Sherry Chapmanby Sherry Chapman
First published in April/May, 2008, Volume 5, Issue 2, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
The story you are about to read is true. Unfortunately.
In the spring of 2003 I took a trip to Fall River to research a book I am still working on. The longer I studied the Borden case the more things I found that I wanted to go out there to see. Learning through Stefani Koorey’s website and source documents, I used to only dream of being able to have access to things that were not available before—transcripts of the trial, Inquest, and Preliminary Hearing to name a few. They fueled my passion for what was already a prime interest.
Many places I had only read about were still standing, and I had to see them. I wanted to go to the towns Lizzie visited and houses people who knew her lived in. I loved New England from prior trips, had been to Fall River twice before briefly, but now I had a reason to stop and stay a while.
My husband (Steve) and our son (Stevie) and my dog (Dusty) and I (name under the title) headed out by car the day after Easter that year. My son had the week off school, plus he had ten days the school gives kids to take a family vacation and the absences are not counted. I didn’t know how long I was going to be out there. I reserved a motel room for five nights to start.
The trip was tedious. It takes two days to get to Fall River from my home in Detroit. There was nothing to see during the drive but toll booths and service plazas with the same food franchise signs stop after stop. (We have since then taken an alternate route that goes through mountains and neat bridges and incredible scenery, and the drive is a delight.) After spending a night in Albany, we got to Fall River the following evening.
It was raining hard and I couldn’t wait to check into our motel. We had stayed there before. It had been many moons since, but I relaxed and let my husband drive. When he asked, “Where do I go now?” I knew we were in trouble. This was my trip, and everything that happened, pro or con, was my doing. I squeaked out, “I dunno,” before he could tell me that this was my trip and everything that happened, pro or con, was my doing. I added hurriedly, “Call them on your cell.”
He did, and they gave him short and simple directions. Fifteen minutes later we were in the empty parking lot of a closed Home Depot. Forced to call the motel again, my son and I started laughing because he had to talk to the same person and tell them where his interpretation of their directions landed us. It really wasn’t the best time to laugh.
The next day I had reserved working in the Fall River Historical Society archives. I would meet Michael Martins for the first time. I was so nervous to meet him once I was in Fall River that it crossed my mind to cancel my research time. I could not picture me actually going through with it. People that know me know that I have had a huge celebrity crush on Michael Martins for ten years. I’d watch a Lizzie show and came to prompt attention when he appeared on it. Sometimes I think I actually drooled.
I did go and even arrived on time. Someone directed me to the basement. There at the bottom of the stairs stood Michael Martins, his hand extended in greeting saying, “Hello. I’m Michael Mahtins.” A Boston accent! He even talked gorgeous.
I made no move to shake his hand. My mind went blank. It was “Lucy Meets a Celebrity” and I stood there mute. After several moments, a curious look crossed his face. He was probably thinking, “And what kind of a nut do I have here?” I had to say something. I chose: “You got your hair cut.” I had noticed that it was shorter than it had been in the last documentary I had seen him in. He laughed and said, “Well, I guess I did.”
The ice was broken, and I was no longer nervous in his presence. I was seeing him casual, off camera, and found him helpful, pleasant and having a good sense of humor.
It was busy there! The phone rang at almost regular intervals, and besides Michael and assistant curator Dennis Binette there were volunteers working down there as well.
I was going through some files Michael had pulled for me, once I named an area I was interested in. The volunteers, an older woman and a young man, shared the same large table as me. It wasn’t long before we started chatting.
They were extremely nice people, as volunteers tend to be. The woman was telling me lots of little stories that were fascinating, and I enjoyed her company immensely. One story she told me was about a cemetery in Fall River called St. John’s. It seemed that every time she went to visit the place, the gate was locked. Being younger at the time, she just hopped the fence and stayed to her heart’s content. When it was time to go to lunch, we wanted to try an authentic Portuguese restaurant they recommended. We didn’t know where it was and this lady got in her vehicle and had us follow here there. She went up to the door with us, and I opened it for her to go in. It was cold, windy and rainy out. “Oh no,” she said. “I wasn’t going in. You guys enjoy yourselves.”
After finishing the rest of the day taking some Fall River photos, we finally called it a night and went to our room. The next morning it was back to the Historical Society for four more hours of scheduled research. After a lengthy visit to their gift shop and a regretful goodbye to Michael, we left for our second day of exploration.
It was warmer that day and sunny—more like May in Michigan, and it felt good. We went out driving and taking more pictures. It was very warm, but I soon realized I had a fever. A friend had pneumonia, and I took her a pot of soup before my trip. No—it couldn’t be . . .
I had read about St. John’s Cemetery in Fall River before. Supposedly there were three people buried there that had something to do with the Borden case. That’d be interesting. We studied our city map (a necessity for us in getting around Fall River—and we still get lost) and after a few mistakes found it.
It was just 5:00 and the gate was locked. My fever wasn’t getting any better, and hard telling what I’d feel like the next day. I wanted to go in there and find those plots. We parked the car and my husband asked me how we were expected to get in. I told him about the nice volunteer in the archives and how she just jumped the fence when she was younger. If she could do it, I could do it.
