by Various
Farm accident, case you were wondering. Happened a lifetime ago, back when Pa was still around. Helping in the fields and tried to clear a stalk of corn that had jammed the combine snap rolls. Pulled my left arm right in and tried to get the rest of me, too. It didn't take the arm off all the way, but enough of the way so that the doctors had to sharpen their saws. An armectomy, I believe is the scientific term for the procedure. Don't remember much of what happened. I asked Pa where was my arm and he said, Audrey honey, it went to heaven. Hope it'll wait there for the rest of me, I replied. They told me I was a brave little girl, only after I left the hospital I didn't feel so little anymore.
I tried to get my teacher Mr. Berch to tell me about the many-armed figure in the museum, but he wouldn't have any of it. I got my nerve up and visited the town library. Mrs. Eck, who ran the library like a bank, just flicked a disapproving glare my way and pointed a witch finger at the kids' stacks. I pretended to be delighted by a book about a singing giraffe who became an opera singer, almost missing his big debut due to a sore throat, but secretly I was waiting for Mrs. Eck to get distracted. When the mailman who had a thing for her came in, I ducked under a table and followed the wall around to the parts of the library where the colors weren't so primary. I wasn't sure where to look and had to give up when I heard Mrs. Eck's boot-steps. In my hometown, a Journey Through Bookland is a trip through a minefield. I snuck into the wider world more than once in the days that followed, eventually coming across my quarry in a doorstop picture book about India. Too heavy to make a five-finger withdrawal, so I sat on the dusty wooden floor and paged through its wonders.
Vishnu. The Preserver and Protector of the Universe. He had a kind face, and more arms than I had worries.
His role, so I read, is to return to the Earth in troubled times and restore the balance of good and evil. So far, he has been incarnated nine times, but Hindus believe that he will be reincarnated one last time close to the end of this world.
So why, all these years later, was Ma painting Vishnu, the Many-Armed One? Maybe she was just trying to make me feel better. But part of me scooted up to the edge of my seat, because she has always been able to see further down the creek than anybody else.
I found out just how far that afternoon.
Not sure what the difference is between a convoy, a caravan, and a motorcade; all I know is that one of the three was coming down our road. Usually it's just tractors and wayward chickens. The caravan motorcade convoy had five cars in all, a mix of police cruisers and big dark sedans. They were going fast. Like they were late to somewhere important. Only quiet-like. No sirens. Nothing to warn folks to get out of the way. I wondered why didn't they take the highway. It was just repaved in the spring. Real nice road.
I moved closer so I could see better as they went by. They didn't slow down a bit. If I would have walked right out into the road I would have been dust, too.
Funny, though, as they passed by it felt like they slowed down. Like someone dropped time into a jar of blackstrap molasses.
And so I saw him, staring out at me through the back window of a dark car. Weary boyish face, thin red scarf with a knot looped around his neck. He looked quietly amused. Did I look funny to him? My clothes were old and worn. My hair was a mess. Maybe he was just being friendly. Maybe someone in the car had told him a joke. Who was he? Did I know him?
He waved, and there was something odd about his wave, although at the time I couldn't figure it out. A wave that was more than a wave. No, not more, maybe less, maybe not a wave at all.
One not-really wave and he was gone. The dust washed over me as I watched the motorcade head toward town.
* * *
The sheriff hadn't been out to our place since the day Pa's car plunged into Flagger's Pond. I felt bad for him. The sheriff, I mean. Who decided he should be Death's messenger? Nobody else wanted the job, I reckon. Not much room for advancement. Imagine you had to keep your emotions in a safe place, too, in a place where there was hardly room to turn around. I wanted to tell him I understood, about the emotions, and the places you had to keep them sometimes, but I didn't think he wanted to hear about that.
"Hi, Sheriff," I said, coming out onto the manure-caked step.
"Mornin', Audrey. Your mom around?"
"Is there trouble?"
"More of a misunderstanding. Tell her I'm here."
"She's out behind the barn. Come on."
I always covered my eyes, at least most of the way, when I went back there. It was as throat-grabbing as a gaudy dawn's early nightmare. I didn't want to see what she painted, but I couldn't look away, neither.
Ma was up that durned rickety ladder, paints on the top step, her big brush working, more paint on her than the brush, her eyes shut, guided by another set of laws, muttering oaths, prayers, incantations, who knew, a laundry list of the strange. I tried to avert my eyes from the never-ending mural, partly because I was afraid Ma was gonna fall, mostly because the subject was me and my life. She started the mural right before my accident, painted my soon-to-be-ex-arm planted in a field, just one more stalk of corn waiting to be picked. Painted me falling off my bike before it happened, except it was a giant centipede instead of a bike. Lost a tooth chasing a fox out of the henhouse and she painted that, too, only instead of a fox it was a devil with horns and a butcher knife. My whole life, painted like a winding creek across the backside of a barn. Her paintings didn't always make sense right away. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and bingo, I got it.
Looked like she was putting the finishing touches on Vishnu's face. She always does faces last, says it's the sum of the other body parts.
