Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(41)

I am an awful woman, and I am probably not going to heaven when I die. But if that’s the case, maybe I ought to do something really awful to earn a spot in hell, if it’s all the same difference anyway. I could start in that courtroom, and I could leave this world a better place than I found it.)

? ? ?

The courtroom was an uncomfortable place, even when nothing dramatic was happening.

It was cold in there at first, and then it got too warm as the place filled up, and everyone sat thigh to thigh on the wooden pews. (Do they call them pews when they’re not in church? Benches, then, if that’s better.) I wished I had a fan, but I hadn’t put one into my bag because it’s been so cool as of late, so I did without.

The chief also looked warm, but he was wearing his wool uniform—the dress uniform that the policemen wear for fancy occasions like funerals. I know he wasn’t really a policeman anymore, not with a badge to prove it; but he’d always be a policeman down in his soul, and nobody would’ve argued his right to wear the uniform. He tugged at his collar once or twice, and I saw a little shine of sweat on his forehead by the time the first hour of introductions was up.

Finally, the prosecutor, Mr. Mayhew, got down to business and started telling the jury what he meant to convict my daddy of.

“The courts will show,” he said, leaving his spot behind his desk, “that Mr. Stephenson with malice aforethought arrived at Saint Paul’s Church, and with gun in hand, he approached the priest—opening fire on him, and killing him instantly.”

Well, no kidding. Everybody knew that part already.

I wished he would say something snappy, make some real accusations, do something to startle the old white men who sat in two rows opposite him. But no, he just paced back and forth, and in that slow, plodding Southern voice of his, he said out loud what everyone already knew. It was old news to us all, and I don’t think anyone was moved by it, or gave a damn about it one way or another.

Then Hugo Black got up and said his piece.

He only stood. He didn’t pace back and forth, but he leaned forward, his hands on the desk as he spoke.

“It is true that Edwin Stephenson shot and killed Father Coyle. He did so in daylight, before a number of witnesses. However, I intend to show that his actions did not represent the behavior of a sane man—that, in fact, he was deranged by a series of events beyond his control, not least of all the elopement of his delinquent, disobedient, ungrateful daughter with a Puerto Rican day laborer . . . an elopement facilitated by the scheming priest, who sought only to add to his own congregation.”

? ? ?

I objected to a whole lot of things in that description.

For one thing, I’m no delinquent. I ran away a few times, but that shouldn’t mean anything to the judge or jury—and I was never arrested for anything, so the word doesn’t seem right. So, yes, I ran away; and, yes, the police brought me back at my daddy’s behest until I got married and he couldn’t do that no more. All right, if that’s all it takes to be a delinquent, then fine. But I don’t like the word. It says something about me that isn’t true, and it makes me sound like a child.

For another thing I don’t like, my daddy has never behaved like a sane man, so it’s not like anything he did on that day on the church’s front steps was anything out of the ordinary for him. It wasn’t some “crime of passion,” as I’ve heard it put. He knew good and well what he was doing, and if he was deranged when he did it, well, he’s been deranged his whole life, when he’s done everything. Convict him for fifty years of being a jackass, why don’t they.

For a last thing I don’t like, and the worst thing of all . . . I objected to the way the old men in the jury box looked at me, their eyes all narrow and hateful, like maybe they’d had bad daughters of their own—girls they’d like to beat or lock away, or send the police chasing after. I didn’t like the way they shook their heads when Hugo Black talked about me being a disobedient, ungrateful person (and I didn’t like those words either). If they had daughters of their own, I’m sure those daughters were never obedient enough, and never grateful enough, either. And I really, really didn’t like the way they sneered when he called Pedro a Puerto Rican. Who cares if he’s from Puerto Rico? Hugo Black said it like an insult, and it’s not an insult: It’s just a place people come from.

Ah, but not white people. Not as far as these men know or care.

It’s not like Pedro’s even very dark, so I don’t see what the big deal is. When I get a suntan on my arms, my skin’s browner than his, not like it matters to twelve ignorant Alabamans in a jury box. I guess I’m an ignorant Alabaman, too, but Lord knows I’m not an idiot. I just don’t know what’s wrong with those men up there.

? ? ?

So I sat there getting mad, thinking about all the things that were wrong with all the things Hugo Black was saying, and it got warmer and warmer in there. My hands started feeling all tingly, and the tingling went up my wrists, past my elbows, up my neck, and into my eyes—where it settled in like silver fireworks, and that’s when I realized I was having another spell.

I started to panic, because I’d never had one in front of people before—except for my mother, that one time—and here I was, in a crowded courtroom, and the edges of everything were going black. I had an awful thought: that if I did anything crazy it’d hurt Mr. Mayhew’s case when he called me to testify. As it was, nobody was likely to take me too seriously, and if I was some kind of lunatic who had fits and spells, then that just made everything worse.