Brann’s Revenge Read online

  This book is a work of historical fiction. While some of the names, characters and events in this book have a factual basis, the story itself is the product of the author’s imagination.

  Brann’s Revenge

  Published by Gatekeeper Press

  2167 Stringtown Rd, Suite 109

  Columbus, OH 43123-2989

  www.GatekeeperPress.com

  Copyright © 2019 by S. Smith

  All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  ISBN (paperback): 9781642375534

  eISBN: 9781642375541

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1—The Find

  Chapter 2—Introductions

  Chapter 3—The Gang

  Chapter 4—Doc Burleson’s One Big Mistake

  Chapter 5—Violence in the Making

  Chapter 6—Those Crazy Baptists

  Chapter 7—The Waco Mob

  Chapter 8—The Aggregation of Pusillanimous Assassins (APA)

  Chapter 9—The Rotten Apple

  Chapter 10—The Final Straw

  Chapter 11—The Shootout

  Chapter 12—My Love, Inez

  Chapter 13—Brann’s Revenge

  Chapter 14—Life in Waco without Inez

  Chapter 15—The Neighbors

  Chapter 16—The Curse

  Chapter 17—Over the Years

  Chapter 18—Finishing the Mission

  Chapter 19—Epilogue

  Foreword

  This story is historical fiction about the town of Waco, Texas, Baylor University, and some of the Baptists and townsfolk of the town during the latter years of the 19th Century. Most of the characters are loosely based on real people who lived at the time, but they are exaggerated and extrapolated to develop the story.

  Not everything was peaceful serenity in this small town located on the Brazos River on the cusp of the 20th Century. People held grudges and had axes to grind for real or perceived wrongdoings. These quarrels were between such characters as William Cowper Brann, a semi-famous local newspaper writer, the Carroll Brothers who ran the Baptist religion in the state, and the mayor of Waco, J. W. Riggins. Red, the primary narrator falls in love with Inez Brann, the daughter of William Cowper Brann, the city’s primary antagonist of the story. Red is heartbroken at their truncated relationship. As the story progresses, the history of the city, including the devastating F5 tornado that struck in 1953, plays a critical part in a love story and quite possibly subsequent tragedies that have repeatedly struck the city over the years.

  I will always consider Waco to be my hometown, although I haven’t lived there for about forty years. I have mostly warm memories of it and fondly look back on my days of innocence and freedom when I rode my bicycle around town, attending school, and coming of age there. My father instilled in me the same love of the town, its people, and its university that he had. The town’s seemingly periodic scandals and tragedies that continue to plague it even today were part of the impetus for the story. Waco’s successes and failures contribute to its rich and colorful history. Its downtown area buildings, bridges, trolley lines, and railroad tracks give it an aura of a town stuck in time. They represent a slower period when people traded and bartered face to face on the town square. When they gave their word, you knew they were good for it.

  The Baptist religion is one of the largest Protestant religions in the world and several key characters in this story play a prominent role in promoting it. However, at times these strong leaders may have been a bit too zealous in defending it. Being raised a Baptist I understood all too well the rules and rigidity of the religion. I also saw and appreciated the members’ deep faith, the love that they had for the church body, and the nurturing that they provided for other members in their time of need.

  An integral part of Waco and being a Baptist there was Baylor University, which was the school that most local kids yearned to go to when they went to college. Almost everyone in town took pride in it and beamed with joy when it came out on top of its conference in its sporting endeavors. I still enjoy the homecoming parades and football games, even today.

  The genesis of this story was a challenge from my son who attended Baylor, receiving a Communication’s degree with ambitions of writing. He wasn’t practicing his newfound art very well. Being a typical Dad, I tried to encourage him by providing ideas and constantly prompting him to write, to the point of becoming a pest (not a difficult task for me). I came up with the idea of writing about Brann and the difficulty he faced in Waco, since I had recently studied about him. I kept pitching the topic to my son, hoping that he would take up the subject and write about it. But alas, all I did was end up pestering him to the point where he’d finally had enough and told me to “Write it yourself!” Challenge accepted. This book is the result. My hope is that it spurs progress from all three of my sons to write about their passions.

  Thus, here I am on the back side of middle age writing my first book. I admit it is a feeble attempt at best, but I enjoyed doing the research, using it as an excuse to ride around the different parts of Waco (this time in my car) to get ideas. I treasured walking around the beautiful cemeteries of Waco, and of course writing about it.

  I would like to acknowledge Baylor University’s “The Texas Collection,” which is a treasure trove of early Texas history. Also, thank you to Dr. Carl Lovelace, who did extensive research into the Brann assassination and was one of the Baylor boys who picked up Mr. Brann from his office at the Provident. I would also like to acknowledge the work of Joseph E. Early, Jr. for his research of Baptist history and the published work of A Texas Baptist Power Struggle. I’d also like to thank Charles Carver, who wrote, Brann and the Iconoclast, and James Pylant and Sherri Knight who wrote, The Oldest Profession in Texas, Waco’s Legal Red Light District. Finally I would like to acknowledge my wonderful wife, who provided daily encouragement, constructive criticisms for the entirety of the research and the writing of the book, and her father for painting a great watercolor of the bridge for the cover.

