No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

  “He’s up soon,” I say. “Couple more batters and Hayes will have his revenge.” He nods and stares straight ahead, then tapers off into catatonia again. Nick rubs his eye, which is already swollen and red with a noticeable lump rising along the socket-line. He reaches over and pats my knee.

  “You’re a good kid,” he says. “A good freaking kid, you hear me?”

  I nod and we sit in silence and watch the courtroom fill back up with the tide of clerks, legal teams, and onlookers for the next session.

  “All please rise,” a stocky bailiff trumpets the moment everyone is seated, “for the Honorable Milton J. Waner.” The Crypt Keeper emerges from his dark chambers in his sod-encrusted robes and snails his way across the courtroom floor awash in a storm of creaky joints and sagging skin. He ascends the heights of the court bench, his vantage point above the crypt. My crypt.

  The bailiff continues his song. “Now hearing case number one double zero eight two, dash jay: The State of Pennsylvania versus Gabriel LoScuda.”

  When I hear my name, it’s like one of those times when you’re half asleep in class, or busy thinking about girls like Marlie, and the teacher calls on you just because she notices how you’re tracing weird geometric shapes on the desk and your book’s under the chair. My feet get all hot and sweaty and my legs go numb, and I can’t tell if the courtroom has gone deathly quiet or if it’s just me—like a giant hand keeps forcing my head under water and my eardrums are submerged in silence.

  It takes a few seconds before I remember I’m the one operating the body that houses the riddled mind of this LoScuda fellow they keep mentioning. A few heads bob up and down in the pews in front of us, and a couple of people stand up. They turn around and gawk. Ugh. I guess they wondered if I’d bothered to show at all. One of them is Officer Patterson. He makes eye contact with me—expressionless, of course. He offers a nod, and suddenly my head’s above water again and the symphony of disaster is about to begin.

  “Gabe that’s us,” Nick says in a low, growling whisper. He reaches across Grandpa’s lap and tugs a button off my sleeve. “Gabe!!”

  There’s a scattered burst of voices, like the clumsy caws of buzzards over a rotting carcass. More sleeve tugging. My legs start to tingle. Maybe functional. Can’t be sure.

  “Mr. LoScuda?” I hear over the noise. It’s the Crypt Keeper. I lift my head and levitate drunkenly from my seat. The Keeper’s empty glare meets mine with a twisted grimace I can only imagine is his best attempt at a smile. “Glad to see you’ve joined us. Will you and your counsel please take your positions so we can proceed?”

  I’m dazed, so my “counsel” takes over.

  “Yes sir, your honor,” Nick says. “Nicholas G. LoScuda, defendant’s unc, er, counsel.” There’s a goofy grin plastered across his face that in no way matches the force with which he wraps a single bear hook around Gramps and me at the same time and drags us up the center aisle.

  “Gah!” Gramps is all stiff and his hackles are up like an old bloodhound.

  “We’re going to see Von Hayes,” I whisper, but the courtroom is so quiet and so focused on us that shouting it through a bullhorn would have had the same effect. I get a few puzzled looks from members of the peanut gallery, but at least Gramps is back under control.

  Nick plops the briefcase he bought at Goodwill down on the table reserved for the defense team (boy, what a team!). I wonder, for a moment, if the thing is just a prop—either totally empty or filled with a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or something. Not that it would matter either way because there’s always the inevitable: I’m just moments away from complete and utter personal destruction.

  I get Gramps situated in a chair behind the heavy, oak table and I sit down beside him. The Crypt Keeper glares down on me from the height of Mt. Justice and taps his wretched fingernails on the bench. “May we proceed, Mr. LoScuda?” he asks.

  I shudder and start to respond, but then realize he’s talking to the other Mr. LoScuda—freaking Nick.

  “Mr. LoScuda?” he repeats over the silence. I slap Nick in the back of the head. Nothing hard or overly noticeable. Just a little something that says, “On guard, you big ape.” He looks at me, surprised, and mouths a question: “Me?” I nod.

  “Yes, uh, yes sir, your honor, sir,” Nick finally says, and he finishes in a flourish of grotesque throat clearings and a wheezing cough that doesn’t help my case in any way—though, sadly, it doesn’t hurt it either.

