The Code of the Hills

by Nancy Allen

  Donita needed a cigarette. She must’ve been smoking too much lately; the urge for tobacco felt more like a compulsion than a nagging desire. A crumpled cigarette pack sat by the ashtray and she rifled through it with hope, but it was empty. Someone had taken her last smoke.

  “Char,” she muttered through her teeth. With Kris locked up, it had to be Charlene taking her smokes. Kristy only smoked once in a while and Tiffany hadn’t started yet.

  She weighed her options. She wasn’t inclined to walk to the Lo-­Cut Market this early; it was cold as all get-­out outside. Besides, she was almost broke. “I’ll teach her to take the last one,” she said as she poked through the ashtray, looking for a butt to relight. They’d all been burned down to the filter, save one. Donita sighed with satisfaction as she plucked up a wrinkled butt that had been stubbed out with a good third of the cigarette remaining.

  Moving into the kitchen, she turned an electric burner on high and lit the cigarette off the coil on the kitchen stove. She took a grateful drag but grimaced as she examined it between her fingers. A relit cigarette never tasted as good on the second go-­around.

  What was the matter with her daughter, stubbing out a cigarette with almost half of it left? It was wasteful. Donita’s daddy had smoked unfiltered cigarettes, Camels when he could get them, hand-­rolled sometimes. He used to say you was to smoke them till you could smell the flesh burning.

  As Donita eased into a kitchen chair, taking care not to put her weight on the wobbly leg, she spied a whole sheet of paper under the table. With a grunt, she bent over to pick it up, thinking, I have to pick up after everybody around here.

  It looked like a homework paper, so she supposed it must belong to Kristy, but the page bore Charlene’s name in the upper right corner. Surprising; Charlene didn’t bother much with schoolwork. Donita couldn’t fault her for it: you plant corn, you get corn, as her mama used to say. She hadn’t been too interested in school herself. She’d sit in the back of the class, daydreaming while the teacher talked.

  After school, Donita and her sister would take the long way home, walking by the Dari Sweet where the boys hung out. Kris Taney was generally there, smoking and shouting at the passersby. He was the baddest boy in town. Mean as a snake.

  So when he started sniffing after Donita, it took her by surprise. At the time, she thought it was a compliment, a distinction, having a tough like Kris chase after her.

  She wasn’t much older than Charlene when she turned up pregnant. They got married pretty quick after that. It was funny to think how glad she was back then, to cast her lot with Kris Taney. She thought she was lucky to get out of her daddy’s house.

  From the frying pan into the fire.

  Donita blew the smoke out with a sober expression. She didn’t like to think about her daddy, not even with him long dead and buried in Arkansas. She was glad when he died, shameful as it was to admit it. Part of her would always hate him. She wasn’t sure how old she was the first time she’d had to take care of her daddy, but she was just a little thing. He made her do it with her hand, at first. Sometimes he’d rub up against her in bed. Before long he said she was ready to be a woman.

  It was god-­awful, that’s a fact. But when she went to her mother that night, Mama refused to give comfort or solace. Donita would never forget the closed look on her mother’s face, the set of her jaw as her mother disentangled herself from her frantic grip.

  “You don’t know what he done, Mama.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Go to bed.”

  “You got to stop him.” Donita clutched at her mother’s dress, but the woman held her off.

  “ ‘Wives submit to your husband, as to the Lord.’ Bible says. Daddy’s the boss of this house. Now you get to bed.”

  “I got to tell you what he done.”

  Donita’s mother snatched her by the upper arm and hissed in her ear, “You don’t never tell. Nobody. Never.”

  She remembered that her mother had relented a little after that, possibly at the stricken look on her face. Mama patted her arm and whispered, “Don’t you think about it, Donita. Think about something else.” Grimly she’d advised, “Think about heaven.”

  Donita had followed her mother’s orders. She never told a soul, and she tried to think about something else when he came to her.

