Dovey Coe

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “How’d you get in here?” I asked Huck, who’d gone over and laid next to Tom, little whimpers coming out of his mouth. I looked about the room, wondering how long I’d been knocked out.

  That’s when I seen Parnell.

  He was lying on the floor as stiff as Tom, one of them metal canisters a few feet from his head. I crawled over to him and passed my hand over his mouth. There weren’t a breath left in him.

  “Oh, Lord,” I said out loud. “Oh, my Lord.”

  The bells tinkled on the front door, and a voice called out, “Parnell? Are you in here? I’ve been keeping supper on the stove for you for almost an hour.”

  It was Mrs. Lucy Caraway. She come to the door of the back room and reached in to flip on the light. That’s when she saw us. “What in heaven’s name?” she yelled, running over to Parnell. She put her ear to his mouth, and then felt his neck with her hand. “He’s dead! Oh, my God! He’s dead!” Then she turned to me. “You killed Parnell! You killed my son!”

  chapter 13

  They let me stay at home while I was waiting for my trial to come up. Usually when a person’s been accused of a serious crime they make him stay in the jail lessen his kinfolks can come up with a right good sum of money. Bail, they call it. But the sheriff didn’t figure I was likely to leave town before trial day, so he let Mama and Daddy sign a paper saying they’d be responsible for me showing up to court. The only thing was that I weren’t allowed to cross the county line until after I was tried, and then only if I weren’t found guilty.

  They say it’s at times like these when you find out who your real friends are, and by my reckoning the only real friend I had outside my family was Wilson Brown. Folks who’d always been right neighborly toward me, including them who were at Caroline’s party, avoided my eyes when they seen me coming down the street. Not that I headed into town too much. I mostly stayed to home, helping Mama around the house and tracking through the woods with Amos.

  Amos weren’t himself after they brought Tom’s body to him. It was like someone had cut off a piece of him and he weren’t sure he could make do without it. It might sound funny to say it, but after Tom died, Amos got real quiet. Just at the time he said his first word, he stopped making any noise at all. Usually he played the rascal around the house, jumping out from behind doors to give Mama a fright or drawing funny pictures and slipping them into my books for me to find unexpected. But now mostly all he did was hike up into the mountain with Huck and come back empty-handed, like there weren’t no use hunting things if Tom weren’t around to hunt them, too. At home he’d sit on his bed rubbing Huck’s head and staring out the window. I think he was hoping Tom might come running over the hill, him being dead just a bad dream.

  Wilson come to visit me now and again, and he always made the effort to be right nice to Amos, patting him on the back and one time bringing him a real fine piece of quartz crystal from his collection. Wilson would ask Amos to join me and him on the porch, but Amos never felt much like it. So me and Wilson would sit by ourselves, eating the cookies MeMaw kept bringing up to the house to make everybody feel better and looking through comic books. We’d occasionally pass a few words between ourselves, but mostly we were quiet.

  The only one who seemed his same old self was Daddy. After coming back from signing them papers at the sheriff’s office, he sat me down at the kitchen table and looked me straight in the eye. “I hate to even ask, but I want to hear it directly from you so as not to ever have a single doubt. You ain’t gone and killed Parnell, have you, Sister?”

  “No, Daddy,” I told him. “I didn’t do it.”

  He nodded his head. “I didn’t believe you had it in you. I hope you’ll forgive me for asking.”

  He got up to go to work in the barn, but before he left he turned to me and asked, “You got any idea of who done it?”

  “I ain’t got the first idea, Daddy,” I said. “When I come to, Parnell was laying there dead. I didn’t see who done it.”

  “Could’ve been anyone, I reckon,” Daddy replied before walking out the door.

  That conversation seemed to settle things for Daddy. He was of the belief that if I didn’t kill Parnell, then there weren’t no way I’d be found guilty. He said he believed in the justice system and everything would turn out as it should. I weren’t quite so sure.

  We didn’t have much money for a lawyer, so the judge assigned us one from all the way over in Wilkes County. Daddy insisted on putting down a little bit of money every week for his services, even though the judge said we didn’t have to pay anything. Daddy wouldn’t stand for that, though. As I’ve said, he weren’t much for accepting charity.

