Double Delight

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The boy shook his head as if embarrassed. “Naw, the name’s Chick, nobody ever calls me that. I’m fifteen years old, and Ava-Rose, that that guy over there tried to kill, is my aunt.”

  At once the defense counsel was on his feet. “Your Honor, I object!”

  Before the judge could reply, the Renfrew boy cried, “‘Object’! What do you know! You weren’t there! Seeing that bastard punching and kicking Aunt Ava-Rose, dragging her down the stairs—!” He waved a fist at the attorney. His handsome, mildly blemished face looked heated and his hair, dirty-blond, stiffly curly, seemed to rise from his head in protest.

  It was some minutes before courtroom decorum was restored. At a request of the defense counsel, the jury was hurriedly sent out of the courtroom; locked into the jury room; then, ten minutes later, herded back. Terence very much hoped that the young witness had not been banished from the trial, and was relieved to see that he was still on the witness stand, though looking now subdued, boyishly contrite. For the remainder of his testimony, “Chick” Renfrew spoke quietly, yet with indignation. He told of T. W. Binder harassing his aunt for weeks—forcing his way into the house—beating Ava-Rose on the stairs, kicking her as she lay fallen—shouting “I’ll kill you, bitch!” He told of trying to pull Binder away from his aunt, and being struck in the mouth. He described in detail Binder’s hand-tooled leather boots, with which he kicked his aunt in the head repeatedly. His story corroborated to the smallest detail the stories given by Ava-Rose Renfrew and Holly Mae Loomis, and as he gave it he glanced frequently at the jurors as if confident that they would believe him. Only fifteen!—Terence smiled at the boy’s combination of innocence and theatricality. You would almost think that “Chick” Renfrew had given testimony in a courtroom before.

  When the defense counsel began his cross-examination, rather warily, as if he feared provoking another damning outburst, he did in fact inquire with seeming innocence after the witness’s “juvenile record”—but this line of questioning was brought to an immediate halt as, simultaneously, the prosecuting attorney raised an objection and the witness himself turned to the judge and asked, in an aggrieved voice, “Do I have to answer that?”

  The judge explained to the jury, at some length, a technicality of state law that protected any juvenile in the matter of his or her “juvenile record,” which was sealed. But, it seemed, “Chick” Renfrew did have a record of some mysterious kind.

  Emboldened by this small gain, the defense counsel, pacing excitedly about, asked the witness if he had not contributed to the incident by fighting with the defendant himself; but the witness denied this vehemently. He’d tried to “pull Binder off,” “make him stop kicking Aunt Ava-Rose”—that was all. Seemingly unaware of his tactical error, the defense counsel doggedly asked questions that allowed the boy to dwell upon the beating, to repeat several times “All the while he’s yelling, ‘I’ll kill you!—all of you!’” and to describe the victim’s bleeding wounds, so that, after some minutes, one of the woman jurors made a gesture as if she were on the verge of fainting. Terence himself, listening intently, envisioning the brute Binder so savagely beating a woman half his size, felt an unmistakable gastric pang.

  If the role of cross-examination in a trial is to introduce doubt into jurors’ minds regarding witnesses’ testimonies, it was having the opposite effect, Terence thought, in this trial. The more the defense counsel hammered at the credibility of the Renfrews, the more overwhelming seemed the defendant’s guilt.

  “Yessir, I sure am sure I saw what I saw,” the Renfrew boy said vehemently, “—and lucky to be alive to tell it, seeing as how T.W. wanted to kill me, too!”

  At last the defense counsel gave up, and dismissed the witness.

  “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  As Charlton Heston Renfrew rose to leave the court, he pulled his baseball cap out of his pocket, gripped it in both hands before him in a clumsy, bashful gesture, and made a bowing gesture with his head, toward the jury: “Have a real nice day, y’all!”

