A Southern Girl: A Novel

by John Warley

  “C’mon Born Lucky!” whelps Ed, pounding the fence with his open palm as the horses break from the gate. Allie is on the outside rail; terrible placement for competition but best for our view as she comes around for the first of two passes she will make in front of us. She gets a fast start and takes the first hurdle, a hedge four feet high, cleanly. Our angle is poor for the second jump, but Carbon Copy leaps first so he must be leading. He tucks his forefeet tightly as he sails over. I hold my breath each time she launches him. This sport, particularly this race, is dangerous to both horse and rider.

  Eleven horses fly past us; forty-four hooves pounding the turf toward the next hazard. The ground beneath rumbles as they come abreast, Allie and Carbon Copy leading by a head. Born Lucky appears boxed near the inside rail. “Pass ’em, pass ’em!” screams Ed. At the next jump a horse in green and white silks near the middle of the pack refuses, sending its rider tumbling over its head. Horses to either side are thrown off stride but clear the hurdle, losing only precious time. Two race officials rush to the aid of the fallen jockey as a young groom tries to approach the frightened animal. The field has cleared two more jumps on the far side by the time the stunned rider is able to walk off under his own power.

  At the last jump on the first lap disaster strikes. One of the horses set back by the refusal we just witnessed has tried to make up time too quickly. He misses his spot badly and jumps early, his hind legs crashing into the crossbars, bringing them down on horse and rider. The horse gets up quickly but is limping badly. The rider does not move as the medics approach.

  The nine riders still in the race are coming our way for their final pass before the stretch. Allie’s head is laid near Carbon Copy’s neck, her seat off the saddle and her legs like pistons in the stirrups as they draw near. Born Lucky has regained his position and is moving up on the inside rail, his rider flailing his crop unsparingly. Allie is keeping Carbon Copy wide to avoid the havoc plaguing the middle of the pack, and as they near I have a full view of her grimly determined features.

  “Son of a bitch,” yells Ed as they gallop by. “Look at that gook ride.” Ed, drunk or sober, could not know she is my daughter and I suppose I should deck him but at this instant I can only echo his praise. “Yeah,” I mutter through clenched teeth, “look at that girl ride.”

  She takes the last jump as she has taken the others, strong and tight and all-out. I raise the field glasses to watch the finish. Born Lucky has pulled even and shows no fatigue. It is between them now, Carbon Copy on the outside and Born Lucky at the inside rail. Down the stretch, neck and neck, they thunder toward the finish. Ed is screaming and we are screaming and all eyes are on the last ten yards. With a final surge Born Lucky takes the flag with Carbon Copy a fraction behind.

  “Su-wee!” Ed yells in jubilation. He must reserve his pig call for truly special events. He and Sam go into some kind of jig as we stifle our disappointment. “I’m buyin’ licker, licker for the whole goddamn crowd!” Ed crows.

  I tap him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, Ed, but that’s not a gook, that’s a girl and she nearly won.”

  He eyes me wildly in his sotted euphoria. “Whatcha mean? I’s there … Nam. Semper Fi, mac. I guess I’d know a gook when I saw one.” He turns from me. Then, over his shoulder, he says, “Besides, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” With a sweeping arm thrown around Sam’s neck, they set out to find more licker.

  In the paddock, Allie discounts her loss, rubbing Carbon Copy’s withers as she praises him. “He gave me all I asked until the end. All he had.” Streaks of dust and dirt line her face, outlining the border of her goggles. “Steve Shaw may have a broken leg,” she reports. Shaw took the tragic spill over his limping horse, which the vets are trying to determine whether to put down.

  Jamison, Carbon Copy’s owner, a big cigar planted firmly in the corner of his mouth, recounts the race to anyone who will listen. Having never fielded an entry finishing higher than sixth, he is ebullient. Kenny, Allie’s trainer, is likewise basking in her light. “Twelve to one we went out and we gave ’em all they could handle. Another inch and they’d have been talking about this upset for years.”

