CHAPTER 15
I had to be in court at nine in the morning, and Uncle Bill drove me into Cincinnati for it. He and Aunt Kathryn decided that Ricky might learn something watching a murder trial, so they let him take the day off from school to go with us.
It was cool and overcast when we got into Bill's Studebaker. I had been coming to Calhoun just about every year since I had been a baby, but I had never been here in the fall, and the town looked barren and desolate without the summer greenery. With most of the leaves off the trees, a lot more of the town was visible - the houses that needed paint, the rickety garages in back yards, gardens turned under for the winter, rusty broken-down cars in alleys, Dogpatch, where Dover lived, on the side of a hill nearly a mile away. We could even see the Miami river from Ricky's house, and it looked yellow and cold.
I had on a tie again, along with my new blue blazer that was supposed to be proper for any occasion. Ricky tried to scare me and make me nervous on the trip into town, telling me stories about tricky lawyers who could get witnesses to admit anything.
"Aahh," I snorted. "I'm just gonna tell what I saw..."
"The Ol' Man carting Reba's body away!" Ricky chortled.
"I didn't see that!"
"Then don't say you did!"
"Ricky!" Uncle Bill said sternly.
Ricky shook with silent laughter, and Bill told me not to worry about anything, just to be polite and tell what I saw without any embellishment.
There was a crowd at the courthouse; reporters and photographers elbowed each other getting statements and pictures on the courthouse steps and in the smoke-filled hallway outside the courtroom. I saw Mr. and Mrs. King from across the street from my Grandparent's; Mrs. King was a witness, too. I wondered if something else important was going on, but it turned out that the Ol' Man's trial was the main attraction. A couple of burly Cincinnati cops hustled us through the throng and got us seats.
A thin, bald-headed attorney in a dark gray three-piece suit came over and said good morning to us. He was Mr. Starret, from the DA's office. I had talked to one of his guys on the phone. Starret told me not to be nervous about anything, to just get up on the stand when they called my name and tell my story as simply as possible. I said OK and he went back to his table wiping his hands nervously on a handkerchief. I wondered if he was new to this; he looked pretty young, despite his shiny head.
The jury was mostly middle-aged, dressed conservatively. There was one old guy who walked with a cane and one young guy who didn't look old enough to vote. There were three women; two middle-aged motherly types and one younger one who might have looked pretty good with her glasses off and her hair out of that bun. They all looked plenty serious, like they were ready to make a responsible decision. So, the Ol' Man's fate was in the hands of these people.
We all stood up when the judge was announced. He was an ominous looking bird, in his black robe perched up high behind his big desk shuffling papers and glaring out at his courtroom over his half-glasses. He looked like Scrooge in the movie "A Christmas Carol," and I was glad he wasn't going to be judging me on anything.
There was a buzz when the Ol' Man came in. He looked haggard and about ten years older. He'd lost weight in jail and his gray jail outfit hung loosely on his shrunken frame. He was supposed to have cirrhosis, and he looked around the courtroom with watery, red-rimmed eyes. We'd heard he'd had an attack of religion in jail, and he had a Bible clutched in his hands that he would read from, his lips moving, every once in a while. His gray hair was sparser than I remembered, and he had about a three-day stubble on his chin.
He had a public defender, who smiled cheerfully at everyone and said hello to Starret. But the Ol' Man looked plenty glum as they sat at the table and conferred, like he didn't have much faith in him.
The Ol' Man's wife, Frances, was there with some of the kids. She looked forlorn, sitting there wearing a wrinkled blue dress and a wrinkled gray face and holding a red-headed baby in her arms. The other kids squirmed around in their seats, making faces at the people in the row behind them and generally being a nuisance, and she had to take the whole tribe out into the hall a couple of times.
Starret opened the case for the prosecution with a big speech to the jury about how the State would prove that Otis Davis was a callous, conniving criminal who had killed his step-daughter to keep her from ratting on him about the robbery of Ev Everson's saloon. Davis had admitted robbing the saloon, Starret reminded the jury, after he had been arrested on the murder charge. Starret looked kind of nervous when he started, but he warmed up after a while and finished with a flourish, banging his fist on the table and demanding that the jury serve justice and find the Ol' Man guilty. He seemed like he really wanted to get the Ol' Man, but I guess he was just doing his job, nothing personal, huh?
