Rose & Poe

by Jack Todd

  “Poe is different. He’s unusual, in every sense of the word. His intellectual abilities are different from ours. He speaks in a different way. He has an extraordinary memory, but he can’t read or write or do the simplest math. But under the laws of this state, Poe can’t be found guilty simply because he is different. He’s not guilty because he’s over seven feet tall, or because he weighs more than four hundred pounds, or because he is remarkably strong, or because he has a rather prominent birthmark. I know that it bothers some of you that he occasionally drools, but that also is not a factor that can be taken into consideration in weighing his guilt or innocence of the heinous crime with which he is charged before this court.

  “Essentially, there are only two pillars to the prosecution’s case. One is that our county sheriff, James Dunn, saw him emerge from the woods near the old gravel pit carrying the victim. She had been badly beaten, sexually assaulted, and she was mostly nude. But the words Poe kept repeating over and over during his encounter with the sheriff tell you all you need to know: ‘Get help. Get help. Get help.’ Poe was trying to rescue this girl, not to attack her. He had carried her a distance of a mile and a half from the point where she was assaulted to the highway, an act that should be seen as heroic, not dastardly. If you doubt me, you may want to try lifting an adult human being and carrying that person even a hundred yards.

  “We have heard also from one Elmer Hepp, who insists that he found both Poe and the victim walking along the highway and gave them a ride on his wagon. This is contrary to testimony we have heard from both the defendant and his mother, who testified that Poe went fishing alone, and also from what we know the victim was wearing when she was attacked: a white dress, not blue jeans and a red T-shirt. Nor is it possible that Elmer Hepp, the victim, and a man as massive as Poe Didelot could all have squeezed onto that narrow wagon seat, so it should be pretty clear that Mr. Hepp has remembered something that did not happen — that is, the young woman was not with Poe when he accepted that wagon ride. We don’t know how she got there, but she did not arrive at the gravel pit with Poe.

  “There remains another pillar of the prosecution’s case, the semen found on the victim’s dress and on Poe’s coveralls. We accept that the semen is Poe’s. He has said as much himself, and he has explained how it came to be there. He had masturbated while looking at one of these obscene old comic books, and the ejaculate was left on his coveralls. While he was running with the victim in his arms, his coveralls rubbed against her dress. That explains why semen was found on the back of her dress, not the front. I should remind the jury that while you might find this act repugnant, he is charged with sexual assault, not public masturbation. When he realized what was going on, that the victim was being assaulted, he quickly descended from the tower, hurled the attacker out of the way with such force that the man’s head or shoulders may have shattered the windshield of an automobile, and carried the victim to the highway, where he was fortunate to encounter the sheriff. Over the first hundred paces or so of that desperate run that saved her life, Poe was carrying her in his arms, in a position where the back of her dress rubbed against his coveralls and the fresh semen he had ejaculated there.

  “Now, I know this sounds like a rather contorted explanation, but in my long experience of the law, the truth is rarely clear-cut, and often the truest version of events is the one that seems to depart most from our tidy sense of things as they ought to be. It’s the clever liar who presents a neatly packaged narrative for our consumption, not the maladroit honest man who is incapable of concocting a meticulous lie. We all have a great respect for science, but science can tell us only so much: it can tell us that Poe’s semen was found on the victim’s dress, but not how it got there. And what, really, is the alternative explanation? That Poe deliberately ejaculated on the back of her dress, when she was partially nude in front? There are ways he might have ejaculated on the dress rather than her bare skin, but they are at least as contorted as the explanation Poe has offered, which has the advantage, I submit, of being the truth.

  “You all watched as Poe tried and failed to open a single button on the dress the victim was wearing the day she was attacked. Yet, when Sheriff Jim Dunn found Poe carrying her out of the woods, all the buttons on the dress had been undone and it was completely open. Poe could easily have torn the dress open if he chose. In fact, had he attacked her, that would have been the obvious method. So why was the dress not torn? There are only two possible explanations. Either this young woman voluntarily undid the buttons for her attacker or there was a third party at the scene, the so-called mystery man who was responsible for undoing the dress. He was able to undo the dress one button at a time, the way a man with fingers more agile than Poe’s would proceed, especially if his victim was drunk or semiconscious and he was attacking her at his leisure.

