by Pete Dexter
Ward Townes was almost apologetic. "I don't have a choice in this, `Harry," he said.
Seagraves hadn't answered for a long time. Finally he looked up, away from the girl, and said, "You going to use these?"
°'What would you do?"
Seagraves put his feet on the floor now and stood up. He was dizzy a moment, and when it passed he walked to the bathroom and drank cold water from the spigot. He brushed his teeth, shaved, and brushed his teeth again. There was a taste in his mouth that would not wash out.
He stayed in the shower a long time, starting warm and finishing cool, letting the water run over his head and into his lips. Then he shut the taps and waited, watching the water drip off the points of his body, until the idea came back to him, the way to defend Paris Trout.
When he came out of the bathroom, Lucy was sitting up in bed. Her face was white and puffed, there were red lines from the corners of her eyes back into her hair where the elastic that held the blindfold had cut into her skin. She held her head in her hands and did not acknowledge Seagraves as he walked back into the room.
"You under the weather?" he said, and sat down on a corner of the bed to dress.
"I may die," she said.
She smelled stale to him now that he was clean. He said, "Get you a cold shower, it'll put the color back in your cheeks."
"Harry . . ." `
"What?"
"Get me a glass of water, honey."
He stood up in his socks and pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and his robe, then he went into the kitchen and opened the icebox. The maid was sitting at the table, drinking Coca-Cola. "Good morning, Betty," he said.
The maid said good morning.
"Mrs. Seagraves isn't feeling well," he said, "so she won't be down for a while."
"That's fine," the maid said. "Me and the broom get along just fine all by ourself."
He took the water upstairs. Lucy was settled back into her pillow. He handed her the glass and returned to his dressing. "Are you going out?" she said.
"I've got some work."
"It's Sunday. You can't do anything for Paris Trout on a Sunday."
He stood in front of the closet mirror to put a knot in his tie. He could see her in the corner of the mirror, soft and white and stale. "How do you know it's Paris Trout?" he said. Seagraves had the largest law practice in Ether County, there were hundreds of clients. She covered her eyes and spoke through her hands. "It's him all right," she said.
He kissed the top of her head before he left, looking down the fold in her nightgown and noticing the pale blue veins beneath the skin of her breasts. It was a continuing mystery of his life that he was always most interested in what was underneath her nightgown when he had been drunk the night before and the odds were the steepest against him. Lucy was either hung over too — as she was this morning — or resentful to have been left behind.
"I won't be long," he said, and allowed his hand to fall off her shoulder, following the line of her body behind her arm until he felt the junction where her bottom met the bed. She moved a few inches, making room for his hand to slide underneath, until he felt the place things more or less came together.
"Harry," she said, "don't." Then, in a different voice, "Get me some more ice water, honey."
* * *
HE WAS OUT THE door a few minutes later and walking in the direction of Hanna Trout°s house. He would see Trout himself later; first he wanted to ask her in a personal way to attend the trial. The alcohol visited him in waves, and once he stopped to sit on a brick fence until it passed.
Seagraves did not drink often, but when he did he made it count. It was Sunday morning, and there were people on the sidewalks. Some of them he knew by name, some of them only to nod. The ones he knew by name tended to be Methodists, on the way to church. He spoke and smiled, and the women, fresh and red-lipped and perfumed, left him pounding. He thought of them in bathing suits.
And between these thoughts — or beneath them, like an undertow — he thought of Paris Trout. In the months since the girl had died, his feelings regarding his client had changed. This was partly from his closer acquaintance and partly from a growing premonition that he would lose.
Seagraves had lost before, but never a case as noticeable as Paris Trout's would be. He had gone into the matter assuming he would win, gone in with certain advantages, but as the weeks passed, Seagraves had come to see that those first advantages were all he had.
He had found some things on the colored family — Henry Ray, for instance, had driven a truck over a white man the previous year — but Trout himself belonged in the asylum — "gone to Cotton Point" was the expression — and could not be trusted to testify for himself at a trial.
A pistol had been found under a mattress in the house where the girl was killed. lt was the wrong side of the house, and it hadn't been fired — or if it had, there was no evidence of it — but the pistol itself seemed to lend weight to the story Trout and Buster Devonne had told Chief Norland on the day of the shooting.
And ordinarily, those things would have been enough. But there was something resilient in the nature of what had happened — perhaps in the nature of the girl herself — that returned again and again as Seagraves prepared his case and informed him that something was headed wrong.
He had found himself avoiding Trout, seeing him once or twice a week, never for more than an hour. During the last visit Trout had threatened him. Not just the words — "I paid you to look after this, and you took the money" — but a feeling. He was always half a second from turning loose the dogs.
Seagraves had turned over all his other work to his clerks and partners and spent most of his time studying statements of the witnesses. The worst of the trouble was in the account of Mary McNutt, who had been shot four times. A jury would listen to her because of the bullets still in her body. She had refused to have the operations to take them out. She was the worst of the trouble, but in a way she was the answer, too.
