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| Categories | Thrillers & Suspense |
| Author | John Grisham |
| Publisher | Anchor; Reprint edition (December 27, 2005) |
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 640 pages |
| Item Weight | 1.04 pounds |
| Dimensions |
5.23 x 1.08 x 7.98 inches |
I. Book introduction
The Chamber (1994) is a legal thriller written by American author John Grisham. It is Grisham’s fifth novel.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • “A dark and thoughtful tale… Grisham is at his best.” —People
In the corridors of Chicago’s top law firm: Twenty -six-year-old Adam Hall stands on the brink of a brilliant legal career. Now he is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case.
Maximum Security Unit, Mississippi State Prison: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of chances — except for one: the young, liberal Chicago lawyer who just happens to be his grandson.
While the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while the protesters gather and the TV cameras wait, Adam has only days, hours, minutes to save his client. For between the two men is a chasm of shame, family lies, and secrets — including the one secret that could save Sam Cayhall’s life… or cost Adam his
Plot
In 1967, in Greenville, Mississippi, the office of Jewish lawyer Marvin Kramer is bombed, injuring Kramer and killing his two young sons. Sam Cayhall, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, is identified, arrested and tried for their murders, committed in retaliation for Kramer’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Sam’s first two trials, engineered by his Klan-connected lawyer, each end in a mistrial. Twenty years later, the FBI pressures a suspected associate to testify against Sam at a third trial. Sam is convicted and sentenced to death by lethal gas. He is sent to the Mississippi State Penitentiary and placed on death row.
Now without a lawyer, Sam becomes a pro bono case for a team of anti-death penalty lawyers from the large – and Jewish – Chicago law firm of Kravitz and Bane. Representing Sam is his own grandson, Adam Hall, who travels to the firm’s Memphis office to aid Sam in the final month before his scheduled execution. Although lacking experience in death penalty cases, Adam is determined to argue a stay for his grandfather. Sam, despite his violent past, is one of the few living links to Adam’s family history. Sam’s alcoholic daughter, Lee Cayhall Booth, slowly reveals the family’s tragic past to her nephew, Adam.
Initially uncooperative, Sam eventually opens up to Adam and reveals a remarkable depth of hard-won legal knowledge, regularly preparing his own briefs and court motions. Adam interviews the FBI agent in charge of the original case and realizes that Sam almost certainly did not commit the actual crime for which he had been found guilty, although he was present. Nevertheless, Sam has a long and largely-secret history of Klan-related crimes, including several murders. Dogan, the associate who testified against Sam at his third trial, has apparently been murdered by the Klan. Sam himself will not reveal if another associate exists, thus not violating the Klan’s loyalty oath.
Adam desperately files motion after motion and argues some of them before judges. He seeks to persuade Mississippi’s governor to grant a reprieve, knowing full well that such a move is politically impossible; Sam forbids such a move, suspecting that the governor is using him for political gain. All appeals are finally exhausted. Sam is now repentant, but does not want Adam as a witness to the execution. He faces the last moment with courage and fortitude, publicly repudiating his past with the Klan, and dies proud of his grandson and happy to have forged a strong link with him during this last month. The sentence is carried out, Sam having ordered Adam to walk away and not watch him die.
With Sam and Dogan dead, no one knows that Roland, the third man who prepared and set off the bomb, is still free and living nearby under a false identity and observing the progress of the case – having graduated from Klan member to a full-fledged “proud fascist” and neo-Nazi. The reader knows – but Adam never does – that Roland stalked the young lawyer and considered killing him, but concluded it was not necessary and that Sam would take his secret to the grave. Meanwhile, Adam, sickened but fascinated by the experience – and disliking the idea of having a career as a corporate lawyer – quits Kravitz and Bane. Instead he accepts a poorly-paid position with a group of anti-death penalty lawyers.
Editorial Reviews
“Mesmerizing… with an authority and originality… and with a grasp of literary complexity that makes Scott Turow’s novel’s pale by comparison — Grisham returns.” — San Francisco Chronicle.
“A dark and thoughtful tale pulsing with moral uncertainties… Grisham is at his best.” –People.
“Compelling… Powerful… The Chamber will make readers think long and hard about the death penalty.” — USA Today.
“His best yet.” — The Houston Post.
About John Grisham
John Grisham (born February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas) is an American novelist, lawyer and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his popular legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three authors to have sold two million copies on a first printing.
Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practised criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990.
Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June 1989, four years after he began writing it. Grisham’s first bestseller, The Firm, sold more than seven million copies. The book was adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, and a 2012 TV series which continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel. Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas.
Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.
John Girsham lives on a farm in central Virginia.
II. Reviewer: The Chamber
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1. SHESH reviews for The Chamber
Just finished rereading this amazing book. This isn’t one of Grisham’s more popular stories however this book was a life transforming experience for me. Two issues this book forced me to deal with on my first reading in 1994: 1) How can people – any people, “Cluckers” (KKK), the Taliban, street gangs,Fred Phelps and congregation, boy soldiers of Sierra Leone, contract killers, even bullies, et al – be so cruel and mean and hateful? Where is compassion? How did they miss that piece of life? How could even members of my own family be so racist (all from Arkansas)? 2)Do I truly oppose the death penalty or do I just “tout” that I oppose the death penalty?
Good to read this again and be reminded of my own compassion and convictions. Pps 400-401 are the magic ones for me. Adam looking at the picture of Sam, his grandfather at 15, celebrating the lynching of a black man with neighbors and family – “He studied the clear, beautiful eyes of his grandfather and his heart ached. He was just a boy, born and reared in a household where hatred of blacks and others was simply a way of life. How much of it could be blamed on him? Look at those around him, his father, family, friends and neighbors, all probably honest, poor, hardworking people caught for the moment at the end of a cruel ceremony that was commonplace in their society. Sam didn’t have a chance. This was the only world he knew. . . . would Adam have been right there in the middle of them if he had been born forty years earlier? . . .How is God’s world could Sam Cayhall have become anything other than himself?”
Certainly that is not the answer in every circumstance – there is still the nature or nurture question. But this book cemented my own understanding of “situatedness” and has informed my compassionate self, assisted in transforming my spiritual sense to a place of understanding. Not every time, of course, but often.
And the death penalty? Absolutely not. No gas chamber, no lethal injection, no firing squad. However, I always add this caveat: I have never had a loved one who has been a victim of a capital crime. I would hope that my convictions would remain if that were ever the case.
2. JULIE reviews for The Chamber
I thought this was one of the most impacting novels I have read for a long time. Grisham thoroughly explores the implications of the death penalty and creates a well-rounded and complex character in Sam Cayhall. You come to hate him and pity him, asking yourself whether he really deserves death and cheering Adam on as he tries to save him. A book I will never forget.
3. COURTNEY reviews for The Chamber
Typically I am a Sci-fi/Fantasy reader, with a smattering of historical fiction thrown in. Really I’ll read just about anything, but I have weakness for fairy tales. So when my dad recommended this book to me, and went as far as to buy it and give it to me, I was like… okay… But I decided to give it a chance because it’s a book, and I like books.
And my response was: Wow. I have read very few things as heart stirring and thought provoking as this book. Who could like a KKK member? Murdering people is ALWAYS bad, right? And shouldn’t people who murder people die? Before I read this book I would have said not me, yes, and yes, to each of those questions (respectively). Now though? I would say it depends, yes, and I don’t know. I learned a lot about humanity. I also learned that the best ending isn’t always the happiest one. Wow. This book is good. No matter what your typical genre is, take a break and give this book a chance.
4. SHAUN reviews for The Chamber
4.5 stars
How could Adam ever reconcile the past with the present? How could he fairly judge these people and their horrible deed when, but for a quirk of fate, he would have been right there in the middle of them had he been born forty years earlier?…If Sam was lynching at such an early age, what could be expected of him as an adult?…How in God’s world could Sam Cayhall have become anything other than himself? He never had a chance.
This is my first John Grisham novel, purchased for a dollar at a local consignment shop. It’s the story of a young attorney who decides he wants to represent a grandfather he only recently learned he had and who is on death row for his part in a KKK killing decades earlier. (view spoiler)
In many ways, this reads like southern Gothic fiction, which I generally enjoy so it’s no surprise that I liked this as much as I did.
In addition to exploring racism in the south, Grisham tackles the morality of the death penalty and also seems to be delving into the topic of “free will.” For those reasons alone, I thought this was a compelling read.
The argument made against the death penalty is a familiar one, that state condoned killing is cruel and immoral and doesn’t really solve anything. Interestingly, I’m reading one of his earlier books called A Time to Kill where he makes a moral argument in favor of a father charged with killing two men who brutally raped and beat (almost to death) his ten-year old daughter.
