“Three months,” he says, beaming at his bride. The kid calls him Dad, and Chet and Wynona look as if they have been married forever. Everyone seems happy. How can they stand it? The Lord’s will? I suppose if you believe it’s all for a purpose, you can endure anything, although I can’t quite buy that.
As Wynona clears the table and does the dishes with Trey, we take our dessert and coffee and adjourn to the square, lodge like room to sit in front of the huge fire place and continue our discussion of the case. Chet gets a fire going easily, and yet it is obvious that he is tired and is not able to concentrate as I ask him questions about the case. Talk to Leigh tomorrow is his only ad vice. I drive home wondering if the only reason I was invited out to dinner was to have his kid browbeat me into going to church. Bracken is preparing for the next world; I’ve still got to live in this one.
As I drive I am thinking how hard it is to know an other person. Chet Bracken the lawyer is one hundred and eighty degrees opposite from Chet Bracken the man. He was positively docile tonight. Was it the cancer Clearly, he was exhausted. After dinner it was as if he were waiting for me to take charge. Perhaps that’s what he really wants but is too proud to say it. Yet nobody was too proud to put me on the spot about religion. My skin crawls as I remember the kid’s face. Are you saved? And they let him get away with it! Why am I reacting so strongly to this incident? It seems a matter of bad taste. Almost a matter of class differences.
It hits me that I am reacting as my mother probably would have. Nice people don’t get in your face like that. It wasn’t as if she were the Queen of England, but for the first time in a long while I remember that she and my father, before he went crazy, considered them selves and their friends far above the ordinary residents of Bear Creek. Her father had been a doctor, and she saw herself as a member of the eastern Arkansas aristocracy, with its disdain for emotional outbursts and theatrics of any kind. This wasn’t so bad, actually. She and her friends weren’t taken in by the demagoguery of Orval Faubus, who, as governor, on the pretext of preventing violence incited the state to wage a guerrilla war against school desegregation. How much of my mother’s sense of who she was would have rubbed off on me if Daddy hadn’t gone nuts and become a source of embarrassment? Yet perhaps tonight I saw vestiges of her emotional fastidiousness in my reaction to Trey. I know nothing of Chet’s background, but in any case, he is way beyond a feeling of distaste for what is socially and aesthetically incorrect. Death, or the fear of it, I realize as I hit the outskirts of town, will do that to you.
“it’s all a crock,” Dan Bailey says cheerfully, “and you know it.”
Dan, who became my best friend almost immediately after I moved into the Layman Building nine months ago, is obese, obscene, and remarkably immature. He stands at the window of my office, dreamily staring at the women in the Adcock Building across the street.
Separated from us by the width of the avenue and the illusions of youth and middle age, they deliberately tease us, coming to the window and sticking their tongues out at Dan when he won’t go away. I push Leigh’s file into my briefcase.
“If you’d seen Bracken’s face at the dinner table,” I say, “you might not think so.”
“Acceptance, the final stage,” Dan says, literally pressing his nose against the glass as he ogles my neighbors.
“More power to him. If there is a God, Bracken ought to be punished for all the murderers and dope dealers he’s gotten off.”
I pull a yellow pad from a drawer and shove it into the case. The valise is bulging, like Dan. His neck, crammed into a too tight shirt collar, seems about to explode.
“There’s an inner peace about the entire family,” I say.
“Even Rainey.”
Dan sticks out his tongue in the direction of the Adcock Building, a sign that he’s been made to understand his staring is not appreciated. I come around my desk to see what’s going on. A blonde in a tight sweater closes the blinds. I’ll probably be arrested for sexual harassment, and I barely saw her.
“The mountaintop experience,” Dan sighs.
“It never lasts. Highs never do.
Physics 101. What goes up eventually sinks like a lead balloon. They’re able to sustain it longer because of the group. New people coming in keep the fires burning for everybody, but eventually they will go out. We all return to our evil ways, sooner or later.” Smiling happily at the memory, Dan cackles, “You should have seen that blonde’s chest. Just before you got over here she turned sideways to the window just so I could check her out.