  The prosecution’s final witness, Ronnie Reuben, was a neighbor of the Renfrews’; a resident of 31 Holyoak Street; a squarely built woman of about thirty-five who described herself as a person who minded her own business, yet could not help but be aware of the ruckus next door on December 27—“You’d have to be deaf, not to be.” She’d known that Ava-Rose had been having trouble with her former boyfriend the motorcyclist because the Renfrews had spoken openly about it—“she wouldn’t marry him, I guess: He was crazy about her”—and sure enough, two days after Christmas, there came T. W. Binder riding his Harley-Davidson right up onto the sidewalk; and, a few minutes later, a terrible commotion next door, as if somebody was being murdered. Mrs. Reuben told of going over to the Renfrews’, though she was scared to death, to see if she could be of help; what she should have done, she realized afterward, was call the police right away. “Was I crazy!—I walked right up to the front door, where it was open, and Binder—yes, that’s him, there, sir”—she pointed at the defendant—“came rushing out, knocking me aside like he didn’t even see me. I could smell whiskey on his breath—there was blood splattered on his face, and on his hands—I almost fainted, I was so scared!—thinking for sure he’d murdered Ava-Rose! ’Cause, that other time, he’d been arrested, and there was going to be a trial, police saying he’d drowned that poor old what’s-his-name—Applewine?—Wineapple?”

  At once the defense counsel was on his feet, objecting; in such a fury, his glasses nearly flew off his nose. Yet Terence saw too that the prosecutor was also concerned. The judge quickly sustained the objection, and ordered the court stenographer to strike the witnesses’ remarks following her statement of having been scared.

  Yet this was insufficient for the defense counsel, who requested, and was granted, a consultation with the judge and the prosecutor, on the far side of the judge’s desk, out of the jurors’ hearing.

  Naturally, all the jurors were alerted. So T. W. Binder was not only accused of having beaten a young woman half to death, but had once been arrested for a drowning? Terence recalled the judge having asked prospective jurors if the name “Wineapple” meant anything to them: Those who had answered “yes” had been summarily dismissed from the jury. So this is a murder case too, Terence thought, baffled. And how frustrating, that we jurors must sit here like deaf mutes, unable to ask questions or even to show our impatience!

  After some minutes of intense whispered debate, the trial resumed. Ronnie Reuben, a plain, jut-chinned woman with coarse graying hair cropped close as a man’s, appeared abashed at the flurry she’d caused; Terence knew enough of courtroom strategy to understand that the witness had inadvertently brought up a subject the prosecutor had not wanted brought up, though, in fact, it adversely affected the defendant’s case. From this point onward, the witness spoke in a careful, halting fashion, and when the defense counsel questioned her, he limited his examination to niggling details about the “unfounded rumors” of T. W. Binder’s threats against Ava-Rose Renfrew; the precise sequence of events on the afternoon of December 27; and, given that blood is blood, whose blood could Mrs. Reuben swear she’d seen on the defendant’s face and hands—“Couldn’t it have been, after all, his own?”

  Mrs. Reuben pursed her mouth, and thought, and had to concede, “Well!—I s’pose Holly Mae and Chick might’ve gone after him, too, in self-defense.”

  “‘Self-defense’?” the defense counsel said, slyly. “How do you know it wasn’t an out-and-out attack on T. W. Binder? By your own account, you weren’t an eye-witness to the scene inside the Renfrew house, were you?”

  Before the witness could reply, the prosecution adroitly raised an objection. Another delay! Terence felt his stomach churn. He could barely bring himself to look at the defense counsel, still less at the defendant, he felt such rage for them. He tried to calm himself by swimming laps in his imagination in the sparkling white-tiled pool at the Queenston Athletic Club. How calming on the nerves, the chaste monot
ony of the Australian crawl! The solace that, in the pool, naked except for swimming trunks, thus anonymous, one could commit no sin, do no wrong. I want to be good and I want to do good but I want Justice. Since the start of the trial, which seemed to be draining all his energy, Terence had not gone to the pool once; he felt the discomfort of unexercised muscles in his neck and shoulders.

  And had not Phyllis, the evening before, at the sumptuous dinner at the Queenston Country Club, nudged him in the small of the back and murmured in a pained undertone, “Oh!—can’t you stand up straight.”

