Paris Trout

by Pete Dexter

  Her robe rose up over her knees, her legs lay in front of her at rag-doll angles. Her head tilted to the left, and her mouth was opened wide at the lower side, as if by its own weight. She watched him, though, he could see that she understood everything he did.

  He took the gun out of his belt and laid it across the windowsill, then the one from his pocket. He put the ammunition on the floor, next to her. He checked the line to the stairway. No one could approach him from there without offering him a shot.

  He walked across the hall and tried the bathroom door. It was locked. There was a note in the corner: “Please see Miss Emma in records for key!”

  A moment later he heard her on the steps, slowly climbing. He heard her breathing. He went to the stairway and saw the white straw hat coming up to him; he saw that she was carrying a blanket. “Mr. Trout?” she called.

  He walked back into the room with his mother and picked up the forty-five. The woman emerged from the stairway and padded into the room. “I brought Mrs. Trout a light blanket,” she said, and then she saw what was in his hand.

  “Dear God,” she said, “you don’t want to hurt nobody today, Mr. Trout. Not with your mother right here watching.…”

  She began to back up, saying things he did not listen to, until she was even again with the stairs. Then, dropping the blanket, she started back down the stairs. He followed the sound of her feet down to the landing between the second and third floors, and then he heard her begin to yell.

  He looked at his mother, she looked back. He put the muzzle of the forty-five against the top of her head. “I end my connections with everything that come before,” he said.

  THE KEEPERS OF THE Bush were moving their courtroom inside at the time Wilma Dunn came down the stairs. The last session was scheduled for that afternoon, and none of them intended to sit out in the rain.

  Carl Bonner, in fact, wanted to cancel court—Paris Trout had broken the stocks anyway—but Seagraves and Ward Townes felt an obligation to finish.

  At the moment Wilma Dunn appeared on the stairs, Harry Seagraves and Ward Townes were fitting the table against the outside of the main courtroom door, being careful not to spill the drinks sitting on top. Carl Bonner was in the men’s room down the hallway, the third time since the parade began.

  Wilma Dunn was a heavy woman, and shrill, and came down the stairs at them, holding on to the banister with both hands. None of them had ever seen her hurry anywhere before. She saw them and changed the pitch of her scream. “Murder,” she said, “God as my witness, he’s going to murder his own mother.…”

  Seagraves walked to the bottom of the steps to catch her if she fell. He did not understand the words at first, and then, a moment before she reached the bottom step, there was a single shot fired somewhere upstairs. Wilma Dunn fell into Seagraves’s arms and began to cry.

  “He’s done shot that poor old woman,” she said.

  He pushed her far enough away to look in her face. “Slow down,” he said. “Tell us slower.”

  “It’s Mr. Paris Trout, up there with his mother,” she said. “He got a gun and made to shoot her.…”

  Seagraves looked up the stairway.

  “Shot dead by her own sonny boy,” the woman said, and began to wail.

  Seagraves turned to Ward Townes. “Can you call somebody?” he said.

  Townes was looking upstairs too. “I’ll try,” he said, “but there isn’t anybody at the police station, I know that. And Edward Fixx and his deputies all been drunk for two days.” He rubbed his face, trying to sober himself up.

  “There’s bound to be some sort of police outside,” Seagraves said. He still had the woman’s shoulders, and she was still crying. Carl Bonner came out of the bathroom, zipping his trousers, holding his cup.

  “The poor thing,” she said.

  “Where are they?” Seagraves asked her.

  “He’s got her up there to the little room on the south side,” she said.

  “Who?” Bonner said, more to Seagraves than the woman.

  There was a sudden cheering outside, something in the parade. “Paris Trout,” she cried. “Paris Trout done shot his own mother upstairs.…”

  She let go of Seagraves and clung to Carl Bonner. “Please help that old woman,” she said.

  Carl Bonner finished what was in the cup and started up the stairs. Seagraves tried to stop him. “Hold on, Carl,” he said. “The man’s got a gun.”

