Paris Trout - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  "It's my gun," Trout said.

  "You brought your gun witch you to jail?"

  "I wasn't going to jail."

  "You could of."

  "No," Trout said, "I wasn't."

  The warden walked to his desk, set his hat on top of it, and sat down.

  "I'd like to know how in Sam hill you're fixing to get back. I don't run no bus service to Ether County, take you half a day to walk to town."

  Trout waited.

  "I guest I could get somebody to tote you over .... Might cost you some change."

  Trout did not say a word.

  "I expect I could get a trustee to ride you for fifteen dollars. That ain't much to somebody like you, is it?"

  Trout stood up, and the dog rose halfway with him and froze. "I spent all the money in Petersboro County I'm going to," he said.

  The warden shrugged. "Suit yourself? he said. "You go right out through the gate, walk to the highway and turn south. Morganville is seventeen miles. I wouldn't count on nobody picking you up around here if that's what you're thinking. The suit don't help, people know you comin' from the prison. They think everybody comes out this place is gone rob them and leave them dead in a ditch. They got no way to tell you ain't like that, Mr. Trout . . ."

  Trout knew the man was laughing at him. He put the forty-five back inside his belt and walked out of the office. The prisoner was still in the same spot; he could have been mopping in his sleep. Trout walked around him, through the wet spot on the floor, and found his way outside.

  He walked to the highway and turned south. Half a mile from the work farm there was a snake. She was a copperhead, as thick as a man's arm, mashed where a tire had hit her, and stuck to the highway in her own gum. She lay still, except for a twitching in the tail, until Trout was a few yards away. Then, without warning, her head came up off the asphalt, striking slowly in Trout's direction, again and again. Trout stayed where he was — a few yards away — and then the snake suddenly turned on herself and struck, three timcs, just in front of the spot where she was mashed.

  Then she dropped against the asphalt and crawled without moving forward, stuck to the road and sliding from side to side, until some sense inside her was satisfied that she had crawled far enough, and she lay quietly against the road and waited.

  Called back to the business of dying.

  He saw it wasn't so bad — she just pulled further back from the world, into the safest, deepest places inside her.

  * * *

  THE FIRST PERSON TO see Paris Trout after he got off the bus at Cotton Point was Sheriff Edward Fixx. It was the sheriff s habit to drive from his office to the Greyhound depot after lunch and watch the passengers leaving the twelve-fifteen express. There was a bulletin board in his office filled with the faces of wanted men — faces and descriptions and methods of operation — and he required his six deputies and Arlene, the radio dispatcher, to read the board every day, not only for the wanted posters but for the admonitions he wrote on note cards and stuck there with thumbtacks.

  It was a world full of rewards for those who knew what they were looking for.

  Sheriff Fixx took his customary seat at the end of the bench closest to the doors and watched the faces, hoping for one that would set off a warning. There were too many pictures to memorize, so the sheriff studied them when they came in, relying on his instincts to tell him when he came across one of them in person. It was a certain feeling he got when there was trouble.

  And today the feeling was suddenly on him like a stroke. A tall, gray — haired man in a suit. The sheriff caught a glimpse, less than a profile, and sat straight up, feeling for his holster. A moment later he realized who it was. The sheriff removed his hat and wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief Paris Trout walked through the glass doors into the depot, right past him, and went to the telephone.

  When Trout finished his call, Sheriff Fixx pressed the same receiver against his ear and dialed Judge Taylor. "Paris Trout just got off the twelve-fifteen," he said.

  '°What am I supposed to do about that?" the judge said.

  "I thought you might want to know, is all."

  "Shit," he said, and hung up.

  Sheriff Fixx walked carefully to the front door and looked outside. Trout was standing on the curb with a Negro woman and a couple of cadets from the officers' academy. His suit was wrinkled, and there was some dirt on his shoes, but there was no other sign that he had been away. Sheriff Fixx remembered the men in suits and white shoes in the warden's office.

  Lawyers.

