by Pete Dexter
“Linda?”
“It just seem like a natural thing for him to do,” she said.
Seagraves held the gate, and she went through it and then to her mother, who was sitting on the aisle in back. Mary McNutt straightened the girl’s dress and wiped at her cheeks, and then she picked her up, pressing the child’s face into her collar, and carried her out of the room.
Seagraves was watching her when he heard Townes’s voice. “That’s all for the people, Your Honor.”
SEAGRAVES CALLED BUSTER DEVONNE. He stood in the witness box in a coat that looked like somebody had stolen it off an organ grinder. He put his hand on the Bible and stared right at the jury and swore to tell the truth. He stared at them, and he smiled.
“Mr. Devonne,” Seagraves said, “what is your age?”
“I’m forty-four years old.”
“Are you employed by Mr. Trout?”
“Yessir, I worked for Paris, off and on, eight years.”
“In what capacity?” Buster Devonne narrowed his eyes. “In what position?”
“I do some collecting,” he said.
“Anything else?”
“Whatever else needs to be done.”
“And on the afternoon in question did Mr. Trout have occasion to use your services?”
Buster Devonne smiled and shook his head. “Excuse me,” he said, “but it struck me comical. It sounded like Twenty Questions.” There was some quiet laughter in back, and Buster Devonne straightened in his seat. Seagraves repeated his question.
“Yessir,” Buster Devonne said. “He asked me would I drive him out to Henry Ray’s, to get him to sign a note on the car.”
“Why didn’t Mr. Trout just go out there by himself?”
“When he thought there might be trouble, he took somebody along.”
“What sort of trouble?”
Buster Devonne shrugged. “There were two pretty big Negroes there, which I had information were very bad, mean Negroes. Plus Mary McNutt and the girl.”
“So you went with Mr. Trout to protect him.”
“I went to keep things in hand, yessir.”
“And what happened when you got to Henry Ray Boxer’s house?”
“Well, let’s see. Thomas Boxer and Mary Jane was on the porch with this girl that got shot. We stopped at the steps and greeted them very nicely.”
“What exactly did you say?”
“Inquired for their health,” he said.
“And what did they say?”
“Nothing at first. They stood up on the porch, looking down, and then Mr. Trout talked to her.”
“You mean Mrs. McNutt?”
“Yessir. He said, ‘We have never put a hardship on you, Mrs. McNutt. We have always done you kindnesses when you called on us, and I can’t understand to save my life why you or one of the boys didn’t come in and talk this over.’ ”
“And what did Mrs. McNutt say?”
Buster Devonne shook his head. “Nothing. Then Mr. Trout and myself assented the stairs, and he told them that they would have to sign a blank note. He said, ‘You-all know this is right,’ and asked me for the note.”
“You had the note.”
“Yessir. Mr. Trout don’t tote papers. And so I handed it to him, and he give it to the boy to sign.”
“Did he sign it?”
“No sir. As soon as he touched it, the woman said, ‘Don’t sign that thing, Tom.’ And then she looked at Paris—Mr. Trout—and cussed him.”
“What specifically did she say?”
Buster Devonne shrugged. “She said, ‘You white sonofabitch, I will shoot your damn heart out.’ You can imagine how I felt.”
Before Seagraves could ask his next question, he heard Ward Townes behind him. “Objection,” he said. “No one has more respect for this court than myself, Your Honor, for what it is and what it can accomplish, but everything has its reasonable limits, and asking the court to put itself into Mr. Devonne’s mind exceeds them.”
There was some laughter again from the back, and Seagraves smiled with it. Buster Devonne put a look on the prosecutor. When the noise had passed, the judge sustained the objection.
“All right, Mr. Devonne,” Seagraves said, “would you please tell what happened next.”
