Black Water

by Bobby Norman

  “Take your time,” Luther said, quietly.

  Hub took a deep breath and backarmed his shirtsleeve over his forehead. “I followed th’sound, th’whim’prin ‘n...” his eyes seemed to focus on an invisible something in front of him. He bit his lower lip and blinked. “It was awful.” There was a quiver in his voice. He looked over to Luther, up at the judge, and then back to Luther. His eyes were glistening. “She’s layin’ in th’dirt. Both ‘er eyes was swole nearly shut.” He wiped a tear running down his cheek, embarrassed that he’d allowed his emotions to slip up on him.

  Luther couldn’t believe it, but God knows he wanted to. He almost felt sorry for him. He peeked out of the corner of his eye to the jury box. They were hooked. Big, bad Hub Lusaw was in pain and everbody was riveted. Never would they’ve believed it, not one of ’em, that Hub Lusaw could be hurt.

  Hub helt out his arms as if reachin’ for somethin’ he alone could see. “I tried t’pick ‘er up out o’ th’dirt, but no matter how easy I was, she hollered in pain. She cried ‘n begged me not t’move ‘er. It hurt s’bad t’have t’leave ‘er lay in th’dirt.” He took a big shuddery breath and continued. “I asked ‘er who done it. She told me she’s goin’ home ‘n George ‘n Matthew jumped ‘er on th’road. They chased ‘er through th’woods ‘n she thought she might coulda outrun ’em, but she tripped over somethin, wrenched ‘er foot ‘n ‘fore she could get up, George jumped on ‘er. She said she raked ‘is face with ‘er nails ‘n got loose, but hadn’t no more’n stood up when Matthew knocked ‘er back down again.

  “She said Matthew stood ‘er up ‘n locked ‘er arms from behind while George grabbed ‘er legs ‘n told ‘er she’s a whore th’way she flirted at th’dance ‘n that lightin’ fires in boys was one thing, but heatin’ up a man was another. Said he’d put a fire in ‘er she’d never forget.”

  Now he was beyond hiding his feelings. He didn’t care about puttin’ on an act any longer, he wanted everbody to know what they’d done to Ret; how they’d butchered her. “Then she said Matthew bit down hard on th’back of ‘er neck ‘n yelled I got ‘er bleedin George, I got ‘er bleedin. She was tryin’ t’get loose ‘n George whacked ‘er face s’hard he knocked ‘er out.”

  The court was mesmerized, waiting breathlessly for the next deliciously hideous description.

  Hub grit his teeth and looked straight at Luther. “After they tore ‘er clothes off, they lugged ‘er back t’their place. She said one time she come to ‘n George had a hammer handle jammed up inside ‘er.” The women gasped and clutched at their throats. “She come to another time feelin’ like she’s afire. Matthew was astraddle of ‘er, cuttin’ on ‘er with a knife. She tried fightin’ ‘im off but George kicked ‘er in th’head. When she woke up she found they’d drug ‘er off t’th’corner ‘n shoved ‘er up agin th’wall like a sack o’ meal. They’s gone ‘n I swear I don’t know how, she’s beat up s’bad, but she managed t’crawl t’the road ‘n that’s where I come on ‘er.”

  He stopped, spent, tryin’ valiantly to put hisself back together. “Then…she give a little groan ‘n I heard th’breath kinda wheeze out of ‘er.” If he’d whispered it, the whole room would still’ve heard. He took another long, ragged breath. “She couldn’t be hurt no more, so I picked ‘er up…took ‘er t’th’shack…theirs…’n laid ‘er on th’couch. I covered ‘er over with a dirty ol’ blanket. She didn’t deserve ‘at. First, layin’ in th’dirt ‘n then that filthy blanket. She was nekkid ‘n dirty ‘n I knew she’d hate it if anybody seen ‘er ‘ataway, but th’blanket was all I’cd find t’cover ‘er up with.”

  Finally, taking a cleansing breath, he looked first at the jury, then at Parks. “I killed ’em.” It seemed he couldn’t stop nodding. And blinking, like he was lost. It was mesmerizing. “I ain’t denyin’ it. I know I did it. I killed ’em. They wasn’t nobody else there. Jus’ me...’n them...’n her.” He looked at Luther. “But I swear, I don’t remember it. I don’t remember ’em comin’ home. But they musta. I do remember, ‘fore they come back, of settin’ on th’floor with ‘er, I didn’t want ‘er t’be alone…’n then…next thing I know…I had a hunk o’ wood in m’hand…‘n’ George ‘n Matthew’s both on th’floor, dead.”