  The Crypt Keeper exhales. “Clerk, read the charges.”

  “The defendant is accused of one count of each of the following: hit and run without intent to do bodily harm, leaving the scene of an accident, and reckless driving.”

  Hearing it all laid out like that makes me sound like a real badass—like I’m one pinprick away from owning a new teardrop-shaped tattoo on my face. Traitor Sofia would be proud. Or not. Whatever. None of it matters anymore. John doesn’t matter. School. Baseball. My stupid job at Perdomo’s. Marlie. None of it.

  The Crypt Keeper’s over-poached Adam’s apple is already moving, vibrating, pulsating. And he’s about to ask me that one question to which I have one possible answer. And that answer will not be the right answer no matter who you get to judge it or grade it or push it or pull it.

  “Mr. LoScuda, please rise.” The Crypt Keeper’s voice echoes down from above and the walls of the crypt tighten around me. I rise from my chair, wobble a bit, then steady myself. “Mr. LoScuda, in lieu of the signed confession this court has in its possession, how do you plead?”

  I know exactly what I have to say, but the word is trapped somewhere behind my uvula—you know, that weird, hangy flap of skin at the back of the throat. I’m parched and sweaty and shivering and sick to the stomach all at once. My biggest fear at the moment—besides the prospect of rotting away in a prison cell for the rest of eternity—is that I’ll spontaneously combust and release half my breakfast in a sour, milky blob on the defense table.

  “Mr. LoScuda? Your plea?”

  I feel a large paw scrape against my back and I look over and meet Nick’s eyes. He winks at me and tips his head forward as if to say, “You’ve come this far, Gabey. You’ve got this.” And I do. I’ve had it all under control, to some extent, from the beginning.

  I think about Dad. What would he do if he were standing here in front of all these people getting ready to trade in his life for the lives of those he loves? He’d make the trade without a shred of regret or a moment of delay. That’s when my own decision solidifies; when I know that my next word is not destined to be the wrong answer after all.

  “Guilty,” I say, and the word comes out all hollow-sounding and heavy like the thud a splintered branch makes when it tumbles from a tree after a storm and hits the ground.

  There are a few seconds of hubbub that trails its way through the peanut gallery before the Crypt Keeper continues. “Thank you, Mr. LoScuda. If there’s nothing else to add I’ll be happy to issue a sentence before we move down the docket.”

  Nick and I stare forward. We’ve nothing to say. Gramps neither, though for a different reason altogether.

  The Crypt Keeper interprets our silence to mean “proceed” and so he lifts his gavel in one wrinkled hand and glares down on me with those beady, black ferret eyes.

  “You injured a young boy, Mr. LoScuda. Could have killed him. And you didn’t have the decency or the maturity to stop and check on the damage you’d done. You have a lot of growing up to do before the state will grant you the privilege of another driver’s license. In addition,” he says as he lifts his gavel a few more inches above the surface of the bench and sends my heart into painful spasms, “I am sentencing you to two years in a fed—”

  “Wait!” Just then the doors to the courtroom burst open and John is standing there looking kind of disheveled, panting and confused. He locks eyes with me for a second before his dart to the floor. Something is weird, or rather, even weirder than my ex best friend bursting into court in the middle o
f my proceedings.

  The door opens again and Sofia leads Mr. Perdomo into the chamber. They stand next to John and absorb the stares of an entire gallery of peanuts. What the hell were they doing here?

  “Please, your honor,” John continues with a waver in his voice. “We’d like to present more evidence on behalf of the defendant.”

  “John!” I shout, because it’s not his freaking place to present anything on my behalf. I can only hope the Crypt Keeper agrees.

  “Mr. LoScuda, who are these people who so rudely intrude upon my courtroom?” The old judge looks a little pissed and I’m not about to piss him off any more while he’s right in the middle of handing down my sentence. I open my mouth to explain—to tell the whole court that I’d never seen any of these psychos before in my life—when Sofia cuts me off. “We are friends of the defendant, witnesses to his character, and firsthand observers.”

