by William Gay
Early in the defense he spoke eloquently of the sanctity ofthe home. Of man’s God-given right to defend it. Then he put Sutter on the stand.
Sutter told his tale in a dry, emotionless voice and sat calmly awaiting cross-examination. Without saying so directly he had managed to leave the impression that the whole thing had started as an altercation over Conkle’s wife.
The state prosecutor that year was a young man named Schieweiler. He was extracted from the Swiss who’d settled Ackerman’s Field. He had intense, slightly protuberant eyes and no political debts to pay, and he adhered to a straight and narrow path. He had a great deal of difficulty understanding the fear folks in Centre had for Sutter. He was an earnest young man appalled by the story Sutter had told after laying his hand on the Holy Bible. He sensed a miscarriage of justice in the making here, and he was determined to head it off.
Mr. Sutter, in your long and varied life have you ever previously had occasion to shoot someone who was attacking you with a firepoker?
Sutter seemed to study awhile. I reckon not, he said. I don’t recall it. But if I did, I ain’t on trial for it here.
No. But bear with me. If you had, I think you would see a pattern begin to emerge. A man shot in the head with a high-caliber rifle would be flung backward. Perhaps he would lie on his back with his arms flung wide, the palms of his hands upwards, the way Mr. Conkle was found. What is really remarkable is that the poker, with an unerring homing instinct, would defy the laws of gravity and physics and follow the man across the room and come to rest in his palm. Do you have any explanation for this?
No, I don’t. I never went very far in school. I can’t explain the world to you. Things happen one way, they happenanother. I reckon he was hangin onto the poker and then he opened his hand up.
Mr. Conkle was righthanded, yet the poker came to rest on his left palm. How do you explain this lapse of your judgment?
Objection.
Sustained.
I’ll rephrase it. Do you know of any reason why a righthanded man would attack you with a weapon in his left hand?
Sutter cleared his throat. He grinned at the jury. Maybe he was just spottin me a few points, he said.
The judge leaned from his oaken bench. Answer the question put to you, Mr. Sutter. And one more example of facetiousness and you will be in contempt of this court.
I didn’t know whathanded he was. All I seen was a firepoker comin at me. I never thought it would come any easier lefthanded than any other. It was a goodsize poker and wouldn’t feel too good whatever hand you got hit with.
It’s common knowledge there was bad blood between the two of you. Mr. Conkle had the misfortune to stand by his convictions, a character trait that probably amuses you. What is it with you, Mr. Sutter? Do you think you can kill the whole world? Slaughter a long line of jurors who vote their consciences? Can you silence them all? Do you have access to that many firepokers? You’d have to hire assistants in your war against order. You’re a busy man, Mr. Sutter. All those widows to create, homes to burn, land to salt. I’ve been checking on you, Mr. Sutter. That’s the way you’ve lived your entire life.
Wiggins was objecting vehemently. The defendant is not on trial for his entire life, he told the judge. Only a particularsegment of it.
Confine yourself to the matter at hand, the judge told Schieweiler. The jury is instructed to disregard the prosecutor’s remarks, he added.
Is it not a fact that you addressed Mrs. Conkle as ‘widow’ just prior to her husband’s shooting?
Don’t pop your bug eyes at me, Schieweiler, Sutter said. I don’t know what you want from me. All I was doin was defendin myself. I come and got the law myself, I never tried to hide nothin. Why would I lay a poker in the wrong hand and then call the law?
I don’t know, Mr. Sutter. I’m here to try to extract the truth from you, not psychoanalyze you. Did you call her ‘widow Conkle’ or not?
No. I swear to God I did not.
When the trial was over and Sutter acquitted, Schieweiler still could not let it be. He followed Sutter to the courthouse steps in a rage he didn’t even try to conceal.
You may think this is over, Mr. Sutter, but I can assure you that it is not. I’m going back to Nashville, and there is going to be an investigation of this case and this tainted jury from the top to the bottom. I’m going to get you for something if it’s only spitting on the sidewalk.
