The Legal Limit

by Martin Clark

  “Sure. A good guy, good lawyer. He prosecuted my brother. I thought he was fair and professional. He wrote my mom a nice letter after the trial. Sent an overly kind and unsolicited recommendation to Richmond when I applied for law school.”

  “Well, I doubt it was overly kind,” Hanby remarked. “We’re all very proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” Mason said, his mind jumping ahead, trying to anticipate why the circuit court judge in Stuart had business with him.

  “People know how you’ve taken care of Sadie Grace and how well you’ve done for yourself in Richmond. And I remember that home run you hit to win us the regionals.”

  “I had good coaching and talented teammates,” Mason demurred. The Patrick County way, he recalled: unhurried, genteel, sidling up to the point without too much haste or urgency. He smiled, for some reason enjoying Hanby’s slow, discursive civility. Mason knew the clerk would get there when he got there.

  “We’ll miss Tony. Big shoes to fill.”

  “Yeah, he’s been in office a long time.”

  “It’s a very, very important job, servin’ as the commonwealth’s attorney,” Hanby said.

  “Yes. You hold people’s lives and property in your hands. I agree.” Grace showed him a jumble of black Etch A Sketch lines and squiggles before shaking them away. “Brilliant,” he mouthed to her.

  “Judge Richardson has to appoint someone to fill the vacancy, then we’ll have an election.”

  “Okay…” The first hint of wariness arose in Mason’s voice. Surely this wasn’t why Hanby was calling.

  “After thinkin’ it through, the judge and the lawyers are prepared to offer you the job.”

  “Me?” Mason sputtered. “The commonwealth’s attorney? There? In Stuart?”

  Hanby was forceful. “You’re what we’re lookin’ for, Mason. A smart, honest man who’s familiar with Patrick and its people.”

  “Well, you know, I mean…I’m flattered to be asked, but I’m very much invested here, and—”

  “I realize you’d be leavin’ the catbird’s seat,” Hanby interrupted. “A high-class firm, a big city, excellent pay—but you give it some thought. There’s a lot to recommend this part of the state, and oodles of people are behind this. People who want to see you come home.” He hurried ahead before Mason could speak. “I’m goin’ to put Judge Richardson on the line. Hope to see you soon. I’ll pass along your regards to everyone.”

  Judge Frank “Tunk” Richardson repeated essentially what Hanby had told Mason, formally extending an invitation to serve as the county’s appointed prosecutor until the election in November. Richard Rogers was the president of the bar, and he took the phone next, promising he’d polled all the lawyers in town and no one would oppose Mason when he had to stand for the office. Not wanting to seem rude or conceited, Mason thanked them both and told them he would sleep on the generous offer, fully intending to call them back the next day with feigned anguish and a firm rejection, a tough decision, he’d say, but he’d have to remain in Richmond.

  Oddly, when he stepped into Allison’s studio and mentioned the offer to her, she seemed intrigued—this despite his tone of voice and ironic brow, which conveyed exactly how he sized up the idea. “So what do you think?” she asked. “Lovely, rugged country there. I’ve always been partial to Stuart.”

  “It’s behind me. Sealed, padlocked, stored in the archives.” He took a breath and exhaled it through his mouth. “Sort of a disconnect now, a greatest-hits recollection of the place and that’s about it, very bloodless. We’ve discussed it before, my sentiments.”

  “I know. But you’ve never had any animosity. I’ve never heard you mention you hated Stuart or Patrick County. People were good to you, you had friends, you were a star athlete, your mom was a saint, you had some fun times.”

  “Good and bad both. Like anyone else. But that’s not the point; that’s not why we would or wouldn’t go.” He was standing at the border of a drop cloth. He stooped and took a brush from a bunch in a quart jar. “No movie theater, no airport, no galleries, no plays, no museums, no colleges, no circle of smart, educated friends, no bookstores, no restaurants with tablecloths.” As he ticked off each shortcoming, he tapped his palm with the brush. “One public high school. A nosy, gossipy, inbred culture. Turnip greens and corn bread. Coon hunting. Fundamentalist, intolerant churches that frown on makeup, a glass of wine and women in slacks. Moonshiners. Square dances. Squinty-eyed hunchbacks in bibbed overalls who refuse to let their kids receive a free measles vaccination, swearing it’s government poison.”