  Grave yards weren’t any quieter than that courtroom.

  “Then,” he said, spent, “I’s out in th’woods runnin’ t’beat all. It took me t’sunup t’figure out where I was, ‘cause I hadn’t run t’nowhere in paticklar. Just run.”

  Luther P. Knox, Attorney-At-Law, wanted in the worst way to turn around and get a look at the gallery. He could actually hear ’em breathin’! Hard! He looked at Hub and thought, He’s either telling the truth or that beat any performance I have ever seen. Figuring he’d milked it as far as he could, and reminded of the old stage adage, “Leave ’em wantin’ more,” he merely said, “Thank you.” You could hear it clear to the back o’ the room. Then to Parks, “Defense rests.” He pushed off from the table and walked around to his chair.

  Parks nodded to the prosecution table. “Mr. Dimwiddie?”

  Now came Luther’s next concern. As impossible as it’d seemed yesterday, there was now the possibility Hub’d pulled it off—if he could just get through the next few minutes without….

  The quiet was shattered when Dimwiddie’s chair scraped across the floor, pushin’ it back from the table. He stood up and slowly approached the witness stand. “Mm, mm, mm,” he said, shakin’ his head. “Boy howdy, Hub, you had me sorry for your pain. I couldn’t even imagine what you coulda felt, but I have absolutely no doubt you did.” Then he looked Hub square in the eye, cocked his head, and winked. “Imagine it, that is. Because I don’t believe one little word of it.” Then on second thought, “Well, no, I take that back. Some I do. I do believe you were shocked at the sight of her. I do believe you picked her up and brought her to the cabin and I do believe you sat with her. I don’t believe it was just t’keep her company, though. No, sir! She was keepin’ you company while you waited for George and Matthew Komes to come home so you could bash in their heads!”

  Luther couldn’t believe Hub hadn’t catapulted hisself out o’ the box, latched his hands around Dimwiddie’s throat, and throttled the life out of him. He wondered if that wasn’t what Dimwiddie was trying to accomplish. He saw the veins in Hub’s forehead poundin’ all the way from the defense table. Dimwiddie’d cocked the gun and stuck it in Hub’s crotch. Now, could Hub keep from blowin’ off his own pecker.

  “Boy, what a waste,” Dimwiddie went on. “What a waste! When I think of all the money we coulda made sellin’ tickets to this show.”

  “Your Honor,” Luther said as he stood up. “Is there going to be a question any time soon?”

  Parks looked over his glasses at Dimwiddie.

  “All right, all right,” Dimwiddie said. “I’m gonna let you off light, Hub. I’m gonna ask you but one question. I believe I already know the answer, but I’d be very interested in hearin’ it anyway. Are you sorry you did it?”

  Luther’s objection had given Hub time to calm down some, and now he seemed to give Dimwiddie’s question thought. “I’m sorry I had to.”

  Luther closed his eyes and dropped his chin on his chest. Speaking for the prosecution, Hub couldn’ta said anything better. Dimwiddie hadn’t expected it to be anywhere near that easy. All Hub woulda had to say was “Yes,” and he mighta got off. One tiny, little three-letter word! “Yes!” But he hadn’t.

  And now, Dimwiddie was a screamin’, fiery-eyed eagle, talons spread, on a broken-backed little mouse. Kidnapping the opportunity before it could slip away, he asked, “You’d do it again? If it happened again, you’d do it?” The gallery was so glad they’d had a chance to catch their breath ‘cause it looked like the game was goin’ into extra innings.

  Hub saw his mistake and tried to back up. “I couldn’t do it again. I only had one sister.”

  Dimwiddie had him on the ropes and almost ran to the witness stand, white-knuckled his fingers over the
edge o’ the box, and pounded home. “That’s your answer? Ohhhh, Hub,” he groaned, “I was told you weren’t afraid o’ anything.” He pushed off the box, swung around dramatically with his arms helt over his head. “Ohhhh, my, how the mighty have fallen!” He came back to the box, gripped the rail, and looked Hub hard in the eye. “What if you did have another sister. And what if George and Matthew was to somehow come back to life and do the same thing t’her. Would you do it again?”

  “Your Honor,” Luther said, jumpin’ out of his chair, “This is ridiculous. The prosecution is goading….”

  But it was too late. Dimwiddie was rollin down hill and he smelled blood.

  “What if they’d had another hammer handle jammed up inside her, too, Hub,” he growled, spittle fleckin’ the air.

  “Your Honor, I object!” Luther demanded.

  “Order! Order! Order!” Parks yelled, pounding the gavel like he was drivin’ a rail spike.

