Long Black Veil

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This short story was inspired by the song, Long Black Veil, made famous by Johnny Cash. The Chieftains and Mick Jagger collaborated on the song "Long Black Veil," featured on their 1995 album of the same name. This haunting ballad, originally penned in 1959, narrates the tale of a man wrongfully accused of murder who opts to safeguard his clandestine affair over presenting an alibi.

Dennis Morgan and Thomas Feagan were the best of friends, a relationship that started as an embryo in youth and developed into a reciprocal and unselfish bond in adulthood. They had grown up in the tiny, once dedicated farmland community of Riverpine, Illinois, a place approximately 200 miles from nowhere.

They went to school together as mischievous boys, cried in each other's arms on separate occasions when their fathers had died and both had traded in farming for solid work at the new plastics company that opened 50 miles away in Altwood. Still, at the same age of 31, they remained citizens of Riverpine; a place so small they called it a "half-a-horse town."

On the surface, Dennis was the happier of the two. He had married a beautiful woman named Rebecca and quickly fathered a glorious and healthy daughter. Thomas Feagan, of course, was named godfather to the lovely Monica and proudly presided at the baptism. Thomas on the other realm of society was more inclined to stay free of commitments. At 6'7'' and a strong, physically fit man, he was the biggest anything in Riverpine and an unmistakable presence in light or darkness. 

As life evolved, as sure as it always would, a definite change was apparent in Dennis. His social drinking with Thomas escalated into binges and all the relationships in his life became strained with self-inflicted emotional trauma.

He had fallen out of love with his wife Rebecca, was an uncomfortable father to his innocent daughter and most of all he became haunted by life's green monster regarding his best friend Thomas, who didn't have the shackles of responsibility smithed to his existence.

All the people in his life were trapped in the middle of a mental concussion that can only be manufactured by a disenchanted adult. The only thing for certain, when life's treachery is mixed with jealousy and inadequacy, is trouble. When all these things are swirled with alcohol, it's double.

The lives of Dennis, Thomas, Rebecca and the rest of the residents of Riverpine would be changed forever on a blistering hot Saturday evening, when the boiling temper of a stagnant life can easily erupt. Dennis hadn't been home since he left work on Friday afternoon, ignoring his husband and fatherly duties, cashing his paycheck and not going home to his family.

Thomas had pleaded with him to go home, but no dice. The tortures in his own mind were becoming unbearable and Dennis tried to quell his trouble with the contents of a whiskey bottle. Thomas abandoned his best friend long enough to drive over to his house and drop off a hundred dollars from his own pocket. As Thomas stumbled through excuses, Rebecca lost hope.

"You're a horse-shit liar Thomas Feagan," she said interrupting the uncomfortable rhetoric Thomas was trying to pass off as the truth. "But it was damn nice of you to offer this money."

As she slapped the now crumbled bills back into his hand, Thomas shook his head in confusion of his next move. He looked to the baby's crib in the corner of the small house and gently made his way toward his goddaughter, then reached down and placed the bills into her tiny hands. A painful stab of sympathy pierced his heart, knowing that someone so innocent should not have to live with such abandonment and someone like Rebecca should not have to endure such torment.

Thomas went back to the dark, roadside bar and its alcoholic contents Dennis had called a confidant for the last twenty hours. Dennis' brood was deep and Thomas' tolerance for the treatment of his friend's distraught family was drained.

"Go home Dennis," Thomas said almost begging. "You have a daughter waiting for her father and a wife who needs you."

"Mind your own goddamn business," Dennis replied in a voice he had never used against Thomas. It was the first argument these two veterans of friendship were to have ever had.

"Get your sorry ass off that barstool and go home," Thomas demanded in a voice that began to overshadow any mutual bond.

As the strong words were broadcast to Dennis and the rest of the patrons of the quieted tavern, no one noticed Rebecca standing in the doorway.

"I'm never going back to that dungeon," Dennis slurred.

Anger seized Rebecca and she stalked her way toward her intoxicated and selfish husband. She grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around to face her hand holding a wad of currency.

"Your friend here tried to make up for your lack of being a man," she howled. "And as far as that dungeon is concerned, don't ever bother coming back."

Her stare cut him down to a stuttering fool and he slouched into the back of his chair. She restrained herself from slapping him across the face but couldn't stop herself from spitting into the blank gaze that covered his eyes. She quickly turned and headed for the door, only pausing to flip the money at Thomas. Before she hit the doorway, Dennis sprang to life clutching a beer by the top and cracking it over the bar so that the jagged edges of the glass protruded from his hand in the pose of a lethal weapon.

