by Martin Clark
“You don’t think that dealing with life, whether people live or die, whether they’re incarcerated or free, whether they’re married or divorced, you don’t think any of that’s relevant and exciting? I guess it’s not up there with smoking dope and going to the lab and watching rats run through a maze, but it’s still not boring. And I’ve never really complained about law school itself; I’ve told you why I’ve been a little bit uncomfortable recently, and it has nothing to do with my like or dislike of the law. And one more thing. All your whining about making our own money, all your petty perspectives about being self-fulfilled, all that shit you pick up at the women’s center from the assorted hirsute lesbians down there, all your talk—and you’ve never had a real job. You’ve never made one cent. But Mr. Massengill here had job offers all over the country. I can get a job. I can make money. Can you?”
“You can make money at a boring job. I could do the same. That’s my only point, Evers. And I’m sure, of course, that you’ll be getting a lot of life-and-death cases in Norton. Like cow theft and farmers sodomizing sheep. Really big stuff.”
“It’s still a living.”
“You’re a sexist, too. Sometimes you are from the depths. A blind fish. A squid.”
“So how come sumo wrestlers shave their legs?” Evers asked.
“What?”
“Why do sumo wrestlers shave their legs?” he said again.
“Why?”
“So they won’t be confused with feminists.”
“Nice sixth-grade mentality, Evers.”
“Get a sense of humor, dear.” He sat up in the bed. “You know, something else that you haven’t mentioned or thought about … I don’t want to move too far away from my brother. Pascal’s pretty close to Norton.”
“The prince of white trash?”
“Jo Miller—”
“I’m sorry. I like your brother. I do. He’s bright and handsome and carefree. I shouldn’t have said that about him just because you’re being a prick.”
“I’m not being a prick.”
“Well, you do what you want to do. You’re making a huge, monstrous, terrible decision. You’re going to suck the marrow and patience and affection out of us. I do not want to go to this place. I do not want to go.”
Jo Miller got her wish, at least partially. She never lived in Norton, North Carolina. Evers did, though, lived there by himself in an apartment above the Coin-O-Matic laundry, and drove more than eighty miles on the weekends to be with his wife. She came to Norton only twice, the first time to help Evers move books and boxes and clothes into his five rooms above the Laundromat, and the second to witness her husband’s swearing-in ceremony at the Hite Mountain County Courthouse. Jo Miller stayed in Durham on a small farm, where she acquired a cat, a supply of Kahlúa, a bottle of bubble bath, a Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and a pair of black riding boots. She worked as an assistant for Professor (Dr.) Hirsch Brockman in the psychology department at Duke. Brockman had hired her on a part-time basis during Evers’ final year of law school and gave her a full-time position just after Evers left Durham. Evers worried that she was having an affair with this “fascinating man,” or, at any rate, that a tryst was imminent. Evers was jealous. He considered Brockman an unemployable, pipe-smoking fraud.
In the months following their separation, Jo Miller would talk about her job and Brockman and the projects she was working on, and Evers would talk about radar guns, drunks in public and knife fights. There was soon an eroding of their common interests and, in inverse proportion, an increase in their sex. Because they really did try to care about each other, Evers and Jo Miller’s sex became more frequent, sustained and important. Evers wanted to keep them together; their union, the idea of their being and remaining joined, was important to him, and sex is a very good adhesive when there isn’t enough time or will to sit in the kitchen after work and sort through all of the small, stubborn marital knots and problems. Orgasm obviates.
“Sex conquers everything,” Evers would say before he and Jo Miller fell asleep on clean sheets at the Durham farm. “Sex conquers everything. Wouldn’t that be an interesting addition to the children’s game, the one where you have scissors and rocks and dynamite and paper and you make signs with your hand to represent each one and certain signs prevail over others? You ever play that game?”
“Yes, I did. Scissors cut off the dynamite fuse, but a rock crushed the scissors.”
“And paper covered the rock.”
“But it wouldn’t work if you had sex and nothing conquers sex.”
“That’s true, I guess.” Evers actually thought about the implications for a moment. “And what would the sex sign be anyway?”
“I’m not happy about all of this, Evers, you not living with me, and me not living with you. We’re like two-sevenths married or something.”
