Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement (40 page)

his face red and angry, gets to his feet and demands a mistrial.

Beside me. Class, a dazed look on his face, tugs at my sleeve.

“Does this mean I’m free?”

Johnson bangs his gavel repeatedly and says that the court is in recess and orders the lawyers back into his chambers. I tell Class it sounds like it to me and that I will be back in a few minutes.

Inside Johnson’s chambers, the tension is thick enough to cut with a knife. Dick can hardly contain himself as we arrange ourselves around the judge’s table and wait for his court reporter to set up. If looks could kill, I’d be dead as a doornail.

Yet I have done nothing unusual or improper except come to my senses.

My guess is that Paul has been lying to him all this time, but I may never know the truth. Finally, the judge says formally to the prosecutor, “What exactly is going on, Mr. Butterfield?”

Melvin, his right hand inside his pocket presumably holding his tape recorder, tells the judge, “The state has credible evidence that Class Bledsoe was being framed by Darla Tate, who has agreed to testify against Mr. Taylor.”

I would have loved to have heard that conversation.

I can only assume that Darla knew that once the spotlight was going to be on her, the jig was up. Dick, his jaw working furiously, yelps, “The

prosecution has already rested its case.”

Butterfield, now suddenly relaxed, takes his hand out of his pocket and brings both palms together under his chin.

“Any witness can change her story,” he says confidently, “on cross-examination.”

I sit back and watch Johnson as he irritably drums his fingers on the table in front of him. No judge likes to declare a mistrial, but he knows he may be reversed if he doesn’t give Dick an opportunity to prepare a new defense.

“I’ll grant a motion, Mr. Dickerson, for a mistrial.”

Dick nods, but from the expression on his face, he knows Paul’s goose is cooked. When we walk back into the courtroom, I give Class a thumbs-up sign. For the first time since I can remember, a smile splits his face from ear to ear.

After Johnson announces that he has granted a mistrial and that Class is no longer a defendant in the case, there is another outburst, but Johnson gavels the spectators into silence and explains that the charges against Paul are still outstanding.

With his usual dignity, he thanks the jury for its service and allows it to leave the courtroom first.

While they are filing out. Class touches my arm and whispers, “I didn’t think you knew what the hell you were doin’, but I guess you did.”

I laugh, realizing how incredibly relieved I feel.

“It took a while, didn’t it?” I kid him.

As I get up to go explain to the Tings what has happened, I hope that Class will never understand how lucky he has been. Outside, in the hall, I find Tommy and Connie, who, as I expected, is enraged.

“Well, you did it, didn’t you?” she says, hissing the words and tears streaming down her face.

“You got him off!”

I put my finger to my lips and mouth the words, “It was Darla who killed your father, she’s going to testify against Paul.”

Tommy frowns, but then nods in understanding.

“Darla must have lost her nerve,” he says to her sister.

“If she had kept her mouth shut, they would have gotten away with it.”

Connie, looking considerably older today than her forty-nine years, shakes her head.

“It’s not over. You wait and see. They’ll get off somehow.”

Not the skeptic his sister is. Tommy shakes my hand and thanks me, and as he does, a photographer from the Commercial Appeal out of Memphis

snaps our picture. As a reporter comes forward, I wonder if in six months Tommy will have any regrets.

On my way out of town I resist the urge to stop by Angela’s. I did not see her on my way out of the courthouse. There will be time to sort through all of that. I do not trust myself or her enough to talk to her. It is not inconceivable that I could be called as a witness if Paul goes to trial.

Right now, I’m just relieved to be leaving Bear Creek in one piece.

EPILOGUE.

Christmas morning I open my present from Sarah and smile. Dad’s Own Cook Book.

“Why didn’t you give me this seven years ago?” I complain.

I glance at the introduction. The author promises not to treat the reader like an idiot, although the book, he promises, is written so an idiot can read and understand it. A book after my own heart. Ever since her mother died, all we’ve done is open cans and defrost meat and call it cooking.

Sarah, wearing her Banana Republic sweater that I picked out for her, replies.

“It’s not true,” she says, stroking Jessie’s muzzle, “that an old dog can’t learn some new tricks.”

As if on cue, Jessie grabs up a rawhide bone and shakes it proudly. She has finally learned to use the dog door. A runner, not a thinker, but that’s okay. Her master doesn’t learn very fast either. Sarah grabs up our Polaroid and snaps Jessie’s picture.

“Jessie, say ‘dog biscuit.”” Hearing her name, Jessie walks over to her.

There was a time when I wondered if Amy was going to keep her as a memento.

The phone rings. I take it and wish whoever is calling a politically incorrect “Merry Christmas.”

“Mr. Page?”