Both arguments, while seemingly at odds with each other, are strong and thought provoking.
The two criticisms that seemed to appear in many of the less enthusiastic reviews I read are 1. This is much different than his other books and 2. It was way, way too long. This being my only Grisham book, I can’t speak to the first complaint. I do feel as if the book was long, maybe longer than it had to be. Yet on the flip side, I think the pacing of the book and its length mirror the death row process. So in that sense, it almost seems appropriate.
GR friends that have read this seem underwhelmed. Most awarding only 3 stars. But I liked it. Really liked it. Grisham is a phenomenal writer.
5. JEAN LEWANDOWSKI reviews for The Chamber
Grisham isn’t a great writer. He’s a good writer in his genre, though, so I read a lot of his books. This is one of the better ones, in my opinion, because it manages to show the humanity of the deeply flawed main characters. There are no sob stories, no excuses for their criminal and unethical behavior, but they’re still human beings, so they invite us to connect with our own flaws. At the same time, it shines a light on the American prison system, not by preaching, but by showing, in minute detail, what a maximum security prison looks, sounds, feels, and smells like. And it exposes the arbitrary and capricious (and often willfully cruel) process of state-sanctioned homicide.
6. DIAMONDGIRL reviews for The Chamber
The story was good and characters well defined but there were too many rabbit trails that had potential then led nowhere. It was more like the author expressed his views on the death penalty and gave Christian witness on salvation. Adam Hall only just found out that Sam Cayhall is his grandfather who murdered an black man but never charged; currently he is on death row charged with bombing the offices of a Jewish business man. The bomb went off later than expected killing the.2 little children and wounding the Jewish man. Adam is fresh out of law school and recently hired at a prestigious Chicago law firm; he is sent to represent Sam. All the appeals are exhausted but Adam is confident he can find a legal way to get his grandfather a new trial or at least life. The governor as well as an FBI agent feel Sam was just a lookout not the bomber but Sam insists he acted alone. The story has more of the family drama and description of how the gas chamber works than actually how Adam can work any new legal arguments. The bomber is always in the background but just waiting for the execution. The governor won’t do anything since Sam won’t give up his partner. Like I said lots of dead end rabbit trails
7. JIM RINALXI reviews for The Chamber
This novel is over 600 long but I never wished for it to end. Grisham’s writing style is very detailed but in a way that draws one deeper into the story. This is the story of a young lawyer attempting to get his grandfather, who was convicted of murder, out of suffering execution in the Mississippi gas chamber. Usually one expects the hero to pull off a miracle and be successful, but in this case he failed. I felt as though I had come to really know the characters personally and I nearly wanted to cry at the end. Although the grandfather deserved to die for his crimes if anyone would, I was hoping for a miracle.
I’ve been opposed to the death penalty for as long as I can remember, but if I had been on the fence this story would have made up my mind and made me into an opponent. It was that good. Grisham at his best.
8. CYNTHIA reviews for The Chamber
I have strong feelings and opinions related to this book that delves deeper into the issue of “an eye for an eye” as it relates to the judicial systems of the day. A great side story about a member of the KKK after the civil war during the segragation conflict. Being from a rural southern area, riding around as a child with a father who always kept a “nigger knocker” under the seat, and having family that still refuses to grasp the concept of nonjudgmental equality, I really thought this book showed the true side of descriminatin and reverse discrimination that could cause one to reflect on their belief system regarding the death penalty.
9. MARGARET reviews for The Chamber
Adam Hall grew up moving from place to place, his family never speaking of any family history. As far as Adam knew he had no other family than his parents and his younger sister. That all changed at Adam’s father’s funeral when Adam was seventeen. His father’s sister attended the funeral and shared some of the family histories with young Adam. Adam was the grandson of Sam Cayhill, a murderer residing on death row. As Adam completed college and law school he was obsessed with learning all he could about his family history. Adam accepts his first job with the Jewish law firm that had until just recently represented his grandfather. With an execution date four weeks away Adam was able to convince the head of the pro bono section of his law firm to allow him to try and convince his grandfather to rehire the firm with Adam as his attorney. Sam had been convicted of a KKK at bombing killing two children and maiming one. The story revolves around the racial sentiments at the time of the bombing and the last-ditch efforts made for Sam as he awaits execution. Adam does not believe in the death penalty and fights to prove it is cruel and inhumane. Along the way, Adam learns much about his extended family and although he begins this journey despising his grandfather, in the end, he finds himself caring for him. As you travel this journey with Adam and Sam you find not only that they change, but find yourself changing. Having lived in the South during segregation and the accompanying racial tensions it brought back dark memories of that time of our countries history. This was an excellent read.
