IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE - CHAPTER 7

A .22 caliber bullet can produce a devastating injury to the human brain. I have heard that this is the preferred weapon of mafia hit men because the bullet is of such small caliber and low velocity that it penetrates the head but doesn't create an exit wound. It simply bounces around inside the skull, ravaging the brain in the process. On top of that, daddy was using hollow point bullets. For those who don't know a hollow point makes a small entrance wound and a large exit wound. As a security officer I am supposed to use hollow points because the bullets disintegrate inside the body. Ball ammunition will pass through the body and can hit an innocent person in the line of fire. Police officers also use hollow point ammunition for this reason. So you can imagine what the death scene looked like. Didi told me that the bullets blew my mothers eyeballs out. I am being graphic in order to illustrate the horror that my grandmother encountered when she walked into that bedroom and found my parents.

Mama, my granddaddy, and Aunt Arda, granddaddy's sister were in the kitchen when they heard the shots. Mama turned to granddaddy and asked if the kids were home. She told me that the shots sounded like firecrackers and she thought maybe one of us had skipped school that day and we were firing firecrackers. Granddaddy was almost totally deaf and didn't hear the shots. Mama walked through the dining room to the the big sliding doors that opened into the front bedroom. She told me later that she didn't see daddy when she opened the doors. This was strange because she would have had to walk over or around him to get to where mother was. Mama said that she walked to the foot of the bed and shook mothers foot but she wouldn't wake up. She was probably in a state of shock at this point. Mama had to have seen the blood and the gore. She ran into the kitchen and tried to tell granddaddy that something was wrong with my mother. Granddaddy told me that he thought that daddy had hurt her so he grabbed a chair to hit him with.

Didi was taking her 10:00 AM coffee break at Southern Bell telephone company about three blocks away. The telephone company was at the corner of Douglas Avenue and Gallatin Road. Southern Bell was the forerunner of South Central Bell. She said that a powerful feeling of dread suddenly came over her. Didi said that it felt like the blood drained from her body. She ran to the phone and called home. When mama answered she told Didi that my mother wouldn't wake up. Didi told her to try again while she waited on the phone. When mama returned she said that she still couldn't wake her up. Didi told her that she was leaving work and coming home. Unknown to Didi, in her haste to get home she left the receiver off the hook. Didi couldn't drive and wouldn't learn how until she was about forty years old. She told her supervisor that there was an emergency at home and could he give her a ride.

When they pulled up in front of the house she jumped out of the car and ran through the front door into the living room. Upon entering the house she tried to open the big wooden doors that opened from the living room to the bedroom but daddy had locked them. She then ran around to the other doors leading in from the dining room. This is when she saw daddy lying on the floor in a pool of blood but she claimed that she didn't see mother. Like mama, she was probably in a state of shock at that point and had tunnel vision. Didi tried to call the police but was unable because she had left the phone off of the hook at work. She then ran next door where she was able to get in touch with the police and an ambulance. In those days there was no 911. Each emergency service had their own numbers. Ambulances were owned and maintained by private funeral homes. The ambulance attendants only had a basic knowledge of first aid. The idea was to quickly transport the patient to the nearest hospital before they died. The profit motive led to some dangerous situations when rival funeral homes would race each other to the scene of an accident. This could result in some pretty bad wrecks involving ambulances.

 Our house quickly became a crime scene. The police and the news media descended on our house. Didi was never fond of Nashville's police department. She would disgustedly tell me how many police officers seemed to be there for no other reason than to gawk. An article was released on the front page of the Nashville Banner that afternoon about my parents. I was shielded from the news over the next few days but I was told that the story ran on the three local news channels that evening and it was on the radio. The story was on the front page of the Tennessean the following morning with a picture of my Uncle Doug being led away weeping by two friends. The murder-suicide occurred around ten o'clock and we probably got home sometime between 12:30 and 1:00 PM. The police, coroner, and news media couldn't have been gone long when we arrived. The case was pretty open and shut. Later that afternoon I was composed enough that I walked to Daniel-Hoppe Rexall drugstore to buy a cherry coke at the soda fountain. They only cost a nickle then and I just felt like I had to get away for a moment. While I was sitting there two strangers were sitting next to me talking about the death of my parents. I never let on to them who I was.

