by Pete Dexter
Townes turned his back on Buster Devonne and returned to his table. He sat down, and then, almost an afterthought, he said, "I think we've heard all we need to from Mr. Devonne."
* * *
UNDER THE LEGAL CODE of the state of Georgia, the defendant in a murder trial was allowed to read a statement without any accompanying obligation to face cross-examination. This privilege covered only the statement, and in the event that the defendant also chose to testify, his previous statement became part of the testimony and was opened to the prosecutor's questions.
Paris Trout left the defense table straight and dignified and took the witness stand. "Your Honor," Seagraves said, "on my advice, Mr. Trout will exercise his privilege to read into the record his statement on how this tragedy occurred. This has been an ordeal, as anyone with an ounce of compassion can see, and I do not think it would serve his interests or this court's to have him testify beyond that."
"Thank you, Mr. Seagraves," the judge said. Then he turned to Trout and said, "Whenever you're ready, sir."
Trout took a pair of glasses out of his pocket and fixed them carefully behind his ears. They softened him, Seagraves thought, and made him older. He took two pieces of paper from another pocket, unfolded them, and began to read.
" 'Your Honor, I do not honestly know how all this happened. Mr. Devonne and myself visited the home of Mary McNutt to settle a financial matter of little importance. When we had come upon the porch, Miz McNutt cussed us, and her son Thomas slapped his hands up around my neck, making to choke me.
"There was a girl there, and she attacked me at once with the boy. She looked to be about twenty-five years old and was strong. Stronger than the boy. We struggled for a moment on the porch. I would of just as soon left right there, but the girl broke loose and went running into the house. I heard Mrs. McNutt tell her to shoot my damn heart out. My damn white heart.
" 'I followed into the house after her, trying to keep her from getting a gun. When I caught up, she'd put her hands under the pillow where the gun was. I knew that's what was there. I didn't want to kill her, then or anytime else. I didn't have any business killing people, and it looked to me if I could knock her down, it would settle the whole matter.
"I never raised my fist to a woman in my life, but I did then, to stop her before things got out of hand, and you know, I didn't hit her hard enough. She staggered and dropped the pistol on the floor, but she never fell.
" 'And then she took a breath, like it was just starting, and reached to pick it up. I shot her in the shoulder right there. It could just as easy been the heart. It could of ended then, but I did not intend to kill her. I just wanted to get out without nobody getting hurt.
"At that moment Mary McNutt come in, slammed against me with all her weight, and tried to get her hands around my neck. When I cleared of her, the girl had got to the pistol, and it was in her hand again.
"I grabbed the girl's arm, and the same time I felt Miz McNutt's weight across my back, about pushed me over, and then she grabbed me around the neck, got both hands on my windpipe, and I began to shoot. I don't know how many times. Three, four, five shots, I honestly don't know.
"And then Miz McNutt said, "I am shot," and let loose of my neck. I saw Thomas Boxer next. He came in from behind and grabbed up the pistol. I squared to shoot him, but the girl recovered — I'm talking about Rosie Sayers now — and I shot her again. Then I called out, "Come on, Buster, let's go. There is apt to be more shooting here." And we goose-stepped it into the car and left. I asked Buster to report to the police, and that's all I know, how this came to happen. "
He looked up then, adjusting his glasses, and he seemed to be shaken by what he had remembered. "Is that your statement, Mr. Trout?" the judge said.
"Yessir. I didn't go out there to shoot those people. I am in the business of helping people. That's what we try to do, and we expect to get paid for it, get a living out of it. Colored people aren't the only ones got a right to a living."
He folded the papers and put them back into his pocket. "I didn't want nothing like this," he said. "I had nothing against that girl or against the woman. The honest truth is, I don't have nothing against them now. We were all somebody's baby once, we all come from the same place.
"I didn't want to get killed either. That is the reason I shot them, the only reason. In defense of my own life."