  “I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions, but in my view there’s only one rational explanation for the fact that her dress was open: someone else undid those buttons, someone who was neither the victim nor the man who sits in the prisoner’s dock today.

  “I would ask you to consider also that there would be two consequences of a guilty verdict in this case. First, you would be sending an innocent man to prison, most probably for the rest of his life. But that’s not all: you would also make it possible for a guilty man to remain free. Because someone did attack this young woman. Someone did almost beat her to death. And that someone is out there today, walking the streets a free man, laughing at us as we try Poe for a crime he did not commit.

  “This is not an easy verdict. It’s a complex case, with some elements I have never encountered before. The crime scene disappeared in the flood. The victim’s short-term memory vanished and has not returned. It’s complex, but it’s simple at the heart of it — which is the very nature of Poe himself. Poe is many things, but he is not two people. What you see is what you get: the gentle giant, the man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, or a young woman he adores. Given the facts of this case, you have only one real choice once you have weighed the evidence: that is to acquit Poe of the crimes of which he is charged, and to let him go free.”

  ~

  Judgment day

  The jurors file out to begin their deliberations. Wild Bill and Matt Harrow head home to wait. Dan Gillespie goes back to the pub. Joey, Maeva, and Rose take a seat on a bench in the corridor and settle in, with Joey heading out for smoke breaks every half hour.

  The day dims. Headlights pop on outside. It’s rush hour in Belle Coeur, which means as many as four or five cars at a time idling at a stoplight. Rose finds it the worst hour of a winter day, when it’s not quite dark, the time before the lights come on and you can smell good things baking in the oven. On these winter afternoons, she finds herself thinking of the time she will be buried someplace where the wind howls and the snow drifts high over her grave. Rose fervently believes that her soul will be in heaven singing the old gospel tunes, but there’s no getting around the solemn truth that her body will be in the cold, cold ground, no matter what her soul gets up to.

  Poe passes the time in his cell talking to Willie, a spider that has been in the same corner since the fall. Willie, Mister Cain says I’m leavin’ soon. Goin to the big jail or goin home. Either way, I can’t be lookin’ after you no more. I’d like to take you home, put you in the goat shed. You’d do real good there. Plenty flies. Or maybe the outhouse. You’d get fat in the outhouse. I know you don’t say much, Willie, but you been a real good friend to me. I’ll be sorry to go, but maybe they’ll let me come by to say hello now and then.

  Poe doesn’t mind the wait. He has always been good at waiting. He empties himself and floats with the current, so that he can’t say whether he’s waited five minutes, five hours, or five days. His sense of time is fluid and without fixed points, apart from the time he can distinguish on his fob watch. In here, he can’t see the sun rise or set or the slow wheel of the stars at night. Time passes. Water drips
. He hears the muffled sounds of traffic from outside. The song on the radio in the deputies’ room changes from Hank Williams to George Jones. Willie the spider walks across the ceiling.

  Poe hears a buzzer and his cell door slides open. Deputy Proulx is standing there. “Let’s go, Poe. The jury is back. It’s time.”

  Rose has dozed off on a bench in the corridor, with her chin down on her chest. She doesn’t hear the bailiff when he pokes his head out the door to say the jury has reached a decision, but the flurry of activity wakes her. Joey takes her arm and leads her back into the courtroom. Her legs are stiff and her knees are weak. She can feel the thud of her pulse in her throat, and for a moment, she thinks she might faint dead away before they announce the verdict, but then Lambert Cain comes striding in, elegant as always in his dark blue suit, and she takes heart from his presence. He pauses at her side for a moment, rests his hand on her shoulder, and looks her in the eye without saying a word before taking his seat at the defense table.

