Shade eased the car to the side of the road, hoping to watch the scene for a few moments before he approached the cabin, but as soon as he cut the motor, the children stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at the stranger. With a sigh of resignation, Shade grabbed his camera and clambered out of the car to make friends with the natives.
As he approached them, the children did not move or acknowledge his half-hearted wave. They stood as still as deer in a twilight pasture, watching him with stony eyes in expressionless faces. They were blond and thin, with sharp cheekbones and deep-set blue eyes. The girl was a head taller than the boy, who, judging from the resemblance, was her brother. The camera would work wonders with their angular features, but, while they were handsome enough, they didn’t look particularly exotic. They wore shabby cloth coats and knitted caps, just like the ones you’d see on working-class children in New Jersey or Brooklyn or Maine, which was a pity, because he was hoping for something more outlandish to highlight their rural origins. Still, they were photogenic and their cabin was squalid in a picturesque way. Given all this serendipity, the children’s ordinary modern clothes might be the easiest detail to fix.
By the time he reached the children, he had come to a decision. They were standing as still as snowmen themselves, but they were tense, as if one word from him might sending them running for cover. “Howdy, folks. Feels mighty cold to me out here, but it’s not cold enough for your friend there, I see.” He nodded toward the remains of the dirt-streaked snowman.
This sally was met with the same unblinking stares. Finally the small boy stuck out his chin and said, “This here’s our land.”
“I know. I came to talk to you. They call me Shade. And what are your names?”
“I’m James, after my daddy, but I go by Jim. She’s Helena.”
Shade whistled. “That’s a mouthful! Is it your mama’s name?”
Almost imperceptibly she shook her head. “After the English princess.”
Shade digested this information. A family that named children after members of the royal family was perhaps to be reckoned with. He’d better get the picture quickly, before any adults turned up to see what was going on. Solemnly he shook hands with young Jim. “See, I’m a photographer, and I’m driving around taking pictures. And I thought I’d see if you’d be interested.”
The children glanced at each other, and then Helena said, “What are you selling? Pictures?”
Shade felt a twinge of admiration, a distant echo of his own rural upbringing. Nobody was going to swindle these two cautious youngsters without a fight. He hoped their native caution would serve them well when they grew up. In general, they were right, of course. Well-dressed strangers in rural areas usually did mean trouble. They’d try to buy the mineral rights to your land for pennies an acre, and then come back some day and make it a wasteland. Or they’d offer you a dollar for your grandmother’s spinning wheel and sell it in the city for fifty times that much. Maybe things weren’t as perilous for them in this place as they had been for their Scottish ancestors, when strangers burned homes and murdered the family. But the habit of caution was bred in the bone, and he knew too much about the world to think they should do away with it.
“Why, I’m not selling anything, missy,” he told the hard-faced girl. “If anything, I’m buying. It would be worth a couple of shiny new Liberty dimes to me if I could get the two of you to pose for me on the porch there. That where you live?”
Young Jim shook his head. “Naw. Our great-grammaw lives here. She’s eighty-one. We live down the road back the way you came. Are you wanting us to go home for the picture taking?”
Shade remembered the house he had passed on the way down from the paved road. It wasn’t large, but it was fairly new, well-kept and freshly painted white with green shutters. “I think it would be less trouble if you stayed right here,” he said, thinking quickly. “The light is very good here. I was thinking you might stand up there on the porch.”
He walked them over to the sagging wooden porch, whose steps were two flattened boulders set one above the other on the sloping ground. As they climbed up on the porch, Shade said, as if he had just thought of it, “Say, I’ve just had a dandy idea for this picture of mine. You say your great-grandma lives here? Do you supposed she’d have any old-timey clothes tucked away somewhere? The sort of thing you might play dress-up in?”
The boy hesitated, and looked up at his stern-faced sister. To forestall her reply, Shade added quickly, “ ’Course I’d have to pay you another dime for your trouble if you’d be so kind as to dress up.”
“There’s an old trunk out in the shed,” said Jim quickly, before his sister could object. He pointed to a small wooden outbuilding fifty yards away in a grove of bare trees. Near it was a henhouse and a fenced-in chicken run.
“Well, let’s go see what we can find in that trunk,” said Shade. “Lead the way, Jim.”
A quarter of an hour later, Jim and Princess Helena, as Shade had taken to calling her, had changed into ancient outfits from the trunk in the shed, transforming them from ordinary modern children into forlorn ghosts from the American frontier. In worn overalls and checked shirt, Jim could have posed for a Tom Sawyer illustration while Helena was unrecognizable in a face-shading poke bonnet and a full-length pioneer calico print dress. The clothes were too big for them, making their slender bodies look emaciated.
Shade told them to lean against the porch railings, and then he stepped back into the yard so that he could get part of the cabin in the background of the photograph. “Now, you mustn’t smile,” he told them, peering through the lens.
“Why not?” said Jim.
Because I want you to look poor and miserable. “Oh, well, you’re dressed like pioneers. Pretend the Indians are attacking.”