Buster Devonne was still staring at the prosecutor. “Thomas Boxer got up and grabbed hold of Mr. Trout by the neck,” he said, “and the girl commenced to tearing at his clothes, to pull him off-balance. They tussled into the door, and then Mrs. McNutt come in there and jumped on Paris from the back. The girl had a pistol.”
“What kind of pistol?”
“A thirty-two automatic,” he said, and looked right into the jury box again.
“Then what happened?”
“I was tied up by the door. Thomas Boxer gone disappeared after he grabbed Mr. Trout, and there was supposed to be another Negro somewhere, who was known to be a big bad one. There was shooting then, and then the boy come in from behind to pick up the gun on the floor, and I yelled for Paris to look out, he’s coming the other way. I was still waiting on the other Negro to appear and expected Paris could handle the women and Thomas until I got a fix on where he was.”
“Did Mr. Trout have a gun?”
“Yessir, he did.”
“Was that unusual?”
“Not that I know. I believe it was an ordinary forty-five automatic.”
“Was it unusual for Mr. Trout to carry a gun along when he went for collections?”
“In Indian Heights? No sir. Paris Trout keeps a bank. He does it hisself, loans and collections, keeps it all in his head. In that business, money and guns go hand in hand.”
“Did you also have a gun?”
“No sir.”
“Do you own a gun?”
“Yessir, but I didn’t have it with me.”
“And so if someone comes in here and testifies they saw a gun in your pocket, they’re mistaken.”
“I’ll tell you what they might of saw,” he said. “I sometimes put my hand in my coat pocket and stick my finger out, looks like the same thing.” Seagraves suddenly had the thought that Buster Devonne was about to wink at the jury.
“So you did not fire any shots that day?”
“No sir.”
“Did you go into the house?”
“No sir, I went to the door. That’s as far as I got.”
“Did you see the shooting?”
“I heard it, a minute after the woman went ’round to the back. But I couldn’t say this shot was fired first and then that one.”
“How long did the shooting last?”
“Not long,” he said. “It didn’t take long.”
“And what did you do when it had stopped?”
“Paris come out of there, it looked like World War One. Both of us made to the car as fast as we could get there.”
“Did you drive back to town, or did Mr. Trout?”
“I did. He was anxious over what had happened. He said he’d never known a good family to turn on him like that.”
“And you went directly to town?”
“I took him back to his store. I did that, and then I called Chief Norland and tol’ him what happened.”
“Mr. Trout asked you to do that?”
“Yessir. He would of done it himself, but he had pressing business to attend.”
“Thank you, Mr. Devonne.” Then, to Ward Townes: “Your witness.”
WARD TOWNES FROWNED AND shook his head. For a long, dreamlike moment Seagraves thought he did not mean to cross-examine. Then he stood up, looking at his notes. “Mr. Devonne, how much do you weigh?”
“I ain’t put a penny in Mr. Dickey’s scale lately,” he said.
“The last time you did, what did you weigh?”
“Maybe two-fifteen.”
“Have you seen Thomas Boxer and Henry Ray Boxer in this courtroom? What do you estimate they weigh?”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “They got to weigh themselves.”
“You were
a member of the Cotton Point Police Department?”
“Eleven years.”
“In all that time you never had occasion to estimate the height and weight of a suspect?”
“Sometimes.”
“All right, as a policeman, what would you estimate Henry Ray Boxer weighed?”
“Hundret and forty.”
“And Thomas Boxer? Would you say he was bigger or smaller?”
“About the same.”
“Is that your idea of big Negroes, a hundred and forty pounds each?”
“It depends on the Negroes,” he said. “Mrs. McNutt as big as me all by herself.”
There was some laughter in the courtroom again, but Seagraves noticed there was none in the jury box. Judge Taylor pounded for quiet. “Sir,” he said to Buster Devonne, “I will not have women embarrassed in my courtroom.”
“All right,” Townes said, “now you testified here that Thomas Boxer choked Mr. Trout and then disappeared when the scuffle started?”
“Yessir.”
