“After baseball practice.”
“He put his arm around my waist.”
“In the locker room.”
It became tedious before long.
Master Josef’s attorney tried to trip them up now and then, but clearly not very hard. “This is one case any sensible attorney would want to lose,” someone sitting behind Phoebus had whispered.
“Where was the coach when you allege Stephen Messinjure tried to kiss you?” Master Josef’s attorney asked a muscular, athletic teen named Freddie Maunter. He was the only boy who didn’t look nervous. He looked bored, in fact, the way he slouched and leaned his head on his hand.
“Still on the field, I guess,” he said.
“Still on the field,” Master Josef’s lawyer echoed softly.
“Yep,” Freddie said, hitting the P with a little pop. “Still on the field.”
“But you just said you’d been playing basketball.”
“Did I?” the teen said lazily. “I guess I meant the basketball court.”
Phoebus noticed that Freddie Maunter bit his lower lip on one side. “A bad liar’ll bite his lip and never look at you,” Tessa always said. “But a good one’ll smile, look you straight in the eye and bat nary a lash.”
“I guess you must have,” Master Josef’s lawyer said before tacking on his usual follow-up question. “And where were all the other members of the team, Mr. Maunter?”
“Still on the court, I guess,” he said, his volume rising a bit. He seemed to be irritated. “I already told you that.”
“Mm-hmm,” Master Josef’s lawyer said. “And, uh, what prevented you from yelling out?”
“I was too scared,” the teen answered—exactly like all the others.
“Too scared?” the attorney asked. “Aren’t you, uh...” he walked over to the defense table, picked up a piece of paper and scanned it for a few seconds before turning back to the teen. “Aren’t you on the wrestling team, Mr. Maunter? At least that’s what it says here.”
Everyone in the courtroom sat up a little straighter, including Freddie Maunter. This was an unexpected departure from the usual fluff questions.
“Used to be,” Freddie Maunter answered, sounding annoyed. “I switched to basketball in my junior year. So?”
“So I would imagine it takes a lot of strength and courage to wrestle other boys and pin them down on a mat, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Unless you aren’t really that good of a wrestler, of course, in which case I suppose it’s understandable that you would switch to basketball and be easily intimidated by other boys.”
“I was state champ two years in a row!” the Freddie Maunter snarled through gritted teeth. Then he yelled, “And I’m not afraid of anyone!”
The judge slammed his gavel.
“You will mind your tone, young man!” the judge ordered. “This is a court of law, not the high school gymnasium! You will be civil or tomorrow you will find yourself in juvenile court. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes,” Freddie Maunter mumbled as he slouched again.
“Good,” the judge said before nodding toward Master Josef’s lawyer. “You may proceed.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.
“Mr. Maunter, you just told us a very short time ago that you were afraid of my client, Stephen Messinjure. I can have the court reporter read back your testimony, if you like?”
The boy just glared in response.
“So you were not afraid then?” the lawyer asked.
“No,” Freddie Maunter said.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Maunter, but I’m somewhat confused: were you lying when you said you were afraid or are you lying now by saying you were not afraid?
“I’m not lying! I was just... I was caught off guard, that’s all. I’d never been touched by a faggot before.”
“I see,” the Master Josef’s lawyer said. “And where did you say my client allegedly touched you?”
“He put his arm around my waist. I told you that. Any guy who puts his arm around another guy’s waist is a fag in my book. Any idiot knows that.”
“Well, why didn’t you just tell him to knock it off? Why didn’t you think he was just horsing around?”
“I... I don’t know. I didn’t know what to think. I was in shock.”
“In shock?!” the lawyer proclaimed in mock disbelief. “Well, my goodness gracious me. You were in shock because another boy—a significantly smaller boy, I might add—allegedly put his arm around your waist? Let me point out to the jury that there are no witnesses to this allegèd encounter so it comes down to your word against my client’s, and my client vehemently denies your accusation, sir. That being said, you are a champion wrestler, Mr. Maunter! Haven’t dozens of boys put their arms around your waist over the years while trying to pin you to the mat?”
“Objection!” the district attorney called out. “Your Honor, he’s badgering the witness!”
“How is asking a witness a question ‘badgering’ him, sir?” Master Josef’s attorney asked the D.A. Before turning to the judge. “Your Honor,” he chortled, “I am simply trying to help the jury understand out why this young man—this exemplar of adolescent hand-to-hand combat—whose testimony is astoundingly similar to that of the veritable fleet of young men whom the D.A. has paraded before us...”
He was starting to become overwrought and was getting loud so he paused to collect his thoughts.
“I’m just trying to figure out,” he continued calmly, “why strapping, young Freddie Maunter, who looks to be at least a few inches over six feet tall, was so dumbstruck when a smaller boy allegedly put his arms around his waist. Was he really too shocked to do anything about it?”
Chuckles from the crowd.
The judge looked back and forth between the attorneys and the audience before him, gauging the mood before announcing, “Objection overruled!”
The murmuring crowd was pleased.
The irate D.A. clenched his fists at his sides as he sat down in a huff.
Master Josef’s lawyer continued.