10. NENETTE reviews for The Chamber
I’ve read a couple of Grishams that had very rich and exciting plots, only to end abruptly, leaving the reader wanting for more.
I’m happy to say that that’s not the case with The Chamber. This story has both the thrills and the heart and it carried through to the end. It was an exciting read, and tugs at the heart at the same time; I almost cried in some of the scenes.
I admire the character of Adam Hall, I wish there were more people like him in real life – those who would put the good of the family first, no matter what the price. I also admire the character of Sam Cayhall. Observers would say he deserved what he got (and maybe he did, who can really tell), but only he would know that he had made peace with himself and with God somehow before his end; and Sam did not see the need for this to be publicized. It’s a sad story, but there was redemption at the end. Something good was borne out of something bad; and that’s not a lesson to be ignored.
III. The Chamber Quotes
The best book quotes from The Chamber by John Grisham
“You’re old. You’re senile. You’re too calm about this. Something must be wrong…”
“Wonderful. I’ll pull out my hair and chase butterflies around the room.”
“Look at me,” he said, glancing down at his legs. “A wretched old man in a red monkey suit. A convicted murderer about to be gassed like an animal. And look at you. A fine young man with a beautiful education and a bright future. Where in the world did I go wrong? What happened to me?
I’ve spent my life hating people, and look what I have to show for it. You, you don’t hate anybody. And look where you’re headed. We have the same blood. Why am I here?”“He received his first death threat at the age of twenty-five, and started carrying a gun.”
Excerpted from The Chamber by John Grisham
Chapter 1 – The Chamber
THE DECISION to bomb the office of the radical Jew lawyer was reached with relative ease. Only three people were involved in the process. The first was the man with the money. The second was a local operative who knew the territory. And the third was a young patriot and zealot with a talent for explosives and an astonishing knack for disappearing without a trail. After the bombing, he fled the country and hid in Northern Ireland for six years.
The lawyer’s name was Marvin Kramer, a fourth-generation Mississippi Jew whose family had prospered as merchants in the Delta. He lived in an antebellum home in Greenville, a river town with a small but strong Jewish community, a pleasant place with a history of little racial discord. He practiced law because commerce bored him. Like most Jews of German descent, his family had assimilated nicely into the culture of the Deep South, and viewed themselves as nothing but typical Southerners who happened to have a different religion. Anti-Semitism rarely surfaced. For the most part, they blended with the rest of established society and went about their business.
Marvin was different. His father sent him up North to Brandeis in the late fifties. He spent four years there, then three years in law school at Columbia, and when he returned to Greenville in 1964 the civil rights movement had center stage in Mississippi. Marvin got in the thick of it. Less than a month after opening his little law office, he was arrested along with two of his Brandeis classmates for attempting to register black voters. His father was furious. His family was embarrassed, but Marvin couldn’t have cared less. He received his first death threat at the age of twenty-five, and started carrying a gun. He bought a pistol for his wife, a Memphis girl, and instructed their black maid to keep one in her purse. The Kramers had twin two-year-old sons.
The first civil rights lawsuit filed in 1965 by the law offices of Marvin B. Kramer and Associates (there were no associates yet) alleged a multitude of discriminatory voting practices by local officials. It made headlines around the state, and Marvin got his picture in the papers. He also got his name on a Klan list of Jews to harass. Here was a radical Jew lawyer with a beard and a bleeding heart, educated by Jews up North and now marching with and representing Negroes in the Mississippi Delta. It would not be tolerated.
Later, there were rumors of Lawyer Kramer using his own money to post bail for Freedom Riders and civil rights workers. He filed lawsuits attacking whites-only facilities. He paid for the reconstruction of a black church bombed by the Klan. He was actually seen welcoming Negroes into his home. He made speeches before Jewish groups up North and urged them to get involved in the struggle. He wrote sweeping letters to newspapers, few of which were printed. Lawyer Kramer was marching bravely toward his doom.
