by Pete Dexter
She looked at me, waiting. As if because she gave up the details of her own life to strangers, strangers would give up theirs to her.
“Something happened,” I said.
“What was it?” Not even giving that a chance to settle, but now at least she was watching the road. She’d wanted to drive, I didn’t know why.
“I forgot where I was,” I said. And hearing myself say that, it seemed like the truth. She leaned across the seat to hear me, and the wind beat the top of her blouse against her chest, and in the second I looked that way, speaking of forgetting where you are, I saw the pink of her nipple.
“You got lost?” she said.
“Not lost,” I said. “I knew I was somewhere familiar, I just forgot where it was.”
“It’s the same thing,” she said.
“No,” I said, “it’s not.”
She went quiet a moment, thinking it over. We were on the way to Starke. She’d said she wanted to be close to the prison for a little while, to sit in the parking lot and see what it felt like to be near him.
She’d wanted Yardley to take her, but late in the afternoon he showed up at the office and told her he couldn’t. “Jack’ll have to do,” he said. He’d met a girl at the Laundromat that afternoon, and needed to explore the local milieu with her instead. He said he was way behind on the local milieu.
“How do you forget where you are at college?” she said.
I thought about it, trying to remember how it happened. “I was a swimmer,” I said slowly.
“You can swim?”
“It’s Florida, everybody can swim.”
It was quiet between us again, and she pushed the lighter into the dashboard and when it was ready she stuck a cigarette in her lips and then, letting go of the wheel, cupped one of her hands over the top when she lit it.
“Where did you swim?” she said, no one driving the car.
“University of Florida. I was on the team.”
“In a pool?”
She pulled on the cigarette and the wind caught the cigarette and blew sparks into her hair. “You weren’t in the ocean or anything.”
“Not at the University of Florida,” I said.
“Good.”
And it was quiet again, and a few minutes later we drove through Starke and turned north on Highway 16. She saw a mileage sign for the state prison and slowed before she went past, watching it until it was cut from view, as if it were something she wanted to remember, and then for a while seemed to immerse herself in the land—studying the flat, lifeless landscape as if each piece of it had a separate meaning, like a battlefield from the Civil War.
I was still thinking of Gainesville and what had happened there, how I had forgotten where I was. I wanted to tell her about that, I thought it might make me more interesting.
“The pool was indoors,” I said, getting the feel of it back, “and the sound bounced from the ceiling to the water to the walls. You could never tell where it was coming from.”
She turned away from the window, and the cigarette in her lips had blown out. “What sound?” she said.
“Yelling,” I said, “a lot of yelling. Whistles The coach was a Hungarian, they love whistles. We were in the water four hours a day, sometimes more, every day but Sunday, six months of the year.”
“We?”
“The swimmers. I was on the team.”
“And you forgot where you were.”
I nodded. That was what happened. There were two practices a day, early and late. I was in the water all the time, and at night, in my dreams, I was in it again.
And I would wake from the dreams at five-thirty in the morning to be at the pool by six, and somewhere in the missed sleep and exhaustion the dreams began to bleed into the day, just as the days had bled into them, and I would find myself swimming laps in the morning and suddenly not knowing which place I was.
I would stop when that happened, terrified, and then roll over onto my back and float, ignoring the yelling and whistling, looking only at the ceiling and the walls, at my legs and arms and chest, to watch them and know where they were.
Three times that last semester I rolled out of bed.
And then, of course, I lost my scholarship and was expelled, and went back to Moat County to my own room and my own bed, and discovered that the disease had followed me home.
She’d quit listening, and then I looked off into the distance and saw it too, the prison.
SHE PULLED INTO a gravel driveway that led to a gate marked “Visitors.” The prison was another two hundred yards in, surrounded by a chain link fence with rolls of razor wire at the top. Behind it was another, smaller fence, also topped with razor wire, and between the fences two dozen large dogs lay in the late afternoon dusk—would-be killers themselves, they were the most vicious cases, and had been saved by that from a carbon monoxide gas chamber at the county’s animal control center.
“We want to sit in the parking lot,” she said to the guard.
He looked into the car, front seat and back, and then shook his head. “You got to have a pass, miss,” he said, “and it’s too late now. Business hours is nine to four-thirty. Visiting hours available on request.”
He stared at me then, I don’t know why.
“It’s all right,” she said, “he’s with the press.”
WE BACKED OUT OF the driveway and sat in the car for a while along the highway. She studied the prison, one end to the other, and then sighed and dropped back into her seat. She closed her eyes.
“You know where they keep them?” she said.
“Who?”
“Death row prisoners, you know where they are?”
I said, “It all looks like death row to me.”
“Over on the far right side,” she said, and I glanced that way, but it looked the same as the rest of the place.
“They keep the lights on night and day.”
She lit another cigarette. “They have the opposite problem of you,” she said. “In there, you can’t forget where you are.”
It was quiet a while and she turned away from me to stare at the prison. “Hillary would know I’m here,” she said.
I didn’t think that was true, but it’s hard to judge from the outside what goes on between a man and a woman who become engaged to marry without meeting each other.