  Sheriff Fixx had walked to the depot that day because his cruiser — the new one — was being repaired, and he'd had to send deputies out in the other three cars on county calls. He thought of his new car, mangled in the drive with Paris Trout to Petersboro County, and now, with the car still in the body shop at Country Ford, Trout was back in town.

  The man had put a gun against his jaw — although the sheriff decided later he never meant to use it — and then damn near beat him home.

  Sheriff Fixx walked through the door and stood just behind him. "I see you got time off for good behavior," he said. The sheriff had a bent for sarcasm.

  Trout reached into his pocket and came out with a folded paper and handed it to him.

  "What's this, a pardon from the governor?"

  "Habeas corpus," Trout said.

  "Hocus-pocus, you mean."

  Trout took the paper out of Sheriff Fixx's hand and put it back in his pocket. "It's legal as anything else," he said. And then while Sheriff Fixx stood there thinking of an answer, a black Pontiac pulled into the curb with the peg-legged woman that worked for Trout behind the wheel, and he got in and drove away.

  The sheriff watched the car until it turned, trying to remember if it was legal for a peg — legged woman to drive. Then he started the walk back to the station, smiling at people so they would think it was natural for the sheriff to be walking. By the time he got there, he had decided what he was going to do about Paris Trout, which was nothing.

  If habeas corpus was good enough for Judge Taylor, it was good enough for him. He thought it had about worn Cotton Point out, taking Trout as far as it did.

  He made up his mind though, to search him in the event he had to ride him back to Petersboro County. He wouldn't have a prisoner carrying any kind of weapon in an official car again and posted a notice to that effect on the bulletin board that evening.

  CARL BONNER

  PART SEVEN

  Monday morning of the next week some of Cotton Point's most prominent citizens and politicians gathered over breakfast at the home of Mayor Horn to begin plans for the town's sesquicentennial celebration, to be held the following spring. Among those invited to the meeting were the presidents of the Rotary, the Elks, the Order of the Moose, and the junior Chamber of Commerce, and all those organizations' ladies' auxiliaries.

  Four of the five members of the Sesquicentennial Planning Committee were present: Harry Seagraves, Carl Bonner, Ward Townes, and Dr. Hodges, who owned a furniture store. Only Walker Hargrove of the First Bank of Georgia was absent, but no one had expected him to make it. Bankers had things to do.

  Estes Singletary was there too, with his wife, who took pictures for the news story she would write. Mrs. Singletary had been a cub reporter before she married.

  The meeting, according to Mrs. Singletary's account in the paper the following Thursday, "went swimmingly, with ideas contributed from a great many sources, some of them delightfully unexpected."

  The ideas, which Mrs. Singletary did not divulge in her newspaper account, included plans for a pageant to be held on the football field at the officers' academy, a train ride to Atlanta — although some of those present thought it was antisocial to celebrate the existence of Cotton Point by riding off to Atlanta — and a town ordinance requiring every man who could grow one to wear a beard.

  A three-member subcommittee of lawyers was formed that morning to enforce the ordinance. The Keepers of the Bush. Mayor Horn
appointed Harry Seagraves chairman, calling him the "finest criminal mind in Georgia".

  When breakfast was over, the mayor's maid cleared the silverware, and the women, on some unspoken signal, separated into the far end of the house. When they had left, the mayor bit the end off a cigar and stuck it in his mouth. The others lit cigarettes, except for Estes Singletary, who used a pipe, and for most of an hour they discussed the pros and cons of constructing public stocks in front of the courthouse for those who showed up clean-shaven during Sesquicentennial Week.

  The mayor was for it; Harry Seagraves was opposed. They talked over who all was likely to refuse to grow beards and how they would look with their ankles and wrists in stocks, laughing at some of the names, eyes watering in the smoke.

  It was the newspaperman who brought up the subject of Paris Trout. He looked right at Seagraves and said, "Whatever the punishment, it ought to be worse than Paris Trout got for killing that Negro child."