Julia looks like she got a couple of marbles put in compared to her.”
I stand by Dan and look down at the street. Deserted.
Everyone is inside pretending to be working.
“You don’t even believe there’s a God behind the Big Bang?”
Dan bumps his swollen stomach against the window ledge.
“What we don’t understand we call God. That’s why you don’t ever read about preachers filing for patents.”
Dan’s zinc gingham broadcloth shirt has a grease stain on it. Probably from the croissant he carried into my office. By his own admission, he drives his rich society wife crazy. According to Dan, Brenda, by her choice of a totally unsuitable marriage partner (himself), proves irrefutably the perverseness of the human species.
Accustomed to his logic, I cross my office and flip the light switch. Dan will stay and talk forever if I let him.
“I don’t read about many lawyers filing for patents either.”
“A complete lack of imagination is our only redeeming virtue,” he says, silhouetted against the window. He is beginning to develop the profile of Alfred Hitchcock, double chin and all.
“We’re totally opposed to progress, creativity, and ingenuity. Once the human vocal cord was developed, unborn lawyers everywhere rejoiced, knowing the species had no further need to evolve.”
I laugh, knowing that Dan, down deep, is one of the good guys, his cynicism a defense mechanism to deal with the chaos closing in around him. A man who has put up with as many divorce cases as he has can’t be all bad. Brenda complains because they call him all night and on the weekends, In the office his patience is legendary, money no object. What could be worse than the pain of divorce? he asks, when I kid him about how many women are stacked up in the waiting room. The only bad thing about women, he says, is that they persist in marrying men. Nothing is more damaging to their self-esteem. My phone buzzes, and it is Julia with a message for Dan. I listen and sigh.
“She says,” I say to Dan, “tell Butterball it’s Mr. Tatum again. His landlord has cut off his electricity, and he’s having an asthma attack.”
Dan looks at me in horror.
“Will you let me take it here?” he asks, reaching for the phone.
“It’s the second time that son of a bitch has done this. By the time I get to my office, he might have hung up. The poor guy’s on SSI, and every time he gets behind on his rent, he gets his heat turned off.”
“Sure,” I say, handing the telephone to him.
“I was just leaving.” I pick up my briefcase, leaving Dan to tilt at another windmill. Arkansas has, Dan tells me, (he worst landlord-tenant laws in the nation and the distinction of being the only state in the country literally to criminalize the nonpayment of rent. Charles Dickens would have loved us, Dan has said on more than one occasion after cataloging our situation. In addition to the “criminal eviction law,” Blackwell County has other delights for debtors—hot-check laws whose enforcement turns our overcrowded jails into debtors’ prisons, a recent law that allows landlords to consider tenants’ property abandoned and subject to seizure after nonpayment of rent, and now we are practically the only state that does not recognize either judicially or by statute an implied warranty < habitability in rental property.
“Nineteenth century Hell, we’re talking feudalism, boy!” Dan cackles woefully about once a week.
Christian Life is not a collection of buildings; it is like
one of those new towns that seems to have been created all at once. The flowers, trees, and buildings all look freshly put down. I pull in behind chet’s Mercedes in front of a two-story brick house whose trim is newly painted. Given its location (western Blackwell County, naturally), the mortgage on this property probably exceeds the national budget of some small countries.
“Shades of Jim and Tammy Bakker,” I say under my breath, noticing the exquisitely cared for lawn of Christian Life’s senior minister, Shane Norman, who presumably lives here rent free with his wife, Pearl. For all I know, however, they own the entire property outright and charge the congregation rent on the acres of parking that we passed on the way in. Ironically enough, given its self-proclaimed Biblical literalism, from the outside the church itself looks like a Greek temple, surrounded as it is by columns vaguely reminiscent of pictures of the Parthenon. With all the starvation and suffering in the world, how do churches justify their wealth? Wasn’t Jesus poor? One of the church columns alone has enough marble in it to pay for a well in Somalia. The Vatican could sell its art collection and probably provide housing for a small country with the proceeds.
