by Allen Drury
“I hope he will get what he deserves,” he said, “because he is a very, very bad man. But I don’t know whether it will be best to shoot him or to put him in jail for the rest of his life so that he can never, never do anything to anybody again. Maybe that would be better. We’ll just have to decide that after there’s been a trial and—”
“She’s asleep,” Mary interrupted harshly. “She isn’t even listening anymore. She’s asleep! So you can stop trying to rationalize everything for yourself and wait until another time.”
“So she is,” he said, almost stupidly. “So she is.”
And when the doctor returned immediately after with the nurse carrying a tray with soup and crackers, they decided it would be best to let her sleep for a while. The doctor increased the intravenous feeding slightly and left them with confident assurances that things were now moving very well, and that they could expect her to have increasingly frequent waking periods.
That evening, and twice again on Saturday, she did. Each time she went through much the same procedure, starting alert and herself, gradually becoming drowsy, without warning dropping off to sleep again. Saturday afternoon she stayed awake long enough to eat soup, crackers and a couple of spoonfuls of mashed potato. Their optimism increased.
It was with rising hopes and growing confidence that he called Moss Sunday morning and prepared to visit “High Pillars.” Mary, their truce holding as her own hopes rose, went so far as to send her best wishes. He decided he would make it warmer than that when he told them. Not “her love,” which wasn’t true and which they would hardly believe, but something more in accord with the steadily rising happiness and excitement he was beginning to feel as the enormous weight of recent days appeared to be lifting slowly but surely from his heart.
On the lawn where Sarah’s services had been held, under the stately old trees in front of the lovely old house, they ate a pleasant light lunch served by the Pomeroys’ family cook who had been with them, Moss told him, since he himself had been five years old. Her face was grave and still touched with sorrow for the family tragedy, but the meal she prepared was delicious, and even Sue-Ann was able to eat a fair portion of it. When she had finished she stood up, brushed a hand across eyes still tired from weeping, gave Tay a quick kiss and smiled.
“I know you two want to talk before Moss goes back to the Court tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll run along and see if I can take a nap. I could use one. I’m so glad things are working out for you, Tay. It’s wonderful.”
“It’s a miracle,” he said.
“You deserve it,” she said, again with the simple generosity that had touched him so when they had first met after the tragedy. “Please give our warmest wishes to Mary, too.” Her eyes filled abruptly with tears. “I know how happy she must be.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll tell her. Try to have a good rest.”
“I will,” she said; kissed her husband; and then turned back for a moment to Tay.
“Dear Tay,” she said. “What would we have done without you all these years?”
“Managed somehow, I suppose,” he said, trying to make a small joke of it. “It wouldn’t have been easy, I know, but I expect you could have.”
“That’s right,” Moss agreed gravely. “It wouldn’t have been easy… Sleep well, honey, and come on back out whenever you feel like it. We won’t be talking too much heavy stuff.”
“Oh, I expect Tay will want to,” she said, but trying to smile too. “He’s a pretty serious fellow… I’ll see you later, you two.”
And she turned gracefully and walked across the lawn, head high, stopping for a moment to pick a couple of camellias from a plant by the door, then going on up the whitewashed stone steps and into the stately house as though this were the same as any afternoon before the world went mad.
“She’s a gallant lady,” Tay said softly. Her husband nodded.
“She is that … sit down, buddy. Tell me about Janie.”
They sprawled side by side in canvas lounge chairs, and when he had completed his story Moss said, “That’s great,” in a firm voice as though he had determined to put everything else behind him. “You’ll be back at the Court soon, then, won’t you?”
Tay nodded.
“As soon as we see what happens when the trial begins again a week from Monday. I suppose there’s a chance we may both be called as witnesses—certainly you, I should think.”
“Yes, I expect so. I’m planning to come back next weekend. I just want to check into chambers for the week and get some work done.” He smiled sadly. “Life does go on, you know … or so they say. I don’t want them to forget my face up there… What’s your gripe about Justice NOW!?”
“Not a gripe,” Tay said, a little startled by this sudden introduction of the subject he had been wondering how to tackle. “Just a concern, let’s say.”
“You didn’t like what I said the other day?”
Tay took a deep breath as a couple of hummingbirds darted by and a jay screamed off in the trees.
“No, I did not. I thought it was inappropriate, unbecoming and quite prejudicial to your position if the case comes up to us.”
Moss grunted.
“Well, that’s laying it on the line.”
“I hope so, because that’s what I intend to do. It’s a long way from what you said when we discussed the subject of vigilantism, up in Washington.”
“I’m a long way from what I was then,” Moss said somberly, pulling up a piece of grass and starting to chew on it absentmindedly. “Or weren’t you aware?”
“But you can’t—”
“Can’t what?” Moss inquired moodily. “Support my own people? Support, if you will, the people of the entire United States? Because that’s almost what the movement is coming to represent now. What do you mean, I can’t? So far I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t.”
“They were about to lynch Earle Holgren Friday afternoon, you know,” Tay said quietly.
Moss gave him a somber glance.
“Maybe that would have been the best solution for everybody.”