  Seagraves had been sitting with his hands folded across his stomach, feeling full and lazy and happy. Without having moved a muscle, everything had changed. "I didn't have any part in that," he said.

  Estes Singletary shrugged. "You're the lawyer."

  "My association with Mr. Trout ended with his last appeal," he said.

  "I would of thought you'd known that, running the Conscience of Georgia." Which was the Plain Talk's motto.

  Estes Singletary saw that Seagraves was angry and tried to undo what he had said. "I didn't mean it in a personal way, Harry," he said. "I only meant that Trout was convicted of a crime in this town and sentenced and then showed up loose on the street the day after he went to jail, and nobody's said a thing about it."

  "You own the paper," Seagraves said. "Why don't you put something in there?"

  "I might," Singletary said, but everyone at the table knew he was afraid to offend advertisers. The table was quiet, and the maid came out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee and walked from place to place, freshening the cups.

  Only Carl Bonner refused more, putting his hand over the cup and shaking his head. She smiled at him and said, "You ain't had but one cup, Mr. Bonner," but he did not answer. His attention was at the other end of the table. After she poured coffee for the mayor, she looked over all the cups again to make sure no one had been missed and then smiled. "All right, I'll go see the ladies need something and leave y'all go back to your discussions."

  But the discussions were over. Five minutes passed. Ward Townes checked his pocket watch and remembered he was due in court. Seagraves stood up with him, thanking the mayor for breakfast, and said he would think about the stocks. Then Dr. Hodges and the Singletarys. They left one by one until only the mayor and Carl Bonner were there in the dining room.

  "You know somebody in Petersboro County who could tell me how Paris Trout got out?" Bonner said.

  Mayor Horn took two cigars from his coat pocket, offered one to the young attorney, and bit the end off the other. Bonner bit the end off his and allowed the mayor to light it.

  "You don't want nothing to do with Pete County," the mayor said finally. "You don't need nothing to do with Paris Trout either. Estes Singletary there, he's got a mouth on him, but he won't say nothing when he's out of this room. The lesson is don't ever invite a newspaperman anyplace there's people with manners .... "

  The mayor stopped for a moment, considering his words. He said, "Cotton Point did as much as it could about Paris Trout already, Mr. Bonner. You don't do yourself or your law practice any favors bringing it back up."

  "I don't intend to bring it up," he said. "It might be useful, is all. I represent Mrs. Trout in her suit for dissolution, and Paris Trout has stalled her every way there is."

  The mayor frowned. He had known and admired Hanna Nile most of his life. He had heard of her trouble getting loose of Paris. "There is a man that will know who got paid," he said fmally. "Most likely he got part of it."

  Carl Bonner sat up in his chair and waited.

  "You don't need me to tell you who," the mayor said, suddenly angry. "The writ's a public document, you're supposed to be eastern educated, all you got to do is go down there and read the damn name."

  Carl Bonner stood up then, the mayor stayed where he was. Very slowly he ground the lighted end of his cigar into the scrambled eggs left on his plate, twisting until the end flattened out and began to shred.

  "I assure you I'll be discreet," Bonner said.

  "Let me ask you something," the mayor said. "If there was something discreet to do about Paris Trout, you think that the people in this room this morning wouldn't of done it already?"

  * * *

  IT TOOK CARL BONNER five minutes to find the name of the judge who had released Paris Trout. Raymond Mims. He sat in the Petersboro County Courthouse the rest of the afternoon, finding other writs of habeas corpus that Mims had signed for prisoners at the work camp. There were eight by the time the clerk shut off the lights.

  Bonner decided to stay in town that night, in the best hotel room he could find, and charge the bill to Hanna Trout's account, to be paid by her husband as part of the eventual divorce settlement. He intended to hurt Paris Trout as badly as he could.

  For two and a half years he'd been filing every kind of legal paper he could file, but each time Trout filed papers of his own, delaying hearings, arguing against producing whatever documents Bonner had requested. Trout was familiar with the soft places in the law, where things got lost or slowed or misplaced.

