Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 139, No. 6, September 14, 1940

The Hanging of Simon Groott by Charles Ingerman

Hangin’ was too good for him, the neighbors said, but maybe they were satisfied after all.

Jed Winters leaned back on his soap box so that his broad shoulders rubbed against the scarred, white-scoured counter. The keen edge of the knife in his gnarled, leathery hand drew a thin, curled plume from the soft wood he was whittling. He spat, with reckless accuracy, at the round, red belly of the stove, and he drawled deliberately: “Hangin’s too good for him. Yeah, I say hangin’s too good for Simon Groott!”

Barney Grauveldt helped himself liberally to the salted crackers. “I dunno. ’T’ud be kind o’ hard on Sarry, bein’ a widow woman again so soon.”

“Pshaw!” Big Dick Wurgel said, blowing apple seeds out of his mouth. “Ever’body knows Simon only married Sarry to get Ham Youtz’s farm — and the money Ham had sweated out of the fields and saved in the bank.”

“Ain’t as if Simon was a farmer, neither, an’ would do somethin’ with those fat acres,” Wally Mendel mused, sucking on his charred corncob and not bothering to open his eyes. “Trouble is, he ain’t done an honest day’s work in his life. The place will go to rack an’ ruin.”

“Why do you suppose she married him in the first place anyhow?”

“Lord, friend, don’t ask me why one woman marries one man, or t’other way around. By gum, I’ve caught myself wonderin’ sometimes how-come I married my Katie!”

The sweet-smelling store was filled, for a moment, with their easy laughter. Then Jed Winters said:

“I kind o’ reckon Sarry might be relieved if somethin’ happened to Simon. I was a-drivin’ past their place on the way to town today, an’ Sarry was a-standin’ in the yard, hangin’ clothes, with tears runnin’ down her cheeks. An’ Emmy — she’s gettin’ to be a right grown-up gal now — was outside of the house, diggin’ up a truck patch with a spadin’-fork.”

“No sign o’ Simon?” Wally Mendel asked. “Has he got his fields plowed, ’fore this cold snap?”

“Nope, his fields ain’t plowed. The barn door was hangin’ open on one hinge, so I reckon he was in there, a-nursin’ that jug of his some more.”

He spat at the stove again. “You ask, Wally, was there sign o’ him. I’d say they war, all right. The little tyke — him as looks like the spittin’ image of his dad — was sittin’ alongside that old hound Ham Youtz was allus so proud of. Cryin’ like his heart was bust. An’ covered with red welts. Looked mighty like the work of a piece o’ harness, to me.”

“Them’s nice kids, that Emmy and that little Ham,” Big Dick Wurgel grumbled. “I allus kind o’ took to them younguns. Simon ain’t got no leave to be whallopin’ another man’s kids like that.”

“That’s what I say,” Jed Winters growled. “Hangin’ too good for Simon Groott. Matter o’ fact, I ’most got me down off my wagon to find him and give him a healthy larrupin’. Would, too, if his brother Moe weren’t sheriff an’ I didn’t know Simon would come a-lawin’ after me.”

As she straightened up from the tub of washing, and tried to rub the misery from her aching back, Sarah Groott — she who had been Sarah Kandell and Sarah Youtz and then the Widow Youtz — knew it had been a mistake.

Of course, a woman — and she was no longer a young woman — can’t begin to farm a section. It takes a man to do that. And a woman has to have a man on the place anyway.

Simon had been mighty sweet of her, too, after Ham died. Ham was a good man, a good husband and a good father to his children, but he’d never thought of sweet things to say like Simon.

“I’ve allus loved you, Sarry,” he said. “Some folks may talk agin me, say I’m a sour and bitter man. An’ you know why? Jest ’cause I’ve been a-eatin’ my heart out for you, Sarry, ’most onto twenty year.”

And then again:

“Don’t you worry none about Emmy an’ Little Ham. Lovin’ you the way I do, I reckon I couldn’t help lovin’ them, too, just like they was mine.”

She had been a fool to listen to him, and a greater fool to believe him. But she’s been desperate, panicked, since Ham died, and she’d wanted to believe him. She had choked down her own certain knowledge of the man, woman-fashion, and listened — and believed.

