Car keys jingling in his hand, Kidd straightened up and said, “Well, I reckon we’d better roll if I want to make it back to New Bern before dark. Nice meeting you, Stancil.”
“Same here,” Allen told him. To me he said, “Now don’t you be a stranger, Deb’rah.”
With the dogs and the ornamental corn giving off familiar earthy smells, we drove down the rutted lane to the road and headed back to Dobbs.
“Stancil seems like an interesting guy,” Kidd said.
I made a noncommittal sound.
“Nice of him to come spend some time with his uncle.”
I was wondering about that myself, but all I said was, “Uh-huh.”
Kidd glanced over at me. “Been a long time since you last saw him?”
“Years,” I said.
“So how come you’re still so pissed at him?”
“Marriage’ll do that,” I said.
“Marriage?” he asked blankly. Then it registered, and the van suddenly veered so far into the passing lane that one wheel hit the shoulder and Aunt Zell’s corn went flying. “You were married? To him?”
“What happened to ‘interesting’ and ‘nice guy’?”
He was too steamed to smile. “The whole time we’ve been together and you never found a spare minute to say ‘Oh, by the way, I used to be married to some redneck speed jockey’?”
“I thought we agreed not to talk about past relationships.”
“Relationships, yes, but marriage is more than a one-night stand. Wasn’t I up front about Jean and Amber?”
“You were married for twelve years,” I said. “And you could hardly keep Amber a secret. Sooner or later I was bound to wonder why your spare bedroom’s done up in ruffles and lace.”
Kidd’s fourteen-year-old daughter is very retro-feminine.
“It’s not funny, Ms. Judge. Is there a kid you forgot to mention, too?”
I was starting to get a little steamed myself. “Does it matter?”
“Jesus Christ, Deborah! Of course it matters. I thought we had something open and honest here. I thought—”
Both hands clenched the steering wheel and he drove in moody silence.
This had the makings of Our First Fight and I was bedamned if it was going to be over Allen Stancil.
“Look,” I said, twisting around till I was sitting on my left leg and facing him across the width of the van. “If you really want to know why I don’t talk about it—why I try to not even think about it—it’s because Allen Stancil’s the stupidest thing I ever did in my entire life.”
My internal preacher gave my conscience a jab and I amended, “Well, one of the stupidest, anyhow. Sometimes I still can’t believe I was ever that messed up. My only excuse is that Mother had just died. I was eighteen and a freshman at UNC-G, away from home for the first time. I was mad at God, mad at Daddy, not talking to at least eight of my brothers, even mad at Mother for dying.”
The van suddenly felt hot and stuffy. I cracked the window and took several deep breaths. “Running off to a Martinsville magistrate with Allen seemed like a way of getting some of my own back. Of course, we hadn’t been married twenty minutes when I knew it was a mistake, but by then I was so high on pot and tequila, I didn’t really give a damn.”
I lowered my window all the way and cool wind whipped my hair into tangles.
Kidd reached over and laid his hand on my drawn-up knee. “You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to,” he said gently.
“There’s not much more to tell. About a week after we married, he went and called me Debbie one time too many. I was slicing limes with a rusty old butcher knife and I guess I overreacted. Scared the hell out of me. I got him to the emergency room before he bled to death, and then I just walked out the door and kept walking.”
“Home?”
“No. There were some other girls. Women. Race car groupies,” I said vaguely. “I crashed with them.”
I don’t like to think of that brief period. It had seemed like an eternity when I was living it—terrified that Allen might die, then scared he might live and have me arrested for trying to kill him. I freaked and crawled inside a tequila bottle carrying my saltshaker. To this day I still can’t look a margarita in the eye.
“Dallas was the one who’d given us a ride up to Martinsville and when he heard what happened, he came looking for me and tried to bring me home, only I wasn’t ready to come back and be preached at. I did let him take me on up to my Aunt Barbara’s house in Maryland, and while I was there, Daddy and my cousin John Claude— the one that’s a lawyer over in Dobbs? They had the marriage annulled before half my brothers were even aware I wasn’t still at school. It was over two years before I finally came home, so I doubt if there’s ten people outside my family that know it ever happened.”