Mother and daddy died on Wednesday and their bodies weren't ready until Thursday. On Wednesday night mama and I had a sleepless night. She sat next to my bed holding my hand as we comforted each other. Although my grandmother was not my mother she was the closest link I had to her. We talked all night. Mama sat in a chair next to my bed staring into the darkened bedroom where my parents died. She would do this night after night. She told me that she saw an angel standing over the spot where mother died one of those nights. On Thursday I refused to go to the funeral home for the visitation. Everybody tried to get me to go but I couldn't bring myself to do it. One of my adult female cousins, who was part of Hughes side of the family, tried very hard to talk me into going to the funeral home. She was granddaddy's niece and the daughter of my uncle Elmore Hughes, who was a railroad engineer. He married one of granddaddy's sisters but she died before I was born but I remembered Uncle Elmore very well. Many of the Hughes lived on Cahal Street in East Nashville and the whole family was very religious.


My cousin kept telling me that my mother was very beautiful and I would regret it if I didn't go. Mama was my champion because she came to my defense. She told her and everyone else to leave me alone. She refused to go to the funeral home herself because she didn't think that she could handle it. I wont lie, part of the reason I didn't want to go was my fear of death and the sight of dead people. The other reason was that I just didn't want to see my mother like that. I wanted to remember her in life. Didi took pictures for my benefit and it would be years before I could bring myself to look at them. In the pictures mother doesn't really look the way I remember her. Her head appears to be very swollen and daddy looks like a mannequin.

 The year 1963 stands out in my mind as being the saddest and most eventful of my life to this point. I would dream that mother had taken a long trip and when she returned I would just throw my arms around her and sob. Then I would wake up and realize that I was dreaming. I dreamed that dream a lot over the next few years. If I dreamed about my father it was a nightmare and he was trying to kill me. Even today the rare times that I dream about my dad he is still trying to kill me. In September Aunt Arda got very sick. An ambulance came to the house and took her to the hospital but I never saw her again. She died on September 12th 1963 at the age of 78. I hate to say it but I was pretty mean to Aunt Arda. She didn't like Roy, Mark or myself because we would pick at her. It would make her mad if we even got close to her. She would take a feeble swing at us with her cane but she loved Alton. Alton was always good to her and helpful. She sure didn't like the rest of us, however. We thought it was funny that she would get so upset and that just made us pick at her more. If I had that part of my life to live over I would have been more loving and respectful to her. I could have learned a lot from her but youth is wasted on the young.

 Like the Christmas of 1962 I don't remember much about the Christmas of 1963 other than it was very sad. I do remember that Didi gave me a book called the Golden Book of the Civil War which I still have today. We were right in the middle of the Civil War Centennial and I read everything I could get my hands on about the war. It has been my experience that many people who are dying will suddenly get better just before they die. This was the case with mama. On the last day of her life mama was very happy. She was like a different person. Mama worked around the house all day doing housework and was in very good spirits. Later that night I was in the living room when I heard a commotion coming from mama's bedroom. After the death of Aunt Arda mama and granddaddy moved their bed into her old bedroom. Donna was hysterical and it looked like Roy and Donna were fighting about something. I looked in the bedroom and saw mama holding her chest. She suddenly fell back on the bed. I freaked out because I thought that she might be dying and I ran outside to the back yard and sat in the swing. That swing sits in my back yard now and every time I sit on it I am reminded of that night.

 I began praying as hard as I have ever prayed in my life. After a short time an ambulance arrived and they placed mama in the back of it and rushed her to the old Baptist hospital. I listened to the siren until it faded off in the distance. Uncle Bud, Didi, Donna, Roy and others went to the hospital while I stayed at home with Alton, Mark, and granddaddy. He paced the floor and I began to feel hopeful as time went by without hearing anything that mama might be okay. Later that night I heard cars drive up and I held my breath until suddenly I began to hear wailing and crying. I knew then that she was gone and just buried my head in my lap and began to shake violently. There were no tears. Only a feeling of numbness but I was shaking as If I had hypothermia. I sat there and shook and I couldn't stop for a long long time. Mama died exactly one year and ten days after my parents died. She died on Mark's 9th birthday, January 26, 1964. In my mind daddy killed four people on January 16, 1963. My mother, the baby she was carrying. my grandmother and himself.