Verdict in the Desert

by Patricia Santos Marcantonio

Tommy wheezed whenever he moved. “There you go, Mr. Shaw.”

  Michael leaned back against the overstuffed booth. “I like this place, Tommy.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Shaw.”

  “You know why I like this place?”

  “No, but you’re going to tell me.”

  “I’m a damn nobody here, nothing but a drinking customer.”

  “And a good paying customer at that.”

  “See, that’s why I like it here.”

  Tommy sat down on a chair near the booth. “You’re happy tonight, Mr. Shaw.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be happy? I got a pretty wife, a respectable job and a rich father. I’m jumping with fucking joy. So bring me the goddamn bottle next time.”

  “Good for you,” Tommy wheezed as he got up.

  The jukebox kicked up again, and Michael started up “Bird Dog” by the Everly Brothers.

  At eleven, Michael stumbled out and searched his pockets for car keys. He beamed with pride at his self-restraint. He didn’t shut down the bar, as he had many times. He knew his limit, which was to the point of almost passing out but still with vision enough to drive home through back roads to avoid the cops. He finally located the keys and only dropped them once before opening the car door. After he started the car, Michael peered through the front windshield. The slip of a moon hung like an unanswered question. He watched for what felt like a long time and drove off to find the answer.

  After reading the same paragraph three times, Toni threw the book across the room. She had read Jane Eyre several times because she loved the story of the plain but resilient governess making her way in a remorseless world. That night, however, the romance between the penniless Jane and rich Mr. Rochester troubled her like heartburn. Sleeping on a blue pillow in the corner, Oscar stirred when the book landed on the floor. The dog came over and licked her foot.

  “Sorry for waking you.” She scratched between his ears. “I bet you miss María, don’t you, boy? Don’t worry. Michael will get her out of jail. And just because I can’t sleep doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.” Picking up the dog, she placed him on the pillow.

  She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, but her nerves pulsated. Getting up again, she washed her face, but it did no good.

  Earlier in the day, she and Michael had interviewed Father Hernán Vásquez at Our Lady of the Roses Church on Adams Avenue. When Michael asked him to take the stand at the trial, the priest agreed without hesitation. Father Vásquez described María’s soul as troubled, and he glanced at Toni, who felt the priest described her as well.

  Drying her face and neck, she peered into the mirror. She had lost weight and found two white hairs.

  “Great. Now you’re old before your time.”

  She hadn’t slept much after calling her father’s doctor. Indeed, he was a nice man who called the illness “progressive and terminal.” She cried so hard, her head ached for hours. Her father, however, refused to let her sleep on the couch in the house because she wanted to be near him. She had her own place, and he hadn’t done all the work on the garage for nothing, he told her. So between worry about her father and María and the heat, she was getting less than five hours of sleep each night. Her father’s health wasn’t the only thing keeping her up that particular night.

  She wasn’t the least bit surprised at the knock on her door.

  Michael knocked again and whispered. “Toni, it’s Michael Shaw.” He tried to focus in the darkness. “God, I hope this is the right house. Toni? Toni? Are you there?”

  She opened the door a little. “What are you doing here?” she said harshly but as quietly as she could.

  “I know it’s late, but I wanted to talk. You know, about María.” A stupid excuse, Michael realized, so he kept on smiling.

  “Are you crazy? Mrs. Hernández hears everything.”

  “She won’t hear me. I’m the Invisible Man.” He covered his mouth to stifle a laugh.

  Toni shushed him and opened the door a little wider. “Are you smashed?”

  “No. Are you?” He put on a straight face and then cracked up.

  “Oh, my God, you are smashed.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Quiet. You need to go home.”

  “Home.” He stopped smiling and leaned his forehead against the wall. His hair fell into his eyes, “Please, Toni.”

  “No self-respecting girl would let you in.”

  Michael held onto the doorknob. “But a nice girl would.”

  Toni said nothing. Michael blinked rapidly.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll go,” he said.

  Toni made the sign of the cross. “Hold on.”

