by Pete Dexter
Hanna was forty-six years old and had been married two years.
“I was wondering if I might see Paris,” he said.
She stood where she was, looking into his eyes. He hadn’t told her. “It’s a matter of some urgency,” he said, “or I would not inconvenience you like this at home.”
She held herself a moment longer at the door and then stepped to one side. “Come in,” she said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
Seagraves stood in the hallway, and Hanna Trout went upstairs. He noticed the curve of her bottom as she climbed the steps, the movement pulled her dress against her skin first on one side, then the other. From behind she looked younger than his own wife.
The hallway itself was bare. The paint over the staircase was spotted and beginning to peel. The windows were dirty. The house felt empty, as if no one lived there, and hadn’t for a long time.
In a few moments Hanna Trout was back on the stairs. She held herself straight coming down, her fingers barely touching the banister. There was a calmness about her that struck Seagraves as practiced. “Paris will be down when he dresses,” she said.
Seagraves looked at his watch; it was seven-thirty.
He followed her into the living room and sat on a davenport with frayed cushions. The wallpaper was a pattern of green, blistered here and there, and torn. There were spider webs in the corners of the ceiling. Hanna Trout took a seat in a straight-back chair across the room and crossed her legs. He thought of his own wife and her legs—no better than the ones in front of him now—and the house she kept. Lucy would reburn Georgia before she let someone see her house like this.
There was a noise on the stairs, slow and heavy, and then Paris Trout came through the threshold of the door in his robe and slippers. His hair was slicked straight back and emphasized the angles of his head. He nodded at Seagraves and then looked at his wife in an unfriendly way.
Seagraves watched her change under that look. “Would you like some coffee?” she said.
Trout did not answer. “You read my mind,” Seagraves said, and she stood up, walking within a foot of her husband on the way to the kitchen. He did not look at her again.
“Hubert Norland called me a little bit ago,” Seagraves said when she was gone.
Trout sat down in the chair his wife had left. His arms were long and thin, and his pale hands spilled over the ends of the armrests and hung in the air. “Hubert Norland knows me,” he said. “I answered him what he asked, and that’s all there is to it.”
Seagraves felt tired. “You told him you shot two colored people,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it ends.”
Trout shrugged, his hands kept still. “What they gone do, arrest me for collecting legal debts? I told that boy when he took the car, I get my money. You ask any people I lent to, I told them all the same thing.”
Seagraves held up his hand for Trout to stop. “You told too many people too much already today,” he said.
Trout stared at him, deciding something. “You worried about this, ain’t you?”
“There wasn’t anybody owed you money that was shot this afternoon,” Seagraves said.
“The same family.”
Seagraves shook his head. “The one that’s going to die,” he said, “her name’s different, and she isn’t but thirteen, fourteen years old.”
Paris Trout squinted, looking at things from a new angle. “I recognized that girl from before,” he said. “She was with Henry Ray Boxer on the day he tore up the car.”
Seagraves shook his head. “Her name’s Sayers,” he said.
“Ain’t a jury in the state that could expect a white man to keep track of family lines amongst the dark aspect,” Trout said. He was sitting up in the chair now, paying attention. Seagraves took it for a positive sign that he had the man’s interest.
He said, “There’s all kinds of juries, and now days you don’t know what they expect.” And he saw that Paris Trout had paid attention to that too.
Trout shrugged again, but the problem had settled on him now. He said, “Well, Mr. Seagraves, God’s will be done.”
Seagraves closed his eyes and let his head fall back into the cushion. “There’s more men than you can count gone to prison in this state, leaving things in God’s hands,” he said.
His eyes were still closed when Hanna Trout came into the living room, carrying a silver tray. He heard her and sat up, smiling, and accepted a cup of coffee. She poured it without returning his smile and then turned to her husband. He ignored her.
When she had gone back to the kitchen, Trout said, “I had a legal debt to collect. I am within my rights to make the collection.”
“That was two women in their own house,” Seagraves said. “One of them was a child, and if she dies, Ward Townes is legally bound to come after the person that shot her.”
Trout considered Ward Townes. “He got to live here just like anybody else,” he said finally.
Seagraves did not answer that, he had been weighing the same thought. You could never be sure what Ward Townes would do. He had gone to the war, for instance, the only lawyer in Cotton Point except Seagraves himself who had. Seagraves knew the prosecutor could have got an exemption like anybody else with money. He knew he had forgiven legal fees when he was in private practice.
On the other hand, Seagraves had seen the deals he cut to get what he wanted.
Seagraves thought the source of the contradiction was that Ward Townes did not come from the substantial side of the Townes family and could not be depended on to side with anybody. There had been a split in the family a long time before anybody alive now could remember, and one branch established the manufacture of bricks in central Georgia and got rich, and the other side laid the bricks and waited their turn.
The substantial Towneses lived on Draft Street with Seagraves. Ward Townes’s side of the family had settled in town later, on Park Street with the car dealers and dentists.
“I wouldn’t count on anything from Ward Townes,” he said finally. “There’s some people you can’t predict.”
“He’s got to live here,” Trout said again.
