The Reservoir (17 page)

“And were Miss Madison and the prisoner sweethearts?” Meredith asks.

“We object,” Crump says.

“You gentlemen,” Mr. Aylett calmly replies, “wanted Mr. Lucas’s opinion on footprints—not exactly his expertise.”

“Yes, but this is too much.”

“Please, gentlemen,” says Judge Hill, “proceed.”

George thinks for a moment, staring into his hat for an answer. “Nosir, not as I know of.”

“Didn’t you tell me that you thought maybe they were?”

“Your Honor,” Crump shouts, “he’s badgering his own witness.”

Before Hill has a chance to rule, George clears his throat and says, “I don’t know for sure that they were anything but good friends.” He closes his mouth and stares at Meredith as though to say he’s done with answering questions.

Meredith asks him to look at the key and says, “Will you swear positively that this is his key?”

“No, I won’t swear positively that it is,” says George, his face gone blank with stubbornness.

“Mr. Stenographer,” Crump says, “did you get that down?”

“He’s got everything down,” Meredith retorts.

At the break Tommie asks Evans how he thinks it’s going. “Ask me when the day’s over,” Evans says.

“It just feels like we’ve turned a corner,” Tommie persists. “Walker gave them nothing.”

Evans is looking over notes he began working on at seven o’clock this morning. He takes off his glasses and stares at Tommie. “No,” he says, “but he didn’t particularly help us, either. We have to be patient, keep wearing away at them. Unless you can think of a better idea.” Tommie looks suddenly deflated.

“It’s going about as well as we can hope,” Evans offers. “Given the information they now have, I don’t believe they could connect the dots and convict. There’s too much doubt. If I was on the jury I certainly wouldn’t. Let’s just keep working.”

The clerk calls an end to the recess, and Judge Hill watches with growing impatience as the crowd fights for seats that have been saved with fans and hats. He calls the court to order and announces that to keep the rabble out he will in future be limiting the crowd to ticket holders only, and that people are welcome to stop by the clerk’s office for details.

First up is a store clerk from King William named Marcellus Gateweed. He maintains that last summer he saw Cluverius wearing the watch key that was shown as evidence. Crump can see that he is a proud, easily rattled little man. He whispers to Evans that he’ll do the cross-examination. “How was the prisoner’s watch worn?” he asks.

“In his pocket,” Gateweed replies, basking in the laughter this produces.

Crump cuts in. “Can you honestly tell the jury that from last summer until you’d heard of the case you ever thought about that watch key?”

“I can’t remember,” Gateweed manages. His hand goes to his tie and his hair. A juryman asks him to repeat the answer, which Gateweed does, in a sullen tone.

Crump nods sagely and takes his time now. “Mr. Gateweeeed,” he says, airing the name out like an undergarment on a line, “When did Mr. Meredith show you this key?”

“I don’t know,” Gateweed says. “I think it was Thursday or Wednesday.”

“Huh,” says Crump. “Yet you remember you saw it ten months ago on July eleven?”

Gateweed nods, his lips pressed together, and Crump waits for the judge to tell him to provide a verbal response.

“Did you describe the key to Mr. Meredith before he showed it to you?”

“I said it was a small gold key.”

Crump walks over and picks the key up, hiding it in his hand. “How else would you describe it?”

Gateweed now looks as though he just wants to leave. “It was fancy in some way,” he says, his voice cracking. “I’m not good at describing things.”

“And yet you come in here when a man’s life is at stake and swear you saw him wearing a key last summer that you can’t now describe?”

Aylett objects and Crump withdraws the question. “Mr. Gateweed,” he says, “when was the last time you saw Colonel Aylett back at Ayletts village?”

Aylett objects but the judge tells the witness to answer. He thinks carefully, then, “It was two weeks ago, I remember clearly.”

“Was he wearing the same watch chain then as he is now?”

“I don’t know,” Gateweed says, his face now closed into itself.

“Colonel Aylett,” Crump says, “you wouldn’t mind standing up like you were a minute ago to remind the witness about your watch chain?”

“I certainly would,” Aylett snarls.

“Judge Hill,” Crump says, “Would you please ask Colonel Aylett to stand?”

“You know I can’t do that,” Hill replies, studying some papers on his bench to avoid looking at any of the lawyers.

“Could the court then please,” says Crump, “note for the record that Colonel Aylett has refused to show his watch chain? I’m done with this witness.”