Seagraves opened the gate and walked to the house. He pushed the doorbell and waited, and in a moment the door opened wide, and Hanna Trout was standing in front of him, dressed for church and holding her purse.
"Mrs. Trout."
"I thought you were my ride," she said.
He noticed both her feet were in shoes. "I see you've recovered the use of your foot," he said.
She did not answer, she did not invite him in. "That was some cut," he said. She stood motionless, looking into his face. He stared for a moment at the line of her leg inside her skirt, at her hip. He stretched to distract them both from the moment. "I saw toes caught in a lawn mower weren't as bad .... "
She looked at the watch on her wrist, and then checked the street behind him. She wore a shiny black belt that pressed into her waist and a silk blouse that she had buttoned all the way to her chin.
"You waiting on a ride to church?"
"Reverend Clay was supposed to pick me up," she said.
"Pardon?"
"Reverend Matthew Clay," she said.
Seagraves stepped inside the house, uninvited. He stood close to her and looked into her face. "Of the Bright Hope Baptist Church?"
She held herself erect and calm. "He may have been held up," she said. "He teaches Sunday school too .... " He smelled her soap and her shampoo.
He said, "I came by to ask you personally to attend your husband's tria1."
"Mr. Seagraves," she said, "I have spent the last three months separating myself from what he has done."
Seagraves felt the alcohol wash over him again and sat down on the steps leading upstairs. "Excuse me," he said.
She considered him a long moment. "Can I get you something?"
His face was suddenly wet with perspiration, his shirt stuck to his sides. He shook his head. "I apologize for this," he said. "It passes in a moment .... "
"Do you need a drink?" she said.
He put his arms across his knees and rested his forehead against them. He considered going to sleep.
"If it wouldn't be a bother," he said.
He did not watch her go into the kitchen, but in a moment he heard her open the refrigerator and then crack an ice tray. When he finally lifted his head, she was standing in front of him, holding what looked like a glass of tomato juice. He accepted it, thanked her, and felt the ice against his lips. He took a long drink and did not notice the alcohol until it was swallowed.
"You keep liquor in your home?" he said. He could not picture her breaking the law, even that one. Immediately he felt himself improving. He took another drink. The front door was still open, and she checked the street. "What in the world are you doing with Reverend Clay?" he said.
"Going to church."
He took another drink, slower this time.
"I hope you will pardon my manners," he said. "I do not normally put myself in the middle of a family matter. But this separation presents legal problems for Paris that I am sure you do not mean to inflict."
He drank again, finishing what she had brought him. It left an acid taste in his mouth, and presently he realized he was half drunk. He looked at Hanna Trout again, staring at her belt. "I'm afraid I've come here dehydrated," he said.
"It would appear so," she said.
"Your husband . . ." Seagraves shook his head and concentrated, but he could not take his eyes off Mrs. Trout's belt. It was something about the way it led to her hips. "I know you don't mean to harm him," he said.
He looked up into her face and saw that she wasn't following his thought, so he began to explain. "In a situation like this the appearance of things is often as consequential as the facts. I'm speaking legally — "
"Do you need another?" she said.
He looked at the glass, then at Mrs. Trout. "That might do nicely," he said, and she took it back into the kitchen. A minute later, when she put it into his hand, he noticed his fingers were shaking. She invited him into the living room, and he followed her there, sipping at the drink as he moved to keep it from spilling. She bent over the davenport, straightening a pillow, and he was poleaxed at the shape of her bottom. She straightened up, he found a chair and sat down. He looked around the room and saw that it had changed. He did not know if she had painted or set the furniture in new places, but the room was lighter. She sat on the couch and crossed her legs. Her ankle moved, up and down, and he followed it until he felt sick again and closed his eyes.
"You were speaking of appearances," she said.
He rubbed his face and sipped at the drink. "A marriage is a thing," he said, "that people understand in the way they're married themselves. In the case of a dissolution they picture themselves in that too. They assume hurtful things about the parties, to assure themselves their own marriage is safe."
She sat still, watching him. He thought she might be fascinated.
"What I am saying is, there is a certain amount of lying that goes on between people that live with each other. Polite lying, that makes cohabitation possible. And at the time of a loss of affection there is a tendency of both parties to unburden themselves of those lies and tell things that indirectly threaten those who are still married. That threaten the institution itself — "
She squared herself and said, "My husband never afforded me the polite lying, Mr. Seagraves. He did not strike poses for me, he is not good at that."
He sipped at the drink. A piece of lemon was floating among the ice cubes, he hadn't noticed it before. "Little lies," he said, "flirtations."
She shook her head. "In the week that followed the killing of that child," she said, "Mr. Trout assaulted me three times. He forced me to eat rancid food, he attempted to drown me in my own bath, he abused me in an unmentionable way with a bottle .... "
Except for the shaking in his hands, Seagraves did not move. He stared into her face, trying to imagine it. He cleared his throat.
Mrs. Trout held his eyes for a moment and then looked out the window. "I expect Reverend Clay was delayed," she said. "Did you drive?"
"No," he said, and his voice seemed to belong to someone else. "I thought the exercise would . . ."
