The Blackstone Commentaries (18 page)

The afternoon turned beautiful beyond Dugan's office window, warm and smelling lush and pungent, like he imagined the women walking down the sidewalk in their sleeveless dresses did. It was rare, and unsettling, when his desires floated away from Dru like that. The ringing of the phone jarred him.

The voice was hesitant, muffled for a moment as though turning away, still deciding, like someone trying not to cry. Dugan heard a car pass in the background, and then another a few moments later, but that was all, other than the faint crow of a rooster. When the man finally came on again, he sounded not upset so much as a little offended, hurt by the lack of respect with which he'd been treated, forced to this call. Not that circumstances would have let it be otherwise. Natty's voice seemed to come out of the vanished rain. “Gaius, he was at my Quonset early, but he gone. He was gone awhile before
they
went.”

“Who were
they
?”

“I thinks that's when the doctor went. Anyhow, one of them blond girls, a Mary Stacy, she come round now and then from over Shelby way.”

“Did you see the car?”

“Nossir.” Then the silence again, the waiting. Wanting the respect back.

Nothing racial, or personal
, Dugan thought.
If I have to force it out, you lose something, that's all. Everyone does
. “Thank you,” Dugan said.

XVIII

Loretta

April seemed so long ago. All the time since then had slowed to a crawl and was making everything small and ridiculous. The tears were coming again, and Loretta knew the anger wouldn't be far behind.

Not here
, she told herself.
But I'm tired all the time now, it seems. I can't get enough sleep, and the anger, it's never going away. Every time my older one wakes screaming in her bed and I run to her room, I want to scream, too
.

But this Mary Stacy, it doesn't seem fair; she looks worse than ordinary. She should be beautiful, ravishing, someone to make men do crazy things like almost kill my family! Oh, her hair's blond, but bleached and dry looking like old straw, like it isn't something a man would want to muss. And her skin's unhealthy, and her lipstick's too red. What on earth does she do to men?

Loretta opened her eyes and found she was still in the courtroom, sitting up near one of the high windows overlooking the bar and bench and virtually everything else, the same place she and Danny had sat the last time they were here, the same hot sun coming through the windows to
make her drowsy. She could see something like a liver wart on top of the judge's bald head, and it made him seem fragile; it made everything seem fragile and pointless. She looked at Mary Stacy sitting by herself down there on the bottom row near the east doors that were open on screen doors and the balcony. She could look all she wanted because Mary Stacy would have to turn around and look up to see her looking, and wouldn't, she felt certain. Mary Stacy looked awkward and shy, lonely down there, like she was seeing daylight for the first time, things as they really were, a whole other world than the nighttime one she'd been living in. And maybe she was scared. Loretta wondered. Dugan could do that to you without intending to be mean at all. It was the way he carried himself and all he stood for. She'd felt it that last time in his office, his frustration at not being able to do more, his trying, even wishing, not to be what he was.

But that woman had to know what life was! Sheriff Dugan had told Loretta and Danny she had two little boys and lived in something not much more than a shack with no running water somewhere outside Shelby, and no regular man around. For a moment, Loretta felt sorry for her, but only for a moment because it made her lose her anger and threatened her with acquiescence, which was what she was sure everyone wanted, especially
him
. Just give up; it's not worth the effort. Everything will go back to the way it was.
No
. It wasn't just the girls, or the car, or that April night anymore, the windows shattered and her babies screaming and those taillights weaving down the mountain out of sight. No, it went much deeper than that now, and this Stacy woman was in that other car.

And this time,
he
was coming. Sheriff Dugan, standing over there by the doors, had signaled them a little while before, just a nod, but they knew what it meant. The hearing would have been continued again for sure if Dugan hadn't come in the door with Mary Stacy about two hours ago. Like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, it was worth waiting just for that, the attorneys trying some other case turning around in their chairs to look, knowing something had seriously changed, even if it wasn't their case. It had suddenly grown so quiet you could hear the buzzing of a fly caught between the windows. Even the solicitor, Mr. Lamb, looked startled. But he wasn't their solicitor anymore, thank God. They had a private one now, a chubby man in a seersucker suit with thick white hair slicked around his ears who came over from Morganton.

