This Day's Death

by John Rechy

  “Right, Mr. Edmondson,” Steve said.

  Jim wondered why Steve should be reticent; certainly there could be no variation in their accounts of what had occurred that afternoon.

  “He wouldn’t have to testify, in any event,” Alan reminded Edmondson.

  Edmondson continued to express dour objections. “Now look here, Alan— . . .”

  He doesn’t believe us, he believes the cop, Jim knew suddenly.

  Jim heard himself insisting they ask for a jury trial.

  “A jury trial, then,” Alan said peremptorily, moving into the courtroom.

  Edmondson followed close behind, still talking. Loudly.

  “Oh, God!” Steve said.

  “Why are you so uptight about the whole damn thing?” Jim asked Steve bluntly. Immediately he relented, remembering the doubts he himself had expressed to Roy. “Look,” he said, trying to salve Steve’s fears, “we’ve got a perfect case, man, you know that; Alan says so, too. This is all just routine. It won’t even come to trial.”

  “You’re not afraid?” Steve asked him.

  “Hell, no, man, of course not; why the hell should I be?”

  “Edmondson—you know— . . .” Steve was stumbling; “well, he’s told me several times to prepare for the worst. It’s crazy, isn’t it?—but I’m worried. I keep thinking of my wife, my kid— . . . I can’t go to prison.”

  “You’re not going! That son of a bitch is just trying to scare you so you’ll be grateful for his crumbs!” Jim said, rejecting the infectious fear.

  “He’s a good attorney,” Steve defended Edmondson.

  “I know he is,” Jim said, remembering how well Edmondson too had handled Daniels, and realizing how necessary it was for Steve to trust him. And for him. “Why wouldn’t you want to testify?” he asked Steve abruptly.

  Steve shrugged.

  Moments later Alan came out of the courtroom. He was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Jim,” he told him. “The two judges who’ll be sitting without a jury are two of the best in California. I’ve tried and won cases before each. They’re intelligent, knowledgeable men who won’t want to nail you just because of the inflammatory charges—they’re the kind of men I can talk to in chambers. Maybe we should ask for a trial before a judge after all in order to get one of those two.”

  “I don’t like the possibility of limiting the testimony, Alan,” Jim said.

  “Actually it’s not that limited. A few cases extend for days. It’s just a tacit understanding that some cases won’t take as long to try as others—and the shorter ones come up more quickly than jury trials. The courts are cluttered with cases, Jim—new ones every day; this is one way of keeping them moving even as slow as they do.”

  The crammed, giant machinery. . . . “I wouldn’t want it to drag on,” Jim said. “And I want it to come up soon and be over.”

  “On the other hand,” Alan is saying, “if we go for a jury trial, we could get a bastard of a judge like that one.”

  Jim saw a disheveled, disoriented-looking oldman scurrying short-breathed along the hall. In an insane asylum one would have assumed he was an inmate, not a doctor. Rushing as though he could hardly wait to sit in judgment, Jim thought.

  “Even with the excellent case we have,” Alan said, “we’d have a hell of a time overcoming his bias. Some judges, Jim—they’re very sick. . . . Of course what I would do then is to keep postponing the case until we got a good judge who would listen. But with the other alternative, we’re assured of getting one of those two judges, and I know both of them are good men. I didn’t realize they’d be hearing the non-jury cases when I suggested a jury trial earlier.”

  “I want it to end,” Jim said. He felt the increasing heaviness of each day.

  “I know, Jim; and it will.”

  It was agreed they would ask for a trial before a judge.

  Alan and Edmondson had made certain Jim and Steve would be first to plead. You were processed according to the prestige of your attorney. The handcuffed men, the bandaged man probably beaten up by the cops—they would go last. Those men stood now in a row—ashen—flanked by cops and separated even from the other defendants, those on bail.

  First in line, Jim stood before the desk of a tan-uniformed cop, Steve in back of Jim. Ubiquitous coplook of mean unconcern engraved on his face, the cop was saying: “When they call your name, step up before the judge and say guilty or not guilty, and— . . . Hey, you, back there!—keep it quiet, willya?—I’m tryin-na give instructions here.”

