Tag: murder

“Sing With th’ Devil in Hell”

LOCATION: Farmland in Macon-Bibb County, Georgia
PERIOD: 1872-1933
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Bethuel “Buel” Sutton (1874-1956); May “Maysee” Sutton (1872-1879); Silas Sutton (1845-1924); Zachary Sutton (1823-1889); Richard McQuayle (1836-1933)

Richard “Slick Dick” McQuayle came from a prominent land-owning family in central Georgia. He was the heir of over 50,000 acres of rich farming land which he had partialed out to several sharecropping families. One of which was the Sutton family: Zachary (“Pap”), Silas (“Pa), and their five children/grandchildren, of four boys, Zach, Jr., Lucas, Levi, Bethuiel, and one daughter, Maysee, named for her mother’s family, the Mays.

(The Sutton’s were distant kin to Pearl Robison (see songs “Between Here and Gone” and “Pearl and Jake“).)

From all accounts Dick McQuayle was a bully and misanthrope, who ruled over his sharecroppers with an iron fist.

Zachary Sutton and McQuayle often butted heads, and this song is about a case where the Sutton’s were unable to pay the third of the harvest to McQuayle and he told them to get off his land if they couldn’t raise a decent crop. He underscored this command by saying that if they didn’t get off his land quick enough he’d burn them out.

The Suttons were hard scrabble folk and had no intention of abandoning the farm they’d worked for at least three generations under successive McQuayles. They didn’t put much stock in Slick Dick’s threat.

Their second youngest, Maysee, was a dreamy child. She loved to read books of adventure and fantasy, which she would do in her “secret place” in the hayloft of the barn. It was a quiet place where she could read unobserved and unbothered by her three older brothers. Her younger brother, Bethuel, was her favorite, and she often took him along with her into the woods for story-telling, and just poking around.

However, Dick McQuayle’s threat was not idle, and when the Suttons failed to pay him his share of the harvest, he did indeed pay a visit to the farm when he knew they would be out in the field and the barn (he thought) abandoned, which he proceeded to set ablaze. Not knowing that Maysee was reading in the loft, he pushed the door shut and closed the latch, making it harder to enter and save.

Bethuel grew up hating McQuayle for murdering his sister (a murder for which Dick McQuayle was never convicted) – swearing to himself that one day he would exact revenge. For thirty years, he lived with this oath, his passion for justice only getting stronger with each passing decade.

SING WITH THE DEVIL IN HELL
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

Shotgun shells
In my vest
Tonight Richard McQuayle
Will meet his death
Blood feud
Decades old
My resolve is shrewd
My blood is cold

His belly out
Thumbs in his bib
Wanted us out
Burnt the corn crib

Pap was a poor man
Him and Pa
Farmed McQuayle land
Who made their own law
My sister, Maysee
We’d run to the trees
Eyes wide with stories
Sacred mysteries

How hard we worked
The crop still failed
Didn’t pay the third
We owed to McQuayle

Might of been sincere
Claimed he didn’t know
The loft was where
Lil’ Maysee would go
A private nook
Away from the boys
With her book
Away from the noise

Burnt up
Along with the corn
McQuayle’ll know what
When you burn a barn

The start of a tale
Tonight it’ll end
Richard McQuayle
Will meet my friend
Pap’s 12 gauge
It’s old but it works
Buck shot sprayed
Across his night shirt

Tonight, I swear,
Richard McQuayle
Gonna send you there
To sing with th’ Devil in Hell

Night air blazes
Black powder smell
Justice for Maysee, and
Slick Dick McQuayle

.© 2023 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ronnie Raney (1962-2004)

Ronnie Raney (1962-2004).  Middle son of Vernon and Margaret “Molly” Raney in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  Married to and murdered by Louanne Bowden (Raney).  His brother Lonnie is sheriff of Warren County.  He has a younger sister, Ginny.

Ronnie works for his mother distributing drugs and in general running the business.  He started out dealing at University of Mississippi where he meets and seduces Louanne.  They begin living together in a shotgun house in Vicksburg and as Ronnie becomes more and more responsible for the operations of the Raney drug enterprise, Louanne also becomes involved in running a bar and trailer where her girls turn tricks.

Ronnie is a basically a “good ol’ boy” and means well, but has trouble controlling his temper. Because he feels intimidated by Louanne’s intelligence and background (she comes from a well-to-do Dallas family) he often resorts to threatening behavior, and even physical violence, when he is at a loss for any other way of controlling a situation.

After suffering from this kind of behavior for years, in 2004 Louanne kills Ronnie for continuing to get drunk and raise his hand to her. She was tried and convicted of second degree murder (unjustly) and was sentenced to twenty years at the Mississippi state penitentiary for women (see song, “One Time Too Many“).

“One Time Too Many”

LOCATION: Vicksburg, Mississippi
PERIOD: 1985-2004
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Louanne Murray Bowden (1967); Ronnie Raney (1962-2004)

In a disastrous act of rebellion from her upper crust background, Louanne Bowden began dating and ultimately married Ronnie Raney whom sehe met while attending the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

The Raney family under the leadership of matriarch Molly Motts Raney transitioned from bootlegging moonshine whiskey to distributing marijuana, pills and eventually funding methamphetamine labs. Ronnie was the second oldest son, acting as his mother’s right hand operations manager, his older brother Lonnie was sheriff of Warren County, offering protection for the entire enterprise.

After suffering years of Ronnie drunken abuse, Louanne and finding no relief from the corrupt legal system in Warren County, took matters into her own hands and shot Ronnie with a deer rifle as he sat at the kitchen table eating a slice of her homemade peach pie.

Although she knew she was justified in killing him, she fatalistically accepted her conviction of murder and the twenty year sentence that went with it. Only much later was she vindicated and released for time served.

ONE TIME TOO MANY
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)

She’d like to fix up her dinette
Yellow wallpaper with nosegays
A hard wood floor would do the trick
Those stains’ll take more than paint
 
A buzzer spoils this daydream
Lights out and the bars clang shut
It’ll have to wait twenty years
This cell is where she’ll stay put
 
She’d had enough
Taken too much
He treated her rough one time too many
She did the crime
She’ll do the time
Regrets? No, she don’t have any
 
She brought him his beer and a slice of pie
Then shot him with his deer gun
It was worth it just to see him surprised
Once he realized just what she’d done
 
She’d had enough
Taken too much
He treated her rough one time too many
She did the crime
She’ll do the time
Regrets? No, she don’t have any
 
His brother was sheriff of Warren County
There was no doubt the fix was in
A jury of his peers showed no mercy
But if she could she’d do it again
 
She’d had enough
Taken too much
He treated her rough one time too many
She did the crime
She’ll do the time
Regrets? No, she don’t have any

© 2017 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.