In his drunken despair he was making a lunge at the mother of his child. Without even having to think, Thomas dropped his shoulder and took two powerful steps, driving his surging body into Dennis and Dennis to the ground. Rebecca turned at the doorway to see Dennis fumbling back to his feet and taking barbaric swings at Thomas with the threatening remnants of the beer bottle. Thomas distanced himself from each thrust coyly and bided his retaliation. With his hands in solid, menacing fists he dodged the last swipe of the serrated glass and connected knuckles to nose with a looping right cross. Dennis' neck snapped and his arms went backward, losing the broken bottle in the process. His body lay sprawled on the floor and a steady stream of dark colored blood ran down each side of his cheeks, spilling from each nostril. Thomas walked toward Rebecca and began to take her outside.

He looked back and as his figure filled the doorway, his heart brimmed with sympathy for the frail and abused wife of his tried companion and the bound lost friendship that lay behind, painfully unconscious.

Outside, he held her tiny frame in his stout arms and gently placed her head onto his chest, where her tears soaked through his shirt and the emotion behind them was absorbed into his heart. He spread his large, left hand, which practically covered her entire back, pulling her closer and with his other hand he cupped her head as she sobbed. He placed his lips onto her sweet fragranced hair and a shock of excitement burst through his body. With eyes closed, he imagined the softness of her touch and tenderness of her kiss. In one motion, he grabbed her by the arms and stood her up straight firmly, but in a secure manner where she felt no harm.

He stared into her eyes deeply and began pulling her closer as if temptation had taken control, preparing to kiss her with an inextinguishable passion. Rebecca, with tears dried and poised in a wide-eyed acceptance, made no effort to stop him.

Right before their lips were to meet in an uncontrollable embrace, Thomas stopped. Knowing that many a mistake has been made in a moment of despair and weakness, he dropped the grip he had on her arms and averted his eyes into the night. He made the decision to turn away from her, before his desire entangled their worlds.

"Go home Rebecca," Thomas said, "go home and take care of Monica."

They each resisted their impulses and made certain their eyes didn't encounter as they walked away. Rebecca's heart was first filled with hope, then drained of it just as brisk. Her thoughts drifted to her daughter who was safe with her mother. 

Thomas tried to black out the whole situation and while stopping for gas, he closed his eyes in disgust and decided he had spent his last day in Riverpine. While his imagination began to wonder aimlessly into an uncertain future, his usual perceptiveness was abandoned. A dark figure made his way into the brightly lit area of the gas pumps and fixed a stare on Thomas as he looked blankly out into the darkness. 

That darkness seemed to follow this figure even into the light and this stranger went undetected until he was just a few inches away from Thomas. Finally, Thomas' senses returned and meandering mind clicked back to reality as the unrecognizable figure reached his hand to tap Thomas' shoulder.

"Got any money?," the dark stranger muttered.

"Jesus, are you out of your freaking mind sneaking up on people like that?," Thomas shouted. "What kind of jackass scares the hell out of someone, then asks for money?"

Thomas spoke in a bold, commanding voice then paused for just a moment, noticing that the stranger's size and shape mirrored his own. "Beat it."

He thought to himself; "Must be a full moon. First I have to deck my best friend, I almost kiss his wife and now some weirdo tries to hit me up for money. I gotta lock the doors when I get home."

But it was too late to put a lock on anything in his life. When he walked through the door of his house, there Rebecca stood, in front of him with a silk negligee rumpled at her feet and the gentle, well-defined curves of her perfectly formed exposed body beckoning his primal physical desire. 

It wasn't her rounded, firm breasts or well-coiffed hair that lay soft and elegant above her husbandly abandoned vagina that gripped Thomas temptation in a vice-like hold. It was her wanting and inviting eyes, which groaned seduction, making the inside of his guts twirl like a tornado and shattering objective thinking. A trance-like gaze into to her sultry stare and the tense muscles in his neck loosened, along with his moral obligation to his best friend. 

Sure, her womanly nature had been ignored, but was it his liability to revitalize her sexual prowess? He knew that a woman's beauty was like the fragrance of a picked flower, if not enjoyed, its sweetness would be completely wasted and this beauty in front him withered his self-control. This was no time for moral dilemmas or philosophical questions, just animalistic actions fired by desire. He dropped his keys to the ground and confidently swaggered toward her, thrusting her in his arms and pressing his lips against hers in the same swift motion.