A black chambermaid named Henrietta Wimbush, wearing a bright yellow dress and a wide burgundy hat with egret feathers, is sworn in and says she saw the prisoner at the Exchange Hotel on January 5 and that he met with a lady from Room 66 and then went out with her. She did not return to spend the night. She was registered for the fifth and sixth as Miss F. L. Merton. To convince the jury she knows what she’s talking about and to prepare them for the story of Tommie’s return visit to Richmond in March, Meredith has her repeat the date.

Crump lights into her. “Can you swear that the man sitting here is the same man you saw all the way back in January?”

“Yes sir it is,” she says. “Except he had a mustache then, and his hair was light. It
is
light,” she says, looking at Tommie. “That’s the man, sure as can be. And he wore a light overcoat and a black hat, and he didn’t take it off in front of the lady.”

“Did anybody else visit the room Miss Madison was in?” Crump asks. There is murmuring in the court, and Crump immediately realizes his mistake. As do Tommie and the other lawyers in the room. Instead of trying to correct himself, he listens politely to the answer—“Nosir”—and moves on to another question, as though he’d intentionally admitted the identification of Miss Merton. “Do you remember,” he asks, “who occupied Room 66 before Miss Madison, or after her?”

“No,” says the witness.

“But you’re sure of that one day?” Crump says. When he sits down he whispers across to Evans and Tommie: “No harm done—just saved us all some time. Merton and Madison—just came off the tongue somehow.” He flashes a look at Tommie, but Tommie only stares ahead. He hasn’t talked about his alias with anybody, nor about his visit last January.

That night he has a familiar dream. Lillie is hugging his knees like a child, but she won’t look up so he can see her face. She is speaking words that make no sense—she wants something from him—and then he is running through the woods, and everybody is after him—Willie, Aunt Jane, Evans, Crump, Aylett, Lucas, and other people he doesn’t even know. He runs and runs, until he finds a culvert to hide in. They all go past, except one little girl with long blond hair and a white shift, and she takes his hand and leads him deeper and deeper into the tunnel until it is so dark he can see nothing.

• CHAPTER SIXTEEN •

I
T WAS IN
D
ECEMBER
when Tommie agreed by mail to meet Lillian in Richmond. She wanted him to come out to Millboro’ Springs, but he told her he was too busy for any travel other than the occasional trip to Richmond. She kept writing, two and sometimes three letters a week:

Dear Tommie,

What I had feared is true. I’ve let my dresses out and since they don’t know me well here they think I have a stout figure. Its funny because Mrs. Dickinson who is so sweet to me says I shouldn’t worry about showing off my figure since many young men like stout figures. I wear my coat alot too on account of the cold, even indoors and they think its because I’m not used to the cold, which I’m not really. I have to see you Tommie. You do love me still, don’t you?

Love, your Lillie

When he read this Tommie tried to imagine what it was like for her by herself in her condition in a strange new place. But she always made friends easily, and the fact that she mentioned other young men, even if she was only trying to make him jealous, meant she was not in despair. He did his best to put the problem out of his mind.

She wrote asking him about the pills, but all he could reply was that he hadn’t found any. He had asked Gretchen what people did who didn’t want babies. She told him that rubber condoms were the best thing, but that there was a negro pharmacy in Manchester that might help. Tommie went out there, and found no one in the store except an old colored woman with large, rheumy, veined eyes that watched him like a dark spirit, and he had no voice to ask for anything but directions to the bridge back to Richmond. On another visit to Lizzie Banks’s, a different girl told him she knew of a negro doctor who sometimes performed abortions.

Lillie wrote: “Dear Tommie, There’s now two feet of snow. I feel sad every morning but then during the day when I’m with the children things seem happier and I think I can get through this. I miss you and I have to see you soon.” When no letter arrived from him after three days, she wrote again: “I’m going to come back to Aunt Jane’s if I don’t hear from you soon. You must write me right away. I’ll take my chances with Aunt Jane you see if I don’t. She was mad at me for going away without coming by to see her first and I know she would take me in and take care of me. Otherwise you have to find a lying-in house where I can be for a week or two and then I don’t care what happens to me. Sometimes I can’t stand the thought of something growing inside of me and I just want to tear it out and sometimes I wish I could just die.”

He wrote to say that he would meet her on January 5 in Richmond and that she should register at the Exchange Hotel as F. L. Merton. Another letter from her crossed his in the mail: “Tommie, I felt it move in me today and I was so scared and surprised I thought I might yell out. I don’t know if I can just give a baby away to somebody I don’t even know I don’t know if I can do that, but I’ll try to be brave. You have to write soon.”

