he could think about was that he had lots of time ahead of him. When the man in the next cage passed the chain to him the first night to put through his cuff and hand to the next man he whispered as he turned...