The trouble with people who have money and power is that you are always expected to kiss their asses if you want any of it. Obviously, it pisses me off that I have had to drive out here. What in the hell is Leigh Wallace’s problem that she can’t make it down to chet’s office? Talk about kissing ass. And totally unlike Chet An old story about him is that if he doesn’t like a judge, he won’t even nod to him or her outside the courtroom. Shane Norman must have really done a number on him. I’m not sure why I’m feeling so superior I’d probably be groveling too, if I were in Chet’s shoes and measuring time in perhaps weeks instead of years. The plan is for him to introduce me and then say he has to go to court.
Why he thinks I’ll be able to induce her to talk is be yond me, but it’s his money and his case. Unlike her father, Leigh may not accept Chet’s eleventh-hour conversion and therefore may not be able to bring her self to trust him as her attorney. She didn’t hire him;
her father did. Norman may think Chet can steam roll her through to an acquittal when all she wants to do is plead guilty and throw herself on the mercy of the court. Representing children is a tricky business. It is easy to forget who the client is if you are getting the check from the parent. At least one thing is for certain:
children are the same everywhere. Leigh Wallace may not like who her father has hired as her lawyer, but it hasn’t kept her from moving back in with her parents According to Chet, she moved home two days after the murder.
As I meet our client, I think to myself that there are a few women (Michelle Pfeiffer in Frankie and Johnny comes to mind) who always look good under any circumstances. I suspect Leigh Wallace may be one of these women. Still, she has altered her appearance from the day of her husband’s death. If I correctly recall her picture in the paper the day of her arrest, she had shoulder-length hair, was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and looked ravishing. Today her body is concealed by a long turquoise-and-beige Mexicanlooking dress, her dark, glossy hair piled up on her head like some diva’s. She looks spectacular but seems a de cade older than her twenty-three years and a hell of a lot more sophisticated than I expected.
Chet wastes no time in making his getaway, and she and I are left alone like a mismatched couple on a blind date. I look around the living room and barely restrain myself from gawking. Somehow, I had expected the walls of the home of a fundamentalist minister to be decorated with religious art of the Jesus-flying-off-on-a-cloud variety. Though I am hardly a connoisseur of interior design, even I have an inkling of the quality of the wall hangings, tapestries, sculptures, and paintings that are on display in the living room. Most, if not all, have something of the foreign or exotic about them. My eyes come to rest upon an oil painting of a scene I recognize from my Peace Corps days in Colombia a famous Spanish fort in Cartagena that is a mandatory stop for sightseers.
“Gifts to my father,” my hostess says in response to my poorly disguised amazement.
“Symbols of gratitude from his mission trips on which he takes Christian Life families to work for the poor.”
“Have you ever gone with him?” I ask, letting my eyes move to her face, thinking they didn’t come from the poor. She is perfectly made up and exudes a fragrance that suggests rose petals. Is this for me or for herself? Chet hasn’t prepared me for her at all. I expected her perhaps to be subdued, but there is some thing standoffish in her manner. Usually, criminal defendants want instant reassurance you can help them, whereas Leigh Wallace seems as if she could care less.
“Every year for the past five,” she says, walking ahead of me into a formal dining room, “until this one.”
A massive mahogany table whose wood is nearly obscured by a Spanish lace cloth dominates the room, and I find myself wanting to touch the shiny surface. It is as if she is a tour guide who is answering the same questions for the millionth time in a well-rehearsed, detached voice.
I look in vain for pictures of her father perhaps exhorting the faithful from the pulpit or mixing cement for the masses in a foreign land, but there is not even a snapshot of a family dog.
