Paris Trout

by Pete Dexter

  “He didn’t touch us long, but when he left his hands off us, we was changed for good.” Seagraves repeated the boy’s words in a monotone as if he were reading them.

  “Yessir.”

  “Could you tell us how things were before Mr. Trout changed them?”

  “I don’t know that I exactly could,” the boy said.

  “Well, let’s see. When you needed money, where did you go to borrow?”

  The boy did not answer.

  “Did Mr. Trout come to you, or did you go to him?”

  “He come out that day.”

  “I’m not talking about the day of the shooting right now,” Seagraves said. “We’ll talk about that later. Right now I want to know about this beatific life you-all had that Mr. Trout changed.”

  The boy moved in his seat. “I didn’t say it was that,” he said.

  Seagraves closed his eyes. “What I am getting at here is that Paris Trout was part of the reason you had the good life you did. That he had been a friend to your family, loaned you money when you needed it, and would still be a friend if you hadn’t tried to cheat him on this car.”

  The boy did not answer.

  “Am I going too fast?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then answer the question.”

  “I didn’t hear none.”

  “The question I asked you was to describe the life that you say Mr. Trout changed.”

  The boy paused. “Rosie’s life,” he said.

  Seagraves felt it getting away from him now. He looked again at the jury and saw the size of his mistake. “Now sir,” he said, “when Mr. Trout came up on the porch, did he do anything to threaten you?”

  “He put his hand back of my collar, you know naturally that would threaten anybody.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “No sir, I recognize they wasn’t coming up there for me. I had one payment before that was overdue, and I just paid them on up.”

  “Why did you grab Mr. Trout by the neck then?”

  “I never grabbed Mr. Trout. I never raised my hand.”

  “Did you try to fight Mr. Trout?”

  “I didn’t attempt to fight. If I did, Mr. Buster was glad to shoot me.”

  “That was the reason you didn’t fight?”

  “Nobody would fight, somebody got a pistol on them.”

  Seagraves held his head as if he were dizzy. “All right,” he said, “you say Rosie ran into the house, then Mr. Trout, and then your mother.”

  “Walked,” he said. “She just walk in there calm.”

  “You saw that? She just walked in nice and slow?”

  “No sir, she was walking pert. She don’t ever walk slow.”

  “Did you see the rest?”

  “I didn’t see it all,” he said. “I didn’t stayed out there. I saw him when he caught up to Rosie, that is the only thing.”

  “Did you see him hit her?”

  “He grabbed her by the head. I don’t know what else. He might of hit her.”

  “You are the gentleman who was there, and you can’t say if she was hit or not?”

  “Yessir, he hit her with something. I saw the place on her head.”

  Seagraves moved closer to the jury. “All right,” he said, “and then you ducked in the house. Is that where your rifle is?”

  “Yessir.”

  “It’s a .22, single-shot rifle?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Did you mean to get it out?”

  “Don’t I have a right to protect my house?”

  “Awhile ago you said you ducked in there because you were scared. Why did you say that?”

  “I was scared,” the boy said. “I’m naturally scared when somebody is shooting.”

  Seagraves saw the boy’s fingers were shaking. “Which is it? Were you scared or were you mad?”

  “Yessir,” he said.

  “You were scared enough to shoot somebody with your .22 rifle, but you weren’t scared enough to shoot them with a pistol?”

  “I don’t know how to shoot no pistol,” he said.

  “Then why was it under your mattress? Why take it from your stepfather in the first place?”

  “I didn’t have no reason, I just liked it,” he said.

  “Do you know what perjury is?” Seagraves asked. “Do you know it is a crime in this state to tell a lie under oath?”

  “I know it.”

  “I’ll ask again. Why did you want it on your side of the house then?”

  “I could take what I wanted on my side. Mr. Lyle don’t mind what I take.”

  Seagraves leaned closer to the boy and spoke to the jury. “The truth is,” he said, “that gun wasn’t there, was it? It was on the other side, and you took it out of there after the shooting, didn’t you?”