  Allison laughed. “Is a squinty-eyed hunchback like a gnome? Same as your basic bridge troll? You forget I’ve been there—it’s hardly that primitive.”

  “I didn’t say it was, entirely.” He was slowing down, catching himself. “The county’s blessed with a lot of positives. Life there has its own proud pace, and the great majority of people are trustworthy and helpful in a pinch.”

  “And I’m sure, Rex Reed, you’ll really miss those movies and plays.” She gave him a mischievous look, her lips curled with amusement, her eyes in a caper. “When’s the last time you went to either?” She flickered a grin before turning serious. “The Bible-thumpers and busybodies I can do without, but maybe we should at least think about this. You can nitpick any city—Richmond, for example, is too crowded and clogged with traffic and socially stratified and overpriced. You could say that if you were being harsh. Too much crime here, way too much. Too much third-generation money. Too many snooty, pretentious people.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m not—well, I’m not saying one way or the other. I like change and movement. I always have. The idea of a home with land and a view of the mountains sounds okay. I’ve been in this same town house for who knows how long now, sort of doing the identical things. Why not break the routine? I mean, at least think about breaking the routine.”

  “I enjoy the routine,” he protested.

  “You know, a rut’s a routine with a little deeper groove.”

  “Are you insinuating you’re restless or stifled here? Bored?” The notion caught him off guard, and it showed in his expression. “I hadn’t picked up on that.”

  She walked to him and took the brush out of his hand. “I’m happy as can be, Mason. I’ve loved every day we’ve spent together. But I think we’re coming to a spot where if we stay here, we’ll be staying here for good. Permanently. Which may be great. I say let’s just take a look around. If not Stuart, then let’s keep an open mind. There’s a lot here for Grace, but she’ll probably never have a yard or pet a horse or splash in a stream. I want us all to be in the best possible place. I adored the three years we lived in the country when I was a little girl, our house in Arkansas. It’s not totally abstract for me.”

  Mason tried to suppress a smile. “You make Patrick County sound like a cross between Walden Pond and some fanciful PBS show. As best as I can recall, having lived there for eighteen years, I never splashed in a stream or touched a horse. We did have a yard, and it was a pain in the ass to keep it mowed.” He let the smile form. “Hey, if we do it, if we move, I can teach Grace how to skin a bear and live off the land. How to roll her own cigs. Drive a Trans Am. Find water with a divining rod. Plow with a mule. Whittle in a rocking chair. Tell the weather by reading the stars. The whole shebang, all the earthy, mystical, folklore shit only we rustics know.”

  Allison laughed, bent at the waist and folded her arms across her belly. “Don’t forget she’ll need to know how to handle a longneck in a bar brawl.”

  “There we go.” He was still smiling.

  “So call them back,” she urged him.

  The playfulness vanished. He was quiet for a moment. “I guess the whole deal with Gates clouds things, too. Not a situation you want to be reminded of every day—your brother the imprisoned drug dealer.” He’d never told his wife about Wayne Thompson’s shooting, nor did he ever intend to. “But I suppose we can pay my mom a visit and mosey arou
nd. It’s a good enough place—hell, it’s a fine place in a vacuum if you want that kind of life. I’m just not sure I can change gears from what I’m used to.”

  Allison walked to the big window that framed their avenue. “I know there are some parts you can’t really erase, that’ll always be stamped on you. But try to take a fresh look. No regrets if we do it this way, right? And I’m going to try to come at it different, too. I’ve always seen it as your hometown, a quirky little village we spend a day or two in. It may be strange if I think about it, you know, more long-term.” She stared out the window, completely turned away from Mason, her shoulders uncovered except for the two fabric straps of her top. “But, jeez, the city is getting monotonous,” she said, her voice flat. “I’ve thought about the West, too. Some new scenery couldn’t hurt my painting. Or this nice town I visited in high school, outside of Boston, called Maynard.”

  “Who woulda thunk it,” Mason said. “Jerri Hall wants to park the jet and raise chickens.”