You just a bad loser, Sutter said. He grinned like a Cheshire cat. Small yellow canary feathers about his jaws.
Your day is drawing to a close. You can intimidate these people with threats, but you can’t intimidate me.
Sutter was fumbling about his overalls pockets. He heldan imaginary pencil poised over an imaginary pad. Now what did you say your street address was? I might want to drop in on you some night. I’m over in Ackerman’s Field ever now and then.
The first cold spell of winter has routed the old men from their habitual benches on the courthouse lawn and the warm stove in Sam Long’s store has drawn them as a magnet attracts iron filings.
What always got me about him was the way he could just slide out of anything. Killin, burnin, sellin whiskey. He sold bootleg whiskey out of the front door of his house for fifteen year and never even got arrested. They used to worry old man Moose Tyler to death raidin him and finally did send him up to Brushy Mountain for a year or two.
Yeah. And killin folks. He told me one time, said, it’s more people than Fenton Breece can bury somebody. Everbody knowed he killed Clyde Conkle in cold blood, but he never drawed a day for it. They let him walk. You take old man Bookbinder up in the Harrikin. His wife took up with one of them Hankins boys and run off and sent Hankins back to get a bedstead or somethin. Bookbinder was goin to run him off, and he wouldn’t run. They took to scufflin and Hankins got killed. They stuck a stamp on Bookbinder and mailed him straight to the penitentiary. He done ten year. I guess he never had none of Sutter’s luck.
It was the middle of the night when Breece knocked but almost immediately the tiny door-within-a-door opened and a goldflecked eye was regarding him.
Whoever sent for you lied, Sutter said. I’m still alive and kickin.
Breece guessed this was Sutter’s idea of a joke. He wasn’t amused. I need to talk to you on business, he said. Let me in. It’s cold out here.
The door opened. Sutter was fully dressed, as if he slept in his clothes or he slept not at all. The room was dark save a warm orange glow from the woodstove.
Turn the lights on. I can’t see where I am.
You in my front room and you ain’t been here thirty seconds and you done givin me orders.
Breece wandered around in the halfdark and finally seated himself in a bentwood rocker by the fire and spread his hands to the warmth of the heater. He seemed ill at ease, someone who must soon be off.
Turning colder, he said awkwardly.
What can I say? It’s December. But I could of stuck my head out the door and told that. You didn’t have to drive all the way out here to give me a weather report.
Like I told you, it’s business.
If it’s whiskey business, you’re shit out of luck. They cleaned me out last week. The fuckin revenuers. I’m under indictment again. Out on bond. The son of a bitches just won’t let me be here lately. Somebody’s got it in for me. I’ve paid these goddamned local laws enough money to buy a farm in Georgia and the niggers to work it and not a word of warning do I get. They didn’t even fool with the county. You know what they done? A nigger come walkin up out of the woods and Isold him a pint. He shoved it in his hip pocket and walked back down in that holler. A nigger in woreout overalls and bustedout shoes, and I thought he’d been down there diggin sang or somethin. Then when the feds came in a big black car with their warrants, there set the son of a bitch right in the front seat wearin a suit of clothes and a necktie. The front seat. Black as the ace of spades. The slick son of a bitches. Who’d of thought they’d send a nigger?
Breece’s
eyes had adjusted to the halflight from the open hearth, and by it he was covertly studying Sutter’s face. Sutter wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He seemed to be abstractedly talking out of a store of rage he’d laid by and a hot but unfocused anger burned in his eyes.
It was the first time they had ever talked face to face and Breece divined in a moment of dizzy revelation something about Sutter that no one had noticed before. Why, he is mad, Breece thought. He’s not what people say about him at all. He’s not just mean as a snake or eccentric or independent. He’s as mad as a hatter, and I don’t know how they’ve let him go so long.
What is it you want, anyway?
Someone has something that belongs to me, and I’m being blackmailed. I’ve got to have it back, and I think you’re the man to get it for me.
Sutter was rolling a cigarette. Who is it?