  “Yes, you weak-kneed son of a bitch!” Hub growled over the crowd’s hubbub, creating dead silence.

  It worked! Dimwiddie had his proof it’d all been an act, and he thought Oh, Thank You, Sweet Jesus. The room waited, hungry for the next act. And Hub didn’t let’m down. It was like Sheriff Rowe’d said earlier, when Hub got goin’, he didn’t have any idee how to stop. And Dimwiddie had him goin’.

  “I’d gladly spend time in Hell if I’cd stoke th’furnace t’keep them screamin’.”

  Dimwiddie just smiled.

  “Your Honor?” Luther whined, but it was too late.

  Parks pounded the gavel. “Order! Order! Order!” but he was beatin’ a dead horse—the crowd had gone crazy.

  Luther collapsed back to his chair and thought All that’s lacking is an elephant, a clown, and hot roasted peanuts.

  “I SAID ORDER, GOD DAMMIT!” Parks aimed a lethal gavel handle at Dimwiddie. “You’re out of order!”

  “My apologies, Your Honor,” Dimwiddie said above the ruckus, and actually bowed. Then he turned to Hub and bowed to him. “To you, sir, I say, thank you. Very much,” and on the way back to his chair, he winked at Luther. He sat down. “Prosecution rests.”

  Parks glared at Hub and jabbed his finger at the defense table. “Go back there and siddown!” Hub left the witness stand and walked to his chair. When he got there, Luther’s back was already to him.

  Parks pounded the gavel one time. “Court’s adjourned until summations tomorrow mornin’ at ten!”

  It was 10:02 a.m., and once again, the courtroom was packed beyond capacity. The bailiff had everbody stand up and he said his thing. Parks parted the waters, climbed the mountain, and plopped onto his throne. The bailiff told everbody to sit down. The judge pounded the gavel one time, real hard, passing on “Good mornin’.”

  “Mr. Dimwiddie? Let’s get this over with. Your summation, please.” Then he waggled his finger at him to approach the bench. When he got there, the judge leaned for’ard, looked real mean and quietly warned, “If you pull any o’ that happy horse shit like you did yesterdee, I’ll walk you to the jail m’self.” Dimwiddie mumbled something that sounded contrite and Parks told him, “Go ahead.”

  Dimwiddie turned to the front with the air of a Southern Baptist Pulpit Jumper with the weight of a sinful world settin’ squarely on his shoulders, when actually there was a pre-victory breakfast of three greasy eggs, over easy, a thick slab o’ pan-fried ham, hashbrowns with finely diced onions and parsley, heavily festooned with coarse-ground black pepper, two flaky biscuits submerged in chicken gravy seasoned with sausage, and a butter-slathered sweet roll under his belt. And for dessert, two shots o’ bourbon. He didn’t normally imbibe before noon, but it looked like it was gonna be a long day, and he needed all the fortification he could get. This was a big case, and a big victory could mean a big payoff in future fees. It could also help landing a cushy position somewhere in government work. He’d like that ‘cause he was gettin’ awful tired o’ havin to actually work for a livin’. He approached the jury box prepared for war.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he started, “what happened to Loretta Lusaw was a horrible, horrible thing. Just horrible. But…that…and the Komes brothers...are not on trial here.” He swung around and thrust a finger in Hub’s direction and, as with one mind, the jury followed the accusing digit. “But, Hub Lusaw, their murderer, is. A cold-blooded, calculating, premeditating”—he turned his attention back to the jury—“murderer. Yesterday, we all heard the grisly account o’ what happened to Ret. It was real, folks, and it was grisly. No doubt about it. But what you haven’t been told was how the brothers Komes met their end. Oh, yes, they’d been beat to death. Hub Lusaw even admitted standing over their pulverized bodies with a blood-soaked two-by-four clutched in his hands.

  “But...here’s something I want you to think about. I want you to think about all that was done to Ret Lusaw, and how she died. Put it in your mind and look at it. Now, let’s say that Hub Lusaw hadn’t come on her. And hadn’t killed George and Matthew Komes. Let’s say he was on vacation in Mobile and didn’t even hear about it for a week. Then let’s say the Komeses did the deed, lit out, been apprehended, and was settin’”—he pointed to Hub’s chair—“in that chair right there, alive, standin’ trial, accused o’ killin’ that poor girl.” He looked hard at one of the two female jurors as if he was talkin’ just to her. “And now, let’s say they admitted to it, just like he did. Now here’s my question. Would you have any trouble findin’ them guilty o’ murder?”

