The Reckless Oath We Made(104)

“Wouldn’t it be risky for him to testify anyway?” Bill said. After years of my nagging him to lose weight, he finally had. Now I worried the stress was killing him.

“Only for the prosecution,” Ms. Howell said.

“How so?” I said.

“Gentry? Gentry?” Ms. Howell leaned across the table and tapped her pen in front of him. He nodded. “Can you tell me about how you know LaReigne Trego-Gill?”

“Certs. She be the elder sister of Lady Zhorzha Trego.”

“And what’s your relationship with Zhorzha?”

“I am her champion. I am sworn to protect her.”

Ms. Howell smiled when she turned back to me. I never knew how to take those smiles, pitying but kind. I took hers in silence, because we needed her help.

“If he testifies, there are a few possible outcomes. One: The jury doesn’t understand him or the jury finds him funny. Two—and this is the one the feds are worried about—the jury sees an earnest young man with a disability, who is being prosecuted for what is essentially a good deed.

“Furthermore, because he was injured, it might be difficult for the prosecution to argue that what he did wasn’t self-defense. We may end up negotiating for an obstruction of justice charge or a mayhem charge. Worst-case scenario, manslaughter.”

“Is there any way to get them to lower his bail?” I let Bill ask, even though we’d stayed up a ridiculous number of nights trying to figure out how to scrape together the bond money. We couldn’t.

“Not while he’s charged with three counts of murder. They know they can’t convict on that, but it keeps him locked up until the trial.”

Just hearing it said—murder—made me sick.

I held out hope that we could reach a plea deal that would allow Gentry to serve his time in a mental health facility. Anything to keep him out of prison. While he was awaiting trial, he was housed at the county jail, but several times they took him to a diagnostic facility to assess whether he was competent to stand trial. Of course, he understood what he’d done was against the law, but according to Ms. Howell, the prosecutor worried there might be room for a diminished capacity plea, because of his voices.

In the end, I wouldn’t have to hear murder again, because Ms. Howell negotiated a plea deal. One count of obstruction of justice and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, which meant Gentry wouldn’t have a felony on his record. As part of that deal, Gentry would go to the state hospital, rather than to prison.

Bill and I went down to Arkansas together to meet with Ms. Howell and Gentry, who looked terrible in his orange jail scrubs. His hair was getting shaggier every week, and he clutched a manila folder of paperwork to his chest like a shield. I longed to hug him, but physical contact had become even more difficult for him while he was locked up. I made do with telling him how glad I was to see him. He bowed to me, then to Bill and Ms. Howell.

She explained the plea agreement more remedially than was necessary, because Gentry’s silence was so often mistaken for a lack of intelligence. After she finished, he held out his hand for the papers. He read it through twice, before he passed it back to her. She flipped to the page he would need to sign and laid a pen on top of it.

“Would ye have me sign it?” he said to his father and me.

“Yes, Gentry. I think it’s the best thing. Don’t you, Bill?”

“I suppose your mother’s right. Because your other option is a trial, and I don’t know about that.”

Gentry nodded, but he stood up and walked to the other end of the room. He’d stimmed on and off while reading the plea, but now he was doing it in earnest. Squeezing his right hand into a fist, while frantically scratching his neck with his left hand, until I knew, from experience, he would end up drawing blood.

“Is he okay?” Ms. Howell said.

“He just needs a few minutes. Gentry—”

“Nay,” he said, loudly enough that Ms. Howell jumped in her seat.

I smiled to reassure her, but she was staring at Gentry, who was pacing and scratching, and having a rather heated discussion with Hildegard, if I were to guess.

“Plague me not, harridan,” he said. “Thou hast no more wit than a stone. And a stone hath a use, more than thee.”

“Should we call someone?” Ms. Howell said.

“Son,” Bill said. “Calm down. You’re scaring Ms. Howell.”

“Nay!” Gentry came back to the table and did something I hadn’t seen him do in years, something he’d been taught in ABA therapy. He put both his hands on the table and forced them flat with his fingers spread out. They’d been trying to stop him from stimming, even though that was actually useful to him. Flattening his hands like that had never helped him, and it made me uneasy to see him do it. He was breathing too fast when he picked up his folder and took out a few photocopies stapled together.

“Read thou this?” he said to Bill, and then to both of us: “Read ye this and ye bidden me agree to such a thing?”

“Do you know what he means, Bill?” I said, but before he could answer, Gentry slapped the pages down on the table between Ms. Howell and me.

“It’s an article I sent him,” Bill said. “About diminished capacity plea deals.”

“Is’t true?” Gentry said. “If I plead as ye would have me, they might give me physic I need not? They might keep me as long as they will? This tells of men held ten years and more, with no hope of freedom.”