by Pete Dexter
The man had put a gun against his jaw—although the sheriff decided later he never meant to use it—and then damn near beat him home. Sheriff Fixx walked through the door and stood just behind him. “I see you got time off for good behavior,” he said. The sheriff had a bent for sarcasm.
Trout reached into his pocket and came out with a folded paper and handed it to him.
“What’s this, a pardon from the governor?”
“Habeas corpus,” Trout said.
“Hocus-pocus, you mean.”
Trout took the paper out of Sheriff Fixx’s hand and put it back in his pocket. “It’s legal as anything else,” he said. And then while Sheriff Fixx stood there thinking of an answer, a black Pontiac pulled into the curb with the peg-legged woman that worked for Trout behind the wheel, and he got in and drove away.
The sheriff watched the car until it turned, trying to remember if it was legal for a peg-legged woman to drive. Then he started the walk back to the station, smiling at people so they would think it was natural for the sheriff to be walking. By the time he got there, he had decided what he was going to do about Paris Trout, which was nothing.
If habeas corpus was good enough for Judge Taylor, it was good enough for him. He thought it had about worn Cotton Point out, taking Trout as far as it did.
He made up his mind though, to search him in the event he had to ride him back to Petersboro County. He wouldn’t have a prisoner carrying any kind of weapon in an official car again and posted a notice to that effect on the bulletin board that evening.
Monday morning of the next week some of Cotton Point’s most prominent citizens and politicians gathered over breakfast at the home of Mayor Horn to begin plans for the town’s sesquicentennial celebration, to be held the following spring. Among those invited to the meeting were the presidents of the Rotary, the Elks, the Order of the Moose, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and all those organizations’ ladies’ auxiliaries.
Four of the five members of the Sesquicentennial Planning Committee were present: Harry Seagraves, Carl Bonner, Ward Townes, and Dr. Hodges, who owned a furniture store. Only Walker Hargrove of the First Bank of Georgia was absent, but no one had expected him to make it. Bankers had things to do.
Estes Singletary was there too, with his wife, who took pictures for the news story she would write. Mrs. Singletary had been a cub reporter before she married.
The meeting, according to Mrs. Singletary’s account in the paper the following Thursday, “went swimmingly, with ideas contributed from a great many sources, some of them delightfully unexpected.”
The ideas, which Mrs. Singletary did not divulge in her newspaper account, included plans for a pageant to be held on the football field at the officers’ academy, a train ride to Atlanta—although some of those present thought it was antisocial to celebrate the existence of Cotton Point by riding off to Atlanta—and a town ordinance requiring every man who could grow one to wear a beard.
A three-member subcommittee of lawyers was formed that morning to enforce the ordinance. The Keepers of the Bush. Mayor Horn appointed Harry Seagraves chairman, calling him the “finest criminal mind in Georgia.”
When breakfast was over, the mayor’s maid cleared the silverware, and the women, on some unspoken signal, separated into the far end of the house. When they had left, the mayor bit the end off a cigar and stuck it in his mouth. The others lit cigarettes, except for Estes Singletary, who used a pipe, and for most of an hour they discussed the pros and cons of constructing public stocks in front of the courthouse for those who showed up clean-shaven during Sesquicentennial Week.
The mayor was for it; Harry Seagraves was opposed. They talked over who all was likely to refuse to grow beards and how they would look with their ankles and wrists in stocks, laughing at some of the names, eyes watering in the smoke.
It was the newspaperman who brought up the subject of Paris Trout. He looked right at Seagraves and said, “Whatever the punishment, it ought to be worse than Paris Trout got for killing that Negro child.”
Seagraves had been sitting with his hands folded across his stomach, feeling full and lazy and happy. Without having moved a muscle, everything had changed. “I didn’t have any part in that,” he said.
Estes Singletary shrugged. “You’re the lawyer.”
“My association with Mr. Trout ended with his last appeal,” he said. “I would of thought you’d known that, running the Conscience of Georgia.” Which was the Plain Talk’s motto.
Estes Singletary saw that Seagraves was angry and tried to undo what he had said. “I didn’t mean it in a personal way, Harry,” he said. “I only meant that Trout was convicted of a crime in this town and sentenced and then showed up loose on the street the day after he went to jail, and nobody’s said a thing about it.”
“You own the paper,” Seagraves said. “Why don’t you put something in there?”
“I might,” Singletary said, but everyone at the table knew he was afraid to offend advertisers. The table was quiet, and the maid came out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee and walked from place to place, freshening the cups.
Only Carl Bonner refused more, putting his hand over the cup and shaking his head. She smiled at him and said, “You ain’t had but one cup, Mr. Bonner,” but he did not answer. His attention was at the other end of the table. After she poured coffee for the mayor, she looked over all the cups again to make sure no one had been missed and then smiled. “All right, I’ll go see the ladies need something and leave y’all go back to your discussions.”
But the discussions were over. Five minutes passed. Ward Townes checked his pocket watch and remembered he was due in court. Seagraves stood up with him, thanking the mayor for breakfast, and said he would think about the stocks. Then Dr. Hodges and the Singletarys. They left one by one until only the mayor and Carl Bonner were there in the dining room.
