‘If Sheriff Parkman fashions an indictment,’ he said, ‘and arrests you and brings you to jail and you are arraigned for trial and are tried, why, I will defend you with every atom of my being. Every atom.’
He rose again and put more of his most precious whiskey into his glass, and talking to the cabinet rather than to me, said: ‘I most certainly will. I most certainly will.’
*
Now the fallen tree was cleared and the workmen had come in a long time since and the new house was a huge instrument of banging and tapping and men calling to each other. Just because the work was there to do I put the week’s wages in order and pegged the urgent orders to the wall and the three boys we had for clearing up after jobs I sent in all directions to hunt up items that were late or gone astray. Work like that drives nearly every other thought away and there was the usual strange solace of numbers in spite of all.
I begged of the lawyer Briscoe that I might not go home that night. He undertook to find out what he could in Paris and off he went. By nightfall he was still away. Lana Jane Sugrue was one of those old-fangled people who rose with the dawn and went to bed near twilight, for want of a candle or a lamp. She did not lack for candles or lamps now but the habit had stayed with her. She was happy to show me a corner of her own bed. In truth she didn’t take up much room in it anyhow but was only the length of a few feet under the coverlets, like a child. I was as hollow as a reed after my long talk with the lawyer Briscoe. I was very content to get in beside her and give way to sleep.
The next morning the lawyer Briscoe said that Sheriff Parkman appeared to have gone off to Nashville on business – he knew not what business. Jas Jonski’s mother had already buried her son. The lawyer Briscoe had spoken to Deputy Wynkle King and the deputy said that I had been seen in town that night – ‘that little Injun girl,’ he called me, ‘that poor Jas was sweet on’ – and that this seemed to be the talk of the town. It seemed also that Sheriff Parkman had tried out his theory of knives on whosoever wished to debate the matter.
‘The Pony Express of gossip gallops on,’ said the lawyer Briscoe. ‘Well, that ain’t law and that ain’t evidence. They have you wrapped up nicely and you soon to be posted to perdition – far as they are concerned. We’ll see, said the blind rat.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
So now I had a few days for my soul to sink into whatever abyss souls sink into when they are affrighted. Even my dreams were laced with evil happenings. The storm went west to Arkansas, went off travelling by old routes and new maybe even as far as my lost country, the shadows of my mother and my sister. I ached for a happy thought. Now the air emboldened and threads of strange gold seemed to blow through the sunlight. In my mood of fear and fright it seemed laden with all wrong prophecy, that wide high sky of fool’s gold spread behind the lawyer Briscoe’s new house. I longed for Thomas and John Cole, I longed for Peg, for Rosalee. I longed for all the sacred stupidity of ordinary life. What the deer feels in the second she sees the hunter with his gun I seemed to feel for long stretches of hours and days. I was poised for flight like any creature might be but where I was to flee I didn’t know.
Noble ideas weren’t much of a balm. The time comes when you are just what you are, without frills. You feel yourself to be so. Seventeen, eighteen years old, with a bunch of ideas about myself – but how easily, quickly all that was swept away. I thought of the whiskey I had drunk, I thought of the things I couldn’t see, the events that were dark. Blundering through twisting darkness. Sometimes a glimpse of faces, sometimes a stray torch of light showing limbs and clothes, a room, a street – then darkness closing again. Black black darkness. But how wretched, how solo, how alone, in my thoughts. At the middle of all was a hurting thought that I had been the cause of everything had happened to me. I had been raised high by Thomas and John Cole but now I was pitched down to what I really was. And what I really was didn’t seem to have even a mouthful of words to tell me its nature. A ragged thing of an unwanted people. I sat alone at the lawyer Briscoe’s and wondered if I shrank away to nothing would I just disappear? A thing so light and worthless that the smallest breeze would carry it off, that strange light stuff that wraps a new leaf, so it rolled and tumbled in the ditches of the world.
*
Then Peg arrived.
We were alone together in Lana Jane Sugrue’s temporary quarters. Even though just a stopgap she had prettied it up as best she could. It was only a corner of a corner of the barn. Her brothers had hung some old lengths of linen for her to make a room so there was an atmosphere in it something like a teepee. Even though Peg seemed burdened by something she smiled when she saw it. She clapped her hands like a child and laughed. The happiness of just being with her pierced into me like arrows. Like knives. It was such a painful happiness because my deepest mind was telling me my legs were in the slough and I could never be sucked free from it again.