  “He’s shot his own mother,” Bonner said.

  “If he shot her, she’s shot,” Seagraves said. “We’ll get the law to take care of it.”

  “It’s still somebody’s mother,” Bonner said, and went on up.

  Seagraves tried again. “You think it’s Boys’ Life up there? Take a damn minute and think what it means.”

  Bonner straightened and walked up the middle of the staircase. Seagraves watched him as far as the first landing, where he turned and followed the stairs up. Wilma Dunn dabbed at her eyes with a hankie. “He always been the bravest of the brave,” she said.

  TROUT WAS SITTING ON the floor, not far from his mother. She had fallen on her side, head tucked into her chest; her long hair was soaked in blood, a mop left in the middle of the job.

  He heard the steps on the stairs. They reached the landing below, stopped for a moment, and then continued up. He laid the forty-five across his knees and sighted over her body to the stairway.

  Bonner called out once, “Mr. Trout? This is Carl Bonner.…” Trout did not answer. He waited, and listened, and in a moment the man came to him, crossing into his line of sight and reason.

  Carl Bonner stood still at the top of the stairs, then slowly turned and offered himself fully. “Mr. Trout,” he said, walking forward, “I am not here to hurt you, sir. I only want to help your mother.”

  Trout shot him an inch above the belt, and the force of it blew him back beyond the stairs. He lay still a moment and then began to curl. The recoil kicked the gun up into the air. Trout let it fall back where it had been, and when it was settled he shot him again, in the ankle.

  In a few moments Trout heard him cry. Little noises. The room smelled like firecrackers. Trout waited for what would come, watching the man he had shot over the sights of the pistol.

  SEAGRAVES HEARD THE SHOTS upstairs, he heard Bonner fall. Then the noises settled, and Ward Townes came through the entrance, towing Dr. Hatfield. “I think he’s shot Carl Bonner,” Seagraves said. He looked up the stairs, and in a moment there were sounds from that direction.

  One of them—Bonner’s voice—was as clear as a whisper in his ear. “Please, Jesus …”

  “What in creation?” Ward Townes said. “He just went up there to him? Without a gun?”

  Bonner cried out then, as if something had caught him by surprise.

  “Is there a gun somewhere we can get to it?” Seagraves said.

  He and Townes looked at each other a minute. “Not that I know,” Townes said.

  The sounds of Carl Bonner’s breathing carried down the staircase, the catches and sighs. Then another cry. The woman covered her mouth and ran for the door. No one tried to stop her.

  It was the doctor who finally spoke. “I got to get to a telephone,” he said, “call an ambulance down here.” Ward Townes took a key ring from his pocket and opened the door to one of the offices.

  “I gave a boy a dollar to find us a policeman,” Townes said to Seagraves. “I don’t see there’s any choice but to wait this out.”

  As if he’d heard that, Bonner cried out again.

  They stood together, listening to Dr. Hatfield on the phone. “What the hell you mean, the ambulance is in the parade?… Then get somebody over here in a car.… Yes, right now, people been shot.”

  And the next time Carl Bonner cried for help, Seagraves went up the stairs.

  He saw Bonner from the landing between the second and third floor, pressed facefirst into the wood railing, eyes open and fixed, as if he were watching something a long ways off. Seagraves
took the next steps one at a time, as close to the wall as he could get.

  When Seagraves’s head was level with the top step, he saw the stain under Carl Bonner’s stomach and then, with the next step, he saw that his foot had been blown halfway off at the ankle.

  A cry came out of the body, but nothing moved. There was a noise behind him, and Seagraves turned and saw Ward Townes on the landing.

  Seagraves took another step up and leaned forward until his chin almost rested on the top stair. He saw that the oak door leading into the south room opened out, the knob rested against the wall leading to the staircase.

  There was something on the floor in the room, but from the stairs he could not see Trout.

  He took a deep breath, checked that Townes was behind him on the landing, and then, still watching Townes, he reached around the corner of the staircase until he felt the door and slammed it shut.

