But it wouldn’t be easy.
“Let’s get this beating going,” I yell enthusiastically.
“Time’s a-wasting!”
As if in self-defense, early in the set, she drills the ball squarely into my chest the one time I am so foolish as to approach the net. At least she didn’t blind me.
“Sorry,” she says, her voice concerned.
“I wasn’t aiming at you.”
Unhappily, I think, I’m not aiming at you either.
But it is the innocent who sometimes get hit.
“I’ll try to use my racket the next time,” I say, glancing up at the group of bystanders who are watching from the top of the hill by the clubhouse.
They seem to be enjoying the match.
“I thought I’d get more bounce off my breastbone, but it’s got too much padding.”
Twenty minutes later the slaughter finally ends. I have won one game this set, a measure of pity that Amy couldn’t resist. My teeth clenched in a pleasant smile, I hold out my hand as I come to the net at the end. When my old girlfriend Rainey used to thrash me at Ping-Pong, at least it was behind closed doors. I tell myself public humiliation is good for the soul. Amy grins and pats my shoulder like you see the winners do on TV at Wimbledon.
“Nice workout.”
“For me,” I grumble. My shirt, underwear, and shorts are drenched with sweat.
“Next time we won’t play on court one,” I say, looking at our fans, all men.
“Would you and Jessie like to come over to dinner tonight?” she asks, shoving her racket into her bag.
Maybe that’s been my problem: I don’t have a fancy nylon bag.
“Sure,” I say, rubbing my chest.
“You and Jessie can finish what’s left of me.”
“Did I hurt you?” she asks innocently as we walk off the court.
“Just my pride,” I grumble, rumbling with the latch at the gate.
“You shouldn’t have given me that one game. I’m not a child about to
burst into tears because I lost.”
“Oh, you’re not?” Amy laughs, nudging me with her shoulder.
“The way your lip was stuck out at the end I wasn’t sure.”
Ha. Ha. Ha.
“You’re so damn consistent.” “Just like Tommy Ting,” Amy says, guiding me around the fence as if I were blind as well as old.
“You make it all sound so fascinating. Maybe I can drive over to Bear Creek with you one of these days. I’d like to meet some of those people.
The old ladies could tell me what you were like as a little boy. You were probably a crybaby then, too.”
Great. She could meet Angela. That would be a delightful conversation.
“Just very sensitive,” I say.
“If you’re spoiled rotten, the least little thing upsets you.”
She laughs, not knowing how pampered I was the first fourteen years of my life. Th quintessential Southern male child. Waited on hand and foot. It’s a wonder I learned how to change my clothes. Is the reality of the adult male too much to deal with? Until my father started going crazy when I was eleven, I had my mother’s full attention.
According to Marty, she might as well not have existed. As a child I’d
come down the stairs into the kitchen and Mother would be waiting like my personal servant to cook my breakfast.
The sports pages of The Commercial Appeal out of Memphis would be beside my plate, and she would pour me a cup of hot tea and watch me sweeten it with three teaspoons of sugar. Then she would vacuum my room and make my bed.
No wonder I’m a crybaby. What male wouldn’t be in perpetual mourning for that kind of worship?
I persuade Amy to cook over at my house, which doesn’t take a lot of effort, now that I finally have heat. I suspect that she would prefer for Jessie to shit on my rug instead other own. We stop off at Harvest Foods and I pay for some angel-hair pasta and stuff for salad. In the store we must seem as married as any other couple, but last night during dinner and afterward I couldn’t get Angela out of my mind and was too quiet. Despite two kids, a husband, and thirty years in the Arkansas Delta, Angela’s basic personality hasn’t changed.
Circumstances and time have made her more conservative, but I put myself in the same category. I pretended I was preoccupied by the memories the trip had stirred up. My pretending didn’t prevent me from making love to Amy last night and again this morning.
After dinner Jessie lies on the couch with her head in Amy’s lap. Like her master, she knows a soft touch when she finds one. I click on 60
Minutes. Mike Wallace looks older every week.
According to Amy, her mother saw him on a trip to New York and complained that, in person, he was a wisp of a man, a virtual scarecrow. More power to him. I have begun to like old people on TV.
Hugh Downs. Bring ‘em all back.
Amy reaches over to the table and takes the remote and turns off the TV.
“What’s wrong?”
she asks.
“You’ve hardly said two words to me since you’ve come back from Bear Creek.”
I would very much like to avoid this conversation, but I don’t see any way around it. The trouble is, I don’t know what I want or even what I want to say. I can rationalize all I want about the reasons why this May-December business won’t work, but until I met Angela again it was working.
There was a spark between Amy and me that was real. I care deeply about Amy, and I know she loves me. Somehow though, ever since I went to eastern Arkansas it is as if I am being drawn away from her, and I seem helpless to be able to do anything about it. Certainly, it is not that I know with utter certainty I have’re met the love of my life.
Though I can’t put my finger on the reason, I do not feel entirely comfortable with Angela.
What I do know is that it is terribly unfair to Amy to pretend everything is normal between us.
