Rabbit Foot Bill

by Helen Humphreys

  There’s a murmur in the room when Mr. Melville touches his shirt with his hand, right above where his heart is beating.

  “Did the accused strike the victim in the heart, Mr. Melville?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And with what did he strike him?”

  “A pair of shears.”

  “Such as one would use for trimming a hedge?”

  “Yes, sir. He was trimming a hedge, sir.”

  “And do you recognize these as being the shears?”

  There’s a gasp when the clippers are held up for Mr. Melville to identify. Lucy Weber squeezes my hand in excitement or sympathy. I can’t quite tell what it is she’s feeling on my behalf.

  Mr. Melville sways slightly when he sees the clippers, as though he’s about to faint. He’s a fat man. I can see, even from as far back in the room as Lucy and I are sitting, that his shirt is too tight across his chest. I imagine the clippers embedded in that fat chest, and I wriggle a little on the bench thinking about this. It’s hot in the courtroom and the backs of my legs are sticking to the wood of the bench. Lucy grips my hand again. Perhaps she thinks that the sight of the clippers has put the fears into me.

  “Yes, sir, those look like the same shears.”

  “The same shears that the accused used to strike the victim, Sam Munroe, in the chest?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It goes on all afternoon like this. Each question tightening around Bill, cutting deeper into his flesh and sinew, getting closer to the bone. He sits at a wooden table on the left side of the court with his back to the audience. He is wearing a borrowed blue suit and he sits up very straight. If I crane my neck around the woman in front of me, I can see the back of his head, his thick black hair brushed down for the occasion of his murder trial.

  At the end of the first day, Bill is led out, returned to his prison cell. He shuffles along the floor like an old person, and then I realize that he is wearing leg irons. I stand up to get a better look and see the two cuffs of steel around his ankles and the short piece of chain running between them.

  I want to wave to Bill or cry out, but he has his head bent, watching the shuffle of his feet across the courtroom floor. He has probably never had his feet in a trap before and he is nervous about how he moves. I don’t want to disturb his concentration, so I watch him leave the room, a policeman at each elbow, without letting him know I am here.

  On the second day the town doctor is called to the stand to testify.

  “Did you examine the body?”

  “I did.”

  “Can you tell the court the nature of the wound that killed Sam Munroe?”

  “The left coronary artery had been completely severed. It had been completely severed about one and a half inches from origin.”

  “Was this a deep wound then?”

  “Yes. It was four inches deep.”

  “A wound caused by the use of considerable force?”

  “Yes.”

  The crown prosecutor holds up the garden shears.

  “In your opinion, could the wound have been caused by this pair of garden shears?”

  “Yes.”

  “On examination of the deceased, was this wound the only thing wrong, medically speaking?”

  “Some of his organs registered acute shock due to the hemorrhage.”

  “Which was due to the wound?”

  “That is correct.”

  “To what do you attribute as the cause of this boy’s death?”

  “Shock caused by fatal hemorrhage.”

  “And what did you determine to be the exact cause of death?”

  “Arterial hemorrhage caused by a stab wound to the heart.”

  On this second day Lucy Weber and I are closer to the front of the room. When the prosecutor holds up the clippers, I can see the worn wooden handles polished smooth by the hands of all the people who’d worked them. I can see the dark start of grease on the spring clip near the handle, and a scrape of what looks like dirt on the blades. Blood—it must be blood, not dirt.

  “You were one of the first to reach the body. Is this correct, doctor?”

  “It is, yes.”

  “Who was at the site of the body when you arrived?”

  “The police constable, Mr. Melville, and the boy who had come to fetch me.”

  “The boy first went to fetch the constable and then you, is that correct?”

  “It is.”

  The prosecutor turns to the judge and addresses him for a moment.

  “The boy in question is one Leonard Flint. We have his statement on record and it supports Mr. Melville’s testimony. I hereby submit it as evidence.”

  “That’s you,” whispers Lucy Weber, as though I need help recognizing my own name.

  I wish the prosecutor hadn’t said that about my statement being the same as fat Mr. Melville’s. I don’t want Bill to think that I turned on him, because I didn’t. I just answered what they asked me, but if they hadn’t asked me, I wouldn’t have told anyone anything. If Mr. Melville hadn’t yelled from across the street at me to get help, I might have gone back inside and poured that second glass of water for Bill.

  “Was the boy dead when you arrived, doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment it seems they are talking about me. I look at the back of Bill’s neck. There’s a crease of dirt in his skin above his shirt collar, and I can tell by the height and hunch of his shoulders that he’s holding them up to protect himself, as though he’s expecting blows. I want to climb over all the dull and stupid people in front of me and hurl myself onto his back. I want to wrap my arms tight around him and bury my face into the curve of skin where his neck meets his collarbone, and I want to breathe in the sharp saltiness of him. I want to feel safe again, just one last time.