  Carl Bonner's practice had grown in that time, but not in the way he had expected. The money he made was still from other attorneys' referrals, he had no big accounts, no important clients.

  And Hanna Trout's divorce was waiting for him every morning when he woke up and still nagging him when he went home at night. Some nights, in fact, he felt as if Trout were in his home. Behind one of the closet doors in back, working against him.

  He found a hotel with phones in the rooms and called his secretary just before six and asked her to call his wife and tell her he would not be home. He spoke to his wife through his secretary two or three times a day now. Sometimes he called them by each other's names. And after he had called his office, he called Hanna Trout.

  * * *

  SEAGRAVES WAS LYING IN the daybed with her when the phone rang.

  She was in a slip, he had kicked off his shoes and loosened his tie. He held a glass of iced tea on his stomach, and it spilled as she got up to answer the phone. He came here once or twice a week, there was a way in through the alley in back.

  She was gone less than five minutes.

  "That was Carl Bonner," she said, sitting back down on the bed.

  He touched her shoulder.

  "He was in Petersboro County."

  "What for?"

  "On Paris," she said. "He said he got what we need."

  Seagraves lay still. "Did he say what?"

  "The names of the people Paris paid to get out."

  Seagraves sat up a few inches and sipped at the iced tea. "Everybody in the state knows who he paid," he said. He saw she was upset and reached out to touch her again. She did not respond. There was a part of her he could not reach, and it was the part he wanted. He thought it might still belong to Paris Trout.

  She turned and looked at him. Her side was a straight line under the slip all the way to her waist, and he followed it from beneath her arm until he touched her hip. "Then why didn't somebody put him back in?"

  "He won't come around here," he said.

  "He is around here," she said.

  And he understood what she meant and did not try to answer. "Carl Bonner said he found eight others that had gotten out the same way," she said a little later.

  "That sounds right."

  She pulled away and stared out the window. "There is an aspect of you that doesn't fit," she said.

  He smiled. "What aspect is that?"

  "Your character," she said. "You are fair with me, more than anybody else has been. You tell the truth.
But there is a whole other side that comes out sometimes and makes me wonder what world you live in."

  "The same world as everybody else," he said. "There's good and bad, and it's no sense getting upset over it. You take things as you find them."

  She pulled her feet up onto the bed and studied them, her chin on her knees. If he moved now, he would catch her crying.

  "What do you expect?" he said quietly.

  "Something else."

  He waited a few minutes and then touched her behind the ears, moving from there down her neck to her shoulders. She sat very still. He moved his hands back to her neck, then around, touching her cheeks and her eyes, pulling her lower lip down and running the tip of his finger inside. She shook under his fingers.

  * * *

  "HE JUST BOUGHT way out," she said later.

  He propped himself up, resting his head against the flat part of his hand, and stared down at her face. He felt a coolness in his lap and on his legs, everywhere he was up against her she left him wet. "It doesn't matter now," he said. "It's not our business."

  "Is that where it settles? He's nobody's business?"

  He dropped back into the pillow and thought of what she had said before: that he was fair with her and told her the truth. He tried to do that now.

  "There comes a time," he said, "when it's best just to leave something alone."

  * * *

  TWO DAYS LATER CARL Bonner walked into the store on Main Street. The peg-legged woman frowned at him from behind the counter. He pointed to a pack of Dentyne gum and gave the woman a dollar bill. When she turned to make change, he asked if Trout was in.

  "I believe he's back in his office with a Negro," she said. "He's been very busy and don't have time to see you." She counted the ninety-five cents out, putting the coins in his palm one at a time. He started toward the back of the store.

  "'Cuse me," she said, but he kept walking. He heard her behind him, the steps alternating hard and soft as she hurried to catch up. "Just hold on your britches there," she said.

  She caught him at the office door, which was closed. He heard a voice inside, she grabbed at the arm of his coat. She was heavier than he would have thought and pulled him off-balance. "I already told you," she said, "Mr. Trout don't have time for you today."