  Natalie approaches Allie and whispers. Allie smiles and says, “Thank you.” Christopher hugs her as does Steven, after which Adelle and Sarah offer their praises. We leave while Allie stows her gear.

  “I’ve had fun,” says Natalie, indicating her car. She extends her hand. “Thanks for sharing your day, and your food.” We hold our clasp a second longer than necessary, a gesture seemingly unnoticed, although from the corner of my eye I see Adelle turn away, perhaps weary from the excitement of the race.

  29

  The Swilling jury is about to make him the richest ninth grade dropout in the state. His attorney simultaneously harbors the hope of becoming the richest lawyer, and his contingent fee on the demanded five million dollars in compensatory damages and another fifty million in punitive would do it. Expert witnesses for Swilling have agreed that he will require “extensive vocational rehabilitation;” words chosen by Dr. Peter Spain, MD, one of his experts paid $4000 for his impartial report and testimony.

  Scott Edwards reports that summations will begin this afternoon with the case expected to go to the jury by the end of today. I marvel at the nature of Swilling’s rehab. Has his beating at the hands of the police deprived him of his memory so that now, absent this gilded treatment, he will have to look up the pager numbers of his runners before dialing his car phone? Has his brutalization left him so befuddled that he might actually declare on a tax return a portion of his income, estimated by police to have been in excess of three million dollars last year, most of it diverted or extorted lunch money from the schools? Is he sexually impaired, raising the tragic specter of abandonment by his bevy of cocaine-breathing beauties who nightly, in twos and threes, trick him into exhaustion? It’s enough to make a man, and a jury, weep.

  Allie moves with brittle deliberateness this morning, the fluid flex of her arms and legs poured out onto the track in Camden. Her spirits show more resilience. She hums softly as she prepares breakfast and gathers her books for school.

  I lower the newspaper. “You’re moving slowly this morning.”

  “I’d kill for a Jacuzzi,” she says.

  I clear my throat. “I saw you and Natalie spending some time together.”

  “Yeah, she’s pretty neat. She used to ride so we talked horses.”

  “Just horses?”

  “Just horses. You spent some time with her yourself. What did you guys talk about?”

  “Stuff,” I say, raising the paper.

  “Right.”

  “Well, I felt badly that she was wandering around without any friends.”

  “You took care of that, not that I’m complaining. She told me I rode with courage.”

  “That was very thoughtful, and very justified.”

  “Thanks. It was scary but fun. Next time I’ll win. Gotta go or I’ll be late.” She disappears, stiff-legged.

  The outing in Camden seems to have softened her. Possibly, my chance encounter with Natalie, our chumminess at the Cup, eased her back toward my corner, if only psychologically. Her restraint is still detectable in the way she shortens dialogue, cuts her thoughts in half when she might otherwise expound on some experience or feeling. For instance, when we returned home after the Cup, a postmortem on the race was dictated by familial pattern. This would have been the time for her to reveal her butterflies while waiting in the starting gate, Carbon Copy’s demeanor during warm-ups, incidents concerning her rival jockeys or horses, nearfouls or worse out on the course. She relishes these details, as she relishes describing them to me. But it did not happen. She stowed her gear, ate some yogurt and went to bed, showing no sulk or pique, only fatigue, as though lack of energy was the sole cause of her withholding. But I know better.

  Approaching the courthouse after lunch I notice an abnormal number of lawyers flocking inside. Swilling’s summation i
s bringing them out like Aztecs to a sacrifice. The courtroom is SRO, or so it seems as I enter. Scanning, I see Natalie wedged among blue suits in the second row. The bailiff barks, Judge Tyler swoops in from a door behind the bench and gavels the room to order.

  Swilling, as plaintiff, has the first and last word with the three men and three women who have patiently listened to three weeks of testimony during which their private lives have been put on pause. His principal lawyer, a dapperly dressed black man named Morrison who has been commuting on weekends to Charleston from Washington, D.C. by chartered plane, begins the laborious but crucial task of recapitulating the evidence in his client’s favor. He is dignified, his voice modulated, his approach clinical and precise.