“No!” Tay exclaimed, genuinely shocked. “You don’t mean that!”
“No?” Moss said, shifting in his chair, biting savagely at the piece of grass. “Why don’t I, Tay? What has that bastard done to give me any cause to be charitable to him? He killed my daughter, you know. He killed my daughter. He almost killed yours. He wanted to kill me. What has he earned from me, except my eternal hatred? Why shouldn’t I want to see him destroyed?”
“But not like that!” Tay protested. “Not without the full functioning of the law, Moss! You can’t possibly advocate that.”
“Why can’t I? Why must I pretend I’m not what I really am underneath here”—and he slapped his sports shirt, hard, over his heart—“an animal, so filled with the instinct to hate and maim and kill and destroy that I can hardly see straight when I think of that—that—” He choked up and had to stop for a moment. All around, the gentle afternoon lay golden on the lawn. He shook his head violently as if to clear it, then dropped it in his hands and rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he resumed in a lowered voice, “but you’re in a different position, you see. Things are working out, for you. Lucky Tay is lucky again: Janie’s on the way back. You don’t have a daughter lying—lying—under—under six—six—” And suddenly he started to cry, sobs wracking his body in a flood of agony that he tried to muffle but which continued to shake him for several minutes while Tay, almost equally shattered, stared unseeing at the serenely peaceful trees and tried to think, without success, of words of comfort that refused to come because, perhaps, they did not exist.
At last Moss said brokenly, “I’m sorry, pal, I’m sorry. It—it—isn’t easy. I didn’t mean to call you ‘Lucky Tay,’ you know that. Sue-Ann and I are as happy for you as we can—can possibly be. We’re so thankful for you … and for Mary, too, though she probably—wouldn’t—wouldn’t—believe it. I’m sorry…”
“I know,” T
ay said; reached out and clasped Moss’ arm hard for a moment; then rested his own chin on his hands, stared moodily out across the lawn and sighed with a heavy sound that seemed to come from somewhere infinitely deep inside. “I know… I’m afraid I must sound awfully pompous and awfully smug—” Moss made a little gesture of protest. “Oh, yes,” he said bitterly. “I know I sound that way sometimes. But I don’t mean to. I really don’t mean to. Mary tells me I’m so superior all the time, and maybe that’s how I seem to other people, but I’m not—not really. And it is easier for me, now that Janie seems to be … getting along. But even if she weren’t, Moss, I think—I really think—I would still feel the same way…
“At least,” he said, as Moss watched him intently through reddened eyes, “I hope I would. I don’t really know. That odd little person who’s defending him came to me the other day and begged me to be ‘true to myself and to my ‘great liberal principles’ if he gets the death sentence and it comes up to us on appeal. I told her I’d try, but that I just didn’t know—I just didn’t know… Even if Janie is really all right, I still don’t know … because I hate him too, Moss. Oh, how I hate him! But,” he said, and his eyes darkened with the struggle of it, “we’re supposed not to have those feelings, on the Court. We’re supposed to be insulated from everything—above it all … aren’t we? I’ve only been there ten seconds compared to you and the rest of them, but I do conceive of that as being my charge and my obligation. I can only try to remain true to that … and I think you should too, awful though it is and terribly hard—hard…”
He sighed.
“We’ve got to protect the law, Moss, it’s what we’re sworn to do. It’s what we’ve been pointing toward ever since we were kids together in law school. It’s the summation of our lives, really—the Law. That’s what we hold in trust for the future, just as others in the past have held it for us. Somehow it’s got to give us the strength to remain true to it, otherwise the whole thing goes down. We can’t betray it—we can’t. At least I can’t—and I don’t think you can, really, either. You may feel like it now, God knows I’m not the one to blame you. But I think when you’re back on the bench it will be different. The obligation will reassert itself and the law will prevail… At least,” he concluded, almost in a whisper, “I hope it will for you … and for me…”
But Moss made no comment, continuing to stare moodily into some far distance; so that he did not know, then, whether he had made any impression. They were silent for what seemed like quite a long time, though it may have been only a few minutes. The afternoon drowsed, the shadows began to lengthen a little under the trees and across the lawn. A peaceful, gentle hum of birds, insects, the first stirrings of a little breeze seemed to hold the world. Finally Moss turned, looked at him squarely and said perhaps the most surprising thing, to Tay, that he had ever said in all their long friendship.
“Have you met someone in Washington?”
His first instinct was to dissemble. Then suddenly it seemed wrong and unnecessary in the presence of his oldest, closest friend at such a moment of trust and mutual dependence in a time of sorrow.
“How did you know that?” he asked, returning Moss’ look with honesty as direct as his.
Moss frowned.
“I don’t know, exactly … little things … something different … a more openly harsh attitude toward Mary … a little underlying excitement … maybe even happiness … a sense of something that I seemed to feel … maybe just because after all these years we have an instinct for each other … I don’t know.” He half-smiled—distracted, Tay noticed with relief though it was at his expense, from his heavy sadness. “I don’t know … but do you know when I began to suspect?”
“Sure,” Tay said. “The very first night, when you saw me driving out Northeast.”