  On the first day of June, Hanby, along with Richard Rogers, met Mason, Allison and Grace at the courthouse that dominates the sloped, quarter-mile-long Main Street in Stuart, and they were soon washed over by hospitality and goodwill and the enthusiasm of old friends who’d heard the rumor Mason was planning to assume Tony Black’s job. There were free plate lunches at the Coffee Break, welcome-homes and recountings of key hits and baseball championships. As they toured the street surveying the stores and businesses, seeing what was available, Mason’s old biology teacher, brought low by a stroke and relying on a cane, told him from a mouth that only half worked he was “tickled to death” for him, especially in light of what Mason had overcome. Grace was scared of the wracked, deformed stranger, but Allison didn’t flinch, squeezing Mason’s hand as the afflicted man struggled to enunciate his words, her eyes switching back and forth between her husband and his former teacher. Dinner with Sadie Grace was at the swanky winery restaurant in Meadows of Dan, and that night Grace was fascinated by a fat, thieving raccoon who sat on his haunches in the midst of Sadie’s overturned garbage, filling himself with black, agile paws.

  They stayed for two days, spending the night at Sadie Grace’s, Mason serving as a tour guide for his wife and daughter, showing them the county’s pig paths and obscure beauty, winding their car up Squirrel Spur at dawn to watch the sun saunter out from the Blue Ridge Mountains, then dropping by Barnard’s Store in Kibler Valley, where cantankerous Bill Barnard presented Grace with a piece of horehound candy and Mason paid a quarter for a cold Pepsi. Sadie Grace played it close to the vest, waiting until they were about to leave for Richmond to tell them how much it would mean to have her granddaughter nearby. They made two more trips to Stuart, studied the elementary schools, the doctors, the homes for sale, the cost of living. They considered Wrightsville Beach, flew to Boston and tooled around Maynard, and contacted the chambers of commerce in Fairhope, Alabama; Bozeman, Montana; and Charleston, South Carolina. Not yet ready to quit on Richmond altogether, they toured several open houses on its fringes, thought about a home close to the city but not so engulfed by it.

  But the more time Mason spent in Patrick County, the more he warmed to returning, and he confessed to Allison that part of the attraction was tied to a clichéd sense of accomplishment, the validation he would feel as a poor local boy who’d struck it big and was coming home to parades and fanfare, a success story in spite of everything. They decided to move in late July, finally persuaded by three circumstances. They received a call from their Realtor informing them a forty-acre farm was available in Patrick Springs, a spread with a stream, a barn, a view of Bull Mountain and a jaunty porch surrounding the front and flanks of the house. Additionally, that same day’s Richmond Times-Dispatch reported there’d been yet another shooting on Hull Street, and a frustrated councilman was quoted as saying the city’s schools were a failing mess, not likely to improve.

  They visited the property with Grace two days later and tried out the place for a night, rocked on the porch and watched the deer slip into the pasture and take up their twitchy grazing, their ears erect, tense, restless, searching. After they sat with Grace and talked her to sleep at her grandmother’s house, they ventured to the barn with a bottle of mediocre Merlot the owners had left for them, and they drank straight from the bottle and had sex that was far more carnal than poetic, finishing with Allison gripping the rough-hewn oak board of a stall front, naked, and Mason behind her, his hands tight on each side of her waist, his bare feet digging in the dirt.

  The next morning they signed the paperwork agreeing to purchase the farm. The Realtor presented them with a country ham in a coarse cloth sack, and they held hands as they left his office, a copy of the contract folded in half and sticking out of Mason’s hip pocket. They kissed next to their white Volvo, for everyone to see. Strangely, though, during the return ride to Richmond, Allison seemed distressed—she was fidgety, unhappy with any of their music, unable to get comfortable in her seat, squirming, impatient with Mason’s chatter. “I hope we’re doing the right thing,” she said at a stoplight in Danville, but she didn’t have any more to add when Mason attempted to draw her out.

  “We can always call them and try to cancel,” he said when she revisited the subject fifty miles later. “Forfeit the escrow payment and forget about it.” He peeked at her, hoping to get a read. “I don’t understand the change of heart.”

