(For there were, among the eleven dead, two Varrell men. One in his mid-fifties, the other about Jean-Pierre’s age. It was his claim that he hadn’t known they were Varrells, which was somewhat unlikely; for, as the tavern-keeper’s slanderous wife pointed out, everyone knew everyone else in the Valley. And Bellefleurs and Varrells always knew one another.)
He could only repeat his story: leaving the tavern early, getting a ride with the peddler, sleeping in the hayloft because he didn’t want to disturb his family. (His father Jeremiah suffered from insomnia, his mother Elvira suffered from “nerves.”) When the sheriff and his men came to arrest him at dawn, dragging him out of the barn and knocking him about until his nose bled onto his filthy, already bloodied shirt, he couldn’t imagine why they were there; he couldn’t make sense of anything they said. They must have had a warrant for his arrest but he didn’t remember seeing any warrant.
Ah, if he had stayed a companion to Mr. Newman, if they had followed through on their scheme to duplicate the tower of the Hôtel de Ville in the States! How profoundly and beautifully innocent their partnership would have been!
But through an excess of boyish enthusiasm he had irrevocably offended the older man, and now his life was ruined. He was only thirty-two years old and his life was ruined. The Lake Noir district had been notorious in the past for lynchings, murders, arson, and theft, and continual harassment of Indians; but there had never been anything quite so lurid as the “Innisfail Butcher” with his handsome, boyish, aggrieved face. He was in all the newspapers, out to the West Coast, the “Innisfail Butcher” who had murdered eleven men and claimed not to remember anything, claimed to be innocent, absolutely innocent: and how certain he was! The newspapers naturally resurrected old stories about the Bellefleur-Varrell feud though Jean-Pierre had made clear, in open court, repeatedly, that he hadn’t even been aware that two Varrell men were in the tavern that night. . . . But no one believed him, and his young life was ruined.
For a stunned moment he could not believe the sentence old Judge Petrie had passed. Life plus ninety-nine years plus ninety-nine years plus . . . Individuals in the courtroom burst into applause. (For it was felt throughout the community that a death by hanging—a death that would involve, at the most, ten minutes of agony—was far too merciful for Jean-Pierre.) “But I am innocent, Your Honor,” Jean-Pierre whispered. And then as the sheriff’s men tugged at him he began to shout: “I tell you I am innocent! The murderer is still at large! The murderer is among you!”
So Jean-Pierre Bellefleur II, the grandson of the millionaire Raphael Bellefleur (who came so close—so heartbreakingly close—to political prominence), was incarcerated in the infamous state penitentiary at Powhatassie, there to serve a sentence of life plus 990 years.
He fainted at the sight of its massive walls—fainted and had to be slapped back into consciousness—whimpering, still, that he was innocent, he was innocent of the charges brought against him, a terrible mistake had been made— Yes, yes, the guards chuckled, that’s what you all say.
THE POWHATASSIE STATE Correctional Facility housed, at the time of Jean-Pierre’s incarceration, about 1,500 men, in a space originally designed for 900. Prisoners customarily fainted or screamed at the sight of its great stone walls, which were slightly over thirty feet high and stretched, so it seemed, for miles, marked at regular intervals by six-sided turrets topped with Gothic cupolas, in which guards armed with carbines and rifles spent their days. The prison, modeled after medieval French prison-castles that had exerted a curious spell, for some reason, on the architect hired by the state to design the facility, was built on a rugged promontory overlooking the dour Powhatassie River, at the very spot at which, according to legend, the water had run red with the blood of Bay Colony pioneers who had ventured too far west and were massacred by Mohawk Indians. Built in the late 1700’s, the prison was in visible decline (everywhere walls were crumbling, exposing rusted iron rods), but possessed, still, the ugly nobility of a medieval fortress; and its huge dining hall, with columns, arches, and heavy wrought-iron grillwork on its windows, reminded poor Jean-Pierre of nothing so much as his grandfather’s pretensions. There was a curious religious aura to the horrific place.