  It was advice she passed on to her daughters. Char had been nine years old when Kris started in on her. Donita knew that for a fact, because she was pregnant with Tiffany, about ready to pop, when it happened the first time. She should have seen it coming. She’d seen the look in his eye as he watched Char. He’d corner her behind the sofa or run a hand up her thigh.

  But Charlene put up a fight, that was for sure, hollering and carrying on till Donita came running, holding her belly with both hands. He had Charlene pinned on the bed—­the marriage bed they’d made their babies in. Charlene was fighting like a bobcat, trying to scratch his face. He was too drunk to catch her wrists.

  Donita tried to help her girl. She grabbed Kris’s shoulder, said he didn’t know what he was doing, he had to stop. He reared back and kicked her in the stomach so hard, she went flying against the wall. Huddled in pain, she clutched her middle, scared she’d lose the baby. Looking up, she could see that he’d done it. He was going at it with Charlene under him.

  She couldn’t watch. Crawling out of the room on all fours, Donita lay on the carpet in the hallway, waiting for it to end. It’s just because I’m so fat with this baby, she told herself. He don’t want me with my belly this way. After the baby, he’ll leave her alone.

  Of course, she was wrong. It happened again, regardless of her protests. And by the time he started up with Kristy, the girl knew better than to resist. Donita felt her failure, carried it around her neck like the oxen’s yoke.

  She taught them her mother’s lesson: that it had to be kept secret, that it was just something men did, and that it must be kept within the family circle, never to be spoken of to others.

  “Think about something else,” she’d whisper to her girls. “Think about something nice.” She didn’t tell them to think about heaven. She parted with her mother’s example on that score. Donita wasn’t too certain that she could count on the existence of a heaven, or that she would get in if there was one.

  But she was a better mother than her own, she believed. She never pushed them away when they wanted to come to her. She would comfort them. Give them some sugar. Share a cigarette, give a squeeze.

  She would stroke Charlene’s back as the girl shuddered. “Think about ice cream,” Donita would urge.

  But Char didn’t cry no more. Not for a long time.

  Donita stubbed out the cigarette in the sink. Things would get better. She would see to it.

  Chapter Six

  ON TUESDAY, IN Associate Division 3, Elsie spent the morning trying traffic cases and negotiating plea bargains with defense attorneys. She had to exercise control to keep from snapping at the lawyers. She was morose, still smarting from Noah’s failure to appear the day before.

  The afternoon docket was devoted to preliminary hearings in felony cases. Sitting at the courtroom counsel table, she studied a witness statement intently, and scribbled direct examination questions on her yellow legal pad. She had a three o’clock preliminary hearing in a first degree robbery case, for which she was thoroughly prepared; she had conducted phone interviews of the convenience store witnesses on Monday night, after her dinner date didn’t show up. Checking her watch, she gauged the amount of time she had before her witnesses appeared.

  Moses Carter, judge of Associate Division 3, was still in chambers, which suited Elsie just fine. Judge Carter was not fond of her, though not because of her courtroom performance or demeanor. She’d had the misfortune of walking in on the judge enjoying the charms of a municipal clerk at the county Christmas party a year ago, and since that time he’d refused to look her in t
he eye.

  The party had begun as a quiet affair, centered around a bowl of Hawaiian punch mixed with ginger ale and a platter of stale sugar cookies. Courthouse personnel, looking ragged from the demands of the holidays, chatted listlessly. Elsie was gearing up to make her getaway.

  But after a rascal in the county commissioners’ office added a bottle of Everclear to the punch bowl, the party took off. Crusty clerics melted into belles, and courthouse stalwarts who hadn’t cracked a smile in years roared with hilarity. Elsie, partaking of the spiked punch bowl, decided it would be good fun to take off her bra and wave it like a flag. But when she stepped into a utility closet to disrobe, she stumbled onto Judge Carter, reaching a climax in the arms of a woman who was not his wife.

  Since then her relationship with the judge had been severely strained.

  Worse, he tended to rule against her, given the opportunity. As a result, she always prepared her cases with particular care when appearing in Associate Division 3.