  She hurried to find a robe. “You must be crazy, girl,” she muttered to herself.

  The admonishment didn’t stop her from opening the door, grabbing his shirt and hauling him in. She kept a peripheral eye out for light from Mrs. Hernández’s windows. Not a flicker showed. That didn’t mean a thing, however. Toni suspected the old woman spied out her windows when the lights were out.

  After three cups of coffee so strong it burned his stomach, Michael held his hand over the top of the cup as they sat at the kitchen table.

  “Toni, no more.”

  “How you feeling?”

  “Not too bad, except my head will pay me back tomorrow.”

  “Good, you deserve it for drinking so much.”

  “You sound like a judge.”

  She held up the coffeepot. “You sure you don’t want more?”

  “Only if you shove the grounds into my veins.”

  “Believe me. I’m tempted to do that with a plunger. Want something to eat? It might help.”

  “Believe me, it won’t.”

  “Okay, I won’t torture you anymore.” She placed the cups in the sink. Turning, she leaned against the counter. “Why do you drink so much?”

  “What makes you think I do?”

  “Come on, tanked on a weekday. Showing up at a strange house in the middle of the night.” She sat across from him. “Are you a drunk, Michael?”

  He sat back in his chair, shocked at the air-to-air missile accuracy of the question nobody had ever bothered to ask. “Only when the situation warrants it, which in my case is a lot.”

  “That’s an honest answer.”

  “Do you make it a habit to let drunken men in your house late at night?”

  “Not usually. But I’ve taken a risk here and there.”

  “Not me. I’ve done what’s expected of every American boy. College, law school, joining dad’s firm.”

  A slight smile. “Wife.”

  “That, too,” Michael said, though not with satisfaction.

  “I get it. You drink because you’ve gotten everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  “It was all so easy, I could have done it in my sleep. And alcohol is my idea of a great anesthetic.” He smiled, but his eyes itched with weariness.

  “You always do what’s expected of you?”

  “No.”

  He took her hand, leaned over the table and kissed Toni with all the uncertainty of a first kiss. For as much as he wanted her, he feared she would reject his all too apparent flaws. But Toni slipped her hand over his neck and drew him closer. She tasted of peppermint toothpaste and renewal.

  Getting up from the table, Toni clicked on the record player and lowered the volume. An unhurried jazz song accompanied her to the door as she locked it. Leading him up from the table, she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled down his pants and shorts, which he stepped out of. Toni slipped off her robe and nightgown. In the middle of the small room, they danced to music tender as an embrace. His fingers brushed over her mouth, along her breasts and around her nipples. Her hands dropped to his sides and then skimmed his chest and his back. He continued to glide his fingers over her face and along her hair. Up her back and down her thighs. His paler hand on her darker skin. His movements resonated on her flesh. Michael’s hand went between her legs, where his fingertips lingered. He tapped out his own delicate t
une. She pressed his hand down, but didn’t moan or writhe. Her breathing scorched his skin.

  When Toni switched off the small lamp beside the bed, he gasped at the beauty of the faint moonlight on her. The shadow of the curtain covered their bodies in a pattern of lace. The single bed squeaked with their weight as he slid over and in her. The record had stopped, but still they danced.

  17

  MARÍA HAD NEVER SEEN two women fight before. She was eating her dinner of rubbery meatloaf and mashed potatoes in the cafeteria when a big blond woman slapped the tray out of the hands of a thin Mexican woman. Food flew. So did rage. The women took steps back from each other. Their lips stretched over clenched teeth before they charged. They kicked and clawed at each other with their nails. Their eyes were slits as they struck out, like hawks tearing at prey. The Mexican dug her nails down the side of the blond’s round face. Screaming and bloody, the big blond grabbed a handful of the Mexican’s hair and yanked. She bellowed in triumph with the long black trophy in her hand. The women called each other names that María had first heard from Ben.

  Cunt. Bitch. Cocksucker. Whore.

