The next week I was put in a wheelchair by the window so that I could watch the Lenten sky blossoming, and the cardinals swaying on the thin branches of the dogwood trees. Seated there, by the window, my thoughts were often with Rowell.
The state had made its decision. At a new inquest, Hillston’s coroner had ruled Joanna Cadmean’s death an apparent suicide. Probably no one would ever know if she had really spotted the original Liberty-head coin in the case. Perhaps she had seen it, but I preferred to believe that Joanna had never seen the coin Rowell confessed he had picked up from the marina pavement and, years later, returned to the case. And returned there as a token of what? Possession? Guilt? Cancellation of the killing itself, itself tangible evidence that Bainton Ames had never removed the coin from the case that night, and so had never left his house that night, and so had never drowned?
If Joanna Cadmean had not seen the Liberty-head coin, but had only dreamt it, then her final case for the Hillston police department transcended all the other mysteries the department had brought, in earlier years, before the oracle of her extraordinary gift. If she had only dreamt it, she was (as Rowell told me) preternatural; and I think she was.
And, ironically, if Joanna had only trusted her gift, had she not assumed she would need “real” threads to weave her spell, had she not found—as we now knew—a duplicate coin in Washington, and bought a diary in a St. Simons shop, and used the brass letter opener to break off the door chain inside Briggs’s tower study (leaving on the brass blade some fragments of the chain’s metallic paint for Etham Foster’s microscope to find), had she not erred in the other infinitesimal, inevitable ways people in the tangle of the real world must err, no doubt we would have all gone on believers. No doubt Ken Moize would have persuaded a jury to condemn Rowell Dollard for killing her, killing her, though, in only thirty seconds and not for the thirty years she believed he had actually taken to murder her heart.
But as it was, Ken Moize accepted the coroner’s new verdict that a mentally unbalanced woman had killed herself. Moize still did go to the grand jury about Rowell Dollard. And he did obtain an indictment. Because Rowell voluntarily confessed. After long discourse with our attorney general and with the other men who live at the capitol of the state, Moize agreed to accept the plea of nolo contendere then entered by Dollard’s lawyers. The charge agreed upon was involuntary manslaughter, resulting in the death of one Bainton William Ames. The judge, who was not Judge Henry Tiggs, found Rowell guilty, sentenced him to two years in prison, reduced the sentence to one year, then made him eligible for parole in six months, and then allowed whatever time the Senator needed to recover from what proved to be a paralysis of his right arm caused by his embolism to be counted toward his serving out his sentence.
Rowell would be paroled before he ever entered a cell. And if this did not seem just (as it did not to some local journalists), the judge announced in his summation that, in view of Rowell Dollard’s personal suffering and his public service (“And,” said Cuddy, “let’s face it, his family name.”), the court was inclined to be merciful. Naturally, Dollard had resigned his state senate seat and his candidacy in the upcoming primary, and our state, said the judge, could be assured that this man was thus punished well enough to satisfy justice.
They told me that before his transfer to the new state medical facilities in Raleigh, Rowell Dollard and I had lived for two weeks on the same hospital floor along the same corridor, and that often in the long nights after visitors from the world outside were required to leave my room, he had came in his wheelchair to wait beside me, never speaking, just waiting there, beside the sealed window, watching out.
• • •
One bright day when haze motes spun up in my room like seafoam, Cuddy Mangum stuck his head in the door. “You decent?” Then he ushered in a thick cluster of Popes, all noisily hushed and stiffly dancing so as not to take up too much space.
Dickey had his comb and his pliers in a new aquamarine cowboy shirt yoked with lariats. Graham had taken off his down vest and put on ten pounds. Somewhere lost behind Graham, Preston moved furtively. And on either side of Cuddy stood Paula Burgwin, in a muumuu, and Charlene, whom I’d last seen as a platinum blonde and who was now staggeringly black-haired and appeared to be wearing a Puerto Rican costume from West Side Story. Of Charlene’s own recent stay in this hospital, there was only a thin white scar over the bridge of her nose.
