by Pete Dexter
THE TRIAL RESUMED AT one o'clock.
Seagraves approached the courthouse by himself, from the back. He'd eaten lunch at the college cafeteria, wanting time alone to think. Something was wrong with the case, the same thing was wrong with him. There was a confusion that defied order, and Paris Trout was in the middle of it, getting clearer all the time.
Seagraves saw Buster Devonne then, standing on the sidewalk where he could watch both doors to the building, and as soon as he spotted Seagraves, he crossed the lawn of newly planted grass to head him off
"Mr. Seagraves," he said, smiling, "if I might have a minute of your time, sir . . ."
Seagraves stood where he was. Buster Devonne stopped close enough so Seagraves could smell his sweat and lit a cigarette. He pulled the smoke deep into his body, and it came back out with the words as he spoke.
"Sir," he said, "there is some feeling among my friends that I am being used in this trial in a way that is detrimental to my own case." Seagraves did not answer.
"On account, you know, of the conflict of my testimony with my original statement."
"You need to talk to your attorney about that," Seagraves said. "I represent Paris Trout's interests."
"That's what I mean," he said. "You see, I ain't got no Harry Seagraves to get me off. I got Bear Lewis, the midget, and he's a worst lawyer than he was a judge."
Seagraves kept still.
"And what I thought," Buster Devonne said, "was it might be to our mutual benefit if you was to represent me also."
"No," he said.
Devonne ran the palm of his hand over his head, from the forehead back to his neck. "I got to protect myself you see. I can't afford no crackerjack lawyer."
"Bear Lewis knows the law," Seagraves said.
"No sir, not good enough. I need me a better lawyer, or I can't go saying nothing at this trial here .... " He smiled and pulled again on the cigarette.
"How much do you want?" Seagraves said.
Devonne left the cigarette in his lips and put his hands in his pockets. He looked at his shoes, caked with fresh dirt. "A thousand," he said.
"A thousand, I ought get me a lawyer of my own .... "
* * *
WHEN SEAGRAVES REENTERED the courtroom, the air was dead weight. Hot and still and dead. It was an effort to breathe. Judge Taylor came in a moment later, pulling at his collar. There was baby powder between his fingers and streaked here and there across his robe. He sat down and broke an immediate sweat. He instructed the court officer to clear the spectators out of the windows and then sent him for a fan. Ward Townes called Mary McNutt. For half an hour Townes questioned her, uninterrupted by defense objection, leading her from her first meeting with Rosie Sayers to the moment things started on the porch.
She said, "I come up on the step, and Mr. Trout had brass knucks on his left hand. He made a rake to hit her, and she dodged.
"Rosie tore off into the house, and he tore off after her, like he was tearing down a panel. I come through the door, and they was at the foot of the bed. He had hold of her, and she had hold of him, around his waist. I saw where he hit her with the knucks. He surely bust the skin. I went in the second room door, and Mr. Buster Devonne come right on behind me and shot me in the back. I walk on, and he shot me again, a little before I got to Mr. Trout and Rosie, right there in my own house."
"And what did you do?" Townes said.
"I kept straight by them, I didn't do nothing."
"Were you hurt?"
"Sir . . . those bullets went inside."
"Could you feel them?"
"I could feel the shock, oh, yes."
Sitting at the table, Seagraves felt them too.
Townes said, "But you went on walking? Did you ever get hold of Mr. Trout?"
"No sir. I went on in there in the kitchen. I just got to the table to lay down, and then I dropped to my knees and couldn't stand up. I felt the bullets a different aspect, and I just wanted to lay down. Then Rosie come in after Mr. Trout had shot her, sat down on the trunk. He had shot her in the arm and the side."
"How many times did Mr. Trout shoot her after she sat down?"
"I know of twice, maybe more."
"And you were there when he did the shooting?"
"I was laying down," she said. "I was laying down with her to die. She said, 'Lord have mercy, Mary, he has shot me in my stomach." I raised up, and just as I turned around Mr. Buster ran in a little piece and shot me again. I said, 'Come on, Rosie,' and she got up, and me and her went out the back door."