  “First hand observers?” The Crypt Keeper suddenly seems intrigued. Great. Way to drag this moment out for me, friends. “I didn’t think we had any of those in this case. I don’t believe there is a legal precedent in this situation, but I’m inclined to hear your evidence, if only out of curiosity.”

  What is going on here? I said the magic word already. Open and shut, just like Nick told me. Let’s not wade through any more garbage. I confessed already! I glance over at Officer Patterson, sitting two rows behind the prosecution team. He raises one of his eyebrows. The bastard. He’s been on to me from the start.

  “What is the new evidence you plan to present?” the Crypt Keeper asks. “And how is it relevant?”

  “We’d like to call Mr. Joseph Perdomo to the stand,” Sofia says, and I have to say she sounds more like a real lawyer than my real lawyer. Maybe I should have hired her, if she wasn’t such a damn traitor. “We intend to show that Gabriel LoScuda could not have been driving the vehicle that struck Timothy Mullins.”

  What!? What the hell did she just say?

  “Sofia! What are you doing?” I squeeze out the words in a harsh whisper, as if all the people packed into rows of pews can’t hear me.

  “We’re saving you from yourself,” she says without even looking at me.

  “Call your witness,” the Crypt Keeper says, and he actually looks kind of amused—like watching this tattooed nightmare of a girl make me squirm in the seat gives him some kind of vampiric power. The bloodsucker.

  Mr. Perdomo walks up to the witness stand and swears to tell the truth with one of his tiny hands held firmly on the bible. He sits and faces the gallery, and Sofia begins her interrogation.

  “Mr. Perdomo,” she says, “How long have you known Gabriel LoScuda?”

  “I’d say eight or nine years..”

  “And how would you describe him?”

  “He’s a delightful young man. Always polite. Never in trouble. A model student. A great athlete with a high level of maturity. He’s a hardworking kid.”

  “Is that why you decided to hire him?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And when did you hire him?”

  “Back in September, close to the start of the school year.” “September, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “The hit and run accident also occurred in September, did it not?”

  “Yes, I believe it did.”

  “It occurred on the morning of September 23 to be exact.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Not only me, Mr. Perdomo. It’s tattooed,” she pauses to look in my direction for a moment when she says this. Typical Sofia, can’t even be serious in a serious-as-shit situation. “across every page of the police report and in all the local newspapers.”

  “Then it must be correct.”

  “Yes. And could you tell me the exact date of Mr. LoScuda’s hire?”

  Perdomo pulls a stack of check stubs out of the chest pocket of his red, flannel shirt. He fans through them a few times, then he looks the Crypt Keeper in his beady eyes. “September 23,” he says flatly. “A Saturday. The date is stamped here on all of Mr. LoScuda’s check stubs.”

  “Do you remember interviewing and hiring the defendant on that date?”

  “Absolutely. As clear as day. He came in around noon. We talked and I offered him the job. Then he pedaled away on his bike.”

  “His bike?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not a red, 1981 Pontiac Trans-Am with silver accents and a teetop?”

  Again, Sofia looks over her shoulder and directs a stone-faced expression my way.

  “No. I distinctly remember him riding a bike because it was leaning up against the front window of the shop during our interview.”

  “Mr. Perdomo, did Timothy Mullins get run over by a really fast bicycle?”

  There are a few muted cackles from the peanut gallery before Perdomo responds.

  “Definitely not,” he says, and then he looks down at me from the witness box and repeats, “Most definitely not.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Perdomo. We have no further questions.”

  “Prosecutors, do you wish to cross examine?” Both the man and the woman in their custom suits look confused and decline the Crypt Keeper’s invitation.

  “Good,” Sofia says. “That gives us time to call Gabe LoScuda to the stand.”

  I’m floored. How can these bastards just storm into the courtroom, into my life, and dismantle all the plans I had for me, for Gramps, for Uncle Nick and the future of the LoScuda family? How can they expect to roast me and then make me stand up in front of all these people and admit my shame? They are not friends. They’ve never been friends. They are parasites. Parasites that suck every last ounce of dignity from me and my family, and from Gramps and even my parents.

  “Mr. LoScuda, I am inclined to hear this out,” the Crypt Keeper says. “Approach the stand.”