“I should tell you I met my old girlfriend over there,” I begin miserably.
I am sitting in my recliner since Jessie is occupying my usual space on the couch.
Amy doesn’t even raise her eyes as she strokes Jessie’s head.
“Goodness, that was quick. I knew something like that was going on.
How long?”
She doesn’t understand.
“No!” I yelp.
“I haven’t talked to her in thirty years.”
Amy looks up and gives me a brittle smile.
“But she’s divorced and wanted to talk about old times, huh?”
I rub the arm of the chair.
“Her husband recently died. She’s got two boys in college and now she’s about to lose her farm. Things are pretty tough.”
Amy strokes Jessie’s muzzle with the knuckles of her right hand.
“How long has he been dead?
Two days?”
I laugh, despite myself.
“Since November.”
“What a nice consolation present you were,” Amy says brightly, looking up at me.
“Do you think you’ll fit in over there now? It’s been a long time. But I guess with your mocha-colored wife dead it’s safe for you to go back home.”
Damn! Amy’s fingernails have grown an inch in an instant. She knows more about me than I do myself. Trying not to let this conversation get out of hand, I busy myself by picking up a dog hair from the arm of the chair. It is becoming obvious that Jessie uses the furniture more than I do.
“It’s not like what you think. She’s very confused and bitter. I don’t understand her,” I confess.
“Oh, I bet you’re trying real hard,” Amy says, her voice strained with anger.
“And to think I was feeling sorry for you-all alone in a tiny motel
room. I’m glad I didn’t drive over and surprise myself. What’s it like after three decades? Is it like riding a bicycle? You remember a mole here, a scar there, what she liked, what you liked?”
Though I deserve this beating, I�
��m not ready to end my relationship with Amy.
“I think you’re going a little overboard,” I say, not able to admit how attracted I am to Angela.
“We’ve had a couple of meals together.”
“Breakfast in bed?” my girlfriend asks, gently moving Jessie’s muzzle off her lap and standing up.
“Did you tell her about me?” she says, beginning to cry.
“Your little young-enough to-be your-daughter fuck? I can hear you, Gideon.
She’s just a kid, but I can’t drive her off with a stick. What’s her name? I’d like to know her name.”
Amy is little short of hysterical. She knows I haven’t denied a word.
“Angela. For God’s sake, she’s almost fifty years old,” I stammer irrationally.
“You don’t understand.”
“Angela! How divine for you! She’s probably hornier than a March hare.”
Madder, I think she means, but this isn’t the time to correct her.
Jessie has gotten down from the couch and stands beside Amy. I slap my leg for her to come to me.
“Here, girl.” In response, she pushes her muzzle against Amy’s hand.
“Look, I’m going to take Jessie to live with me until this summer when Sarah comes home,” Amy announces.
“You’re obviously going to be too busy to take care of her. I’ll give her back then, I promise. She and I can commiserate together.”
“Don’t act like this!” I plead.
“I don’t even know her.”
“You will.”
I rub my face as if to shake myself awake from a nightmare. Will I ever know Angela? Not like I know Amy.
“Don’t leave!” I plead, as Amy reaches for Jessie’s leash on the floor beside her.
“You’re not supposed to have pets in your apartment.”
I should say that I love her, but I’m not sure I do.
“They don’t care,” Amy says, probably realizing I missed my cue deliberately.
“Other people have pets. The couple on the first floor do.”
This is ridiculous. She doesn’t need a dog.
Still, it would be a help. I will be traveling so much to Bear Creek I really won’t have time to take care of an animal. My pragmatism at this moment appalls me. I get to my feet.
“You have to promise me that as soon as you realize this isn’t working out, you’ll bring her back.”
Amy clips Jessie’s leash to her collar.
“I promise,” she says, “but you’ll need to remember I’m pretty slow at figuring things out.”
I am, too. And what I need is time. Part of me wants to take Amy into my arms and swear everything will be fine, but I can’t do that.
“Let me get her dog food,” I say, and go out to the garage to get it.
But when I return my dog and girlfriend are gone. Sick at heart, I open a beer and wash the dishes, wishing I had lied. Amy has been the best thing in my life for a long time. Still, I feel a distant odd sense of relief.
At precisely three o’clock Monday, with me standing by his side and his wife and twenty onlookers in the spectator section. Class Bledsoe enters his formal plea of not guilty. After he sits down, Dick Dickerson comes forward (Paul had his arraignment last week), and Judge Johnson, over both our objections, sets the trial for the week of May 26. I complain that I won’t have enough time to prepare my client’s defense in a case like this, but Judge Johnson looks at me with a bemused air. Since he was just elected last year, he has no discernible track record. In private practice in Helena until he was elected, according to Dick, Johnson was by himself and like most small town practitioners, took everything that walked in the door. When I protest, he gives me a withering look.
“You don’t have the burden of proving your case, Mr. Page, do you, sir?” he says, with excessive courtesy.
“Doesn’t the prosecutor have the burden of proving his case, and you merely have to show reasonable doubt?”
I ignore his sarcasm and argue, “Of course, your honor, but the prosecution has worked on this case for six months. I’d like to have at least that long.”