“It could be better, I guess. But don’t dare do anything that you don’t want to do.”
“I don’t even know the things I don’t want to do. And don’t be sarcastic. It comes out more as a whine than a bite with you. You’re so rigid, so distant sometimes.”
“So why do sumo wrestlers shave their legs?” This had become Evers’ favorite interjection over the years.
Jo Miller smiled, just a little. “We need to do something about this.”
“It’s so weird how things happen. You get married and it’s all just fun and new and sex, drinking and just hanging out, and now we’ve got all these problems. Complications really complicate things.”
Evers came to hate Norton.
This is not to say that he disliked the town when he first got there; in fact, for several years he enjoyed himself and his new job a great deal, despite occasional fits of self-doubt and ceiling-staring. Evers continued to worry about his “alikeness,” but more and more, like scores of other small-town men, he began to smile and end conversations with the four-syllable defense that “it’s not so bad.” He enjoyed the one meat, three vegetable meals at the Owl Diner, he enjoyed his metal mailbox with the red flag, and he enjoyed selling brooms door to door for the Rotary Club. He enjoyed Norton for some time. And then—snap—months of sentiment were transformed in seconds. Jo Miller had been right.
Harry Truman Moran was a deputy sheriff in Norton. H. T. was pure stereotype: he had carved out, with no more than a straight razor, steady hand and shaving bar, a continuous facial hair network of two triangular sideburns which were connected to a turn-of-the-century mustache by a narrow, hairy isthmus on each cheek. H. T. drove a red El Camino equipped with white-letter tires, wore zip-up, pointed, synthetic white boots—even while on duty—and owned a tiepin shaped like a miniature pair of handcuffs. He would take the tiepin off and tap it on the witness stand when he was testifying in court. Harry Truman Moran thought that Judge Evers Wheeling was a minor deity. H. T. was absolutely loyal to Evers.
This fidelity was no small asset. Because of the lie-detector tests, H. T. was a valuable ally for Evers, a regular Lafayette. The lie-detector scenario went something like this: H. T. would arrest some local for disorderly conduct at a fiddlers’ convention or for a drunk in public violation at the county fair or, as was more often the case, for a bogus breaking-and-entering charge just as the suspect was preparing to eat dinner. The person in custody would invariably deny any wrongdoing and usually was telling Officer Moran the truth when he professed his innocence. Nevertheless, H. T. would take the suspect to the Norton jail and hold him in the interrogation room, all the while demanding a confession. Evers once asked H. T. if he’d ever heard of Miranda v. Arizona. H. T. suggested that since that case was decided in 1966, and 1966 had come and gone, the case didn’t apply any longer.
Upon failing to obtain a confession, H. T. would ask the suspect to take a lie-detector test. In his experience, crooks and hoodlums always thought they could beat these tests, and innocent people were anxious to take the test so as to escape his bullying and braying and bad teeth. Consequently, just about everyone whom H. T. decided to a
pprehend—guilty, innocent or in between—was subjected to his examination. He would escort his prey from the interrogation room into another, darker cubicle, tape a collection of wires to the poor fool and fit some kind of hat over his head, then ask a question. “You was the one that helped shoot President Kennedy, weren’t you?” The suspect would answer, and Harry Truman would push a button on the machine’s controls and out would come a large sheet with the word LIE printed on it.
The object of all this forensic magic, usually some plant worker or farmer who was afraid of the cordless microphone on The Old-Time Gospel Hour, would, as H. T. put it, “lose his shit.” Evers had actually watched H. T. putting someone through these paces; the poor man really did become unnerved. H. T. would then say something along the lines of, “Well, if you ain’t lyin’ about the question I just asked you, then there must be something what’s not true inside you. Says right here that you’re a lyin’.”
The witless questionee had no idea he was connected to an office copy machine with a metal colander resting on his head. H. T. kept the room lights low and stood behind a sound board which had been illegally seized from a high-school band at a keg party. When the sound board came on, it was full of red and green lights, and H. T. would turn dials and slide levers and push buttons. An eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper with the word LIE written on it was waiting in the copy machine, and H. T. would ask a question and then punch a button on the sound board. The button was wired to start the copier, and the copier always gave H. T. the same response. This proved to be a useful tool: rather than risk involvement in a presidential assassination or the burglary of Fort Knox, people would volunteer information about affairs, gambling debts, old grudges, stolen livestock, illegally manufactured liquor, or the locations of growing marijuana plants.