He seemed to know beforehand that his appeals—made to the State Supreme Court, and argued faultlessly—were doomed, for he sank almost immediately into a state of apathy, and maintained a Bellefleur detachment from his surroundings that infuriated, at first, his fellow inmates, and certain of the guards. That his first cell was five feet by eight, that the “toilet” was a hole, uncovered, that the food was inedible (indeed, it was indefinable), that he was issued unlaundered clothes several sizes too big for his graceful frame, that his mattress was filthy and infested with bedbugs, and the single cotton blanket issued to him stiff with filth and dried blood—that there were cockroaches and footlong rats everywhere—and the majority of his fellow prisoners were evidently ill, physically or mentally, and sat on their cots or the floor, or walked about, with the spirit of zombies—that since a riot five or six years ago in which seven guards were killed and twelve inmates “committed suicide” the guards were exceptionally cruel: none of this stirred him.
For some time the only emotion he felt was a deep shame—shame that he had been the cause of his family’s fresh humiliation—that it would be many, many years before the Bellefleurs regained their dignity. (As his brother Noel said, weeping with exasperation, the fact that he was innocent somehow made it all the more intolerable. . . . When Harlan was arrested, after all, he had been guilty, and very publicly guilty, of several murders, and every word of his, every gesture, must have been enhanced by the noble melancholy of his predicament. He had killed, he had exacted revenge as, indeed, he was forced to—and then he had died. In every respect he had acted heroically. By contrast poor wretched Jean-Pierre, who was innocent, was ignominious as a trapped muskrat: his fate was merely outrageous.)
To anyone who would listen, to guards who greeted him with a routine, unmotivated elbow in the chest, Jean-Pierre spoke quietly of his innocence. His manner was courteous and reasonable. He had long given up shouting. If a penitentiary is a place of penitence, he said, and if an innocent man is wrongly incarcerated, how can he do penance . . . ? Isn’t the very foundation of the penitentiary undermined by such injustice . . . ? The considerable sums of money Jean-Pierre received each month (which he was later to increase through poker and bridge games in which, occasionally, guards would participate) allowed him to purchase cigarettes, candy, sugar (no sugar was provided by the institution, and cold oatmeal, alternately watery and glutinous—and sometimes dotted with the remains of weevils—was served every morning, every single morning), and other small favors, and naturally he tipped his guards, as he would tip any servant not in his own hire, so the rough treatment gradually stopped; but it was to be some time—in fact, years—before Jean-Pierre would acquire a more spacious cell, for him and his bodyguard-companion (there was to be a series of such young men over the decades, some fifteen or twenty in all: each would be injured or killed by his successor, another husky young ambitious prisoner eager to serve Jean-Pierre Bellefleur II). But it took time for Jean-Pierre to acquire this sort of power, especially because his manner was so subdued, his voice so hollow and seemingly apathetic, and his insistence upon his innocence—which, as the guards remarked, was universal—detracted from his natural distinction. So when he reiterated his plea, his listless comical logic, If a penitentiary is a place of penance, and if an innocent man is wrongly incarcerated . . . more than one guard burst into rude laughter, and butted him all the more cruelly in the chest.
(Later, a friendly prisoner warned Jean-Pierre against “talking crazy.” Because if he talked crazy, no matter how quietly, how politely, he might be diagnosed as crazy. And if he was diagnosed as crazy—by a state psychiatrist who visited the prison on alternate Thursdays, in the afternoon, and made judgments and prescribed medicine from his office, going by scribbled reports handed him by
prison officials—he would be sent across the yard to the Sheeler Ward; and that would be the end of him. The Sheeler Ward! Jean-Pierre had heard of it: it was named for Dr. Wystan Sheeler, a physician who had taken interest in the mentally ill in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and had prescribed a radical, and sometimes successful, method of dealing with “madness” through sympathetic immersion in the patient’s delusions. Family gossip had it that Dr. Sheeler had attended Raphael Bellefleur for a while, and even lived at the castle. . . . But the Sheeler Ward, which comprised an entire building made of concrete blocks, was simply the hole into which troublesome prisoners—whether “sane” or “insane”—were thrown, and once committed to the ward there was little likelihood that a man would get out. Some years ago a gang of prisoners there had seized a guard, and one of them had torn out his throat with his teeth; and though the prisoners involved in the uprising were, of course, beaten to death by guards, there was still a tradition of punishment in that ward. There was no sanitation, individual cells were no longer used, everyone was kept in a single dormitory room, a vast warehouse of a room, which was unheated, and said to be littered with unspeakable filth. Since the uprising no guard would venture down onto the floor: from time to time they patrolled the ward from a catwalk, and it was from this catwalk that cafeteria workers (gagging, their faces averted, their eyes shut) dumped food once a day, for the men to scramble for. There were men in that ward, Jean-Pierre was told, who were in the tertiary stages of syphilis, quite literally rotting; there was every kind of sickness; and when a man died—which was of course frequent, since the other prisoners were quite vicious—it might be several days before prison officials hauled away the corpse. So, Jean-Pierre’s companion said quietly, you don’t want them to send you there.)