“Should we make like we’re scared?”
Shade shook his head. “I got it. Say the Indians have already attacked the fort, and they’ve killed your granny. Can you look like that? All sad and dignified. Yes. Perfect! Hold still now! Got it.”
He took a dozen more shots of the two solemn children on the porch. When the black-and-white prints were developed, their ragged old-fashioned clothes and the background of the ramshackle cabin in a bleak winter pasture would make even the most hard-hearted reader feel a twinge of pity for these poor hungry unfortunates. In those getups, their own parents wouldn’t have known them.
It was a good day’s work.
IN THE SITTING ROOM of Cousin Araby’s boardinghouse, the fire had burned low. In the club chair beside the hearth, one of the old men was dozing, as he had been since dinner. The only other occupant of the room was Carl Jennings, seated at the satinwood writing desk under the window. With his tie askew and his suit jacket draped over the back of the chair, he was penning another dispatch to his editor in Johnson City. The rhythmic snoring from the fellow in the easy chair had put him off at first, but now he was used to it, and the faint whistling noise faded into the background of his thoughts.
In yesterday’s account he had told of the defense attorney, graciously receiving the Knoxville ladies in his comfortable brick home, and to be even-handed he had described the hard-working prosecutor in his courthouse office on a Sunday afternoon, still wearing his coat and tie. He had been more restrained in his depiction of the defendant, because he would have felt foolish extolling her beauty if the jury ended up finding her guilty. He wasn’t all that impressed with her, anyhow. She had seemed . . . careful. Guilt? Fear of her brother?
He had spent a good while the night before thinking about how to describe Harley Morton. He was pretty sure that his initial impression—that of a shrewd and coarse young savage on the make—was the correct one, but then, second-guessing himself, he thought that perhaps an uneducated but ambitious fellow who had to direct his sister’s court defense might indeed appear grasping and desperate. Carl had decided to err on the side of charity by describing Harley Morton as an earnest, self-made man, doing everything in his power to p
rotect his sister. If a little more investigating could prove that Erma Morton’s brother was pocketing the defense money for himself, then Carl would reveal those facts in a later article. The same went for his depiction of the defendant herself. If the trial evidence convinced him of her guilt, then he would reflect that in his later articles, but right now he felt that a wary neutrality was the safest course.
Yesterday’s news story had set the stage for his coverage of the Morton murder case, he thought. He had introduced the principal characters and reserved judgment until more evidence. Now he could report on the first day of the trial.
Carl stifled a yawn. Surely a trial was not dull to the people whose lives depended on its outcome. And perhaps in a small community where most of the people present knew the defendant and the witnesses, there might be some interest in seeing familiar faces in dramatic circumstances, but he had found the proceedings as tedious as a city council meeting.
This was inevitable, he supposed. Before they got to the crux of the matter concerning the death of Pollock Morton, the preliminaries had to be established for the record. One official witness after another—police officer, physician, coroner—stated for the record what everybody already knew: Morton died at 5 A.M. of a blow to the temple, and the police had not been called to the house until nearly noon. There had been no emotional outbursts, no startling revelations, and no moments of inadvertent comedy. Just routine procedure. Hard to make that interesting to people a hundred miles away who knew no one involved.
He supposed that it was his job to acquaint them with the principal characters in the courtroom drama, but with the family monopolized by the syndicate reporters, there wasn’t much he could do except relate what he was able to observe.
So far, Erma Morton had not testified. She sat at the defense table, scribbling notes to her attorney or staring off into the distance. Occasionally, she would turn and look at the crowded courtroom, and when she caught sight of someone she knew, she would nod at them with a faint smile.
Harley Morton had been in the courtroom, decked out in a dark brown patterned suit that looked more suitable for a day at the racetrack than it did for an appearance in court. Carl wondered whether he really had no better sense of decorum than that, or if he simply didn’t think the people of Wise were worth taking the trouble to dress up for. Morton had stationed himself directly behind the defense table, and occasionally leaned forward to whisper instructions to the attorney.
The one person who was not present in the courtroom was the widow, Erma Morton’s mother. Carl made a note in the margin of the page to ask someone—perhaps one of the attorneys—whether she was absent from court voluntarily, or if she was a potential witness and thus barred from attending the trial. He wished he could have observed her demeanor during the testimony about her husband’s death. Perhaps that was why she stayed away—to escape from the prying eyes of the press and the public. He would have been tempted to do the same, but he did wonder how she could stay away knowing that her daughter’s future hung in the balance.
He thought he could wrap up the day’s proceedings in a couple of hundred words. Tomorrow he would try to find more people to talk to, and he hoped that little cousin Nora would be arriving soon. They had no telephone up on Ashe Mountain, so he would have to wait for a letter or perhaps a telegram before he would know for sure, because, unlike his Bonesteel relatives, Carl couldn’t see the future in advance.
ELEVEN
NORA
The mountains were high and so deeply wooded that we heard not even the song of a single bird.