She did as he told her in January, explaining to Mrs. Dickinson that her aunt was sick and that she would only be gone a few days. Mrs. Dickinson gave her five dollars against her next pay and told her to take as long as she needed.

On the afternoon of the fifth, Tommie entered the lobby of the Exchange and checked the register. A Miss F. L. Merton was in Room 66. He went up to her room and knocked. She opened the door a crack, then let him in. It was a small, hot room, with tall windows and brown curtains, an oblong mirror over a low white bureau, and a ceramic terrier in the corner. At first Lillie tried for a cheerful holiday mood, telling Tommie how nice the hotel was and showing him how the enunciator worked. “You can call the front desk anytime you like,” she said. She gave him her shy little smile and brushed a limp wing of hair from her forehead, and he found himself wanting to take her right there on the bed. She was in a way already his to take. But he was too afraid to even touch her. It was cold and iron-gray out beyond the lace curtains, horses clopping on the street below, and life seemed a miserable prospect, endless work and trouble, and all for what?

“You haven’t said two words, Tommie. Are you not feeling well?”

“Under the circumstances,” he said, “I’m feeling better than average.” She laughed gaily at this, but quickly changed to a serious look, waiting for him to continue. “There’s a doctor I know who can help us,” he said.

“At a lying-in house?”

“He’ll perform an abortion,” Tommie said, impatiently, then with more kindness, “and we’ll save money over a place of confinement.”

But Lillian was already shaking her head and frowning. “No, Tommie, I won’t do that. It’s illegal and it’s wrong and I won’t do it. The baby’s alive. I think it’s a girl. I thought you had already found a lying-in place.”

“I’ve been busy,” Tommie protested. “But I’m going to find you a place. Today. I promise.”

She smiled tenderly at him again and touched his arm, but seeing that he didn’t warm to her, she tightened her lips and simply said, “I think it’s coming in April, so we ought to meet here again in March, early March just in case.”

“And what if it takes a month? I don’t have the money for that.”

“You’ll have to borrow it then from your brother or Aunt Jane, or somebody, Tommie. You’ll have to.”

He nodded and sat down on the bed with a city directory. He found an advertisement for a lying-in asylum called the Church Institute on Marshall Street: “All non-contagious diseases treated.” Probably a euphemism for “any medical condition handled.” At least he hoped so. “Public wards, in advance … per wk $6. Private rooms … per wk $15 to $25.” So he would need at least fifteen dollars, which he could easily make in a good week. To Lillian he said, “I’ll find the money. I’ll meet you here March fifteenth.”

“It should be earlier than that, Tommie, and I need another reason to be gone. I can’t very well tell Mrs. D. I’m going to see about my sick aunt again. What if she were to write to Aunt Jane?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said.

“No, because you don’t have to.” She picked up her hat with the ostrich feathers.

Tommie looked up from the directory. “How about a sick school friend?”

“No, it should be a school friend’s aunt. Violet Bone really does have a sick aunt. It’s easier for me to fib if there’s some truth in it. I’ll say that Violet has to take care of her own mother, and there’s no one her aunt would rather have than me.”

“Of course.”

“And I’ll be taking her down to Old Point Comfort, where I’ve always wanted to go but never have.”

“Well, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t go down there until after you’d moved out, and then it was just for the day with Willie and Aunt Jane.”

“Still, it must have been beautiful out there by the sea.”

“By the bay. Yes, it was beautiful. Now you should get to work on your letter.” He opened the desk drawer and pulled out two blank sheets and a pencil.

“I don’t know if we should use their paper for this, Tommie.”

“It’s already paid for. You start writing, then I can send it to you around the first of March.” He watched until she had started writing the fake letter, then told her he was going out to buy them some breakfast. Twenty minutes later he was back with two cinnamon raisin buns and a little bottle of milk. He also gave Lillian a bag of candy and oranges for her trip home. She finished her letter, covering both sides of the page to save paper, while he sat eating. He read it over:

Richmond city

March 1885

My dear Lillie,

It is on business of sad importance I must write to you today—poor Mama & aunt Mary are both ill. We don’t know which will die first sometimes. Mama is too ill for me to leave her at all, and the Drs. say the only remedy for aunt is a trip of a week or ten days at Old Point to take those sun bathes which are proving so beneficial to consumptives, but we cant prevail on her to go unless mama was well enough for me to go with her, which is of course out of the question as she is so ill. She likes your gentle manners so much that when it was decided she must go to Old Pt. she begged we would get you to go … As we were so much in hopes of going to the New Orleans Exposition I have had a good many dresses made up and should you wish any mine are at your entire command …

Your loving friend, please excuse handwriting in haste. Violet Bone

“You’re a very good fibber, Lillie,” he said archly, “with your gentle manners.”