“Would you care for some coffee or something to drink, Mr. Page?” she asks, stroking the lace with her fingers. Though she has on a ring, an opal, I spy no wedding band. A silver bracelet adorns her wrist. Her red fingernails are perfectly manicured Hardly the weeds of a grieving widow and certainly not the getup I had pictured of the daughter of a Bible-toting Jesus freak. In fact, Leigh’s dark, dramatic features remind me of nothing so much as those of a well-to-do, haughty Colombian beauty. Even shop girls dressed to the teeth in the larger cities on the northern coast, and the ones who could afford it decked themselves out in a way that eclipsed their paler American counterparts. Though I am not particularly thirsty or in need of further stimulation this windy March afternoon, perhaps we could use something to break the ice.
“Coffee would be great,” I tell her and follow her into the kitchen, which gleams with copper pots and pans hanging from the walls like foreign artifacts.
The perfect hostess, she gives me a steaming cup of dark roasted coffee and offers me a piece of German chocolate cake. Accepting both, I make myself at home at her kitchen table. Sitting across from me, sipping at a glass of water, she asks, “Are you a Christian, Mr. Page?”
I suppress a sigh, remembering my earlier thought that she might mistrust Chet because of his Johnnycome-lately attitude toward fundamentalist Christianity.
Fearful that the answer to this question guards the gate to a genuine conversation about the case, I push aside my desire to question its relevance.
“Does Catholicism count?” I ask lightly, hoping to avoid an inquisition.
“There are Catholics,” she says, “and there are Catholics
“That’s true,” I admit, surprised she would know. I suspect it is not the Pope who bothers her but the accommodation made by any modern-day Christian to harmonize faith and science. Ever since Galileo looked through his telescope, the battle has been joined. My latest evidence of the fight, laughably sketchy, since I don’t have anything to do with the church, comes from the popular press. Shamelessly summarizing years of scholarship mainly by European Catholic Biblical scholars, an article I read some time ago in The Atlantic on the historical Jesus put the matter bluntly: the four gospels in the New Testament are best understood as a collection of interwoven faith documents which put a particular theological spin on early Christianity (St.
John, for example, was influenced by Greek philosophy). As accounts of the life of Jesus, according to the article, they contain very little history.
“Either you accept the entire Bible as the written word of God or you don’t,” she says flatly, her eyes fierce.
I wonder if poor Chet is cutting the mustard as a con vert. The hypocrisy of people never fails to amaze me.
Now that this Miss Ice Bitch is back home, she’s holi
er than the Pope. It hasn’t been very long since she was doing some serious backsliding of her own. According to the file, she had practically dropped out of the church by the time of the murder. I swallow a mouthful of moist cake to keep from saying that I’d rather be inter viewing a boa constrictor. Get a grip, I tell myself. Murderers aren’t usually Miss Congeniality material.
Actually, behind this frosty facade, she may be scared to death, and that accounts for her snottiness. I decide to kill her, if not with kindness, at least with my own hypocrisy.
“It looks like events are conspiring,” I say in my friendliest voice, “to get me to see what Christian Life is all about.” Briefly, I tell her about Rainey’s apparent conversion and my conversation with Chet’s stepson. I conclude by saying, “I’ll be there Sunday.”
Leigh Wallace’s face softens a bit. Stories about women and children get women and children every time.
“Don’t expect to get everything from the Sunday service,” she warns.
“The place where you change is in your family, if you choose to participate.”
“That’s what Rainey says,” I gladly acknowledge.
“Can I ask you something about it?” I ask, feeling at last that the bait is set.
“What bothers me about religion is that it seems like a feast-or-famine proposition. For example, Mr. Bracken says that after you were married your participation at Christian Life dropped way off. It seems like people get excited about Christianity and then drift away from it. Is that what happened to you?”
For a moment she does not speak, as if I have asked a profound question that demands reflection.
“There really is such a thing as evil in the world,” she says, without smiling.
If she weren’t so serious, I’d have to laugh. It’s not that I disagree, but the evil I know comes in human form. Her tone makes it clear that it might not be a bad idea to check under the beds when I get home tonight.
Peeling as if I were auditioning for a part in a soap opera, I ask, “Was your husband a part of that evil?”
Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction Page 6