  AT HOME, AT NIGHT, my parents talk of nothing but the trial. My mother feels sorry for Sam Munroe’s parents, and my father wishes that Bill would hang for what he did. After supper, my father doesn’t go onto the porch to smoke, but lingers around the kitchen while my mother washes the dishes. He likes to have me recount the murder, over and over again, until he tires of this and I can excuse myself and go to do homework in my room. I am lucky that his job at the train station makes it impossible for him to attend the trial, and I am lucky, too, that my mother feels so disturbed by Sam’s violent death that to go to the courthouse would be just too upsetting. She relies on Lucy Weber’s recounting of events at the end of each day to keep her informed.

  From my bedroom I can hear my parents talking down the hall. My father likes to retell my version of the murder and then pronounce on it. Every time he gets to the part about Bill stabbing Sam in the heart with the shears, my mother says, “Don’t. Please don’t,” as though he is about to raise the shears himself and plunge them through the wall of her chest.

  ON THE THIRD and last day of the trial, Bill is called to take the stand. There is nothing worse for a man who doesn’t like to talk than being made to do so, and I cringe when I see how nervous Bill is inside the little wooden box. He keeps darting his head from side to side and pulling on the collar of his borrowed suit. All the nervous movement makes him look crazy.

  Lucy Weber and I are sitting in the third row. We got here early and lined up outside to get a good seat. This is the final day of the trial and the courtroom is filled. This is the day when the judgment is meant to be coming down, and no one wants to miss it.

  The witness box is raised up on a little stage beside the judge’s bench, and I have a good view of Bill. I don’t like how scared he seems, how he fidgets inside the suit like he’s got the pox.

  “He looks so guilty,” says Lucy. “He’s gone all twitchy with it.”

  The prosecutor rises to his feet. “William Dunn, can you recount for the court what happened on the afternoon of June 17?”

  Bill just looks nervously about. It’s like he doesn’t know they’re talking to him, that they expect an answer from him.

  “Please answ
er the question, Mr. Dunn.”

  “What?”

  “Where were you on the afternoon of June 17?”

  “Cutting the hedge for the missus Odegard.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  I like that Bill is protecting me, although it’s pointless, as the judge already knows from my statement that I was there.

  “Mr. Dunn, there was a boy there too, was there not?”

  “No.”

  “A one Leonard Flint?”

  “No.”

  Everyone knows that Bill is lying. Parts of my statement have been read out to the court. People have heard the testimony of Mr. Melville, who recounted seeing me standing by the hedge, talking to Bill. I dig my nails into my wrists to prevent myself from crying out for Bill to stop lying. It is making everything worse for him if he denies what everyone else knows to be true.

  The prosecutor waves his hands in exasperation, as though he’s dismissing Bill entirely.

  “Did you kill Sam Munroe?”

  Bill has his head bowed and is mumbling something.

  “I can’t hear you, Mr. Dunn.”

  There’s more mumbling.

  “What?”

  Bill suddenly raises his head and looks out at the prosecutor. His fidgeting has stopped. He’s angry now. I can tell that he’s angry now, because he has a calmness and strength about him.

  “He had it coming to him,” he says.

  After that it’s all over for Bill. It’s the last clear thing he says and he just keeps on saying it. No matter what else the prosecutor asks him, all he answers is that Sam “had it coming to him.” There really is nothing else to do but find him guilty. He is guilty. I have to keep reminding myself that he is guilty, because I just feel so sorry for him up on the stand, getting pestered with all the lawyer questions.

  The verdict is manslaughter and the sentence is life in the Prince Albert Penitentiary.

  “Well, that’s justice done,” says Lucy Weber, snapping the clip on her purse shut with satisfaction.

  Everyone is on their feet preparing to leave the courthouse. I can’t see for all the moving arms and legs, and I am frantic to find Bill before he is taken from the room.

  I burst through the people in front of me, climb up on the benches and down again, until I am on the floor of the courtroom, right in front of Bill and the two policemen who are preparing to lead him out of the room.

  “Bill!” I say, and I rush forward to touch him, but one of the policemen swats me back.

  Bill looks down at me. He has a wild look in his eyes, wild and unfocused, like he’s been out in the sun all day and has suddenly come indoors and can’t adjust to the change in light.

  I want to tell him not to worry, but that’s stupid. I want him to tell me not to worry, but that’s stupider still. I strain against the barrier of the policeman’s arm, and all of a sudden, Bill’s eyes clear and he looks at me like he knows me.

  “See to my dogs,” he says. “Will you go and see to my dogs?”

  “I will.”

  The policemen have started Bill moving again and I call out to him when he’s at the door of the courtroom.

  “I’ll take care of the dogs, Bill. I’ll look after them. Don’t worry. You don’t have to worry.”

  Bill turns when he hears me yelling this and he nods his head to show he’s understood me, that he trusts I will do what he needs me to do. Then he is pushed through the door and the last I see of him is the slope of one blue-suited shoulder as he’s jostled out of the courtroom and into the hallway.

  LUCY WEBER COMES to my house that night to tell my mother about the final day of the trial. They sit out together on the front porch drinking iced tea. I try to sit with them for a while, but my mother banishes me to my bedroom.

  “You’ve had enough of this,” she says. “It’s too much for a child.”

  I lie on my bed, listening to the flutter of their voices through the wall. I can’t hear the words, but the murmur is comforting, like wind through the prairie grass.