  “No sir, I had it before.”

  Seagraves shook his head. “All right, you said Mr. Devonne had a gun too.”

  “I saw the print of it through his coat.”

  “Did he say anything while this was going on?”

  The boy shrugged. “He didn’t say a mumbling word the whole time.”

  “He just walked in, without rhyme or reason, and began to shoot? Does that make sense to you?”

  “I don’t know,” the boy said. “I never seen people act out like that before.”

  Seagraves walked back to the defense table and saw that Trout had filled the page. Ducks, mice, guns, pools of steaming blood. A woodpecker smoking a cigarette. He was beginning to draw walls and a window, to make the scene indoors.

  “I have no further questions,” he said.

  Judge Taylor consulted his watch and broke for lunch. It was ten thirty-five, and Paris Trout was out the door before any of the spectators.

  TROUT CROSSED TOWN ON foot, using alleys and backyards, and arrived at the Ether County Retirement Home in ten minutes.

  He walked through the lobby without signing the visitors’ book, without acknowledging the nurse sitting behind the reception desk. There was a rule that visitors had to sign in and residents had to sign out, but the nurse looked at Trout and decided not to make an issue.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked into room 26 without knocking. His mother was sitting in a wheelchair near the sink, naked.

  A fat Negro woman in a green uniform was kneeling in front of her, sponging her feet. The woman looked over her shoulder at the sound of the door, stopping for a moment, and then rinsed the sponge in a bowl of dirty water and started up the old woman’s legs. She knew Trout from other visits.

  Trout sat down on the unmade bed, watching. His mother’s toenails were yellow and thick and had not been cut in a long time. They had not grown straight but followed along the curve of her toes, reminding him somehow of talons.

  Her legs were thin and bruised, unshaved.

  Her lap was hidden by the way she sat in the chair, a little tuft of gray hair showing at the top. “Miz Trout be finished here in a few minutes, you want to wait outside,” the woman said.

  Trout did not move.

  The sponge went over his mother’s knees and then moved to her chest and stomach. He saw little bumps rise on her arms, chicken skin. The woman stood and pulled her halfway out of her chair. His mother’s chin rested on the woman’s shoulder while she washed her back and bottom.

  “There now,” the woman said, “we be done in a jiffy.” She dropped the old lady back into the chair and studied her work. There was a wet shine over her, top to bottom, and she had begun to shake.

  The woman walked into the bathroom and came back with a towel and bent over the old lady, going back over what she had done. She was drying the chest when she noticed the old lady’s breathing. “Lord a mercy,” she said, “something got Miz Trout excited today.”

  He saw the rise and fall of her stomach too, it was spasmodic, as if she were crying. “I bet she knows you come to see her,” the woman said. “I bet she knows you here.” The woman moved until her face was in front of his mother’s. “
You know your sonny boy come to visit, didn’t you?”

  She opened the closet door and came out with a white nightgown. She fit it over the old lady’s head and then her body, tugging at the arms to get them into the sleeves.

  “People ’round here say Miz Trout don’t realize a day has passed the last five years, but she knows more than they think.”

  She took the combs out of the old lady’s hair and then smoothed it as it fell, the ends just touching the floor.

  “You want to comb your momma’s hair?” the woman said. “Sometime peoples like to comb their mothers’ hair.…” She thought for a minute. “But I expect it’s ladies like to do that, ain’t it?”

  Without a word Trout stood up and walked out the door.

  TRIAL RESUMED AT ONE o’clock.

  Seagraves approached the courthouse by himself, from the back. He’d eaten lunch at the college cafeteria, wanting time alone to think. Something was wrong with the case, the same thing was wrong with him. There was a confusion that defied order, and Paris Trout was in the middle of it, getting clearer all the time.

  Seagraves saw Buster Devonne then, standing on the sidewalk where he could watch both doors to the building, and as soon as he spotted Seagraves, he crossed the lawn of newly planted grass to head him off.

