Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  “You could recall me, so I could disabuse them of that idea.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.” Coop’s fingers slid into my hair, began to massage my scalp. “Oh, God. I ought to pay you for this.”

  “Nah. It’s one of the perks of sleeping with me to secure my testimony.”

  “Well, then. It’s worth it.” I tipped my head back and smiled. “Hi,” I whispered.

  He leaned forward to kiss me upside down. “Hi.”

  His mouth moved over mine, awkward at this angle, so that I found myself twisting around and kneeling on the chair to fit myself into Coop’s arms. After a moment, he broke away from me and touched his forehead to mine. “How’s our kid?”

  “Splendid,” I said, but my grin faltered.

  “What?”

  “I wish Katie had had some of this,” I said. “A couple of moments, you know, with Adam, that made her believe it would all work out.”

  Coop tilted his head. “Will it, El?”

  “This baby’s going to be fine,” I said, more for myself than for Coop.

  “This baby wasn’t the party in question.” He took a deep breath. “What you said in there during the direct-that line about taking the first step, did you mean it?”

  I could have played coy; I could have told him I had no idea what he meant. Instead, I nodded.

  Coop kissed me deeply, drawing my breath from me in a long, sweet ribbon. “Perhaps I haven’t mentioned it, but I’m an expert when it comes to first steps.”

  “Are you,” I said. “Then tell me how.”

  “You close your eyes,” Coop answered, “and jump.”

  I took a deep breath and stood. “The defense calls Samuel Stoltzfus.”

  There were quiet titters and glances as Samuel appeared at the rear of the courtroom with a bailiff. A bull in a china shop, I thought, watching the big man lumber to the witness stand, his face chalky with fear and his hands nervously feeding the brim of his black hat round and round.

  I knew, from Katie and Sarah and the conversations held over the supper table, what Samuel was sacrificing in order to be a witness in Katie’s trial. Although the Amish community cooperated with the law, and would go to a courtroom if subpoenaed, they also forbid the voluntary filing of a lawsuit. Samuel, who had willingly offered his services as a character witness for Katie, was riding somewhere between the two extremes. Although his decision hadn’t been called into question by church officials, there were members who looked less favorably upon him, certain that this deliberate brush with the English world was not for the best.

  The clerk of the court, a pinch-faced man who smelled of bubble gum, approached Samuel with the customary Bible. “Please raise your right hand.” He slid the battered book beneath Samuel’s left palm. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  Samuel snatched his hand away from the Bible as if he’d been burned. “No,” he said, horrified. “I do not.”

  A wave of disruption undulated across the gallery. The judge rapped her gavel twice. “Mr. Stoltzfus,” she said gently, “I realize you’re not familiar with a court of law. But this is a very customary procedure.”

  Samuel belligerently shook his head, the blond strands flying. He looked up at me, beseeching.

  Judge Ledbetter murmured something that might have been, “Why me?” Then she beckoned me to the bench. “Counsel, maybe you’d like a minute with the witness to explain this procedure.”

  I walked over to Samuel and placed my hand on his arm, turning him away from the eyes of the gallery. He was trembling. “Samuel, what’s the problem?”

  “We do not pray in public,” he whispered.

  “It’s only words. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

  His mouth dropped, as if I’d just turned into the devil right before his eyes. “It’s a promise to God-how can you say it means nothing? I cannot swear on the Bible, Ellie,” he said. “I am sorry, but if that’s what it takes, I can’t do it.”

  Nodding tightly, I went back to the judge. “Swearing an oath on the Bible goes against his religion. Is it possible to make an exception?”

  George jockeyed into position beside me. “Your Honor, I’m sorry to sound like a broken record, but clearly Ms. Hathaway has planned this performance to make the jury sympathetic to the Amish.”

  “He’s right, of course. And any minute now the troupe of thespians I’ve hired to reenact Katie’s grief will come and take center stage.”

