events that immediately followed the death of his father, the blunt reality of the Nebraska State Welfare Institution, and his first meeting with Anthony Scarapetto.
4
For Michael Travis, it was a change, and a hard one at that. Looking back, it was as if he had two distinct ranges of memory set against the horizon of his mind: the before and the after . The first was dark, the second darker. Before meant the ever-present threat of liquor-fueled violence, the ferocity of his father’s outbursts, all of this tempered by the two sides of his mother, the beaten, bloodied, swollen-faced wife, possessing barely strength enough to breathe, and on the other side his real mother, loving, somehow ever-forgiving, convincing herself that all it would take was to believe enough to make it all change for the better. It never did and now never could. The after was something else entirely, though equally strange, immeasurably new, and frighteningly real.
For a long time after his father’s death, Michael did not speak. Already a quiet one, he became silent. People with letters trailing their names said he was emotionally traumatized , understandably so, and would eventually come back to reality. They asked him about his thoughts, his feelings, what was really going on inside . He did not care to answer their questions, and so he did not. He did not speak of the dreams, for there was little he could recall of them once he woke, and he would not have known what to say anyway.
Michael became a ward of the state of Nebraska: the court his father, due process his mother, and he the bastard child that fell through the gap in between.
Janette Alice Travis, a mere thirty-one years of age, was charged, arraigned, and remanded for trial. As the county prosecutor and public defender prepared their cases, she was held west of York in the State Reformatory for Women. There had already been intimations that the state would press for the death penalty. Sheriff John Baxter, if nothing else, was a man who understood law as needful for the survival of a society and thus was duty bound to relay precisely what Janette Travis had said to him upon his approaching the scene of the crime. It was to be those few words that damned her.
Was premeditated, John. No use hidin’ from the truth. Been thinkin’ about killin’ him for just the longest time…
Had she not said such a thing, there might have been a prayer, but it seemed the state prosecutor had blood on his teeth, and he wasn’t going to fall victim to pleas for clemency, mitigating circumstances, et al. The previous two governorships had seen no executions. Before them, Governor Arthur J. Weaver, back in May of ’29, had seen only one murderer pine-boxed out of death row. If Janette Travis went such a way, then it would be the first execution under the current governorship of Dwight Griswold, the first woman ever to take her place in the Big Chair up at Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln.
Maybe the state prosecutor, a bullfrog of a man called Frederick Wyatt, and the state’s DA, Lyle Samuelson, figured such a thing was worth brownie points on the old career scoring card.
Whatever went on in the minds and hearts of the bureaucratic and judicial collective responsible for the expedition of Janette Travis’s case, none of it gave a thought for Michael, even then sojourned in the inappropriately named Nebraska State Welfare Institution, for institution it may very well have been, but welfare could not have figured any less in its concerns.
State Welfare was an ex-military facility a couple of dozen miles north of St. Paul. There were no armed guards or watchtowers; there were no dogs or alarms or gun galleries. The doors were locked, and the custodians, as they were known, were uniformed and carried whistles and nightsticks. The big boss of the hot sauce during Michael Travis’s period of tenure was Warden Seymour Cordell, ex-cop, ex-penitentiary governor, head as hard as a pool ball,
4
For Michael Travis, it was a change, and a hard one at that. Looking back, it was as if he had two distinct ranges of memory set against the horizon of his mind: the before and the after . The first was dark, the second darker. Before meant the ever-present threat of liquor-fueled violence, the ferocity of his father’s outbursts, all of this tempered by the two sides of his mother, the beaten, bloodied, swollen-faced wife, possessing barely strength enough to breathe, and on the other side his real mother, loving, somehow ever-forgiving, convincing herself that all it would take was to believe enough to make it all change for the better. It never did and now never could. The after was something else entirely, though equally strange, immeasurably new, and frighteningly real.
For a long time after his father’s death, Michael did not speak. Already a quiet one, he became silent. People with letters trailing their names said he was emotionally traumatized , understandably so, and would eventually come back to reality. They asked him about his thoughts, his feelings, what was really going on inside . He did not care to answer their questions, and so he did not. He did not speak of the dreams, for there was little he could recall of them once he woke, and he would not have known what to say anyway.
Michael became a ward of the state of Nebraska: the court his father, due process his mother, and he the bastard child that fell through the gap in between.
Janette Alice Travis, a mere thirty-one years of age, was charged, arraigned, and remanded for trial. As the county prosecutor and public defender prepared their cases, she was held west of York in the State Reformatory for Women. There had already been intimations that the state would press for the death penalty. Sheriff John Baxter, if nothing else, was a man who understood law as needful for the survival of a society and thus was duty bound to relay precisely what Janette Travis had said to him upon his approaching the scene of the crime. It was to be those few words that damned her.
Was premeditated, John. No use hidin’ from the truth. Been thinkin’ about killin’ him for just the longest time…
Had she not said such a thing, there might have been a prayer, but it seemed the state prosecutor had blood on his teeth, and he wasn’t going to fall victim to pleas for clemency, mitigating circumstances, et al. The previous two governorships had seen no executions. Before them, Governor Arthur J. Weaver, back in May of ’29, had seen only one murderer pine-boxed out of death row. If Janette Travis went such a way, then it would be the first execution under the current governorship of Dwight Griswold, the first woman ever to take her place in the Big Chair up at Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln.
Maybe the state prosecutor, a bullfrog of a man called Frederick Wyatt, and the state’s DA, Lyle Samuelson, figured such a thing was worth brownie points on the old career scoring card.
Whatever went on in the minds and hearts of the bureaucratic and judicial collective responsible for the expedition of Janette Travis’s case, none of it gave a thought for Michael, even then sojourned in the inappropriately named Nebraska State Welfare Institution, for institution it may very well have been, but welfare could not have figured any less in its concerns.
State Welfare was an ex-military facility a couple of dozen miles north of St. Paul. There were no armed guards or watchtowers; there were no dogs or alarms or gun galleries. The doors were locked, and the custodians, as they were known, were uniformed and carried whistles and nightsticks. The big boss of the hot sauce during Michael Travis’s period of tenure was Warden Seymour Cordell, ex-cop, ex-penitentiary governor, head as hard as a pool ball,
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