Well, there’s two of them in together, I think. A brother and a sister named Tyler. The girl is the one who actually approached me about the money, but I know for a fact the young man is the one who stole the article out of my car. That’s what I want back, and I’m willing to pay for it.
The article. Yes.
Say I try to do it for you. Do I get to know what the article is, or do I just wander around finding things that look like they might have belonged to you?
Of course, you’ll know what it is.
Then let me in on it.
All right. Some photographs were taken of myself and a…young lady. They are potentially very damaging. The photographs are of a very incriminating…a very intimate nature. The young woman is connected politically, and they are threatening to go to her husband if I don’t pay them fifteen thousand dollars. I’ve been in a quandary. If anything goes wrong, my position in this community will be ruined.
This story was so monumentally absurd that Sutter did not even take offense at being lied to. He was even a little impressed. The idea of Fenton Breece doing things of an intimate nature to a politically connected young woman while someone else took potentially incriminating photographs was so far beyond the realm of probability that he permitted himself a small smile.
Of course, we both know that’s bullshit, he pressed on. But it’s your business what you done and what specie of animal you done it with. Pictures then. And you want em back. If they’re as bad as you say, why don’t you just give them the fifteen thousand dollars. That’s chickenfeed to you. What do you think, I’m goin to do it cheaper? I ain’t no bargain basement, ain’t runnin no sales.
Breece was silent for a time. He seemed unused to speech, as if he’d gone too long without the companionship of the living. He studied a bit and then he said, I flatter myself that I know something of human nature. I can read people. Ifit were simply a matter of the fifteen thousand dollars, I’d pay it and be done with it. However…there was something in the Tyler woman’s eyes. It was clear she means to ruin me. She’ll take the money and then want more. Or perhaps they’ve already had copies of the pictures made and she’ll show them about anyway. There was a vindictiveness in her face. Utter viciousness.
This utter viciousness, where do you reckon it came from? Wait a minute. I’m gettin an insight into human nature. Let me guess. You was doin things of an intimate nature to this Tyler gal, and then your attention wandered to this gal who was politically connected, and the Tyler gal got pissed and aims to run you out of the undertakin business.
It’s not necessary to ridicule me.
Then quit actin like I’m a goddamn fool. Quit jerkin me around and get on with it. Make me an offer or get the hell out of here.
Very well. I’ll give you the money. All fifteen thousand dollars, half now and the rest when I have the pictures. I’m sure you could use a sum of money like that in your…legal difficulties. I’ve had no experience in that area, but I’m sure that would buy several lawyers.
Judges is what I’m shoppin for. And why are you goin roundabout like this if she offered to sell you the pictures straight out?
I told you. She wants to ruin me.
Sutter had an actual insight of his own then into human nature. He gave Breece an acute look. It’s not just the pictures, he said. They’ve got some kind of a deathlock on you and you want it off. You want me to kill them.
No, no, certainly not. I can’t condone murder, hire murderdone.
Sure you can. You just don’t want to know about it. You don’t even want to say it. You keep dancin all around it. You want me to do it for you.
You must be aware that you have a certain reputation. Your words would carry more weight than mine. Perhaps violence wouldn’t be necessary. Perhaps you could just talk to them.
Perhaps I could.
Breece was hesitant. How many…how many people have you killed?
You don’t owe me for them.
Will you tell me that if I tell you something of my own past?
What is this, you show me yours and I show you mine? I don’t care about your past. And whatever I done, I done it because it was what I had to do at the time and it’s yesterday’s news anyhow.
I’m aware you killed Conkle. I could hardly have avoided knowing that. Breece hesitated, studying Sutter warily. But this was business, and money had been promised. He didn’t have it on him, and that weighed in his favor.
You killed Conkle and laid a poker in his hand so you could claim self-defense. But Conkle was righthanded and you put the poker in the left hand. How smart was that?
In the warm halflight Sutter was smiling. I knowed he was righthanded.
Say you did? Then why did you mess up?
Sutter’s voice grew confidential, conspiratorial. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I didn’t mess up. I did it on purpose.
