Drowning of Stephan Jones (21 page)

There was so much commotion in the mahogany-walled courtroom that the judge had trouble restoring order long enough to announce that sentencing would take place six weeks hence, at ten o’clock in the morning on November 16.

Outside the Wayland home on the November morning of the sentencing, the Japanese maple tree had already lost some of its leaves, and the real estate broker’s sign in front of the house proclaimed to friends and foes alike that there was a sale pending.

Judith knocked lightly on the door of her daughter’s bedroom. “We don’t have a lot of time. Ready for breakfast?”

Carla swung open the door. She wore a baby-blue skirt and a matching sweater, and around her neck was a single very ladylike strand of cultured pearls. “Fooled you, didn’t I”

Judith beamed, relieved to see Carla was on the mend. A person who’s young and healthy could accomplish an awful lot of healing in forty-two days—thank God! Carla had left the court at the trial’s end with one profusely bleeding wound that no emergency medical personnel could ever treat because the trauma had been to her mind ... and to her spirit.

As Judith closely observed her daughter, she silently asked herself the same old nagging question that had clung to her like a chronic headache for six weeks. Why should the young person who suffered the most from the trial and its aftermath be Carla and not one of those five charged with murder? Why was it the one, the only one, fired up with a passion for justice?

Justice? In spite of herself, the mere thought of that word made the librarian shake her head mournfully. Justice ... the community didn’t want it, the jurors didn’t dispense it, and Lord knows, the lawyers seemed to have the least regard for it. Why, Judith pondered, were attorneys forever referring to themselves as “practicing law”? Why wouldn’t they come right out and call it by its rightful name: practicing the
avoidance of
law?

But if there was pain, and there
was
pain aplenty, it was also true that not everything was sorrow and loss, loss and sorrow.

There was also pride. The shared pride of a mother and daughter who grew closer in the knowledge that they may have been knocked around but they had never been knocked out. For Judith, there was the exhilaration of being able to gaze on her own child and say with complete candor, “You’re okay, kiddo. I’m proud of you.”

If there was any one thing that had crystallized this point of honor between them, it was Carla herself, who came to the difficult decision that whatever the price, she had to give testimony to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The truth exactly as she had experienced it.

At the breakfast table, Judith split the four-egg mushroom omelet that Carla had cooked to perfection as they chatted about the weather. Carla considered that a form of talking without saying anything but, ever since the trial, that kind of talk had pretty much suited her.

Judith looked out the kitchen window in time to see the
brittle fallen leaves being pushed into a dancing frenzy. “It’s a cinch we won’t be needing our lawn mower until spring,” she said. “Think we should get it tuned up before taking it with us?”

“If you’re bent on taking that temperamental old gas mower with us to Peterborough, then why bother to ask my opinion?”

“Because I value it.”

Carla sighed. “I sure wish others still did.”

“Don’t tell me—is that regret I’m hearing? Are you sorry that you testified to the truth?”

“No, but I wish ... well, I guess I wish that truth didn’t hurt so much,” she responded with a quick toss of her head.

Judith laughed. “And so, my darling, do I.”

“Going back into that courtroom today to hear Judge Bernhardt pass sentence ... I feel funny about that.” Carla speared an escaped mushroom cap with her fork, without bothering to eat it. “Will people—Andy and the others—think I’m only there to gloat? Because I’m the only one not charged with the crime? Is that what they’ll think?”

Slowly Judith thinly spread low-salt, low-fat, low-taste margarine on her whole-wheat toast. “Try not to worry about them anymore, honey. It’s not really rewarding trying to fathom what people will think. Particularly people who have demonstrated a lifetime aversion to thinking. What is important to remember is why you decided to testify in spite of everything. Right from the start you realized that some people would consider you a traitor. But in spite of everything you decided to forge ahead. It had a lot to do with facing yourself, remember?”