“You may hear folks tell that I’m shiftless and that I drink too hard. An’ I’ll admit I have been shiftless an’ I have drank too hard. But look it, Sarry, I ain’t never had a woman like you to work for. An’ I been drinkin’ to keep my sorrows down. You’ll find me diff’rent now.”

They had warned her about him. God knows, everyone had warned her about him. Lizzie Winters had brought three roast chickens — nice fat ones — and had said:

“I’m not one to be mindin’ your business for you, Sarry, but I hear tell that Simon Groott is walkin’ over the hills to see you. He’s a no-good one, Sarry, and you know it well as me.”

“I got to have a man on the place,” Sarah Youtz — Widow Youtz — said. “I ain’t a woman can farm a section.”

“If it was me,” Lizzie Winters affirmed, “I wouldn’t even try to farm a section. I’d sure enough let it go to weeds and briars ’fore I married Simon Groott!”

She went on busily snapping the last wax beans of the season in the silence that followed, and then she said:

“Look it, Sarry. I reckon I’m as good a friend as you’ve got in this valley. I’ve washed your clothes an’ you’ve washed mine. I’ve tended your sick younguns an’ you’ve tended mine. Don’t marry Simon Groott!

“Emmy will be gettin’ married pretty soon — prob’bly to Little Dick Wurgel, if I hear right. Then they’ll be a man on the place again, like it ought to be. An’ Dick’s a good, honest chap.

“Or if you want to keep the fields up, hire yourself a man. Ham must have left you quite a heap of money. Hire a man, or take in a young couple like Hank Andreasen an’ his wife. But don’t marry Simon Groott!”

“I already give him my word,” Sarah said. “It was a year last week. We’ll be married, come this time next month.”

And they were married, during the first flurry of snow in the fall. And it had been a mistake — a bitter mistake — since the first hour that Simon Groott set his foot in the house as master.

Sarah Groott looked over the sudsy tub, across the fields Ham Youtz had loved. They should have been plowed before this late cold snap, and instead, an army of weeds was sprouting in the furrows Ham had never harvested because the bull had gored him to death.

She turned and watched her slim daughter, Emmy, bent to the spading fork, working the rich soil — and loving it — like her father before her. Emmy, who knew the money was nearly gone, and that the jars in the cellar were nearly gone, and that hope was nearly gone.

She turned the other way and looked at Little Ham, so small for his five years, so blond like his father, so pitiful, sitting besides the shaggy hound his father had prided in. She looked at him with tears in her eyes, sensing the child’s confusion and defeat. The harness strap had raised bad welts on him, and there had been nothing she could do — nothing, short of murder, that she dared to do.

Yes, it had been a mistake...

Little Ham watched his mother at the washtub, and he felt like crying some more. His shoulders and back and legs still hurt from his stepfather’s beating, but it was another ache, lost somewhere deep inside him, which hurt most.

The worst thing was that he didn’t rightly know why he had been beaten. Simon Groott had been eating, in the noisy way and the greedy way he always ate, and Little Ham did something he had often done when his real father was alive: he had patted the back of Simon Groott’s neck.

It had been sort of game with his real father. Big Ham had always pulled him around in front and patted him back. Kind of hard, maybe, but playful.

But Simon Groott had been furious. “Brash brat!” he stormed. “You will hit out at me, eh? I’ll learn you!”

And then came the beating.

The shaggy old dog, Prince, had been licking Little Ham’s hot hand. But now he stopped, began to growl. Little Ham turned, looked, and he shriveled up inside.

Simon Groott was coming through the barn door, and he still had that piece of harness in his hand. He came lumbering across the yard, eyes red and fierce, mouth working.

Little Ham wanted to run. To run away, anywhere, away from the advancing man. But he was paralyzed with fright, and there was no strength in his muscles.

“I seen you,” Simon Groott roared. “I seen you, sittin’ there a-sulkin’. Maybe you’re still feisty, eh? Maybe you want some more, eh?”

“No,” Little Ham squeaked. “No, don’t hit me again, please!”

