Poly Wilkerson and his posse were back later in the day, looking for Sylvester. Mrs. Eustis had told them what she’d imagined she’d heard and the men were incensed, looking for Sylvester and looking for the black man from the chain gang that was supposed to have attacked Mrs. Taylor.
This time Wilkerson didn’t stop at the front door. He and the rest of his posse stormed in through the front door and spread out, up the stairs, down the hall and out the back door.
“Where are they, Auntie?” Wilkerson shouted at Sarah as he pushed past Rose and Scrappy towards the kitchen.
“Only my grandsons, Daniel and Roy, are here now,” she said as she stood calm and quiet in the hall.
Wilkerson came back out of the kitchen, pushing Roy and Daniel ahead of him. Roy looked almost paralyzed stumbling up the hall, still holding the brush he had been using to scrub the kitchen floor. Daniel put his hand on Rose’s arm as he passed, squeezed it to reassure her, but Poly Wilkerson gave him a shove and bellowed “Get on out on that porch!”
Daniel tripped as they moved down the hall and grabbed on to Poly Wilkerson’s arm to keep from falling. Wilkerson struck Daniel in the back of the head and knocked him down. Rose cried out but Sarah held her back from moving after the boys.
Wilkerson shoved both boys out the front door then returned to where Sarah stood.
“Where’s your boy Sylvester, and that convict Jesse Hunter?” he shouted in her face.
“Sylvester’s not here. No other man here, James is over the sawmill,” she told him, looking him in the eye. ”You don’t need those boys Mr. Poly, they’re just boys, didn’t have anything to do with this mess.”
“We heard tell there’s a whole house full of niggers here, looking for trouble, including that escaped convict.”
“No convicts, no other men. Just two old ladies and a bunch of children and grand babies,” Sarah calmly explained
A group of men came banging down the stairs, Emma and Gussie following close behind. Emma was shaking. Gussie held her up by the arm as they followed the men down the stairs and then stood, waiting, on the lowest tread.
“There’s nobody upstairs except a whole bunch of children,” one man told Wilkerson.
“Let’s look out back, check the barn and the corn crib, check the smokehouse,” Wilkerson ordered. “Make sure somebody goes down in the root cellar, the cowards are probably hiding down there.”
“We been in the smokehouse, Poly,” a sandy haired man told Wilkerson as he and another member of the posse came in from the kitchen. “You never seen so much meat in your whole life.” The man looked disgusted. “Take my family two years to eat all that food. Never seen so many hams in all my days,” he repeated, shaking his head.
Wilkerson turned back to Sarah, pushing his red, sweating face near to hers.
“You tell that boy of yours we’re gonna find him. Nobody’s gonna stand by and let him terrorize our women. You tell him and all his nigger friends too.”
Wilkerson stomped out the front door, calling to the men waiting outside to tie up the two boys and put them in the back of the car waiting at the gate.
“Oh, no,” Gussie cried, and ran out on the porch. The other women followed, Rose behind Sarah.
Don’t, please. Please don’t let them be taken, she prayed.
“Auntie,” she whispered, but Sarah shook her arm and hissed “Hush up. Just hush up right now.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Wilkerson. Those boys don’t know anything.” Gussie called out to Poly Wilkerson. “You’d best be leaving them here.”
Wilkerson turned to her, staring, and asked her carefully, each word spoken slowly and clearly, “What did you say to me?”
“I said,” Gussie told him again, “You’d best be leaving them here. They’re just boys, they don’t know anything and you’d best be leaving them here.” She stood straight and tall and looked right at Wilkerson as she spoke, using what Rose recognized as her most strict teacher voice.
“Who the hell are you?” Wilkerson asked, his face turning red.
“I’m Mrs. Aaron Carrier. I’m the schoolteacher here in town and I know these boys from our school and from church. They’re not anyone you’re looking for.”
“Mrs. Aaron Carrier, huh?” he mimicked her voice, moving back to the foot of the porch steps. “Well you get right on in this car then, because we’re looking for you, too. The sheriff wants to ask you some more questions. Your husband didn’t tell us much, but I’ll bet you can tell us something about the man what stopped at your house the other day.” Wilkerson reached up and pulled Gussie down the steps.
Sarah moved forward to the edge of the steps.
“The sheriff needs to speak to her, he can come on down here,” she told Wilkerson as she moved down the stairs. “She doesn’t have to go unless he arrests her, and you don’t have the power of arrest. You needn’t take her, or the boys. He can come speak to them here. You can’t arrest any of them,” she told him.
“I guess I can if I been deputized,” Wilkerson yelled. “Get your ass back up on the porch, Auntie,” he sneered, “And you get yours in the car,” he pointed at Gussie.
Sarah started to speak again but Gussie held up her hand and shook her head.
“It’s all right,” she told Sarah. “I’ll go. It’s better I go along than these boys go alone.”
Gussie walked to the car and climbed in.
A rude voice from the back seat said, ”What do we have here, whatcha got here, Poly?” and started to laugh as she moved in to the dim interior.
“There ain’t no room for them two boys in the car,” one of the men watching Daniel and Roy complained. “I don’t want them in my car, stinking it up, have to smell them all the way back to Bronson.”
“Leave them for later then. We’ll bring this one in to the sheriff. We can question her on the way, ask her where she learned to talk so fancy,” Wilkerson told them, and the men all laughed.