  The lawyer come up to see us a week before the trial to discuss what kind of case we had. Mr. Thomas G. Harding was a right handsome man about twenty-five or so. When he come up to the front porch after parking his car, Daddy greeted him at the door, saying, “You the lawyer’s helper or something?”

  “No, Mr. Coe,” Mr. Thomas G. Harding replied, patting down the lapel of his gray suit. “I am, in fact, the lawyer himself.”

  “You don’t look old enough to be no lawyer,” Daddy said to him.

  “I assure you, Mr. Coe, I am indeed a lawyer. I have a law degree from the University of North Carolina, the Chapel Hill campus.”

  Daddy ushered Mr. Harding into the house right quick. “Don’t be saying that so loud. Folks around here don’t trust city lawyers. The judge is likely to rule against Dovey on that fact alone.”

  Mr. Harding laughed, setting his briefcase on the kitchen table. “It will be our secret, Mr. Coe. Now where is Miss Dovey? Ah, this must be her.” He walked over to where I was standing in the kitchen doorway and offered his hand to me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Why don’t we have a seat and talk about your case.”

  I sat at the table across from him, looking at the fine cut of his suit and his fancy haircut. “How come you’re doing this?” I asked him.

  “Doing what, Miss Dovey?”

  “Taking on my case. From the looks of things, you don’t appear to be the type to do much charity work.”

  Mr. Harding laughed again. He seemed a right jolly sort. “First of all, Miss Dovey, it’s not charity work when it’s paid for. And as for why I’ve taken your case, well, I feel it is part of my job to defend those who can’t afford an expensive private attorney. In fact, that is one of the reasons I went into the law.”

  “To take care of poor folks?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Harding replied. “In a manner of speaking. I represent those who cannot afford representation. Liberty and justice for all, as I like to remind those with a tendency to forget that the laws of our country aren’t only for the rich.”

  “You’re a right learned fellow, ain’t you?” I said. “They must pay you a sight of money for you to afford a suit like that.”

  “No, Miss Dovey,” he said, opening his briefcase. “They don’t pay me much at all. This suit comes courtesy of my father, who can afford closets full of such things. You certainly speak your mind, don’t you?”

  “She’ll speak her mind till she’s blue in the face,” Daddy said from where he stood over by the sink.

  Mr. Harding smiled. “Good, I like a person who’s honest. Most people are too frightened to come right out and say what they’re thinking.”

  “That’s my belief, too,” I told him. “Most folks are cowards when it comes to expressing their honest take on things. But that ain’t how I am.”

  “Then we have something in common, Miss Dovey. I wouldn’t be surprised to find we have many things in common.”

  We smiled at each other. I decided then and there that I liked Mr. Thomas G. Harding just fine.

  We spent about an hour discussing the facts of what happened the night Parnell was murdered. I give him a little background on the situation, how me and Parnell never got along, and how Parnell had spent all year being in love with Caroline, but she rejected him all the same. Mr. Harding took a whole mess of notes on a yello
w writing tablet he brung with him. After I told him everything I known that could possibly affect my case, he leaned back in his chair and asked, “What do you think the other lawyer, the prosecutor, will claim motivated you to kill Parnell?”

  “I didn’t kill Parnell, I done told you that already,” I said.

  “Yes, Miss Dovey, you have told me that, and I believe you. However, the other attorney will say that you did, and he will create a story to show the reason you did. What do you think his story will be?”

  I thought on that for a minute. “I reckon he might say that after Parnell killed Tom, I got so mad that I hit him over the head with that soda canister.”

  Mr. Harding nodded. “I imagine you’re right, Miss Dovey. But let us continue to consider that matter as to leave no stone unturned. We want to be prepared for anything.”

  Mr. Harding stood up and began putting his papers back into his briefcase.

  “She got a case there, Mr. Harding?” Daddy asked.

  “I hope so, Mr. Coe. I certainly hope so.”