  Now the judge appeared who would hear their pleas— and Jim was glad he would hear only their pleas: He was a gray, skinny, little oldman gobbled up by his robe; the kind of man who seems, always, to have a very bad cold, and a headache.

  No wonder they have to elevate them on platforms, to make everyone stand when they walk in, to mount them on tall-backed chairs, Jim thought. Otherwise, everyone would laugh.

  He heard his own name.

  “How do you plead?”

  How the hell do you plead, bastards! his mind shouted.

  “Not guilty,” he said.

  NOT GUILTY OF WHAT? AND GUILTY OF WHAT?

  Of what part of my life, of what act—of what acts am I really guilty? Jim wonders now. (And remembers: Two knives sharp and deadly, a girl’s dark laughter mixed with pain, hard cocks like threatening guns over her, an alley, a wallet, his fist striking a face, a girl’s silver lips, long hair thrashing, the green afternoon, a red-shadowed room.) Irrelevant and immaterial, he thinks wryly. Because one was judged in courtrooms only on the single act, accused, chosen to be pulled from the complicated tangle of one’s life, the shadow of a shadow, if that.

  Framed by the window, the El Paso December morning is still undecided as to its course, suspended between last night’s windstorm, today’s resurrected spring. Occasionally a wayward gust of wind, lingering from last night, captured the loose dust in ghostly whorls; but the sun is bright, the sky newly blue, the mass of clouds still pasted against the horizon. . . . Raised on Mexican folklore, Jim’s mother would claim they were going prematurely through “las cabañuelas”—when, during one single day (or is it a week?) in the early part of January, the weather supposedly ranges through a complete seasonal spectrum.

  “Not guilty.” Jim’s mind returns to the Los Angeles courtroom where he spoke those words: a courtroom square and high-ceilinged, old and ugly—yellowish light rotting. The color of aging bones.

  “Not guilty.”

  Steve followed: “Not guilty.”

  Jim walked out of the courtroom, not waiting for the others.

  And he stood in the hall staring at what surrounded him: Windows gazed blindly at windows across a hollow about which the building had been constructed. Jim felt, like a physical threat, the presence of the jail on the highest floor of this building. And as he stared at the long hall that angled sharply toward other halls and other courtrooms, then toward others and still others and others, he had the feeling of being trapped in a rectangular concrete maze.

  “. . . the first Wednesday in January.”

  “What?”

  “The trial, that’s when it’s set.” Alan Bryant had caught up with Jim.

  January! Three infinitely long months away. The nightmare would crawl through his mother’s saint’s day, through Christmas, New Year’s. . . . God damn Daniels, the district attorneys, the judges and all their crazy laws! God damn Steve— . . . Steve? Oh, Jesus, no, not him. It wasn’t his fault.

  “Can’t it be set earlier?” Jim asked Alan. “Goddamnit, Alan,” he said urgently, “I want this fucking mess to end—so I can go on with my life.”

  “Edmondson’s taking a vacation—and so is the judge,” Alan said in a tone of voice which indicated disapproval.

  It seemed unbelievable to Jim that his fate, or anyone else’s, would have to wait while two men vacationed. Guilty or not, you had to go through with it. Once a charge was made, you were in danger. Guilty or not, you saw your life turned upside dow
n. You were helpless. No matter how your whole being rebelled, no matter how logical it seemed merely to say, I’ve had enough—and to walk away. Incredibly you couldn’t: An invisible power, layers and layers of it, was ready to crush you with a word spoken, an order issued, a warrant signed—a gun pointed.

  Sitting in the Beverly Hills restaurant where Alan took Jim to lunch after that morning’s proceedings, Alan broke a gray silence by saying: “You’ve got to remember that sometimes it’s best to let things develop slowly, Jim. I don’t want you coming back and forth—but like I’ve told you so often, I want to win. And we will. I know I offered to do this before—but it honestly hadn’t seemed opportune when I considered the risks. As soon as Edmondson and the judge return, I’ll present the district attorney with the contradictions in Daniels’ testimony which show he’s lying, I’ll use your excellent notes, the exhibits. The district attorney knows we have a fine, thoughtful judge now—who’s skeptical of cops’ testimonies. There’s an excellent possibility you won’t have to return again for this thing, Jim—that it won’t come to trial—I’m going to try like hell.” He had never sounded more convinced, nor convincing.