She wasn't listening. He thought of her receiving the bottle and wondered what it had been. Coca-Cola? Where had it happened? In this room? He cleared his throat again, warm-faced with liquor. "I will not break this confidence," he said.
When she looked at him again, she was smiling. "It hardly matters, does it?"
"Yes, to the appearance of things it does. To yourself and to your husband."
"What sort of appearances do you favor, Mr. Seagraves?" she said.
He thought she was teasing him now, he thought that she knew what he was thinking. He put the glass on the floor next to the chair.
"The appearance of normalcy," he said.
She laughed out loud and leaned into her own lap. It crossed his mind that she herself had been drinking before he arrived.
"Mr. Seagraves," she said finally, straightening up, "that appearance is the very thing that allowed this to happen. My husband is an aberration. It is not normal to shoot children. Whatever effort is made to lend that appearance, it does not change the perversion itself but only asks that the perversion be shared. I will not be party to the shooting of children."
He said, "What if I proved that your husband was defending his life by discharging those shots?"
Her expression turned unfriendly. "You can't prove what didn't happen," she said.
"It's for a court of law to determine."
She shook her head. "There is no story you can tell in your court that will change what happened in that house." She looked around the room. "Or in this one."
"That is a misperception," he said, "that an act is, of itself, a crime or a perversion. It becomes such only after it is judged." He had no idea why he was explaining this to her.
He saw that she had begun to smile again, as if she were judging him. "The misperception," she said, "is that the law, and lawyers, decide what already happened."
Seagraves sat back into the chair. She stood up, checking the window again, and then crossed the room and took the glass out of his hand. "Another?"
He held his head, deciding.
"Mr. Seagraves?"
"One more," he said, and when she went into the kitchen, he followed her. She held her shoulders in one place as she walked, setting off all the movements below her belt. He passed through the room with the daybed and thought of her on the afternoon she had been cut. She had seemed less substantial then. He remembered Trout's mischief; and his thoughts came back to the bottle.
He had never heard any woman outside of a courtroom acknowledge such an act before, and now Hanna Trout, whose life was as circumspect as anyone's in Ether County, had said it without so much as clearing her throat.
He realized he had stopped at the daybed, and she had stopped in the doorway to the kitchen, waiting for him. "I was remembering the afternoon you lacerated your foot," he said. She waited. "The mess on the floor . . . I never saw a worse cut. It's a miracle they saved all your toes."
It hit him then that he had no idea if they had saved her toes or not.
"There's no feeling in the ends," she said.
And that struck him as intimate too. He moved toward her, and she went the rest of the way into the kitchen. She kept the jar in plain sight, on the cabinet beneath the glasses. The liquor inside was caramel-colored, and he saw a peach at the bottom. He recognized it as coming from Elbert Street's still. Elbert was an idiot with a gift for aging liquor. Seagraves had been told that he stored it in kegs. He used charcoal, which purified it and gave it color. The kegs were buried in a cave somewhere on his property north of Gray for close to a year, and when it was time, he poured it into fruit jars, usually over a fresh peach.
Seagraves had measured one of the jars once and found that the liquor brought Elbert close to fifty dollars a gallon. It was commonly acknowledged as the best liquor in the state, but to Seagraves's knowledge it was sold in only one place, the Ether Hotel. You gave the boy there ten dollars and the
n reached into the pocket of an overcoat hung on the rack near the emergency exit and took the jar. He could not picture Hanna Trout giving the boy ten dollars and wondered if the liquor was something her husband had left behind when he moved.
"The last time I was in this room," he said, "it looked like somebody'd blew up the icebox."
She unscrewed the lid of the jar, and he sat down at the cable and stared at her while she fixed his drink. The tablecloth was plastic and stuck to his hands. She brought the glass to the table and set it in front of his nose. He was still staring at her, but she did not seem to notice. He saw her chest was not as heavy as Lucy's but seemed to be attached to her at a more favorable angle.
She sat down in the chair across the table, and for just a moment he felt the brush of her leg against his, and then he was dizzy. He recovered himself and said, "Where was I?"
"You were reminiscing over the kitchen," she said. "It looked like the icebox had blown up."
"Before that."
"The law. My misperception that a crime can happen without a lawyer there to verify it . . ."
It reminded him again of what Paris had done with the bottle.
"I'll give you the case," he said, and leaned heavily on the table. He noticed she did not move away, not even an inch. "What if a woman was to suggest, as you have, that her husband had in some way abused her with a bottle?"
He saw that she wouldn't stop him. He said, "And that is a crime in the state of Georgia — "
°°Sodomy," she said, and he felt himself humming beneath the table. The word sounded different coming from Hanna Trout in her own kitchen than it did in court. There was a sort of connection, both of them knowing what it meant.
"Sodomy," he said. "But what if it went to a court of law — which it wouldn't, because there were no witnesses — but what if it did, and all the details were revealed, where it occurred, what sort of bottle, everything that was said, and it became evident, in the course of this discovery, that the woman . . . had agreed to the act?"