Ascent Into Morbidity

Even before the bloody slashing and horrible death on water-tower hill, the place was often a drawing card for children after school, sledding in winter and summer adventures. 

The old water tower looked like a huge, rusty rocket pointing to the sky atop four metal legs with an off-limit ladder that rose high above our heads. It was on the highest point of the town--a grassy knob surrounded by bushes and trees so thick that from the pathways beneath the branches one could not see the sky. The grassy knob was just high enough above the labyrinth of bushes and hidden paths that one could look down upon the roofs of houses descending in lines down the hill in all directions. Even further could one see. Beyond the houses of the town were the pasture lands, with their barns and haystacks, which began at the edge of town and ran to the infinity of our vision.

Grandma’s house was at the end of Hill Street where the city stopped and the country started. From the water tower, it was downhill all the way. Grandma kept some old, rusty bikes in her outbuilding by the chicken house, near the grape arbor. She couldn’t bear to part with them. They had belonged to her sons, my ghostly uncles, that I knew only by the tales that mom and the aunties told--tales of a hunting accident, one accidentally shooting the other and then weeping as he carried him home, tales of a coal mine accident and a broken neck and another funeral.

If grandma cared when we got the bikes out and disappeared, we never knew, for she never complained or scolded. In fact, she was not able to do either. A stroke had taken away her voice and her independence. She would sit in her wheelchair beneath the sycamore tree where the shade and the summer breezes kept her cool, and watch and smile.

The chains on the bikes were long gone. We could only push them up Hill Street, clear to the top where we would mess around a bit, hiding and chasing in the bushes. Tired of that, we would lie on our backs on the grassy knob staring at the apex of the water tower skimming along the sea of fluffy white clouds, wondering what it would be like to climb the ladder and ride the spar of the water-tower ship.

The ride back down Hill Street was the highlight of our adventure. Hill Street was actually a bumpy, dirt road with little traffic. Since the brakes of the bikes didn’t work anyway, we would coast-race down the hill, legs sticking out to the sides, screaming all the way. By the time we reached grandma’s house, the road had leveled out and we were able to turn in without catastrophe, if we made it down the hill. We often arrived with scrapes and bruises to ourselves and bent frames or knocked out spokes to the bikes. Mom was always happy to see that we still had our teeth and no broken bones.

Our attraction to water-tower hill increased greatly overnight after the murder. It was not fear that drew us, but a morbid fascination. In spite of the orders from mom to “stay away from there”, we could not. We wanted to see the blood.

On Saturday night, a drunk Perry Miller ran out of money at the Peckerwood Club before he ran out of the desire for whiskey. It was an old tavern tucked into the river bluff on 24 Highway at the edge of the Missouri River. Somewhere in his fogged brain was the memory that Newt White owed him $3.00. He had procrastinated paying it back always saying, “I just don’t have it right now.”

Perry Miller left the tavern and headed for the home of Newt White who lived in the vicinity of water-tower hill.  “I’ll get it from him one way or another!” he said to his drinking buddy as he pulled out of his pocket a dirty, pearl-handled, straight razor with a shining honed edge.

Newt was sitting on his front porch steps on that hot, airless, summer night when Perry Miller arrived with his ultimatum and his threats. Newt took out running and yelling, “I’ll get it for you, but I don’t have it right now!”

Perry Miller chased him up water-tower hill and through the bushes on the paths. He caught up with him under the water tower, and that’s where he left his lifeless body in a pool of blood amongst the grass and leaves.

We never found blood after the police were finished. We knew there must have been a lot of it because we had seen the picture in the newspapers sold outside of Watkins’ Store. We never gave up looking for it though, always thinking a drop or two would show up. All we had to do was find it.

The End

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