Ward Townes waited a moment, and then, quietly, he said, "Can you show the jury any of the places the bullets hit you?"
Seagraves came out of his chair slowly, as if he were undecided whose side he was on.
"Objection," he said, sounding tired. "The witness is not the deceased, the condition of her body, whatever it may be, is not germane to this case and is not admissible."
Townes said, "It is certainly germane to the business Paris Trout conducted that day in Indian Heights. It cannot be separated out because Mrs. McNutt did not succumb to her injuries."
Judge Taylor dropped his chin into the palm of his hand and thought. "Well, Mr. Townes," he said, "I don't think you can make an exhibition of these wounds without subjecting the witness to a certain embarrassment."
"We won't need to disrobe her," Townes said. "All she has to do is pull up her dress."
Seagraves spoke again, more deliberately. "I would further object, for the record, that any such display would be highly prejudicial and would impugn the dignity of this court."
Judge Taylor would not meet his eye. "I will let it in," he said, "if counsel can show the wounds without undue embarrassment."
Seagraves walked back to his seat and heard the first question before he had turned around.
"Now, Miss Mary, where did the initial shot hit you?"
"Right in the middle of the back," she said.
"Would you please stand for a moment?"
The woman stood up and turned around. She had worn a long cotton dress with buttons up the back. Without being asked, she unfastened the top three. Her dress separated, and the skin beneath was rolling and brown, and just to the right of her spine was a black spot the size of a half dollar. Two black lines led from it in opposite directions, as if she had been cracked.
Townes positioned her so the jury could see. Then he said, "Thank you," and she rebuttoned her dress and sat back down. She had not hesitated or fumbled over the buttons.
"Where did the next bullet go?" Townes said.
"In the side," she said. And she reached behind, without standing, unbuttoning herself again, and then pulled the dress open until another black mark appeared. It lay on the wave of flesh beneath her brassiere. "And the next?"
She covered her side and pulled the dress down from the neck. Showing her right shoulder. The spot there was larger than the other two, and unlike them, it rose above the skin. The last mark was beneath her left breast, and she displayed it easily and without embarrassment. Unlike her sons, she was not afraid.
"All this time you were being shot," Townes said, "did any of you folks curse Mr. Trout or Mr. Devonne?"
"No sir," she said.
"Did you have any kind of weapon, any of you?"
"No sir."
"How long did it take? I mean, were the shots fired quick or slow?"
"As quick as anything is ever done," she said.
"And when it was over, what did Mr. Trout and Mr. Devonne do then?"
"When I looked," she said, "both of them was just running like rabbits. I told Rosie then to come on, and me and her made our way out the door. It didn't seem like no reason to stay in the kitchen where it happened. We had other things to do then."
He looked at her, not seeming to understand. But Seagraves did.
"To prepare ourselves," she said.
Seagraves closed his eyes; Trout looked straight ahead. Townes waited a moment, making sure everyone understood. "Did they ever get any of thos
e bullets out of you?" he said finally.
She shook her head. "No sir. I feel them in the night."
"Thank you," Townes said, "that's all I have."
* * *
SEAGRAVES STARED AT THE WOMAN from his seat, she stared back. "Do you own a pistol, Mrs. McNutt?" he said.
"No sir."
"There is no pistol in your house?"
"Yessir, there is one. It belongs to my husband, Mr. Lyle McNutt."
"Do you know where your husband keeps it?"
"Yessir, I know everything in my home."
"What caliber pistol is that?"
"I don't keep track of nothing like that. I just know it's there."
Seagraves stood up and began to walk toward the jury. He had found an assault charge which was filed and dropped against Mary Boxer in Daniel County seven years previous. A white veterinarian claimed she had tried to hit him with a chair in a scuffle over the rent.
He had meant to bring that into it here, he knew he ought to bring it in. Something stopped him, though, he couldn't say what. Only that things were confused enough.