“Once again calling on your experience as a Cotton Point police officer, did you ever see a person disappear? See it for yourself?”
“I sure as hell looked for a bunch of them that seemed to,” he said, and the judge himself laughed at that.
“But not in front of your own eyes?”
“No sir. What happened, I was distracted when he and the girl grabbed Paris, and next thing I knew he was gone.”
“Where did he go?”
“Don’t know.”
“Into the other side of the house?”
“Inside, underneath, I don’t know.”
Townes stopped for a moment, changing directions. “How long did you say you were a member of the police force, Mr. Devonne? Eleven years?”
“Yessir.”
“Do you recall why you left that job?”
Seagraves objected, and Judge Taylor admonished the prosecutor.
“Let me ask something else then,” Townes said. “When you spoke with Chief Norland after the shooting, did you indicate then that you had been unarmed?”
“I don’t recall,” he said.
“You didn’t tell him you were in the thick of it out there?”
“I might of left that impression.”
“Why would you want to do that, Mr. Devonne?”
“We was in it together,” he said. “I didn’t want it to look like I was putting the blame on Paris—”
Townes turned his back on Buster Devonne and returned to his table. He sat down, and then, almost an afterthought, he said, “I think we’ve heard all we need to from Mr. Devonne.”
UNDER THE LEGAL CODE of the state of Georgia, the defendant in a murder trial was allowed to read a statement without any accompanying obligation to face cross-examination. This privilege covered only the statement, and in the event that the defendant also chose to testify, his previous statement became part of the testimony and was opened to the prosecutor’s questions.
Paris Trout left the defense table straight and dignified and took the witness stand. “Your Honor,” Seagraves said, “on my advice, Mr. Trout will exercise his privilege to read into the record his statement on how this tragedy occurred. This has been an ordeal, as anyone with an ounce of compassion can see, and I do not think it would serve his interests or this court’s to have him testify beyond that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Seagraves,” the judge said. Then he turned to Trout and said, “Whenever you’re ready, sir.”
Trout took a pair of glasses out of his pocket and fixed them carefully behind his ears. They softened him, Seagraves thought, and made him older. He took two pieces of paper from another pocket, unfolded them, and began to read.
“ ‘Your Honor, I do not honestly know how all this happened. Mr. Devonne and myself visited the home of Mary McNutt to settle a financial matter of little importance. When we had come upon the porch, Miz McNutt cussed us, and her son Thomas slapped his hands up around my neck, making to choke me.
“ ‘There was a girl there, and she attacked me at once with the boy. She looked to be about twenty-five years old and was strong. Stronger than the boy. We struggled for a moment on the porch. I would of just as soon left right there, but the girl broke loose and went running into the house. I heard Mrs. McNutt tell her to shoot my damn heart out. My damn white heart.
“ ‘I followed into the house after her, trying to keep her from getting a gun. When I caught up, she’d put her hands under the pillow where the gun was. I knew that’s what was there. I didn’t want to kill her, then or anytime else. I didn’t have any business killing people, and it looked to me if I could knock her down, it would settle the whole matter.
“ ‘I never raised my fist to a woman in my life, but I did then, to stop her before things got out of hand, and you know, I didn’t hit her hard enough. She staggered and dropped the pistol on the floor, but she never fell.
“ ‘And then she took a breath, like it was just starting, and reached to pick it up. I shot her in the shoulder right there. It could just as easy been the heart. It could of ended then, but I did not intend to kill her. I just wanted to get out without nobody getting hurt.
“ ‘At that moment Mary McNutt come in, slammed against me with all her weight, and tried to get her hands around my neck. When I cleared of her, the girl had got to the pistol, and it was in her hand again.
“ ‘I grabbed the girl’s arm, and the same time I felt Miz McNutt’s weight across my back, about pushed me over, and then she grabbed me around the neck, got both hands on my windpipe, and I began to shoot. I don’t know how many times. Three, four, five shots, I honestly don’t know.