  “You know,” Judge Ledbetter said thoughtfully, “I had an Amish businessman as a witness in a trial some years back, and we ran into the same problem.”

  I gaped at the judge, not because she was posing a solution, but because she’d actually had an Amishman in her courtroom before. “Mr. Stoltzfus,” she called out. “Would you be willing to affirm on the Bible?”

  I could see the gears turning in Samuel’s head. And I knew that the literal-mindedness of the Amish would serve the judge well here. As long as the word she posed wasn’t swear or vow or promise, Samuel would find the compromise acceptable.

  He nodded. The clerk slipped the Bible beneath his hand again; I may have been the only one who noticed that Samuel’s palm hovered a few millimeters above the leather-bound cover. “Do you . . . uh, affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  Samuel smiled at the little man. “Ja, all right.”

  He took the stand, filling the whole box, his large hands balanced on his knees and his hat tucked beneath the chair. “Could you state your name and address?”

  He cleared his throat. “Samuel Stoltzfus. Blossom Hill Road, East Paradise Township.” He hesitated, then added, “Pennsylvania, U.S.A.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Stoltzfus.”

  “Ellie,” he whispered loudly, “you can call me Samuel.”

  I grinned. “Okay. Samuel. Are you a little bit nervous?”

  “Yes.” The word came out on a guffaw of relief.

  “I’ll bet. Have you ever been in court before?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever think you would be in court, one day?”

  He shook his head. “Ach, no. We don’t believe in the filing of lawsuits, so I never gave it a minute’s thought.”

  “By ‘we’ you mean whom?”

  “The People,” he said.

  “The Amish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you asked to be a witness today?”

  “No. I volunteered.”

  “You willingly put yourself into an uncomfortable situation? Why?”

  His clear, blue gaze locked on Katie. “Because she didn’t murder her baby.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve known her my whole life. Since we were kids. I’ve seen her every single day for years. Now I work for Katie’s father on the farm.”

  “Really? What do you do there?”

  “Anything Aaron tells me to do, pretty much. Mostly, I’m there to help with the planting and the harvesting. Oh, ja, and the milking. It’s a dairy.”

  “When is the milking done, Samuel?”

  “Four-thirty A.M. and four-thirty P.M.”

  “What does it entail?”

  George raised a brow. “Objection. Do we really need a lesson in farm management?”

  “I’m laying foundation, Your Honor,” I argued.

  “Overruled. Mr. Stoltzfus, you may answer the question.”

  Samuel nodded. “Well, we start by mixing the feed. Then we shovel up behind the stanchions, and that goes into the manure pit. Aaron’s got twenty cows, so this takes a while. Then we wipe down their teats and put on the milking pump, which runs on generator. Two cows get hooked up at a time, did I say that? The milk goes into a can that gets dumped into the bulk tank. And usually in the middle we have to stop and shovel up behind ’em again.”

  “When does the milk company truck come to pick up the milk?”

  “Every other day, save the Lord�
�s Day. When it falls on a Sunday, it comes crazy times, like Saturdays at midnight.”

  “Is the milk pasteurized before the truck takes it?”

  “No, that happens after it leaves the farm.”

  “Do the Fishers get their milk from the supermarket?”

  Samuel grinned. “That would be sort of silly, wouldn’t it? Like buying bacon when you’ve just slaughtered a perfectly good pig. The Fishers drink their own fresh milk. I have to bring a pitcher in to Katie’s mother twice a day.”

  “So the milk the Fishers drink has not yet been pasteurized?”

  “No, but it tastes just the same as the stuff you get in the white plastic jug. You’ve had it. Don’t you think so?”

  “Objection-could someone remind the witness that he’s not supposed to be asking questions?” George said.

  The judge leaned sideways. “Mr. Stoltzfus, I’m afraid the prosecutor’s right.”

  The big man reddened and looked into his lap. “Samuel,” I said quickly, “why do you feel that you know Katie so well?”