"The point I'm coming to, Mrs. McNutt," Seagraves said, "our contention here is going to be that you are accusing Mr. Buster Devonne because you don't want the jury to believe him later on. I want to give you the chance to speak to that now."
For a moment she seemed to rock, as if a breeze had suddenly blown through the room. "Lord," she said, "I wouldn't say nobody shot me if they didn't."
"You know a good bit about the courthouse, don't you?"
"No sir."
"You and your family know something about how to try a case?"
"Ain't none of us lawyers," she said, and suddenly everyone in the court except Mary McNutt herself was laughing.
Seagraves smiled, and the judge wiped tears out of his eyes. "I didn't mean to accuse you being lawyers," Seagraves said. "I meant you folks have been through this procedure before."
"No sir, I never been in court."
"What about those boys of yours?"
"No sir, they never in nothing like a big court. Henry Ray been in little troubles, but never in nothing with a gun."
"Our contention, Mrs. McNutt," Seagraves said, "is going to be that Thomas came up off that chair and cursed Mr. Trout for everything in the catalog and then came in after the shooting and removed the gun. Is that the truth?"
She and Paris Trout stared at each other then, until Seagraves walked between them.
"No sir," she said. "I told the truth about it. You can make it look any which way now, but I told how it happened."
Seagraves said, "That's what we called the jury for, to decide."
She turned then, looking directly at them. "They don't decide what happened", she said. "It's already done. All they decide is if they gone do something about it."
* * *
HARRY SEAGRAVES ATE A late supper alone with Lucy. The maid had gone home ill, and the liver Lucy cooked had a metallic taste. He had no appetite anyway. He played with his food until she had finished and then stood up, not waiting for dessert, and headed out the front door. "Harry?" she said.
"I've got some things to do," he said, without turning around.
"Are you going to be long?"
"I'm in a trial," he said.
He drove the car to Sleepy Heights, a gritty housing development that overlooked the sawmill on the edge of town. Two-bedroom houses, most of them cheap brick. Brand-new, they were forty-two hundred dollars each. Police lived there, workers from the sawmill, teachers.
The development was built on two hills, and Buster Devonne's place sat in between, at the bottom. Seagraves stopped the car in the road and turned off the lights. He checked to see the envelope was still in his coat pocket. He got out. The air was full of the smell of sawmill chemicals.
The driveway sloped downhill, and ridges of baked clay left by car tires broke under Seagraves's feet and made him unsteady as he walked toward the porch. It was screened in and ran the length of the front of the house. Seagraves knocked and then realized Buster Devonne was sitting six feet away, watching him.
Buster Devonne stood up slowly and unhooked the screen door. Behind him, inside the house, there were lights on. Somebody was playing a piano. Buster Devonne didn't wait for Seagraves to come in but turned his back as soon as the door was unlocked and sat back down and lit a cigarette. "Help yourself? he said, and nodded to the other chairs.
"I didn't come to sit with you," Seagraves said.
"This ain't personal against Paris," he said. "I got to protect my own interests. You explained that to Paris the way I intended it .... "
"I brought you the money," Seagraves said. "I don't run your errands."
Buster Devonne was bare-chested, thick in the neck and shoulders, turning fat. The porch smelled of tobacco and sweat.
"Help yourself." he said again.
Seagraves stayed where he was. The heel of his shoe held the door open, perhaps an inch. He took the envelope out of his coat pocket, feeling the weight. "This is from Paris Trout," he said. "It isn't connected to me."
"Whatever you say."
Buster Devonne accepted the envelope without looking inside, folded it in half and pushed it into his pants pocket. "Mr. Trout don't have nothing to worry about," he said. "All those people looking for is a way to let him go."
Seagraves did not answer.
"I know people, and I lived in this county all my life," he said.
Seagraves walked back to his car, feeling the man on the `porch watching. He got in slowly, feeling as if he'd left something behind. He stared at the porch a moment, and then, before he started the car, he saw the point of Buster Devonne's cigarette glow red and then disappear. In the moment of illumination, though, he saw him. Buster Devonne was counting his money.