The presence of a nighttime guard patrolling benignly around the flower beds prevented an attack upon the Kramer home. Marvin had been paying the guard for two years. He was a former cop and he was heavily armed, and the Kramers let it be known to all of Greenville that they were protected by an expert marksman. Of course, the Klan knew about the guard, and the Klan knew to leave him alone. Thus, the decision was made to bomb Marvin Kramer’s office, and not his home.
The actual planning of the operation took very little time, and this was principally because so few people were involved in it. The man with the money, a flamboyant redneck prophet named Jeremiah Dogan, was at the time the Imperial Wizard for the Klan in Mississippi. His predecessor had been loaded off to prison, and Jerry Dogan was having a wonderful time orchestrating the bombings. He was not stupid. In fact, the FBI later admitted Dogan was quite effective as a terrorist because he delegated the dirty work to small, autonomous groups of hit men who worked completely independent of one another. The FBI had become expert at infiltrating the Klan with informants, and Dogan trusted no one but family and a handful of accomplices. He owned the largest used car lot in Meridian, Mississippi, and had made plenty of money on all sorts of shady deals. He sometimes preached in rural churches.
The second member of the team was a Klansman by the name of Sam Cayhall from Clanton, Mississippi, in Ford County, three hours north of Meridian and an hour south of Memphis. Cayhall was known to the FBI, but his connection to Dogan was not. The FBI considered him to be harmless because he lived in an area of the state with almost no Klan activity. A few crosses had been burned in Ford County recently, but no bombings, no killings. The FBI knew that Cayhall’s father had been a Klansman, but on the whole the family appeared to be rather passive. Dogan’s recruitment of Sam Cayhall was a brilliant move.
The bombing of Kramer’s office began with a phone call on the night of April 17, 1967. Suspecting, with good reason, that his phones were tapped, Jeremiah Dogan waited until midnight and drove to a pay phone at a gas station south of Meridian. He also suspected he was being followed by the FBI, and he was correct. They watched him, but they had no idea where the call was going.
Sam Cayhall listened quietly on the other end, asked a question or two, then hung up. He returned to his bed, and told his wife nothing. She knew better than to ask. The next morning he left the house early and drove into the town of Clanton. He ate his daily breakfast at The Coffee Shop, then placed a call on a pay phone inside the Ford County Courthouse.
Two days later, on April 20, Cayhall left Clanton at dusk and drove two hours to Cleveland, Mississippi, a Delta college town an hour from Greenville. He waited for forty minutes in the parking lot of a busy shopping center, but saw no sign of a green Pontiac. He ate fried chicken in a cheap diner, then drove to Greenville to scout the law offices of Marvin B. Kramer and Associates. Cayhall had spent a day in Greenville two weeks earlier, and knew the city fairly well. He found Kramer’s office, then drove by his stately home, then found the synagogue again. Dogan said the synagogue might be next, but first they needed to hit the Jew lawyer. By eleven, Cayhall was back in Cleveland, and the green Pontiac was parked not at the shopping center but at a truck stop on Highway 61, a secondary site. He found the ignition key under the driver’s floor mat, and took the car for a drive through the rich farm fields of the Delta. He turned onto a farm road and opened the trunk. In a cardboard box covered with newspapers, he found fifteen sticks of dynamite, three blasting caps, and a fuse. He drove into town and waited in an all-night café.
At precisely 2 A.M., the third member of the team walked into the crowded truck stop and sat across from Sam Cayhall. His name was Rollie Wedge, a young man of no more than twenty-two, but a trusted veteran of the civil rights war. He said he was from Louisiana, now lived somewhere in the mountains where no one could find him, and though he never boasted, he had told Sam Cayhall several times that he fully expected to be killed in the struggle for white supremacy. His father was a Klansman and a demolition contractor, and from him Rollie had learned how to use explosives.
Sam knew little about Rollie Wedge, and didn’t believe much of what he said. He never asked Dogan where he found the kid.
They sipped coffee and made small talk for half an hour. Cayhall’s cup shook occasionally from the jitters, but Rollie’s was calm and steady. His eyes never blinked. They had done this together several times now, and Cayhall marveled at the coolness of one so young. He had reported to Jeremiah Dogan that the kid never got excited, not even when they neared their targets and he handled the dynamite.
