by Rob Riggan
Then she surprised herself. “We needed to send the girls to Rexy’s for this?”
“I thought we might need some time to get used to the idea, talk if we have to.” But what is there left to say? she wondered. That’s when she really saw for the first time how much he’d changed, how quiet inside he’d become, like he’d finally made some kind of peace with it, and it was all so close up she hadn’t seen it until then. It might have scared her once, wondering what it might mean for her if he got someplace first, or she couldn’t even get there. He’d always tried to be good for her, calm and strong, but she never doubted he disbelieved. She remembered when Sheriff Dugan came over and talked to her in the back of that deputy’s car the night it happened, and she felt everything was going to be okay again. “We’ll wait and see, Loretta, honey,” was what Danny had said. How long ago all that seemed, now that it was about to be over, for she knew somehow it was going to be over.
Then, all at once, she also knew how much she’d changed. She was still angry—people should not have their lives be at the mercy of other people who don’t care because they are unhappy or drunk. They should not be able to visit their miseries on you. But she wasn’t afraid of what Danny felt anymore, and wasn’t afraid of the anger in herself either. She could feel the tension running off. Maybe now I’ll sleep again, she’d thought, sitting there with her feet up, looking at him. No matter what happens now, though I may still be angry, I won’t be ashamed.
The judge was different, too—more businesslike, it seemed—a thin, smallish man with white hair and glasses who looked serious about everything, even mean, she decided. But the biggest difference was the jury—its existence. The lawyers had spent almost two hours impaneling it, seven men and five women. She’d tried to guess about each one, what they might think. Most looked like working people, a little awkward in their dress clothes.
By the time the first witness for the prosecution was called, the courtroom had filled all the way to the top seats, where she and Danny had sat the first time and hardly anyone else had been there. She could feel an excitement in the room and in herself. But she felt seasoned, too, like an old hand, which seemed strange. What had changed? Danny looked almost bored, and she grinned to herself and was proud of him. But these feelings made her feel confused, too, because she knew that even if it was going to be all over that day, it was about something ugly and always would be—not an entertainment, or the circus. Or theater.
She looked over at the defense table. The doctor, dressed again in a nice suit, this one dark, was sitting with his hands folded on the table, just like the last time, only looking relaxed. Something had become settled in him, too; she could feel it and was suddenly afraid, as though there would never be any end to the lessons and surprises and hell that had begun up on that mountain. She was deluding herself if she thought otherwise. But she took hold and forced her fear down. I’ve been through too damn much now, she told herself.
Once again, the solicitor called Danny first, and Danny said pretty much what he had the last time, the defense asking one or two questions but not being very aggressive, unlike before. Then the solicitor called Sheriff Dugan to describe what he’d found when he arrived at the scene. There was scarcely a sound in the room when Dugan took the stand, his arm in that clean, white sling, his uniform obviously too big, for all the weight he’d lost, and him looking old beyond his years. It was fatigue, she knew, fatigue that had become greater since he’d left the office earlier that morning. And pain, for every now and then he might move a special way, and she barely detected a wince and knew he was fighting to hide it, to not make excuses for himself or, worse, to be seen doing so. But Lord, to get up before the public and press, who were sitting there just waiting to see what he looked like!
When the sheriff took the stand, she looked over at the defense table again and found Pemberton watching the witness closely. He has to see Sheriff Dugan’s discomfort, she thought, but his face seemed pitiless to her, and self-absorbed. It divulged no emotion, nothing despite the smile that she knew was only in the shape of his lips—fixed and accidental, like his birthright. At that moment, he was so unattractive to her with his coddled look, she felt actual revulsion.
The defense attorney, all smiles and sweetness, said he had one question: “Sheriff Dugan, during testimony at Dr. Pemberton’s preliminary hearing, the name Ronnie Patton was mentioned as the person who, and I read from the transcript, ‘had the gun and pointed it out the window.’ Do you recall that?”
“Yes, sir,” Dugan said, looking unflinchingly at the attorney, but not, it seemed to Loretta, with hostility or unfriendliness. He seemed to be making an effort to rally himself to do a good job.
“Given the seriousness of this allegation, has your department taken any steps to apprehend him?”
“Yes, sir. Following that testimony, and as we informed your office when you inquired, we learned that the subject had left North Carolina with several outstanding warrants against him, including our own alleging assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. He left two weeks before the hearing in which he was implicated.”
“And that’s where your investigation ended, with a warrant?”
Dugan nodded.
“Tough keeping law and order out here, is it, Sheriff Dugan?” Laughter rippled through the room.
Loretta suffered for the sheriff because she knew he wasn’t himself and didn’t even look it, shrunken as he was in those clothes, trying to hold back the pain. It seemed to her that the defense attorney in his fancy suit with his good health deliberately puffed himself up every time he went near the stand. Oh, he’s good, she thought.
“We received word just yesterday,” Dugan persevered, but in a lower voice that brought a hush back to the courtroom, “from Phoenix, Arizona, that a man answering Ronnie Patton’s description is being held there on a charge of manslaughter. We haven’t been able to confirm whether this is in fact the same Ronnie Patton, though we are in the process of doing just that. However, even if it proves to be the same man, extradition may be difficult, given the gravity of the charge in Arizona.”
