by Pete Dexter
She cocked her head, as if she had not understood the words.
He said, "If the woman had agreed. Or perhaps she didn't agree, not directly, but she enjoyed it. What does that say for her complaint? The act still occurred, a crime has been committed, but now we see it different. It's shaded by the woman's agreement .... "
He was reckless now, he had taken it too far and delivered himself into her hands. But part of being reckless was knowing you were reckless, and he was. He reached across the table and laid his hand on her arm. She did not seem to notice.
"A conspiracy," she said.
"It could be," he said. He was suddenly aware of his breathing, the feel of air over his lips and teeth. "A thing that could happen spontaneous. Who can say then that what occurred was even a crime? Law without compassion is not law at all."
She sat still a moment longer and then drew her arm from underneath his hand. He did not try to hold her. She said, "Do you believe I asked my husband to abuse me with a bottle, Mr. Seagraves?"
He did not answer at first. "It was only intended as a case for argument," he said finally. "I never meant it in a personal way. It came to mind because you had just spoken of your problem .... "
He was suddenly panicked.
"Do you believe the child asked to be shot?" she said. "Or the woman? Do you believe they agreed to it?"
He pulled himself back off the table and reached for his drink. He lifted it to his mouth and smiled just before it touched his lip. The smile was wrong in some way he could not identify or correct.
"I will tell you this," he said. "There wasn't anybody in that house completely innocent. Not the way you think of it. It didn't happen by itself?
It was quiet a moment, and he sipped again at the drink. He wished she had used less tomato juice.
"Do you know my husband well, Mr. Seagraves?" she said.
"As well as I need to," he said. Then: "As well as I care to."
"Can you predict what he would do if he walked in now and found us here talking on him?"
Seagraves pictured Trout coming in.
"I believe he'd bust up the kitchen."
"Would he speak?"
"You can't tell with him. He might and he might not."
"And when you left, what would he do then?"
Seagraves shook his head. "I never saw that side of him."
"You would leave .... "
He did not follow her now. He thought she might be asking him to stay. He thought she might be offering him something in return.
"I couldn't move in to watch him. I got a house of my own."
"Then who will watch him?"
"That's not my end of things .... "
Suddenly there were tears in her eyes, and he moved to touch her arm again. He said, "Perhaps you misunderstood my meaning, Mrs. Trout .... "
She pulled her arm away, and when she spoke again, her voice was shaking. "Who will watch him?"
He took another drink, but the tomato juice was at cross purposes with the liquor now, thick and hard to swallow.
"It's a simple question," she said. "When you and the law have decided that the child and the woman conspired to be shot, or enjoyed it, and have set my husband free, who will keep him from conspiring with another child to shoot her?"
"If he goes free, he is free," Seagraves said.
"And what then?"
He shook his head, wanting to leave now, wanting to get away from her misunderstandings and her warnings. "It's not my end," he said again.
She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. He tried to stand, but he was dizzy and felt himself begin to pitch onto the floor. She was speaking to him of the appearance of normalcy, he could not follow the words. She was warning him. He moved and fell into the sink.
* * *
SEAGRAVES WOKE UP ON the floor. There was a pillow beneath his head, a light blanket tucked under his chin that covered him to his knees. He sat up, exactly as sick as he had been in the morning. His tie had been loosened, and his belt. The room was darker than it had been, and he had the sudden feeling that people might be looking for him. He found the edge of the sink with his hand and used that to pull himself to his feet. He stood still a moment, feeling the blood wash through his body. His foot was asleep, and there was a numbness in the left side of his buttocks. He waited, and those feelings passed.
The house was quiet.
He turned the faucet on and let cold water run over his face. He saw a box of baking soda on the counter and used that and his finger to wash his teeth. He combed his hair without a mirror and then pushed his shirt into his pants all the way around. He fastened his belt. He walked carefully, not wanting to see Mrs. Trout again, and headed in the direction of the front door. He thought of putting off the visit with her husband until the morning, but if he did that, the expectation of it would be bothering him all night. The sun had moved to the west side of the house, leaving the side he was on in a kind of dusk. He did not see her resting on the daybed until she spoke.
"I hope you're not injured," she said.
It startled him, and in the aftermath he felt his blood again, returning to places it had left. He nodded, and to calm himself; he began to speak. "It's the hours I been putting in," he said, "they catch up to you.
It happened once before. I'd just got out of the courthouse, and the next thing I knew I was looking at the squirrels in the trees."
"I didn't think you'd want me to call a doctor," she said.
"No," he said, "no need. I must have cut out just as I was leaving."
He looked at his watch then, but in the poor light he couldn't make out the hands.
"Have I been here long?"
"Yes."
"It's still Sunday, isn't it?" he said. He smiled, and then felt the weight of her stare, and stopped.
It was quiet.
"Are you going to get him off?"
"I can't say what will happen." He put his hand on the doorknob, telling himself to turn it, walk through and then out the front door ....
"If you turn my husband loose, you open the door for everything that follows."
Seagraves opened the door and paused in the threshold. "I wish you'd reconsider," he said. "Come to the trial."
