Cracks in the Sidewalk(61)

Some cases were clearly black or white. They had no shades of gray, no shadows of doubt lurking around the corner, and no recriminations waiting to haunt Sam Brill should he dare to sleep. In cases where right and wrong were easily defined, Sam Brill dispensed justice in a fair and efficient manner. Once decided, those cases were packed away in manila envelopes and filed alongside thousands of others. They remained at the courthouse when Sam Brill went home at night.

But there were others too painful to seal inside an envelope. Those cases burned their way into Sam’s memory and poked a fiery finger at his brain. In each of those instances he’d rendered the decision he thought just. But Sam knew justice was blind, incapable of understanding the bond between children and their parents.

Sam Brill had resolved eight of the nine cases he’d heard that day. The only one left pending was that of Caruthers v Caruthers. It should have been a relatively easy decision. If he went strictly according to the law, Elizabeth Caruthers had every right to be with her children. She was a principled woman, a good mother, a person who trusted in the will of God, and would certainly do her children no harm. But Sam Brill had to consider her husband, Jeffrey Caruthers, a self-centered man, irrational, obstinate, divorced from reality—a man with the same look of desperation and wild-eyed ferocity as Jack Wallner.

When Sam ruled the Wallner girls had to be returned to Alma, Jack flew into an uncontrollable rage, screamed a string of obscenities, and shook his fist in the air. Then before anyone realized what was happening, Jack flung himself across the defense table and came at the judge. Luckily the court deputy tackled him before he made it across the courtroom. Sam could have had Jack Wallner carted off to jail, and he regretted not doing so. It would have saved the man’s life.

Sam reminded himself that he allowed Jack Wallner to walk free because he’d felt compassion for a man stretched beyond his emotional limit. He’d tried to be merciful, but something had gone terribly wrong. From that day forward Sam couldn’t rid himself of the picture of Jack Wallner lying dead on the courthouse steps—part of his face gone, and those frenzied eyes forever accusing.

On Friday evening Sam had little appetite. He ate a few bites of chicken, worked a handful of peas into his mashed potato, then claimed he wasn’t very hungry and left the table. After dinner he settled into the recliner to watch television, but after flipping channels for nearly an hour he found nothing worth watching and went to bed.

Bed, but not sleep. Sam climbed beneath the sheets and stretched out on his back, but there in the ridges and swirls of ceiling paint he could see Jack Wallner’s face. He turned on his right side but that didn’t work, so he turned to the left. Nothing helped. The face was everywhere—angry eyes glinting through the silver of a mirror, peering into windowpanes, accusing, accusing, endlessly accusing. The pale shimmer of morning edged across the sky before Sam Brill finally fell asleep.

On Saturday he agreed to accompany his wife, Maggie, to the Plainfield Craft Fair, even though it was something he disliked doing. But he needed a place to escape the thoughts and images of Jack Wallner. They walked through aisle after aisle of vendors selling handmade wares—ruffled aprons, painted teapots, crocheted doilies. Maggie stopped in front of a woman selling potholders stitched into the shape of people.

“Aren’t these adorable?” she said, turning to Sam.

He gave an obligatory nod.

“Which do you like best?” she asked, holding two chubby-faced potholders—one decorated with a blue apron, the other with green.

Sam, in no mood for decision making, said, “Get both.”

“They’re exactly the same,” Maggie answered with a pout. “Why would you suggest that I buy both when they’re exactly the same?”

“Blue,” he said to end the discussion. Maggie smiled and went to pay for her purchase. Sam walked on, past the clowns painted on velvet, past a booth filled with lacy toilet paper covers. Did life have to be this way, he wondered. Did everything have to revolve around his decisions? It was never ending—big decisions, little decisions, unimportant decisions, life or death decisions, choose wrong and a child’s life was ruined, choose wrong and a father puts a gun to his head, choose wrong and that decision haunts you for the rest of your life.

Maggie caught up with him and took hold of his arm. “I’m glad you chose blue,” she said. “I liked that one best.”

Sam felt a jolt of annoyance. If Maggie liked blue, then why had she asked him to decide? Why didn’t people simply make their own decisions? Suddenly Sam felt tired, worn threadbare by the difficult questions that continuously picked at the fiber of his soul.

“Remember the camping trip we took six years ago?” he asked nostalgically.

Maggie gave him a smile and nodded.





October 9, 1985


At nine-fifteen Monday morning a messenger left the Union County Courthouse carrying two large brown envelopes. Despite the way Sam Brill had labored over his decision, he realized it would probably not satisfy either recipient. Elizabeth Caruthers was a reasonable person, someone Judge Brill hoped might accept his ruling and understand how he had come to such a decision. Jeffrey Caruthers would not. He was a dark soul, someone with layer upon layer of anger folded inside of him, a person Sam believed capable of unthinkable deeds. Hoping to avoid a replay of the Wallner tragedy, he’d spent half the night composing a lengthy document that wove heartfelt advice though the bitter reality of a court order.