“Now I ask you again, Mr. Maunter, are you accustomed to other boys having physical contact with you during a wrestling match?”
The teen’s face a hateful grimace. “Yes,” he said flatly. “But no boy ever touched me in the locker room. Ever.”
“And have you, yourself, ever touched another boy in the locker room, Mr. Maunter?”
The boy didn’t answer.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Maunter. Did you not hear my question?”
Still no response.
“The witness will answer the question,” the judge ordered.
“Oh, that’s okay, Your Honor,” Master Josef’s lawyer said as he turned and walked back toward his table. “I already know the answer to the question—and so does Mr. Maunter.” He picked up another piece of paper. “This is a court document with your name on it, Mr. Maunter. Apparently you were involved in a brawl which you started, according to this report, by harassing some of your classmates. Harassment that started in the, uh...” he paused and closely inspected the paper for show “...the locker room.”
He held the paper out to Freddie Maunter but the teen wouldn’t even look at it.
“Well, no need to for you to read it, is there?” the lawyer said as he lowered his arm. “After all, this is your signature at the bottom where you pled guilty to having pushed and shoved another boy before wrestling him to the floor, sitting on top of him and punching him repeatedly in the face and upper torso. Besides, I’m sure you have your own copy at home.”
The room was silent.
“Tell me, Mr. Maunter, did you put your arm around that boy’s waist at any time during this attack?”
Freddie Maunter flinched when the judge barked, “Answer the question!”
“Yes,” the teen said.
“Well, then, if one boy putting his arm around the waist of another boy constitutes homosexual behavior, which I vividly recall you defining for us, then it appears that you are,
yourself, a homosexual, sir. Are you not?”
“Objection, your Honor!” the D.A. yelled.
Without breaking eye contact with Freddie Maunter, Master Josef’s lawyer quickly added, “Any idiot knows that!”
“Objection!”
“I withdraw he question! No further questions, Your Honor.”
It was the first and last time Master Josef’s attorney had shown any courage done his job. After making Freddie Maunter squirm, however, he returned to his usual milquetoast self.
Chapter Six
The Verdict
Most people were discussing dinner plans, some not so softly, by the time the door to the judge’s chambers finally opened. The din died down immediately as the portly old jurist briskly entered the courtroom clutching a black leather binder at his side.
“All rise!” the bailiff commanded. Joints had rusted over after hours of sedentariness and the bailiff’s order was greeted with irritated moans and groans.
At nearly the exact same moment the door to the jury room also opened and the thirteen jurors stepped out looking as grim as usual. Each man silently walked to his assigned seat and stood there, staring straight ahead, as expressionless as an wind-up automaton with the tension of its inner springs completely spent.
“Hear ye! Hear ye!” cried the bailiff. “The Christian People versus Stephen Messinjure is now back in session! The Honorable Horatio P. O’Malley presiding!”
The judge seemed anxious to be done with the proceedings as he flipped open his binder and curtly announced, “You may be seated.”
Phoebus’ stomach knotted up.
The judge took a moment to quickly look over some papers before turning to the jury. “Mr. Foreman,” he said, “have you agreed upon a verdict?”
A man sitting in the front row stood up. He was tall and gaunt. His skin looked nearly as gray as his suit. Phoebus could see he was clutching a folded piece of paper.
“Yes, your Honor,” he replied in a flat, nasally voice. The courtroom was rapt. “We have.”
“Bailiff,” the judge muttered, motioning toward the gray man. The bailiff walked over to the jury box where Mr. Foreman handed him his folded paper, which the bailiff took to the judge. The judge unfolded it, read it, and handed it back to the bailiff who took it back to the jury foreman.
“Mr. Foreman,” the judge asked, his thin-lipped expression remaining impassive, “how say you?”
Master Josef gripped Phoebus’ hand.
“We, the jur--” Something seemed caught in the gray man’s throat. He cleared it and continued very loudly. “We, the jury, find the defendant, Stephen Messinjure, guilty as charged.”
Instant pandemonium. (In all honestly, this seemed a little showy considering the predictability of the outcome to most but naive little slaves.)
“Order!” the judge yelled.
Phoebus felt like he was going to puke. His heartbroken master let out a low moan.
After the noise settled down the judge turned to the jury and said, “My opinion is that your verdict is correct and just. I must say that as an individual I cannot be happy because this is a sad day for America. The thought that a citizen of our country would debase himself to the destruction of his fellow Americans by the most foul and unnatural means known to man is so shocking that I can't find words to describe his loathsome offense.”
You seem to be doing a pretty good job to me, thought the little slave.
“This young man—if, indeed, we can still think of any sodomite as a “man”—was given a full, fair and open trial. It was proven beyond any reasonable doubt, by reason of your verdict, that he is guilty of having committed heinous acts of homosexual perversion time and again. Your verdict is a warning that we can and will fight sin with vehement resolution. You have sent a message to others who may think they can get away with undermining our sacred Christian democracy that no matter where they are, who they are or how powerfully connected the may think they are, we will hunt them down and destroy them for the greater glory of God.
“I thank you for your dedication to this sacred duty. You are dismissed.” The judge then pounded his gavel. “Sentencing will be in fifteen minutes. Court is in recess until that time.” He pounded his gavel a second time and quickly exited the room.
