“I was always a good girl. A good girl, my mama said. I did what Daddy expected of me. Then what you expected. And then the kids.”
I love you, he wanted to tell her, but his mouth was numb. “DeWitt? It sucks being a good girl. Did you know that? Did you know that nice guys come in last and good girls always lose? I love you. But, God, I was so tired of being good. And he wanted me so bad that he would have done anything. My fault. I saw how he—I could see it in his eyes. And it was like power, Wittie. You know how he is. How he would never have–but I can’t say I’m sorry. You don’t know what it felt like. Wittie? A little power. A chance to say no once in a while.”
DeWitt didn’t understand: Janet had all the power. Couldn’t she see that in his eyes? He would do anything for her.
“Please. God. Don’t die on me, Wittie.”
Anything . . .
Her hand in his, he sank like a lead sinker into cloudy water.
* * *
The sheets were damp and sticky. He was lashed to the bed. Under bracelets of cloth his skin was chafed.
He must have groaned, because Delsey leaped to her feet, spilling loose pages from her much-read paperback. Doc came in from the hall. Delsey glanced at her watch.
“Don’t bother checking the time. Orders are morphine PRN.”
DeWitt felt a tug at his arm. Delsey, nut-brown face lined in concentration, stuck a needle in his IV shunt.
“Might as well make him comfortable, Delsey. No sense worrying about addiction. No sense worrying about anything if we can’t get his fever down.”
DeWitt wanted to ask where he was, but the effort was too great. Then suddenly he knew: he was lying in Doc’s examining room. In a comer were piled blood-stained sheets. A trash can overflowed with crimson-dotted gauze.
“If he seizes again, call me.” Doc’s hair was mussed, his white coat awry. “And keep the ice . . .”
DeWitt slept.
* * *
A heavy, dark silence. Nighttime. His bonds had been taken away; the bed was cool and dry, the sheets crisp. Next to the bed was a lamp. It cast a spotlight over a table piled with the refuse of illness: a jar of water, an open Kleenex box, a sagging blue ice pack.
The room reminded DeWitt of an airplane cabin after a long flight; of a darkened schoolroom at the end of the day.
“You awake?” Delsey asked, looming out of the shadows. There was a blue plastic box in her hand. “Let’s take your temperature.“ From the plastic box she took what looked like a bank pen, with its attendant coil of cord.
DeWitt tried his voice. “Water.”
“Temperature first,” she said, putting the pen under his tongue.
He looked behind her broad form. Across the room was a counter filled with cards and flowers. And three wrapped packages: the children’s Christmas gifts.
Delsey removed the thermometer from his mouth, picked up a water glass, and slipped the straw between his lips. The water was cool, its touch strange to his throat.
As he drank, she followed the direction of his eyes. “People brought you things.” She took the water away. “You want to rest now?”
He shook his head.
“Want me to show you what you got?”
“Please.”
She picked up the cards and read them one by one. She read the names from the notes on the flowers. Etta Wilson. Purdy Phifer. B.J. and his family sent their best wishes. Granger left a wooden dog that wagged its tail.
“Your wife brought the Christmas presents. You want me to open them?”
From Denny, a green-painted ceramic mass that was either an airplane or a fish. From Linda, a popsicle-stick birdhouse made with exacting care.
Delsey dug her hands into the tissue lining the third box and held up a slip of paper. “Tammy says she’ll mow the lawn this spring. There’s a PS. It says to remind her a little.”
Nothing from Janet. Nothing made from haphazard love, no painstaking appreciation built piece by piece, no promises.
“There’s something else,” Delsey said, going to the counter. She came back with a small stuffed tiger dressed in police blue. A plush toy no bigger than a kitten.
Hattie had been to visit.
“She says you know what this meant.”
DeWitt took the tiger. The toy was heavier than it looked: stuffed not with batting but tiny pellets.
Their affair had begun in the cafe over coffee. It had insinuated itself past an argument—Hattie indignant that control of the town had passed to the Torku and DeWitt. During a lull in the fight, she sat back and hooked her fingers in the loops of her jeans. Don’t look at me that way, Wittie. I’m a pushover for a uniform.
Astonishment at first. He laughed.
She laughed, too. Really. Uniforms are turn-ons. Naval uniforms, Russians in their long coats, SS officers in old movies. Christ, I get weak-kneed over mailmen. Don’t smile like that. Are you making fun?
No, I—it’s just that I always thought of you—
As a controller? Then embarrassed: Nothing personal, okay, DeWitt? But I like the fitted shirts you wear. How they hug your waist. I watch you sometimes when you have your back to me. How your pants fit.
Two years of Janet turning away from him in bed. Just when DeWitt had accustomed himself to abstinence, lust came like an illness. He sat in the cafe, high-fevered and trembling.
He said, You never showed me your show barn. I’d like to see your horses, Hattie.
She looked at him. He hoped she was seeing the uniform, the fitted shirt, the tighter-than-regulation pants, and not the man.
Humble, groveling. Hattie? I’d like to see your horses very much.
“You rest now,” Delsey said.
He closed his eyes.