  “I’ve seen her in so many situations I know how she acts-when she’s sad, when she’s happy. I was there when her sister drowned, when her brother got banned for good from the church. Two years ago, too, we started to go together.”

  “You mean date?”

  “Ja.”

  “Were you dating when Katie had the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you there when she gave birth?”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Samuel said. “I found out later.”

  “Did you think at the time that it was your baby?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He cleared his throat. “We never slept together.”

  “Did you know who the father of that baby was?”

  “No. Katie wouldn’t tell me.”

  I softened my voice. “How did that make you feel?”

  “Pretty bad. She was my girl, you see. I didn’t understand what had happened.”

  For a moment, I simply let the jury look at Samuel. A strong, good-looking man dressed in clothes that seemed strange, speaking haltingly in his second language, trying to keep afloat in a situation that was completely unfamiliar to him. “Samuel,” I said. “Your girlfriend gets pregnant with someone else’s baby-the baby’s mysteriously found dead, although you’re not there to see how it happens-you’re nervous about being in a courtroom to testify-yet you’ve come here to tell us she didn’t commit murder?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why are you sticking up for Katie, who, by all means, has wronged you?”

  “Everything you said, Ellie, it’s true. I should be very angry. I was, for a time, but now I’m not. Now I’ve gotten past my own selfishness to where I’ve got to help her. See, when you’re Plain, you don’t put yourself forward. You just don’t do it, because that would be Hochmut-puffing yourself up-and the truth is there’s always others more important than you. So Katie, when she hears others telling lies about her and this baby, she won’t want to fight back, or stand up for herself. I am here to stand up for her.” As if listening to his own his words, he slowly got to his feet and stared at the jury. “She did not do this. She could not do this.”

  Every one of the twelve was arrested by the image of Samuel’s face, set with quiet, fierce conviction. “Samuel, do you still love her?”

  He turned, his eyes sliding past me to light on Katie. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

  George tapped his forefinger against his lips. “She was your girlfriend, but she was sleeping with some other guy?”

  Samuel’s eyes narrowed. “Did you not just hear what I said?”

  The prosecutor held up his hands. “Just wondering about your feelings on that subject, that’s all.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk about my feelings. I came here to talk about Katie. She’s done nothing wrong.”

  I covered my chuckle with a cough. For someone inexperienced, Samuel could be a hell of a mountain to move. “Does your religion practice forgiveness, Mr. Stoltzfus?” George asked.

  “Samuel.”

  “All right, then. Samuel. Does your religion practice forgiveness?”

  “Yes. If a person humbles himself and confesses to his sin, he’ll always be welcome back in the church.”

  “After he admits to what he did.”

  “After confessing, that’s true.”

  “Okay. Now let’s forget about the church for a minute. Don’t answer as an Amishman, just answer as a person. Aren’t there some things you just can’t excuse?”

  Samuel’s lips tightened. “I cannot answer without thinking Plain, because it’s who I am. And if I couldn’t forgive someone, it wouldn’t be their problem, but mine, because I wasn’t being a true Christian.”

  “In this particular case, you personally forgave Katie.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you just said that forgiveness implies the other party has already confessed to a sin.”

  “Well . . . ja.”

  “So if you forgave Katie, she must have done something wrong-in spite of the fact that you told us not five minutes ago she didn’t.”

  Samuel was silent for a moment. I held my breath, waiting for George to strike the killing blow. Then the Amishman looked up. “I am not a smart man, Mr. Callahan. I didn’t go to college, like you. I don’t really know what you’re trying to ask me. Yes, I forgave Katie-but not for killing a baby. The only thing I had to forgive Katie for was breaking my heart.” He hesitated. “And I don’t think even you English can put her in jail for that.”

  Owen Zeigler was apparently allergic to the courtroom. For the sixth time in as many minutes, he sneezed, covering his nose with a florid paisley handkerchief. “Sorry. Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Judge Ledbetter.