‘Two nights past it was true what I said,’ Peg began. ‘You just slept the sleep of the innocent and when it was maybe two hours nigh midnight I could not sleep and rose and went out to the stables and got me a mule and as quiet as the quietest thing ever was I went into Paris to punish that boy.’
‘Jas Jonski?’
‘Ain’t no way to say this excepting if I ain’t saying it now, I ain’t never going to sleep again, I ain’t never going to hardly breathe,’ she said.
‘I went into Paris to punish that boy. I could see the suffering in you. It were anger carried me then. A desire that ain’t to be resisted to have justice for that girl I love, justice for Winona.’
‘I am Winona, here in front of you.’
‘I know,’ she said.
Then she drew breath.
‘So I go into that wretched town and I creeping along the ways but I know because you said it that he lived back of Mr Hicks’s store so I am asking a couple of jackass boys where that might be and then in the dark I am standing outside and I see the little light of his window and I creep through the little rose garden Mr Hicks seem to have and the roses are prickling me all the way and I gaze in the window. I don’t even have a gun, I don’t even have my knife, and then I am thinking what a damn fool I am and nothing to fight with and I am just on the point of going back to my mule which of course I had tethered up by the last woods and I am just on the point of spinning round on my feet and going back and getting back to Lige’s and creeping back into our bed and lying along your back like only angels get to do and feeling your sweet warm body against me and then though what do I see? I see a body not warm or sweet but it be Jas Jonski strewn cross his own dank little bed and by heaven blood all round and over everything and this cold scene lit by a candle that fluttered and gasped on his table and I thought, someone has done the deed, someone they have done the work that needed to be doing. And I crept away back through the town and tried not to be seen and I was happy that boy was dead. And I rode home to you, and you never had stirred, and even when I slipped in behind you you never stirred, only let out a tiny sound. And that my story told cold and that the proof that you never killed nobody and that the bare truth and it can be told to everyone.’
‘Peg, my Peg, it a story can be told to no one, to nobody. You tell that story then it just you replaced for me and just the hangman’s noose just the same and that for me would be the same, to lose you would be to lose myself. Peg, you must never tell another what you told me. Never.’
‘I heard you reading the letter to John Cole and I heard what he said and I thought just since we be of no account in the world I had best be judge and jury and do the right thing which would be the thing directed to do by love.’
‘Peg, you think we said enough about that? What I saying is, you think we said everything clearly enough? We sometimes say love and sometimes say like and we just together as if we both chose it without a word and if I be the half of myself you be the other half. Do you know what it is to me that you would go off in the deep dark of the night and try and fetch justice for me? Do you know ho
w that heals me and hots my heart and makes me feel more braver than that bear that took steps to kill us in the woods? Do you know when I look on you now how my heart swells with something, with pride or something, or a feeling so big I guess mountains ain’t the equal of it?’
‘I guess we found each other,’ she whispered, her face an inch from mine, ‘I guess we did. And we weren’t even looking for each other when we found each other. Ain’t that strange?’
*
Well, Peg was obliged to go back to Lige’s because we thought we couldn’t be turning the lawyer Briscoe’s into a hotel. I gave her my señorita gun and my knife because something told me it was best to go without arms now. I was burning with a better force now. I was clearer, I was balanced like Thomas McNulty dancing, whirling, and stepping in the lost days and footlights of Grand Rapids.
But I wondered, could I live in my mother’s hoop of time any more? Did I have to put my foot on the whiteman’s strict straight line now? Because I didn’t want anything to come round again. In earlier times in the protection of my mother I wanted that because I lived in a dress of feathers, beads, and happiness. But what could I do in a black suit of sorrow?