The Popes jostled for position until Cuddy, like the nervous director of a school play, prodded Paula forward, and she—obviously elected speaker for the group—said, “Mr. Savile, how’re you doing?”
“Call me Justin. And much better, thank you, Paula, and how about you?”
“Well, I am trying to lose weight, is all, if you can believe that, and I’m on this Scarsdale Diet thing, you know the one where that lady shot him, and,” she giggled, “it’s a real good diet for me because I can’t even afford half the things he expects you to—”
Graham bellowed, “God damn it, Paula, will you get on with it?”
“Yeah, Paula,” said Dickey from the mirror over the sink where he was combing his hair. “Will you stop running your mouth?”
“Shut up, Dickey.” Graham cuffed his brother in the side of the head.
“Listen, y’all goons,” Paula said, “Justin asked me how I was doing. I’m doing fine.” She turned to me with the Snow White smile that showed her small, perfect teeth. “Well, I lost my position at the Rib House, but I’m seeking other employment at this time.”
“I don’t know why,” growled Graham.
“Anyhow,” Paula told me, “if they’d let me get a chance to say so, we all just wanted to come see how you were doing and tell you we’re sorry about your getting hurt and we appreciate what you did to help Preston out. And Charlene got a suspended sentence, for giving evidence against that goon Luster. We appreciate that. And, well, that’s all.”
Preston sidled out from behind Graham and nodded and ducked back.
I said, “Listen, I appreciate what you did, Graham. I probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
“Hell with it,” Graham grumbled. “I’m just sorry Hudson’s dead. I wanted to mess that son of a bitch up in person, and I wanted him to remember who was doing it.”
Charlene had stuck a cigarette between her magenta lips, but Cuddy pulled it out before she could light it. She stepped forward now, orange skirt flouncing, and frowned at the ceiling. “This is all my fault, I guess. I hope you ain’t going to hold it against me.” She stepped back as if she’d finished a recitation.
I told her, “Don’t be silly, Charlene.”
Cuddy sighed. “Let’s say there’s nobody here without some M&M’s melted on their hands; by which I mean Messing Up and Mixed Motives.”
“Not Paula.” Graham tried to hug her, but the muumuu slid away from him. “This little angel of a mother here never badmouthed a soul in her life.”
Paula giggled. “I guess you never heard some of the things I’ve said about you, Graham.”
“She was teasing,” he explained. “Okay, lieutenant, you ever want to go hunting something with four legs, you look me up. We got to hit the road, I guess.”
“We got to split,” echoed Dickey, and they all left but Preston, who passed quickly by my bed, his hand inside his leather jacket, and dropped out of it a car’s AM/FM tuner onto my sheet, then hurried away after his family.
“I didn’t see that,” said Cuddy.
I asked him, grinning again, “Did you round them up and make them come here?”
“Well, it is April Fool’s today. But I believe this was Paula’s idea.”
“Good Christ, did she give in and go back to Graham?”
She and their two kids went back to the Maple Street house. Because Charlene came to our conclusion that Little Preston did a noble deed trying to keep her out of the state pen where her sweet-talking ways might have gotten her face torn off and her hair (umm! you notice that?) ripped out by so
me of the inmates there, whom I have seen at the lady convicts’ wrestling finals, and I don’t believe even Graham would take them on without a sledgehammer. So Charlene the Hot Tamale has kissed and made up with Preston, and love’s gonna live there again. Paula went on back because she didn’t want Charlene to have to live in that house again with the Pope boys unchaperoned, which she believes no woman should have to do, and I can see her point. But Paula is not living there, as she put it, as man and wife. She is holding herself in reserve, like those Greek ladies in La Strada.”
“Lysistrata.”
“That’s right. One of those foreign films. And speaking of man and wife, look here.” He loped around to the bedside, tugging out a small jeweler’s box; in it was a diamond ring in a circle of tiny sapphires the color of his eyes. “You think Junior’ll like it? I put it on my Visa card. I just have the feeling she’s going to say yes. Don’t you?” Head tilted, he grimaced.
“I hope so, Cuddy. She ought to.”