Carla’s low chuckle could have easily been mistaken for a moan. “I still can’t get over how Andy’s lawyer tried to make me tell the court that I ran away from the others that night because of jealousy. He pretended that it had nothing at all to do with the fact that I feared Stephan might be in jeopardy.” She
shook her head in disbelief. “Waking up the Lindstrom family at one in the morning and begging them to call the Parson Springs police was just what any normal girl would do if her boyfriend wasn’t giving her enough attention. Right? Well some people—probably a lot of people—believe that! They really believe that I was trying to punish Andy! And, oh yes, the fact that a man really did drown was just one of those things. Nothing but a real peculiar kind of a coincidence.”

“I’m sorry that I have to agree with you, because unfortunately Mr. Burwick did perform altogether competently. He did what he was paid to do. In painting you as a girl burning with jealousy over Andy’s romantic interest in others, he made all your testimony suspect.”

Thoughtfully, Carla replaced the top on the jar of marmalade. “I know. It’s called discrediting the witness.”

Judith decisively pushed her plate toward the center of the table. “In the end the jury believed you! The Rachetville Five
were
convicted.”

“Convicted yes, but convicted of murder? No! They were convicted only of involuntary manslaughter!” Carla shook her head as though she were trying to shake away some terrible but persistent truth. “Take away all the legal mumbo jumbo and all that means is that no malice was ever intended, only that these ‘nice, young people’ should have been more careful. Want to know something, Mom? When I worked at the day-care center that’s just what they paid me to say to the children when they spilled their milk: ‘Oh, I know it was an accident,’ I’d tell them, ‘Only next time, let’s see how we can be more careful.’”

At Carla’s flash of insight, Judith laughed approvingly, and it was just the warmth emanating from her mother’s compassion that propelled her to open up in a way that she hadn’t since the trial.

“Want to know what else made me furious?”

Judith looked up at Carla, who narrowed her eyes and continued, gesticulating with her hands and aping Burwick. ‘Forgive this girl,’ he told the jurors, ’cause it’s not her fault, ’cause she never asked to be born to a dangerously radical mother.’”

Judith replied, “No doubt about it, we took our licks all right. What he said about me should have been stricken but the case wasn’t really fair from many points of view. However, in the end the jury did convict them.”

“Only of involuntary manslaughter,” shot back Carla. “Don’t you see, Mother... don’t you see,
I
was guilty of involuntary manslaughter—they were guilty of
murder
!”

Judith jumped to her feet.
“You
were guilty of
nothing
! You tried to save Stephan Jones! Remember that you, and only you, tried to save—”

Carla interrupted. “That night I tried ... I
really
tried to save him. ...” She bit down on her lower lip so that the physical pain could divert her attention from the emotional pain of remembering. Her eyes were touched by mist. “But tell me,” she went on, “where was I when all those ugly homophobic jokes were being told? The truth is I was standing right there with the others laughing my head off. Where was I when Andy harassed Stephan and Frank with letters, phone calls, and vandalism? I’m so ashamed because I kept looking up in Andy’s eyes and telling him how wonderful he really was! I keep thinking and wondering, would things have turned out differently if I had been different? If right from the beginning I had demanded that Andy leave those men alone?”

Judith rubbed two fingers back and forth across her forehead as though anticipating a headache. “None of us can fly backwards in time to correct our wrongs of yesterday,” she said. “So perhaps, the next best thing is to have the courage to face those past wrongs. By confronting them we change ourselves! Somewhere within yourself you discovered that kind of
courage. I admire you for it.”

The phone jangled, breaking the mood, and both women looked anxiously at each other before responding to its ring. While reaching for it, Judith shook her head in exasperation. “When you have to think twice about the wisdom of answering your own phone, then it’s really time to move on.” But on the line was Debby’s mother, Peg Packard. She and Debby wanted to accompany them to court. Since Carla was close enough to hear Peg’s question, all Judith had to do was to lift a quizzical eyebrow in her daughter’s direction and wait a mere fraction of a beat as Carla smiled and nodded affirmatively.

Chapter 23

A
CROSS THE WINDING
Pascaloosa River over in Parson Springs, the rising November sun peeked around and through the calico curtains of the graceful home that Frank Montgomery once shared with Stephan Jones.

Frank stood in front of his bathroom sink, shaving. Today this ordinary, everyday ritual felt different. Perhaps it was merely the intensity with which he glared back at his reflection that made it more than clear that this was no ordinary day.