They had first gone to that attorney Elmore Willis, son of old Doc Willis. It had been Danny's idea, after they'd seen him their first time in court. Willis had been defending a man and trying hard, you could see, like it really mattered, not just rattling off some words, throwing in a couple of “Your Honors” to make it sound official, then strutting a bit before putting out his hand for money. The man he was defending was poor, you could see that, too, so he couldn't be paying much. He trusted Willis, Danny said. Because she had no opinion except that she didn't want Mr. Lamb anymore even if they did go into more debt, she went along.

But Willis turned them down, had to, he said, though he seemed reluctant, and not before he agreed a private solicitor might be a good idea, if they could afford it, though he wouldn't say why. “I'm really not free to comment on that,” he'd explained when she asked, but he seemed sincere. It was enough he said it, like someone was finally listening to them. He was very nice about it, something about the way he looked and listened, something inherently respectful. He said he couldn't do it himself because he'd been socializing some with that doctor—that was how he said it, “socializing,” whatever that meant—and if he were to lose, which he wouldn't want to do, it could be seen as a conflict. He was so nice about it she had trouble being disappointed in him, his even wanting to be around that bastard. Looking back, it was like he really wanted to take their case and wanted them to know that, like he knew somehow what they were talking about and believed them, but he just couldn't do it. It was he who recommended the man from Morganton and even made the first call for them, and hadn't charged them anything for his time.

But the private solicitor didn't come cheap. So they were in debt again, and not just from legal fees and the car they had to buy, which was not even new or as good as the one that had been wrecked. They had both missed work days because the girls were having so much trouble. Their bank account was never very big after they got out of debt the first time, but it had been adequate, if they were careful. The fact was that nothing had really felt right since the shooting. They still weren't sleeping well. She felt estranged from her surroundings, and increasingly from her friends in Damascus, too, as though she had never known them, didn't know what was real anymore, a condition that had only grown worse with this court business. It was like after a while no one cared, or worse, like somehow she
and Danny were the bad people. She'd begun to wonder if anything would ever be right again, though she hadn't shared that worry with Danny. Not yet.

But my, someone had sure gotten word about Mary Stacy to that doctor's attorney in a hurry! He'd stormed in just a few minutes after Dugan brought the woman in and asked the judge for an hour's postponement so his client, the defendant, might appear, which of course the judge granted. Danny had stretched like a cat and leaned over, whispering, “Hotshot, I don't think they expected her. Score one for Dugan.”

She'd felt this crazy desire for Danny when he did that, like he was the old Danny who could take care of her, protect her, back when she still believed in such things. She did rest her hand on his shoulder for a little bit after that.

Now she tried to imagine that young attorney Willis, who was a good-looking man and seemed gentle, going out with that woman sitting down on the bottom row, and she just couldn't. But if Willis was “socializing” with
him … He
could go out with that woman.
He did
, no matter what Dugan said they had yet to prove. But why did he, if he had everything? The woman was young, just twenty-two, the sheriff had said. What did she do for him? Or was the question, what did she let men do to her?
How awful
.

She started to feel sorry for the woman again because it was plain that life was never going to get any better for her. She was probably looking at the best years of her life right now, and she looked so awkward, like she was made for some other kind of world or light. And she had two little children. Did she care for them the way Loretta cared for her own two? Loretta knew she could die now and would have lived a better life many times over than that woman ever would. Until the shooting, she'd actually known what it meant to feel blessed.

Then she caught herself.
Loretta, you can't do this! It's just what he wants you to do! What all of them want you to do, who just don't want to make waves
.

“Ronnie Patton,” she heard Mary Stacy say, a name Loretta hadn't heard before. The way everyone in court suddenly paid attention, it seemed important.

Danny had already taken the stand, told how the lights had popped into their rearview mirror just as they passed the turnoff for Sentry, where
the Duke Power dam was, how when he looked again they had about taken his breath away, the lights—high beams, too—right on top of them, swinging wildly from side to side.