—MATSUO BASH
For the first time in her life, Nora Bonesteel was reading a big-city newspaper. She had been in the depot in Johnson City, sitting on a bench, watching the other travelers and waiting for the train to Norton, when an older woman in a fur stole came and sat down next to her.
“I am changing trains,” the woman announced when she sat down. “I am going to see my son, who is a college professor at the University of Tennessee. He is an historian.” She peered doubtfully at the dark-haired country girl sitting primly beside her in her long tweed coat and countrified brown boots. “Are you going on to Knoxville, too, young lady?”
Nora shook her head. “Norton,” she said. She could tell from the lady’s anxious expression that she thought something was wrong, seeing such a young girl traveling alone, so she added, “I’m not running away from home, ma’am. My folks are letting me go over to Virginia to stay with a kinswoman who needs help with the chores.”
That was essentially true. The Bonesteels agreed to let her go off and help Cousin Araby with the extra chores that came from the additional guests at her boardinghouse. Her father had brought her down the mountain well before first light, and after he had made sure that she had her ticket and knew which train to take, he had gone off to telegraph Araby that she was coming.
Strictly speaking, the Bonesteels didn’t know that the relative who really needed the most help was young Carl, but that would have been hard to explain anyhow. Nora’s mother didn’t like for anyone to mention the Sight. She knew that this ability ran in her husband’s family, but it frightened and repelled her to think that anyone might have a knowledge of the future. She maintained that such powers constituted dabbling with the occult; even if you couldn’t help having the gift, you ought to fight against it. Since she had forbidden Nora ever to mention it, the girl could hardly explain her real purpose in going to Wise County.
“Helping with chores? Do you not go to school?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do,” said Nora. She reached into her book bag and took out an exercise book. “I brought my lessons with me. I’m only going for a week.”
The lady smiled at her. “So am I. We are on much the same errand, young lady. My son’s wife is having a baby, and I have come down from New York to help out during her convalescence.”
Nora nodded. “I hope you like Knoxville, ma’am,” she said politely. There wasn’t any point in telling the woman something that she wouldn’t believe anyhow. She would find out for herself soon enough.
“Well, I shan’t have time to see much of it in only a week and with a new baby to see to.”
Nora said nothing.
The woman pointed to Nora’s book satchel. “Is that all you brought with you? Schoolwork? Not anything to read for pleasure?”
“My schoolwork is mostly a pleasure.”
The woman reached into her own bag and withdrew the thickest newspaper Nora had ever seen. “Perhaps you’d like to have this to read on your trip. I was finished with it many miles ago, and it would help you pass the time.”
Nora had taken the New York newspaper, and, on the train, when she had tired of watching the patchwork of brown fields and silver-limbed trees slide past her window, she began to page through the newspaper, looking for stories that might interest her. She paged through the sports and finance sections in very little time, and spent half an hour looking at the women’s pages, with its fashion articles and news of famous ladies. She was fascinated by the story of the royal wedding. Prince Henry, a younger son of the King of England, had married Lady Alice in a private chapel at the palace, a quiet wedding on account of the sudden death of the bride’s father, the Duke of Buccleuch. The story was interesting to Nora, but she knew she wouldn’t be using it for small talk, because she had no idea how to pronounce the name of the bride’s father. When you read a lot and didn’t talk to many people, your pronunciation skills trailed far behind your store of information. It still made her blush to remember her teacher’s amusement when she had tried to talk about “Her-la-cues” and “Don-Quick-sot.” She had learned to listen for the word before she tried to enter into a discussion.
When she finished the women’s pages and began to page through the section on national news, she found the story of the Morton trial. She felt a shock of recognition seeing her destination talked about in such an important newspaper, and she folded the paper four times, until it was a small rectangle
containing only that one story, so that she could give it her full attention. With a shiver of excitement, she settled back in her seat and began to read the reporter’s account of the current events in Wise.
Her delight soon turned to bewilderment, though, because she wasn’t at all sure that she was going to the place the writer was describing. Ladies in long skirts and bonnets? Folks traveling in a horse and buggy? Why, the story read like more of a fairy tale than poor Prince Henry’s wedding. She wished the lady who had given her the paper had come along on this train, because she wanted to ask her if newspapers were allowed to print things that aren’t true. Well, she would see the town for herself soon enough. With a sigh, Nora turned to the national news section and began to read an article about a soup kitchen in Chicago where they doled out food to people with no jobs and nobody to help them. It was run by a fellow named Al Capone. She fell asleep, dreaming of those poor ragged people in Chicago, begging for food, and awoke an hour later with tears crusted on her cheeks.
THERE WERE NO WINDOWS in the little pantry that Cousin Araby had set aside for Carl’s room, so when the rapping on the door awakened him, he thought he had overslept. But when he turned on the light, he saw that his watch said 6:45, and since the trial did not begin until nine, he should have been able to lie in for almost another hour.
The Devil Amongst the Lawyers Page 23