It was Harry Truman Moran’s revelation that caused Evers to become unhappy in Norton, and the bruit came on cat’s feet, early in the morning when Evers was reading the newspaper at his desk and thinking about where he was going to eat breakfast. He’d returned from his brother’s the night before and gone to bed early, around nine-fifteen. He had left the albino tears on Pascal’s porch for most of the weekend, until the ice in the cooler began to melt and Pascal put the sandwich bag and plastic top in his freezer. Evers had tried to call Jo Miller from his brother’s, and again when he got back to Norton, but she didn’t answer the phone. He knew he had a mess on his hands with his wife.
Harry Truman walked into Evers’ office and asked if he recalled a local farmer, a man named Hobart Falstaf. Evers knew Falstaf; he remembered him because Falstaf had been before Evers in court, once for a charge of careless and reckless driving, and once as a character witness for a neighbor accused of larceny. Evers remembered Falstaf because of the man’s hair. It was thick, rich, black hair, combed straight back. It had just a little wave, near the front, and Evers wondered why God had wasted such a fine head of hair on Hobart Falstaf, who probably would never think about what a blessing he possessed.
Evers remembered dismissing the driving charge against Falstaf because he liked the man’s hair and because he liked Falstaf’s looks—handsome but not pretty, very rural and straightforward. He was particularly fascinated by the fact Falstaf’s hair glistened—it glistened at nine-thirty when court opened, and it glistened at noon when he stood up from the defendant’s table to leave. But it wasn’t wet or dirty or oily; it glistened, like a snake’s skin, dry and shiny wet. Hobart Falstaf had snake hair and wore Red Camel work pants, and Evers incensed the state trooper who’d made the arrest because he didn’t convict Falstaf. This is what Evers remembered when H. T. Moran asked if the name was familiar.
“Why, H. T.?” It was a Monday morning, and Evers knew, of course, exactly why H. T. was asking. H. T. ran the copy machine on Friday and Saturday nights, then reported any results of interest to Evers and the sheriff on Monday mornings. Evers enjoyed these visits and looked forward to them.
“You know him, Judge?”
“Careless and reckless driving. Black hair, pulled back.” Evers laid his paper down. “Seemed kind of quiet, fairly well spoken. Was a character witness once, too. What about him?”
H. T. took off the tiepin and began tapping it on the front of Evers’ desk. The desk was wooden. “I hate to be the one telling you this, Judge. Shit. God. I’m doin’ it ’cause, well, ’cause you and me is friends and because I’ve got a duty to you as judge.”
Evers could see he was agitated. “So tell me, H. T. I know you’re my friend, and that you’re trying to do what’s right. Don’t worry about it.”
H. T. wasn’t listening to Evers. He continued tapping the wood and looked down at the floor. “I didn’t sleep a lick wonderin’ if I should tell you this. I found out nearly four weeks ago. Didn’t want to do nothin’ or say nothin’ till I done checked it out real good. Seen things for myself.”
“Seen what?”
“Falstaf’s datin’ your wife.”
“What?”
“He’s been datin’ your wife.”
“Dating?” Evers looked at H. T.
“In a motel.”
Evers laughed. “Her boss, maybe. Or some sensitive sort with a beard and good lines about wines and Barcelona and Vermeer. But not a farmer with greasy fingernails. She’s never been here but twice, Harry. I trust you, my friend, but I think you’re off base here. And I see her on the weekends, and talk to her on the phone during the week.” He laughed again. He laughed because H. T. seemed both worried and earnest, like a puppy who had pissed on the floor while its master was fumbling with the door. “Don’t worry. Really.”
“But it’s true, Judge. I know it’s plumb hard to swallow, but it’s true. I reckon it’s hard to believe what with you bein’ a judge and so smart and all, but I got it out of him on the lie-detector test. They date at the Iron Duke Motor Inn—it’s right outside Hillsboro, about halfway between here and Durham.”