"Ma, Sheriff's here to see you," I told her. Didn't figure it would take. I had to help her down from the ladder and pry the brush from her hand to get her to pay attention. She didn't recognize me at first, then I could see her come back, at least part of the way. About as far as she ever did.
"Ma, Sheriff wants to talk to you." I turned her to face him.
"Mornin', ma'am. Got a call from Betty over at the courthouse. Says you were supposed to be on jury duty today but didn't show. Did you know you were on jury duty? You should have gotten a letter from the county about it."
"Which one?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Which letter did they send me? I like H the best. Friendly, sturdy letter. Wouldn't complain a bit if somebody sent me an H."
The sheriff looked over at me for help. I was used to it. Trying to have an A-to-B conversation with Ma wasn't always a good use of your time. Ma usually went from Z-to-A to some letter in an alphabet that nobody had ever heard about.
"Don't blame Ma, it's my fault. I get the mail every day. I was afraid to look at the letter. I was afraid it was gonna say we had to move out."
"Jury duty is a serious responsibility," he explained. "It's part of being a good citizen. Everyone deserves a right to a fair trial in front of a jury of their peers."
"Jury of my fears?" Ma said.
"Peers, Ma."
"Don't like that word. No H in it."
"Not only that," the sheriff continued, "it's the law." He led me out of earshot. "Look, Audrey, the judge can cite your mother for contempt of court if she doesn't show up."
"What does that mean?"
"It means a fine, or even jail time."
"It's hard to get her to do things."
"I'll help you bring her down. Chances are she'll be excused anyway. But she has to show up."
"She's got her own mind. More than one, sometimes."
"She'll listen to you, Audrey." He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. "You need to make her understand."
I went back over to her, feeling like a duly sworn officer of the law.
"Gotta go into town, Ma."
"Have a good time."
"No, you too."
"No, no, no."
"Got to. Sheriff says."
"He says what?"
"They picked you for jury duty. You might even get
on a trial. Wouldn't that be exciting?"
"No, no, no."
"You have to, Ma…it's your civic duty."
"That means what?"
"That means you have to do something you don't wanna do."
Her clothes were a rainbow mess. "I can take her into the house and get her cleaned up," I told the sheriff.
"Let's just bring her down to the courthouse as is. Judge don't like to wait."
So off we went in the cruiser. Never rode in a police car before. Sheriff didn't use the siren. I was glad. I didn't want people to stare. For a change I made it all the way downtown without even one screwy look.
Once we got to First Avenue, I could have riding on a Mr. Electric parade float and nobody would have noticed. Folks all over. Folks in city suits and uptown dresses. Folks with cameras and microphones, stay away from me with those. The County Fair had started this week, but this didn't have nothing to do with that.
"What's goin' on?" I asked the sheriff. "Is there a circus in town?"
"Yeah, it's a circus all right," he said, driving around behind the courthouse.
He parked in his assigned spot and led us in the back way. I had never been in the back way. I had only been in the front way. It scared me to be here. Four stories of trouble. It was the only building in town I ever got lost in. Pa used to take me along when he went to pay his taxes or buy a bingo license. They have forms that would make your hair curl.
The sheriff held the door for Ma. Didn't want to go in until she spotted the mural on the wall inside. A farmer plowing a field while in the distance Indians rode by on horseback across a setting sun and a church poked its nose up over a hillside. In my opinion it lacked a necessary nightmare quality.
It got Ma inside, anyway. She stood in front of it and stared for a second before turning away, like for that moment she thought it was hers. I guess in her world there was only one mural; everything else was just wallpaper.
We followed the sheriff up the stairs to a plain-looking door. He opened it, and then we were in the courtroom.
It was as packed as the armory when the wrasslin' matches came to town, but nobody had throwed a chair at the judge yet. Your honor was talking. He gave us a nasty look, then the sheriff whispered for us to set down on the benches along with some other folks who looked like they didn't want to be there, either. They nervously smoked and watched the clock on the wall.
Somebody else was looking at us, too. Still wearing that red scarf, like he was a movie star. He stared at me the same way he did when the motorcade went by. But I couldn't focus on him long because I was doing my best to keep Ma still. She kept trying to get up. She wanted o-u-t.
The judge called her name. She heard that. I prodded her, but that sent her toward the exit. The sheriff corralled her and led her to a box by the judge's desk.
His honor started off by asking her name, so far so good. Then the lawyers began quizzing her, and she didn't answer, or answered in a way they didn't understand. I got what she was saying, but that's only because I spend a lot of time with her, and even then I usually scratch my head at her ramblings.
"Could you tell me what your definition of 'reasonable doubt' is?"
"It's marigold yellow, yellow like a baby chick."
"Have you ever seen the defendant before? Is there any reason why you could not fulfill your civic duty and come to an impartial verdict in this case?"
"Civic duty means doing things you don't wanna do," she said in a singsong voice.
That got a laugh, except from the judge. As they continued to question her, she began to ignore them and focused instead on the bench where the fellow who smiled at me was sitting. She squinted at him, shook her head, and squinted some more.