“Can’t have no sulkers on this farm,” Simon Groott said. “I learn you some sense if I have to beat you every day o’ your life.”

“Please! Please, no!” Little Ham begged.

Sarah Groott came hurrying across the yard, drying her hands on her apron. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter now, Simon?”

“He’s a-sulkin’,” Simon Groott growled. “Anything I can’t stand, it’s a whiney, sulky brat.” He pulled the length of harness strap through his hand. “’Pears to me he needs ’nother lesson. ’Pears to me he’s a-goin to get it, too!”

“You’re drunk,” Sarah said sharply. “You’ve been out to that jug again, Simon.”

He leered at her. “An’ what if I have?”

“You’re drunk, an’ you’ll not be a-beatin’ Little Ham again — ever. You hear?”

“Stand aside, woman! Don’t be tellin’ me what I’ll do or not do. I say he needs another beating, and another beatin’ is what he’ll get!”

They were standing beside the wood-pile, and Sarah’s fingers closed over the haft of the kindling axe. “You touch Little Ham,” Sarah screamed, “and I’ll split your skull, Simon Groott. So help me God, I’ll split your skull with this here axe!”

He wheeled toward her, fury and cunning in his fiery eyes. “Oh, you will, will you? Is that the way a wife talks to her man? Split my skull, now, is it? Maybe it’s you who needs a lesson too, maybe!”

He raised the leather strap, started toward her, and Little Ham found his legs again, went running away from there. Simon Groott swung the end of harness, square against the side of Sarah’s head, and wrenched the axe from her hand.

And at that same moment, Prince, the dog Ham Youtz had trained from a pup, growled once, horribly, and launched himself at the man.

Simon Groott whirled to meet this new attack, staggered back as the big shepherd snapped at his throat and missed. Then Simon Groott swung the axe, once, twice, thrice, viciously, at the shaggy, loyal beast...

Emmy Youtz heard the loud voices, prodded the spading fork into the ground hard, and left it standing there. She turned the corner of the house just in time to see the axe blade strike her father’s dog just behind the ear — just in time to see the great animal sag to the ground, puddling the dust with its life-blood.

She saw the red welt the harness had left across her mother’s face, saw Simon Groott drop the bloody axe, stoop to pick up the leather strap again.

She put herself squarely in the path of her step-father, said shrilly: “What are you fixin’ to do, Simon Groott?”

He leered at her, and she felt naked. “First, I’m a-goin’ to larrup your mother. Then I’m a-goin’ to larrup your brother. An’ then, likely, I’m a-goin’ to larrup you, too, for good measure.”

“It’ll be the last larrupin’ you ever do,” Emmy said.

He growled at her. “Like your ma, eh? Maybe you’re a-aimin’ to split my skull, too, maybe?”

“No,” Emmy returned, “I ain’t. But last Sunday, Little Dick Wurgel asked me to be his woman. We’ll be gettin’ married in a week-ten days. I don’t reckon he’ll cotton to havin’ you larrup me when I’m a-goin’ to be his wife.”

“Hadn’t you better be askin’ your pa for permission? How you know I’m a-goin’ to let you marry Dick Wurgel?”

“You ain’t my pa,” the girl said. “I done asked my real pa, ’fore he was killed. He said it was all right. He talked it over with Big Dick Wurgel. There’s nothing you can do about it, ’less you want to fight it out with Little Dick and Big Dick and all their kin.”

Simon Groott stood, with the harness strap poised in his hand, and thought about it for a moment. At first, there was a puzzled expression on his face, and it was replaced by a look of cunning triumph.

“Good riddance!” he snorted. “Good riddance to bad rubbish. Tell you, I’ll be mighty pleased when you step off my land. And I’ll thank you never to step back on again.”

“Only I ain’t stepping off this land,” Emmy said fiercely. “When my pa said we could marry, he said we could live here in this house and work the bottom forty. And that’s just what we’re a-fixin’ to do!”

Simon Groott’s face reddened with rage. “In this house?” he yelled.

