#336 Fragments of Justice- Dashiell Hammett

#336 Fragments of Justice- Dashiell Hammett

Three men completely different from each other sit on a jury. One man old and addled just wants to feel important one more time; the second an old world protestant, who’s crowning achievement in life was quitting his social club after they let in a Jew, wants the world to be like it was; and the third is a beaten down man that just wants someone else to be punished.

Hammett tales are often a “long-standing interest in the ways in which men struggle to find their places among each other and in the world…” This is one of those. It was not published during his lifetime.

Rating: 6-6-5-5 Total= 22

#327 For Love of Trains- David Dante Troutt

#327 For Love of Trains- David Dante Troutt

The Patterson’s learned of a horrible event. Their 19 year old son, Haywood had been falsely arrested for murder and rape aboard a train. Him and 8 others were convicted and sentenced to death in an Alabama prison. The family became hardened to the hopeless reality that faced their family.

“[He] became like a hopeless kind of iron, just thickening and hardening under flames he couldn’t put out.”

After the ineptitude of the NAACP lawyer, they accepted the help of a white, Jewish, communist group from New York. They won a stay of execution and finally were able to see Haywood in person. He was beaten, and desperate, but he was their son:

“They’d beaten him across the left side of his face, and his eyes swole up. But when you looked deep into them there were the brown, tender eyes of the boy.”

They won a Supreme Court appeal, but didn’t win the re-trial. As the case continued to make its way back and forth, disaster strikes again. Even without hope, you can still have fight, what else is there?

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29

#263 Glow in the Dark- David Dante Troutt

#263 Glow in the Dark- David Dante Troutt

David Dante Troutt put together a unique collection here. The Monkey Suit: And Other Short Fiction on African Americans and Justice, is fictionalized tellings of true court cases. The truth about these cases have been obscured by shady history, bad reporting, and about the ways we never truly can know certain facts. Just because these stories may not represent the facts, doesn’t make the telling of them any less truthful.

The opening salvo is Glow in the Dark. John Henry, a runaway slave is tied to a Sheriff awaiting his fate. He is struggling with killing the lawman in his sleep. He holds this conversation with the rope itself:

“Hush rope, John Henry whispers hard at it. I ain’t wanna hurt dis boy. I see bout runnin tomorruh.”

The heavy dialect sets the correct mood for this story. John Henry has no allies except for his anthropomorphized bindings, and fate, as expected runs it course.

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27