“And you’ve checked this all out?”
“Usual procedure. Had the suspect in custody on breakin’ an’ enterin’. I asked him a question, told him he was lyin’ and that there must be some powerful untruth in his system. So then he up and told me that he’d been seein’ your wife. Kinda smiled when he said it. I put my gun to that fucker’s head and I said to him, ‘You’ve done slandered upon a fine woman and man, and I’m goin’ to get you a phone and let you call the judge’s wife and prove to me you ain’t lyin’, or I’m gonna shoot you right in the side of the head.’ I was figurin’ he might just be smartin’ off, so I wanted to test him.”
“And?”
“I got him a phone and he called a number in Durham—he knowed it by heart—and he talked to this lady, Jo Miller, your wife. Here’s the number what he dialed. It’s her number. Anyhow, when he called, she knowed him and all but said she couldn’t talk and to call her back. I reckoned that you was right there when he called. So I watched him after that, and on the next Monday she met him at this motel. I got some pictures of ’em. I mean, you know, pictures of ’em goin’ in and then leavin’. Ain’t got none from the inside. Damn if I ain’t sorry about this.”
Evers believed H. T. now. He remembered the telephone call, and he remembered Jo Miller’s tone on the phone. “Just one of Brockman’s students.” Evers felt drained … practically instantaneously, he began to despair…. “Let’s see the pictures. How did they meet?”
“I made a report for you to read.”
“You read it to me.” Evers’ secretary buzzed him on the phone. He ignored her, and she poked her head into his office. “Mr. Blake in the clerk’s office—”
“Fuck it, and do not bother me until I tell you to, understand? Go away and do not come back in here.”
“But it’s—” She saw Evers’ glare and didn’t finish her sentence. She pulled her head back and shut the door.
H. T. was reaching into his pseudosuede briefcase. “Read it to me, Harry. Read it.” Evers stopped talking and thought for a moment. “There’s no orde
r after a certain time in your life, is there, H. T.? Everything gets to be random. Canadian air masses are random. Drawings are random. The Virginia lottery is random. My wife is random. Justice is random. I let him go—random. Goddamn it. Goddamn it, Jo Miller.”
Evers bit his lip and pressed his temples with the bottoms of his palms. It occurred to him that the largest, most hideous things, unexpected and wicked things, take only seconds and a few words and breaths to get completely into you and sour your blood; gargoyles, cancers and betrayals pour into you in no time at all, like water filling a bottle. Evers felt angry and ruined. He slid down in his chair, closed his eyes … and he saw a hand, strong and larger than life, pull a piece of dripping, bloody bone from out of his back, and he just stopped moving, paralyzed, seized and broken.
“I agree, sir. Things get all mixed up.” Harry Truman Moran always agreed with Evers. “You okay, Judge?”
“I guess I just took a lot for granted,” Evers said, ignoring H. T.’s concern. “It’s been a bunch of years, her down there, I’m here. You just get used to things….” Evers’ voice trailed off. It was hard for him to talk. “And, I mean, you know, I knew this was coming, just … just … not like this.”
“You know, Judge, the way ol’ Falstaf acted, he knowed the machine was a trick. He ain’t dumb. I guess he told just to be spiteful.”
Two days later, Evers was sitting outside the Iron Duke Motor Inn in H. T.’s El Camino (the “El Demeano,” Evers called it), both of them smoking cigarettes and listening to a John Boy and Billy Big Show cassette entitled Rocket Science. H. T. collected comedy recordings—Jerry Clower, Redd Fox, George Carlin—and he had been listening to one after another since they left Norton, repeating the punch lines, rewinding his favorite bits and chortling and slapping the steering wheel whenever someone worked in a little profanity at the end of a joke. They waited at the rear of the motel for about an hour, smoking and listening to comedians, watching cars drive into the parking lot and staring at the people inside them. Evers felt his stomach squeeze and turn when he saw his wife’s profile through the window of Falstaf’s car, a blue Cadillac. Falstaf drove the car into a space in front of one of the rooms and turned out the lights before the car completely stopped. Coasting into darkness. Evers saw his wife touch her eyelashes with her thumb and finger. She was always doing that, fooling with her lashes.