“In this house,” Emmy repeated. “An’ you’ll farm the rest, and farm it right, too, or you won’t eat. No more of that liquor jug business. My man will see to that!”

“Why, you sassy snip!” Simon Groott bellowed. “I’m more ’n half a notion to wring your spindly neck!”

“You just dare touch me! You just dast touch any of us again,” Emmy warned. “The Wurgels come big and strong and tough. Like I said, they don’t cotton to havin’ their womenfolks larruped.”

“I’ll... I’ll!” Simon Groott choked.

“You’ll work,” Emmy supplied. “For the first time in your no-good life, you’ll work an’ like it. You’ll make a good husband to my mother, and a good father to my brother, or I’ll know the reason why!”

Simon Groott was boiling with fury. His hands shook with his rage, and the drunkenness had left him now. “I’ll—!”

And at that unfortunate moment, Little Ham showed in the hay door at the top of the barn. “There!” he shrilled, as the rope from the hay fork dangled in the wind before him. “There! Now I guess he won’t be gettin’ drunk an’ givin’ me beatin’s again!”

He had his little arms wrapped around an earthenware jug — Simon Groott’s liquor jug — and even as the three of them watched, as Emmy gasped and her mother cried out, he shoved it out into space.

It turned over in space, and the cork popped out, and then it struck the hard earth and shattered liquidly into many pieces.

For a scant moment, there was a deathly silence, and then Simon Groott uttered a hoarse roar of rage and began running toward the barn.

Emmy began running after him, only a second later...

Simon Groott was in a whirlwind of fury. He held the hysterical lad with one hand, was cuffing him brutally with the other. “I’ll bash your head in,” the man swore. “I’ll break every bone in your ornery body!”

“No,” wailed Little Ham. “No! Ma!”

“Leave hold of my brother,” Emmy said. “Leave hold of him right now, Simon Groott!”

The man slapped the boy again, viciously, turned, stared, released his fierce grip on the lad. Little Ham fell into the hay, and Simon Groott took a step backward — a step toward the open hay door.

“Put that down!” he ordered. “Put that down, Emmy!”

For the girl was holding a hay fork in her tense hands — a three-tined hay fork which was leveled at Simon Groott’s heaving chest.

She took a step forward, and the tines came that much nearer to Simon Groott. “I told you not to hit him,” she said. “I told you not to try hittin’ any of us, ever, again.”

“Put that hay fork down!” Simon Groott shouted. “Put it down, you young she-devil!”

“I reckon not,” Emmy answered, breathing quickly. “I reckon this might as well end one way or another, right now, Simon Groott!”

“Put it down,” Groott snarled. “Put it down ’fore I cut loose on you. Put it down ’fore I take it away from you an’ skin you alive.”

“Emmy!” called Sarah Groott, at the top of the ladder which led to the hay mow. “Put that fork down!”

“Like fun,” Emmy said. She took a step forward, and another, while Simon Groott retreated from the menace of those gleaming, needle-sharp tines. “Like fun I will!”

“So now you’re a-aimin’ to kill me, is that it?” Simon Groott snarled. “Goin’ to stick me with that fork, is it?”

“I reckon so,” Emmy agreed. Her face was pale, and beads of sweat were running down her face, along her slim arms. “I reckon that’s just about what I’m a-goin’ to do, Simon Groott.”

“Emmy! Don’t!” Sarah called. “Stop it. It’s murder. It’s murder, child!”

Emmy took another step forward. “Maybe it is, maybe. But somebody’s got to do it, and I reckon I’m the one that’s handiest to doin’ it!”

The older woman was scrambling off the ladder now, thrashing toward her daughter through the uncertain footing in the mound of hay.

And at that moment, Simon Groott determined to charge the girl. At that moment, when he though she would be distracted because of the movement behind her.

He hurled himself forward, cursing, trying to bat the tines out of the way, trying to come to grips with the girl. And she, hearing the whispering, slipping noise in the hay behind her, chose that same moment to move forward.

The long, sharp tines speared through Simon Groott’s arm, pinioned the hairy arm to his chest. He grunted, pained, once, as the steel sank into his chest, and he took three or four shuffling steps backward, tripped over Little Ham, still sitting there, still sobbing.