“You know somebody in Petersboro County who could tell me how Paris Trout got out?” Bonner said.
Mayor Horn took two cigars from his coat pocket, offered one to the young attorney, and bit the end off the other. Bonner bit the end off his and allowed the mayor to light it.
“You don’t want nothing to do with Pete County,” the mayor said finally. “You don’t need nothing to do with Paris Trout either. Estes Singletary there, he’s got a mouth on him, but he won’t say nothing when he’s out of this room. The lesson is don’t ever invite a newspaperman anyplace there’s people with manners.…”
The mayor stopped for a moment, considering his words. He said, “Cotton Point did as much as it could about Paris Trout already, Mr. Bonner. You don’t do yourself or your law practice any favors bringing it back up.”
“I don’t intend to bring it up,” he said. “It might be useful, is all. I represent Mrs. Trout in her suit for dissolution, and Paris Trout has stalled her every way there is.”
The mayor frowned. He had known and admired Hanna Nile most of his life. He had heard of her trouble getting loose of Paris.
“There is a man that will know who got paid,” he said finally. “Most likely he got part of it.”
Carl Bonner sat up in his chair and waited.
“You don’t need me to tell you who,” the mayor said, suddenly angry. “The writ’s a public document, you’re supposed to be eastern educated, all you got to do is go down there and read the damn name.”
Carl Bonner stood up then, the mayor stayed where he was. Very slowly he ground the lighted end of his cigar into the scrambled eggs left on his plate, twisting until the end flattened out and began to shred.
“I assure you I’ll be discreet,” Bonner said.
“Let me ask you something,” the mayor said. “If there was something discreet to do about Paris Trout, you think that the people in this room this morning wouldn’t of done it already?”
IT TOOK CARL BONNER five minutes to find the name of the judge who had released Paris Trout. Raymond Mims. He sat in the Petersboro County Courthouse the rest of the
afternoon, finding other writs of habeas corpus that Mims had signed for prisoners at the work camp.
There were eight by the time the clerk shut off the lights.
Bonner decided to stay in town that night, in the best hotel room he could find, and charge the bill to Hanna Trout’s account, to be paid by her husband as part of the eventual divorce settlement. He intended to hurt Paris Trout as badly as he could.
For two and a half years he’d been filing every kind of legal paper he could file, but each time Trout filed papers of his own, delaying hearings, arguing against producing whatever documents Bonner had requested. Trout was familiar with the soft places in the law, where things got lost or slowed or misplaced.
Carl Bonner’s practice had grown in that time, but not in the way he had expected. The money he made was still from other attorneys’ referrals, he had no big accounts, no important clients.
And Hanna Trout’s divorce was waiting for him every morning when he woke up and still nagging him when he went home at night. Some nights, in fact, he felt as if Trout were in his home. Behind one of the closet doors in back, working against him.
He found a hotel with phones in the rooms and called his secretary just before six and asked her to call his wife and tell her he would not be home. He spoke to his wife through his secretary two or three times a day now. Sometimes he called them by each other’s names.
And after he had called his office, he called Hanna Trout.
∗
SEAGRAVES WAS LYING IN the daybed with her when the phone rang. She was in a slip, he had kicked off his shoes and loosened his tie. He held a glass of iced tea on his stomach, and it spilled as she got up to answer the phone. He came here once or twice a week, there was a way in through the alley in back.
She was gone less than five minutes.
“That was Carl Bonner,” she said, sitting back down on the bed.
He touched her shoulder.
“He was in Petersboro County.”
“What for?”
“On Paris,” she said. “He said he got what we need.”
Seagraves lay still. “Did he say what?”
“The names of the people Paris paid to get out.”
Seagraves sat up a few inches and sipped at the iced tea. “Everybody in the state knows who he paid,” he said. He saw she was upset and reached out to touch her again. She did not respond. There was a part of her he could not reach, and it was the part he wanted. He thought it might still belong to Paris Trout.
She turned and looked at him. Her side was a straight line under the slip all the way to her waist, and he followed it from beneath her arm until he touched her hip. “Then why didn’t somebody put him back in?”
“He won’t come around here,” he said.
“He is around here,” she said.
And he understood what she meant and did not try to answer. “Carl Bonner said he found eight others that had gotten out the same way,” she said a little later.
“That sounds right.”
She pulled away and stared out the window. “There is an aspect of you that doesn’t fit,” she said.
He smiled. “What aspect is that?”
“Your character,” she said. “You are fair with me, more than anybody else has been. You tell the truth. But there is a whole other side that comes out sometimes and makes me wonder what world you live in.”
“The same world as everybody else,” he said. “There’s good and bad, and it’s no sense getting upset over it. You take things as you find them.”
She pulled her feet up onto the bed and studied them, her chin on her knees. If he moved now, he would catch her crying.
“What do you expect?” he said quietly.
“Something else.”
He waited a few minutes and then touched her behind the ears, moving from there down her neck to her shoulders. She sat very still. He moved his hands back to her neck, then around, touching her cheeks and her eyes, pulling her lower lip down and running the tip of his finger inside. She shook under his fingers.