  Within minutes of rising to his feet Morrison shows himself a spin master worthy of the advanced billing, leading the rapt jurors through the night of the arrest and Swilling’s protestations of innocence. He wisely omits his client’s exact words, testified to by the arresting officers and reported in the newspaper, tastefully edited: “Hey, muthafuckas, whatchoo hasslin’ me fo; I been playin’ basketball; I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no drugs.”

  Morrison leads them through Swilling’s account of his detainment in the bullpen and his subsequent “torture” by the defendant police officers. He weaves a chilling tale of spiked white fury, black vulnerability, and patent, gloating indifference by white supervisors to the pounding being administered in the holding cell. In this civil trial, he does not need the unanimity demanded of criminal verdicts, giving him greater latitude in playing the race card to trump the outnumbered whites. If black experience holds black jurors together, he’ll break the bank and he knows it.

  I am behind and to one side of Natalie, having found a spot at the wall to back into. As Morrison parades his sad horribles before the jury like crippled, sack clothed mourners in a funeral cortege, I picture her nudging and prodding him on with her body English, restrained only with discipline and by the press of those flanking her, exhorting him to grip the city’s jugular and not be shaken free.

  In rebuttal, the city’s lawyer, Meg Brandon, offers its review of the evidence, as close to Swilling’s as the Cooper River is to the Nile. Swilling, the city contends, was beaten unconscious by a man named Gaston Halleck, arrested hours earlier and the only other occupant of the bullpen when Swilling was placed inside. To prove its claim, the city produced Halleck, its star witness during the trial, who swore he had first delivered a fierce blow to Swilling’s temple, knocking him out, and proceeded to do the balance of his damage as Swilling lay helpless on the floor. “That’s why,” testified Halleck, “the po-lice didn’t hear nothin’. I stayed real quiet so I could work him over good.”

  Halleck’s motivation in assaulting Swilling stemmed from a drug deal. One of Swilling’s runners had inflicted a recent wound to Halleck’s attrited pride by selling him some Sweet ’n Low at a price substantially higher than market, and that night at the jail Halleck dealt with the rip-off according to the law of the streets. During Halleck’s testimony, Morrison fought to suppress any reference to “a drug deal” as prejudicial to his client’s cause and the judge agreed. Halleck had been allowed to say only that he and Swilling had had “an argument.”

  “I thought ’bout chokin’ him to death,” Halleck forthrightly admitted on the witness stand, “but I been knowin’ him a while. We has some good times in the old days.”

  The key question was why Halleck would come forward with such an admission, and the answer lay in the twenty-to-life sentence he had just drawn from a jury for armed robbery. Halleck had little to lose by coming forward. Swilling lacked the contacts in the penitentiary system to have Halleck killed and Halleck, a two-time loser, had plenty of protective friends waiting for him at the big house.

  As if his confession were not enough to seal Swilling’s fate, Halleck had a parting gift for his old friend. Weeks after the beating, as Halleck and Swilling awaited their respective trials, Halleck on the armed robbery and Swilling, once released from the hospital, on the drug charges that constituted the basis for his original arrest, they had a conversation through intermediaries in the jail. Swilling told Halleck that he planned to get a hot-shot lawyer to sue the city for negligence in failing to protect him from Halleck in the bullpen. Halleck then, according to Halleck, told Swilling such a case lacked sex appeal and that if he really wanted to stick it to somebody he should claim the police did it.

  “I was kind of jokin’ with the dude,” Halleck testified for the city. “How’s I to know he’d do it?”

  As Meg Brandon rests the city’s case, Morrison jumps up for his final run at the jury. Gone is his judicious reserve, the “come, let us reason together” demeanor that characterized his earlier appeal. His eyes flash, his arms wave and he moves toward the jury box like a jaguar famished for meat.

