It was another scene I’d played before, this one on Greenville Avenue, not long after I’d come to Texas. There was no Muddy Waters blasting from the Desert Rose, but here was another badly hurt woman and another man bleeding from another broken nose, his shirt untucked and flapping almost to his knees. He was holding a knife instead of a gun, but otherwise it was just the same.
“No, Clayton!” I shouted. “Put it down!”
His eyes, visible through clumps of orange hair, were bulging as he stared at the dazed, half-fainting woman on the couch. “Is this what you want, Sadie?” he shouted. “If this is what you want, I’ll give you what you want!”
Grinning desperately, he raised the knife to his throat… and cut.
From the Dallas Morning News, April 11, 1963 (page 1): RIFLEMAN TAKES SHOT AT WALKER
By Eddie Hughes
A gunman with a high-powered rifle tried to kill former Maj. General Edwin A. Walker at his home Wednesday night, police said, and missed the controversial crusader by less than an inch.
Walker was working on his income taxes at 9:00 PM when the bullet crashed through a rear window and slammed into a wall next to him.
Police said a slight movement by Walker apparently saved his life.
“Somebody had a perfect bead on him,” said Detective Ira Van Cleave. “Whoever it was certainly wanted to kill him.”
Walker dug out several fragments of the shell’s jacket from his right sleeve and was still shaking glass and slivers of the bullet out of his hair when reporters arrived.
Walker said he returned to his Dallas home Monday after the first stop of a lecture-tour called “Operation Midnight Ride.” He also told reporters…
From the Dallas Morning News, April 12, 1963 (page 7): MENTAL PATIENT SLASHES EX-WIFE, COMMITS SUICIDE
By Mack Dugas
(JODIE) 77-year-old Deacon “Deke” Simmons arrived too late on Wednesday night to save Sadie Dunhill from being wounded, but things could have been much worse for the 28-year-old Dunhill, a popular librarian in the Denholm Consolidated School District.
According to Douglas Reems, the Jodie town constable, “If Deke hadn’t arrived when he did, Miss Dunhill almost certainly would have been killed.” When approached by reporters, Simmons would only say, “I don’t want to talk about it, it’s over.”
According to Constable Reems, Simmons overpowered the much younger John Clayton and wrestled away a small revolver. Clayton then produced the knife with which he had wounded his wife and used it to slash his own throat. Simmons and another man, George Amberson of Dallas, tried to stop the bleeding to no avail. Clayton was pronounced dead at the scene.
Mr. Amberson, a former teacher in the Denholm Consolidated School District who arrived shortly after Clayton had been disarmed, could not be reached for comment but told Constable Reems at the scene that Clayton-a former mental patient-may have been stalking his ex-wife for months. The staff at Denholm Consolidated High School had been alerted, and principal Ellen Dockerty had obtained a picture, but Clayton was said to have disguised his appearance.
Miss Dunhill was transported by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where her condition is listed as fair.
I wasn’t able to see her until Saturday. I spent most of the intervening hours in the waiting room with a book I couldn’t seem to read. Which was all right, because I had plenty of company-most of the DCHS teachers dropped by to check on Sadie’s condition, as did almost a hundred students, those without licenses driven into Dallas by their parents. Many stayed to give blood to replace the pints Sadie had used. Soon my briefcase was stuffed with get-well cards and notes of concern. There were enough flowers to make the nurses’ station look like a greenhouse.
I thought I’d gotten used to living in the past, but I was still shocked by Sadie’s room at Parkland when I was finally allowed inside. It was an overheated single not much bigger than a closet. There was no bathroom; an ugly commode that only a dwarf could have used comfortably squatted in the corner, with a semi-opaque plastic curtain to pull across (for semi-privacy). Instead of buttons to raise and lower the bed, there was a crank, its white paint worn off by many hands. Of course there were no monitors showing computer-generated vital signs, and no TV for the patient, either.
A single glass bottle of something-maybe saline-hung from a metal stand. A tube went from it to the back of Sadie’s left hand, where it disappeared beneath a bulky bandage.
Not as bulky as the one wrapped around the left side of her head, though. A sheaf of her hair had been cut off on that side, giving her a lopsided punished look… and of course, she had been punished. The docs had left a tiny slit for her eye. It and the one on the unbandaged, undamaged side of her face fluttered open when she heard my footsteps, and although she was doped up, those eyes registered a momentary flash of terror that squeezed my heart.