“We’ll be back for them later,” Poly Wilkerson told Sarah as he nodded at the two young men. He grunted as he squeezed himself into the front passenger’s seat. “You see that they’re here. And you tell Sylvester what I said.”
Two boys ran around from the side of the house and jumped on the running boards as the car roared off, Emma weeping and Sarah shaking her head. In the rear window, the small spot that was Gussie disappeared out of vision and into the darkening afternoon as the automobile moved east up the road.
Sylvester didn’t return that evening, Gussie had not returned and Beauty never came home from her job in Sumner. Afraid to send anyone out, Sarah and Emma decided the best thing was to wait for news. The family could only hope all three were safe as they ate their evening meal and prepared for bed, no one wanting to go upstairs to sleep. Sarah insisted the children go up and one by one Emma, Rose and Scrappy followed.
Rose crept into bed with Queen, who woke for a moment then rolled back over in to her dreams. Rose dipped in and out of sleep, jerking awake over and over as her dreams moved into the shapes of her waking thoughts, and she saw like snapshots the events of the previous few days: Aaron being dragged by the car. Sarah pleading for his life, Beauty kicked into the dirt. Marlene throwing up as Sam Carter was set on fire. Queen crying out as the flames from his body reflected off the parlor window. That boy, sawing away with his knife.
Finally, after a few hours of restless tossing, she rose and dressed. Downstairs Sarah was already up, standing at the window. They started the fire, silent, and began the coffee and the bread baking for the day.
Sheriff Walker brought Gussie back at first light. Rosa and Sarah rushed to help Gussie when they came in the back door, the sheriff half carrying the tall woman.
Rose gasped at the sight of her teacher. Gussie had a bruised, swollen eye and spots of blood on her cheek. Her mouth was swollen and had a long scrape along the lower lip and chin. One of her shoes had a broken heel and her clothes were smeared down the front with dirt and vomit.
Gussie staggered away from the sheriff once she was in the kitchen and collapsed into the chair Rose pulled out for her. Groaning, she bent over, head in her lap, as the sheriff apologized to Sarah for the posse entering her house and taking Gussie.
“I brought her back as soon as I found them questioning her at the jail. I guess they scared her, roughed her up some. I’m sorry I deputized any of these men. I thought I’d be able to keep them under control that way, but I was wrong,” he apologized.
Rose saw blood down the back of Gussie’s dress, and holes along the sides where it had been violently torn. As she laid her hand on Gussie’s shoulder, Gussie jumped back in the chair, starting violently and twisting towards Rose, wide eyed, mouth trembling.
“Honey, come on, I’ll take you up to Emma,” Sarah told her, gently easing off Gussie’s shoes and helping her to stand.
“Rose, help me bring her up, then bring along some hot water and a cloth. Sheriff, I appreciate you bringing her home,” Sarah told the sheriff, but only nodded and frowned at his repeated apology. She led Gussie towards the hallway as the sheriff let himself out the back door.
Rose could see the lights of the sheriff’s car moving east as she and Sarah helped Gussie up the stairs. The sun was beginning to rise through a low layer of clouds, turning them gold and red and dark blue.
“The sheriff, he can’t ever seem to help things,” Sarah muttered. “We vote for him, don’t mean he’ll keep us when we need it.”
“Ah, Sarah, oh My Lord, Sarah,” Gussie moaned. “Did they take those boys?”
“No honey, they’re right here in the house. They wouldn’t leave like I told them. They were afraid those men would come back with more trouble if they were gone.”
“Thank the Lord, Sarah, they’re all right. Those men-” Gussie started to cry. “They would have hurt them, I was so afraid they would hurt them, they didn’t care I was a married woman, the teacher here in town. They don’t care. They were so-” and Gussie started to sob, big gulping cries, as Rose and Sarah struggled to hold her up and carry her in to her room and to bed.
From the Gainesville Sun, Thursday, January 4, 1923:
NO FURTHER TRACE OF
NEGROES WANTED FOR
ASSAULT AT SUMNER
_________
Sheriff Walker and Posses Still
Scouring Territory in Search
of Fiends
____________
No further trace of the two ne-
groes wanted for the assault upon a
young white woman at Sumner, a
small mill-town 45 miles southwest
of here Monday morning developed
after an all-day search Wednesday,
Sheriff Walker of Levy county stated
tonight. Posses are still scouring the
woods near Sumner and circling Gulf
Hammock, a dense swamp near that
place.
Bloodhounds led pursuers to the
home of another negro near Sumner
Monday night but were unable to
pick up any trace of the fleeing men.
Sam Carter, father of one of the ne-
groes wanted, was shot to death
when he confessed to having trans-
ported one of them several miles in
a horse and wagon. A convict who
escaped from a nearby turpentine
camp several days before the assault
is also being sought. He is believed
to have been guilty of the crime.
_____________
Bronson, Jan. 3- (By Associated
Press)- No further traces of the two
negroes wanted in connection with
assault on a young white woman at
Sumner early Monday had been found
after an all day search today, Sher-
iff Walker of Levy county, announced
tonight. Posses are still scouring the
woods near Sumner and circling Gulf
Hammock, in which the fugitives are
believed to have taken refuge.
Sam Carter, father of one of the
negroes, was shot dea[d] Monday night
after he confessed he transported
one of them several miles in a wagon.