  This book is dedicated to all three of my sons. Tag, you’re it!

  Chapter 1

  THE FIND

  I remember him, but just vaguely, as my memories of him have faded a tad over the past forty years. He could tell some pretty great stories. He had a raspy voice and spoke with a strong Texas twang but with a slight accent, a remnant of his Irish heritage. He was a nice enough fellow and had a full head of white hair. Everyone called him Red. Being a naïve kid of twelve, I never put two and two together, at least until his funeral. He was a regular attendee at Spring Street Baptist Church, where I went to church with my family as a child in East Waco. He didn’t own a car and usually walked wherever he needed to go, unless one of the kind folks around town gave him a lift in their car. He’d push a bike from place to place if he needed to carry anything.

  Most of the time, he would come to church cleaned and bathed, but on a rare occasion he would reek terribly, like something had died next to him. This would usually end with him sitting alone on the right set of pews while everyone else sat on the left side. It wasn’t that we didn’t like him. In fact the church loved him, but his occasional strong odor was just too much for us to handle. Fortunately, this was a rare occurrence. We kids would typically sit by him or sit close to him, as he would usually have gum or mints that he would share with us to help pass the sermon time faster. We played quite a bit of Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect the Dots, and Hangman back in the day
, and a full wad of gum in the cheek would always help pass the time.

  Spring Street Baptist Church was a white church in a black neighborhood. Over the years the demographics of this blue-collar working neighborhood changed from a working-class white neighborhood to a predominantly working-class Black and Hispanic neighborhood. The minority populations flourished in East Waco to the point where all the churches were either exclusively Black or Hispanic. Back then the different racial crowds didn’t interact very much and generally kept to their own. Spring Street Baptist was the last hold-out for the white folks, mostly for the few elderly folks who still lived in the area and had watched their neighborhood slowly change. Some of their kinfolk also attended the church, which included me, my two sisters, and my parents. My grandparents still lived in the area. This was where my Dad grew up, but when he got married and started his own family, he moved to another part of the city per the typical white flight pattern of the times. However, for my entire childhood until I was 17, I made the journey across town and attended church at Spring Street with my folks, twice on Sundays and once on Wednesday nights.

  No one really knew where Red lived, although he said that he lived close to “the bridge.” Anyone in or around Waco knew that “the bridge” meant the Suspension Bridge. It’s funny that at the time, Waco had at least a dozen bridges that spanned the Brazos River, but the lingo of “the bridge” still exclusively meant the first bridge across the Brazos, the Suspension Bridge as it is now known. I didn’t realize until I was at his funeral that he actually lived in the toll booth of the bridge, and had been living there for most of his life.

  The folks of Spring Street usually took up a small weekly offering to help Red out. Everyone knew that he was dirt poor, lived alone, and wouldn’t take any government assistance. He survived on the local folks’ charity. He was a funny fellow. Whenever we’d have Sunday lunch on the grounds, he was there and usually the very first in line, always cracking jokes and telling stories. He told stories about how Waco was before the automobile was invented. He’d tell us about some of the famous people around Waco like William Cameron, the famous lumber baron, or Pat Neff, a governor of Texas. But his favorite subject was William Cowper Brann, a local newspaper man that the city of Waco and Baylor University unsuccessfully tried to run out of town. He had plenty of stories about Brann and his daughter, Inez, that would entertain us seemingly for hours after church. He would sit down with us kids on the steps of the church under the shade of the Pin Oak tree and story-tell away. After a while, all the men would finish their cigars, cigarettes, and their very important discussions about football, and they’d eventually yell at us to get into the car so we could go home. Red would stop the story that he was telling, sometimes in midstream, until the following week. He’d wink at us and say, “Next time.” I always looked forward to hearing the rest of the story at the next service.

  Red was such an intriguing character and always quick with a joke or a funny anecdote. He loved to watch us play tag around the parking lot with the pin oak tree as home base. Occasionally we’d ask him if he wanted to play. He’d teasingly hold out his hand and we’d run up to him and say, “Tag, you’re it!” Although he knew and directly experienced the dark, sordid side of Waco, he never mentioned it to us kids. His stories were always light and usually funny or at least thrilling to hear, tales about an event or why a certain park was named after a particular person. Red said that he was writing everything down in his “log book” so that others might also know what happened and to help carry on the mission. It was to be a sort of a history book written by him. We always asked him if he’d let us see it, and he said that he would when it was finished, but he never did. I guess he was always still writing it.

  One day, about early May, we got word from Brother Evans, the Pastor at the Church, that Red had died of a heart attack. He was in his late eighties. As far as we could tell, he was still fit and could get around town just fine, but he was old and his heart finally gave out. This always seemed a bit odd because Red had the biggest heart of anyone that we knew. We never thought that it would be his demise. I still remember the last time he said, “Next time.” But there was never to be a next time.

