The Slow Moon (7 page)

Twelve

T
HE COURT BUZZED
and crackled, packed with people from town. Reporters stood on the courthouse steps, and in the parking lot visitors kept a curious vigil. It was the day that Crow would testify. The June morning was filled with clouds but remained bright. Stray dogs and cats sniffed the ground searching for food.

Inside the large courtroom Crow Davenport, his young body tall and tender-faced, sat at the long table next to his lawyer. From time to time they leaned to speak to each other, Butler’s bald head nodding toward Crow; they looked expressionless, waiting for the judge to enter the room.

The jury sat very still, their faces ready for anything, anything at all, to be written on them. Aurelia Bailey and her son, Bobby, sat in the back row. Sophie had not yet come in, but everyone watched for her.

As Crow readied himself to testify, he found it hard to breathe. His head felt strange, light with anticipation. He had been coached about what to say when he took the stand, had rehearsed, but Raymond Butler had warned him not to make his answers sound planned. Crow was trying not to plan anything, trying to keep all hope in abeyance.

The day before, Crow’s mother cornered him in the kitchen. “Have you prayed about this, Crow? Maybe you should.”

He lifted orange juice out of the refrigerator and drank from the carton. She handed him a glass, but he didn’t take it.

“I don’t know.” Crow shook his head. He had prayed but didn’t want to admit it. His mother’s eyes bored into him like a beam of light. He had no secrets, but the space inside his head began to create hidden pockets. Her face pleaded with him.

“Maybe I should leave prayer up to you,” he said. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

“Well.” She lowered her head. “Johnny wanted me to ask if you minded him being in the courtroom tomorrow. He wants to be there when you testify.” Crow had not wanted his younger brother to attend the trial, but now he thought Johnny’s presence might bring comfort. “He wants to come, Crow. He wants to be there, but if you don’t want him to…” She laid her hand on his shoulder. They were alone in the house. “I know things are going to be all right,” she said. “I just know it.”

Crow couldn’t imagine how he, how he himself, could ever be all right.

He had gone to bed feeling nauseated, his belly rising as soon as he lay down. Even though he was ready, prepared carefully for taking the stand, still he couldn’t picture it. He looked at the clock every hour, until four-thirty or five, when he fell into a hole of nightmare: his lawyer’s face floated like someone offstage, and Crow recoiled at the necessity of telling the truth. (“I left her. I put clothes on her and left. I got scared when I heard someone coming. I was afraid they would blame me. And they did.”) This is what he had to say, but even in his dream he couldn’t speak the words.

He woke to hear his parents arguing downstairs. Their voices sounded emphatic, interruptive.

“I think it’s going very well, Carl,” he heard his mother say. “I don’t know why you say that. I think the jury believes he’s innocent.”

“It
is
going well, Helen. And Butler has a good chance of proving reasonable doubt. He says the prosecutor was crazy to let Sophie’s mother and the mayor’s office and the local papers hound them into a trial before they’d nailed down those multiple attackers. That’s why they keep coming to us with this plea-bargain idea. Crow rats out his accomplices and they lighten the sentence.”

“But he had no accomplices!” Helen roared. “He didn’t do it!”

“Stop shouting,” said Carl, his throat tight. “I know that. But you asked me how I think it’s going and I’m telling you. The testimony today will cinch it. Crow has to do this right.”

Crow lay in bed, something sour-tasting rising in his throat. He forced himself to swallow. He pulled himself out of bed and threw water on his face several times, rinsed his mouth. His face, swollen and dark-eyed, had a hard look that terrified him. He looked older than his sixteen years, and after today he would feel older.

He pulled on his T-shirt and shorts to go downstairs, but his fingers felt huge and trembly, as though he had on gloves.

“What do you mean ‘do it right’?” Crow stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Johnny sat at the table eating a bowl of cereal.

“You have to
sound
right, son,” said his father. “To sound sincere.”

“But I didn’t do it.”

“Yeah, like that.” He clapped his hands.

Crow hated that his father thought he was practicing.

“I’m going today,” Johnny said. “I’m going to be there, unless you say no.”

“Naw, man. I do want you there.”