“ ‘And then Miz McNutt said, “I am shot,” and let loose of my neck. I saw Thomas Boxer next. He came in from behind and grabbed up the pistol. I squared to shoot him, but the girl recovered—I’m talking about Rosie Sayers now—and I shot her again. Then I called out, “Come on, Buster, let’s go. There is apt to be more shooting here.” And we goose-stepped it into the car and left. I asked Buster to report to the police, and that’s all I know, how this came to happen.’ ”
He looked up then, adjusting his glasses, and he seemed to be shaken by what he had remembered. “Is that your statement, Mr. Trout?” the judge said.
“Yessir. I didn’t go out there to shoot those people. I am in the business of helping people. That’s what we try to do, and we expect to get paid for it, get a living out of it. Colored people aren’t the only ones got a right to a living.”
He folded the papers and put them back into his pocket. “I didn’t want nothing like this,” he said. “I had nothing against that girl or against the woman. The honest truth is, I don’t have nothing against them now. We were all somebody’s baby once, we all come from the same place.
“I didn’t want to get killed either. That is the reason I shot them, the only reason. In defense of my own life.”
He looked at the jury, a long examination. “We are all somebody’s baby,” he said again.
And then he folded his glasses and put them back into his pocket too, stood up, and returned to the table with Seagraves. Somewhere in the back a woman was crying.
Trout folded his hands and seemed, for a moment, to be praying.
JUDGE TAYLOR, NOTING THE courtroom was 104 degrees, gave each counsel five minutes for closing arguments, keeping the time on his wristwatch.
“What we have here,” Seagraves said, “is a death and two stories how it happened. We all regret that someone was killed, no matter who was at fault. But you are not being asked to regret the loss of Rosie Sayers’s life today, you are being asked to decide if Paris Trout, an honest and respected citizen of Ether County, deliberately caused that death, with malice and forethought, as the prosecution claims.
“I want you to think of the times you have seen Mr. Trout on the street or perhaps spoken to him at his store. Ask yourself if it seems possible that same man would drive out to Indian Heights to shoot a girl he did not know.
“Paris Trout did not need eight hundred dollars. His concern was a principle, and the principle is what led him out to Indian Heights. He went there as a reasonable man, to talk.
“Now, the prosecution asks you to believe something else. That Mr. Trout and Mr. Buster Devonne just walked into that house and began to shoot colored people up. They say that Mr. Devonne shot Mary McNutt in the back and the shoulder and the side and the breast, while Paris Trout was shooting the girl. They ask you to believe that the colored people themselves had no guns, that the guns were all in the other side of the house.
“Is that possible?” he said. Seagraves stopped for a moment and seemed to think. “Yes. Is it likely? No. Is there proof that’s the way it happened, physical evidence? No. All we have here is the words of the family against the words of Paris Trout and Buster Devonne.”
He paused for a moment.
“The real proof, of course, was right in this courtroom yesterday. Not ten feet from where you’re sitting. The proof is inside Mary McNutt, the bullets she has never had removed. If those bullets are anything but forty-fives, then somebody besides Paris Trout was shooting at her in that house, and she is telling the truth. But if those bullets are forty-fives, then they came from the same gun that shot Rosie Sayers, and you are obliged to believe Paris Trout.”
He had been walking up and down in front of the jury as he spoke, hands in his pockets, but now he took them out and leaned against the rail of the jury box. “We are that close to the proof, and that far away. But if those bullets were inside Paris Trout,” he said, “you know he would of found a way to have one of them removed and take the decision of who to believe off you.…”
He looked at the jurors, but the train had left the station. The foreman’s face was two feet from his own, and there wasn’t a sign he even understood the words. Seagraves knew to a certainty it had slipped away. It surprised him, to see it was already lost, and insulted him.
He pulled back off the rail, to keep the jury from seeing it.