  He took the last three steps in one stride and threw himself against the bottom of the door. He had meant to call for Townes to get Carl Bonner and then to hold the door shut until there was help, but even before he was started, he was stopped.

  Something moving at the very edge of his vision.

  The shot caught him in the shoulder, just as he hit the door. It threw him sideways and turned him toward the movement he had seen, and there was Paris Trout.

  He had moved to a different room and was standing in the doorway, only a few yards from Bonner. His open eye dropped to meet him over the sight of the gun.

  Seagraves got to his feet and Trout shot him again. The bullet hit him in the side and passed through his body.

  Seagraves closed the distance.

  Paris Trout stood with his feet spread and his shooting arm straight out in front, and pulled the trigger four more times as Seagraves came across the hall. Two of the shots missed, the other two hit him in the leg and the groin, but they did not knock him down.

  He staggered and surged.

  The next time Trout pulled the trigger, the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He reached into his pocket and found one of the spare clips just as Seagraves’s hand attached itself to his shirt. Trout tried to pull himself free, but Seagraves would not let go.

  Trout stumbled backwards, trying to get the fresh clip into the forty-five. Then Seagraves had one of his fingers and was pushing it back. Trout heard the clip fall against the floor, he felt the life surge in the man he’d shot. The finger snapped at the knuckle, a crippling pain traveled the length of Trout’s arm, and then the attorney let go of his shirt and dropped to the floor.

  The forty-five and the clip were both somehow underneath him. A phone was ringing downstairs, over and over. No one answered. Trout reached into his pocket and found the other gun.

  He walked to the north end of the hallway, noticing that his trousers were sticking to his legs. He’d wet himself. Cradle to cradle.

  There was a fire escape at the end of the hallway. He thought for a moment of climbing down and looking for the rest of the people he’d put on his list, but he’d lost his purpose.

  He stopped at the end of the hall and took his hand and the pistol out of his coat. He checked the safety—it was off—and put the gun in his mouth. Then he turned back in the direction of the staircase and waited until Ward Townes’s face appeared there, waited until Townes found him, and on that signal pulled the trigger.

  BY THE TIME DR. Hatfield arrived on the third floor, there was only a faint stirring in Carl Bonner’s chest. Ward Townes had put a lawbook under his head and then gone to tend Harry Seagraves.

  Dr. Hatfield knelt at the body. He felt for a pulse and then opened Carl Bonner’s eyes to see if they would dilate. The doctor was shaking. There were sirens outside now, feet on the steps.

  “I think he’s gone,” he said.

  He opened Carl Bonner’s shirt and studied the wound. He shook his head.

  Dr. Hatfield stood up slowly and moved to Seagraves. Ward Townes held his head in his lap. The doctor searched for a pulse, but there was none.

  Then he moved to the small room at the south end of the hall, opened the door, and from there saw the top of the old woman’s head. He turned back to the landing without going in.

  People had reached the third floor now, some of them police, some of them lawyers. A woman was crying, the police were issuing orders.

  “There’s another one over here,” somebody said.

  Dr. Hatfield stepped away from the door and saw it for himself. Paris Trout lay alone, beneath the splash on the wall. At the corner of the ceiling, bits of him hung in a spider web.

  “Somebody get a boy in here,” the doctor said. “Clean that mess up after we take care of the dead.”

  A month to the day after her husband killed his mother, Carl Bonner, Harry Seagraves, and then himself, Hanna Trout signed a legal order authorizing Ether County to open the five safes that still stood in the hallway of the store.

  Agents of the Internal Revenue Service had visited her twice, and Estes Singletary had written a signed editorial calling for reparations to be made from the Trout estate. Not only to the Seagraves family and Leslie Bonner but to the city of Cotton Point as well.