  “Dust mites. Nasty little creatures. They live in pillows, mattresses-and, I’ll bet, under the rugs here.” He sniffed a bit. “They feed on the scales shed by human skin, and their waste products cause allergic symptoms. You know, if you monitored the humidity a little better in here, you might reduce the irritants.”

  “I assume you’re referring to the mites, and not the lawyers,” the judge said dryly.

  Owen glanced dubiously at the air-conditioning vents overhead. “You probably want to take a look at the mold spores, too.”

  “Your Honor, I have allergies,” George said. “Yet I’ve been perfectly comfortable in this courtroom.”

  Owen looked aggrieved. “I can’t help my high level of sensitivity.”

  “Dr. Zeigler, do you feel that you’ll be able to make it through your testimony? Shall I see about procuring another courtroom?”

  “Or maybe a plastic bubble,” George muttered.

  Owen sneezed again. “I’ll do my best.”

  The judge kneaded her temples. “You may continue, Ms. Hathaway.”

  “Dr. Zeigler,” I said, “did you examine the tissue samples from Baby Fisher?”

  “Yes. The infant was a premature liveborn male with no congenital abnormalities. There was evidence of acute chorioamnionitis and infection in the baby. The cause of death was perinatal asphyxia.”

  “Your findings, then, did not disagree with those of the medical examiner?”

  Owen smiled. “We agree on the cause of death. However, regarding the proximate causes of death-the events leading up to the asphyxia-our analyses are markedly different.”

  “How so?”

  “The medical examiner found the manner of death to be homicide. I believe the infant’s asphyxia was due to natural causes.”

  I let the jury absorb that for a moment. “Natural causes? What do you mean?”

  “Based on my findings, Ms. Fisher did not have a hand in her newborn’s death-it stopped breathing all by itself.”

  “Let’s walk through some of those findings, Doctor.”

  “Well, the most puzzling was liver necrosis.”

  “Can
you elaborate?”

  Owen nodded. “Necrosis is cell death. Pure necrosis is usually caused either by congenital heart abnormalities, which this newborn didn’t have, or by infection. When the ME saw the necrosis, he assumed it came part and parcel with the asphyxia, but the liver has a dual blood supply and is less susceptible to ischemia than other organs.”

  “Ischemia?”

  “Tissue hypoxia-lack of oxygen-caused by this loss of oxygen in the blood. Anyway, it’s very unusual to find this sort of lesion in the liver. Add this to the chorioamnionitis, and I started to wonder if an infectious agent might have been at work here, after all.”

  “Why would the medical examiner have overlooked this?”

  “A couple of reasons,” Owen explained. “First, the liver showed no signs of polys-white blood cells that respond to a bacterial infection. However, if the infection was very early, there wouldn’t have been a poly response yet. The ME assumed there was no infection because there was no inflammatory response. But cell death can occur several hours before the body responds to it by mounting an inflammation-and I believe the infant died before this could happen. Second, his cultures showed no organism that would have been a likely cause of infection.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got the paraffin blocks of tissue and did Gram’s stains on the liver. That’s when I found a large number of cocco-bacillary bacteria in the neonate. The ME chalked these up to contaminants-diphtheroids, which are rod-shaped bacteria. Now, cocco-bacilli are often misidentified as either rod-shaped bacteria, like diphtheroids; or cocci, like staph or strep. There were so many of these organisms I began to wonder if they were something other than mere contaminants-like perhaps an infectious agent. With the help of a microbiologist, I identified the organism as Listeria monocytogenes, a motile pleomorphic Gram-positive rod.”

  I could see the eyes of the jury glazing, bogged down in scientific terms. “You can say that again,” I joked.

  Owen smiled. “Let’s just call it listeriosis. That’s the infection caused by these bacteria.”

  “Can you tell us about listeriosis?”