“It’s all true, in a way. And you can see I went to some trouble to make it different from my writing. And that part about her going to the Exposition—she really had planned to go …” She trailed off.

“Fine, Lillie,” he said, taking the letter and putting it in his satchel. “I’ll mail it to you in March.”

“And that’s it? No other letters, no visits, and I just go back to the mountains, where it’s cold and snowing and I don’t know anybody?”

“Lillie, I’ll write to you. You know we can’t risk being seen together anymore.”

“But after the baby’s born. What then?”

“We’ll see about it then.”

“Tommie, I don’t know if I can give her up.”

This was what he had hoped to avoid. “You never said anything before about keeping it.”

“But I don’t know if it’s right just to give her away. What if nobody came for her? I couldn’t bear to think of my baby left in an orphanage.”

“You should have thought of all that—”

“What do you mean?” She stood there across the bed from him, a stranger with a swollen face and midriff. She had always been a determined, headstrong little thing, and now she was a stolid, stubborn presence, an obstacle near the door he wanted to walk through. Yet he also wanted to tear her clothes off and drive himself deep into her little dumpling of a body.

“I don’t know what I mean,” he said. “I just need to go now. I’ll write you.”

She moved toward the door, her lips pouting, her hands curling into fists. “Tommie,” she said, “you’ll marry me, won’t you?”

He could feel the blood draining from his face, even as it rose in hers. “I’m engaged to Nola, and you know that.”

“Then you’ll just have to break it off. Tommie? You’ll have to break it off, that’s all there is to it … I’ll tell her why you have to break it off, if you won’t.”

He stood there facing her like a cornered bull. “No,” he said. “I’ll tell her myself, when the time comes.” Lillian did not move, her lips and knuckles gone white. It was impossible that his life could be ripped out from under him this way for a small mistake. He felt a rage building within him. “Okay Lillian,” he said, not caring how loud he was. “I’ll tell her! I’ll go home today and tell her and everybody I know.”

“You don’t need to get angry,” she said. “I’m not sure what I want to do yet. Don’t act so crazy like that. It’s scary. Your eyes, Tommie. Don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to calm himself. “Of course we’ll do whatever you think is the right thing. But I know we can find a good home for it, so if that’s all you’re worried about, just quit your worrying and leave it to me.”

She smiled at him, but it was an impassive, tolerant look that said, So far, leaving it to you has accomplished nothing—there were no pills, and I had to force you to meet me here. He could see the accusation in the flat set to her mouth and eyes.

He went over and put his arms around her and said what he thought were soothing words, but she made no effort to hug him back. She patted his shoulder, as she might a child’s. He said, “I promise it will all work out. I’ll meet you at the American in March, and I’ll have found a place for you by then.” He looked down into the crown of her head, and she nodded but did not look up.

“I thought maybe you loved me, a little,” she said.

“I do,” he said, “of course I do.”

She put his hand on her belly and he felt a rippling under the surface, as if she were performing some obscene trick. He knew what she was doing, yet he couldn’t bear to leave her like this, pathetic and beautiful. He took his coat back off, and they sat on the bed together, his arm around her and her head on his shoulder. Something was breaking in him. He got on his knees and buried his face in her lap, letting her stroke his hair and smelling her warmth. His shoulders trembled, tears dampening her dress where his face lay. He reached up beneath her dress to the top of her stocking and beyond until he was stroking her crotch. Then she stood and undid the hooks and eyes at the back of her dress; Tommie undid the top button and she lifted the dress over her head. In her ivory-colored petticoat her arms were pale and thin, her shoulders narrow. She slipped off the straps and let the petticoat fall to the floor, and she stood there in nothing but her corset and drawers. He watched as she took these off as well. He had never seen her naked—she was a thing of beauty, her breasts plump and upturned above her distended middle. Then she lay back on the bed while he took off his things. He drove hard into her, augering up and in, rocking her as though to undo what they had done. After he had finished, she held him there, pushing her pelvis against his until her breath came in quick gulps and her face flushed.