Wedge’s car was a rental from the Memphis airport. He retrieved a small bag from the backseat, locked the car, and left it at the truck stop. The green Pontiac with Cayhall behind the wheel left Cleveland and headed south on Highway 61. It was almost 3 A.M., and there was no traffic. A few miles south of the village of Shaw, Cayhall turned onto a dark, gravel road and stopped. Rollie instructed him to stay in the car while he inspected the explosives. Sam did as he was told. Rollie took his bag with him to the trunk where he inventoried the dynamite, the blasting caps, and the fuse. He left his bag in the trunk, closed it, and told Sam to head to Greenville.
They drove by Kramer’s office for the first time around 4 A.M. The street was deserted, and dark, and Rollie said something to the effect that this would be their easiest job yet.
“Too bad we can’t bomb his house,” Rollie said softly as they drove by the Kramer home.
“Yeah. Too bad,” Sam said nervously. “But he’s got a guard, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. But the guard would be easy.”
“Yeah, I guess. But he’s got kids in there, you know.”
“Kill ’em while they’re young,” Rollie said. “Little Jew bastards grow up to be big Jew bastards.”
Cayhall parked the car in an alley behind Kramer’s office. He turned off the ignition, and both men quietly opened the trunk, removed the box and the bag, and slid along a row of hedges leading to the rear door.
Sam Cayhall jimmied the rear door of the office and they were inside within seconds. Two weeks earlier, Sam had presented himself to the receptionist under the ruse of asking for directions, then asked to use the rest room. In the main hallway, between the rest room and what appeared to be Kramer’s office, was a narrow closet filled with stacks of old files and other legal rubbish.
“Stay by the door and watch the alley,” Wedge whispered coolly, and Sam did exactly as he was told. He preferred to serve as the watchman and avoid handling the explosives.
Rollie quickly sat the box on the floor in the closet, and wired the dynamite. It was a delicate exercise, and Sam’s heart raced each time as he waited. His back was always to the explosives, just in case something went wrong.
They were in the office less than five minutes. Then they were back in the alley strolling nonchalantly to the green Pontiac. They were becoming invincible. It was all so easy. They had bombed a real estate office in Jackson because the realtor had sold a house to a black couple. A Jewish realtor. They had bombed a small newspaper office because the editor had uttered something neutral on segregation. They had demolished a Jackson synagogue, the largest in the state.
They drove through the alley in the darkness, and as the green Pontiac entered a side street its headlights came on.
In each of the prior bombings, Wedge had used a fifteen-minute fuse, one simply lit with a match, very similar to a firecracker. And as part of the exercise, the team of bombers enjoyed cruising with the windows down at a point always on the outskirts of town just as the explosion ripped through the target. They had heard and felt each of the prior hits, at a nice distance, as they made their leisurely getaways.
But tonight would be different. Sam made a wrong turn somewhere, and suddenly they were stopped at a railroad crossing staring at flashing lights as a freighter clicked by in front of them. A rather long freight train. Sam checked his watch more than once. Rollie said nothing. The train passed, and Sam took another wrong turn. They were near the river, with a bridge in the distance, and the street was lined with run-down houses. Sam checked his watch again. The ground would shake in less than five minutes, and he preferred to be easing into the darkness of a lonely highway when that happened. Rollie fidgeted once as if he was becoming irritated with his driver, but he said nothing.
Another turn, another new street. Greenville was not that big a city, and if he kept turning Sam figured he could work his way back to a familiar street. The next wrong turn proved to be the last. Sam hit the brakes as soon as he realized he had turned the wrong way on a one-way street. And when he hit the brakes, the engine quit. He yanked the gearshift into park, and turned the ignition. The engine turned perfectly, but it just wouldn’t start. Then, the smell of gasoline.
“Dammit!” Sam said through clenched teeth. “Dammit!”
Rollie sat low in his seat and stared through the window.
“Dammit! It’s flooded!” He turned the key again, same result.
“Don’t run the battery down,” Rollie said slowly, calmly.
Sam was near panic. Though he was lost, he was reasonably sure they were not far from downtown. He breathed deeply, and studied the street. He glanced at his watch. There were no other cars in sight. All was quiet. It was the perfect setting for a bomb blast. He could see the fuse burning along the wooden floor. He could feel the jarring of the ground. He could hear the roar of ripping wood and sheetrock, brick and glass. Hell, Sam thought as he tried to calm himself, we might get hit with debris.
“You’d think Dogan would send a decent car,” he mumbled to himself. Rollie did not respond, just kept his gaze on something outside his window.