During their blissful coitus, across their small world, the town hall light was dim and flickering in the quite reserve of a sleeping village. In between the glints, a muffled but deadly commotion played like a silent, ancient, reel-to-reel film in black and white.

As he slammed on the breaks of his rusting out 1982 Buick, Benjamin Davis, uncertain of the commotion, propped his head out of the window and yelled from his car. A large shadow continued to grasp a little man by the hair on the back of the head and forcefully grind his face into the cement, crushing bone and spurting blood from deep gashes. 

All Benjamin Davis could see from the darkened road was a figure outlined by the erratic flicks projecting from the malfunctioning town hall light and that outline was an unmistakable 6'7'' and well over 220 pounds, the same as Thomas Feagan.  

Benjamin Davis wheeled his car so he could flash the brights onto the scene of this hellacious attack, but as the headlights illuminated the tragedy, it was too late. The broad shadow had blended secretly into the swarthy evening.

Benjamin Davis recognized the swollen and beaten man, Mike Wandter, and tried to ask him what had transpired before the victim of this viciousness drifted into an ultimate and permanent sleep. 

"Why did Thomas Feagan do this to you? Mike, answer me, Mike!"

Mike Wandtner's grip on life loosened quickly, as he tried to speak, all that erupted from his mouth was a cough of blood and his eyes reeled into death. Benjamin Davis ran to a nearby pay phone and called the Sheriff's office screaming into the receiver through gasps and pants, "Thomas Feagan just killed Mike Wandtner, beat him to a bloody mess and now he's dead, he died right in my arms. Get Thomas Feagan."

Back in bed, Thomas was deep inside a slumber that can only be obtained after physical and emotional fulfilling eruptions of sexual pleasure. This wonderful rest was bluntly interrupted by a brash pounding on the front door. Thomas sprang out of the sheets, quickly thinking it was his broken-nosed friend Dennis and his eyes darted back to the bed. Rebecca had slipped away hours before and Thomas breathed easy. The guilt he was feeling was a tremendous weight and would surely be increased if he were physically caught with Dennis' wife.

His train of thought revolved around relief and even greater mystery when he prudently opened the strident door to find the Sheriff of Riverpine with his revolver drawn and handcuffs dangling from his left hand. Thomas knew adultery was a sin against morality, but he didn’t think he'd wind up behind bars.

"You can't go to jail for what I've done," he plainly told the Sheriff.

"Jail, hell boy!," the stout Sheriff lambasted Thomas for his misunderstood arrogance. "You're going to dangle for this."

At the Sheriff's office Thomas was accused of murdering Mike Wandtner and Benjamin Davis signed the complaint as a witness. The bloody pictures of Mike Wandtner were spread on the desktop in front of Thomas Feagan and it was as if an invisible blade severed him from reality.

Thomas refused council to represent him during the murder trial and was unanimously found guilty by a jury of his unknowing peers. He believed this happenstance was punishment meted out by a supreme source. His morality pleaded guilty to weakness, and he was willing to accept any consequence.

"Death by hanging," preceded an expeditious and haunting smite of the judge's gavel. 

Rebecca sat traumatized by the judge's grave voice and dug her fingernails into her legs, through her black silk dress and nylons underneath, causing small amounts of blood to soak into the darkness of her wear. 

Because Riverpine had not been the unfortunate witness to a murder in over 100 years, the judge was able to hand out such an inhuman death because of an old town law that was never repealed. 

Dennis Morgan stood, oblivious to the fact that a murderous stranger was walking through life undaunted and the tears welling in the eyes of his wife were for a brief passage into a uncontrollable emotion that could never be revisited.

The wooden gallows were erected in plain view from the cell that would be the final residence of Thomas Feagan. He looked with hollow eyes to the courtyard where Riverpine's somber citizens would view the merciless death that would ensue and refused to shed a tear.

In the aftermath of Thomas Feagan's death dangle, Rebecca divorced Dennis. Never knowing of the tryst between his friend who was a misidentified killer and his disenchanted wife, he moved away from Riverpine and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He became a great provider for his daughter and one weekend of every month he journeys back to the town with a hidden ghost. 

During that weekend every month, Rebecca goes to the grave of the most hated man in Riverpine’s history while Dennis takes Monica to all of her favorite spots. Rebecca kneels and cries, draped in a long black veil. And when the night is cold and the winds are wailing through the town, the light at the town hall flickers and the life of Thomas Feagan is remembered only in Rebecca's tears.