  We had his funeral at the church, and I’d never seen the church as full as it was that day. Besides everyone at our church being in attendance, there were lots of other people, including the mayor of Waco, a State Representative, and the entire County Commissioner’s court. Just about everyone who was anyone in Waco showed up. I never knew Red had so many friends. Now that I look back on it, I shouldn’t have been surprised because he would talk to anyone and everyone, no matter if you were white, black, red, purple, poor, rich, etc. He’d just start up a conversation and would usually end up being your friend after just the first few minutes.

  At the service, the choir sang the song that Mr. Brann always requested when they let the congregation select the hymns to sing, which was the “Sunny Side of Life.” Brother Evans talked about what a kind man Red was to everyone and how he never met a stranger. He also said that he’d lived in the toll booth of the Suspension Bridge for nearly his entire life. He had no living relatives that anyone was aware of, so the city brought all of Red’s belongings to the church. His possessions were simple and plain for a simple and plain man. They included just a few changes of clothes, some shoes, his bike without a seat, a city library card, a Bible, and his last Will and Testament. That was it.

  After the service, I ran up to the preacher and asked him if anyone had dropped off Red’s log book as I was expecting to see it among his possessions. He said that they hadn’t dropped off any other books besides his Bible. I asked him what the will said when it was opened and he looked at me oddly and said, “Here, you read it.” Carefully I took the brownish envelope from him. You could tell that it was old since it seemed fragile and a bit crumbly. I gently worked it out of the brown faded envelope and carefully unfolded the paper. It was in someone’s cursive handwriting and said,” To Whom It May Concern, if the cause of my death either by direct murder or under suspicion of murder, please open the lamp for the name of the person that is likely the culprit for both my murder and Mr. William Cowper Brann’s murder.” It was signed by Patrick O’Neal Delaney and a Judge George Gerald. There wasn’t a lamp in his possession and his death was by no means under suspicion of being a murder so neither I nor Brother Evans had any idea what this meant.

  I was frankly a bit disappointed that the log book wasn’t there, as it was something that I really wanted to read. About ten minutes later, though, when I was outside playing tag with my pals, I forgot about the will and the lamp and didn’t give them a second thought. The church members buried Red, but I didn’t attend the graveside portion of the funeral, so I never knew where.

  Over the past forty years I’ve never forgotten about Red. Every time I passed the bridge, I’d look at the toll booths and think to myself, that must have been a hard life that he lived. It was such a small place and he didn’t have a single living relative when he died. He should have been lonely and miserable, but he seemed like such a happy guy. He didn’t have a care in the world and certainly didn’t care that he was a pauper. He’d lived a full life and was content with his life and his friends and died in peace. Even in the casket, he didn’t look solemn at all, but had the hint of a smile on his face that made me smile back at him. I almost expected him to wake up and give me the punch line of the joke that he was telling.

  Over the next forty years, The City of Waco seemed to stagnate. While the cities of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin all grew by leaps and bounds over this same forty year period, Waco grew only slightly. The suburbs of Waco, such as Hewitt and Woodway, where the well-to-do population lived, grew some but the downtown area seemed to be dying. East Waco became a dangerous and crime ridden place that most people avoided except for the folks who lived there. The downtown retail stores continued to close in droves despite the valiant effort of the city leaders to try to bring more
commerce to the area.

  However, one bright spot to Waco’s stagnation was Baylor University. Even today, it continues to grow and build to the point where it is taking over large sections of the older parts of Waco, including Sandtown and South Waco. Even the downtown area is now starting to feel Baylor’s growth. New developments include shopping areas with restaurants and new apartments to accommodate the incoming Baylor students, etc.

  As part of Baylor’s expansion and the city’s Lake Brazos effort to beautify the downtown river area, the city leaders closed all traffic across the bridge except pedestrian traffic. They painted the bridge and made some repairs. As they were restoring the toll booths and tearing out parts of the rotting wooden floor, they pulled up a few planks. There they discovered something that would affect my life. Under these rotting planks they found an old wooden box that looked like it had been pieced together with junk pieces of lumber. The box had some old markings on it. Some words could be made out, such as “Cameron Lumber” but some strange letters that looked like they had been carved with a knife were difficult to read. Within the box was an old book with pages and pages of handwritten notes, almost like a chapter book.

  Again, the city didn’t know what to do with it and almost threw it away. Instead they decided to contact the church where they knew Red’s funeral had taken place. Spring Street Baptist Church, which is still going strong, was now a black church in a black neighborhood instead of a white church in a black neighborhood. The preacher at Spring Street didn’t know what to do with the book, so he contacted a few past members of the church that he had met at one of the recent Church Reunions.

  As soon as I heard about the book, I immediately assumed it was Red’s long-lost log book, and I was right. Even though it hadn’t been seen for forty years, the book was in remarkably good condition, just a bit dusty with some of the edges chewed by river rodents. Red died on May 6, 1973 and the log book showed up on September 6, 2013. The title on the log book was “Brann’s Revenge,” which seemed like a strange title for a personal log book. But as I started reading it, I eventually understood what he meant.