If These Walls Had Ears Read Online Free PDF Page A

town of Fort Smith, Arkansas, sometime around 1908. Jessie Jackson, then age twenty-one,
     was a bright, outgoing, self-confident young woman from St. Paul, Minnesota. A graduate dietician, as successful home ec majors
     were known in those days, she had sent letters to schools all over the country announcing her qualifications and her willingness
     to relocate. She was a woman ahead of her time. One day, Jessie heard from the principal of the high school in Fort Smith.
     He wondered if she would come establish a “domestic science” program at his school. It was just the kind of adventure Jessie
     was looking for. She packed up her best friend and took her along, too.

    Jessie Armours with her children, fane and Charles.
    Jessie’s best friend also happened to be her mother. Cynthia Jane Paxton Jackson had been widowed when Jessie was three, and
     the two of them had gone to live with Cynthia’s brother, Ben Paxton, a bachelor doctor and world traveler. Jessie’s father,
     William Malcolm Jackson, had also been a doctor. Back in those days, doctors made house calls—even out to the country in the
     middle of a Minnesota winter. After one such visit, Dr. Jackson caught pneumonia and died. Cynthia never remarried.
    The above story was told to me one crisp blue day in the fall of 1992. I had driven out to the Scott community northeast of
     town to see Jane Armour McRae, then seventy-six, the only surviving child of Jessie and Charlie Armour. Jane is a tall woman,
     angular, and on the day of that first meeting I noted that she was wearing heavy blue eye shadow and a rinse on her hair the
     approximate color of Windex. She laughed heartily and often. On a later visit, the color was less vibrant, but her attitude
     was the same: When she looks at you, you get the feeling there’s a party going on behind her eyes.
    Her mother, Jane said, had two great loves: talking and dancing. In Fort Smith, she met a man who shared both of those passions.
    A garrulous real estate salesman from Kansas, Charlie was seventeen years older than Jessie, and he had a past. For one thing,
     this was his second career. He had studied civil engineering at the University of Kansas and had spent several years surveying
     for a railroad down in Louisiana. He was brimming with tales about that exotic land, which was about as different from his
     own home state as any place could possibly be. He mesmerized Jessie with stories of wildcats and things up in trees that would
     howl in the night. He could still make the sound of a panther. He had loved Louisiana, had been taken with its food, its eccentricities,
     its attitude. He had adopted those Southern ways with the passion of one who happens upon a new part of the world and discovers
     himself in it. To Jessie Jackson, who had lived her entire life in the North, this smooth-talking fellow seemed the epitome
     of Southern charm, especially with his three first names. Up where Jessica came from, they’re more frugal with their appellations.
    He had also been married once, and had a young daughter, a toddler, Caroline, called Carolee, who lived with him. He was a
     widower, he said. He and his daughter lived in an imposing Queen Anne mansion on a hill outside of town. It was the kind of
     estate that had a name—Lone Pine, which referred to a massive old tree that towered over the house and stood out in solitary
     splendor against the sky. There was a story about that house. Even if Charlie hadn’t told Jessica about it, she would’ve heard.
     It was the sort of story that people would whisper behind their hands whenever Charlie walked into a room.
    His first wife had killed herself at Lone Pine. One day Charlie and his daughter were walking out in the large yard when Charlie
     heard a shot. He swept Carolee into his arms and ran back to the house. When they got to the front steps, they saw her—his
     wife, and Carolee’s mother—sprawled dead on the porch, a pistol in her hand. If Charlie had any