“I CAN’T BELIEVE that the family has given up on this man,” Leah said. “I can’t believe you’ve done so little.”
They tried to explain to her about the appeals, and the many thousands of dollars spent; one or two attempted bribes—that is, gifts—which were unfortunately offered to the wrong officials; and of course other family difficulties; and Jean-Pierre’s apathetic manner. He had, for instance, never applied for parole. Not once in thirty-three years. While at first he seemed mildly happy to see visitors he soon changed, and frequently refused to enter the visiting room; once, while Noel presented an earnest, enthusiastic case for the probability of his verdict being overturned by the Supreme Court, he leaned forward slowly and spat against the glass partition that separated them. Never in his life, Noel said afterward, had he been so thunderstruck.
“The poor man must have fallen into despair,” Leah said. “Everything I’ve heard about Powhatassie has been vile, incredibly degrading, it’s a place for animals, not human beings. . . . Perhaps he’s ill? Does anyone know? Cornelia says he has never answered his mail, and he’s never answered my letters; but then of course he doesn’t know me. I don’t suppose he even knows Gideon. Does he remember any of you? When is the last time anyone has visited him?”
They could not remember, exactly. Noel believed he had visited Jean-Pierre for the last time some thirty-two years ago (the Sunday of the spitting incident, in fact); Hiram believed he had tried to see him more recently—perhaps twenty-five years ago—but wasn’t certain whether Jean-Pierre had condescended to appear in the visitors’ room. (A hideous place, all concrete and wire mesh and armed guards, and such a din!—for the prisoners and their visitors had to shout at one another, and there were usually upward of fifty people in the room, all shouting helplessly at the same time. And, Hiram said with an angry flushed face, he was once beside a backwoods woman come to visit her husband, sentenced to Powhatassie for life: the pathetic woman was weeping and moaning, and had no more shame than to unbutton her dress to show her lardy, sagging breasts to her husband.) Their mother had visited him for the last time approximately twenty years ago; when she returned home she went at once to her bedchamber, where she remained, weeping, for several days. Aunt Veronica had never gone, since she left her rooms only after sundown, and visiting hours were from two to five; Della had gone once or twice, and Matilde only a few times. (It was thought that Matilde’s reclusiveness began at the time of Jean-Pierre’s trial. She turned away all suitors, frequently dressed in men’s clothing (but not nice men’s clothing, Cornelia said; farmhand sort of clothing), spent more and more time out at the old camp, and finally moved there permanently, pretending that a life of raising hens, growing vegetables, and making quilts, samplers, and silly little “artistic” things like carvings was any sort of life for a Bellefleur.) Lamentations of Jeremiah had visited his son as often as Jean-Pierre would allow, which wasn’t often because, to perpetrate Elvira’s myth, he liked to claim that the telegram summoning him home had ruined his life—he had been nearly engaged to an Italian marchesa whose family dated back to the twelfth century, and Jeremiah’s latest financial debacle had brought the whole house of cards tumbling down. And then of course Jeremiah had died in the Great Flood of twenty years back. So Jean-Pierre hadn’t had a visitor from the outside world in twenty years.
“I will visit him,” Leah said. “My little girl and I will visit him.”
“Oh, but you couldn’t take a child,” Cornelia cried.
And Hiram said, twisting the ends of his mustache nervously, “The one thing, dear, you know, that’s been a kind of stumbling block . . . or perhaps there are two . . . or many. . . . Well, to be frank: his story about the peddler, a peddler allegedly driving a mule-drawn wagon along the Innisfail Road at night . . . in the pitch-black . . . a peddler never glimpsed before or since . . . the story is, isn’t it? . . . somewhat strained. And there was the matter of Folderol covered with sweaty scum, and her ankles badly scratched, and her hooves all muddy. . . .”