At least fifteen minutes had passed since they had left Kramer’s office, and it was time for the fireworks. Sam wiped rows of sweat from his forehead, and once again tried the ignition. Mercifully, the engine started. He grinned at Rollie, who seemed completely indifferent. He backed the car a few feet, then sped away. The first street looked familiar, and two blocks later they were on Main Street. “What kind of fuse did you use?” Sam finally asked, as they turned onto Highway 82, less than ten blocks from Kramer’s office.
Rollie shrugged as if it was his business and Sam shouldn’t ask. They slowed as they passed a parked police car, then gained speed on the edge of town. Within minutes, Greenville was behind them.
“What kind of fuse did you use?” Sam asked again with an edge to his voice.
“I tried something new,” Rollie answered without looking.
“What?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Rollie said, and Sam did a slow burn.
“A timing device?” he asked a few miles down the road.
“Something like that.”
THEY DROVE to Cleveland in complete silence. For a few miles, as the lights of Greenville slowly disappeared across the flat land, Sam half-expected to see a fireball or hear a distant rumble. Nothing happened. Wedge even managed to catch a little nap.
The truck stop café was crowded when they arrived. As always, Rollie eased from his seat and closed the passenger door. “Until we meet again,” he said with a smile through the open window, then walked to his rental car. Sam watched him swagger away, and marveled once more at the coolness of Rollie Wedge.
It was by now a few minutes after five-thirty, and a hint of orange was peeking through the darkness to the east. Sam pulled the green Pontiac onto Highway 61, and headed south.
THE HORROR of the Kramer bombing actually began about the time Rollie Wedge and Sam Cayhall parted ways in Cleveland. It started with the alarm clock on a nightstand not far from Ruth Kramer’s pillow. When it erupted at five-thirty, the usual hour, Ruth knew instantly that she was a very sick woman. She had a slight fever, a vicious pain in her temples, and she was quite nauseous. Marvin helped her to the bathroom not far away where she stayed for thirty minutes. A nasty flu bug had been circulating through Greenville for a month, and had now found its way into the Kramer home.
The maid woke the twins, Josh and John, now five years old, at six-thirty, and quickly had them bathed, dressed, and fed. Marvin thought it best to take them to nursery school as planned and get them out of the house and, he hoped, away from the virus. He called a doctor friend for a prescription, and left the maid twenty dollars to pick up the medication at the pharmacy in an hour. He said good-bye to Ruth, who was lying on the floor of the bathroom with a pillow under her head and an icepack over her face, and left the house with the boys.
Not all of his practice was devoted to civil rights litigation; there was not enough of that to survive on in Mississippi in 1967. He handled a few criminal cases and other generic civil matters: divorces, zoning, bankruptcy, real estate. And despite the fact that his father barely spoke to him, and the rest of the Kramers barely uttered his name, Marvin spent a third of his time at the office working on family business. On this particular morning, he was scheduled to appear in court at 9 A.M. to argue a motion in a lawsuit involving his uncle’s real estate.
The twins loved his law office. They were not due at nursery school until eight, so Marvin could work a little before delivering the boys and heading on to court. This happened perhaps once a month. In fact, hardly a day passed without one of the twins begging Marvin to take them to his office first and then to nursery school.
They arrived at the office around seven-thirty, and once inside, the twins went straight for the secretary’s desk and the thick stack of typing paper, all waiting to be cut and copied and stapled and folded into envelopes. The office was a sprawling structure, built over time with additions here and there. The front door opened into a small foyer where the receptionist’s desk sat almost under a stairway. Four chairs for waiting clients hugged the wall. Magazines were scattered under the chairs. To the right and left of the foyer were small offices for lawyers–Marvin now had three associates working for him. A hallway ran directly from the foyer through the center of the downstairs, so from the front door the rear of the building could be seen some eighty feet away. Marvin’s office was the largest room downstairs, and it was the last door on the left, next to the cluttered closet. Just across the hall from the closet was Marvin’s secretary’s office. Her name was Helen, a shapely young woman Marvin had been dreaming about for eighteen months.
Upstairs on the second floor were the cramped offices of another lawyer and two secretaries. The third floor had no heat or air conditioning, and was used for storage.
He normally arrived at the office between seven-thirty and eight because he enjoyed a quiet hour before the rest of the firm arrived and the phone started ringing. As usual, he was the first to arrive on Friday, April 21.