“I do not want to leave your house tonight,” Seagraves said, “without an agreement between us on the serious nature of the events that have occurred. Ward Townes can’t be taken for granted.”
“What would he go and make trouble for himself for?”
“Principle,” Seagraves said. “He might do it on principle.”
“The principle in this is on my side,” Trout said. “You’re a businessman, I ain’t got to explain it to you.”
Hanna Trout came back into the room again, and this time she sat down. “I would like to know what this is about,” she said. Seagraves waited for Trout to answer, but he gave no sign that he’d even noticed her.
When he spoke again, it was to Seagraves. “Besides, Buster Devonne was there too. He did as much as me, and that makes two witnesses on our side.”
“I think you ought to stay away from Buster Devonne awhile,” Seagraves said. “You aren’t in this together now, and if that girl dies, you don’t want to be in it together then.”
“What girl?” Hanna Trout said quietly.
Seagraves turned to her, acknowledging her. She looked clean and strong, he could not imagine her neglecting her house in the way it had been neglected. Seagraves waited for Trout to tell her what had happened, but it was as if she were not in the room.
Trout drew a long breath. “Buster Devonne is in my employment,” he said, “and he will say any damn thing I tell him.”
“You pay him enough to spend the next five years killing snakes for the state?”
Trout thought it over. “He would if I told him.”
Seagraves caught another look at Mrs. Trout. He wished she would go back into the kitchen, it was hard to watch her husband insult her in this way. He wondered what kept her in the chair. He thought again about the condition of the house and was curious if it was connected to her stubbornness.
/> “People don’t go to prison for other people,” Seagraves said, returning to Trout. “Things look different to him than they do to you, and they look different sitting in the living room than they will in front of Judge Taylor.”
“Things look different ways when they ain’t clear,” Trout said.
Seagraves put the cup on the table beside the davenport and stood up to leave. Trout stood up with him, and the sudden movement startled his wife. She recovered herself and smoothed her skirt.
“You be at the store tomorrow?” Seagraves said.
“Business as usual,” Trout said. “All day.”
“I expect you’ll hear from Ward Townes in the morning,” Seagraves said. “He’ll likely send Hubert Norland over to pick you up, to interrogate you on what happened.”
Trout considered that.
“If that in fact occurs,” Seagraves said, “you have somebody call me, and I’ll meet you at the courthouse. I don’t want you telling Ward Townes the time of day without me there in the room.”
He started for the door and then stopped. “Don’t count on Buster Devonne to get you off.” he said. “Or Ward Townes, or anybody or anything. The only people you can count on right now are your lawyer and your family, and that is what I came over here tonight to impress on you. We’ll begin on the rest tomorrow, when there’s more time.…” He stole a look at Mrs. Trout and then smiled because she’d caught him.
“I’m sorry to push my way into your house at this hour,” he said to her, “and I hope you will forgive the abrupt nature of this business.”
Trout looked off in another direction while Seagraves spoke to her, as if he were waiting for him to finish tinkling in the bushes.
“What is the nature of this business?” she said, studying his face.
Seagraves considered her again, noticing her eyes. They were as dark as the coffee she’d brought him. He found himself attracted. He said, “I think perhaps that is something you’d better discuss with your husband, Mrs. Trout.” He saw that did not satisfy her.
“If you like, you could come with Paris to my office tomorrow and we’ll go over it in detail.” He looked at Trout for help, but Trout was still focused a long way off.
“The details are not my interest, Mr. Seagraves,” she said, looking right into his face. “My interest right now is what act has brought you to this house tonight. There is a girl involved. What has happened to her?”
“It isn’t scandalous,” Seagraves said. “I can assure you it isn’t that.” He shook her hand and then let himself out the front door. Trout had not moved or changed attitude.
Seagraves walked a few steps toward the street and then stopped to light a cigar. He felt relieved to be out of the house. He thought of her bottom as she climbed the stairs and tried to remember the oldest woman he had ever taken to bed. There had been a whore in Atlanta during his first term in the state legislature—she had seemed old to him then, but that was a long time ago, when he didn’t know what old was.
It came to him slowly that the oldest woman he had ever had was his wife.
And that was a long time ago too.
IN THE MORNING HARRY Seagraves walked to work. He followed the sidewalks to the college, speaking to everyone he met, and crossed the campus on a diagonal to Davis Street. His office was half a block up, on the second floor of the Dixie Theater Building, and you would never know, looking at the building or the offices inside it, that his was one of the richest and most successful law practices in the state.
He kept it that way intentionally, resisting changes. The people he represented—in the legislature as well as the courts—liked the way things were and worried in an unfocused way that they were somehow losing what they had, mostly to the federal government.
His secretary was a middle-aged woman named Emma Grandy. She looked up as he came through the doorway. “Mr. Townes has called twice,” she said.
Seagraves looked at his watch, it was twenty minutes after nine. He had known Townes would call, but he had expected him to take more time to think it through. “Would you call Cornell Clinic for me,” he said to her. “Inquire to the condition of one Rosie Sayers.”
“Yessir,” she said.