  Rose stands as the judge takes his seat. The jurors come trooping in, looking weary. She still can’t read their expressions. She has to pee, but there isn’t time. Her whole life comes down to this, to what a dozen people decide to do with her son.

  Judge Buzzard asks the jurors if they have reached a verdict. They answer “yes,” in unison. He asks for the verdict to be passed to him and scans it carefully before he speaks. “Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Do all of you agree with this verdict?”

  Some of the jurors merely nod. Most mumble “yes.” Only one or two speak up so they can be heard across the courtroom.

  The judge leans forward. “Alright, jurors, now I am going to ask you to confirm your decision. Will the presiding juror please step forward?”

  Rose watches as Grace Nagel stands. Grace, of all people. Rose experiences an awful moment of dizziness and takes Maeva’s hand to keep from pitching forward out of her seat. The judge addresses Grace in a firm voice: “Madame, on the charge that Mr. Poe Revere Didelot committed aggravated assault on the person of the victim, how do you find?”

  “Not guilty, Your Honor.”

  “And on the charge that Mr. Poe Revere Didelot did commit aggravated sexual assault on the person of the victim, how do you find?”

  “Also not guilty, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Didelot, you have been found not guilty on both charges and you are free to go. Bailiffs, please release the defendant.”

  Grace Nagel usually squawks like a parrot. On this occasion, she pronounces the verdicts so softly that Rose hears only the word “guilty,” and it’s not until the judge turns to Poe and tells him that he is free to go that she understands what has happened. Through all the months of waiting, she has envisioned herself leaping up with joy if Poe is freed, but now she sits motionless, staring straight ahead, unable to speak, struggling to breathe.

  Lambert Cain bends over her, his hand on her elbow. He’s saying something, but Rose can’t make out what it is. Behind her is an odd buzzing sound, like a nest of angry hornets. The upper and lower galleries have mysteriously filled with people still in their parkas, their cheeks inflamed from the cold wind outdoors, huddling in little knots of anger, venting their displeasure with the verdict. When Rose glances back at them, they glare at her with such pure hatred that it shakes her to the core. How can people hate so? A jury has found Poe innocent. How could that be wrong?

  Lambert and Maeva help Rose to her feet and lead her to Poe, who is rubbing his wrists, free of the handcuffs. He seems more baffled than she is. His eyes seek her out. “Is that all, Mama? Can I go home now?”

  “Yes. We’re going home.”

  Poe envelops Rose in his powerful arms and lifts her off the floor, swinging her back and forth until one of her shoes falls off. As he puts her down, Jim Dunn appears at his side.

  “Poe, we’ve got to walk you back to the jail to get your effects and get you changed out of that jumpsuit. I’m going to send a couple of deputies to give you and your mother an escort home. There are some folks here in a very nasty mood. They’ll calm down, but we’d best keep an eye until they do.”

  Rose waits in the corridor outside the jail until Poe emerges wearing his OshKosh B’gosh coveralls and the work shirt, which she has to button. She has with her an oversized shopping bag with his parka and mittens and a Russian hat she bought at a thrift shop in Bunker’s Corner against the day when he would be released.

  Joey drives, the three of them crammed into the cab of the pickup, Rose in the middle, a drift of snowflakes floating across the road in the mismatched beams from the headlights of the old truck. A deputy sheriff’s cruiser leads the way, his lights flashing, and another follows along behind. They don’t say much on the way. At the house, the deputies linger on the side of the road, the lights still flashing, casting a blue-and-red glow over the snowbanks. Matt Harrow, Maeva Miller, Dan Gillespie, and Wild Bill De Graaff all crowd into the kitchen and living room of the little yellow house. More friends and supporters keep arriving, until there are more than a dozen altogether. Rose has a beef stew she left to simmer just in case. She dishes up bowls of stew and slices of homemade bread with fresh-churned butter and hunks of her own cheese. Wine bottles are opened, caps popped off bottles of ice-cold beer, cups found. Matt breaks out his mandolin, Joey tunes his guitar, Dan gives them a riff on his harmonica, and Joey launches into “I’m Sittin’ on Top of the World.” Poe sits in their midst, feeling dazed and a little feverish, beaming at one and all.