Helen smiled and touched Johnny on the back of the neck. “I told you he wanted you to come, honey.” She turned to her husband again. “Carl, you want eggs?”

“I’m just saying,” Carl continued, “that even though everything’s going well—I mean, hell, not even the victim’s saying anything against him—I mean not so directly against him, since she doesn’t remember—and even with that, when Crow gets on the stand, he’s got to sound innocent.”

They spoke as if Crow were not in the room.

“Tell me what you’re talking about,” Crow said. He remained just inside the doorway of the kitchen, feeling unwelcome.

Helen turned quickly. “But—” she said.

“Let me finish, Helen. You never let me finish. He has to hold his head up, look people in the eye. He has to get up there and say how awful he feels about what happened to Sophie.”

“I
do
feel that way,” said Crow.

“Just keep your voice low.” His father turned to him now, motioned for him to sit down and eat something. “I mean, don’t get mad at anybody, son. No matter what you do, don’t get mad at anybody. You hear?”

“Yessir.”

Helen asked Crow if he wanted some eggs, but Crow shook his head and poured cereal into a bowl. “I’ve practiced with Mr. Butler,” he said. “He told me what to expect.”

“Just come across as
hum
ble,” Carl continued. “You have one strike against you already because we’re wealthy, you know. That doesn’t help.”

Crow didn’t say it, but it was a strike he had been dealing with since he was very young.

“The papers are having a field day with that.” Helen pursed her lips as though she might spit something out. “And we’ve done so much for this town.”

“We can’t even think like that, Helen. We’re on our hands and knees with this one.”

Crow wanted to ask his father if he had bought off any of the jurors. He only thought this because of the way his father kept reassuring everyone, even the lawyer—though today, for some reason, he was not reassuring anyone.

Carl picked up the paper and handed the sports section to Crow and Johnny. Helen made eggs for herself and ate quietly, until Carl announced, “Be ready at nine-thirty, everybody.”

As Crow showered and dressed, he heard his parents arguing again, his mother saying that everything was going to be fine and urging Carl not to be pessimistic.

A few days earlier Raymond Butler had told Crow, “Your reputation at school is good, academically and socially. You’re from a good family. You’ve never been arrested or even been in trouble. All these things will build on a presumption of innocence, and the circumstantial evidence will seem misplaced, wrong.” He spoke as if he were already in court, as if he might not believe all he said but was trying hard to believe it. Even in a restaurant or in a small room, Butler’s voice could take on an air of fortification and rightness. It was just the way he was.

“And we know,” he said, “that because of the evidence of sperm, there were multiple attackers, and that complicates the prosecution’s case considerably.”

Crow’s face worked and stretched for a moment before he said, “Isn’t my dad making sure that they get DNA from…” He couldn’t crank out any names.

“Your dad was pushing hard for that,” said Butler, “but parents are making it impossible. Even Judge Bailey put up a big fuss about civil rights and privacy issues. I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Crow looked at the wall charts Butler had posted next to the desk, showing who had attended the party that night, timelines and cross-references about boys unaccounted for, kids who were drunk and stoned. Even Crow’s best friends were angry, complaining about Butler’s questioning, as well as the investigator and Hollis, who would not get off their backs.

Crow brushed his hair back from his face into a neat, preppy look, and wondered if he should have cut his hair shorter. His blue eyes looked large, his nails bitten to the quick. He did not wear a suit or even his best shirt, opting instead for a crisp blue button-down shirt and navy tie. Unassuming, he thought. He practiced looking humble in the mirror, but most of his expressions seemed merely sad.

“You okay?” Johnny asked. Johnny was a foot shorter than Crow.

“I don’t know why they haven’t found somebody else to arrest,” Crow said. “What’ve they been doing? Have the police already decided it was me? I mean, what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Johnny said. “They’ve been questioning everybody. I still think it’s those guys that were hanging around the school.”

“They had a pretty good alibi though,” Crow said. “I mean, they weren’t even in town that night.”

“They’ll find who did it,” Johnny said.

“It wasn’t me.”

“I know that.”

“I’m scared. I am so scared.” He sat on the bed.