It is my “little brother,” Harold Ritter. Harold is thirteen, black, from the projects, “Needle Park,” and has the sweetest smile on a kid I’ve ever seen. Dan wouldn’t let me back out on my promise to join One-on-One.

“Harold,” I say, “did Santa Claus come last night?” “Thank you for the watch,” he says, dutifully.

“What time you comin’ by to git me?”

The two of us are going to see the movie Toy Story. Sarah will visit her friends.

“A little before two,” I tell him. At six we are invited over to Angela’s for Christmas dinner with her boys.

“Wish your mother a Merry Christmas for me.” “Okay^he says solemnly and hangs up.

I put down the phone, wondering if Harold will have a chance to grow up. There is so much gang activity in Blackwell County it is spooky.

His mother, who desperately wanted him to be in the One-on-One program, is on welfare. The best thing she could do for Harold is to move to a desert island for the next ten years. Since she can’t do that, I’m supposed to take up the slack.

Right.

“Dad,” Sarah says, as I am about to head out the door a few minutes later to take Jessie over to the park to do her business, “do you think you and Angela will ever get married? You seem to really care about her. I like her, too.”

I wonder what my daughter would think about her if she knew as much about Angela as I do.

Since she moved over here in September into an apartment close to the river (only about a mile from me as the crow flies), I have unsuccessfully tried to keep my distance from her, but the holidays are always difficult.

“This is just dinner.”

“Just checking,” my daughter says casually.

“I can tell she really likes you.”

It helps to have your main competition serving a life sentence. Jessie and I cross the street into the park, which many days, but not this one quite yet, is crisscrossed by mountain bikers, solitary walkers, dogs of all persuasion, and their purported best friends. It is easy going this time of the year, the shrubs and trees having shed their evidence that they had thrived during a long spring and hot summer.

I slip the leash from Jessie’s throat. She likes to nose around in the brush but never lets me get too far out of her sight. Sarah has probably told her that I shouldn’t be allowed to stray too far from home. Not a bad idea. Bear Creek was, as it turned out, a long way.

Angela. How can I be so attracted to a woman who would have an affair while her husband of thirty years lay dying? I’m not sure if she is a monster or one of the most attractive women I’ve ever known. If she tells me tonight that she has been lying and is still in love with Paul I won’t bat an eye. For all I really know, if Paul hadn’t pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in order to be eligible for parole, she might still be living in Bear Creek waiting for the right moment to slip off to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. Once people lie, you never know if they are telling the truth.

Of course, we all lie, and if not to each other, then to ourselves. All those years I carried a grudge against Paul and his father because I didn’t want to admit how screwed up my own family had become. I thought I was so clear-eyed about my past, and I didn’t have a clue.

Thank God Paul didn’t have a trial. His plea agreement let Angela’s secrets stay secret. The fortunate thing about guilty pleas is that the real story never comes out. I will always wonder how Paul convinced Darla Tate to actually slit another human being’s throat, especially one who had been so good to her. If she hadn’t felt so much guilt, she could have pulled it off. Poor Darla.

Butterfield has told me that Paul figured out from her boys how desperate she was and began to put the scheme together after Willie turned him down the first time. Her payoff was supposed to be a farm that Paul owned. Instead, she is doing a life sentence as well.

According to Butterfield it was to be for her boys, something to pass on. I have wondered if it was my grandfather’s property. A nice irony if it was. Land.

Sometimes, it seems more of a curse than a blessing in this part of the country.

Jessie spies a squirrel and makes a dash for it, but it scrambles up a tree just in time. What if she had caught it? I’ve heard it said that it isn’t always such a good idea to get the thing you wish for.

Except for Eddie, all the Tings are gone forever from Bear Creek. Tommy has returned to D.C., and Mrs. Ting has moved to Memphis to live with Connie. The plant, according to Eddie, has begun to make a profit again. Good for Eddie.

Perhaps, because he is younger, and has experienced less rejection, he is more comfortable in a small town than his cousins. Poor Bear Creek.

So much tension, so little hope. Of course, that is a white person thinking out loud. Maybe some of the African-American population see it differently.

I squint at my watch. A quarter to eleven. Dan will be coming over for lunch in a few minutes with his new girlfriend, a schoolteacher he met through the personals column in the Little Rock Free Press. So much for his dating service. I smile at the thought of my best friend.

The idiot is wearing a gold ring in his left ear and looks ridiculous.

Some guys can pull it off, but not Dan. When I asked why, he grinned.

“It’s kind of a fuck-you statement,” he admitted.

“But it’s harmless. I don’t wear it to court.”

Harmless? As I call Jessie and head back to the house, I think of all the pain I stirred up in Bear Creek. Sometimes, I don’t think I am.