  Them weren’t the most comforting words I ever heard, and I could tell Daddy weren’t satisfied by them, neither. He walked Mr. Harding out to the porch and give him directions to the sheriff’s office. Mr. Harding wanted to check on a few things with Sheriff Douglas before heading back to Wilkes County. When Daddy come back into the house, he patted me on the shoulder and said, “I suspect everything will work out, Sister. Don’t you worry none.” But there were plenty of worry in his words all the same.

  The day of the trial we got up good and early to get dressed in a respectable fashion. Mr. Harding said it was important that I looked like I were on my way to Sunday school, so the judge and jury would think highly of me. I put on the yellow dress I worn to Caroline’s party, and Mama combed my hair out real pretty so my bangs curled around my face. I looked like a right upstanding citizen by the time she was through with me.

  “Dovey,” she said to me when she was done with my hair, giving me a serious look. I was expecting her to lecture on me on how I was to behave in a ladylike fashion during my trial. Instead, she said, “I want you to remember that God takes care of his children. There’s been a lot of praying done on your behalf, and I want you to take them prayers with you when you walk into that courthouse. Keep them in your mind if you start to worry that things ain’t going your way.”

  “I will, Mama,” I promised, and lay my head on her shoulder. She petted my hair a few times and give me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Go on and get Amos,” Mama said, rising. “I reckon we ought to go on now.”

  Amos’s door was halfway closed. I nudged it with my foot, and it swung open to reveal Amos sitting with his back to me on his bed, writing furiously on a white sheet of paper. He must have sensed me in the room, because he turned around the second I took a step inside. He quickly folded up the piece of paper into a little square.

  “This ain’t no time to be writing letters, son,” I told him. Amos shrugged his shoulders like he didn’t have the least idea of what I was talking about. I followed him down to the truck, wondering what he was up to. Amos got in the way back with Huck, both of them looking scared.

  The courthouse steps was already crowded with folks come to see the trial by the time we got there. Daddy’s cousin Ray had driven Caroline over from Boone, and she run to greet us as soon as she seen the truck.

  “How could they ever think you done such a thing as murder Parnell Caraway?” she cried into my ear, giving me a big hug.

  Mr. Harding walked over then and shook Daddy’s hand. He introduced himself to Caroline, but didn’t give her a second glance after that. He was the first man I’d known who seemed to have more interest in me than in my sister.

  Mr. Harding put his arm around my shoulder as we turned to go inside. “Are you ready, Miss Dovey?”

  I told him I was, and all of us walked into the courthouse, except for Huck, of course. Amos tied him to a tree outside and gave him a bone to gnaw on. Usually Amos wouldn’t bother tying Huck up, seeing as Huck’s right afraid of strangers and won’t mess with folks any. He’ll run away from anyone he don’t know, lessen of course they’re on our property. Then Huck will go straight up to them and sniff them out to make sure they ain’t up to any mischief.

  But on that day, Amos wasn’t taking any chances. I don’t doubt he was thinking about what happened the last time Tom and Huck got away from him.

  chapter 14

  The prosecuting attorney, which is what they called the other side’s lawyer, was a man by the name of Mr. Tobias Jarrell. I thought him to be a comical-looking sort, as he had no chin to speak of and his eyes was kind of buggy, like a frog’s. But I had to admit that he was a smooth one. He could string words together and make them shine like lights around a Christmas tree.

  “What we have here is an open-and-shut case, Your Honor,” is how Mr. Jarrell started his argument against me on the morning my trial began. He said “Your Honor,” but he was looking straight out at the folks lining the courtroom. You could tell he’d be real comfortable on the stage of a big-time theater, the way he paced back and forth as he spoke and took long, dramatic pauses. “As assistant district attorney of Watauga County, it is my job to present the facts and only the facts here in this honorable establishment. I am pleased to say that in this case, the facts speak for themselves.”

  “Then I suggest you let them begin speaking,” Judge Lovett M. Young said. You could tell that he weren’t the least bit impressed with Mr. Jarrell’s theatrical talents. Because I was of such a young age, my fate would be decided by the judge alone, and I took comfort that the judge seemed to be a sensible sort.

