Book helps a Bragg City native come home

A book written by a Bragg City native that he describes as "a true story of life and death on the Floodways," is gaining more attention than he ever dreamed. "Murder on the Floodways" was written by Harold G. Walker, who has spent the last several years reinvestigating the murder of Harry "Fats" Shell and the subsequent death of his killer, Donald "Hokey" Busby, that occurred in 1957.

Walker is retired from the Marine Corps and had a parallel career in federal law enforcement. Those life experiences were a distant future in 1957 for a 12 year old boy. Perhaps because he was so young, what happened in December of that year never left him. "It wasn't ever far from my consciousness all my life. When I was a pilot in the Marine Corps, and when I had a chance to fly over the farm, I'd always tell my co-pilot the story about Hokie and Fats. One of those pilots, he's a colonel now and retired, he saw the book and called me up and told me, 'I remember you telling me about that in the 1970s, when we were flying over your farm,'" said Walker.

Hokey had a bit of the devil in him, but nobody thought he would kill his best friend. Yet, one night on the Walker family farm, Hokey brutally shoots Fats down. Hours later, Hokey is found dying in a pool of blood from a single shotgun blast. The events shook up a young Walker. "The impression it left on me was the violent nature of it. We had a gentle cotton picking community, and all of a sudden this eruption of deadly violence. I think that was one of the things that flipped a switch in my brain. That's why I wanted to write it, and I wanted to find out more than I knew at the time," he said.

Knowing the people involved, he believes, is why the incident left such an impression. "It wasn't like a car accident on 84 Highway, where you see something bloody and nasty and just go on, and you really don't connect with it other than the gore of it. These were people I knew -- people I trusted. These were people that were common to me every day, and to have this happen to them was a shock that I didn't get over."

Yet the book has helped him come to terms with this major event in his life. "It gave me an opportunity to go back at a mature age. I started thinking about this in 2010. More than writing notes, I really started to investigate it in February 2011. It has saturated my whole being until now. I'm able to step back now and look at it as a total project, and what I've learned was therapeutic," he said.

It is not the intent of this article to give away the plot other than the mere basics. Hokie and Fats are dead, and their unusual double funeral makes for a dramatic story in and of itself. The book, however, is much more than that. It is also intended to show what life was like on a Bootheel cotton farm in 1957. "That was a trip through my own recall of a 12 year old kid," he said. "That's how it was written. It was from my viewpoint -- what I saw. What was done. How the cotton was picked. Who did the picking. What they were paid. What they did on the weekends. I tried to recreate that -- to show what it was really like. I've had more people comment on that than the murder and the funeral "

People who have read the book with southeast Missouri roots have responded to Walker very positively, saying they recall the same things. The book has been educational for non-Bootheel people too. "The Floodways are an incredible achievement made by man, I think, and no one really knows about it. I live up here outside of Chicago, and these people are looking at this and saying, 'What are the Floodways?'" Walker then asks if they have ever driven from Chicago to Memphis on I-55. If they have, he tells them they have driven right through the Floodways and did not know it.

"The heart of this book isn't the killing or the funeral. It's the Floodways. It's the cotton, and it's the people," he said.

The book is available on Amazon and at That Book Store in Blytheville, 316 W. Main St. Walker is surprised by the support he has seen for the book since its publication in May. "This started out being me writing a book for the family. It was going to be for my brother and my sons about the farm. It developed with the killing as part of that. It's a true story of life and death on the Floodways."

"Murder on the Floodways" has provided something else for Walker that is very dear to him. "This allowed me to come home. I was in the Marine Corps and in Chicago. This allowed me to come back, and it feels good."