  It was a warm, glorious day. Pretty girls and youngmen in colorful costumes, with beads and flowers, roamed in rainbow tribes that portion of Sunset Boulevard known as the Strip. Looking at them through the window of the restaurant, Jim felt acutely drawn to them again—they were the same breed he had lived among only a few years back. And theirs were the same rebellious faces which appeared increasingly in the courtrooms.

  Naturally, Alan was saying to him, putting his hand amicably on Jim’s shoulder, all this was requiring a lot of extra time. “I hate to do it, Jim; but I’m going to have to raise my fee,” he blurted. “I really hate to do it, because I like you, and because I believe you’re innocent. But I’ve already spent more time on your case than on any other I’ve got; you’re not just another client, Jim.”

  It was true; Alan did spend a great deal of time on Jim: making himself always available, taking him to lunch. Especially this: going to the site of the arrest. Even so, Jim couldn’t help remembering Alan’s emphatic assurance from the beginning that the agreed-upon fee would be “for everything through trial.” “And there won’t be any surprises,” he had underscored.

  Outside, two uniformed cops were questioning a barefoot youngman in a sarape-striped poncho—earlier, he had been selling newspapers on the street. A small band of the costumed girls and youngmen nearby tinkled tiny bells as if to offset the cops’ bad vibrations. Jim’s fists clenched instinctively at the sight of the cops.

  “How much more, Alan?” he asked. He told himself: Don’t show your panic, man: cool it.

  The cops outside were shoving the barefoot youngman—and another, who had merely sidled up—into a squad car. Jim had noticed: There were cops everywhere now in Los Angeles: their faces often wore a fierce smile: a smile like their badges, metallic, brash, confident—triumphant. There was flaring in the country an undeclared war.

  “I’ll make it the very minimum,” Alan said, “just five hundred dollars more. . . . Jim, honestly, I hate to do it—but I’ve got a terrific overhead—not to mention a wife and two kids,” he pointed out smiling.

  Five hundred dollars.

  For the first time in his life Jim was becoming overwhelmingly aware of the threat of money going, and he resented it. Before, alone, he had had a reckless attitude toward it; he felt “purified” when he was broke. Now: medical expenses, installments to be paid to Alan, expenses of going back and forth to Los Angeles. Still, he refuses to panic. There’s this: Lloyd had managed to get them $2000.00 in apprehensive settlement for his mother from the company whose truck ran into his car.

  And yet: Five hundred dollars more.

  “Anyway,” Alan had gone on to say, “I’ll draw up a paper, you can pay in installments. A smart kid like you, Jim, you’ll be making thousands before long in that law-firm you’ll be working for in rich Texas when we get you off—and we will, count on that—and soon.”

  Had there been the very slightest reminder—and therefore an implied threat—of what the opposite would mean? No—Alan had always reassured him. In fact, although to Roy Stuart he had expressed doubt about it, Jim was confident himself of the ultimate resolution—certain of victory—of ultimate acquittal.

  (Certain— . . . except for the dark moments—and these occurred usually late at night. Certain— . . . except for the brief times when he felt immobilized by the sheer force of the legal entanglements, as if he were trapped in an iron cobweb. Certain— . . . except when he thought recurrently of the world narrowing into a barred cell.)

  The miracle he awaited—or so he told himself—consisted only in the shortening of the nightmare. Dismissal before trial.

  Perhaps still embarrassed by having had to bring up the matter of money, Alan was assuring Jim that the judge they had been assigned to was one of the very best in the whole state. “I can talk to him in chambers,” he kept pointing out. “He’s the kind of man I can say to: Now look, your honor, you know the officer is lying— . . . A good man. A very good man. Judge Arnold Cory.”

  Judge Arnold Cory.

  Jim wished he could have seen him. But now that judge was like God. Hidden somewhere in the maze of these courts.

  Judge.

  Arnold.

  Cory.

  Jim sped back to El Paso.