“Eleven now,” said Kidd.
I slid across the wide seat and tucked myself under his free arm. “I said outside my family.”
4
« ^ » It is indeed astonishing, how far ignorance, partiality, and prejudice will often carry people.“Scotus Americanus,” 1773
As so often happens, I no sooner meet someone than he appears in my courtroom.
Wednesday morning, the first day of November, I looked up from the papers before me to see young Billy Wall called to the defendant’s table for issuing worthless checks. A very young, very pregnant woman with short brown curls sat on the bench beside him and she gave his arm an encouraging pat as he stood up and came forward.
The prosecuting witness was Curtis Thornton, a cheerful balding man who owned Thornton Tires, a truck and tractor tire service between Dobbs and Cotton Grove. Mr. Thornton is no stranger here. He’s one of those easy-going businessmen who freely extend credit, accept anybody’s check, and then use district court as their collection agency when the check bounces or the debt isn’t paid.
There’s been some talk about changing the setup and requiring such businessmen to hire private collection agencies or pay the court a fee, but until the laws are changed, all I can do is lecture the Thorntons of the world about their trusting natures and order the defendants to make restitution or go to jail.
Thornton took the stand and testified that this was the second time Billy Wall had made payments with a bad check. “Much as I hate to press charges against such a hardworking young man, Your Honor, you know I do have a business to maintain.”
Speaking in his own defense, Billy Wall was clearly embarrassed to be standing before me so soon after we’d met out at Jap Stancil’s pumpkin patch. He’d crammed his Royster fertilizer cap in the hip pocket of his jeans and his knuckles were rawboned as he leaned his hands against the table. He looked so much like one of my nephews as he earnestly explained how he’d gotten a little behind this fall that I couldn’t help feeling sympathetic toward him.
“My truck needed some work and a set of new tires, too, if I’m going to haul corn up to Washington, and then I had to pay my labor cash or they wouldn’t ready the corn. I swear I’ll give him his money soon as I get back next week, but, Judge, I just ain’t got it till then.”
I could have laid a fine on him in addition to court costs and restitution, but it seemed to me that if Mr. Thornton was going to keep on handing out credit so freely, he could just wait another week for the sixteen hundred dollars Billy Wall owed him. “But I don’t want to see you back in here with Mr. Thornton again,” I warned.
“No, ma’am,” he promised. “Thank you, ma’am.”
As he turned away, his young wife stood up to meet him with a relieved smile, and she, too, murmured thanks to me.
I smiled back and handed the judgment papers over to the clerk, then looked expectantly at Tracy Johnson, the assistant district attorney who was prosecuting today’s calendar. She seemed to be in yet another whispered conference between two attorneys. Court’s busy enough without these constant interruptions.
“What’s the holdup, people?” I asked impatiently.
“Sorry, Your
Honor,” said Tracy, without a smidgin of sorrow in her tone as she reached for the next shuck. She’s been an ADA about a year longer than I’ve been on the bench. Tall, blond, knockout gorgeous. Or would be if she’d take off those ugly oversized glasses. She thinks they make her look more professional.
I shifted my gaze to the two attorneys who’d taken advantage of the six-second break that occurs when I sign a judgment and hand the paper over to the recording clerk. Sometimes there are legitimate and urgent reasons for a lawyer to speak with the ADA while court’s in session, but sometimes it’s just a matter of the lawyer’s convenience. Give them too much leeway and they’ll wind up conducting a lot of their business on your time.
“Mr. Whitbread? Mr. Stephenson? Either of you have clients on this morning’s calendar?”
Reid Stephenson’s my own cousin and former law partner and he was too familiar with my testy tone not to say “No, ma’am” and sit himself down, but Edward (“Big Ed”) Whitbread thought he had enough charm to get away with it. He gave me an ingratiating smile as he continued to lean over Tracy’s shoulder. “Your Honor, if I could just—”
“Unless this pertains to the next case, I suggest you speak to Ms. Johnson when we recess,” I said crisply. He probably had business elsewhere and hoped to clear up a small but crucial point with Tracy so he wouldn’t have to wait around till I was ready to recess.