  “Mr. Seagraves,” he said, smiling, “if I might have a minute of your time, sir …”

  Seagraves stood where he was.

  Buster Devonne stopped close enough so Seagraves could smell his sweat and lit a cigarette. He pulled the smoke deep into his body, and it came back out with the words as he spoke.

  “Sir,” he said, “there is some feeling among my friends that I am being used in this trial in a way that is detrimental to my own case.”

  Seagraves did not answer.

  “On account, you know, of the conflict of my testimony with my original statement.”

  “You need to talk to your attorney about that,” Seagraves said. “I represent Paris Trout’s interests.”

  “That’s what I mean,” he said. “You see, I ain’t got no Harry Seagraves to get me off. I got Bear Lewis, the midget, and he’s a worst lawyer than he was a judge.”

  Seagraves kept still.

  “And what I thought,” Buster Devonne said, “was it might be to our mutual benefit if you was to represent me also.”

  “No,” he said.

  Devonne ran the palm of his hand over his head, from the forehead back to his neck. “I got to protect myself, you see. I can’t afford no crackerjack lawyer.”

  “Bear Lewis knows the law,” Seagraves said.

  “No sir, not good enough. I need me a better lawyer, or I can’t go saying nothing at this trial here.…” He smiled and pulled again on the cigarette.

  “How much do you want?” Seagraves said.

  Devonne left the cigarette in his lips and put his hands in his pockets. He looked at his shoes, caked with fresh dirt. “A thousand,” he said. “A thousand, I ought get me a lawyer of my own.…”

  WHEN SEAGRAVES REENTERED THE courtroom, the air was dead weight. Hot and still and dead. It was an effort to breathe. Judge Taylor came in a moment later, pulling at his collar. There was baby powder between his fingers and streaked here and there across his robe. He sat down and broke an immediate sweat. He instructed the court officer to clear the spectators out of the windows and then sent him for a fan.

  Ward Townes called Mary McNutt. For half an hour Townes questioned her, uninterrupted by defense objection, leading her from her first meeting with Rosie Sayers to the moment things started on the porch.

  She said, “I come up on the step, and Mr. Trout had brass knucks on his left hand. He made a rake to hit her, and she dodged.

  “Rosie tore off into the house, and he tore off after her, like he was tearing down a panel. I come through the door, and they was at the foot of the bed. He had hold of her, and she had hold of him, around his waist. I saw where he hit her with the knucks. He surely bust the skin. I went in the second room door, and Mr. Buster Devonne come right on behind me and shot me in the back. I walk on, and he shot me again, a little before I got to Mr. Trout and Rosie, right there in my own house.”

  “And what did you do?” Townes said.

  “I kept straight by them, I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “Sir … those bullets went inside.”

  “Could you feel them?”

  “I could feel the shock, oh, yes.”

  Sitting at the table, Seagraves felt them too.

  Townes said, “But you went on walking? Did you ever get hold of Mr. Trout?”

  “No sir. I went on in there in the kitchen. I just got to the table to lay down, and then I dropped to my knees and couldn’t stand up. I felt the bullets a different aspect, and I just wanted to lay down. Then Rosie come in after Mr. Trout had shot her, sat down on the trunk. He had shot her in the arm and the side.”

  “How many times did Mr. Trout shoot her after she sat down?”

  “I know of twice, maybe more.”

  “And you were there when he did the shooting?”

  “I was laying down,” she said. “I was laying down with her to die. She said, ‘Lord have mercy, Mary, he has shot me in my stomach.’ I raised up, and just as I turned around Mr. Buster ran in a little piece and shot me again. I said, ‘Come on, Rosie,’ and she got up, and me and her went out the back door.”

  Ward Townes waited a moment, and then, quietly, he said, “Can you show the jury any of the places the bullets hit you?”

  Seagraves came out of his chair slowly, as if he were undecided whose side he was on.

  “Objection,” he said, sounding tired. “The witness is not the deceased, the condition of her body, whatever it may be, is not germane to this case and is not admissible.”

