“No, I did not!” Darla shouts at me, her bosom heaving under her dress.
“But Mrs. Tate you did tell me and Eddie Ting a few weeks ago that you had been going through the books and found out that a meat salesman by the name of Muddy Jessup had been stealing from the plant by altering the price sheets?”
“Yes, I did,” Darla says, her voice high.
“And you suggested I try to find him, but when I did, it involved only a few hundred dollars, isn’t that a fact?”
Darla purses her lips.
“That’s all we could prove. It may have been more.”
“Don’t you find it a little strange that you caught the changes in the price sheets but not the changes in the receipts from Dixie Farms?” “No,” she says, angrily, “it never occurred to me to check them.”
Knowing I will have to accept whatever answer she gives me, I ask, trying to seem as confident as I can, “Mrs. Tate, do you recall telling me that your sons have worked for Paul Taylor during the last two summers?”
For all Darla knows, they are waiting outside the courtroom to testify She blinks rapidly, and says, “Sure.”
“Just one moment, your honor,” I say. Hoping the judge won’t stop me, I walk over to Butterfield’s table and with my back to her, nod as if I am getting an instruction. Melvin looks at me as if I am crazy.
I come back to the podium and rumble with my papers for a moment before asking, “Now, your sons haven’t worked for him since the summertime, is that right?”
Darla has begun ever so slightly to lean back against the witness chair as if she is bracing herself.
“That’s correct.”
My heart pounding, I act as if I am being coy with the next question and mumble it but speak loud enough for her and the jury to hear, “Do you know if they saw Mr. Taylor in January or February of this year?”
Darla cocks her chin slightly, but just for the briefest of instants her eyes track to Paul’s table and then back to me. She is taking too long to answer, or I hope she is.
“I have no idea.”
I smile as if I know the answer and then look back over at Butterfield and nod. He frowns, but I can tell by his eyes that he knows what I am doing. I pause for as long as I dare and then back to Darla and ask, “Mrs. Tate, did Mr. Taylor talk to you about murdering Willie Ting?”
“No!” she answers, shrilly.
“He did not!”
I wheel around and make a show of looking at Dick, who is whispering urgently in Paul’s ear. I turn back to the judge and say that I have no more questions, and before Dick can get up, I point out that it is almost noon and ask the court to break for the noon recess.
Johnson consults his own watch instead of the clock in the courtroom and says the court will be in recess until one. As soon as the bailiff opens the door that leads into his chambers, I walk quickly to the witness
stand before Dick can get to Darla.
“If you know what’s good for you,” I whisper into her left ear, “you’ll follow me right now out this courtroom and to my car out back, so we can talk.”
Darla looks past me at Paul, who I know is watching her.
“He’s gonna get off,” I continue saying, “and you’ll end up in jail.” Darla says nothing, and I head out the door, and go around back to the Blazer, which, like the other thirty or so vehicles sinking into the sweltering asphalt, is now directly in the sun. I climb in and roll down the windows, while the longest minute of my life passes, but I begin to breathe again as Darla comes around the corner. Her face is a mask, but I don’t give her time to bullshit me.
“Bonner and Butterfield will be coming after you, Darla,” I say as soon as she shuts the door.
“They’re not stupid, and you know it.
You’ve got just enough time to make a deal with Butterfield, but you better do it now. Paul can’t be tried again if this case ends today, and you won’t have anything to bargain with.” She says nothing, but looks at me with pure hatred in her eyes.
“It’s Paul who Butterfield wants, not you. He wants to run for office so bad he can taste it, and sending Paul to jail will put him on the map. But you could be the first woman executed in Arkansas if you don’t act immediately.”
Following her gaze, I turn my head, and sure enough there is Paul, brazen as a whore, standing at the corner of the building waiting to talk to her.
“Paul’s spent his life sneering at people like you, and if you let him, he’ll do it again.”