Why would you do a thing like that?
I don’t know. For sport, maybe. For sport? What the hell kind of an answer is that?
For sport, you know what sport is, don’t you. Anyway, I done it. And I’d not have even as sorry a piece of shit as you thinkin I didn’t know whether a man I was about to kill was righthanded or lefthanded.
Well. I was just curious. I killed someone myself once, while I was still in college. I killed a whore in Memphis.
Sutter just gave him a quick glance of dismissal as if murdered Memphis whores did not quite meet whatever arcane criteria he judged peers by. He leant and spit into the fire and rose and laid another stick of wood in the sparking coals.
I killed her with a Pop-Cola bottle.
This evinced some small interest. I expect that would do it, Sutter allowed.
Breece fell silent. Perhaps wandering down the alleys and byways of his curious past. Other whores, other bottles.
What’d she do, take your money and run out on you and you busted her head with it?
Oh, it wasn’t anything like that. She took to bleeding. You never saw so much blood. The bedclothes were soaked, white sheets with great crimson centers, like flowers…the bottle broke something loose inside her, punctured her in there somewhere, and all the blood ran out of her.
Inside? Sutter wondered, then he stared at Breece as comprehension came over him. I don’t want to hear anymore of this perverted shit, he said. You just keep anymore stories you got about Pop-Cola bottles to yourself.
Breece just sat bemusedly, hands laced across his corpulent belly. He seemed to be intently inspecting the shine of his shoes. After a time, he said, Did it ever occur to you that we’re a lot alike? Not hardly.
We’re both to a great degree involved with death. You in your way, I in mine. It’s only natural that a person as intimately associated with death as I am would think quite a lot about it. There’s a poem I’ve remembered that seems to best sum it up. Do you want to hear it?
Why, hell yes, Sutter said. I believe it’s been a day or two since I’ve had anybody in here quotin rhymes at me.
It’s by Auden, W. H. Auden. Are you familiar with Auden?
Sutter leaned and spat into the coals again. Seems like I knowed him when he lived over on Jack’s Br
anch, he said.
As poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are very well hung.
Sutter watched him with something approaching disbelief. This mad quoter of poetry, nightmare minister to the dead so far beyond the pale light could never fall on him.
Did you find it amusing?
Let me get this straight. You want the pictures and you want it hushed up. This threat to your social standin removed. Is that about it?
Breece thought it over for a moment. Yes, that’s what I want. What I really want is for everything to be back like it was before they stole my pictures.
He thought some more. He was aware that things could never really return to the way they were, for Sutter knew about it now, but he had already done some thinking about that. When the time came, he could take care of that himself.
Give me the money. I’ll have to get it from the bank. I don’t carry that kind of money around. I’m not a fool.
Sutter let that pass. Tomorrow, then.
Breece rose. He stood awkwardly a moment as if about to proffer a hand to seal this bargain, then thought better of it and made ready to leave.
I’ve kept you up long enough, he said. The money will be ready tomorrow.
When Breece was gone, Sutter closed the hearth door and turned down the damper and lay back on the bed still fully clothed with his hands clasped behind his head and stared at the ceiling and thought about the money. Fifteen thousand, but it could be readily turned into more. If Breece wanted the pictures desperately at fifteen, he would want them only a little less desperately at twenty. Perhaps twenty-five.
But it was more than the money. Something in his life that had been without form was taking shape. A dark, cauled shape that stood to the side and watched him with hooded, expressionless eyes. In some curious way he intuited that all his life previous had simply been a rehearsal for this.
By three o’clock Tyler had the roof of de Vries’s store painted and was cleaning out his brushes with gasoline. His hands and clothes were so smeared with red ochre he looked like the survivor of some terrible highway calamity. He wiped gasoline out of the brushes and stored them in the old milkcrate in the back of the truck and while he was loading the ladders de Vries came out. De Vries crossed the alley and stood on tiptoes against the building on the other side thebetter to see his own roof. Then he came back to where Tyler was.