Sarah snatched the bloodstained fork from her daughter, turned to look at the man tottering in the hay door. For a moment he stood there, like a marionette on a string, and then he toppled backward.

The dangling ropes of the hay carrier tautened, twanged, and when Sarah and Emmy crept forward, horrified, to the hay door, Simon Groott was hanging there, tangled tightly in the ropes, swaying a little, still. Twitching a little, still. But quite, quite dead...

Moe Groott stood in the barnyard with the other men, looking up at the body of his brother. In death, Simon Groott was wearing a placid, almost benign expression which he had never troubled to assumed while living.

“It’s murder,” Moe Groott announced to them all savagely. “It’s murder, I say. Look at those marks on his body — in a row, just like tine marks — with the blood streaking from them.”

“I see,” Jed Winters said, slowly, cautiously. “They do sort o’ look a lot like tine marks.”

“’Course they do!” Sheriff Groott rasped. “It’s murder, sure’s you’re a foot high.” He spat vigorously in the dust, and his flushed face was working angrily. “He was my blood brother, an’ one o’ them women killed him, sure’s shootin’!”

Sarah Groott stood beside her daughter, Emmy, and Emmy was standing beside the huge young fellow named Little Dick Wurgel. “Don’t you say nothin’,” Little Dick bent down to whisper to them. “Don’t you two say nothin’!”

“Which one do I arrest,” Moe Groott asked belligerently. “Which one do I yank down to the jail, to ready for hangin’?”

“There’s some mighty funny accidents happen in this world,” Jed Winters drawled. His gaze moved from the dead dog, sprawled in the dust, to the welt on Sarah’s face, to Little Ham, clinging to Big Dick Wurgel’s denim coat. “Mighty funny accidents.”

“Accident?” Sheriff Groott snapped. “Look at them tine marks. Look at the puddles of blood Simon dripped onto the ground. Look at them two women, big-eyed with fear at what they done!”

Emmy stepped a pace forward, shook off Little Dick Wurgel’s restraining hand. “I ain’t neither a-feared!” she said. “I ain’t a-feared o’ whatever I done, or whatever comes resultin’ from it! I’ll tell—!”

Sarah pulled her back. “No,” Sarah protested shrilly, “I’ll tell. Any tellin’ needs be done here, I’ll do. Any explainin’ needs be done, I’ll explain. Any blame needs be took, I’ll take!”

She glared at Emmy as she had never glared at her before and there was a piteous beseeching in her eyes.

“Reckon we ain’t come to that yet,” Jed Winters said.

“Let ’em talk!” Moe Groott yelled. “’Tween the two of them, maybe we’ll come to the truth of this here murder, maybe.”

Old Judge Hallpert leaned forward on his knotty cane, stared at Sheriff Groott. “Don’t let’s be callin’ names out o’ turn, Moe. Let’s do things accordin’ to law an’ order. Seems I rec’lect that if it’s murder or ain’t is up to the Coroner of this here township.”

Sheriff Moe Groott glared at the judge, and he glared at Winters, and he glared at the men around Winters: Big Dick Wurgel, with his horny hand on Little Ham’s head, and Barney Grauveldt and Wally Mendel. “I claim it’s murder,” he said hoarsely, “an’ one o’ them ought to hang!”

Jed Winters cleared his throat. “Can’t rightly say I ’gree with you, Moe. Seein’ what funny things has already happened ’round here—” he looked again from the dog to Sarah to Little Ham — “still ’pears like an accident to me. A mighty strange workin’ o’ Providence, but an accident, ’thout a doubt.”

He turned gravely to the men beside him. “What would you say, friends?”

They nodded solemnly, one after another. Wurgel, Grauveldt, Mendel. “Accident,” they each said.

“Guess it ain’t murder, then, Moe,” Jed Winters said, looking Sheriff Groott in the eye. “Reckon it must been an accident, all right. You heard the report of the Coroner’s jury. An’ as coroner of this township, I’m makin’ it official.”

And under his breath: “I allus said hangin’ was too good for Simon Groott!”