Her temples already beginning to sweat in the heat, she brushes back a lock of wispy gray hair from her forehead. After a moment, she shrugs slightly, and I realize she isn’t going to say anything to me. I look back and see that Paul has disappeared.
“Wait here, and I’ll go tell Butterfield you want to talk to him.”
After a long moment, she raises a hand to wipe a tear out of the corner of her right eye. Until this moment, I wasn’t certain he was in on it.
That is good enough for me. I sprint back into the courthouse to look for Butterfield, whom I find upstairs in his office behind his desk opening a sack lunch, the Arkansas criminal code open before him.
Pushing the sack to one side, he smirks as if he is not at all surprised to see me. I sit down across from him and tell him that Darla is waiting to talk to him in the Blazer.
Melvin looks past me at the closed door behind my chair.
“So this case just comes down to good old-fashioned racism, after all, huh?”
I stare at him. He must mean that Mary Kiley lied to the sheriff.
“Call it what you want,” I say, “but it is obvious she resented the hell out of him and would have tried to protect Adolf Hitler if he had been out there.”
As if he has all the time in the world. Butterfield tilts his chair back and asks, “Assuming you’re right, what was Tate’s motive?”
“Money, probably,” I guess.
“She didn’t say, nor has she admitted anything to me, but she was trying to raise two boys on a secretary’s salary.
Taylor probably got to know how desperate she was through the boys. He somehow learned she was stealing from the plant and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse since Willie was about to find out. The timing for Paul was perfect.”
The prosecutor rocks back and forth in his chair with his hands behind his head and thinks.
“So your idea is, together this Tate woman and Taylor,” he muses, “picked the easiest and the dumbest nigger in the plant to frame?”
I lean forward on my knees. Class is more decent than dumb, but I won’t argue the point.
“And he picked the dumbest lawyer in the state to represent him,” I
admit.
“I’ve had my own agenda so long in this case I’ve been lucky to find the courthouse.”
Butterfield abruptly stops rocking and says, “So I’ve heard.”
For a long moment we sit staring at each other. Then, taking a small Sorry tape recorder from his desk, Butterfield stands up, his lanky frame uncurling as if it were made of rubber.
“Hell,” he complains laconically, “I’m not gonna get any lunch.”
After nervously gulping down a turkey sandwich and a Coke at a convenience store off the square, I wander around the courthouse hoping to spot Butterfield and Darla. They are not in the Blazer.
His office door is shut, but I do not see a light coming from it. I should be sitting with Class, but we have gone over his story so many times that I can’t stay seated. So nervous he can barely speak. Class is going to make a terrible witness.
He will sound guilty, and there is nothing I can do about it.
I walk outside and stand on the front steps.
Paul and Dick are nowhere to be seen either. I have looked for Angela, but she has probably walked home, a mere three blocks away, for lunch.
I have not talked to her for the last week, and now, I wonder how all of
this will affect her.
What does she really kno
w? Has she been lying to me all this time? Is she still in love with Paul? I have tried to put her out of my mind, but now it is impossible. What a mistake it was to become involved with her! Now I am hooked. Gloomily, I realize the case is out of my hands. I walk back inside, knowing that if he wants to, on closing argument, Butterfield can brush away the testimony of Eddie Ting and Mary Kiley in two minutes. Darla has admitted nothing, and unless she does. Class is headed for Cummins, and my anger and stupidity will have helped put him there.
At five minutes after one, Melvin Butterfield is nowhere to be seen, and Judge Johnson, ready to resume the testimony, is fuming. The courtroom is packed to the gills, and I look over at Paul and Dick, who are sitting quietly, giving nothing away by their expressions. Just as the judge orders his bailiff to go look for the prosecutor, Melvin bursts through the side door and Johnson immediately holds him in contempt of court for being late and fines him fifty dollars.
So distracted that he doesn’t seem to have heard him, Melvin fidgets with the buttons on his suit coat until Johnson asks him sarcastically if he is finally ready to proceed.
Nervous for the first time since I’ve known him, Melvin announces, “Your honor, the state moves to dismiss all charges against the defendant Class Bledsoe!”