  It’s past eight o’clock when Rose remembers the goats. Matt is trying to sing “Miss the Mississippi and You” and making a bad job of it, and Rose has to speak into Poe’s ear to make him understand above the racket. “It’s a cold night, Poe, but somebody has to milk the goats. Do you want to do it, or shall I ask Joey?”

  Poe grins, the grin stretches into a smile, and he gets to his feet, keeping his head clear of the light fixture to avoid shattering the lightbulbs. “I’ll do it, Ma. It’s my job. Happy to do it.”

  Poe dons his parka and boots and mittens, and Rose wraps a thick woolen scarf around his neck. He grabs the empty buckets off the back porch and heads out to the winter goat-shed near the house, along the path that Joey and Rose have kept shoveled. He’s halfway there when he hears the goats, bleating their urgent need to be fed and milked. He opens the door to the shed, closes it behind him, hauling it shut against the wind, and fumbles for the light switch. Their stalls are bathed in warm yellow light. The nannies are all around him, butting each other out of the way, butting him, licking at his hands. He inhales the warm fragrance of goat shit and hay and oats and goat milk. Two cats wind themselves around his ankles as he shakes out buckets of oats into the trough and grabs his stool to begin the milking. He calls them by name, Jenny-Girl and Ostrich, the twins Bertha and Pearl, Roxie, Little Dipper, Maude, Lula May, Olive, Susie Q, Thelma Pearl, Aunt Nell, and Princess Sally. As always, he begins with Little Dipper and finishes with Princess Sally. He milks them with his cheek nestled against their warm, fragrant hides. When he’s done, he heads across to the cheese shed, carrying two full buckets in each of his six-fingered hands. Back in the house, he plunks himself down on the davenport in the center of the living room, the guest of honor in his own house, and watches the folks sing and dance when they aren’t thumping him on the back and saying, I knew it, Poe. I knew all along you wasn’t guilty and they would figure it out sooner or later.

  It’s past midnight when the last of them head home, including Joey. He offers to stay, but Rose wants to be alone with her boy. Joey thinks of opening the door to the shed to let the geese out to keep watch, but it’s at least twenty below, cold even for a goose.

  Rose and Poe sit in front of the little black-and-white TV, watching a blond woman laugh with a talk-show host. Rose doesn’t know who they are because she’s never up this late at night. They watch until one o’clock in the morning without saying much, then Rose switches off
the television. “I expect we’d best get to bed,” she says. “Places to go and things to do in the morning.”

  ~ VII ~

  Visions of the Apocalypse

  Milk spilled across the sky

  Deputy Travis Proulx leans his face against the icy window of the cruiser so he can watch the slow wheel of stars in the winter sky. The night is moonless. Out here, far from the big city, the stars are like milk spilled across the sky. That’s what his mother told him years ago when he asked why it was called the Milky Way. She said it was spilled milk way up there, and Travis is embarrassed to think how old he was when he realized it wasn’t true.

  It’s deathly quiet and Travis is cold. He watches the people who were celebrating the verdict at Rose’s place leave the yellow house in twos and threes until the last rusty pickup has turned onto the highway and drifted away. Another hour goes by. He sees an owl fly past on hushed wings. He checks the clock on the dash. It’s twelve minutes past one. If anyone is going to make trouble, surely it would have happened by now. He’s under orders not to leave his post, but it won’t hurt to dash into the twenty-four-hour donut shop in Belle Coeur for a coffee and donuts. He has a little thing going with Bridget, who works the night shift. He figures he can run into town, see Bridget, get his coffee, and be back at his post in twenty minutes.