  “Why,” he demands, “did Gaston Halleck come before you with such bald-faced outlandish lies? He said it was because he has nothing to lose by telling you the truth. I’m here to tell you that a man like Halleck, a liar with a record as long as your sleeve, wouldn’t know the truth if he found it in his pocket. That truth is that the city can still make life better for Gaston Halleck in two ways; first, it can recommend he be placed in an alternative to maximum security where he will enjoy conjugal leave privileges. For any of you who don’t know that term, it means the chance to be alone with his wife or lover at certain intervals. And secondly, it can recommend that he receive favorable consideration on the day, mercifully far into the future, when he comes up for parole. That is why he has agreed to perjure himself for the city.”

  It has been a clash worth the time of every professional here, and as the jury files out and Judge Tyler announces a recess until a verdict is delivered, predictions fly across the courtroom like Frisbees.

  “Get ready for a tax hike,” says Boyd Rollins, a CPA standing next to me. “The city’s self-insured and we’re going to take it on the chin.”

  “No way,” counters Walter Ford from the other side. “I was here for Halleck’s testimony and let me tell you he had that jury by the short hairs. When he told about suggesting the whole thing to Swilling they looked over at that black bastard like he’d spit on the Pope. He’s got no chance.”

  Ford is not a lawyer. No one who is would deny the first law of juries: when they’re out, anything can happen. The crowd begins to thin, expecting no rapid decision. Scott Edwards is up front, pad in hand, interviewing both sides. Summations and jury instructions have consumed the afternoon and I have no appointments. I edge forward, counter to the flow of those leaving, to where Natalie is engaged in debate with one of the blue suits. He departs as I approach.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” she says pleasantly. “What did you think?”

  “Morrison’s good,” I say. “Real good.”

  “Good enough?”

  I shrug. Not having attended the trial as it progressed I am in no position to judge critical factors like credibility of witnesses. Conversely, Natalie has been here every day.

  “What’s your guess?” I ask.

  “Verdict for the city. Just a hunch.”

  “Want to stake a lunch on it?”

  “You’re betting on Swilling?”

  “On the system. Slimeballs like him have a karma when it comes to taking advantage, especially when they can afford legal talent like Morrison.”

  “Well,” she says, folding her arms and grinning, “isn’t this a role reversal for the books?”

  “I’m not ready to fill out a membership application for the ACLU, I’m just calling it like I see it.”

  “And I’m not ready to join … what is it I’m not ready to join?”

  “United Daughters of the Confederacy?”

  “Yes, that,” she says, laughing. “That man I was talking with a minute ago was trying to entice me into the pool they have going. Pick the verdict and come closest to the time the jury’s out and win a hundred bucks.”
r />   “How are the bets running?”

  “The money’s on a decision for Swilling; nobody thinks it will come quickly.”

  “Then we have time for me to buy you a drink,” I am surprised to hear myself say.

  “I’d like that,” she says, “but are you sure you should be seen with me? Last time it caused you problems.”

  “There’s an Irish pub down the block. I could follow you from a safe distance.”

  Together we stroll down Broad Street. A day that began as a harsh afterthought of winter has ripened into a redolent prelude to spring. The outrunners of nature’s marshaling bounty are borne on the wind from the sea. Delicate brines lift across awakening marshes, whisked ashore to rustle among jasmines, pears and redbuds in a sibilant reminder that it is once again time to stir, to lend their fragile incense to the perfume of renewal.

  At the pub I suggest we continue on and she agrees. We turn on State Street, lined by ever-vigilant palmettoes and late-sleeping crape myrtles. At Queen we turn east to the river, drawn toward Waterfront Park by the scents of spring like two hungry children following a spiced aroma to a cooling apple pie.

  From the river’s edge we watch the patient migration of freighters in the channel, outlined by running lights and moving with ghostly caution in the accumulating dusk. Up river, the twin spans of the Cooper River Bridge loom in the twilight, giant superstructures festooned between land masses beginning to twinkle with lights. In the park to our right some young boys are playing with a football so dark it seems invisible, lending a surreal touch to their efforts to throw and catch it.

  We are standing before bronze topographical displays of Charleston’s four centuries, each emblazoned with history.