I look over at Paul, who grips the table with both hands. In the courtroom, the blacks begin to yell and clap, and over the noise, Dick,
his face red and angry, gets to his feet and demands a mistrial.
Beside me. Class, a dazed look on his face, tugs at my sleeve.
“Does this mean I’m free?”
Johnson bangs his gavel repeatedly and says that the court is in recess and orders the lawyers back into his chambers. I tell Class it sounds like it to me and that I will be back in a few minutes.
Inside Johnson’s chambers, the tension is thick enough to cut with a knife. Dick can hardly contain himself as we arrange ourselves around the judge’s table and wait for his court reporter to set up. If looks could kill, I’d be dead as a doornail.
Yet I have done nothing unusual or improper except come to my senses.
My guess is that Paul has been lying to him all this time, but I may never know the truth. Finally, the judge says formally to the prosecutor, “What exactly is going on, Mr. Butterfield?”
Melvin, his right hand inside his pocket presumably holding his tape recorder, tells the judge, “The state has credible evidence that Class Bledsoe was being framed by Darla Tate, who has agreed to testify against Mr. Taylor.”
I would have loved to have heard that conversation.
I can only assume that Darla knew that once the spotlight was going to be on her, the jig was up. Dick, his jaw working furiously, yelps, “The
prosecution has already rested its case.”
Butterfield, now suddenly relaxed, takes his hand out of his pocket and brings both palms together under his chin.
“Any witness can change her story,” he says confidently, “on cross-examination.”
I sit back and watch Johnson as he irritably drums his fingers on the table in front of him. No judge likes to declare a mistrial, but he knows he may be reversed if he doesn’t give Dick an opportunity to prepare a new defense.
“I’ll grant a motion, Mr. Dickerson, for a mistrial.”
Dick nods, but from the expression on his face, he knows Paul’s goose is cooked. When we walk back into the courtroom, I give Class a thumbs-up sign. For the first time since I can remember, a smile splits his face from ear to ear.
After Johnson announces that he has granted a mistrial and that Class is no longer a defendant in the case, there is another outburst, but Johnson gavels the spectators into silence and explains that the charges against Paul are still outstanding.
With his usual dignity, he thanks the jury for its service and allows it to leave the courtroom first.
While they are filing out. Class touches my arm and whispers, “I didn’t think you knew what the hell you were doin’, but I guess you did.”
I laugh, realizing how incredibly relieved I feel.
“It took a while, didn’t it?” I kid him.
As I get up to go explain to the Tings what has happened, I hope that Class will never understand how lucky he has been. Outside, in the hall, I find Tommy and Connie, who, as I expected, is enraged.
“Well, you did it, didn’t you?” she says, hissing the words and tears streaming down her face.
“You got him off!”
I put my finger to my lips and mouth the words, “It was Darla who killed your father, she’s going to testify against Paul.”
Tommy frowns, but then nods in understanding.
“Darla must have lost her nerve,” he says to her sister.
“If she had kept her mouth shut, they would have gotten away with it.”
Connie, looking considerably older today than her forty-nine years, shakes her head.
“It’s not over. You wait and see. They’ll get off somehow.”
Not the skeptic his sister is. Tommy shakes my hand and thanks me, and as he does, a photographer from the Commercial Appeal out of Memphis
snaps our picture. As a reporter comes forward, I wonder if in six months Tommy will have any regrets.
On my way out of town I resist the urge to stop by Angela’s. I did not see her on my way out of the courthouse. There will be time to sort through all of that. I do not trust myself or her enough to talk to her. It is not inconceivable that I could be called as a witness if Paul goes to trial.
Right now, I’m just relieved to be leaving Bear Creek in one piece.
EPILOGUE.
Christmas morning I open my present from Sarah and smile. Dad’s Own Cook Book.
“Why didn’t you give me this seven years ago?” I complain.
