This is a piece of speculative fiction regarding the outcome of the Scopes Monkey Trial which was held in Dayton, Tennesee in the twenties. The verdict in the actual trial was guilty, but this story speculates what would happen had the verdict been innocent. Names have been changed and based heavily on the "Inherit the Wind" script.
PART 1
Hillsboro, 1920s
He sat in the audience, sweat beading on his hairline like transparent pearls. The entire population of Hillsboro had somehow been herded together and penned up inside the courtroom, watching the judge and the door leading to the jury annex anxiously. The women waved fans like ferry paddles in front of their faces, panting, huffing, their own sweat collecting on their upper lips and under arms. And the men stood, lined up along the walls, hats off, sleeves rolled, practically melting under the heat and anticipation. There was a kind of grid-like tension that was strung in the air, criss-crossing in a labyrinthine lattice work and gripping everyone's senses and attention. They were all waiting for the verdict.
The verdict that would divide the celestial from the terrestrial.
He shifted in his seat, readjusting his jacket and impulsively fingering the pistol tucked inside his belt. A sudden surge of power – a high – traveled from the stock and up his fingers, through his arm, leaking into his brain. Stimulating. He closed his eyes. The thought of crusading for truth and righteousness over the barrel of a gun made him feel ten feet tall. It made him feel invulnerable. The Lord was on his side today, after all. He was wielding His sword, wearing His armor. Satan had no right to coexist among the citizens of Hillsboro, much less ferment in the courtroom. In the house of the law. He shivered. The thought that the son of perdition was living vicariously through the lawyers and politicians of his United States made him feel dirty and exposed. It was the Lord who had founded the country, for God's sake! Faithless bureaucratic bastards couldn't take that away from him or from any good God-fearing American. And now Satan had infected the education system. He felt a sneer tugging at the corner of his mouth as he stared at the back of Bertram Cate's head, boring into it, drilling.
Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none.
Darwin, obviously, had become more than a man. He had become a second god. An aspiring god. No longer was his common descent suggestion only a hypothesis - fiction until proven truth – but had become an idealistic Mecca of sorts. A place where the doubtful arrived mentally because of the crap schoolteachers dumped into the learning atmosphere of the children of penitent men and women nationwide.
Scientists were suddenly compelled to make science an idol. They had crowned it king over human thought.
And that was why men like Cates had to die. A simple bullet to the head, maybe two, would fix everything.
He resisted the temptation to touch the gun again and instead drew a cigar out of his jacket pocket and placed it carefully between his lips. The judge was sitting at the bench, tired and worn looking - like a wrinkled suit coat - and was turning the gavel over in his hands repeatedly. Staring into space. He knew the judge was impartial and indecisive. The kind of man who would wash, dry, and hold up his hands in defeat when faced with a difficult problem and then let the dead bury the dead. He didn't like the man. Here the judge had a case, a trial behind his own walls, that would mold the viewpoint of millions. A verdict that would make or break faith. The whole country was watching, for God's sake! Impressions had to be made. Sermons had to be delivered. Salvation was weighted in that gavel.
Innocent was just not an option.
He would not settle for anything less than a heavy jail sentence for Cates. Otherwise, he would take the law into his own hands. The Lord had given him a mission. If the jury came back with a guilty – reelection votes or not – the judge had to let the hand of God crush Bertram Cates and Drummond. Like an executioner's axe. Like a divine guillotine.
Or he would.
The jury door opened, the bailiff walked out, and the crowd held their breath as the jury members exited out one by one, like marchers in a funeral wake.
>>TBC
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