Eventually the judge gave up and excused her. She got out of that box like it had a beehive in it.
But she would have to wait for the judge to excuse us to go home, and when he did, everyone in the courtroom stood, and one person not only stood but turned around.
The man from the motorcade.
The man who smiled at me.
The man with three arms.
His extra arm didn't look out of place at all. It was positioned comfortably between his right arm and his waist, sort of resting on his hip. It poked out through a little hole in his blue shirt. His third arm seemed a little smaller than the others. The runt of the litter.
Ma grabbed my hand. "I need to go home and paint."
As we began to move toward the aisle, the Three-Armed Man said in a quiet drawl, looking right at me, his face sincere, "If I could, I'd give you my third."
That sent a wave of good feelings through the room and made my heart feel warm, too. People go to the warmth, can't help themselves.
As we left, I asked the sheriff, "What's this all about? What happened?"
"The Three-Armed Man is on trial."
"What'd he do?"
"He didn't do anything until they prove it."
"What are they trying to prove he did?"
"Kill two people."
"A Three-Armed Man killed two people?"
The sheriff wouldn't say anything more, but everybody else in the courthouse wasn't as shy about it.
"Killed three people, one with each arm.…"
"No, it was just two.…"
"Strangled one while shooting the other.…"
"One of them was his wife.…"
"Girlfriend.…"
"Caught her with another guy.…"
"I don't know about a three-armed guy. Most of the guys I've gone with, two arms are plenty!"
"You spoke a book, honey. You spoke a book."
The sheriff drove us to the farm, Ma disappearing right away.
"Can I ride back into town with you, Sheriff?"
"What for, Audrey?"
"I want to go to the fair."
"Sorry, I have to take a run down to Nine Mile Road. Got a report of some kids messing around at the old filling station."
I climbed out and the sheriff left. I checked on Ma. She was in full trance-mode, slapping paint onto the barn, so I took my bike and rode back into town.
When I got downtown, people were milling around outside the courthouse. I guess court was done for the day. Like I always do, I went over to prop up my bike against the tree by the statue of Harriman Crane, founder of Beggar's Creek, then saw that underneath the tree sat a messy-haired fella in a rumpled suit, little notepad poking out of his breast pocket, a swath of sweat on his forehead. A camera lay on the ground beside him.
He didn't see me until I got impatient.
He turned to me, a tuckered look on his face. I expected him to stare at my arm that wasn't there, they all do, but he didn't. He acted like he didn't care.
"I bet this is one of those sleepy towns when jokers like us aren't around," he said.
"I'm not tired."
"So how long have you known Marty Earles?"
"Who's Marty Earles?"
"That fella in the courtroom. The one who said he'd give you his extra arm."
"Oh, him."
"Do you know him? He acted like he knew you."
"No, I don't know him. Don't know anything about him."
"You know why he's on trial?"
"I heard a few things."
"Like what?"
"Double-murder over in Greentown."
"Everyone knows that."
"Strangled his girlfriend with two arms while he shot her lover with the third."
"Sleepy little town, not too sleepy of a girl."
"Why didn't they take him to court in Greentown, then?"
"He's got the best lawyer in the quad-county area, Monte Clawe. Talked the Greentown judge into a change of venue. Talked your judge into letting his client stay at the hotel; after all, your honor, where in this world can a three-armed man hide?"
"My cousin Sylvester can talk birds right out of the trees. Is he like that?"
"He's exactly like that."
* * *
THERE WAS A RUCK
US over by the courthouse entrance. The newsman stood, scooping up his camera. "Gotta run, kid, but I want to meet with you later."
"I don't know what I'd have to say to you."
"Don't worry, I'll ask all the questions. What's your name?"
"Audrey."
"Mac."
I followed this Mac to the courthouse steps, where the Three-Armed Man's lawyer was holding a powwow with the press. Three-Arm was standing alongside him but the lawyer did all the yakking.
"…a good day for us. It was a pleasure to meet so many fair-minded people, and I believe we'll have an excellent jury."
"Are you going to let Mr. Earles take the stand in his own defense?"
"Sorry, I can't answer that."
"Why didn't you think you could get a fair trial in Greentown?"
"Because Mr. Earles has been dealing with prejudice and scorn all his life due to his unfortunate condition. I presented Judge Lomax in Greentown with a detailed logbook of those prejudicial events."
"What kind of prejudicial events?"
"Childhood taunts became criminal acts. Bullying, harassment, even physical assault. Refusing to serve him in local eating establishments. Refusing to rent lodging to him. Refusing to employ him in positions for which he was highly qualified. The judge quite rightly determined that it would have been impossible for my client to receive a fair trial in his jurisdiction. My client is unknown in Beggar's Creek. The people of Beggar's Creek and the jury selected from them for this trial will be able to look upon my client with an untainted eye, no matter how many arms he has, and they will see that my client could not possibly have done what he is accused of doing."
"Are you going to lay out a scenario about how those two people were murdered that didn't involve your client?"