Hanging from a hanger on the bathroom door was a carefully laid-out business suit with an accompanying no-nonsense striped tie and a white oxford cloth shirt.

As he shaved, he heard a familiar thud against his door. Without bothering to wipe the shaving cream from his face, he walked briskly out his front door to pick up his weekly copy of the
Parson Springs Transcript
lying on the sun-shaded veranda. He stood outside in the morning light totally engrossed in the lead article: RACHETVILLE FIVE TO BE SENTENCED TODAY: CONVICTED LAST MONTH OF INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER.

Returning inside, he tossed away the second section and placed the first section on his dining room table where he carefully constructed two folds. Then he bound both ends with pieces of surgical tape, creating a kind of pocket with an opening only from the top.

From outside he suddenly heard a chorus of raucous young voices shouting, “Frank-Frank! Frank Montgomery! Frank-Frank! Frank Montgomery!” Swinging open the front door, he was bombarded by an assault of screaming obscenities hurled at him from the safety of a nearly new Oldsmobile.

With fists raised, Frank dashed after the now quickly accelerating, automobile, shouting at full volume, “For what you
did, you’ll pay! If it’s the last thing I ever do, you’ll pay! I swear to God YOU’LL PAY!!!”

Alone, Frank Montgomery drove the Winnebago to Rachetville. As he passed the courthouse, a cameraman, sporting the NBC peacock on his equipment, was setting up in a particularly strategic spot. The block was jammed with cameramen and reporters from local as well as national press and TV stations. Overnight entrepreneurs with houses within a few blocks of the courthouse were renting out their driveways, and even their yards, for three bucks a clip.

Some blocks away on a side street Frank pulled his RV over to the edge of the curb and cut the motor. Next to him on the passenger’s seat was his copy of the
Transcript
with its specially prepared pocket. It didn’t lie flat as before. There was something inside that was giving it a hefty bulge.

Walking across the courthouse lawn with the newspaper pressed tight beneath his arm, Frank Montgomery passed beneath the shadow of a bronze Confederate soldier. Although seven generations separated the soldier from the antique dealer, it was clear they shared something. Maybe it was only the rage of men who had seen the unbelievable and experienced the unspeakable.

A few steps later, Frank stopped short to take in the sweet aroma wafting from several pushed-together card tables laden with home-baked cakes, pies, and cookies. The sugar and cinnamon fragrance momentarily transported Frank back through time and space to the days he’d been wrapped in his grandmother’s loving embrace before being led into her sugar-and-spice kitchen.

He smiled wanly and noticed on the card table his absolute favorite: moist chocolate brownie squares topped with chunky bits of walnuts. Frank took out his wallet while asking one of the pleasant-looking ladies behind the table, “How much for the brownie?”

“Anything you’d like to contribute
over
a dollar, sir,” she sang out sweetly. “It’s all for a good cause, you know.”

For the first time, Frank noticed the poster-board sign written somewhat crudely in red and green Magic Markers and stuck with Scotch tape to the edge of the card table: Buy a Pie and sweeten the defense fund of the Rachetville Five ... Sponsored by The Ladies Auxiliary of The Rachetville Baptist Church.

“How much would you like to contribute, sir?” she asked, her deep Southern accent carrying as much of a sugary glaze as her bakery goods.

In contrast, it made Frank’s response sound just that much more rude: “Nothing!” he spit out, as he whipped his unopened wallet back into his back pocket. “Not a damn thing!”

As he approached the courthouse, he wondered if in the fifty years since the Scopes trial, had so many out-of-town media types descended upon such a sleepy Southern town.

Striding energetically toward Frank was a beefy man in his late thirties whom everybody called “Red” all the years he was growing up in Fitzgerald, Georgia. “Red” in more recent years had changed his three-letter nickname back to the three-letter name he had been given at birth: Ben.

Hereabouts, Ben Brewster was mockingly referred to as “the First Fag” because he was sent by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force all the way from Washington, DC, to organize local protests as well as to monitor the trial. As he fell into step with Frank Montgomery, an anxious look played across his face. “How are you today, Frank? Are you okay?” he queried. “Anything that either I or the task force can do to help?”