“Sorry, Your Honor.” He lumbered over to squeeze his ample backside in between Reid and another colleague on the attorneys’ bench.
“Call your next case, Ms. Johnson.”
The next thirty-five minutes moved briskly as we disposed of some more guilty pleas. Pimply-faced black and white kids of both sexes stood penitently before my bench, nervous that they were about to lose their driver’s licenses before they’d even worn the new off. Unless they’ve done something really stupid like passing a stopped school bus, roaring through a residential section, or deliberately running a red light, I usually enter a prayer for judgment continued so that they don’t get points against their insurance or licenses.
At ten-thirty, a grandmotherly white woman came forward with a timid air. She didn’t look like a leadfoot even though she was charged with doing 57 in a 45 mph zone. Probably hadn’t noticed when a 55 zone changed to a 45.
“How do you plead?” I asked.
She hesitated nervously and seemed to be on the edge of blank panic.
I leaned forward and spoke as gently as I could. “Guilty or not guilty, ma’am?”
“Guilty,” she blurted. “But I’d sure appreciate it if you could offer up a prayer for my redemption?”
The attorneys and law officials seated on the side benches burst into laughter and I couldn’t stop my own lips from twitching as I said, “You haven’t been with us before, have you, ma’am?”
Bewildered, she shook her head.
I explained what a prayer of judgment was (basically a suspended sentence—the temporal equivalent of “go in peace and sin no more”), entered hers, then announced a fifteen-minute recess.
Three lawyers swarmed toward Tracy.
As I stepped through the courtroom door and out into the corridor, I, too, was waylaid by people who wanted my signature on various documents. I signed a search warrant, a couple of show causes, and a temporary restraining order against a well-known merchant here in Dobbs who always treats his wife with old-fashioned courtesy. At least, that’s how he always treats her in public. According to her attorney, he’d broken her nose last night. For the second time in two years.
I haven’t been on the bench long enough not to still be surprised by the violence that can rage behind a lovely facade of heirloom silver and Queen Anne mahogany.
Eventually I made it to the rest room off the small office assigned to me this week, and when I emerged, I found Merrilee Yadkin Grimes clicking up and down in turquoise high heels in front of the bare desk. She’s a Clairol auburn, a perfect size four body inside that turquoise suit, and five or six years older than me.
(“Than I,” comes Aunt Zell’s voice in my head. Aunt Zell fights a losing battle with my grammar.)
“Hey, Merrilee, what’s up?” I asked. Dallas’s cousin works in Raleigh, a middle manager of something with the Department of Transportation, and would normally be in her own office on a Monday morning.
“It’s not what’s up, but what’s out,” she said, her little Yadkin eyes flashing.
I suddenly remembered that today was finally supposed to be the probable-cause hearing for Cherry Lou Stancil and Tig Wentworth.
The wheels of justice turn slowly in a death penalty case, which was what Douglas Woodall, our district attorney, said he was going for. It had been set back twice now. First, Doug was waiting for results from the SBI lab, then Cherry Lou’s court-appointed attorney had to argue a case in federal court.
“Don’t tell me Judge Longmire didn’t find probable cause,” I said.
“Oh, they’ve both been charged with first-degree murder all right,” Merrilee said angrily, “but he turned her loose on bail.”
“How’d she raise it? I thought John Claude—”
“Not on the land,” said Merrilee. “On Dallas’s rig. He bought it brand-new three years ago and her lawyer argued that it’s community property till they prove her guilty. And she gets to stay in the house and use Dallas’s bank account till then, too.”
“The law does say innocent till proven guilty, Merrilee.”
“Innocent?” She was outraged. “When everybody in Colleton County knows she bought that shotgun just to kill poor Dallas?”
“Did he set bail for Wentworth?”
“No. Mr. Woodall said he’d made enough threats against Ashley and her brother to be a danger to society and that even if he didn’t kill somebody else, he’d probably try to run off, so they’re going to keep his sorry tail in jail with no bail.”
All those -ail words brought a rueful smile to her lips and made her face look five years younger under its artful makeup.