  María set down her fork. She recognized the vicious faces of the combative women as they were dragged away by the guards. The cafeteria quieted, but María could not finish eating her meatloaf as she remembered the first time Ben had raised his hand to her. It happened the night she lost her virginity.

  She had left Puerto Vallarta without packing or saying good-bye to her father or mother, who would only miss her cooking, cleaning and the money she brought home. She did take a handful of sand and put it into her pocket. María breathed in the ocean, not knowing if she would again stand on its beaches. With Ben, she boarded a bus to the United States, carrying nothing but faith in a future.

  As a young girl María had dreamed of wearing a lace and embroidered dress to church, of a priest placing a crystal rosary around her neck and that of her betrothed and of humbly placing flowers before the Virgin during the wedding Mass. Of a big dinner with family. Of the wonders of love between a man and woman. As the bus rumbled north, she didn’t mind missing out on these rituals. She had a man at her side.

  In Nogales, Ben had bought a car and found a place for them to get married—a justice of the peace in a ramshackle office next door to a butcher’s shop. She still wore the same clothes she had on when she left Mexico. They were now wrinkled and sweaty from their journey on the hot bus. The justice spoke only English, so Ben had to tell her when to say, “I do.” He didn’t kiss her when the ceremony ended within minutes.

  “Ben, I love you,” she had told him as they left the justice of the peace. She didn’t lie. He had rescued her from dying alone, and she was grateful. He had shown her kindness and attention.

  Ben didn’t answer her.

  He bought her new clothes, and they ate dinner. Later, at their motel room, María shivered in the bathroom like an innocent girl, although she was almost forty. She combed her hair and rubbed lotion on her body, becoming heady with the smell and anticipation. When she and Ben had strolled the beaches of Puerto Vallarta, he only kissed her. Once in a while and almost with an endearing shyness, he rubbed his big hand over her small chest or wiped it over the front of her panties. On her wedding night, she envisioned more kisses like the first one on the beach, with his breath filling her.

  Ben yelled at her from the other room, “What are you doing in there? Get out here, dammit.”

  She came out, turned off the light and slipped off her nightgown. She got into bed and waited for love. Ben rolled on top of her. She hadn’t realized how much he weighed. He grunted as he entered her, and she cried out with the initial pain as something foreign forced its way inside her and she could not escape, no matter how hard she shoved at him. He pushed and pushed, making the bedsprings squeak and the pain between her legs surge like waves against rocks. His grunts came more quickly, until she thought he was going to pass out. Finally, he rocked off her.

  María began to cry as much from the throbbing as the possibility she had made a mistake, despite her love for this man.

  Ben stirred, turned toward her and slapped her so hard her teeth shook. “I love you, baby, but shut the hell up. I need to sleep,” he said and kissed her cheek.

  Naked and bruised from lovemaking, she returned to the bathroom. She stared at the spots of blood on the worn linoleum and wiped a towel between her legs. It came away red.

  That had been her life ever since. Pain and love. Blood and kisses.

  For seven years, she traveled with him from construction job to job, all over Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Although she could have no children, she knew contentment. She came to like how he laid on her and even felt pleasure, which was helped considerably when she drank beer. She took care of him when he came home dog tired from work and listened as he complained about all the good-for-nothings who worked with him. He smacked her around only on those occasions when he drank to the point that his smallish eyes disappeared entirely into his face and he fell more than he walked. But even in his drunkenness, his slaps found their target on her face or body.

  Then they moved to Borden, and they talked about settling there. She found a job, and their life continued. But after Ben severely injured his back on a job, he drank more and began to hurt her more. Like her father, Ben began telling her she was nothing without him and no other man would have her. “You are small and ugly, María,” he would say. “Looking at you aches worse than my back.” His laugh was full of spit.

  “I know I am lucky to have you,” she would tell him and believe it.