He walked into his private office and took off his coat and his shoes. His feet hurt from the walk; he determined to have someone look them over. He couldn’t decide between a doctor and a shoe salesman; they didn’t bother him at all after he ran.
The office was filled with old furniture and pictures. Lucy as Miss Ether County, 1935. His brother’s children as babies. There was a diploma from Georgia Officers Academy on the wall, along with his law degree from the University of Georgia. Class of 1934.
Mrs. Grandy knocked on the door and looked in. She had a child’s face and took everything he said seriously. She understood the law as well as most of his partners but kept it to herself.
“I called the clinic,” she said. “Rosie Sayers is quite grave.…”
Seagraves nodded. “Did you talk to Dr. Braver himself?”
“No sir, Dr. Braver was busy. I talked to his girl.”
“If you get a moment later,” he said, “you might try to get the doctor on the phone for me. I’d like to speak to him myself.”
“The girl said he was in surgery,” she said, “some little boy that cut himself this morning on the rocks at the church—”
“Whenever he’s finished,” Seagraves said. “It’s no hurry.”
She closed the door, and Seagraves picked up his telephone. Ward Townes answered the other end himself. “County prosecutor’s office,” he said, “good morning.”
Seagraves said, “Mr. Prosecutor? This is Harry Seagraves.”
“Thank you for getting back to me,” he said. “There was a problem yesterday afternoon down to Indian Heights.…”
“I heard that,” Seagraves said.
“I thought you might. You still represent the Trout family?”
“As far as I know.”
“Then let me suggest that you bring your client by my office this afternoon, save us getting Chief Norland upset, having to pick him up.”
“Charges been pressed?”
“Not yet,” Townes said. “But people been shot.”
“We might could settle this between the parties, save everybody some aggravation.”
“I think it’s too late,” Townes said.
“Does this mean you aren’t in a settling mood today, Mr. Prosecutor? We could come in some other time.”
“That girl he shot in the stomach, she’s fourteen years old,” he said.
There was no anger in the words, it sounded more like an argument you might have with yourself, trying to decide what to do.
“That somebody shot,” Seagraves said. “There was more than one gun. Buster Devonne had a gun, maybe some of them had guns too.”
“Buster Devonne’s already told me who did the shooting,” Townes said. “He came in yesterday afternoon after it happened.”
“Buster Devonne is a known liar.”
There was a pause, Townes considering Buster Devonne. “He said Paris shot the girl. Followed her into the kitchen to finish it, and then both of them lit out the back like thieves.”
“You believe him?”
“You don’t?” Townes said.
Seagraves measured his answer. “I believe Paris Trout’s been a businessman in Ether County a long time,” he said. “His sister’s a court clerk. People know him, they traded with him. Not just whites. He’s got loans out all over the county. Indian Heights, some in the Bottoms too, and there isn’t anybody either color ever heard of this Sayers girl or her people.”
“Obscurity isn’t grounds to shoot children in the state of Georgia,” Townes said, and there was something in his voice now. “The law doesn’t say anything about the social station of the deceased.”
Seagraves saw the conversation had somehow turned personal and moved it a different direction. He said, “Buster Devonne, he cracked so many burrhe
ads they had to take him off the police. The first man in the history of Cotton Point, Georgia, they took off the police for assaulting Negroes. He went from that to cotton stealing, you brought him in this office yourself for that.
“He got off on cotton stealing, and the next thing you know, he’s got a death grudge against a man, all he did was catch Buster stealing his cotton. Bragging all over town he’s going to do this and that to some dirt farmer—hell, I think he was a Methodist—and then sneaks out one night and sets his chicken coop on fire.
“You couldn’t find a jury in Ether County that is going to believe the testimony of a man that settles his grudges by setting chickens on fire—not over Paris Trout.”
Townes said, “The man was there. It’s what he said. The clinic reports the girl made the night, but she won’t make another. The nurse said isn’t a thing left to do for her but dig a hole.”
“That isn’t up to the nurse, to say that she’s gone.”
“That’s so,” Townes said, “but she’s shot, four, five times, and I want to see Paris Trout about that at one o’clock in my office this afternoon. If he isn’t here, I’ll send Chief Norland to get him.”
“No need for that,” Seagraves said. “I think we’d both be served to keep this as uncomplicated as possible.”
“Thank you, Mr. Seagraves, and we’ll see you at one.”
Seagraves put the phone back in its cradle, surprised at Ward Townes’s sudden anger—which wasn’t noticeable unless you knew him—and opened one of the lower drawers in his desk. He put his feet in the drawer, resting them on somebody’s papers. He didn’t look to see whose. He thought of Buster Devonne on the witness stand testifying against Paris Trout. Confused and undignified and scared.
He thought of Buster Devonne, and then he thought of the witnesses from Indian Heights. Paris Trout would be sitting beside him all the time in a blue suit, where the jury could compare him to his accusers. He might not need to say a word.
Still, something in it tugged at him. He called Mrs. Grandy in the outside office. “Did you locate Dr. Braver yet?”
“No sir, they said he’s having a time with that boy.”