The Ol' Man's lawyer got up and made his opening speech. His name was Jamison, and he was a chubby, comfortable-looking guy with a mustache and horn-rimmed glasses. He had on a three-piece suit with scrambled eggs or something on his vest. He looked real relaxed as he spoke in a resonant voice to the jury, stating that Mr. Davis was unjustly accused and how terrible it was that his step-daughter, whom he had loved so much, had been murdered and how it was such a horrible ordeal for him to undergo, being accused of the murder. He said all the evidence against his client was circumstantial and that he should be acquitted. He had an old briar pipe in his pocket that he took out and fingered while he talked. He looked at it while he talked, only glancing at the jury occasionally. Despite his casual attitude, he seemed to know what he was doing. When he finished he put the pipe back into his pocket and sat down next to the Ol' Man, stroking his mustache and making notes on a yellow legal pad.
The first witness, from the coroner's officer, testified that Reba Davis had been strangled to death sometime between eleven o'clock Saturday night and four o'clock Sunday morning. The next witness, a police detective, said it appeared that the crime had been committed somewhere else and that the body had been dumped at the gravel pit. One of Reba's shoes had been found in the Ol' Man's station wagon. Tire prints from the gravel pit were introduced into evidence, and they matched the tires on the Ol' Man's station wagon, the cop said.
Finally it was my turn. When they called my name Ricky poked me in the ribs with an elbow and Uncle Bill gave me the thumbs up sign. They swore me in and I sat down on the hard wooden witness chair. The crowd stared expectantly at me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Ol' Man looking mournfully at me, and I tried not to make eye contact with him. Starrett asked me where I was at one o'clock Sunday morning the night Reba was murdered and I said I was at my Grandparent's house. He asked me what I had seen out the window that night and I told the court about seeing Mr. Davis drive off in the family station wagon. This started the whole courtroom whispering and the judge banged his gavel and everybody shut up.
Then the Ol' Man's lawyer started on me. He walked back and forth in front of me a couple of times, fingering his pipe, before he said anything, trying to make me nervous, I guess. He wanted to know how I knew how I knew what time it was when I saw the Ol' Man drive off, and why I was looking out the window in the first place, and was I usually up at that hour, and was I sure it was the Ol' Man driving. Starrett objected a few times. When Jamison asked me how far I could see at night I wanted to ask him how far the moon was - I could see that - but I didn't. Then I was done and the judge told me to step down.
Then came the big blow, when Starret introduced Reba's diary into evidence. It was a baby blue book with one of those locks on it that any little brother could pick with his eyes closed. A handwriting expert verified that it was, indeed, Reba's. The courtroom was deathly still as Starret read what she had written the Saturday afternoon before she was killed: "Daddy robbed the saloon last night. I saw him stuffing the money in the dresser drawer when he came home. It was on the news today and I then I knew where the money came from. He was drunk and he hit me with his belt again and said he'd kill me if I told on him. I should. Then he'd go back to jail. It was so nice around here when he was gone before. If Nick and I do 'it' tonight I hope he doesn't see the marks on my legs. I don't want him to know."
Starret looked up meaningfully at the jury. Nobody made a sound. Whew, Nick would have finished the Ol' Man off on the porch that night if he'd known he was whipping Reba. The Ol' Man cringed and hugged his Bible, his eyes on the floor.
It was almost noon, now, and the judge called a recess for lunch. Uncle Bill took us down the street to a great hot dog place and we really chowed down. It was warmer, now, and the sun would peek out from behind the gray clouds occasionally. They laughed at me when I put ketchup on my dogs, but that's the way I liked 'em. Didn't like mustard.
On the way back Ricky asked me if I knew where the word "testify" came from.
I said I didn't. But I was sure he did.
"Testicle," he said, grinning.
"Testicle? Your lyin' ass." Uncle Bill was a few steps ahead of us and couldn't hear us.
"No, really. In the old days in England or somewhere they used to grab their nuts when they were in court telling their story."
"Who grabbed their nuts?"
"Whoever was talking."
"Y'mean they grabbed their own nuts?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"To show they were telling the truth."
"Oh, shit."
"No, really."
"Well, I'm not gonna grab my nuts in front of everybody."
That really broke Ricky up, and he laughed like a hyena.
When the proceedings had gotten under way again Starrett called me back up to the witness stand. The judge reminded me that I was still under oath and Starrett got me to tell the court about the fight the Ol' Man had had with Nick on the Davis's front porch the Saturday night Reba was killed. He made a big deal out of me seeing the Ol' Man jerk Reba back into the house when she went out on the porch to greet Nick.