  Townes said, “It is certainly germane to the business Paris Trout conducted that day in Indian Heights. It cannot be separated out because Mrs. McNutt did not succumb to her injuries.”

  Judge Taylor dropped his chin into the palm of his hand and thought. “Well, Mr. Townes,” he said, “I don’t think you can make an exhibition of these wounds without subjecting the witness to a certain embarrassment.”

  “We won’t need to disrobe her,” Townes said. “All she has to do is pull up her dress.”

  Seagraves spoke again, more deliberately. “I would further object, for the record, that any such display would be highly prejudicial and would impugn the dignity of this court.”

  Judge Taylor would not meet his eye. “I will let it in,” he said, “if counsel can show the wounds without undue embarrassment.”

  Seagraves walked back to his seat and heard the first question before he had turned around.

  “Now, Miss Mary, where did the initial shot hit you?”

  “Right in the middle of the back,” she said.

  “Would you please stand for a moment?”

  The woman stood up and turned around. She had worn a long cotton dress with buttons up the back. Without being asked, she unfastened the top three. Her dress separated, and the skin beneath was rolling and brown, and just to the right of her spine was a black spot the size of a half dollar. Two black lines led from it in opposite directions, as if she had been cracked.

  Townes positioned her so the jury could see. Then he said, “Thank you,” and she rebuttoned her dress and sat back down. She had not hesitated or fumbled over the buttons.

  “Where did the next bullet go?” Townes said.

  “In the side,” she said. And she reached behind, without standing, unbuttoning herself again, and then pulled the dress open until another black mark appeared. It lay on the wave of flesh beneath her brassiere.

  “And the next?”

  She covered her side and pulled the dress down from the neck. Showing her right shoulder. The spot there was larger than the other two, and unlike them, it rose above the skin. The last mark was beneath her left breast, and she displayed it easily and without embarras
sment. Unlike her sons, she was not afraid.

  “All this time you were being shot,” Townes said, “did any of you folks curse Mr. Trout or Mr. Devonne?”

  “No sir,” she said.

  “Did you have any kind of weapon, any of you?”

  “No sir.”

  “How long did it take? I mean, were the shots fired quick or slow?”

  “As quick as anything is ever done,” she said.

  “And when it was over, what did Mr. Trout and Mr. Devonne do then?”

  “When I looked,” she said, “both of them was just running like rabbits. I told Rosie then to come on, and me and her made our way out the door. It didn’t seem like no reason to stay in the kitchen where it happened. We had other things to do then.”

  He looked at her, not seeming to understand. But Seagraves did.

  “To prepare ourselves,” she said.

  Seagraves closed his eyes; Trout looked straight ahead. Townes waited a moment, making sure everyone understood. “Did they ever get any of those bullets out of you?” he said finally.

  She shook her head. “No sir. I feel them in the night.”

  “Thank you,” Townes said, “that’s all I have.”

  SEAGRAVES STARED AT THE woman from his seat, she stared back. “Do you own a pistol, Mrs. McNutt?” he said.

  “No sir.”

  “There is no pistol in your house?”

  “Yessir, there is one. It belongs to my husband, Mr. Lyle McNutt.”

  “Do you know where your husband keeps it?”

  “Yessir, I know everything in my home.”

  “What caliber pistol is that?”

  “I don’t keep track of nothing like that. I just know it’s there.”

  Seagraves stood up and began to walk toward the jury. He had found an assault charge which was filed and dropped against Mary Boxer in Daniel County seven years previous. A white veterinarian claimed she had tried to hit him with a chair in a scuffle over the rent.

  He had meant to bring that into it here, he knew he ought to bring it in. Something stopped him, though, he couldn’t say what. Only that things were confused enough.

  “The point I’m coming to, Mrs. McNutt,” Seagraves said, “our contention here is going to be that you are accusing Mr. Buster Devonne because you don’t want the jury to believe him later on. I want to give you the chance to speak to that now.”