“You couldn’t have found all this out sooner, Sheriff Dugan?”
“We found out as fast as we could, sir. We were right on it.” But the way that attorney had worked it, she saw, the sheriff couldn’t be right on anything.
“You didn’t ask for a continuance when you received this information?”
“Yes, sir, we did, and as I believe you know, it wasn’t granted.”
“Of course it wasn’t! Finally a glimmer of compassion and justice! Here a man’s considerable reputation, not to mention career and livelihood, have been on the line for months, his name has been bandied about and dragged around in the mud like he’s a common criminal, and you just wanted to suddenly continue this case a little longer because you were ‘right on it’ and finally were able to locate a man identified as the actual shooter in this incident, a man whose name you’ve had for months. Now, just what is criminal here? Come now, sheriff.” The attorney walked back to the defense table and sat down, dropping his forehead into his hand and riffling idly through some papers, things so quiet everyone could hear the sound the papers made.
“This is awful,” she whispered to Danny.
“It’s court, baby,” Danny whispered back. “Sheriff knew what he was in for.”
At last, the defense attorney looked up like he was so disheartened by the ugliness and injustice of all that had happened to his client he’d forgotten he had a witness in the stand. “No more questions, Your Honor,” he said, and the dismissive way he said it was so full of contempt that muttering swelled in the crowd behind her, a few people even breaking into laughter. But that attorney knew all along about Patton, Loretta told herself, surprised that she could still be amazed by anything here. It was simple, deliberate humiliation.
The judge was banging his gavel when she became aware that the solicitor had been calling another witness. Soon there was virtually
no other sound in the room. “Mrs. Mary Stacy,” he repeated in the silence. Turning slightly in her chair, Loretta found herself looking in the same direction as all the other people. Reggie, the bailiff, was looking, too. Then, from the far corner, from one of the high seats that looked down on the east door, a woman rose and started making her way carefully down the steep steps, the unsteady click of her shoes on the wood floor punctuating the hush. She was wearing a pretty, knee-length navy suit with white collar and cuffs, and a small white hat such as you might wear to church. She wore short heels, also dark blue. Stunned, it took Loretta a moment. She didn’t buy that suit! was her first thought, and with it came an electric jolt of anger, like some sort of betrayal was coming clear.
She looked again to make certain it was who she thought it was. By that time, the woman was at the gate to the bar, and Reggie was holding it open for her, his smile all oily, the pig.
Loretta recalled the dress she first saw Mary Stacy wearing, the pink dress with white polka dots all over it, the low-cut bodice, the hem reaching only halfway down the woman’s thighs, the flimsy material, the high spike heels, the beautiful legs going to fat above the knees. She remembered the inescapable truth not only of what her eyes had beheld at that preliminary hearing, but finally the truth of the woman herself, something utterly foreign to her until then, something slatternly but attractive somehow, like a scent.
Not dressed for court or church, she remembered thinking, then suppressing the thought and where it inevitably was leading, because she didn’t want to judge anyone by their poverty. She remembered, too, her struggle with the woman’s immodesty and insolence, and the innocence or stupidity and whatever else had been there—remembered her struggle to keep an open mind because she knew she would be stronger for it if she could.
She recalled all that as she found herself clutching the wooden arms of her chair, a new fury suddenly raging through her, another kind of outrage. She’s supposed to be Sheriff Dugan’s witness, our witness! But it was too apparent that Mary Stacy wasn’t anymore. She had been coached, dressed, made demure even, was answering questions politely, “Yes, sir,” or “No, sir,” acting like she could have been in church, her eyes not playing for the solicitor this time, or the audience or the judge, but looking modestly down at her lap sometimes. Look at me! Mary Stacy was saying again, but so differently. And people were, Loretta felt, just as she had felt their response to the defense attorney’s handling of Dugan. And worse, she was looking herself and feeling the confusion between memory and the present moment. She detected no poverty of body or mind in front of her, both of which she knew embarrassed people and made them do unfair things just to get that poverty out of sight. All she saw was a mildly pretty woman with a modest haircut holding her hands on her lap—holding a pair of white gloves, too, good Lord!—trying her best to answer the questions well for the solicitor.
The same questions, the same story, but now it all sounded rehearsed, divorced, disconnected from the person relating it with a look of simple, honest well-being. But if you didn’t know otherwise, how could you tell the difference? How could you ever know? It seemed part of something else, something scripted, but what was the script? Yes, it was the doctor’s car, but she had been drunk, too drunk to be sure where the doctor was, if he was there at all. Three men were in the car, yes, she was certain of that—one driving, and Ronnie Patton another one, the one with the gun, just like she had testified, and another man beside her in the backseat….
No questions from the defense. Nothing. Tears stung Loretta’s eyes. There was a trap here, she just knew. It was all a trap.