He flopped down into the wheelchair and spun it in a circle. “Oh, lordy, if she doesn’t, I’m gonna, I’m gonna….” He stopped and sighed loudly, for the first time in our acquaintance robbed of his rich mint of words.
I said, “Did you buy those clothes to propose in?” For he was wearing a Harris tweed jacket with a gray wool knit tie.
“First, I tried on a bunch in your closet, but the pants were knickerbockers on me. Tell you the truth, I came into a little extra money. This is going to spook you, Justin. I almost didn’t want to tell you. You remember those basketball scores Mrs. Cadmean gave me the night she died, off the top of her head? I won the pool. I won the damn NCAA basketball pool! First time in my life! Can you believe that?”
I could see Joanna’s face, see the perfect smooth profile, feel the calm gray eyes on mine, hear her voice soft and absolute as a dream saying to me, Let go—saying to me what she could not tell herself. I said, “Oh, yes, I believe it.” The face moved close to mine, translucent now.
Cuddy was saying, “No, I already wore these clothes when I took Junior over to see her old man.”
The gray eyes closed and the face faded away.
I said, “Sorry? You got Briggs to go see Cadmean?”
“Ummm.”
“How’d it go?”
He spun the chair in a slow circle. “I’ll say this. If you stood between her and her dad in your shorts, your pecker wouldn’t be too much use to you afterward, due to falling off from frostbite.” Cuddy yanked up his hair. “I hate to confess this because I am a strictly moral man, but I liked the fat old bastard.”
I laughed, and winced. “I also hate to confess it, as he is not a strictly moral man…any chance Ron Willis will tie Cadmean in for us about those Ames papers?”
“I deeply doubt it.”
“It’s not over, Cuddy. Luster was working for somebody. I just know it.”
“Doctor D’s happy. He found some of that yellow carpet’s fibers on Luster’s sneakers. Plus a speck of Mrs. Dollard’s type blood, plus a sliver of some kind of expensive grass the Dollards had planted out there, plus dog hairs, plus Lord knows what all else; so he’s happy, and Ken Moize is happy. Luster did it. And the state rests. We’ve got nothing on Ron Willis except his whinging a few shots at you, which appears to be a popular Hillston pastime. He can prove where he was the night of the robbery. Just because he knew Hudson and just because he handed Charlene a bag, doesn’t make him a murderer. Or even an accessory. Meanwhile, Hophead Ron has come up with some real fancy lawyers that wouldn’t use Joe Lieberman to lick their stamps, and they are arguing he wasn’t even shooting at you. Just disturbing the peace, under the influence, and driving so as to endanger.”
“I think old Briggs hired Willis to find somebody to steal those copies of the Ames papers. Cloris had them. Somebody took them.”
“Oh, lordy. You are stubborn. Well, it wasn’t Cary Bogue; he said he never saw them, and for us to stop pestering him. Anyhow, Fatso the Bald and I didn’t get into that aspect of our rela tionship when I was over there. It was personal.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Not much. I’ve been told that I’m a talker, but between your mama and my future pa-in-law, I believe I’ve been overrated.”
“So, what did he say?”
Now Cuddy jumped out of the chair and blew up his cheeks and poked his finger at his pursed lips. “Says, ‘Who the shit are you, son? Huh? Huh? Huh?’ Says, ‘I truly, truly believe I know you from somewhere, your particular ugly face strikes a chord of memory in my old ossified vicious self-adulating mind. Didn’t your daddy used to work on my line? Huh? Huh? Now, shit, you’re not diddling with my Baby, are you? Even if that child did sew a stone up in my heart. Because if I hear—and my ears are big as the sky—if I hear you are not doing right by my Princess, I’m going to have to send some boys from C&W over to pull off your arms and club you to death with them. Son.’”
I said, “Let me quote a friend: ‘You are messing with the big boys now, Mangum.’”
He winked, “Oh, I expect that man is going to just love me if he lives long enough. I’m not going to let him see his grandchildren unlest he improves his character.”
“Forget it, Cuddy. He’s too old for improvement. And I’m not sure what’s coming along behind him is any better.”