Jamison wanted to know if I had actually seen Mr. Davis strike Reba and I said no, he just grabbed her by the arm and jerked her back into the house.
Then Mrs. King, the neighbor down the street from my Grandparent's, got up and corroborated my story. She also told the court about seeing Nick bringing Reba home Saturday night. So she had seen that, huh? Good thing she hadn't seen Ricky and me over at Debbie's bedroom window.
Poor old Jamison didn't have much of a defense to present. He called up a few character witnesses for the Ol' Man - his parole officer and a couple of guys the Ol' Man worked with. They had to admit that the Ol' Man was pretty much of a low-life, but they really couldn't see him killing his step-daughter, they said. The jury didn't look very convinced; I knew I wasn't.
Then Jamison called the Ol' Man himself to the stand. The whole courtroom perked up its ears and leaned forward in its collective seat.
"I got drunk!" the Ol' Man wailed when Jamison asked him what he had done that Saturday night. "I didn't kill her. I got drunk and fell asleep on the sofa."
He admitted arguing with Reba about the money from the saloon robbery, but she wouldn't have turned him in, he said. Had he threatened to kill her? No, no, he was just trying to scare her. But had he threatened her? If he did, he didn't mean it. Had he hit her with his belt? No, not really. What does that mean, "not really"? Well, he might have hit her, but not very hard. Children have to respect their elders, y'know. How did he explain his tire prints at the gravel pit? He didn't know; he'd never driven his car there in his life. If he didn't kill her, then who did? No idea, everybody loved Reba.
"I loved her, I didn't kill her, I wouldn't kill anybody," he wailed in a broken voice with a big crocodile tear in his eye.
Nobody seemed very impressed with his story, though, and it didn't take the jury long to bring in a guilty verdict. When the Ol' Man heard it he dropped to his knees, blubbering something about Christ forgiving them for they knew not what the hell they were doing.
After dinner I got Shauna's phone number out of my wallet and sat by the phone working up the courage to call her. I had been meaning to call her the whole time I'd been gone, but somehow I'd never gotten around to it. I guess I was just scared, really. Hell, she'd probably forgotten about me by now. I had imagined her having fun at the Top Deck, dancing, meeting new guys. Or pining away for that guy in the service. She was only the most knocked-out chick I had ever known, and so I forced my finger to dial her number.
Her Mom answered and didn't sound too friendly when I asked to speak to Shauna, but when she got on the line she sounded pretty glad to hear from me.
"I heard all about the trial on the news," she said. "You're famous."
"Please, no autographs," I laughed.
The conversation went pretty well. We talked about school and music and stuff and she said everything was great with her, except that she missed her job at the Top Deck, which was closed for the winter. I said I wished I could see her while I was in town, but that I had to go back tomorrow and I supposed she would be in school. She said she would like to see me, too, but that there was something she ought to tell me.
"Rod and I have set a date for our wedding," she said.
You know how you feel when you're walking down the street and a construction crew on the tenth floor of some building drops a load of bricks on your head? Well, that's how I felt when she said that.
"It's in June, after school is out."
"Oh," I said numbly. "Congratulations."
"Thanks."
I guess it was my turn to talk again. "Uh, so you're not gonna finish school?" She was only a sophomore this year, like me.
"My sisters didn't, and they're real happy with their families. You should see my little nieces and nephews."
"Yeah, I should," I said sarcastically.
"Will you be in town in June? Maybe you could come to the wedding."
"Nah, I don't think so."
"After a pause she said: "I was so confused the last time I saw you... I'd never met a boy like you. Maybe if we'd had a chance to spend more time together..."
"Yeah."
"Please don't be mad at me," she said in a little-girl voice.
"I'm, not. Hey, I'm happy for you," I said, trying to sound happy. "Good luck."
"You sound mad."
Shit, what did she expect? Well, I wasn't mad - just surprised, or something. "It's just... I don't know... a surprise."
"I'll never forget you," she said sweetly.
"Sure."
We said good-bye and I went out on the back porch, jammed my hands in the pockets of my jeans, and flopped down on the swing.
I'd never forget her, that's for sure. The way she looked selling Cokes and popcorn the first night I met her, the way she came to my defense when I got into that fight with that crazy buddy of her boyfriend's, the night I'd walked her home from the Top Deck and kissed her in the silvery moonlight...
But what the hell was I expecting, anyway, that she would fall in love with me and wait until I came back next summer? She hadn't even waited until I came back for the trial. I knew that I'd never meet anybody like her again.