“Mrs. Caraway, tell the court about this past summer, about Parnell’s actions.”
Mrs. Caraway blew her nose into her white handkerchief. “This summer, law. I don’t know what was going on in that boy’s mind, pursuing that Coe girl the way he did, always up there every spare minute of the day.”
“Was this Miss Dovey Coe he was pursuing?” Mr. Jarrell asked.
“Good Lord!” I cried out. Mr. Harding shushed me, and Judge Young give me a hard look. But how could they expect me to stay quiet at such a question?
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Caraway said, laughing a bit. “It was the older one, Caroline. She’s a pretty girl, but that family, well, they’re wild. Everybody knows that John Coe won’t set foot in a house of the Lord. I suspect that’s why that boy of theirs come out deaf. John Coe is a wicked man, and the Lord will punish the wicked.” Mrs. Caraway coughed delicately into her handkerchief before continuing. “Oh, there are plenty of stories I could tell you about that family. I’ll be surprised if only one of them ends up in jail.”
Mr. Harding was up on his feet at that. “Objection, Your Honor! This is slanderous!”
“Objection sustained,” Judge Lovett M. Young replied. That meant that he agreed with Mr. Harding.
Mr. Jarrell straightened his tie and cleared his throat. “Your Honor, I am merely trying to establish the circumstances of this summer, the environment that these horrible events were a consequence of. The defendant’s family background, which is less than ideal, is relevant to this case.”
Mr. Harding’s hand was firm upon my arm. He known immediately that I was like to jump up over the table and box Mr. Jarrell’s ears. Imagine that froggy-faced man saying such a thing! I tell you, I was on fire all over.
“Your Honor,” Mr. Harding said, sounding like the whole matter was trying his patience. “Please! This is preposterous!”
Judge Young banged his gavel, which made Mrs. Caraway do a little hop in her seat. “Mr. Jarrell, I will allow you some latitude in your arguments here, given that family background can be an indicator of how a young person will be disposed to act. But you take care, sir, to back up with concrete and specific evidence any claims you make against the characters of these people. I will not allow rumor and innuendo in my courtroom!”
Mr. Jarrell made one of his little bows. “Certainly, Your Honor,” he said, trying to sound humble. But I seen how his lips curled into a tiny smile, like he thought he’d won a victory here. He turned back to Mrs. Caraway. “Now, everyone knows, Mrs. Caraway, that you are not a woman to spread loose talk throughout the community. So, tell the court, if you will, what leads you to believe that the Coes have not provided a proper environment for their children.”
“Why, everyone knows that John Coe likes the bottle.” Mrs. Caraway had a prim expression upon her face. “I myself heard it from folks in my husband’s store. I overheard someone talking to Johnny Hampton, saying that John Coe’s corn liquor certainly had a bite to it.”
“Objection, Your Honor! That testimony is hearsay, not to mention a complete fiction!” Mr. Harding called out.
“Objection sustained,” Judge Young replied. He was starting to look like he could use him a rest from all the yammering going on, which I took as a good sign. I was getting tired of all these lies about my daddy myself. John Coe might not go to church, but that didn’t mean he was some hillbilly with a still.
Mr. Jarrell cleared his throat again. “Mrs. Caraway, had you ever actually seen Mr. Coe take a drink?”
“I believe my son, Parnell, said he smelled liquor on John Coe’s breath once when he was up to their place visiting.”
“Your Honor,” Mr. Harding said, throwing up his hands like all this was just too ridiculous to be believed.
Judge Young looked Mr. Jarrell straight in the eye. “You, sir, are to stop this line of questioning immediately. I told you I would not allow gossip and innuendo in my court, and yet that seems to be all that you’re presenting here. I suggest you take a different line of attack immediately or I will cite you for contempt, sir!”
“Forgive me, Your Honor!” Mr. Jarrell said, sounding as sorry as he could be. “We’ll move on to other things.”
“Very well, then,” Judge Young replied, then leaned back in his seat.