“Your wife’s coming to visit tomorrow.”
Janet. A counter full of cards, and nothing at all from Janet. “No.”
“What?”
“Don’t let her in.”
A sigh. Delsey tried to pry the tiger from his grip, but he held on.
* * *
“You awake?”
Bo was standing nervously at the side of the bed.
“Can you talk? Can you understand me?”
DeWitt said, “Yes.”
“The police station’s burned to the ground, and the Torku haven’t gotten around to rebuilding it. Billy’s locked up in a room at Granger’s house, but we can’t keep him there forever. Everyone’s pushing for a trial. The charge will be capital murder. I tried to get the Torku to send Billy across the Line, but they refuse. Explain to Seresen that an execution would be grotesque. The damned alien won’t listen to me.”
“Yes.”
“You promise.”
“Yes.” DeWitt closed his eyes in what he thought would be a blink, but was slumber after all.
* * *
He awoke to daylight streaming in the window. A cardinal was perched on the sill: a blood spot in the blue of the sky. Someone, probably Delsey, had moved a television and VCR into the room. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was playing to an empty chair.
Light from the window made a glare on the screen. DeWitt closed his eyes and listened to the voice of William Shatner.
A door opened in the background.
“Are you awake?”
Seresen. The alien waddled across the room, stopping to give the TV screen an incredulous glance. He took the chair, dragged it to DeWitt’s side, sat, and leaned over confidentially. “You must tell the Bo that we do not want the man.”
DeWitt licked his lips. He couldn’t feel his tongue, his mouth. He wondered if he was drooling. “Okay.”
“It is entirely your affair. The acts you do are unimportant. Besides, we are the observers only, and we are allowed to affect the outcome only so much. You should have the trial this Bo talks about, if that is the way you do
things.”
“Okay.”
“Good. “ Seresen patted his arm. The alien’s touch felt spongy.
* * *
Doc was weaning him off the morphine. DeWitt was awake more often; and being awake involved pain. On the third day of the dosage reduction, while he and Delsey were watching The Exorcist, Bo and Curtis came in.
“I have to talk to you,” Bo said.
Delsey turned down the volume right at the good part and made her rubber-soled way out of the room.
“Okay,” Bo began heatedly. “So we’re going to have a goddamned trial. But when the town votes Curtis as judge—”
“But I’m Justice of the Peace,” Curtis said.
“Listen, DeWitt. You know and I know there’s a difference between a JP and a real judge. This man can’t preside. He doesn’t know criminal law, and this isn’t some sort of game. If Billy is found guilty—if he’s executed—Jesus! Curtis is so consistently flaky, people don’t even know he’s a hophead. They can’t tell Curtis stoned from Curtis sober. I wanted to tell—”
“Motion denied,” Curtis said. “See? I know some stuff.”
Bo gave Curtis a dark look, then said to DeWitt, “He doesn’t understand what this means! I tried to explain. You know what he said? He said that if the people of Coomey found out about his dope, they’d find out about you. You see what he’s doing? To shut me up, he’s using you as a shield.”
“Objection,” Curtis said.
“Out of the room, Curtis.” Pain made DeWitt’s voice no louder than a whisper.
Curtis stared as though he hadn’t heard.
“Go on.”
Lips pursed, Curtis left.
“Don’t expose him,” DeWitt told Bo.
“But—”
“Not for me, for him.” DeWitt was running out of energy.
“I know Curtis.”
“If you’re afraid for yourself . . .”
“No.” DeWitt let his hand drop to the bed. “Don’t spoil. Rise to the occasion. Maybe.”
“You okay?”
DeWitt nodded, but the cramps were back.
“I didn’t want to bother you . . .”
DeWitt waved a hand to show it was all right.
“They’re picking a prosecuting attorney and a defense counsel. A lot of people want prosecution, but nobody’s come forward to defend the poor bastard. Looks like it will be a court-appointed thing.”
“You.”
“Huh?”
“You be defense.”
Bo didn’t speak. DeWitt had closed his eyes against the pain, but curiosity coaxed them open. The officer looked crushed. “I can’t be defense.”
“You be . . .” DeWitt groaned, shifting his body.
“How can I defend him adequately, DeWitt? I know he’s guilty.”
“Confessed?”
“Doesn’t need to. I found Loretta’s clothes and purse buried right next to Billy’s house. He burned them, but there was enough there—” Bo stopped when DeWitt reached out and grabbed his sleeve.
“Best person,” DeWitt wheezed. “Needs to defend him. Do it right.”
“But—”
“Please. Promise. Do it right.” DeWitt’s fingers slid from Bo’s jacket. “Ask Seresen. Show you kids.”
“He knows where the kids are buried?”
“Ask Seresen.”
“If the aliens saw it, I could get depositions . . . “
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Lie,” DeWitt gasped. “Can’t help it.”
“Listen, you okay? God, Wittie, it looks—”
“Call Doc.”
“Right away.”
Bo left. The doctor came into the room and gave DeWitt a shot. He missed the end of the movie.
* * *
Three days later, Doc came into DeWitt’s room with Granger. “Okay, Chief. Let’s get you on your feet.”