  “Very well, Your Honor.” Mr. Jarrell made a little bow toward the judge’s bench. “The facts that I will present to you here today are simple. A young woman enraged. A young woman with a knife. An upstanding, decent young man. Bitter words, bitter feelings. The young man cut down in his prime. The young woman, guilty of this heinous crime.”

  “Them Coes is trash,” Paris Caraway said in a low, mean voice from across the aisle from where I was sitting.

  “You best watch yourself, Paris Caraway,” I said loud and clear as day to her. Mr. Harding, who was sitting in the chair to my right, took hold of my wrist and give me a stern look. “Miss Dovey,” he said in a low, meaningful-sounding tone, “I must ask you not to respond to any comments made in this courtroom, no matter how much they might upset you.”

  I nodded like I understood, but I still saw red every time I looked over to where Paris Caraway sat perched like a queen in her seat.

  It was hard for me to look anywhere in that courtroom, except straight ahead. All the rows of benches was filled with folks who’d come to see the show, and I could feel their eyes upon me from the very minute I walked into the room, like I was some circus animal who’d escaped from the big tent.

  Mama, Daddy, Caroline, and Amos was sitting in the bench directly behind the defense table, where me and Mr. Harding was seated. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Caroline, her face was so full of misery and bad feelings, and I didn’t want to look at Mama and Daddy, afraid that the sight of their faces might make me start crying.

  I glanced at Amos from time to time, trying to figure out what he’d written on that sheet of paper. It filled me with nervousness to think about it. Every time I looked back at Amos, my insides got all jittery, and I had to remind myself to pay attention to the trial.

  The first person Mr. Jarrell called up to the stand was Parnell Caraway’s mama, Mrs. Lucy Caraway. I thought calling on Mrs. Lucy Caraway to be a witness weren’t even fair, as she would of course have nothing but good things to say about her own son, and nothing but bad about me and my folks.

  Mrs. Caraway carried a white handkerchief in her hand, and after she sat down and got sworn in by Deputy Coble, she dabbed it at her eyes every two seconds like she might never stop crying.

  Mr. Jarrell come up to her, his face all sad and tore up, like he might start to
cry, too. “Mrs. Caraway, it was you who found your deceased son’s body, was it not?”

  Mrs. Caraway sniffed into her handkerchief, then nodded.

  “Please say your answer out loud so the court can hear you, Mrs. Caraway,” Mr. Jarrell instructed her.

  “Yes, I did,” Mrs. Caraway replied in a soggy voice. “He was in the back room of my husband’s store. And that wicked girl was standing right over him. Oh, she’s the one who done it, all right. She killed my boy.”

  Mr. Jarrell nodded. “Did she say anything to you, Mrs. Caraway?”

  “Oh, no, she just stood there, mute as that brother of hers. Didn’t give a word of explanation.”

  “Mrs. Caraway, I know this is hard for you.” Mr. Jarrell moved in close and patted her hand. “But I’d like you to tell Judge Young about your deceased son, Parnell. What kind of man was he?”

  “Parnell could be difficult, I admit,” Mrs. Caraway said, and I almost fell over in my seat. I known a whole lot of folks who would have said the same about Parnell, but I never suspected his own mama would admit to it.

  “Difficult?” Mr. Jarrell raised an eyebrow real dramatic-like. “How so?”

  Mrs. Caraway sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. I suspect we spoiled him some. He was such a smart, lively, cute little boy, it was hard not to. Eventually, he thought he should have the whole world placed in his lap.” Then she looked up at Judge Young. “But nothing Parnell ever did earned him the punishment of being murdered. He weren’t a bad boy, just strong-willed, wanting his own way.”

  Mr. Harding was nodding his head. “Smart. This is very smart,” he whispered softly to me.

  “What’s smart about it?” I whispered back. What could be smart about bad-mouthing your own child, I wondered.

  “Parnell was difficult,” Mr. Harding said in a hushed voice. “The prosecution is saying it before we get a chance to. It will carry some weight with the judge.”

  I slumped in my seat. Their side was getting points for pointing out that Parnell was a scoundrel. That didn’t seem fair to me.