I give Mr. Harding a poke in his shoulder. “I reckon that Judge Young has taken a liking to us,” I whispered, feeling the first bit of hope I’d felt all morning. “He seems to be on our side through and through.”
“He’s just doing his job, Miss Dovey,” Mr. Harding whispered back. “We still have a long road ahead of us. Let us not lose sight of that.”
Mr. Jarrell had turned back to Mrs. Caraway and surveyed her a bit, as though he was trying to figure out if it were worth his while to go on with her. Finally, he just shrugged his shoulders, looked to Mr. Harding, and said, “I’ll turn this witness over to you, Counselor.”
Mr. Harding stood up and hemmed and hawed a bit. I likened his actions to a batter swinging around his bat and kicking the dirt before going to the plate to hit a home run. Weren’t no doubt in my mind that this trial was going our way. I leaned back in my seat, satisfied, hardly able to wait for Mr. Harding to grill old Mrs. Lucy Caraway over the coals about all them lies she’d been telling.
Mr. Harding made an odd croaking sound, and his face turned a bright red. Finally, rubbing his hand through his hair, he managed to get out, “The defense has no questions for this witness at this time, Your Honor.”
And then he sat right back down.
chapter 15
I thought my head was going to blow off the top of my neck, I was so mad. “What is wrong with you, son?” I had to ask. “You act like this was your first trial, you’re so flustered!”
Mr. Harding looked down at his papers, underlining words here and there with his fountain pen. His face was still blushing a furious red, but he acted like he was calm and collected. “It is my first trial, Miss Dovey. But that has nothing to do with my performance. I simply saw no reason to ask any more questions. Mrs. Caraway raised enough doubts by herself.”
I didn’t have time to say anything in response, as Mr. Jarrell had called up Paris Caraway to the stand. I would have to wait until lunch before letting Mr. Harding feel the full weight of my discontent.
I’ll tell you one thing, Paris Caraway was a piece of work. I had known her since we was both real little, and she weren’t what you would call an angel of a girl. But here, on this particular day, she looked as though she had the good Lord himself in her back pocket. Her dress was white with a hemline bordered in yellow embroidered daisies. It was the sort of dress Paris had not worn since she was eight and going to church on Easter Sunday, but the judge would not have been aware of that fact.
Paris settled herself into the witness stand and swore solemnly on the Holy Bible that she would tell nothing but the truth. I for one did not believe it, and as it turned out I was right to have my suspicions.
“Miss Caraway,” Mr. Jarrell began, sounding like he was in the mood for a friendly conversation instead of talking to a witness in a murder trial. “Will you please tell the court about driving Miss Coe to your father’s store so she could retrieve her dog on the night of August twenty-first?”
Paris looked to the jury and begun to speak in a real sad tone, like it were hard for her to talk about these things. I heard someone behind me murmur, “Poor child.”
“Well, Parnell sent me up to Dovey’s house, you see,” Paris said, smoothing down the folds of her dress and picking at a thread, looking shy, “because he was worried about that dog of Amos Coe’s biting somebody. It just seemed like that type of dog, if you know what I mean. Parnell got bit by a dog once when he was a little boy, and he remembered that fairly well enough.”
Mr. Jarrell looked troubled, as though the thought of Parnell getting bit as a child disturbed his very soul. Then he stroked his chin, like he was pondering a serious matter. “What state was Miss Coe in when you found her at her house?�
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“Jumpy,” Paris answered, jumping about in her seat a bit to demonstrate. “She was sitting on her front porch steps polishing a knife. I was a bit scared walking up to the house, actually. Dovey seemed agitated to me. We’d been friends for many a year, and I’d never quite seen her in such a state.”
“Can she just make lies up like that without no one saying a thing about it?” I whispered to Mr. Harding, who hushed me in response.
I wondered if it was too late to find me another lawyer.
“Please continue, Miss Caraway,” Mr. Jarrell urged Paris.
“Well,” Paris said, leaning forward, “I told Dovey she needed to come get that dog, and she was furious. ‘Why do I got to do everything?’ she wanted to know. And then she said something real strange, just as strange as it could be.”