  Elsie toyed with the idea of going downstairs for a Diet Coke, but she’d had one with lunch and she was trying to cut down on aspartame. She couldn’t remember just what the sweetener’s bad properties were, but the evils were formidable, she knew. She’d sworn off diet drinks entirely on New Year’s Day. When her abstinence plan didn’t last twenty-­four hours, she revised her resolution to a single serving per day, and tried to stick to that. Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes she didn’t. Work days were tough. Gotta have some kind of reward system, she thought. Since her love life was stalled, she would substitute chemicals for romance. She dug four quarters from her briefcase and ran down three flights of stairs for a can of solace.

  When she returned to the Division 3 courtroom, the chairs were only sparsely occupied, mostly by the remainder of the afternoon traffic docket. A man facing revocation of his probation due to a new DWI charge brought his wife and baby in a bid for sympathy. The child cried, a lusty wail that made it difficult to hear anything being said in court.

  Judge Carter sat at the bench, a slight man in his forties with a head of prematurely gray hair. He gave his bailiff, Eldon, a meaningful look over his glasses. The portly bailiff rose from his chair with an effort, walked over to the young mother and told her she’d have to take the baby outside.

  The witnesses from the Jiffy Go store waited on the front row. Elsie patted her first witness on the shoulder as she walked to the counsel table.

  The judge asked, “Ms. Arnold, are you representing the prosecution in State v. Bradley?” He looked at a spot somewhere above her head.

  “Yes, your honor,” she replied.

  “Are you ready to proceed?”

  “I am, your honor,” she said.

  The judge inquired, “Is the defendant here with his attorney?” The public defender stood and prepared to come forward.

  The wail of the baby echoed in the rotunda outside the courtroom door. Judge Carter paused, frowning, and said, “I’m sorry to inconvenience the parties, but I’d like to take up a probation violation first.”

  “That’s fine, your honor,” Elsie said smoothly, though inwardly she was disgruntled. The delay would make her day that much longer: another complaint to add to her growing list. She gathered her papers together and moved to the empty jury box, where she took a seat.

  Breeon represented the Prosecutor’s Office in the probation hearing. Addressing the court, she announced she would present evidence that the party had been driving drunk, in violation of his probation. She asked the bailiff if he would call her witness out in the hallway.

  “Sure,” the bailiff said. “Who do you need?”

  “Officer Strong.”

  Elsie’s head jerked up as the bailiff opened the door and shouted for Noah. He entered the courtroom and strode up to the bench. Noah had the distinctive tread of a uniformed officer when he walked: the squeak of the leather boots, the heft of the belt, supporting holster and sidearm, ammunition and flashlight, radio and baton. He raised his hand as he swore an oath to tell the truth, and sat ramrod straight in the witness chair.

  He did look fine in that uniform. Elsie stared at him as she might eyeball a sideshow freak. When he returned her look and flashed a smile in her direction, she looked away with a twist of her head, seething. She had no intention of engaging him. Ain’t giving you a come hither look from the jury box, Officer No-­Show, she thought.

  She fiddled with her papers and tapped her pen, composing her face into lines of total disregard for the officer testifying in court. If he could forget he made a commitment to see her on Monday, she would forget he was in the room. She would make him pay for his offense. She looked at her files, the judge, the light fixtures overhead, her nails: anywhere but the witness stand.

  Bree’s direct exam of Strong was brief, as was the cross. When the accused took the stand in his own defense, Bree moved in to grill him over his misdeeds.

  Out of the corner of her eye Elsie watched Noah approach the jury box. Leaning over the rail, he whispered, “How’s it going, Elsie?”

  She shrugged, still not looking at him. “Fine. I guess.”

  He rested his arms on the railing. “Nice to see you.” He smiled, relaxed, as if he had nothing to apologize for.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said with scorn. “Nice surprise.”

  “What do you mean? I told you I had a case today.”

  She shook her head and hissed, “It’s Tuesday. You said you’d see me Monday.”

  “No,” he whispered, “I wouldn’t have said that. I have two cases set for today: Tuesday.”