*
Then of course because it couldn’t be anything else to happen Frank Parkman – Sheriff Parkman – came out to the lawyer Briscoe. He was alone, without deputies, so sure of the rightful ground he stood on that he wouldn’t need them. He showed a paper to the lawyer Briscoe and the lawyer Briscoe perused it and handed it back to him. This all on the new open space in front of the house, the workmen there that day looking down from the roof where they were sticking in pots. Nice new chimney pots made in New England and two weeks it took to get them down to Tennessee. There to rise proudly from the stack for evermore, hoped the lawyer Briscoe. No more depredations against things as innocent as chimney pots. In the meantime, this scrap of paper with this and that on it and my name.
The lawyer Briscoe said I would most likely have to go with Sheriff Parkman. Well, I didn’t have a horse or mule so Virg Sugrue was told to rattle me in on the buggy. Anyway the lawyer Briscoe didn’t intend in the general undertaking of his business to let me go alone, though Sheriff Parkman was strenuous in his speeches to try and make exactly that happen.
‘Plenty of time to set her to rights,’ he said. ‘She don’t need no lawyer just now. I just to question her on suspicion. I ain’t arresting her if she so allows. If she won’t come then I guess we clap the irons on her and bring her along, shouting insults against me.’
Sheriff Parkman was as devoted to his tobacco as ever. He had extracted his little clay pipe and had stuffed it with baccy and now with a flashing lucifer he lit it. The other thing strange about him I was thinking was that way he had of laughing at everything – laughing to the point of craziness. Maybe he expected me to be frightened and folding but I was neither. Peg had brought me out clean underclothes at the behest of Rosalee and I was grateful for those starchy items. And she had brought a clean dress which just happened to be the famous yellow dress, a dress Peg could always spare, since she thought so little of it. I had taken the yellow dress with a wry laugh. Then I had my army coat as in Thomas McNulty’s old coat and I had two jackets that Rosalee had sewn in the same white stuff she had made my trews and shirts out of. I would have loved to wear my trews and shirts and why was I not wearing them?
‘You got to be a girl the while,’ she said. ‘Lige Magan said so. Did you ever see Lige when he blows? Thomas McNulty said why in hell you had to but Lige Magan kept saying it was so so I brought the damn dress. They was arguing and arguing. John Cole staggering about saying Death was to be preferred. Rosalee weeping and demanding justice of God. They just boats unmoored by the flood and they going to be broke up in the rapids by and by.’
And then I petted her the best I could and then she was gone.
So now I was decked out in that way I have described and I don’t know what gods or God had given me the grace of that moment but I did not fear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The lawyer Briscoe embraced me at the sheriff’s office. He had never embraced me before and it was over quicker than the downturn of a bird’s wing. I had time to notice that the paunch of his stomach was gone – that house-building had stripped the poor man of his fat, like winter strips the bear. Sheriff Parkman was not inclined to welcome him any further and the lawyer Briscoe was obliged to take leave of me.
‘Send out a boy as soon as I needed,’ he said to the sheriff. ‘Do not fail.’
‘Mr Briscoe,’ said Frank Parkman flatly. He didn’t use his jocular self with the lawyer Briscoe so much, I noted.
Then I was bustled down into the jail cell proper. Young Wynkle King was there with a mop and bucket cleaning up after someone had vomited. No sign of life otherwise. He was mopping away with his gun still forlornly in its holster.
‘You brought her in then?’ he said. He didn’t say anything to me.
‘Well I guess I did,’ said Frank Parkman.
He told me to sit on the bench and then Wynkle King banged away off with his bucket and then Sheriff Parkman stepped back into the corridor and fetched a stool and then he set down just near me and started to fuss with his infernal pipe. He also was armed and for a moment I wondered could I get the gun from him and shoot him, quickly. But then what would be the use of that? He would be dead and I would be a murderer.
‘We going to get you arraigned pretty quick, see if we don’t. No sense in delaying nothing. I guess you’ll hang, that’s it. Judge Littlefair he sitting now next week – real convenient for you. This ain’t no place to be waiting for nothing. No.’
*
No prairie snow in Paris any time of year but it was mighty cold in that dank place. Twice I heard the voice of Thomas McNulty shouting in the office – then both times it was followed by laughter. I guess Sheriff Parkman didn’t want me to see anyone but the lawyer Briscoe. Rosalee Bouguereau sent in delights and for some reason Sheriff Parkman was content to let me have them. Chief among these was her rabbit stew. Otherwise I don’t know who was to feed me. Mopping maybe was Wynkle King’s only domestic skill and Sheriff Parkman thought eggs were born in a pan.