I glance at the introduction. The author promises not to treat the reader like an idiot, although the book, he promises, is written so an idiot can read and understand it. A book after my own heart. Ever since her mother died, all we’ve done is open cans and defrost meat and call it cooking.
Sarah, wearing her Banana Republic sweater that I picked out for her, replies.
“It’s not true,” she says, stroking Jessie’s muzzle, “that an old dog can’t learn some new tricks.”
As if on cue, Jessie grabs up a rawhide bone and shakes it proudly. She has finally learned to use the dog door. A runner, not a thinker, but that’s okay. Her master doesn’t learn very fast either. Sarah grabs up our Polaroid and snaps Jessie’s picture.
“Jessie, say ‘dog biscuit.”” Hearing her name, Jessie walks over to her.
There was a time when I wondered if Amy was going to keep her as a memento.
The phone rings. I take it and wish whoever is calling a politically incorrect “Merry Christmas.”
“Mr. Page?”
It is my “little brother,” Harold Ritter. Harold is thirteen, black, from the projects, “Needle Park,” and has the sweetest smile on a kid I’ve ever seen. Dan wouldn’t let me back out on my promise to join One-on-One.
“Harold,” I say, “did Santa Claus come last night?” “Thank you for the watch,” he says, dutifully.
“What time you comin’ by to git me?”
The two of us are going to see the movie Toy Story. Sarah will visit her friends.
“A little before two,” I tell him. At six we are invited over to Angela’s for Christmas dinner with her boys.
“Wish your mother a Merry Christmas for me.” “Okay^he says solemnly and hangs up.
I put down the phone, wondering if Harold will have a chance to grow up. There is so much gang activity in Blackwell County it is spooky.
His mother, who desperately wanted him to be in the One-on-One program, is on welfare. The best thing she could do for Harold is to move to a desert island for the next ten years. Since she can’t do that, I’m supposed to take up the slack.
Right.
“Dad,” Sarah says, as I am about to head out the door a few minutes
later to take Jessie over to the park to do her business, “do you think you and Angela will ever get married? You seem to really care about her. I like her, too.”
I wonder what my daughter would think about her if she knew as much about Angela as I do.
Since she moved over here in September into an apartment close to the river (only about a mile from me as the crow flies), I have unsuccessfully tried to keep my distance from her, but the holidays are always difficult.
“This is just dinner.”
“Just checking,” my daughter says casually.
“I can tell she really likes you.”
It helps to have your main competition serving a life sentence. Jessie and I cross the street into the park, which many days, but not this one quite yet, is crisscrossed by mountain bikers, solitary walkers, dogs of all persuasion, and their purported best friends. It is easy going this time of the year, the shrubs and trees having shed their evidence that they had thrived during a long spring and hot summer.
I slip the leash from Jessie’s throat. She likes to nose around in the brush but never lets me get too far out of her sight. Sarah has probably told her that I shouldn’t be allowed to stray too far from home. Not a bad idea. Bear Creek was, as it turned out, a long way.
Angela. How can I be so attracted to a woman who would have an affair while her husband of thirty years lay dying? I’m not sure if she is a monster or one of the most attractive women I’ve ever known. If she tells me tonight that she has been lying and is still in love with Paul I won’t bat an eye. For all I really know, if Paul hadn’t pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in order to be eligible for parole, she might still be living in Bear Creek waiting for the right moment to slip off to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. Once people lie, you never know if they are telling the truth.
Of course, we all lie, and if not to each other, then to ourselves. All those years I carried a grudge against Paul and his father because I didn’t want to admit how screwed up my own family had become. I thought I was so clear-eyed about my past, and I didn’t have a clue.
Thank God Paul didn’t have a trial. His plea agreement let Angela’s secrets stay secret. The fortunate thing about guilty pleas is that the real story never comes out. I will always wonder how Paul convinced Darla Tate to actually slit another human being’s throat, especially one who had been so good to her. If she hadn’t felt so much guilt, she could have pulled it off. Poor Darla.
Blind Judgement g-5 Page 31