  I don’t even remember walking from my chair to the witness box, but suddenly I’m standing up there with my hand on a book swearing I’ll finally tell the damn truth. And then John takes the baton from Sofia and pounces on me before my ass is even touching wood. His litigation style proves to be much less measured than Sofia’s.

  “You didn’t hit that kid, did you?!” he shouts as if he was starring in the movie A Few Good Men. I don’t respond. I’m completely startled. John seems like he’s not going to give me a chance to say a word. “You never drove the car that day, did you!?! You’re not the one responsible, are you!?! You’re just covering, Gabe. You stupid, freaking idiot! You’re covering.”

  There are streams of tears running down his cheeks and, for some reason, I feel the same sting encroach at the corners of my eyelids. My throat feels like it’s coated in molasses and wallpapered with cotton balls. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. There’s no one to rescue me from this moment, so I just stare down at Gramps and think about how much I love him and Dad and Mom and even Nick. And I think about how I’d do anything—literally anything—to protect them. And then the strangest thing happens.

  Gramps opens his eyes wide and he looks at me. I mean, he really looks at me the way he used to at baseball games and when I’d fall off my bike and skin my knees and he’d wipe them down with a cool cloth and slather a bunch of Neosporin on the wounds.

  He looks at me with all the recognition in the world and he says, “Keep your nose clean, kid. Please. Keep it clean.” And there’s nothing more I can do for him. I know it now. He knows it. Nick knows it. And now an entire courtroom full of strangers knows it.

  “I’m not guilty,” I say to the tabletop. “Someone else was driving the car.”

  Gramps sits at the table—still looking at me with the eyes he had ten years ago—with that gentle smile that makes me feel, at least for a moment, like a little kid again.

  18

  OVERTURE

  The Crypt Keeper cracks his gavel against the surface of the bench. It’s like mortar fire exploding in my head. I can almost feel a hail of imaginary shrapnel knife through my skin, and my head gets all woozy l
ike I’ve just been concussed. The whole world goes mute, with all the members of the peanut gallery and the court reporters and officials moving about the chamber in a silent ballet—chaotic but still with some semblance of order and precision. These muted dancers rise up around me. They wash in on a high tide of clunky pirouettes and curious aggression, and they overpower my compromised senses with their blinding flashbulbs and the evil, blinking eyes on their video cameras. Their lips move and their gums smack in time with the vacant symphony, but it all feels more like a silent film to me—one of those grainy black-and-whites, but without the trademark and necessary title cards.

  I sit in the chair behind the witness stand and watch it all unravel: watch the Crypt Keeper fold up his paperwork, slip it in a pocket within his robes and retire to high ground in the safety of his chamber; watch Uncle Nick fend off an entire hunting party of reporters with the rat-tattat of his “no comment” machine gun; watch Grandpa’s face twist and contort in fear, the pupils dilating again, as two bailiffs approach him with handcuffs swinging; watch John and Sofia sit in the gallery, the horror broadcast across their stupid faces.

  Then I’m up out of the chair and bounding across the courtroom floor like an assassin or a special forces militant. A bailiff already has my grandfather up and out of his seat. He spins Gramps around and snaps one end of the cuffs around a bony wrist. I’m about to pounce, to rescue Gramps one last time, but the other bailiff—a large man with the shoulders of a linebacker—gets me in a choke hold and drags me in the opposite direction. I try to scream out to Grandpa. Try to tell them all they’re a bunch of bastards. That they need to unhand my grandfather before there’s trouble. That cuffing the old man could inflict irreversible trauma to his already damaged mind. But I either can’t push the words past my lips or they’re lost on the current of chaos rushing through the courtroom. And there’s nothing Nick can do as the smaller bailiff drags Grandpa off into the bowels of the courthouse, to a place where a set of steel bars are a man’s only company.

  The monster bailiff releases his grip on my neck, but still has me wrapped up in a bear hug. He drags me past the gallery, past a quietly weeping John and a Sofia with her brown eyes all soft and sympathetic in a way I’ve never seen from her before. And all I want to do is walk past them forever and never talk to either one of them again for setting this whole scene in motion; for decimating the structure of my family so we’re like the tiny, jagged shards of a broken wine glass; for their ultimate and untimely betrayal.