  My father is gone. He’s visiting another station master farther up the line and won’t be home for a day or so. He likes to say that these visits are about his work, but my mother tells me the truth, that he likes to go away from home so that he can “drink without guilt.” He always comes back nicer than when he left, so we never mind his absences.

  After a while, I can hear the creak of the porch chairs as the women get up from them, the click of the screen door, and one set of footsteps inside the house. Lucy Weber must have left and my mother has come in to get ready for bed. I listen to her footsteps get fainter as she goes into the bedroom she shares with my father, on the opposite side of the building.

  There’s a timid knocking at my window, and I leap off my bed and wrestle the shuddery pane up its frame. It’s Lucy Weber, standing in the roses.

  “I just wanted to come and say goodbye,” she says.

  “Thank you for not blabbing about me coming to the trial with you,” I say.

  “It was my pleasure to take you,” she says. “I enjoyed your company. And . . .” She hesitates for a moment and then reaches through the window and squeezes my hand. “I wanted to do something nice for you, Leonard. I’m no fool. I know what kind of man your father is.”

  Canwood

  Saskatchewan

  1970

  MY MOTHER MEETS ME AT THE STATION.

  “Pleasant journey?” she asks.

  “Good enough.”

  She presses herself against me, less of a hug than the way a dragonfly lights on skin, how it rests for a moment and then pushes back off into the air it came from.

  I follow her out to the dusty, battered, green Ford.

  “You still have the truck,” I say, lifting my suitcase over the side and into the bed, where it sits beside a spare tire and a tangle of wire.

  “It still runs,” she says. “So, why not?” She shrugs and gets in, hauling herself into the cab by the steering wheel because she’s not tall enough to step up easily into the truck.

  We drive in silence, the prairie landscape unspooling before us. I have forgotten the grandeur of it, how it is vast like an ocean. Off in the distance there is a column of grey, rain coming down on some other patch of earth, some other community. I can’t tell if the storm is moving towards us or moving away. It is one of the miracles of the prairie landscape that you can watch rain approaching hours before it arrives.

  At the house, my mother lurches the truck to a stop in front of the porch.

  “You can have your old room,” she says when I come into the front hall with my luggage. “It’s much the same. I was waiting . . .” She stops because we both know what she is going to say next and there’s no point.

  “Okay.” I carry my suitcase down the hall.

  “Tea?” she calls from the kitchen.

  “Sure.”

  My bedroom is as I remember it—the single bed by the window, simple dresser against one wall, white wooden chair at the end of the bed. Sometimes I would sit in that chair and look out the window, past the rose bushes, to the flat scrape of fields. On a windy day, the dust would rise from the fields like a veil. The immensity of the landscape made it feel as though I could see everything coming from far away, not merely the weather. Even words seemed to float towards me before they’d been uttered.

  Now I live in Toronto, a city of trees and ravines, streetcars and roads—the landscape interrupted every few feet. The only thing in that landscape that is remotely like anything in this one is the lake, the flat blue tilt of it at the southern end of the city, cut off from my neighbourhood by a tangle of expressways.

  I put my suitcase on the bed and go back out to the kitchen. My mother has made tea in a couple of mugs and we take them out to drink on the porch.

  “Thank you for coming,” she says.

  “You don’t need to thank me.” He was my father, after all. It feels necessary to come home for his funeral.

  “Wha
t will happen to the house?” I ask. A station master is given a house with the job, but now that my father is dead, there will be a new station master in Canwood.

  “I’ll have to go.”

  “Soon?”

  “They’ll allow me a few months.” My mother puts her mug of tea down on the arm of her chair. I notice that her hand shakes a little now. “Don’t worry. I have a little put aside. I’m going to move into town. Maybe rent a little house near Lucy Weber. You remember her?”

  “Yes. I remember Lucy Weber very clearly in fact. She was always very kind to me.”

  I think of the last time I saw Lucy Weber, how she held on to my hand through the window, how her words had shocked me because it was the first time that I had heard someone speak out against my father.

  “She took me to the trial,” I say. “When Bill was charged with murder.”

  “That vagrant you used to pester?”

  “He wasn’t a vagrant. He just had a different way of living his life.”

  “Don’t get upset, Leonard.” My mother pats my hand.

  I pull mine away.

  “I should go and unpack,” I say, and get up abruptly and go into the house.

  In my old room I sit down on the small single bed. The mattress is soft and I can feel the springs digging into the underside of my thighs. It might be the same mattress from my childhood, and probably no one has slept on it since then. There were never many visitors to our house when I was young, and certainly none that ever stayed overnight. My parents didn’t have many friends, and no relations were near enough to visit. I touch the raised crocheted roses on the bedspread. Once bright red, they are faded pink from age, from the sun angling in from the window, day after day, year after year.

  There’s a timid knock on the bedroom door.

  “Leonard?”

  “I’m fine.”

  In the silence that follows, I wait for my mother’s footsteps to retreat back down the hallway, but she stands outside the closed door for what seems an unbelievably long time.

  “I’m fine,” I say again, and only then do I hear her weary shuffle down the length of hallway towards the kitchen.