  The single witness for the defense was the defendant himself, T. W. Binder, who, called by his attorney, made his way forward in a shambling, swaying gait, like a man uncertain of his surroundings. Everyone in the courtroom watched as the bailiff swore him in: He laid a hand clumsily against the Bible, and mumbled a near-inaudible reply. For a man of thirty-two Binder appeared, to Terence’s critical eye, much older. His reddish-brown hair was receding from his bumpy forehead and his muscular body was going to fat; his flushed, formerly handsome face was soft in the jowls. His lips were unnaturally white as if the blood had drained out of them soft like slugs yet she had kissed him and been kissed by him.

  The defense counsel led Binder through his testimony, which, though clearly rehearsed, was delivered in a faltering, defiant voice. Binder insisted he’d never meant to hurt Ava-Rose Renfrew—“I just wanted to talk to her.” No, he had never “harassed” or “threatened” her. He had not seen her in weeks, maybe months. If somebody was bothering her, as she’d claimed, it was “some other guy—not me.” In fact, Binder said, staring at the defense counsel with a look of muted rage, as if the man were an enemy and not his only ally in the courtroom, Ava-Rose Renfrew and her family owed him money. He’d gone to 33 Holyoak Street on the afternoon of December 27 to ask about the money they owed him. How much was it?—“A couple of thousand. Maybe more.” But as soon as he stepped inside the house, Binder said—“Things happened so fast, I never knew what.”

  The defense counsel, who appeared both belligerent and nervous, glanced at the jury to see how they were absorbing Binder’s testimony. For a fraction of an instant the man’s gaze locked with Terence’s: He seemed to freeze. Then, “Mr. Binder, continue. Try to approximate what did happen.”

  Binder was slow to speak. He flexed his fingers, shifted his broad, hunched shoulders inside his cheaply cut brown coat. His pale mouth worked oddly, as if these words gave him pain. “Like the first time I ever saw her!—three years ago. And every time I was with her, or went there—to that house. They tried to keep me out after all I did for them, but I had a right! So I pushed my way inside and maybe I was a little drunk, but that wasn’t it—what happened. I looked up, and Ava-Rose was on the stairs, and—somehow I was with her. And we were falling. And Chick, and the old woman Holly Mae, and the old man they call the Captain—he was there, too—and they were all on me.” There was a pause. The defense counsel waited. Binder shook his head vigorously, like a dog. “Naw, I don’t remember. It’s all a fog. I don’t know what happened. I blacked out, and when I came to I was on the bridge over the river, in the wind, my face drying in the wind, sort of freezing, on my ’cycle flying over into Pennsylvania.” Binder grinned maliciously. “I went to Philly, where I got some friends. I thought maybe I was finished, here.”

  A chilling remark! Terence and his fellow jurors listened keenly.

  The defense counsel shoved his glasses against his nose and regarded his client guardedly. As if much of this testimony were new to him?—and he dared not risk more? “Mr. Binder, uh—tell us what you were wearing on your feet that afternoon.”

  Binder stared, and blinked, then nodded, slowly, as if back on course. “Jogging shoes, sir. I was wearing jogging shoes.”

  “Jogging shoes! And not ‘black leather boots’?”

  “They were black jogging shoes, sir. I was wearing black jogging shoes. Not boots.”

  “Not boots! Very good!” The attorney sighed, rubbed his hands together. “Now tell us, to the best of your ability, Mr. Binder, what happened on the afternoon of December 27, at 33 Holyoak Street. Go back to the beginning, to your arrival—”

  And so T. W. Binder did, or tried to do, in his halting, stumbling way: until, again, he reached the point of no longer remembering—“I blacked out.” Blacked out! Terence Greene, so deeply offended by the defendant’s obvious subterfuge, as by his crude physical presence, that he could scarcely force himself to listen, sat stiff and detached. Even when, later, the young prosecutor took over the questioning, several times reducing Binder to guilty, sullen silence, Terence could not concentrate. Thinking that, long ago, in a distant part of the country, as in a distant part of his life, he too had been a witness to, if not a participant in, some lost, utterly mysterious event.

  Like Binder, Terence had simply blacked out, afterward.

  In a place where pain runs wild, like fire. Where words refuse to follow.