  “Paris Trout was never a contributor to this community,” he wrote. “All he did was take. And in the end he took his own mother and two of our finest citizens, and he owes a debt for that. The repugnance one feels in this matter is not lessened by the fact that the killer ought to have been in jail at the time this grievous act was committed for another act of murder, which was overlooked because the girl was colored.…”

  The editorial went on to the bottom of the page. Hanna Trout read the first two paragraphs and put the paper aside. She did not need the Ether County Plain Talk to tell her about Paris Trout.

  And when Sheriff Edward Fixx called her that same week about opening the safes, she said that he and the federal government could do what they wanted.

  It did not seem to her that what was inside belonged to her anyway.

  On an order from the coroner, the sheriff and two of his deputies had already searched Paris’s room at the Ether Hotel and found nine pistols, loaded and cocked, two shotguns, and a .30 caliber lever-action carbine. They had found a steel plate beneath his mattress, stacks of canned food, and several sheets of glass fitted to cover the floor.

  There was no money, no indication of where it was.

  An investigation by officers of the Southern Bankers Directory showed that Trout had sold 866 acres of timber in February for $117,000, and had liquidated Trout & Co. the month before, receiving a payment slightly in excess of $170,000 from an Atlanta investment firm.

  The assets of his bank, which were estimated at $400,000, had vanished.

  All that was left were the house and the store and the five safes inside. Hanna Trout signed the authorization without reading it. She had put her house up for sale. She sensed she was an embarrassment now, much as her husband had been before that Saturday morning.

  There were stories, of course: that she had the money herself, that her husband had gone crazy when she threw him out.

  There was a story that she and Harry Seagraves were lovers, but that one died early, out of respect for his wife.

  Hanna Trout had gone to the funerals—Harry Seagraves and Carl Bonner were buried the same day—and no one had offered her an arm or a kind word. Of course, there had been no offers in that direction before, when Paris Trout was only an embarrassment.

  Before what he was and what he did had changed the place he lived.

  HARRY SEAGRAVES WAS BURIED in the family plot in the oldest and shadiest part of Ether County Memorial Park. His stone read:

  HARRY SEAGRAVES

  HE WAS OUR BEST AND OUR KINDEST

  Carl Bonner lay in a newer part of the cemetery, near the street. His marker was flat on the ground and carried only his name and the dates of his birth and death. You would never guess, looking at it, that he had been the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of Georgia or that a generatio
n of Cotton Point children had suffered in the comparison with his example.

  You would never guess that a perception of the future died with him.

  Paris Trout and his mother were buried a day later, in separate parts of the cemetery.

  There had been no church funeral for him, and only Hanna and a few of his blood relations came to the graveside. He went into the ground in a section of the cemetery where no one visiting the graves of Harry Seagraves or Carl Bonner or his mother would accidentally stumble over his name on the way in or out. The ground there was hard, and there were spots where grass would not grow.

  The place looked poisoned.

  There were no trees, and there was no shade, although in some seasons the late-afternoon sun dropped behind the Monument to the Unknown Confederate Dead in such a way as to cast a shadow across his grave.

  A LOCKSMITH WAS BROUGHT in from Macon at county expense. He spent two days in the hallway of the store, going from one safe to another, and was unable to open any of them. By the second afternoon his curses were audible on the street.

  At the end of the second day he told Sheriff Fixx, “Those ain’t ordinary,” and returned to Macon.

  Edward Fixx informed all interested parties—including agents of the Internal Revenue Service—that the safes were not ordinary and the locksmith from Macon had left. A week later two federal agents stepped off the train from Atlanta, escorting one Ralph Guthrie, of Leavenworth, Kansas.

  Mr. Guthrie was in handcuffs and was taken to the Ether Hotel and given the best room available.

  In the morning he ate steak and eggs at Richard Dickey’s drugstore and then walked between the agents from the restaurant to Paris Trout’s store, smiling in a boyish way at the women—it did not matter if they were young or old—and did not seem even slightly embarrassed by the circumstances or the handcuffs.

  Once inside, Ralph Guthrie looked at the safes and began to laugh.

  Edward Fixx did not appreciate a man in handcuffs laughing at his situation. “Can he do it or not?” he said.