* * *
SEAGRAVES CLOSED THE GATE outside the house and looked at his watch. It was nearly four o'clock. He began to walk south, into town. He straightened himself as he went, lining up the buttons of his shirt with his belt buckle, smoothing the wrinkles out of the sleeves of his coat.
A block from the house he turned east, in the direction of the college. It was one place in Cotton Point he was not likely to be recognized, and there were professors walking around the school who looked as wrinkled as he did now every day of their lives.
He crossed the street, stepped over a parking chain, and was on the campus. Feeling safer, he began to reconstruct his defense of Paris Trout. It was not as pure now as it had been in the morning; Hanna Trout was still with him, staring across the dark room, using his own words to warn him. It felt like a curse.
He wondered if she were part Gypsy.
He walked the length of the campus and came out behind the courthouse. The street beyond that was Browne, and then Main, where he turned left. The Ether Hotel stood in the middle of the block, a shade of green, it seemed to him, that nobody drunk or hung over or anywhere in between ought to have to confront.
He walked inside. The lobby was empty except for a clerk sitting behind the desk, playing solitaire. Seagraves noticed the coat hanging on the rack near the emergency exit, the side pocket heavy with a jar of liquor, and he thought for a moment he was going to be sick.
"Is Mr. Trout i11?" he said.
The clerk looked up, saw who it was, and hurried to his feet. He turned and checked the mailbox. "Yessir," he said, "He must be, on account his key's gone."
"What room is that?" Seagraves said.
The boy hesitated.
"I am Mr. Trout's attorney, and I am here on a
matter of business."
The boy said, "Mr. Trout don't take visitors. It's in his instructions."
"Instructions . . ."
"Yessir, he wrote them down when he first moved in. Like, he takes the paper in his mailbox just so, and if it ain't there, he won't pick one up off the counter. He'll go to his room and call down to have somebody bring it."
Seagraves saw the boy was as afraid of him as he was of Trout.
"What room?" he said.
"Three-ten. The honeymoon suite."
Seagraves looked up and down and could not imagine it. "Paris Trout's got the honeymoon suite?"
"Yessir," the boy said, and Seagraves thought he sounded sad. "He flat took it over."
Seagraves climbed the stairs, holding on to the rail. When he got to the third floor he stopped, right on the edge again, and waited until his stomach settled.
He walked up the hallway to the end and found the door. It was dark wood, the numbers 310 nailed in gold right at eye level. He knocked and heard the bedsprings. "Who is it?" Right on the other side of the door.
"Harry Seagraves," he said.
The door cracked open, a few inches. He saw one of Trout's eyes.
"We got to talk."
Trout offered no sign that he recognized Seagraves or even heard him. He kept his eye in the crack of the door, waiting for something else.
"Are you dressed?"
Trout looked him up and down then, as if he were comparing their clothes. Then the door opened another half foot, and Seagraves saw the gun. Trout was wearing a long-sleeve white shirt, buttoned at the neck and wrists, and in the hand Seagraves could see was a heavy foreign-looking automatic.
"Who are you fixing to shoot?" Seagraves said.
Trout still didn't answer, and the thought settled for just a moment in Seagraves's head that this man knew where he — Seagraves — had spent the day. Trout walked away from the door, leaving it open, and came back a moment later wearing his coat. He put as much of the gun as would fit into the side pocket and came out of his room.
As he opened the door, Seagraves caught a quick, blinding reflection of the sun of the floor. "We could talk here," Seagraves said, but Trout had already started toward the stairs.
At the front desk Seagraves stopped him. "Leave your gun with the boy," he said.
Trout took a step back. "It's legal. I got a right."
"You don't need a damn gun to walk up the street Sunday afternoon."
"How far?"
"As close as you want," Seagraves said. "The college, officers' academy, it doesn't matter as long as it's private. It won't help things to be seen walking the streets with a weapon two weeks before they call a jury .... "
Trout looked at his pocket. The mouth of the pistol peeked out of the corner like some pet snake. He took it out, the barrel moving quickly from Seagraves to himself to the door, and then handed it to the boy behind the desk. "Don't allow nobody to monkey with this," he said.
The boy took the gun, holding it with two hands, and set it behind the counter. "No sir," he said.
"Even yourself."
"No sir."
Trout stared at the boy a moment longer. "I'll know if you do," he said.
"Yessir, I know you would."
They walked down Main Street, passing Trout's store, and came to the academy. Seagraves was sick again and went through some bushes to a bench underneath an elm tree. He sat down heavily, Trout stood in front of him.
"Well?" Trout said. "It's private."
Seagraves wiped at the sweat on his neck. "I went and talked to your wife today," he said.
"It's no one's concern what's between her and me."
"It's your concern that she comes to your trial," Seagraves said quietly.
Trout stared down at him, then looked around, as if he were afraid someone were listening. "I pay you for that." Then he looked at his watch.
"Are you late somewhere? You need to get back to your hotel room?"
"What is it you come by to say?"
"The first thing," Seagraves said, "you got to talk to your wife, patch up what you can. People know you left the house, but if you could get her to the courtroom, it might help."
"I mind my own business," Trout said, "let everybody else mind theirs."