Johnny didn’t respond.

Crow leaned to put on his shoes. “No. Okay.” He looked up. “I’ll just do what Butler says. Anyway, I think Dad probably bought off some jurors.”

“Shit,” Johnny said. “That’s why he wants you to be
hum
ble.” A hint of a smile crossed Johnny’s lips.

Crow laughed for the first time in several weeks. He wondered how long laughter would feel unfamiliar to him.

The judge came out of his chambers and everyone stood as court was called to order. E. G. Hollis and Charlie Post sat near the front on the right-hand side. Crow heard Mr. Hollis clear his throat as they stood. He turned and both men nodded to him. They wanted to offer the solidarity of their presences.

Coach Post leaned to speak to someone sitting behind him, and though Crow saw the two men out of the corner of his eye and wanted to acknowledge their presence, he didn’t. He felt that any extra movement might cause his body to break.

He had seen Bobby and his mother in the back of the room, and he had seen Sophie’s mother sitting near the prosecutor’s table, next to an empty chair for Sophie. Rita Chabot, who was normally a shiningly beautiful woman, did not look like herself. During the last two months her face had become gray and fathomless, her posture stooped, her eyes black. She wanted to make someone accountable and hoped Crow would help her to that point. She held her arms across her torso and kept her lips tightly closed.

Sophie had slipped in a side door and stood near the back by a window. She kept looking outside, as though she might bolt. She had collapsed in the hallway of her house twice before arriving at the courthouse. The judge agreed to let her stay in the back if she wanted.

Sophie could not say that Crow had hurt her, but she knew her mother wanted her to say it. Sympathy and outrage fought inside her. “It wasn’t Crow,” she had told her mother that morning.

“Don’t, Sophie.”

“It wasn’t,” she said. She didn’t know if she could watch the D.A. question Crow. She wanted to take back the accusation forced on Crow by her mother, but she wasn’t strong enough.

Yesterday rain came in a downpour like any spring day, and today had a bright-washed look. Sophie used to like the day after a rain—the clearness of it. Now she felt that any kind of clearness could not be part of her life. She wanted weather that matched her mood.

Raymond Butler summoned Crow to the witness box.

Carl and Helen sat in the front row, very still, not turning their heads or moving. Their attire was tasteful, but they were not overdressed. They looked like stick figures in fine clothes. Johnny sat between them, fidgeting nervously. He kept his hands between his knees.

“Do you know Sophie Chabot?” Mr. Butler asked.

Crow nodded. He imagined himself confident. “Yes. I do.”

“How do you know her?”

“For about a month we’d been going out.”

“Were you seeing her, that is, going out with her, at the time she was assaulted?”

“Yes. But it was the first time we’d gone to a party together.”

“But, as it has already been established”—he cleared his throat—“you had seen her often before that night?”

“I’d been to her house, and we went places after school and sometimes to a movie.”

“You saw her every day?”

“Almost. I liked her. I liked being with her.”

“And your feelings for her were reciprocated?” Butler asked.

Crow looked puzzled.

“She liked you? Did she show affection toward you?”

“Relevance, Your Honor,” the district attorney interrupted.

“Your Honor, I want to establish a friendship, an affection, between these two people.”

“I will allow it.”

“Did she say how she felt about you?”

“She said she liked me from the first time she saw me, and that she’d wanted to go out with me.”

“She told you that?”

“Yes.”

“And did your relationship become physical?”

“Sometimes we kissed in the car after a movie, but we’d never had sex before.”

Someone in the courtroom made a sound. When Crow looked to the back of the room, Sophie was gone.

“Before that night?” Butler sounded at this point more like the district attorney. The jurors squirmed.

“Right. We talked about it, but I wanted to wait until she was sure.” Crow looked at the jurors when he said this, and a few of them smiled at him. Crow knew most of the people sitting in the jury box.

“And she was sure that night? The night of March twentieth?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know she was sure? Did she say anything to let you know this?”

“Yeah. Like, when we went to the woods to be alone and started kissing? Then she said, ‘Let’s lie down on the leaves,’ so we did. And, like, we started to touch each other.”