“What might that be, Miss Caraway?”
Paris lowered her voice a bit, like she were about to tell everyone the best secret they ever heard. I could feel the folks behind me straighten up in their seats, getting ready to listen. “She said, and I quote, ‘If Parnell wants rid of that dog so bad, why don’t he get Caroline to come get him?’ Well, now, that didn’t make sense to me at first. Everybody knew Caroline had left town already, and besides, what did that dog in my daddy’s store have to do with Caroline? I was mystified.”
She paused and looked around the courtroom, demonstrating her expression of mystification, eyes open wide, shoulders up in a shrug.
“But then I put two and two together. Dovey was upset about Parnell’s proposal to Caroline. Why, Dovey was jealous. I probably ought to have explained to her right then and there that Parnell hadn’t been serious about his proposal at all. He couldn’t care a fig for Caroline Coe. But there was something about Dovey’s agitated state that made me stay quiet. I didn’t want to upset her.”
I felt like someone had just hit me over the head with a rock the size of Tennessee, I was so stunned. If there was one thing Paris Caraway knew, it was how much the mere sight of her brother rankled me. And yet here she was, making up this fairy tale, lying with every bone she had in her body.
If my very freedom hadn’t have been at stake, I would have laughed out loud at the foolishness of it all.
Mr. Harding was writing something on his yellow pad, seeming a bit agitated himself. I tilted my head to read his words. CRIME OF PASSION, they said in big, bold letters.
“I’m finding this all real hard to believe,” I whispered to him. “The last reason I would have killed Parnell for was because I was in love with him, everybody knows that.”
Mr. Harding simply nodded.
After pacing dramatically back and forth a few times in front of the witness stand, Mr. Jarrell made an abrupt stop and turned to Paris. “Miss Caraway, let me see if I am hearing you correctly. You believe Miss Dovey Coe was jealous of your brother’s supposed affection for Caroline Coe?”
Paris nodded. “Yes, sir, I do.”
Mr. Jarrell gave Paris a piercing look. “From most accounts, your brother and Miss Dovey Coe did not get along well at all. And you expect us to believe that, in fact, Dovey Coe had feelings for your brother?”
That was my question exactly. I was just a little surprised to hear the other side’s lawyer asking it.
Paris shrugged her shoulders. “It came as a shock to me, too. But then I remembered something my mother told me. She said that sometimes the people who act like they hate you the most are the ones that love you the most. You know how the boys who throw rocks at you on the playground a lot of times would really like to kiss you? I think that that’s how Dovey was about Parnell.”
There was something about Paris’s response that made me think this whole question-and-answer routine had been rehearsed just like a Shakespeare play. All the answers fit the questions just a little too easy, in my opinion.
“Miss Caraway, is there anything Dovey Coe said to you on your trip down the mountain to your father’s store that makes you think she was of the mind to take some sort of revenge on your brother?”
“She was fairly quiet for most of the trip,” Paris answered. “Though she did talk some of wanting to leave Indian Creek and how she might be doing that sooner rather than later. It made me sad to hear it, really. When I thought about it later, I guessed she planned on leaving town as soon as she murdered Parnell.”
“Objection!” Mr. Harding called out, getting back into the swing of things at last. “This is the witness’s opinion and has no place in her testimony.”
“Objection sustained,” the judge responded. It was the first good thing that had happened for our side in quite some time.
I had begun to feel as helpless as a baby. Paris could tell lie after lie, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. It was her word against mine, and it seemed like the judge would probably ship me off to the Home for Delinquent Girls in Charlotte before I even had a chance to tell my side of the story.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Paris said, looking down at her hands folded in her lap. “I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.”
“Just keep your testimony to the facts, young lady,” Judge Young told her. He sounded like her kindly uncle, not the least bit mad.
“Yes, sir, Your Honor,” Paris replied, giving the judge an oh-so-sweet smile.
Mr. Jarrell nodded to the folks in the courtroom, pleased that his star witness was acting such the lady in front of all them people, I suppose. Then he turned one last time to Paris. “Miss Caraway, did Dovey Coe say or do anything before she got out of the car that struck you as suspicious?”