He looked at the jury, a long examination. "We are all somebody's baby," he said again.
And then he folded his glasses and put them back into his pocket too, stood up, and returned to the table with Seagraves. Somewhere in the back a woman was crying.
Trout folded his hands and seemed, for a moment, to be praying.
* * *
JUDGE TAYLOR, NOTING THE courtroom was 104 degrees, gave each counsel five minutes for closing arguments, keeping the time on his wristwatch.
"What we have here," Seagraves said, "is a death and two stories how it happened. We all regret that someone was killed, no matter who was at fault. But you are not being asked to regret the loss of Rosie Sayers's life today, you are being asked to decide if Paris Trout, an honest and respected citizen of Ether County, deliberately caused that death, with malice and forethought, as the prosecution claims.
"I want you to think of the times you have seen Mr. Trout on the street or perhaps spoken to him at his store. Ask yourself if it seems possible that same man would drive out to Indian Heights to shoot a girl he did not know.
"Does it make sense, if that is what he intended, to go out there in broad daylight? Do you believe Mr. Trout, a substantial member of this community and the owner of several businesses, would intentionally jeopardize his own life over an eight-hundred-dollar debt?
"Paris Trout did not need eight hundred dollars. His concern was a principle, and the principle is what led him out to Indian Heights. He went there as a reasonable man, to talk.
"Now, the prosecution asks you to believe something else. That Mr. Trout and Mr. Buster Devonne just walked into that house and began to shoot colored people up. They say that Mr. Devonne shot Mary McNutt in the back and the shoulder and the side and the breast, while Paris Trout was shooting the girl. They ask you to believe that the colored people themselves had no guns, that the guns were all in the other side of the house.
"Is that possible?" he said. Seagraves stopped for a moment and seemed to think. "Yes. Is it likely? No. Is there proof that's the way it happened, physical evidence? No. All we have here is the words of the family against the words of Paris Trout and Buster Devonne."
He paused for a moment.
"The real proof, of course, was right in this courtroom yesterday. Not ten feet from where you're sitting. The proof is inside Mary McNutt, the bullets she has never had removed. If those bullets are anything but forty-fives, then somebody besides Paris Trout was shooting at her in that house, and she is telling the truth. But if those bullets are forty-fives, then they came from the same gun that shot Rosie Sayers, and you are obliged to believe Paris Trout."
He had been walking up and down in front of the jury as he spoke, hands in his pockets, but now he took them out and leaned against the rail of the jury box. "We are that close to the proof: and that far away. But if those bullets were inside Paris Trout," he said, "you know he would of found a way to have one of them removed and take the decision of who to believe off you .... "
He looked at the jurors, but the train had left the station. The foreman's face was two feet from his own, and there wasn't'a sign he even understood the words. Seagraves knew to a certainty it had slipped away. It surprised him, to see it was already lost, and insulted him.
He pulled back off the rail, to keep the jury from seeing it.
"The law," he said, "is reasonable doubt. And even if you did not know who Paris Trout was, or that he had been doing honest business in Cotton Point for as long as most of us can remember, even then, you could not look at this case and make more than a guess at what happened. There is no weight of evidence h
ere, it is one story against another. And what we are left with is a tragic death and doubts over how it occurred. Reasonable doubts."
* * *
WARD TOWNES WAS EVEN shorter in his remarks.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I am not as eloquent as Mr. Seagraves, but then I am not as expensive." There was some polite laughter from around the room, and Seagraves smiled.
"So I think what I will do now is borrow something from Mr. Seagraves's own argument and remind you of his words that the proof was right in the courtroom yesterday, in the person of Mary McNutt.
"I believe that too," he said, and pointed at the empty witness chair.
"She was sitting in that seat, and I think you can weigh what she said. I think you heard Mr. Trout too, and everyone else who was there when Rosie Sayers was killed. People who were in their own house when Paris Trout and Buster Devonne came to visit.