“Folderol—?” Leah cried, staring at him. “What in heaven’s name are you talking about, Uncle?”
“Folderol was the name of—”
“But you just don’t want to help him, do you!” Leah said, pressing her hands to her cheeks as if they were burning. “You think that the ignominy has been lived down simply because people have forgotten. But they haven’t forgotten—not really! Suppose Christabel, for instance, fell in love with a—a Schaff, or a Horehound—or one of those old Vanderpoel families—I mean with the son of one of those families—do you think they would countenance a match with a Bellefleur, as things stand?
“We must think ahead,” Leah said, shaking a cigarillo out of a package. “Didn’t Raphael once say—it isn’t possible to think too far ahead—”
“Christabel is maturing rapidly,” Cornelia murmured.
Noel threw up his hands in angry despair. “But if you visit my brother, dear, what precisely will you talk about? It isn’t as if you know him, after all. I doubt that I would recognize him myself. We tried so often to press him into applying for parole, and in the end he was really quite abusive; in fact I had the distinct impression that he’d settled in, at Powhatassie, as he never had out here. The men are allowed to play cards, you know, and according to the warden (at that time—I’m afraid I don’t know the current warden) there was always a game going out in the yard, or in the recreation hall, and Jean-Pierre had taught the other men a dozen kinds of poker, and gin rummy, and casino, and euchre, and even bridge—We had hoped he might at least apply for parole, despite Judge Petrie’s admonition to the state, but he never did; perhaps he didn’t want to risk another humiliation, then again perhaps he didn’t want to risk being freed.”
“I don’t want a parole,” Leah said impatiently. “I want a pardon.”
“A pardon?”
“From the governor. A pardon. Exoneration.”
“A pardon? For Jean-Pierre?”
At that very moment Germaine ran into the room and clambered up on Leah’s lap. She had something very exciting to tell her mother—something about one of the cats being treed by a Minorca rooster—but Leah quieted her, and brushed her hair back from her overheated fore
head. Perhaps to give the older Bellefleurs time to recover (for Leah, despite her impetuousness, was keenly sensitive to others’ feelings) she turned her attentions to her daughter, wetting a forefinger to wipe away some dirt, kissing the child’s flushed cheek. “Aren’t you a pretty girl,” Leah whispered. “Aren’t you blessed.”
And finally, after a long silence, Cornelia said weakly: “But at least don’t take Germaine, dear.”
The Elopement
One fine autumn morning when the last of the leaves—the golden maples—were blazing with light, and the sky was so coldly pellucid a turquoise-blue that it resembled stained glass, Garth and Little Goldie ran off together, in Garth’s new Buick, leaving behind only a scribbled note (in Little Goldie’s childlike hand) slipped under Ewan’s and Lily’s door: Gone to get marri’d. They sped southward, crossing the borders of several states, until, breathless, they arrived in one that would marry them within three days; and so they were married. Because of the circumstances of their surprise elopement they had time to heap in the rumble seat of the Buick only a few of Little Goldie’s dresses (she had so many—for her new-adopted family was very generous with new things as well as cast-off but still perfectly wearable things—it would have been impossible to choose: so she and Garth merely grabbed an armful out of the closet), the single suit of Garth’s he found tolerable to wear, for brief periods (it was made of brown mohair-and-cotton, with a modest lapel and many brass buttons; its trousers were too short but in other respects attractive), and the old Swiss music box from the nursery. They had also taken a half-dozen items from the Great Hall whose value they couldn’t have guessed; instinct guided them as blindly toward a rare sixteenth-century German bell metal mortar and pestle as toward a crystal knickknack from Victoria’s England, or a “snowstorm” paperweight of undetermined origin. Raiding a few rooms during the very early hours of the night, whispering and giggling, on tiptoe, barefoot, they accumulated about $2,300 in loose cash taken, in such irregular amounts, from the pockets of coats and jackets, from out of drawers, from between the pages of books (in Raphael’s library they found a great deal, though some of it was in currency that “looked funny”—so they left it behind), and even from piggy banks, that the money was never to be missed. And of course Garth had some money of his own.
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