  Frowning, she didn’t respond. She was trying to remember. Could he have said Tuesday?

  “Aw, come on. Don’t tell me you’re mad at me for testifying on Tuesday instead of Monday. I don’t put the date on the subpoena, I just show up,” he added in a teasing tone.

  “Hell yes I’m mad,” she whispered. “I don’t know why I’m even speaking to you.”

  He bent his head to her ear and whispered, “Elsie, honey, you’re making a big mistake. You mixed it up. Do you really think I’d blow off a chance to finally be with you?”

  Judge Carter interrupted the exchange; she nearly jumped when he snapped, “We’re ready for you, Miss Arnold. Call your first witness.”

  Flustered, she picked up her file and walked to the counsel table. Pulling out her handwritten examination questions, she said: “If it please the court, the state calls Maria Rodriguez to the witness stand.” The store clerk came forward, and after being sworn, sat in the witness box. Elsie smiled at her, gave her a second to get settled, and said, “Please state your name.”

  Elsie got her head into the game, regained her composure, and proceeded through direct examination without a hitch. Convenience store employees didn’t always make good witnesses, but this woman was a dream. Mrs. Rodriguez identified the defendant in court without hesitation, spoke clearly, and described the gun he’d pointed at her in minute detail. Moreover, the Jiffy Go had a video recording of the robbery, and the corporate office sent the correct witness (for once) to establish the chain of custody for the tape. All in all, the hearing went very well indeed, but she wasn’t totally focused on the outcome; she was still distracted by the encounter with Noah Strong. She kept going back to the phone conversation on Saturday night: exactly what had he said?

  After the defendant’s attorney finished his cross-­examination, the judge found probable cause to believe that the defendant committed the offense charged, and decreed that the defendant would be bound over for trial in the Circuit Court.

  Elsie breathed a sigh of relief. She spoke with her witnesses briefly and thanked them for coming, then sat back at the counsel table. She wanted to wrap this up quickly so she could get back to her office. She needed to think: could he have actually said Tuesday instead of Monday? She’d been totally wiped out when he called.

  Or maybe he just said
the wrong day, accidentally. Said Monday instead of Tuesday, without realizing it. Anyone could make a mistake, she reflected, and she felt herself softening, her resolve to be done with Noah melting like butter in a skillet.

  I’m a schmuck, she thought, shaking her head at her own foolishness, but knowing she’d give him a chance to make it up to her. A schmuck and a fool, she added while scrawling a quick note in the file about the chain of custody witness from Jiffy Go. As she wrote, someone put a hand on her shoulder, and she spun around with a forgiving heart.

  “Hi!” she said. Then she saw that it was Detective Ashlock.

  Elsie felt the heat rise in her face. “Oh, Ashlock,” she sighed, “I owe you one.”

  He shook his head with a dismissive gesture. “Don’t mention it.”

  “Really, I do,” she insisted. “And Ash, I am so, so, so embarrassed.”

  He leaned against the railing that separated the gallery from the counsel table. “I mean it, Elsie; don’t give it another thought.” With a smile he added, “I got your back.”

  The remark flustered her. She looked down at her file and shuffled her papers. “What brings you over here today?”

  “I’m presenting a search warrant across the hall, but the judge is tied up for another twenty minutes, so I’m waiting around. Thought you might want to go for coffee.”

  “Oh, Ash, thanks,” she said, shaking her head, “but it’s way too late for coffee.”

  “I’d buy you a cold pop, then.”

  “Sounds good, but I don’t have time. I need to check in with Madeleine to see what she wants me to do for tomorrow’s preliminary hearing in the Taney case.” She stood, picking up her file. “I gotta get downstairs. But really,” dropping her voice to a whisper, “thanks. For last Friday. Really.”

  She cruised through the halls, looking in vain for Noah. When she finally arrived at Madeleine’s office, she found the door closed, as always. Elsie knocked; no response. Sticking her head in the cubicle of Madeleine’s private secretary, Nedra, she asked whether Madeleine was around.