  Hearing his car, his mother stood at the door, straining toward him, her arms ready to close about him.

  “Is it over now, my Son?” she asked him urgently.

  “Is what over, Mother?” he asked back, shaken by her intense question, which seemed to imply she knew something about why he had really gone back to Los Angeles.

  “Your business in Los Angeles, for Mr. Maxwell,” she said.

  “I hope so—I think so,” he told her. “There’s a slight chance I’ll have to go back in January.” The last came automatically, without his having wanted to speak it.

  The next day—but Jim saw this only in retrospect—his mother’s illness began to shape discernibly.

  Compulsively, Jim read over and over the transcript of the cop’s testimony at the preliminary hearing, and a copy of the arrest report which Alan had been able to get. As he read the cop’s words—his contradictions—he felt personally pitted against Daniels. His hatred of the cop became obsessive, a part of his life now. He and Daniels—a negative closeness, like that which binds two people who share a mutually slaughtering secret.

  Weeks passed. A month. More. His mother’s saint’s day came, December 12, the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe—which they always celebrated rather than her birthday; and—always before, a joyous occasion—this time it passed somberly.

  Then Alan wrote that he would approach the district attorney—both the judge and Edmondson back in town—before Christmas.

  The prospect that the charges might be dismissed now and before trial elated Jim. The maneuver often verbalized but not yet undertaken would now be set in motion. As Alan had so convincingly explained it, now was the exactly right time; perhaps he had even strategically waited for the mellowing days immediately before Christmas.

  The abrupt fear he experienced on awakening—when the darkness lurking from Los Angeles permeated the day quickly—diminished the next morning. It was, after all, the pattern of his adult life: which led him to a precipice, then saved him miraculously.

  But despite his renewed confidence in the quick termination of the nightmare, there soon continued the times when just the fact of his still being trapped in the nightmare he could not immediately rouse himself from overcame him: as if the machinery of the courts in which he was caught was capable of generating a magnetic held (extending across the miles he had traveled back and forth) drawing him to it.

  Concurrently, as if terror had begun to take two distinct shapes, his mother’s savage illness also seized his life. Then: an orgy of doctors, medicines, doctors, examinations. Pills arrived dai
ly. She began to name them: Amphetamines were “dancers”; tranquilizers, “bridesmaids”; sleeping pills, “pillows.”

  She began to wear, inside the house, the dark glasses intended only for bright glare.

  Soon he knew exactly when she prepared to be sick—and he began to think of it as an elaborate preparation. It started with a look; as if she was mortally hurt. She would touch her forehead absently with a trembling hand, which then slid slowly down the length of her face, to her neck as if to choke the origin of a scream. At night he heard other signals. Wanting to protect her from whatever was invading her body, or her mind, he would get up the moment he heard her.

  “What’s the matter, Mother?”

  “I don’t know!” she would answer frantically.

  In the morning she greeted him with her untarnished smile—even though in a few moments she might begin the signals of anxiety.

  She stopped going to the department stores—which she had enjoyed; then the grocery stores. She telephoned for groceries. She stopped tending the flowers, which she had always loved, especially roses. She began to say this after breakfast: “At least I was able to fix your breakfast,” so that breakfast became the acknowledged symbol of order. After breakfast, she moved into her bedroom, which she kept increasingly darker. Most ominous of all: She stopped going to Mass—prayed instead in her dusking room before her gallery of saints and virgins. Swiftly she had reduced her whole world into one dark room.

  Now a kaleidoscope of menacing images filled Jim’s mind quickly on waking: his mother ill, Daniels, doctors, Jones, hospitals, bills mounting, his mother, Steve, medicines, Alan, Edmondson, legal fees, his mother, Daniels, his mother. . . . That was the present. He wished, those times, that he could cancel that insistent present, move without it into the immediate future, when he would be in lawschool—the one factor which remained stable in his life.

  Finally his mother was hospitalized—“for a short rest and observation.” Like the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles, this hospital, though new, had already assumed the color of bones. . . . A few days later—unchanged—she came back home, to her dusking room—and to the vase of faded roses he had given her on her saint’s day and which she insisted remain there.