* * *
HE DROVE THROUGH SLEEPY Heights and came out on the highway. He turned left, in the direction of town, and a few minutes later he passed his own house and then the college and then the courthouse. He turned right at the river, and the sound of his tires changed as he dropped off the pavement onto the dirt road that led into Indian Heights.
He stopped up the road from the house where it had happened and turned off his lights, thinking of what he had just done.
He watched the windows for most of an hour, trying somehow to weigh the place now without the girl, until a shadow moved and the lights inside went off.
He had no idea why he was there.
* * *
SEAGRAVES ARRIVED AT COURT at five minutes to eight, red-eyed and spent. He had fallen into bed exhausted and then been unable to sleep until after five. Trout was already there, staring in a murderous way across the aisle at Ward Townes. Townes ignored him, and with the jury out of the room, Seagraves ignored him too.
The first witness was Agent E. Smythe of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who referred repeatedly to a small leather notebook he took from his coat pocket.
Agent Smythe had visited Rosie Sayers at Thomas Comell Clinic the day after she was shot and written down what she told him. Seagraves objected before he could read it. "No grounds have been laid for this," he said. "A dying declaration is not admissible without proof that the declarer knew they were dying. There was no doctor present, no medical basis for this at all."
Ward Townes did not wait for the judge to rule. "Did Rosie Sayers know she was dying?" he said.
"She said as much."
"I'll allow it," the judge said.
"Thank you," Townes said, and then to the agent. "What exactly did Rosie Sayers say that indicated to you that she realized her condition was mortal?"
The agent went back to his notebook. "She complained of her stomach," he said. "She believed she was too young to die, that God had made a mistake."
Seagraves stood up again. "That is the statement of a delusional child, Your Honor. I ask that it not be allowed to prejudice this case any further than it already has."
"I think we'll listen to this," Judge
Taylor said.
"Did she tell you what happened to her?" Townes asked the agent.
"Yessir. She said Mr. Paris Trout had arrived on the porch with brass knucks and grabbed Thomas Boxer." The agent looked at his notebook again and began to read.
"'I told Thomas the man had knucks, and he said, 'Goddammit, what is it to you?" He chased me in the house and hit me on the head with his knucks. Mary come in and pulled him loose. He shot me in the arm, he shot at Mary too. I went on inside the house and sat on the trunk. He came to the door and shot me in the shoulder and stomach.' "
The agent looked up.
"Did you ask if she had a gun herself?" Townes said.
"Yessir. She said she didn't. She said she didn't even have a stick."
"Was there anything else?"
The agent shook his head. "She couldn't talk much, except to swear under oath it was true."
Townes went back to his table and pulled a folder out of his briefcase. An edge of one of the photographs lay beyond the lower edge of the folder, and Seagraves knew what it was.
"Objection."
The judge looked up, surprised. "To what, Mr. Seagraves?"
"The photographs Mr. Townes is about to offer as evidence are gruesome beyond the matter in front of this court. They show the marks of the surgery."
"Are those pictures, Mr. Townes?" the judge said.
"Yes, Your Honor." He closed the folder of pictures and delivered them to the judge. Seagraves was surprised that he had not taken the pictures out and given the jury at least a glimpse as he carried them up. The judge fit his glasses across his nose and looked them over.
"Is this the girl?" he said.
"Yessir," Townes said.
"Is she deceased here?"
"Yessir."
The judge frowned. Seagraves moved next to Townes and folded his arms. "As Your Honor can see," he said, "the wounds are enhanced by the surgical procedures necessary to remove the bullets. The woman in those pictures has not only been shot, she has been mutilated."
Townes did not reply, and it struck Seagraves that the prosecutor had reservations of his own about showing them to the jury. Judge Taylor, however, had changed sympathies. "I believe the jury is able to see for themselves which wounds were bullets and which were surgery."