“Are you in reference to Lawry Whetstone?”
“For one.”
“The Whetstones are on a cruise to the Caribbean. What with you whopping him and throwing her over, they needed to rest up. Fatso gave me the news when I was over at his castle that he personally sent old Lawry off on this vacation and told him don’t rush back. They don’t appear to be too friendly.” Cuddy ate two chocolate turtles out of the box on my bedside table, then leaned over and shook my foot. “All right, now, when are you going to unhook your catheter and come on back to work? Not that it’s as much fun around there now that old fathead V.D.’s left us to go tame the West.”
“Have I still got a job?”
“Yep. Fact is, the new captain’s a friend of your family’s, you know how family connections always help. He even got you a raise so you could make your piano payments.” Cuddy draped his (apparently new) London Fog raincoat over his lanky shoulder.
I pulled myself carefully up on the pillows. “New captain? Have we got a new captain? Who?”
At the door, sun twinkled the blue-jay eyes. “Oh, a real brainy guy.”
“Who?”
“Me.” He waved a salute and closed the door.
Chapter 32
I was home by Easter, sleeping on the couch downstairs across from my new ebony spinet. Above the piano, beside my father’s watercolor, now hung the pencil sketch Joanna Cadmean had drawn the first day we met; Alice said it didn’t look like me.
Propped on my cane, I watched Alice, day by day, move through the house, and leave it rich with her presence, with a vase pulled forward on a table, with apple juice shining in the refrigerator, with her small earth-dark gardening gloves placed one upon another in the windowsill.
While she was gone, I followed her days, saw her walking along the aisles of looms at C&W. Lying on my couch, I was taking tests with her across the street, worrying if this morning’s exam had indeed, as we had predicted, begun with this question or that. I was going back, sober, to college.
Seated at my new piano, I was always listening for the click at the door and the quick steps coming closer. At every car’s brake squeaking outside the house, my heart expected her, hours before I knew she could possibly return.
My own first public outing was to take place shortly before I resumed work at the department, under my new chief, Captain Mangum. I was asked to Easter services at the large stone church I had attended as a child, as a restless captive peering at the back of old Briggs Cadmean’s glossy skull, but that I had not entered since my father’s funeral. It was Alice who (to my mother’s delight) asked me to go to church with her.
Across from her at the kitchen table,
I said, “Red MacLeod, Lenin is writhing.”
“Why?” she asked, and poured more syrup on her pancakes.
“I thought you were a Communist.”
“Wasn’t Christ? I’m a communist with a little c.” She smoothed the syrup in swirls with her knife. “Most Communists with a big C are just Fascists without the nice clothes.”
“Are you speaking as a weaver, or as a politician, or as a churchgoer?”
“All three,” she said, and began eating.
I watched her. “Alice, why don’t you marry me now and then run in this district primary? It might be nice to have a Christian communist state senator named Savile.”
She laughed, leaned over and kissed me, tilting the small, stubborn chin. “First of all, Mister Savile the Fifth, even if you do con me into marrying you next month, which is not practical, and not reasonable…”
“How about if I say, all right, take the damn sideboard out of the dining room, will that do it?”
“This sideboard is hideous. And second, if somebody out of this house goes to the senate, the name’s going to be MacLeod the First. Unless, of course, you want to run against me.”
“Ah tempora. You and Briggs.” I poured her a third cup of coffee. “You ought to get old Cadmean to finance your campaign. You’re one of his. He’d love to buy you…. Can you be bought?”
“Bought to do what? And for how much? I’m practical. So’s Cadmean. Just last week the union and he bought each other off. What he wanted to buy was ‘cooperation,’ and we sold it to him.”
“Meaning what?”
“Are you really interested?”
I was very interested.
“Well, Mr. Cadmean invited all the shop stewards to this special board meeting, where he got us to testify so the board would vote through his plans to put this new loom system in the cottons division. That’s my section. To update, instead of cut back. Now, that means shutting down for the time it takes to install the system, and then, after it goes in, laying off some workers.”
Uncivil Seasons Page 30