The lawyer Briscoe was busy lining up his arguments and finding witnesses. If I were to say he seemed to grow more gloomy over this work I would be speaking against the promise I made to myself, to be hopeful and bet for a good outcome. I was wondering and wondering about Judge Littlefair. Surely I had robbed Tennyson’s own gun from under his nose but contrariwise I had Peg for an ally. Was he going to hang Peg’s friend? I didn’t know.
The day of the trial came on quick icy feet. At length I was led over to the courthouse which I and Jas Jonski had idly passed many times. Sheriff Parkman paid me the compliment of having me in chains. The townsfolk seemed mighty pleased to gather to watch the show.
All was noise and to-ing and fro-ing and even caterwauling in the courtroom. I was brought up like a dead soul from the underground holding cell. I saw the spread of faces and the bright staring eyes. Then in came the judge from a door at the back, Aurelius Littlefair in his black funereal suit, his face hair bristling like that wild boar I had eaten in pie form. The courtroom was cold and sweaty in one, people all padded out in big coats. It was just the yellow dress for me and I don’t know why but I felt no cold. The atmosphere of eager faces and excited chatter reminded me of Grand Rapids days, when as a little girl I would stand at the side of the stage and peep out at the audience, ear cocked to the strange seaside roar it made, as if it were a gigantic shell held to my ear.
I knew Jas Jonski had been much liked and no one knew me hardly in the town, except those who now seemed to be my enemies. Now the jury filed in and looked at me as if ashamed but of course not ashamed – sideways glances like prospective lovers make. Not much love likely, I was thinking. I was struggling in my thoughts not to be what they thought they saw, a skinny Indian in a ragged dress.
My lovely Thomas McNulty and John Cole were r
anged along the nearest seats, and Lige, and Rosalee. Thomas didn’t stint to wave to me. John Cole I could see, still thin as a prisoner, was constraining himself from rushing forward. There were six militia men lining the left wall, and the court bailiffs were armed with pistols and rifles, looking fearsome, like they were on the cusp of a mighty battle. I knew poor Thomas would have feared so mightily to come near that place, carrying after his own incarceration for evermore the seared soul of the felon. Rosalee had scrubbed the three men raw and all were shaved except Lige, who I could see in my mind’s eye begging clemency for his moustache. Thomas McNulty looked young, his old fled self of beauty and youth part redeemed by Rosalee’s shaving, and the shadow of the court, his cheeks sallow as a moon, his long grey hair trimmed back and darkened by pomade. John Cole and his narrow Indian face, so quiet, so calm, a cover for the rapids running through his mind, I did not doubt.
The jury a mixture of the rough and well-to-do – older men in older coats, and young men calling out to the fashions of Knoxville, Memphis, and Nashville. Cavalry trews without the yellow stripe. Ferocious haircuts from the German barber down the square.
Judge Littlefair’s clerk took his court in order and tried to extinguish the fire of talk. Soon enough it was just a smoking pyre. The lawyer Briscoe sat beside me, and I thought Aurelius Littlefair might hide his contempt for him, but he fair did not, to judge by the first fierce look at this man he detested. Who had signed that document of death for Colonel Purton and likely other crimes against the old Confederacy.
Aurelius Littlefair now spoke to the jury as though they were the fond beneficiaries of his thoughts. The jurymen stared at him respectfully, eagerly, wanting to understand whatever he said to them. Judge Littlefair asked the lawyer Briscoe how I pled to the charge of murder in the first degree, and the lawyer Briscoe said Not Guilty. The room surged with suppressed reactions, the clerk wielded his invisible whip to schtum them. The legal proem of the offence was read out and the nature of it illuminated and the possible outcomes and decisions and their responsibilities explained to the jury. Then the prosecuting lawyer, a tall bent man with a gold tie-pin and patent shoes, with a nice soft face, gave his speech. He told us what he intended to prove and who he would call and he was in no doubt that we had the guilty party here in court. I was sorry that I looked at Thomas’s face just then, because it was a blushing face of suffering.
A Thousand Moons Page 17