Beside me, Dick tells Johnson he has a heavy trial schedule in the next two months, and adds, “Judge, in order to do an adequate job of investigating this case, we’ll have to track down everyone who was in the plant that day. It is my understanding not every one of the workers is still there.”
Johnson, a small, gray-haired man in his fifties who seems entirely
comfortable being the first black judge in the Delta, shrugs.
“I would imagine Mr. Butterfield has whatever information there is available on the whereabouts of each worker in his file, which he is obligated to turn over to you. Since I have been judge in this district, I have observed that it is his practice to make his file available to the defense without a motion having to be filed. Do you anticipate problems in this regard?”
“Well, I don’t know, your honor …” Dick begins, but the judge cuts him off.
“If you have problems locating witnesses, then you may file a motion closer to trial, but I warn you that I will not grant a continuance unless counsel has shown appropriate diligence and has shown he has complied with the criminal rules of procedure.” He consults his calendar, sets what is known as an omnibus hearing for April 4 to hear any motions that may be pending at that time, and abruptly calls the next case.
As Dick and I walk out of the courtroom, which has all the charm of a bus station with its lime green seats, it is hard not to wonder if we were being picked on because we are white.
There is no reason to schedule a trial with so many witnesses this quickly. I whisper to Dick, “Did you know he was going to be like this?”
Dick doesn’t reply until we are out of the courthouse.
When we are coming down the steps, he mutters, “He and Butterfield are
old friends from Helena. Whatever he can do for him, he will. In civil cases he’s reasonable most of the time. But if Butterfield ever makes it big in politics, which could easily happen now with all the whites pulling out, Johnson’s chances of making it to the federal judiciary go way up. This area of the state has always been neglected when it comes to receiving our fair share of judgeships.”
I realize that Dick is talking about himself.
Despite his reputation, he has never had much political pull. He invites me over to his office across the street, but I tell him that I will have to call him later in the week. I have to drive back tonight to Blackwell County to get ready for a two-day child custody trial that I thought was going to be settled but has blown up over the weekend, and before I head back I promised Bledsoe I would come see him. With his practice primarily civil litigation, Dick understands settlements coming apart at the last moment, and says for me to call him when I get that behind me. As he crosses the square to go back to his office, I realize that he is still convinced that we are allies in this case, which is fine with me. After today’s hearing, I suppose in some ways we are.
At the detention center Class is not at all depressed with the judge’s decision to set the trial the last week in May.
“I jus’ want to get it over with,” he says, emphatically.
“I’m sick of this place.”
As bad as the old jail may have been, I doubt if it had this much security. Here, separated as we are, Bledsoe can’t even shake hands with
me, much less hug his wife. It is hard not to like this guy. As he tells me how much he has begun to miss Lattice, I think of a statistic I’ve read and wonder if it can possibly be true: a million black males locked up all over the United States. It is a mind-boggling number. Is this the only way blacks and whites can live together in this country?
I wonder how many of them are innocent.
Other than Willie’s blood on his knife, there is no physical evidence linking Class to the murder. If he had the money, I would hire a forensic expert to tell the jury why there were no hair, flesh, or clothing fibers found under Willi
e’s fingernails.
The only bloody footprints leading away from the spot where he died were Doris Ting’s, apparently made when she discovered the body. I’d also like to get an investigator to do a thorough background check on each of the individuals who worked at the plant. One of them could easily have something in his or her past that could be useful to us.
Here, as in too much of life, you get what you pay for and no more.
We talk at length about the events of the day of the murder, which occurred on a Tuesday, September 21, but it is painfully obvious that Class has no memories of that afternoon that can help him. Though I don’t know if it will cut any ice with Butterfield at this point, I urge him to consider taking a polygraph, but he is disturbingly adamant on the subject.
“Like I already said, I don’t trust ‘em,” he says, his voice more stubborn than I’ve ever heard it.
“In a case like yours,” I explain, “the defendant they really want is the one who arranged the murder.”
Class pushes his hands inside his pockets.
“I’m not gonna take no test.”
My heart sinks a little at his intransigence. The last time a defendant of mine refused to take a polygraph test it turned out he was lying. It sounds as if Class has already talked to a lawyer long before he ever contacted me. I ask him if he consulted anyone else, but he claims he has not.
He insists that he never had a conversation with anyone over the telephone from the plant office about having received some money.
“If I’d a killed ole Willie, I’d have to be dumb to call someone from there,” Class argues, staring hard at the concrete floor.
“Not necessarily,” I respond.
“You would have had to think that nobody was around.” Actually, I agree with him. Criminals do amazingly stupid things all the time, and that’s why some of you get caught, I think, my frustration growing.
“Why would the bookkeeper make up a story like that?”
I ask, flipping through the file to find her statement.
“I don’t know,” Class says, his voice getting more stubborn by the moment.
“Maybe she killed Willie, but I doubt it. She’s all right.”
I make the speech I make to all my criminal defendants-that I can’t help them if they lie to me-but it is water rolling off a duck’s back.
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