Even the solicitor seemed agitated at the quietness of things now, his attempts at oratory and drama falling flat. His sense of futility, or suspicion, or perhaps the wariness one might feel approaching an ambush, sensing it without knowing it for sure, slapped up against the bench like a wave from a fast boat. I will not be shamed by this again! she thought, feeling an old panic. I tried, we tried. She took Danny’s hand.
“Dr. Martin Pemberton.”
Startled—she had forgotten for a moment this was a trial and not just a repeat of the preliminary hearing, that the doctor would testify—she watched him press down on the table, slowly push himself to his feet, then walk to the stand, looking as relaxed and unconcerned as when she first saw him that day. Again the silence in the room was palpable, and she found herself holding her breath, waiting for even the answer to the first question: his name and occupation. The reply was quiet and smooth, not insolent nor impolite nor haughty either, like the look of the man suggested—his birthright, she thought again, without knowing why. She still felt a trap as the solicitor marched on with renewed vigor through that too-deep hush where not even the sound of the birds in the surrounding oak trees intruded: Did he own a car matching the description of the vehicle used that night in April?
“Yes.”
“Really! Was it the same car?”
“Yes.”
The room was stunned. The solicitor had started to ask another question and had to stop himself as the doctor’s answer registered; he couldn’t hide his surprise. My God, it all seems so easy. Why does this feel terrible and false?
“Dr. Pemberton, were you in the car at the time the shooting into the Carvers’ car occurred?”
“I believe so.”
Again the room held its breath with Loretta.
“You believe so? Yes or no?” She saw that the solicitor’s astonishment was not only that of a man not in charge, but that of a man with no illusion he was.
“Yes.”
“You were driving?”
“No.”
“Where in your Cadillac Eldorado automobile were you?”
“In the backseat next to Mrs. Stacy, I believe. I was too drunk to drive, you see. I was too drunk to do much of anything that night, I’m ashamed to say, especially not the right thing. Just as I’m ashamed I didn’t come forward sooner, too, and so have cost people much more pain. But it was shame that kept me from coming forward, realizing that I, especially as a man who holds a public trust—”
“Wait a minute! You’re saying you are guilty?”
“Guilty of being in the car. I couldn’t tell you who else was in there for sure, not who was driving, not even Mrs. Stacy there—I have to take her word for it.”
XLIV
Drusilla
Finally they got him where it hurt. They found the hurt that made him so passionate about being fair and taking care of people, trying to give them the justice they sought and deserved, even when he stood to lose, the hurt of never being able to forgive himself.
It was shame that had driven him out of Alabama all those years before. Despair, too, because he loved something, the law, so much it drove him crazy when he lost faith in it. But shame is a terrible thing. It makes those who are ashamed want to be like those who shame them, to feel upright again and have that power, whatever form it takes. It is instinct, like an animal’s, to be like those who shame us; they have such authority, they must be right. It’s even worse when they say it’s God’s doing, not just theirs, like that’s something a real God would do. We don’t even think about it, we don’t even question the rightness when we’re shamed, because we feel so bad. Questioning it, looking it in the eye, not imitating those who shame us—that’s the hardest thing in the world to do. But that’s what Charlie did.
It was the morning after the Pemberton trial. The kitchen windows were open on a warm autumn day, the sun shining bright through the thinning leaves, all that yellow drifting to the ground. Drusilla was sitting at the table lost in her thoughts, the fresh-poured coffee going cold in her cup. She was angry, angry at the Pembertons of the world, and the trial lawyers and the judges and the fools who listened to them and let their loyalties and perceptions be manipulated. But she knew that was the way things really were, that Charlie had always known it, too, that he and she had never been naive so much as maybe a little too optimistic or idealistic. But how else could
one live? She’d never felt so powerless as she did sitting at that table that sunny morning, and probably never loved Charlie more. To her mind, it was that long-ago hurt that had tempered him and made him good.
Charlie always held grief close. When Doc Willis died, the man he trusted the most after his uncle, he’d been real quiet, his eyes reddening a few moments at the supper table when he told her the news. They’d known it was coming, but Charlie said it was the first time the world felt like it would never fill up for him again.
His uncle’s death was something much worse. They were in bed in the cabin in the mountains when he told her. They weren’t married yet. Though they’d talked a lot since they met, the talk had changed since they started sleeping together, gone deeper, like with no clothes on they couldn’t hide from each other. No man had ever taken her there before, as if what they were doing with their bodies was spiritual.
They’d just made love, and he was lying in her arms, his head on her breasts. Suddenly he rolled away and lay looking at the ceiling for a long time. Finally she reached over and stroked his face with her fingers, saying nothing. “I’ve got to tell you about this,” he said finally, his voice different from anything she’d heard, subdued but not gentle at all. But not violent either. She knew he was letting her in on something he was saying to himself. “I never told anyone, I’ve been so ashamed.”
A huge sigh boiled up and out of him like muck from the bottom of his soul into the deathly silence that had settled between them, and suddenly she was afraid. For the first time in her life, she felt all the pain and helplessness of caring. She’d grown bound to this man, and whatever he was about to say, she’d have to live with it.