“HE JUST BOUGHT HIS way out,” she said later.
He propped himself up, resting his head against the flat part of his hand, and stared down at her face. He felt a coolness in his lap and on his legs, everywhere he was up against her she left him wet. “It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “It’s not our business.”
“Is that where it settles? He’s nobody’s business?”
He dropped back into the pillow and thought of what she had said before: that he was fair with her and told her the truth. He tried to do that now.
“There comes a time,” he said, “when it’s best just to leave something alone.”
TWO DAYS LATER CARL Bonner walked into the store on Main Street. The peg-legged woman frowned at him from behind the counter. He pointed to a pack of Dentyne gum and gave the woman a dollar bill. When she turned to make change, he asked if Trout was in.
“I believe he’s back in his office with a Negro,” she said. “He’s been very busy and don’t have time to see you.” She counted the ninety-five cents out, putting the coins in his palm one at a time.
He started toward the back of the store.
“ ’Cuse me,” she said, but he kept walking. He heard her behind him, the steps alternating hard and soft as she hurried to catch up. “Just hold on your britches there,” she said.
She caught him at the office door, which was closed. He heard a voice inside, she grabbed at the arm of his coat. She was heavier than he would have thought and pulled him off-balance. “I already told you,” she said, “Mr. Trout don’t have time for you today.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her out of the way and then opened the door. He walked into the office. Trout was perched, bare-chested, on a chair over the sink. The mirror behind it had been broken, all except for a piece in an upper corner. His suspenders hung loose to his knees, his cheeks and chin were covered with shaving cream. There was a straight razor in his hand, and he changed the way he held it as Bonner came in.
Bonner heard the woman behind him. “I told you,” she said, but he put an arm out as she grabbed him, and she fell across the floor. The peg clattered, the rest of her landed soft. Bonner moved to help her up.
“Are you hurt?” he said.
“Some Boy Scout,” she said. “You knocked down a crippled lady.”
Trout hadn’t moved. Bonner tried to get her up. Half of her seemed to take the help, the other half seemed to fight him off. “You slipped,” he said.
“I never slipped in my life,” she said, getting back upright. She brushed herself off and straightened her clothes, and then, without any warning, she began to cry.
Bonner walked her to the door and closed it when she was through. Then he turned and looked at Trout. “Mr. Trout,” he said, “none of this would have been necessary—”
Trout stepped off the chair and moved a foot in his direction, holding the razor. Carl Bonner picked an empty mineral water bottle up off the floor and waited. Trout stopped, and Bonner had the sudden thought that Trout didn’t know who he was. “I am Carl Bonner,” he said. “I represent your wife in her suit for dissolution of the marriage.”
“Lawyers,” Trout said, and moved back to the sink and began to shave. He did not climb back up the chair to use the mirror, and in a moment he was bleeding.
Bonner watched, determined to wait him out. He crossed his arms and spread his feet and looked around the room. Bottles, empty cans, it was like someone lived there. Trout wiped the soap off his face, leaving red stains on the towel. He put on his shirt and replaced his suspenders, making popping noises as he let them go. He left the towel on the floor.
“Mr. Trout, I am here about your wife.”
“Don’t have one,” he said. He passed in front of Bonner and sat down behind his desk.
“Legally, sir, you do.”
Trout pointed a crooked finger at him and said, “I’ve took as much abuse as I’m going to, pretty boy. A wo
man throws you out, she loses her claim.…”
“The only thing she wants is deed to her house and the money you took from her when you married,” he said. “That, and the attorney fees. There’s nothing else, except to rid herself of the name Trout.”
Trout did not answer.
“I have general information on the state of your finances. The bank you run and the holding company is worth half a million dollars. There’s eight hundred sixty-six acres of land in the eastern part of the state with sawmill timber, worth a hundred thousand, and you have deed to an apartment house which, along with your store, is valued at thirty thousand dollars. Then there is whatever you’ve got in the safes.”
Bonner paused for a moment. “All Mrs. Trout wants,” he repeated, “is her four thousand dollars, the house, and my fees.”
Trout laughed out loud.
“This goes to court, it will cost you more than that,” Bonner said. “There’s judgments where the wife gets a third of the property.…”
“Find it,” Trout said. “Collect all the niggers together in court and ask what they owe me. Show me the lumber deed. Show me where the store makes a profit.…” Without any warning, he began to laugh again. Bonner waited him out.
“There’s always a way,” he said when the older man was quiet. “You step in mud, you leave a footprint.”
“I don’t keep things where just anybody can find them.” He tapped the side of his head and then settled back into his chair. It occurred to Bonner that the man was having fun with him. He felt his face go numb with anger.
“I expect that’s true,” he said, “but there is another matter.” Trout put his hands flat on the desktop and stared. “The matter of Petersboro County.”
“There ain’t no matter of Petersboro County. That’s over.”
Bonner turned the chair and sat down. “Judge Raymond Mims,” he said. The man did not seem to hear him. “You paid Judge Raymond Mims to get you out on a writ of habeas corpus, a move unheard of before in any court in this state.”