  The trial concluded late in the morning of the fifth day, with formal closing arguments of the prosecution and the defense; and the examination, by the jurors, of the items of evidence—the detailed medical report on the condition of Ava-Rose Renfrew, admitted to the emergency room at Trenton General Hospital, 4:40 P.M. of December 27 of the previous year; and six black-and-white photographs of the interior of the house at 33 Holyoak, primarily of the steep staircase down which Ava-Rose was said to have fallen. (Of all the jurors, Terence Greene examined these items most thoroughly. He would have liked to make a copy of Miss Renfrew’s medical report, just for himself! And the interior of the Renfrew house fascinated him, what he could see of it in the background—an elaborate woven mandala wall hanging, a spiny, grotesquely flowering potted tree of about the size of an orange tree, garish Christmas decorations. At the very top of the stairs, in one of the photographs, lay, deep in slumber, the rough-coated mongrel with the German shepherd’s face who had given Terence such a fright the day before.)

  Before sending them to the jury room to deliberate, the judge gave the jury detailed instructions regarding the case at hand and the law governing it. They were to vote “guilty” or “not guilty” on a charge of aggravated assault; if “not guilty,” they were to vote on a lesser charge of assault. All, including Terence Greene, came away having memorized that part of the New Jersey statute pertaining to “aggravated assault”: that the defendant knowingly, purposefully, and recklessly intended to inflict serious physical injury, or did inflict such injury.

  To Terence’s surprise, his fellow jurors unanimously elected him foreman.

  “Well! Thank you.” He was genuinely moved.

  (And humbled: For these men and women, strangers to him, must have been watching him with something like admiration, while, in his characteristic aloofness, he’d paid no attention to them at all.)

  Yet, even granted such authority, Terence had, at first, a difficult time guiding the deliberations. He invited discussion from any of the jurors, urging them not to be shy; yet was startled by the vehemence of one of the younger men, who said, flatly, “I’d say I don’t know who to believe. Him, just now—he sounded spaced-out. But her, this ‘Ava-Rose’—something about her, she’d eat you up alive, I don’t know.” He shivered, and laughed; and others laughed with him. The young man’s very lack of coherence seemed to make his argument, if it was an argument, the more persuasive. Terence simply stared.

  Another man, in his mid-forties, in robust physical appearance resembling Matt Montgomery, though clearly less educated, said, with a snort of derision, “I don’t think that woman’s face looked so bad, like it’s anything permanent, or even ‘serious,’ like they say it’s got to be to find him guilty. And if the guy had really kicked her in the head, wearing boots, like her and the kid said, she’d be dead now, or crippled, not walking around!”

  A woman said, tentatively, “Well, she did have a concussion. It says here on the medical report—”

  “Hey, you can get a concussion fallin
g down a stairs, you don’t need to be kicked in the head.”

  “But he pushed her—”

  “She says! He said they all attacked him.”

  “You believe him? The way he acted?”

  “How can you believe any of them? That kind of people—”

  Terence sat quietly, listening amazed. He felt his face redden. Was it possible!—his fellow jurors, having heard the same testimonies he had heard, had formed such different opinions?

  A faded, pretty woman in her mid-fifties, whom Terence had overheard identify herself as a registered nurse, said, tentatively, “These injuries on the medical report, they are minor. And did he mean to do it? ‘Knowingly, recklessly’—all that? Was it ‘aggravated’?”

  “A concussion is minor? An eye injury?”

  “Yes, compared to—”

  “What I think happened is—”

  “Look, he said he was gonna kill them—”

  “They said!”

  “It’s four against one!”

  “But three are in the same family.”

  “He said they owed him money—”

  “—and what was that, about some guy—‘Wineapple’?”

  “Yeah, the neighbor woman said what’s-his-name was going to be tried for some other thing, ‘drowning’—”

  “There’s a lot here we don’t know, huh!”

  Everyone was speaking at once. Terence, though unhappy at the tone of the discussion, recalled his position as foreman, and rapped gently on the tabletop to restore order. At once, the jurors quieted. He said, “I am not a lawyer, but I feel I should speak for the judge. She did instruct us, you know, to exclude that fragment of testimony—that mysterious reference to someone, apparently drowned, named ‘Wineapple.’”

  “Huh! It’s hard to forget something you heard!”

  “It is,” Terence conceded, “—but, in the interests of Justice, we must try.”

  Inwardly wincing for certainly T. W. Binder was guilty, and that was Justice!