He unlocked the front door, turned on the light switch, and stopped in the foyer. He lectured the twins about making a mess on Helen’s desk, but they were off down the hallway and didn’t hear a word. Josh already had the scissors and John the stapler by the time Marvin stuck his head in for the first time and warned them. He smiled to himself, then went to his office where he was soon deep in research.
At about a quarter to eight, he would recall later from the hospital, Marvin climbed the stairs to the third floor to retrieve an old file which, he thought at the time, had some relevance to the case he was preparing. He mumbled something to himself as he bounced up the steps. As things evolved, the old file saved his life. The boys were laughing somewhere down the hall.
The blast shot upward and horizontally at several thousand feet per second. Fifteen sticks of dynamite in the center of a wooden framed building will reduce it to splinters and rubble in a matter of seconds. It took a full minute for the jagged slivers of wood and other debris to return to earth. The ground seemed to shake like a small earthquake, and, as witnesses would later describe, bits of glass sprinkled downtown Greenville for what seemed like an eternity.
Josh and John Kramer were less than fifteen feet from the epicenter of the blast, and fortunately never knew what hit them. They did not suffer. Their mangled bodies were found under eight feet of rubble by local firemen. Marvin Kramer was thrown first against the ceiling of the third floor, then, unconscious, fell along with the remnants of the roof into the smoking crater in the center of the building. He was found twenty minutes later and rushed to the hospital. Within three hours, both legs were amputated at the knees.
The time of the blast was exactly seven forty-six, and this in itself was somewhat fortunate. Helen, Marvin’s secretary, was leaving the post office four blocks away and felt the blast. Another ten minutes, and she would have been inside making coffee. David Lukland, a young associate in the law firm, lived three blocks away, and had just locked his apartment door when he heard and felt the blast. Another ten minutes, and he would’ve been picking through his mail in his second-floor office.
A small fire was ignited in the office building next door, and though it was quickly contained it added greatly to the excitement. The smoke was heavy for a few moments, and this sent people scurrying.
There were two injuries to pedestrians. A three-foot section of a two-by-four landed on a sidewalk a hundred yards away, bounced once, then hit Mrs. Mildred Talton square in the face as she stepped away from her parked car and looked in the direction of the explosion. She received a broken nose and a nasty laceration, but recovered in due course.
The second injury was very minor but very significant. A stranger by the name of Sam Cayhall was walking slowly toward the Kramer office when the ground shook so hard he lost his footing and tripped on a street curb. As he struggled to his feet, he was hit once in the neck and once in the left cheek by flying glass. He ducked behind a tree as shards and pieces rained around him. He gaped at the devastation before him, then ran away.
Blood dripped from his cheek and puddled on his shirt. He was in shock and did not remember much of this later. Driving the same green Pontiac, he sped away from downtown, and would most likely have made it safely from Greenville for the second time had he been thinking and paying attention. Two cops in a patrol car were speeding into the business district to respond to the bombing call when they met a green Pontiac which, for some reason, refused to move to the shoulder and yield. The patrol car had sirens blaring, lights flashing, horns blowing, and cops cursing, but the green Pontiac just froze in its lane of traffic and wouldn’t budge. The cops stopped, ran to it, yanked open the door, and found a man with blood all over him. Handcuffs were slapped around Sam’s wrists. He was shoved roughly into the rear seat of the police car, and taken to jail. The Pontiac was impounded.
THE BOMB that killed the Kramer twins was the crudest of sorts. Fifteen sticks of dynamite wrapped tightly together with gray duct tape. But there was no fuse. Rollie Wedge had used instead a detonating device, a timer, a cheap windup alarm clock. He had removed the minute hand from the clock, and drilled a small hole between the numbers seven and eight. Into the small hole he had inserted a metal pin which, when touched by the sweeping hour hand, would complete the circuit and detonate the bomb. Rollie wanted more time than a fifteen-minute fuse could provide. Plus, he considered himself an expert and wanted to experiment with new devices.
Perhaps the hour hand was warped a bit. Perhaps the dial of the clock was not perfectly flat. Perhaps Rollie in his enthusiasm had wound it too tight, or not tight enough. Perhaps the metal pin was not flush with the dial. It was, after all, Rollie’s first effort with a timer. Or perhaps the timing device worked precisely as planned.
….
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