"It isn't your business until it's over," Seagraves said. "After the trial you got all the privacy you want, one way or the other."
Trout looked at him. Seagraves could see he was angry, but he held it. "Now," Seagraves said, "you and Buster Devonne been going over what happened in Indian Heights?"
Trout shrugged. "Ain't much to go over." Trout began to pace.
Seagraves closed his eyes to keep himself from following the movement. "Buster and myself was in it together," Trout said. "We decided what we said and took a pact to stick to it."
"A pact?"
Trout nodded. "On the way back to town. That nothing happened in Indian Heights was gone turn two white men against each other."
Seagraves opened his eyes and stared at him, trying to imagine how it would have looked. He saw Trout stained with the child's blood, he and Buster Devonne shaking hands on their pact.
"Did Buster shoot the woman, or did you?"
Trout stopped pacing and studied his feet. "He works for me," he said. "He'll say what I tell him." Then, more quietly: "He thinks they'll invite us in the jury room — my trial and then his — give out party hats to celebrate."
Seagraves took a deep breath.
"Buster is a popular man in Ether County," Trout said. "They ain't going to do nothing to him. It could be their own trouble."
It was quiet a long minute, and then Seagraves heard his own voice.
"If it was you who shot the woman and the girl, and they had a gun of their own, it would explain things better."
Trout stood dead still.
"If it happened that all the shots came from your weapon . . ." The words came out of him easier than he thought they would, easier than they should.
Trout still hadn't moved, but Seagraves began to notice the rise and fall of his chest. "Which one of us you think is paying you?" he said after a moment.
"It was your gun that fired the bullets into the girl," Seagraves said. "Ward Townes has got the gun and the bullets, that's the starting point. We all got to agree to it because there it is. But if it happened that the bullets inside the woman were yours too — there is no way to prove that because they're still inside her — then we've got a situation that a jury might see self-defense."
"I ain't in this alone," Trout said a little later.
Seagraves stood up, steadying himself with his hand against the back of the bench. "Either that," he said, "or you were in it together." The next time he looked at Trout, he was glad he'd made him leave the gun back at the hotel.
"There isn't going to be any party in the jury room for either of you," Seagraves said. "Buster Devonne doesn't know Cotton Point, he only knows what fits his own way of thinking about it." He saw Trout didn't believe that. "It's a mistake to take a place and say it's all one way or another, just because that's the way it's comfortable," he said.
* * *
THE TRIAL BEGAN SEVENTEEN days later on a Wednesday, at eight o'clock in the morning. Judge John Taylor was a little under five and a half feet tall and weighed 220 pounds, even without his robe, and started early because he was intolerant of late-afternoon heat.
During the summer, in fact, he was sometimes disposed to call a five-minute recess every hour, to retire to his chambers, undress, and cover himself with baby powder. Attorneys who were taken into his chambers for scolding or to argue sensitive issues were accustomed to seeing the judge sitting in his shorts behind his desk, the color of death itself.
He smiled now, at the beginning of the case, and noted the spectators. They had filled every seat and were standing in the back and sitting in the windowsills. "You-all welcome to stay, of course," he said, "but in the afternoon you ain't going to want to."
A f
ew of the ladies looked uncomfortable at the warning.
Seagraves was sitting with Trout. There was a notepad between them on the table, for Trout to write down his thoughts or objections. He was immobile today, staring straight ahead, as he had been the day before during jury selection. He took it as an affront to be judged.
He was dressed in a pale gray suit and a yellow tie. He had been to the barber and shined his shoes.
Hanna Trout, however, was missing from the room. Seagraves had saved a place for her in the seats just behind the defense table, and it was the only empty seat in the room. He took it as a setback and as an omen.
And he was disappointed in some way that was unconnected to the trial.
Buster Devonne, whose own trial was scheduled to follow Trout's, sat behind the gate, on the aisle of the third row. Seagraves noticed he bore a certain resemblance to some of the members of the jury, a resemblance of attitude and manner which Trout, under any sort of scrutiny, did not share.
As the trial date closed in, Seagraves had spent long afternoons with Trout and Devonne, together and then one at a time. Devonne, who was an imbecile, understood immediately; Trout held some unspoken resistance. Hours went into the preparation of the statement Trout would read at the trial, and more hours into trying to coach him into some sort of ordinary civility. But each time they met, Trout was more remote than the last. It was almost as if he had removed himself from what was coming. On the last afternoon Seagraves gave up and left the instructions at this: "If you need to say something, write it down. Write slowly, so it looks thoughtful."
Trout had said, "I don't need to write things down. That's what I paid you for."
* * *
THE FIRST WITNESS WAS Henry Ray Boxer. He wore a long-sleeve shirt with cuff links at the wrists, Sunday pants, work shoes. His hand on Bible was as narrow as a woman's. He slouched in the witness chair, afraid to look left or right, and spoke so softly he could barely be heard.
Seagraves noticed that Ward Townes's voice was lacking capacity too. It was Townes's courtroom manner to take a jury out of the reference of a courtroom, to make them comfortable, let them know was all right to smile like ordinary people. This morning, though, there was none of that, and the thought came to Seagraves that Ward Townes didn't want to be here any more than he did.