“That’s right. I thought, Now, what the hell is he doing going out that way? He lives in Georgetown.” He grinned suddenly: the old bright, blithe Moss reappeared for a moment. “I almost followed you, you know that? I almost became a sneak and tried to catch my old buddy in flagrante delicto, that’s how startled and intrigued I was. It was so unlike you, particularly after having just been appointed to the Court. I thought, How could he. That isn’t Tay! And then I thought, Why, the crazy bastard! He’s human, just like everybody else!”
Tay winced but Moss didn’t notice.
“And I gave a big chuckle and said right out loud, ‘Go, man, go!’ And turned left onto Independence Avenue and went on downtown and safely home… So. Is it good?”
Tay hesitated; and decided again to be honest.
“I don’t know yet,” he said slowly. “It is for me. I hope it is for her.”
“You want it to last.”
“Yes,” he said simply, “I do.”
“And knowing you, you don’t want it to stay on this basis. You want to get a divorce and marry the girl. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t think Mary will let you go without a hell of a fight no matter what she feels about you. Does she suspect?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Mary is”—he smiled wryly—“Mary-oriented. She usually senses anything that really threatens her security, but she hasn’t seemed to sense this yet, maybe because of—of Janie. She’s never seen us together—probably never will. And after all, this was only a couple of weeks ago, you know. She hasn’t had too much time to suspect, what with one thing and another.”
“Tell me about it,” Moss suggested. “If you want to.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, and did so, while Moss again listened intently, making no comment as the afternoon moved gently on toward its inevitable close.
“So that’s it,” he concluded. “Very brief, very ordinary, very standard for such things—I guess. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Well, I have,” Moss said. “For a while after we were first married and I was proving to myself that I was still in there pitching and could still stay the course. But I stopped it before too long and fortunately never got caught. I realized what I had and decided I’d better not risk it.” He smiled without much humor. “Sue-Ann isn’t Mary.”
“No,” he agreed, and sighed. “Sue-Ann isn’t Mary.”
“It’s amazing to me, frankly, how you’ve stuck it out this long. But I guess that went with your concept of yourself.”
“Yes, it did,” he replied sharply, “and I’m not very proud of myself now, if you want the truth.”
Moss smiled again.
“Don’t you think I know that? I haven’t known you twenty-four years for nothing. But I think you should be, because apparently she’s a nice girl, and she really does love you—or,” he added as Tay moved in his chair, “is beginning to—and obviously you’re falling in love with her so—why not? You’re going to have to get a divorce one of these days, inevitably, and you know that; so why not just face up to it and make the fight? When you’re both really sure, that is.”
“When we’re both really sure…” he echoed, and his expression darkened. “And what about the Court?”
“Then you’re obviously not sure, if you’re going to let that inhibit you.”
“It’s got to inhibit me to some extent, Moss,” he said earnestly. “How can it not? I’ve just been appointed, I can’t go around bed-hopping—”
“Oh, come on,” Moss exclaimed. “‘Bed-hopping’! You sound like the horniest Congressman who ever hit the Hill. One little affair that quite soon, probably, is going to become entirely respectable, and you’re ‘bed-hopping’! Stop exaggerating! If that’s the kind of language you use I hate to think what your opinions will be like. People will think there’s a revolution coming in the law every time you open your mouth.”
“Well, anyway,” he said, laughing, as Moss intended, in spite of himself, “I don’t feel that it’s at all appropriate.”
Moss snorted.
“Now you sound like a real stuffed shirt. ‘Not at all appropriate’! Well, get you, Aun
t Mabel! Now, look,” he said firmly, “you just want me to help you argue yourself into it. You keep on with that little gal and you do what your heart tells you and don’t you worry about the Court or anything else. For once, Taylor Barbour, you do something spontaneous and what’s best for you. All right?”
“But,” he said, still going through the motions of fighting his conscience, though he really knew the battle was already firmly won, “there’s Mary—and there’s Janie. I just can’t walk out on them. Particularly Janie.”
“If this Cathy is as great as you obviously think she is, then she’s going to be the best thing that ever happened to Janie. And as for Mary, it seems to me she’s forfeited most of her right to be worried about. So just cut it out.”
“Well—”
“Listen! Knock it off. Have you talked to her lately?”
“Only from a public phone at the hospital. I rather think one of the nurses eavesdropped.”
“They won’t eavesdrop here,” Moss said, getting up. “Come on in and give her a call.”
“I can’t,” he said, suddenly feeling shy and awkward as a teenager. “I haven’t anything particular to say.”
“Just say hello,” Moss suggested, sounding again for a moment quite like his old self. “That ought to start something.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Off your duff.”
“Well—all right,” he said, allowing himself to be pulled out of his chair. “She probably isn’t home, anyway.”
“Probably waiting breathless by the phone every minute of every day,” Moss said as they started toward the house. They were halfway there when Sue-Ann came out on the veranda. Her face was tense, expression alarmed. An answering fear shot through his heart. The peace was gone. The lovely afternoon had reached its ending.
“What is it?” Moss asked sharply. “Something wrong?”
“It’s Mary. From the hospital.”
Tay began to run, took the steps two at a time.