Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(40)
“Excellent.” He sounded truly relieved, though I couldn’t imagine why. I was the one too relieved, too baffled, too amazed to do anything at all but accept his invitation.
He concluded by giving me the hotel where he stayed, promising to reserve me a room near his own for the sake of convenience—and then we respectively closed the call.
I stood in the parlor, the phone still in my hand, wondering what had just happened. I was flushed from head to toe; I could feel the pink warming my cheeks, and my hands were shaking. I put the phone back down on the table, lest I drop it and break it; I put my hand over my mouth, and pressed it there to keep from saying Nance’s name again, and again, and again.
Ruth Stephenson Gussman
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA SEPTEMBER 28, 1921
My father’s trial began today, and all of us are doomed.
Pedro couldn’t come with me because he had to work, but George Ward and Chief Eagan showed up. They came partly to support me, and partly to show that they were still paying attention. They want Barrett and his Klan cronies to know that murder—especially murder in the middle of the day, as the sun looks on along with everyone else—isn’t all right with everyone.
But it’s going to be all right for my father and his friends, and deep down I think we all know it. They’re going to get away with it, and it isn’t right at all. What kind of world is this, anyway, when a mean old fool murders a man of God before a host of witnesses, and the court just shrugs?
Well, we’re not shrugging. We’re here, and we’re watching.
Today we sat in the back row, waiting for the prosecuting lawyer to call me up as a witness. He said he was going to when I talked to him yesterday—and I think he might actually do it. I can’t tell if he’s good or bad. He was in the Klan before, but says he isn’t now . . . and anyway, he doesn’t like Hugo Black very much, so that’s one thing in his favor.
Hugo Black is Daddy’s lawyer. He’s the man who’s helping him walk free, so as far as I’m concerned, he’s the worst man in the room. I said that out loud to Chief Eagan, and he told me not to be so damn optimistic.
So I watched them all from the back row, as they got started with their introductions.
It took forever, I swear—everybody introducing themselves, introducing evidence, introducing all the things they planned to introduce later, except for me. They mentioned me as a witness to be called somewhere down the line, but they didn’t mention when that might turn out to be. Mr. Mayhew just told me to make sure I kept myself available, as if I’ve got somewhere else to be—and as if I don’t plan to sit there on that bench and watch every goddamn minute of this trial.
Mr. Mayhew is the prosecutor. I should’ve mentioned that. I know: I’ll introduce him.
Mr. Henry Mayhew is an attorney from Mobile who moved here a couple of years ago. As I said, he once was in the Klan, and says that now he’s not. He also said that he wasn’t in the True Americans, but he could be lying for all I know. He’s a short man, only about my height; but his shoes are always shiny and he dresses like he owns a mirror. His hair is brown, but it’s starting to get some gray in it, just above his ears on either side. He’s about forty years old, I think. He’s not married, or if he is married, he doesn’t wear a ring. When he talks, he talks slow. I hope he talks slow because he’s thinking about his words, and his mouth just drags like that when he’s working on a thought. I’ll forgive slow, so long as it’s careful. But I won’t forgive slow if it turns out he’s stalling because he’s stupid, and he doesn’t know what to say.
Anyway, that’s Mr. Mayhew. He’s the one bringing evidence against my daddy, so I want to say he’s the hero in the room, except Chief Eagan says that’s optimistic, too.
I’d like to introduce Chief Eagan as a pessimist.
Along the back row with me and the chief, there were a few other folks from Saint Paul’s—one of the nuns, her name’s Irene; one of the altar boys, and his name’s David; two of the older folks, they’re Italian and I don’t know their last name . . . and they don’t speak much English, so I feel strange about asking them. I know them on sight, that’s all. They came to support me and the chief, and Father Coyle even though he’s surely up in heaven by now, and doesn’t much care what becomes of my daddy.
Like the good father used to say, one way or another, we all get what’s coming to us in the end.
I know he was trying to say something comforting, but I never felt much comforted by it. Mostly I just felt worried. Sometimes I think I’m a pretty good person, real decent and all; and sometimes I have terrible thoughts that make me wonder if I’m not fooling myself, and I’d better pray as hard as I can that I don’t get what’s coming to me in the end.
? ? ?
(I feel bad and angry that way when I look at my daddy. I feel it boiling up hot, when I see him sitting all smug in front of the judge, next to Hugo Black with his slick hair and his smile that shows too many teeth. I feel like if I had a gun, maybe I’d just show them all what it was like—when someone comes walking up to you, and for no reason at all just blows your head clean open. I could do it, too. One by one, until I ran out of bullets. Six bullets, and if I’m a lucky shot that means six heads blown open. I’d start with Daddy’s head, then take his lawyer, then take the judge. Maybe I’d stop there, because maybe it’d take more than one bullet on a couple of them. Maybe that’d be enough, and the boiling-hot feeling would be all burned up, and I could sleep at night without seeing blood behind my eyelids, at least until they hanged me for doing all those murders. But then, maybe after that I could dream, without dreaming of murder.