  Unlike her father, who never apologized after slapping her mother, at first Ben would bring her gifts after he hit her. A bracelet. The hard candy she liked. A new nightgown. But those apologies had ended almost as soon as they had started. She began to wonder what she did wrong and tried everything to please him. Surely she must have been the cause of his unhappiness and anger, because most of his ire was directed at her. Each day, she prayed to God to not make him mad and for the old Ben of Mexico to come back to her. But she also recalled what her mother had told her during one of the rare times they did have a conversation. Her mother talked about how her father used to sing under her window and moon with big eyes and love to win her hand. After they married, however, that romantic lover had drowned in the Pacific, and she had been living with his bad spirit ever since. It was the way of men.

  María started to drink, which lessened the pain from Ben’s hand on her back and legs. The beer also gave her enough bravery to fight back, but not that often, because when she did the beatings only increased. She again felt the solitude of her early years, until God let her find a puppy roaming in the street. She took him home and fed him. Ben had yelled at her to get rid of the mongrel, but she begged him to let her keep the dog. Ben said he liked when she begged, gave in and got drunk. She watched her husband and knew she would go to bed with cuts and welts that night, but it didn’t matter. “I will protect you, Oscar,” she had whispered to the puppy. And she did.

  María glanced down at the tray of jail food, which was now cold. She had never seen two women fight before, but she had seen the ruthlessness warping their faces. She had seen it on her own face, reflected in the blade of the knife she had plunged into Ben’s chest.

  18

  COUNTY ATTORNEY JOE BRENNAN blew cigarette smoke at the three deputy attorneys sitting around the table in the conference room. They had all come from wealthier families than his, were older and more popular in school. But he stood at the head of the table. His name was painted on the glass door to their office. The former Joe “Four Eyes” Brennan was the real law in Mitchell County.

  Receiving no help from his destitute parents, he had paid his way through college, working summers in the steel mill alongside Mexicans and Negroes. He never forgave his family for having nothing to give him. After completing law school at the state university, he worked at the county attorney’s office and made sure his name got out to the publ
ic by shaking what he believed was the hand of every voting Republican in the county. His plan was going as expected and helped immensely by marriage to Sandra Lariat, the pudgy, nondescript daughter of a judge with massive property holdings in the next county.

  Yet Brennan didn’t want wealth. He wanted more precious commodities: authority and respect. He had developed his own creed: If you can’t make people respect you, make them fear you. And that had worked out pretty well.

  Thumbing through one of the files before him, Brennan heard updates on cases from the deputies during their weekly meeting. He looked at the tops of their heads as he talked. He reserved eye contact for judges, witnesses and people who could advance his career. He specifically wanted to hear about the María Curry case. He had claimed the lead attorney spot because if the case ended up at trial, murder meant his name in the newspaper. But he left the details and footwork up to his chief deputy.

  “Roberts, what do you have for me on the Curry case?”

  Chief Deputy Simon Roberts, who was five times more burned out than anyone in the room, consulted his notes. “Lots of evidence showing that Curry and his wife had knockdown, drag-outs. At least two dozen police reports of domestic battery were filed, but no arrests were ever made. They never pressed charges against each other. The bad news: Ben Curry did most of the assault and battery in that relationship. And I’ll bet my new Edsel that Shaw’s going to use self-defense.”

  “Naturally.” While listening, Brennan intertwined his slim fingers, a gesture he regarded as distinguished.

  Sitting across the table, Adam Stevens had one word for Brennan: “asshole.” Although “bastard” also fit. Adam crushed out his cigarette. “A jury might feel sorry for the old girl, boss.”

  “After we get through with her she’ll look like Pancho Villa’s girlfriend,” Brennan said.

  The men around the table laughed, even Adam, who was not above kissing a little behind if it made his job easier.

  Brennan got up and glanced out the window at the bank building, where Michael Shaw had his office two floors above his own. They had worked together for one year in the county attorney’s office, where Shaw had proved fierce in court. That surprised him, because he believed Michael Shaw was going to be all pretty boy and no brains. Brennan came to envy Michael’s abilities, connections, fortune and even his face and hair. All the more reason to dislike him.