  Totally unsettled, the woman fidgeted nervously, lookin’ around at all the faces lookin’ at her.

  “No, of course you wouldn’t! They did it, didn’t they? They admitted it?” What a stroke of genius. He was assured of one vote. Then he shifted his attention to the man seated next to her and said, “I wouldn’t!” Insinuating that if the juror didn’t feel the way Dimwiddie did, he was an idiot and didn’t give a shit about the victims. Dimwiddie now felt confident of two votes. “No, sir,” he said, shifting to the next juror. “I’d do the right thing, as I know you would.”

  He gave ’em a second to think about it and then continued to the second woman. “Do you think a man-killer should be treated any different than a woman-killer?” She was so flustered she almost answered, but Dimwiddie turned to face the gallery. “No! A life is a life, and any way you look at it, a cold-blooded killin’ is a cold-blooded killin’! And that man”—gesturing to Hub—“that man right there, beat not one, but two other men to death…with his bare hands!”

  He shook his clawed hands in front of his face, showing the jury. “My God, can you imagine? His bare hands. It gives me the shiv’rin’ fits just to think about it. How much d’you have to hate a body, how Devil-possessed d’you have t’be, to kill someone…rob ’em o’ their life...with your hands?” He closed his eyes and shook his head like he was trying to exorcise the image from his mind. He approached the defense table and chinned to Luther.

  “In just a minute here, Mr. Knox is gonna tell you how Hub’d lost ‘is mind, or somethin’ to that affect…that and he didn’t know what he was doin’, but…,” he swung back around to the jury box, “that’s a sucker punch, because Hub Lusaw did know what he was doin’. As he stated hisself, yesterday, he had ‘presence of mind’”—he mimed picking somethin’ up—“to pick up his sister’s body”—he acted like he was carryin’ it—“the ‘presence of mind’ to carry it to the house”—mimed layin’ the body on the prosecution table—“the ‘presence of mind’ to carefully lay ‘er down”—then like he was pullin’ the blanket over her—“and cover ‘er up. And then…what did he do? He waited…. Waited and plotted! For his victims…t’come home.”

  For effect, he spun on the jury. “He laid in wait! Just like a lion or a wolf! It wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction! Nobody snuck up behind ‘im and scared ‘im to action. No, sir! No, ma’am! He waited an hour! A whole hour! Hell, over an hour”—he looked toward Hub, disgustedly—“rollin’ cigarettes like he was waitin’ for a bus…waitin’ an
d smokin’ and plottin’.” He raised his hand displaying four fingers. “The time o’ four cigarettes, plannin’ his revenge.” He acted like he was totally blown away by the human condition and how cruel it could be. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is,” he punctuated each syllable with a back slap of one hand into the other, “Pre…me…di…ta…ted…MURder!”

  He took a deep breath and continued. “Now, I do personally believe there is such a thing as insanity, and I’ll even go so far as to say I also believe in temp’rary insanity. I do! But, either one of ’em means that forever, or for a certain amount o’ time, a body didn’t know what they were doin’. Had no idea! The nut house is filled with those poor souls settin’ around peenchin’ dust motes out o’ the air with their fingers, and they don’t know the difference between Thursday ‘n a bowl o’ clam chowder. Just as crazy as they can be, and there ain’t no comin’ back for ’em.

  “On that dark and dreary mornin’ of August eighteenth, if the sheriff’d entered the Komes home and found Hub Lusaw settin’ on the floor in wet pants, blubberin’ to hisself, pickin’ boogers and eatin’ ’em, I’d say he was probably a likely candidate for full- or part-time insanity. I’d have to agree that he probably didn’t know the difference,” he raised his hand, stuck up his thumb, and waggled it to starboard, “between right…”—then to port—“and wrong.” He leaned on the jury box. “But that wasn’t the case, was it?

  “You know what makes the difference? It’s as plainnnnnn as the nose on your face. The one and only difference you need to know. You ready? He ran.” He helt his arms out as if to say voila! “It’s just that simple. Do you think that mote-peenchin’, bugger-eater’d know the difference? No.” He took two steps toward Hub and looked him in the eye. The room was stone-dead quiet. “But he did. He knew the difference…‘cause he ran.” He turned back to the jury box. “It’s the very thing I mentioned to you just a few minutes ago when I described what he did with his sister’s body. What’d I say?” He looked down the line of the jurors, expecting them to remember. “He had ‘presence of mind.’ Remember that? Sure ya do. An insane person doesn’t know that difference. But a sane one does,” and without lookin’ at Hub, pointed in the direction of the defense table, “and did.”