She sat with her legs apart, smoking her cigarette as the sky got dark. Night insects flew into the car, and I slapped them off my neck and arms. There were lightning bugs in the prison yard. She sat still, immune to insects, her face glowing in the light of her cigarette as she pulled on it from time to time, then disappearing into the dark. Perhaps the mosquitoes didn’t like the smoke.
I thought of undressing her, right there in the car with Hillary Van Wetter lying in his cell a quarter mile away, his intuition suddenly sitting him up in bed.
But it was only a thought; it lit and faded, like her face as she pulled on the cigarette. It seemed to me that even Hillary Van Wetter would have forgiven me for that.
WELDON PINE WAS seventy-two years old and had practiced law in the northern end of Moat County for forty-six years, grandfathered in from a time when a degree from an accredited law school was not requisite to becoming a lawyer. And while Mr. Pine did not have a degree—at least not in the academic sense, he did have an honorary doctorate of jurisprudence from the Christian University of North Florida—he was personally associated in one way or another with every human being who made a living in or around the Moat County Courthouse, and was the man who decided, in fact, if many of them made a living at all. It was an accepted fact in the northern end of Moat County that he was the best lawyer in the South.
Mr. Pine still occupied the office he had first rented when he began his career. It sat in a building across the street kitty-corner from the courthouse, and while he now owned not only the building that housed this office but the block of buildings behind it, he kept the corner room on the first floor as it had been when he moved in. An oak desk sat
in the center of the room, allowing just enough clearance for the door to swing open. Shades were pulled over the windows, the metal file cabinets sat against the far wall.
Except for its location and roofline and the fact that it did not smell of fried onions, it was not appreciably better than the space my brother and Yardley Acheman had rented above the Moat Cafe half a mile to the north.
It seemed smaller, in fact, after all of us were inside. Mr. Pine sat behind his desk in a new suit and a new haircut, a large, heavyset man, his wavy white hair shaved half an inch above his ears.
There was one chair in front of the desk, which Yardley Acheman took.
“I wonder,” Mr. Pine said, looking at those of us still standing, “if we might be more comfortable in the conference room.”
“That would be fine,” my brother said.
The old man held up a crooked index finger, and said, “But …” We waited out a long, dramatic pause. “… any and all photographs shall be taken here. Do we understand each other?”
Ward and Yardley Acheman looked at each other a moment, then Yardley Acheman stood up, his shirt soaked with sweat and sticking to his skin. There was a small air conditioner at work in the window, but it was not designed for five people in the room at once.
“It’s a little early yet for pictures,” Ward said, and that seemed to satisfy Mr. Pine.
We followed him through his secretary’s office and down a carpeted hallway. The conference room lay behind the last two doors on the right, and there were enough chairs in there for us all.
Charlotte put her hands behind her back and examined the law books that lined the walls as if she were looking for something to read.
The old man took his seat at the head of the table and watched her. “She’s the photographer, am I correct?” he said.
“This is Charlotte Bless, Mr. Pine,” my brother said. “She wrote you she was coming.”
The lawyer said, “Of course, of course,” and smiled at her. She took a seat but did not smile back. Weldon Pine leaned his head back into his laced fingers and closed his eyes.
“It’s been my experience in these expeditions,” he said, “that the best place to start is the beginning.…” There was another long pause as he gathered himself to start.
“I was born in this county in 1897 of proud but poor parents. My mother was French, my father German. My early education was informal, but nevertheless at least equal, I would say, to what my compatriots received at the hands of the public schools. I was taught the importance of logical thinking, which has served me well over all the years since—”
Weldon Pine stopped suddenly, looked in front of himself at the empty table, and then got up and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. Those of us left inside looked at each other, but no one spoke. A moment later he was back, out of breath, carrying his family album; it looked as heavy as a sandbag. The leather cover was ancient and dry and it creaked as it opened.
“Here,” he said, pushing his finger into the book, “this was my mother. As you see, she was French.…” The finger was thick and brittle, like a farmer’s. Charlotte Bless came a few inches off her seat to look, possibly coveting the photograph for her files; no one else moved. “I’m afraid it doesn’t reproduce well,” he said. “What kind of presses do you have? The Palm Beach Post managed to get a good likeness, but they have offset presses.…”
He turned another page. “This is my father and his brother.…” He smiled at them. “Germans,” he said, as if that were a joke we all understood.
“Mr. Pine,” Yardley Acheman said, “you think we could skip maybe sixty-five years here, save everybody some time?”
The old man looked up, his finger still resting beneath the picture of his father and uncle. He blinked.
“Nineteen sixty-five,” Yardley Acheman said. “Hillary Van Wetter …”
The old man looked at the album again; he didn’t seem to understand. “That isn’t a significant case,” he said finally. “It contributes nothing to the richness of the story.…”
“It is the story,” Yardley Acheman said slowly.
And there was still another pause as that settled in. “We wrote you a letter and said we’d be coming up?” Yardley Acheman said. “You agreed to take us in to see him.”