I glanced at my watch. I’d been out of the courtroom nine minutes and I still didn’t have my cup of coffee. Interesting as all this was, I could probably hear the rest of the details over lunch with Roger Longmire.
“I’m sorry, Merrilee,” I said, “but if you’re wanting me to do something about Cherry Lou’s bail—”
“No, no, it’s not that. What I really stopped by for was to see if there’s some way to put a stop on Uncle Jap’s bank account. Maybe get them to give me his power of attorney or whatever you call it before all his money’s gone?”
For a moment I wondered where Jap Stancil got enough cash money for Merrilee to worry about. Then I remembered the ornamental corn and how his share was probably going to bring him five or six thousand.
“Oh yes. I saw him with the Wall boy a couple of weeks ago. He sounded pretty cogent to me about their business deal.”
“I don’t mean Billy Wall even if Uncle Jap hasn’t seen a penny of the sales yet. The way he’s carrying on though, it’s just as well. Every penny’d be right down the drain.”
“Don’t tell me he’s started drinking again? I thought he swore off for good at the funeral.”
Jasper Stancil had pulled some monumental drunks in his day, but Daddy said he’d already tapered off even before Dallas was killed.
“Allen’s got him started again,” said Merrilee with returning anger. “You know Allen Stancil, don’t you? Uncle Jap’s brother’s boy?”
She paused and I could almost see her mind grasp at the tendrils of old gossip. “In fact, didn’t you date him or something once?”
“Water over the dam,” I said hastily. “What’s he done now?”
“I thought he was just here for a sympathy visit, but he’s settled into Uncle Jap’s spare room like he’s here to stay. He’s got Uncle Jap drinking, got him fixing up that old repair shop, got him thinking he’s forty again. Petey and I stopped by last week on the way to church to take Uncle Jap a plate of my fresh ham and swee
t potatoes. Half the time he forgets to eat. I signed him up for meals-on-wheels so he’d get lunch through the week, but I like to make sure he eats on the weekend, too. I thought sure Allen would have gone by now, but there he was, cleaning out that garage—on Sunday, too!—like he owned the place. He’s just as sorry as he ever was and I wish there was some way to get him to leave before he drags other people down with him.”
High heels clicking on the bare tiles, Merrilee was back pacing again.
It didn’t take me but a moment to understand the real reason for her agitation. Like Allen and Dallas, Pete Grimes also had a rough, hardscrabble childhood, only there had been no Miss Elsie to mitigate his father’s drunken rages or to comfort him with a mother’s pitying love. Pete’s trashy mother had fought his even trashier father for the last drink in the bottle and it never worried either of them if the kids went off to school hungry, dirty and ragged. They didn’t care if the kids went to school at all, long as they weren’t being pestered by truant officers.
Even though he drank too much and drove too fast and ran with a rough crowd after he grew up, Pete was never as bad as some of those older Grimes boys and he had a gruff charm that convinced Merrilee he was worth saving. Must be something in their blood that makes Yadkin women such redemptionists: first Miss Elsie, then Merrilee. On the other hand, there’s a reason why so many country songs tell of wild men tamed by the love of a good woman, and Pete Grimes isn’t the first roughneck to run through a couple of bad marriages before taking happily to a well-ordered life. Such a man appreciates regular meals, a tidy house, and a woman who can lead him to Jesus.
In fact, Pete thinks Merrilee’s a saint for loving him and he’ll tell anybody who’ll listen how grateful he is to her. “She raised me up,” he says. “I’d be in jail or dead by now if it wasn’t for her.”
But Merrilee lives in fear that Pete might backslide and she tries to keep him away from bad influences like Allen.
“And now Uncle Jap’s saying he’s going to hire Charlie Holt to come fix that old hydraulic lift like he’s got half the wealth of the world and he doesn’t, Deb’rah. Except for a little bitty Social Security check, all he has is his corn money and what he picks up selling pumpkins and turnip salad at the flea market. But Allen’s going to use him just like he uses everybody and what’s poor old Uncle Jap going to do if he has to go in a nursing home or something? Last time he got to drinking so bad, the doctor said his liver couldn’t hold out much longer.”
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