  “I’m not saying there is a change of heart, okay? This is just such a major step. It’s pretty damn overwhelming when you actually do it. Talking about it and looking at brochures is one thing, but…now…it’s happening.” She was sitting with both feet pulled up on the seat, her knees encircled and gathered against her chest. “I’m really excited,” she insisted. “It’s just I can’t help thinking, looking back, about how much I’ve changed. I hope I don’t miss, you know, the glamour—well, that’s not the right word—the sort of cutting edge or whatever. I mean, I don’t miss it now. I love you and I’d die for Grace—but I don’t want to wind up faded and drab, a fishwife or something. That’s a huge part of what I’m saying.”

  “I can’t believe you’d feel that way.” Mason looked across at her, lifted slightly from the gas. “You’re as brilliant and sexy and talented as the day I met you, and where we live isn’t going to change any of that.” He glanced at the highway, then checked her again. “There’s not a more irresistible woman on the planet—Picasso crossed with Bridget Bardot. Margaret Thatcher’s brass. Men will always drop what they’re doing and fall in line, no doubt about it.”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “What’s hard to explain?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “I’m trying to make sense of stuff. I hope I’m doing this for the right reasons.”

  “Well, I thought we’d talked about the reasons. You wanted to leave Richmond more than I did.”

  “We’ve talked about it,” she said, peeved.

  “So what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she answered dully.

  “There has to be something bothering you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Is there a message I’m supposed to be able to decipher from your clues and heavy hints? Last night we’re on cloud nine, we just bought a new house, and now you’re weird for reasons you can’t explain to me. Your neck’s starting to splotch, so it must be pretty serious.”

  “Can we get Twizzlers at the store?” Grace interrupted from the rear of the car.

  “Maybe, honey,” Mason said, pegging her in the mirror when he answered.

  “The next place,” she said.

  “Okay,” Mason answered, distracted.

  “The next place.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve tried to tell you as best I can,” Allison said. “There’s no reason to beat me up about it.”

  “We’re making the right choice,” he said. “And I’m hardly beating you up.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “N
o I’m not. I’m simply trying to understand your problem.”

  “Well, I suppose there is more to it, but I don’t want to talk about it with you in this mood.”

  “What mood?” he demanded, tossing his hands so they slapped against the steering wheel.

  “The mood you’re in.” She was almost to tears.

  “This is stupid. What’s wrong with you? Why’re you so emotional all of a sudden?”

  “You wouldn’t understand anyway.”

  “Not unless I’m Mandrake the Magician and can read your mind.”

  “Stop! My Twizzlers!” Grace wailed.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t see the store.”

  “You promised.”

  “The next one. You watch and tell me when it’s coming.”

  “You told me a story,” Grace said sullenly, feeding on the discontent in the car, sensing her mother’s withdrawal.

  “It wasn’t on purpose,” he assured the child. “I’m sorry if I’ve pissed you off,” he said, returning to Allison. “I was only trying to get at what’s plaguing you. I suppose I’d have been better off simply ignoring you and the method acting you’ve been doing for two hours, all the bottled-up angst over there.” He barely waited before continuing. “Of course, then I get blasted for not asking, for being inconsiderate and self-centered.”

  She was composing herself. The red splotch on her neck had stopped its attack. “I’ll remember this the next time you’re in a bad way. I will.”

  “Whatever,” he said, defeated. “You’d think we’d be celebrating.” He was almost to another store but couldn’t stop in time to make the turn. “Oh damn.”

  “Stop! You said you would.” Grace was instantly bawling, revving up on big gulps of air and loosing them with all the shrieking disappointment she could muster.

  Mason pressed the brake more abruptly than was called for and veered to the shoulder of the road. He jammed the Volvo’s shifter into Park, turned off the ignition, exited in a huff and trudged back down the side of the highway to a gas station, cars whizzing by, their warm whooshes butting into him as they passed. He bought a pack of Twizzlers, a liter of orange drink, a giant bag of M&M’s and a box of cookies. “Go to it,” he said to Grace, handing her the cache of goodies as soon as he reached the car. “Knock yourself out.”