"You have seen the pictures of the girl after Mr. Trout and Mr. Devonne left. You have seen the scars on Mary McNutt's body "There is no reasonable doubt. You all understand what happened out there, and all I am asking you to do now is acknowledge it. To say that it matters."
* * *
THE JURY WENT TO its deliberations at three-thirty. Seagraves took Trout out of the courthouse. They crossed the street and walked half a block to the Dixie Theater, and climbed the stairs. Seagraves's office overlooked the street, and he stood in the window, watching good Cotton Point people taking care of their business, people he knew by name. He had not spoken to Trout since they left the courtroom.
"Am I loose?" Trout said.
Seagraves did not turn around. "Not yet," he said.
"How long does it take?"
"It depends on what they're going to do."
"They ain't going to do nothing," Trout said.
Seagraves did not answer.
"What can they do?" Trout said, a little later.
"Isn't anybody safe, Paris," Seagraves said. "Not all the way. You might keep that in mind next time."
"What can they do?" Trout said again.
Seagraves shrugged. "It's a jury, they can do what they want."
Trout laughed, that barking sound. "I think you forgot where you are," he said.
Seagraves turned away from the window. "Maybe," he said.
Trout slammed his hand against the desk. "I paid you to look after this," he said. "I want more back than maybe."
"You should of come hired me sooner," Seagraves said, feeling the anger returning. "You should of called me up before you and Buster Devonne went over there to shoot that child and Mary McNutt. You should of called and asked my advice then, and I would of given you advice that it was murder."
"That boy owed me money," Trout said. "You ought to explained that better.? He had moved halfway across the desk, and his face was so close Seagraves could see the thin red lines in his eyes.
"There's some things," Seagraves said, thinking of himself; "that business isn't an excuse."
Trout stayed where he was, leaning across the desk. "You think I don't know what a lawyer is?" he said.
It was quiet a long time, and Trout slowly sat back into his chair. His mood seemed to change, and he turned thoughtful. "Say they come back and find me guilty," he said. "What's left then?"
Seagraves shrugged. "Depends on you," he said. "File motions for a new trial. Allowing the pictures was a judicial error . . ."
"What then?"
"Then we go through appeals until we get a new trial or run out of courts."
"How long is something like that take?"
"Depends. A year or two . . . sometimes longer." He turned in his seat and looked back out the window. "It's expensive," he said.
"It's already expensive," Trout said.
"Yes, it is."
* * *
THE JURY WAS out a little over three hours. Seagraves had left Trout in his office, looking at a National Geographic, and was down the hall with a young lawyer named Walter Huff when his secretary knocked on the door and said they'd called from court.
Walter Huff s family owned the Ether Hotel, where Trout was living, and he had just told Seagraves that the maids were afraid to clean the room. "He's supposed to said he's got poison up there," the young lawyer was saying, "and there's guns everywhere."
"You allow him up there like that?"
The young lawyer smiled. "He pays his rent."
Seagraves thought of that on the way back to court. It seemed to him that the young man had good judgment for an attorney fresh out of school. And then his thoughts turned to the Bonner boy, who had graduated Tufts Law School that spring and would be opening his own law practice in the fall, and Seagraves wondered what the schooling had done to him.
Most of them came out thinking they knew something.
Seagraves and Trout walked through the courtroom's main entrance. Ward Townes was already sitting at the prosecution table, the spectator seats were close to empty. People had gone home. The room had a hollow sound without spectators. Whispers carried, words spoken out loud seemed to hang in the air.
Judge Taylor came in buttoning his robe. There was grease on his chin, and he was sweating. When he settled, he checked the papers on the desk in front of him and then instructed the court officer to bring in the jury. Trout stared at them as they filed into their seats. Seagraves could see a pulse in his forehead. Only two of them glanced back, the foreman and a woman from Homewood.