I leaned back in my seat preparing myself for Paris’s words, which I was sure would do me in for good. I could tell without even turning around that Paris had gotten everyone to her side of things, just by her being sweet and wearing a pretty dress. Paris Caraway could have run for mayor at that very moment and been elected, I dare say.
Paris twirled a piece of hair around her pointer finger and slowly shook her head. “Like I said, she’d been acting jumpy, but she didn’t say anything at all suspicious at that point. I thought she was just upset about the dog and about Parnell’s supposed affection for her sister,” she said softly. “That’s why it came as such a shock to me that they’d found her in the same room with Parnell. I didn’t think Dovey had it in her to do such a thing.”
There was no doubt in my mind at this point that Paris Caraway was killing me with kindness.
“Thank you, Miss Caraway,” Mr. Jarrell said, his voice soft, too. “There are no further questions.”
I looked to Mr. Harding, who had been writing long strings of sentences across his yellow pad all through Paris’s testimony. He had to do something here, something that would crack open Paris’s story like a knife prying open a walnut. I waited for him to rise up and be my hero.
But Mr. Harding just kept scribbling.
“Mr. Harding,” Judge Young said finally. “Do you have any questions for this witness?”
Mr. Harding looked up, jerked out of his own thoughts. “Uh, no, Your Honor. She can be excused.” Then he went back to his notes.
I heard a murmur of voices behind me. I didn’t dare look at Mama or Daddy, for fear of the expressions they might be wearing. If I saw my mama’s face crumble, I would mostly likely lay down on the floor and cry like a baby.
Mr. Jarrell called him one more witness before lunch, that being Sheriff Douglas. My mind was so full of worry that I barely paid attention to what the sheriff had to say about the evidence Mr. Jarrell was presenting—the metal canister found beside Parnell’s body and my knife with Parnell’s blood on it being the most significant things. Mr. Harding listened closely to every word the sheriff had to say, occasionally making a note or two.
After Mr. Jarrell finished questioning Sheriff Douglas, the judge said we was free to go to lunch for an hour but we was to return directly so that Mr. Harding could cross-examine the witness. “Should he care to do so,” Judge Young added in a fairly sarcastic tone.
As
soon as the judge dismissed us, Mr. Harding was gone in a flash, without so much as the briefest hint as to where he was off to. Mama tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go have us a picnic, Dovey. It’ll lift our spirits some after such a long morning.”
I stood up and stretched my arms out, trying to push the worry from my bones. I heard low sobs coming from the other side of the room, and, like everyone else, I turned and peered to where the noise was coming from. On the end of the row, opposite of where my folks sat, there was Paris Caraway in her pretty white dress, her face buried deep in her hands, her mama petting her on the shoulder. I’d never seen Paris cry before, and it was a strange sight to me. Even stranger was that I believed her tears to be real.
Listening to Paris cry, I thought of how I would feel if something so terrible ever happened to Amos. I let that feeling sink deep inside me, and when Mama took my hand to lead me outside, the tears were falling down my own cheeks.
For the first time since it happened, I felt terrible. It finally hit me that Parnell Caraway was really dead.
chapter 16
Mama led me out to the trees by the front of the courthouse, beneath which Caroline had unpacked a lunch of ham biscuits and sweet tea. I took a seat on the grass next to Daddy and leaned back my head to look up through the tree’s branches. I thought I had best memorize the deep blue of the sky, the tree’s knobby arms. After this trial was over, I might not have much chance to study on such things for a while.
When I sat up again, folks was streaming past us, making a point of not looking in our direction, with one or two exceptions. For example, when Curtis Shrew and Lonnie Matthews ambled by, they paused to have them a little laugh at my expense.
“Why, hey there, Dovey,” Curtis called out. “You looking forward to being a flatlander? They’re going to send you off to that girls detention home in Charlotte when this is all over and done with, that’s for sure.” Lonnie joined him in a big belly laugh at that remark.
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