The fence was wrought iron spikes—the kind the priest in The Exorcist got impaled on. Long-legged Steve climbed over it swiftly. “I ain’t doin’ that,” I said. Gonna-be-long-legged Stevie went next, but he had his dad’s help, as I remind him to this day. I took some razzing from them, but I said I would take the stone wall, thank you. It was about 4 ½ feet high—one of those gorgeous stone walls that are all over New England and us Mid-Westerners adore.
Compared to my family, I’m short. But with little effort I got myself sitting up on top of the wall. I jumped down onto the cemetery grass and felt pretty smug if I do say so myself.
The sun was still out, and I took my jacket off and so enjoyed the early warmth of the season. The slight breeze fanned my hot face. The cemetery wasn’t big. This shouldn’t take long, I thought. The boys started on one side and I started on the other, and we all walked it row by row.
We met in the middle and none of us had any luck. It was mostly an Irish-Catholic cemetery, and every now and then one of us would yell out, “Oh! I found _____”—the same last name as one I wanted to see. But no, it would be yet another with the same surname.
We combed it three times and then even I had to say that’s it. I never found one of them. Steve and Stevie wasted no time in announcing their going, and they went over to a piece of wrought iron fence to leave. I didn’t even want to watch them. Okay, I wished I could have done it, but I so wanted to live.
I think the wall was higher where I was going to go over than it was where I went in. I know I didn’t shrink. I could not get my first leg up on the wall. I looked around the ground and found several pieces of broken concrete. I stacked them up and got on top of those and then was able to get up on the wall. I got up and sat there, this time looking down on not grass but on a cement sidewalk. I heard our car motor, and there were the boys, driving to pick me up. I waved at them, then they disappeared behind another part of the wall, parked, and waiting. I thought of Custer, waving at Benteen’s troops—the last wave he ever gave. He waved his hat with a flourish, going out in style as he’d wish. I just had my hand.
I thought for a while. In the back of my mind common sense told me not to do it. Then my husband blasted his horn. He has an especially irritating sounding horn, probably invented by men to get their wives to hurry. I ignored the horn. This was a little important.
I thought back to the nice lady volunteer. How did she say she got back out? She didn’t say. Well, she obviously got out of there at some point. @#$%$#@!! A second horn blast. Geez, would ya stop it? I’m not Gumby.
The pressure of that horn was affecting me, and the teasing they gave me when I wouldn’t take on The Impalers. I guessed I’d have to jump . . . But I don’t think I should . . . #&$^@#%^#^@!!!. That was the last horn blast I was going to hear. I told myself I can do this and jumped.
I landed on my feet! For about ten seconds. Then I went down. Something was wrong with my legs, and they buckled beneath me. I laid on that cement sidewalk like a drunk. Surely, surely, Steve saw me fall. And he was going to be coming around the corner any second with the car and . . . Seconds slowly ticked by and he didn’t come.
Now the street in front of St. John’s is a busy street. Ideal for a fruit stand. But lousy for an accident victim. The speed limit was 45, and car after car after car went by me and didn’t even slow down. Talk about not wanting to get involved. I was starting to roll out toward the traffic. My mind was bouncing between ‘What are the injuries’ to ‘How am I gonna get up?’
The one person who did stop helped me get up. A big, black pickup truck slowly started to pull over toward me. The windows were all tinted. My family couldn’t see me. I couldn’t see who was in the truck. This person could just throw me in and there I’d go, with my picture on the late night news. (And I take such awful pictures.) I read a lot about serial killers. I thought of the Boston Strangler. Why did this have to happen so close to that city?
I told myself I am going to do this, and I got myself up to a Hunchback of Notre Dame standing position and shuffled to the corner a few feet away, not looking back at the black truck, and saw our car waiting just far enough away from the side street stop sign where they couldn’t have seen my drama unfold. I had to cross the street to get to the passenger side of the car, and the boys were looking at me in surprise.
I got in and the whole thing was so ridiculous I started laughing as I was telling them of my adventure.
“Didn’t you see me?” I asked them. “Didn’t you see me fall?”
“Why, no. We saw you wave at us when you were on top of the wall.”
“Where did you think I went?”
“I don’t know! You could have went anyplace.” If it weren’t true I would have been mad.
My injuries consisted of a broken bone in the knee/leg – “an unusual break” they called it, which figured. I was in for two knee replacements, my back hasn’t been the same since, and I fractured two teeth my dentist found in the back of my mouth six months later. It could have been worse. I could have been paralyzed, or split my head open, or have gotten picked up by a serial killer in a black truck.
I spent the rest of my trip immobilized in the motel bed. The fever was the pre-amble to pneumonia. And when my husband took little Dusty outside, the dog picked up ticks. Somehow those ticks knew I couldn’t go anywhere and tried to make me their new home.
I was on strong pain pills and stuff for the pneumonia, and I was out of it most of the time. When I did wake up at one point, there was my son playing with toy cars on the floor without making a sound, and my husband was in a chair near me, reading. They had the tv on but muted. If Norman Rockwell had lived longer, he would have thought the scene quite worthy of painting.
And I did learn two important things. One is: If a cemetery is locked, they mean it. Don’t go in there. And the other: Way back in the right corner of that cemetery are some trees, and they offer a barrier-free walk-in entrance.