DeWitt stared at the two incredulously.
“More you lay around on your butt, the longer the recuperation’s going to be. You’re going to start walking a little every day now.”
“No, no.” DeWitt waved his arms in panic.
“Granger?” Doc said.
The big man came forward, put a beefy arm under DeWitt’s shoulder, and lifted him like a sack of meal.
“No, no,” DeWitt said.
“It don’t hurt as much as he’s letting on, believe me,” said Doc.
Granger pulled DeWitt up. When DeWitt’s bare feet hit the linoleum floor, he bent double at the waist and stayed there.
“Walk,” Doc commanded.
DeWitt took a sliding step.
“Stand up straight.”
“No.”
“Suit yourself.” He made DeWitt shuffle three doors down and three doors back.
The next day, Doc and Granger came in and made him do four doors.
The next day, Bo came to visit. “How are you?”
DeWitt stared at the ceiling. “Um,” he said.
“I found the kids’ bodies.”
“Joy.”
A pause. “Doc said you were in a bad mood. He said that’s how he can tell when people start feeling better. Isn’t that funny?”
“Ha, ha,” DeWitt said.
“There was a tire iron thrown in the brush. It had fingerprints on it.”
DeWitt looked down. Bo was standing by the bed, tired and grim, sunglasses in his shirt pocket, vulnerable eyes exposed.
“They mine?” DeWitt asked quietly.
Bo looked at his motorcycle helmet, turning it over and over in his hands. “I don’t think so. You put your tire iron back into your trunk.”
“Seresen told you what I made him do?”
“Yes.”
“He upset with me?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
With a grunt DeWitt turned on his side, face to Bo’s belt buckle. He’d been able to do the turning-on-the-side trick for three days. “Do me a favor.”
“Sure.”
“When you see Seresen next, you tell him the policeman’s happy, will you?”
Bo didn’t answer.
“The policeman’s happy, you got it?”
“Okay.”
DeWitt rolled over on his back. Bo was staring at him—a distinctly unhappy policeman. Silence settled between them like a fine winter rain. He studied Bo’s tall shadow on the wall.
When Bo spoke, his voice was pained, as though speaking was a burden. “Anyway, since I’m defense counsel, I can’t lift the prints off that tire iron. I’m teaching Purdy how.”
Bo’s shadow moved. He was playing with his helmet again.
“Thank you,” DeWitt said.
“Hum?”
“You saved my life. Thank you.”
The shadow went still. “Janet wants you home.”
DeWitt forgot for a moment to breathe.
“You hear me?” Bo’s voice had a waver in it. Sympathy or something else?
Maybe he had loved Foster the way DeWitt in high school loved Janet. Maybe Bo sat in front of the TV at night, fantasizing Foster sitting beside him. A solitary house; an imaginary playmate.
Bo’s voice was stiff. “Are you going home to Janet, DeWitt?”
Old hurt, older than the pain in his belly, welled from DeWitt like blood from a wound. His eyes searched the counter for Hattie’s tiger, but someone, maybe Janet, had taken it away.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sometime during the drugstore fire, Jimmy Schoen’s fingers had set loose his parishioners’ hearts.
Now, down the table Foster and Tyler were smiling: Lucifers with pleasing faces. When Schoen looked at his plate, he thought for a queasy instant t
hat his eggs had moved, that his brown, slickbacked sausages had begun to crawl.
He closed his eyes, a weary Job. God was testing him, not with boils, but with his people’s pestilent disregard.
He should have been jury foreman, yet a Papist had been elected. Worse was the presence of Foster, false prophet, evangelist of nihilism. Schoen opened his eyes in time to see the jury nod in agreement and laugh at something witty Foster said.
A Torku came into the room, filling coffee cups from a Pyrex pot. The jury members seemed easy with the demon, too, laughing and joking with it.
As though life itself were a prank.
Schoen’s hand clenched on his glass so hard that it shook, spilling juice in sticky, orange waves.
“Will you wish some more?” the demon asked politely.
What else should Satan be but courteous? The world the devil had created was an easy place. Hell, Schoen had discovered, was not made of flame but of an obliging, seductive anarchy.
“No,” Schoen said without looking up. His voice was hard, his words clipped. There was, he congratulated himself, an unwavering discipline in his tone. “I think I have had quite enough.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
DeWitt was in bed through the selection of principals. He missed the voir dire. The trial preparations went on without him as the sun rose and set outside the windows and the stars at night slowly careened. On a Tuesday, Doc came in, helped him dress, and sent him into the world.
They drove to the center in silence. Leaning on Doc’s arm, DeWitt limped into the familiar green-and-cream rec hall. Rows of folding chairs had been set up in two sections and the room was packed.
Seclusion had become such a habit that he nearly fled when people jumped up, chattering, to shake his hand. Miz Wilson tore him away from the well-wishers and, like leading a prize bull into the auctioneer’s ring, took him to the front row and sat him down behind the defense table. Billy’s hands were folded before him. Bo sat at his shoulder, dressed in a three-piece suit. Hattie was at the prosecution table by her oldest boy.
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