The old man began to shake his head. “I wouldn’t have agreed to any such thing without my client’s permission,” he said. “He has his right to privacy, like anybody else.”
“You have Mr. Van Wetter’s permission,” my brother said quietly, and the old man turned to face him; it was like he was fighting off a pack of dogs. “He wrote you, and a copy of that letter was enclosed in the envelope you received.”
Weldon Pine’s jaw went slack. “I’d have to check that,” he said. He looked again at the picture of his father and uncle, the Germans, and then reluctantly closed the album.
“The letter would be in your files,” my brother said.
The old man looked at him, closing the gates. “That’s what you say, but I’ve got a client to protect.” He looked around the table again, stopping for just a moment on Charlotte Bless, and then fixed a small, practiced smile on his face. “Will that be all?”
“Mr. Pine,” my brother said, in the same quiet voice, “Mr. Van Wetter has asked us to review his case for the purposes of writing a newspaper story. To that end, he has instructed you to open all the pertinent files to us, and to facilitate interviews between ourselves and Mr. Van Wetter, as well as all other interested parties.”
“Other interested parties,” the old man said, finding something humorous in that.
“If you would just check your files—”
Yardley Acheman interrupted my brother. “Put it another way, Mr. Pine. If you don’t check your files and arrange a meeting with Mr. Van Wetter, if we’ve got to bring a lawyer of our own up here to represent Mr. Van Wetter’s interests in this—and I promise you that’s what we’re going to do if we walk out of here empty-handed—then as long as he’s up here, we’re going to have him look into every aspect of Mr. Van Wetter’s case, including the competency of his defense, if you catch my meaning.…”
The old man sat still, his throat working. “There’s nothing wrong with the defense Hillary Van Wetter got in court,” he said.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about from us,” Yardley Acheman said, his tone friendlier now. “We just want to talk to him.”
“I took that case pro bono,” the old man said. “I didn’t make a cent off that man.”
It was quiet again. “We are, of course, aware of your fine record of commitment to the public interest,” Yardley Acheman said.
Charlotte opened her purse and found a cigarette. The old man watched her light it.
“You sent me your picture,” he said.
She nodded and drew the smoke deep into her chest.
“I’m his fiancée,” she said.
“I think you’re wasting your time,” he said a moment later, but he was looking at the family album again and it wasn’t clear which of us he was talking to.
“We have time,” Yardley Acheman said.
The old man arranged for the meeting with Hillary Van Wetter, but would not be talked into coming along to straighten out any problems we might have getting into the prison.
“I have no desire to see Mr. Van Wetter again in this lifetime,” he said formally.
“You’re his attorney,” Yardley Acheman said. We were back in the little office again, where Weldon Pine kept his files.
“Yessir, I am,” he said, “and in that regard I will continue to defend Mr. Van Wetter’s legal rights, but I have no interest in another personal encounter.” He put a scalding look on us all and said, “That man has took as much of me as I intend to give him.”
ON THE MORNING she would first meet her fiancé in person, Charlotte came out of the apartment she had leased in a yellow dress. My brother and Yardley Acheman and I were sitting in the rented car outside, waiting. She
was fifteen minutes late, and none of us had seen her in a dress before. She wore white shoes with modest heels, and she had spent some time that morning in front of a mirror.
From the distance of the curb, she could have been as young as she looked in her picture.
“Well, look at this,” Yardley Acheman said. My brother looked, but said nothing. She walked from the door of her apartment to the curb in a natural way, as if she wore dresses and white shoes with heels every day of her life. She got into the car carefully, lifting her legs well over the bottom of the door, not wanting to run her stockings.
We’d driven five miles out of Lately when she suddenly reached across the seat and turned the rearview mirror so that she could check her face. One side, then the other, smoothing the makeup into her neck. She left the mirror where she could see herself when she finished and lit a cigarette. For a long time, no one spoke. The windows were closed, not to muss her hair, and the air was dense with the smell of her perfume and her shampoo.
I was afraid Yardley Acheman would try to say something humorous, but he didn’t. He sat in the backseat with his hands folded in his lap, looking at her, then out the window, then glancing at her again, as if it were something he couldn’t stop.
She didn’t notice his attention; she barely noticed the prison. It seemed to startle her when I turned back into the gravel road where she and I had been before and rolled down my window to talk to the guard.
Yardley Acheman turned his attention to the sprawl of the prison, and the flat, empty ground surrounding it. Already working on his prose. Half a dozen prisoners were standing in ditches farther down the road, swinging sickles at the weeds. In his story, they would become thirty men.
It was the same guard at the gate, and he seemed to recognize us. He looked inside the car at Charlotte first, then into the backseat at Ward and Yardley Acheman, and then back to Charlotte.
“Straight ahead to Administration,” he said, staring at her legs.
HILLARY VAN WETTER WAS brought into the room in shackles by a guard, and the smell of the prison—disinfectant—came in with him. The guard held on to a chain that encircled his waist and attached to his handcuffs, and, after locking the door he had just come through, he pointed to an empty chair that sat by itself in the middle of the room.