“Hang on,” he'd said quietly. Catching his tone, she had turned toward the backseat, thinking of their daughters, having to check on them, but she had to shield her eyes in the light. The driver of the vehicle behind them beeped the horn when she turned, then the lights fell back. She heard Danny sigh with relief, but in the next instant the lights roared up on them again, the horn blaring. “Some good ol' boy's had too much,” he said, still quietly concentrating on the road and holding his speed. “How are the girls?”

“Still asleep, the Lord knows how,” she said, trying to control the edge in her voice like she knew he was controlling his. The car was running up on them again, beeping. It dashed to the left, way across the centerline, then back onto the shoulder on the right, skidding as it climbed back onto the pavement. HONK! HONK! HONK!

The curve ahead suddenly flared white. A pickup truck wailed by in the opposite direction, just as the car behind jerked back across the centerline. But it was that horn! “I'm going to pull over and let them by,” he told her, still quietly.

“Yes,” she whispered, half twisted in her seat, one arm hanging over the back, as though she could protect her babies from what was happening.

He had just started to slow down when the car lunged by them, then dropped back in his lane, causing him to swerve onto the shoulder, which was still greasy from the thunderstorm. Stones thumped under the floorboards as the car slid sideways. Somehow Danny brought it back onto the pavement, but in an instant the other car was behind them again, honking, so close they couldn't see its lights at all. In a long curve, the car swung out, roared ahead, then fell back beside them as tall pines and a guardrail flashed by.

“Stop!” she shouted.

“I can't! I'm going too fast. There's too damn much mud on the shoulder!” He was yelling, too, as he tried to steer clear of the other car thundering beside them, ducking at them as though to push them off the road for good.

For an instant, Danny told the solicitor, he had seen into the other
car, had seen two, maybe three people in the backseat, women with flying blond hair, faces full of lipstick and teeth laughing hysterically, someone hunched over the steering wheel he thought he recognized. When asked, he pointed at Dr. Pemberton. Right beside Pemberton that night, sweating with drunkenness, smiling, dark, oily hair flying, was another man, and then an arm reached out holding the biggest pistol he'd ever seen, pointing it right at his face. He stood on the brake. The gun exploded.

Of course, that lawyer of Pemberton's had gotten right up and tried to confuse Danny and the issue, demanding to know if he'd ever met the doctor before, and if not, how did he know it was him? Hadn't he told the deputy, Mr. Trainor, that's who it was that night? And here someone was pointing a pistol in his face, about to pull the trigger, and Danny fighting just to stay on the road and keep his family alive, and still he was clearheaded enough to think he knew who was “hunched over” the steering wheel by pictures he'd seen in the newspapers? “
Really
, Your Honor!”

And then Pemberton's lawyer had pointed at the woman, Mary Stacy, sitting in the front row just beyond the bar, looking a little lost. Did Mr. Carver recognize that woman? And when Danny said no, not by his own experience, the lawyer sat down like he'd won something.

“Ronnie Patton,” Mary Stacy repeated, her voice harsh and grating, which surprised Loretta. Mary Stacy was wearing a pink dress with tiny white polka dots all over it. The dress reached only halfway down her thighs, and its material was flimsy, like a house shift. The high heels she wore were incongruous, Loretta thought; she should be wearing fluffy slippers. Except the front of the dress was low-cut, and she truly filled it. Certainly not a dress for court or church, Loretta decided, finding herself on the verge of smiling. But she repressed that thought, too, because maybe that was the only nice dress the woman owned.

It was then that Loretta comprehended something in the woman she hadn't fully caught before, something profoundly immodest and insolent, yet somehow innocent, too. No, not innocent—she wasn't innocent! Maybe childlike. Loretta had first become aware of this the moment the woman stood up and walked through the bar to take the stand, and sensed it was attractive somehow. Like a scent. Was that what men felt? How could a woman be childlike and dress like that? she wondered, but still she felt it was almost true. Or maybe it was just the woman's stupidity:
she didn't know any better. Or it was instinct, something animal. Was she stupid? Her hair needed washing. Her dress was too short. Pretty as her legs and feet in those spike heels might be, her thighs weren't pretty. They were too fleshy. Her toenails were painted. She was going to be fat someday not far off.