Everyone knew what the sentence would be. The Church-State had long ago declared that homosexuality was an inexplicable in-born infirmity of the mind that could never be cured, a diabolical curse that could never be lifted. All attempts at rehabilitation had failed and were eventually discontinued. Post-incarceration sexual surveillance had proven many times over that even homosexuals who had married following their release from prison always sought sexual relations with an individual of their own gender. “Fags will be fags,” one Supreme Court justice famously said when upholding the death penalty for sodomy and all associated homosexual sexual behavior, including open-mouthed kissing. (A peck on the lips might be okay, but never not a prick.) It was Josef Messinjure himself who had once proclaimed, “The only fair and merciful sentence for the suffering homosexual is death. Death frees the sinner of his sin while sparing the Church-State the financial and moral burdens of caring for irredeemable degenerates for whom there is absolutely no hope of repentant rehabilitation.”
There would be no appeal, either. After the Holy Revolution they were outlawed for all but Party members and their families. Master Josef had been disgraced and defrocked by his fellow clerics and subsequently The Party had given him the boot, so no appeal for his seditious son. (The POG kicked out most party members either while they were on trial or immediately after their conviction, so in reality appeals were nearly non-existent.) Besides, the Church-State would want to make an example of Stephen Messinjure, the perverted progeny of a heretical traitor. There would be no quick, painless beheading or peaceful drifting off into a drug-induced oblivion for Stephen Messinjure. Even a firing squad would be too quick and clean. The Party alone appointed all judges and granted them complete discretion in sentencing. Publicly The Party rationalized that this policy as an assurance of strict adherence to the letter of the law. Subversively, however—of course, naturally, without a doubt—it also guaranteed leniency and retaliation when the POG desired it.
“Stephen Messinjure, the depravity of your crimes is almost unfathomable,” the judge read in monotone from a prepared statement. “The testimony of human suffering that you inflicted upon others was, at times, agonizing to hear and painful to watch. Your heinousness, in my estimation, is made all the more heinous because it was all about sex—inhumane things one human being did to other human beings, seemingly without remorse and without regret. The conduct which the jury found proven at trial beyond a reasonable doubt in and of itself merits the most severe penalty.
“In my humble estimation, you received the fair and full trial that every defendant in this country is entitled to. Therefore, I am compelled to impose a just, fair, and adequate sentence. The most serious crimes deserve the most serious punishments. If there is to be any deterrent effect, it must be for me to mete out a sentence that recognizes the gravity of your crimes; any less would not show sufficient respect for the law or the rule of law. After an orderly proceeding in which both parties were very well represented by counsel, a jury did the hard work that jurors do and rendered a fair and just verdict that reflected careful review of the evidence and application of the law.
“Mr. Messinjure, at this point I would ask you to please rise.”
Master Josef’s lawyer stood, but Stephen was overcome with grief and didn’t rise as the judge had ordered. He just hung his head low and sobbed. The judged motioned to the bailiff who marched over to the defendant, put a hand under his arm, and roughly jerked him to his feet. Stephen almost fell but the bailiff had a firm grip.
“Mr. Messinjure,” the judge continued, “having considered and weighed all of the sentencing factors under Church-State Code 1984(a), it is the judgment of this Court that you are hereby committed to the custody of
the Bureau of Prisons to be executed by means of lapidation until you are dead.”
The courtroom exploded, and this time the excitement was genuine. Just a few decades earlier nearly everyone in America would have had to look lapidation up in the dictionary if asked the meaning of the word. Since biblical law was now the law, however, everybody knew it meant—stoning.
Master Josef wailed out loud and the little slave thought he was going to be sick. For weeks the media had been clamoring for a stoning in the case of a guilty sentence. For weeks pundits had been debating the possibility of a stoning, though no one ever dared argue against the punishment. A VILE PUNISHMENT FOR A VILE CRIME! one headline had read that morning. Protestors outside the courthouse frequently held up signs and wore T-shirts proclaiming EVERY HOMO MUST GET STONED! To the judge the punishment the public wanted could not have been more obvious, and as the POG leadership always mandated at their judicial conferences: Ye give the faithful what they want, stupid!
“Order!” the judge yelled as he repeated hammered his gavel. “Order in the courtroom!”
Without any warning several rifle-wielding soldiers entered the room and stood with their backs against the walls, legs spread wide. Everyone cowered and the courtroom was silent within seconds, and only sounds to be heard were the sobs of father and son.
“We will all now pray,” the judge said. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Our Father, who art in heaven...” Everyone but the Messinjures joined in the mantra. “Hallowed be thy name...”
Chapter Seven
The Compassion Visit
Aside from his father’s lawyer, Stephen Messinjure had not been allowed a single visitor since his arrest. Nor had he been allowed to read anything other than signs in the hallway, listen to or view any form of broadcast. He had been kept in perpetual solitary confinement in a dinky, frigid cell that was five-feet high, five-feet long, and three-feet wide. He could never fully stretch out or stand up straight in the cell, so he sat all the time.
The Good Slave Page 3