The judge asked the foreman if the jury had reached a verdict. The air in the room smelled a hundred years old. "Yessir," he said.
Trout slowly stood up, his eyes still fixed on the jury box.
The foreman did not see him rise, he stared at the paper in his hands. "We find the defendant guilty of second-degree murder,' " he read.
Then he looked up and found Paris Trout staring at him. A look passed over the foreman's face, and when it was gone, so was his color. Seagraves stood up too. "We request a poll of the jury," he said.
One by one the jurors stood and pronounced the same verdict. Only one — the woman he recognized from Homewood — dared to look Trout in the eye. Seagraves wondered if she cared anymore who it was that had got her city water.
"Mr. Trout," the judge said when the last juror had spoken, "you have been found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Rosie Sayers. Do you have anything further to say at this time?"
Trout turned his look on the judge but did not answer.
"We have no further remarks," Seagraves said.
"In that case, gentlemen, it is the finding of this court that you are guilty of the crime prescribed in the true bill filed by the people July twenty-first of this year — namely, second-degree murder. Further, it is the decision of this court that you be incarcerated in the state work camp in Petersboro County for a period of not less than one nor more than three years."
He leaned forward then, folding his hands, and spoke informally.
"It is this court's fervent hope that you will return to the community at the soonest possible time," he said, "and resume your place among its business leaders."
Judge Taylor looked at Seagraves then in an apologetic way.
"Your Honor," Seagraves said, "in light of Mr. Trout's established business, civic, and family ties to the community, we ask that he be allowed to remain free on his own recognizance until new trial motions are settled."
"Mr. Townes?"
"The people have no objection to that, Your Honor," Townes said.
Judge Taylor thanked the jury and excused them. Trout stared until the last juror was out the door. Then he stared at their empty chairs.
"Mr. Trout," the judge said, "you are free pending your appeal. You may not leave the county or change residences without notifying this court of your intention to do so. You are not to have contact with any of the witnesses or jurors involved in this trial. Do you understand the conditions of your release?"
"We understand, Your Honor," Seagraves said. But there was no sign that Trout u
nderstood at all.
They walked out of the courthouse together and then stood for a moment in front of the town monument where, if you believed the monument, the state seal of Georgia had been hidden in a privy when General Sherman came through at the end of the war.
Cotton Point had been a rich place then, the center of the state's agriculture and law. At that time "Gone to Cotton Point" did not refer to the asylum.
Trout took a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and looked back at the courthouse as he smoked.
"I'll let you know where we stand," Seagraves said.
"You said the judge made an error."
"I believe he did."
Trout turned quiet, and Seagraves started to leave. He wanted to walk. "I'll be by the hotel later, when I got some idea where we are."
"Leave word," Trout said. "Don't come up on me unexpected."
A farmer passed them in his pickup, the back end loaded with coon dogs, baying at the sky. There was nothing to chase and tree, so the noise itself had become the purpose.
"How long does it take to figure this out?" Trout said.
Seagraves shook his head. "You work it out," he said. "You get an accommodation. There's no figuring, not the way you mean it."
"Is it more money?"
Seagraves blew all the air out of his chest. He wanted to move to a different place, to walk. He could still hear the dogs, fainter now, like a memory. "You missed the point, Paris."
"If a man stole from me tomorrow," Trout said, "I'd do the same thing again."
CARL BONNER
PART FIVE
On an afternoon early in December, five months beyond the trial, a woman arrived at the office of a young attorney named Carl Bonner without an appointment, knocking so tentatively on the smoked-glass window that he thought at first it was the maid.
Carl Bonner walked from his desk through the outer office and opened the door. He did not have a secretary yet and could not persuade his wife to work for him until the practice was making enough money to afford one.
The woman stood in the doorway, looking at him in a direct way. "Mr. Bonner," she said, "I am Hanna Trout. Mr. Seagraves suggested your name to me this morning, and I was just passing your office and thought I might take a chance on catching you in."