In spite of this, Emory never left his rooming house without the key. Just knowing that he had it with him made him feel special and less alone.
“Go ahead. Say whatever you like, Jones,” said Wesley Lowermilk, who knew Emory from the cotton mill. Wesley, a handsome young man whom Emory nicknamed “Zorro” from his resemblance to the hero of the 1920 swashbuckler picture, The Mark of Zorro, was close to Emory’s age, had been married — unhappily, by Wesley’s own confessional account — and was now waiting with great anticipation for the woman’s return from Reno. Not that he ever wanted to see “Xantippe Redux” again, but he was eager for that happy day when he would know for certain that the divorce was finalized and he had at last been set free.
Emory had always had a crush on Wesley, who reminded him of the cleft-chinned movie actor Bryant Washburn.
“I agree with Mr. Cates and what he said about upholding the law,” Emory began, nervous but determined to put his point across. “And my initial vote will reflect that fact. But should I then find myself on the wrong side of the sentiment in this room, I promise not to be an obstinate holdout. You all seem good and decent fellows and will not, I trust, hold this principled stand against me.”
“On the contrary!” exclaimed the normally soft-spoken chemist Fogleman. “We commend your stand. At least I do.”
“My only wish,” contributed Hampton Womack, a barber at the National Midway Shaving Parlor, “is that I shouldn’t miss the vaudeville show at the Grand Opera tonight. I’m taking my mother for her birthday and they’re box seats. See?”
Hampton had taken the tickets from his wallet. In the process of drawing them out, a key was disturbed. It dropped upon the table with a little clink.
Emory knew this key. He had one just like it. Hampton and Emory exchanged a look. But Emory wasn’t the only man in the room scrutinizing Hampton and his key.
A long moment passed, a moment that would ultimately determine whether or not Mrs. Wimbish had the right to punish her husband and his secret lover for what she discovered them doing on that day — for what they had, no doubt, been doing for quite a number of days or weeks or even months. Not in a guest room on the fifth floor of the O. Henry Hotel but in the Wimbishes’ own colonial revival in the still fashionable Gilded Era neighborhood of Fisher Park. There was wrong there, one would suppose — adultery is always wrong, is it not? But did the act warrant the kind of visceral revulsion that had induced legislators the country over to exact such sharp penalties of moral retribution? Did it warrant such repugnance and distaste among the “upstanding” citizens of Greensboro that, even decades later, homosexual men of that town would find themselves rounded up and sentenced to highway gangs in what became infamously known as “The Gay Scare of 1957”?
Earl Stutts was the second man to lay his key on the table, and he placed it there deliberately. Earl was a butcher at Nicholson Meat Market. Like the other key, his was imprinted with the number “505.” It had also been painted yellow. The O. Henry Hotel painted all of its keys — a different color for each floor. “To help guests remember what floor they’re on,” was the manager’s explanation. As if simply having the room number on the key wasn’t enough.
Hampton slid his key across the table to keep company with Earl’s. The two keys were quickly joined by a third key — this one from Captain (retired) David Bishop, a recruiter for the U.S. Navy. If the other men in the room hadn’t been making such concerted efforts to keep their faces solemn and unrevealing there might have been a few private smiles, given that some of the men were quite familiar with the legendary penchants of certain of Uncle Sam’s sailors.
In quick succession, identical keys were produced by Bob Weaver, then Dean Tuttle, then Jesse Cates, then Horace Fogleman. Emory hesitated, waiting for just the right moment to unite with his brothers in their mutual admission. That time came after Wesley dropped his own key upon the jumble. The two men smiled at one another and shrugged. To have worked in such close proximity and to have never known…
To Emory, the world had suddenly become a very strange place. Strange and really quite fascinating.
Eleven keys now taken from wallets and pulled from pockets and detached from key chains to be put upon the table, each bearing the room number 505. Eleven men now revealed to be members of the 505 club, Tracy Sprowl, its president and CEO, in absentia. The only man left in the room who had not joined his fellow jurors in this joint avowal of secret fraternity was the insurance salesman for the Gate City Life Insurance Company, Albert Sykes.
Every eye was now on Sykes.
“I don’t have a key like that, I’m afraid,” he finally said. “Nor have I any inclination to possess such a key. But I know what it all means. You see, gentlemen, I’m a good friend of Marcellus Teague, in whom Mrs. Wimbish deposited her nearly fatal bullet. Well, to be perfectly honest, we were once very much more than friends, if you understand my meaning. Marcellus knew, as did Mr. Wimbish, that should Mrs. Wimbish be acquitted, charges would in very strong likelihood be swiftly brought against my friend and his paramour Mr. Wimbish under the statute that our friend Shube here has just reminded us of. It was important to the two men that Mrs. Wimbish be found guilty so as to destroy her viability as witness in the other matter. And it was important to find the right men to do it — men who would not be put off by what Mrs. Wimbish saw.
“No, I don’t have a key, gentleman, nor will I ever have need of one, since I anticipate no future need to break the heart vows that I have made to a gentleman with whom you are all quite familiar: Elliot Curry, the jury clerk for the Superior Court of Guilford County. Mr. Curry has put his job on the line by handpicking, with Mr. Sprowl’s assistance, the jury pool from which we were all selected. And if you will all be so good as to keep this rather large secret to yourselves so as to save his job and preserve his liberty — because he’d be certain of a conviction for the grave crime of clerical malfeasance — then Mr. Curry and Messrs. Wimbish and Teague and I will be forever in your debt. Now, Foreman Tuttle, shall we have that vote?”
There was a vote. It was unanimous; Mrs. Wimbish would be required to pay for her crime of passion with her liberty. Subsequently, the keys were reclaimed, hands were shaken and cheeks kissed (and not just in the duple-Continental way).
It wasn’t until the landmark Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 that sodomy laws were invalidated in the fourteen states that had not yet seen fit to overturn them on their own. One of those states was North Carolina.
Emory Jones did not live to see that day. Nor did he ever pay another visit to Room 505 (though a good many of his fellow jurors kept up the practice for many years thereafter). He kept the key, though. He put it in the drawer with the clippings of all of his favorite magazine advertisements. Many of the handsome male models in the ads were smiling, rident with celebratory youth. Now and then, Emory Jones found himself smiling, too, knowing that he wasn’t alone — that there were others quite like him.
Like a certain good-looking divorced coworker named Wesley Lowermilk, with whom Emory became — let us put it in the safe vernacular of the day—very good friends.
1924 DOUBLE FAULTED ILLINOIS AND D.C