A Covenant with Death (11 page)

“Then she had decided to try to make a go of it with Bryan Talbot.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Hoyers said, and Dietrich, who was up again, never had a chance to object because Parmelee said, “Thank you; that's all,” and sat down.

Dietrich took a moment for thought. “How often did you see your daughter after that?”

“Objection,” Parmelee roared. “That isn't redirect at all. The District Attorney has started an entirely new line of questioning. We can't chop this testimony into little pieces and bat it back and forth indefinitely.”

“Cross-examination went to the question of Louise Talbot's later emotional attitude,” Dietrich said. “I have a right to go into the matter.”

“An offer of proof,” Parmelee said.

“I intend to show that Louise Talbot returned to Dallas often for the purpose of seeing a man she was fond of; which would tend to show her alienation from her husband.”

“Well, that was for direct,” Parmelee said grumpily.

“The District Attorney is within his rights,” Hochstadter ruled. “Objection denied.”

Dietrich turned inquiringly to Mrs. Hoyers. “I don't remember the exact question,” she said. He repeated it. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Well, she came home about every three months after that, for a week or two at a time.”

It was on her visit in March that she had run into an old schoolmate, Jack Rawlins. Mrs. Hoyers tried eagerly to fill in the details of their meeting, and Parmelee's objections were sustained. Dietrich persevered, and the pattern emerged. The two had met by chance, and afterward Rawlins had squired Louise to movies, to dances, to dinners; Mrs. Hoyers reported his arrival at the house bearing posies, repeated Louise's comments on their evenings together. Parmelee sank deeper into gloom; further cross-examination could only hurt Talbot. But John sensed something I had missed. “He's losing them,” he whispered, and I saw that he was right. The audience were fanning themselves, scratching themselves, shifting in their seats; the jurymen were leaning back, some slumped, relaxed and not rigid. They were in part relieved, now that the unmentionable had been mentioned and left behind; in part—I thought—willing to sympathize a bit with Bryan, whose wife had taken a woman's revenge.

Dietrich too looked about him, and knew, but went on calmly. The dilemma was only temporary. He had to establish the rift, the continuing quarrel. There were two sides to any quarrel, and that was the risk he had to take, but a momentary sympathy for Bryan would not serve to exonerate him of first-degree murder. He finished quickly. Perhaps he did cut it short; perhaps, with Rawlins on his list, he had no need for lengthy comment from Mrs. Hoyers. He thanked her again and turned her over to Parmelee, who had sense enough to let her go.

Hochstadter recessed for lunch.

Alvin Hochstadter and I walked together to the Territorial, nodding at friends, the Judge tipping his hat. “Hot,” he said. “Damned hot under that robe.” Joseph Hawkins led us to a table and held our chairs, and without a word brought us bourbon and ice water. I peered about for Mr. Francis X. Gorman and did not bemoan his absence. “They are making a hash of this trial,” Hochstadter said. “Parmelee was right, and Dietrich should have planned better. Can't have them popping on and off the stand like that.”

“Trouble is,” I said, “Dietrich's got two different stories to tell. And Parmelee wasn't ready for this first one. He isn't sure what to do about it.”

The Judge lingered over a long draught of cold water. “Aaaah,” he exulted. “You know, that pitcher on the bench warms up in half an hour. In an hour it's like swamp water. We ought to have blocks of ice and some electric fans blowing out over them. What you going to eat?”

“Cold ham,” I said.

“Good idea,” he said. “You were late this morning.”

I told him about Gorman.

“Hoo,” he said. “And Bettmann the Federal judge. God save us if he's ever replaced.” Bettmann was a stern, wrinkled old bibber who had, since Prohibition, developed and exercised a fanatical devotion to the rights of the accused. “God save me if
I'm
ever replaced. I come up again next year.” We were appointed on what came to be called the Missouri Plan: every four years the voters got a chance to throw us out. They never did. The proposition on the ballot was phrased in our favor, and it was much easier to vote Yes—provided there had been no financial scandals—than to vote No and have to worry about a new and unknown evil. The natural conservatism of people who disliked all government. Financial scandals were unlikely. We were paid six thousand dollars a year and in 1923, in Soledad County, that was extravagant. I could have been comfortable on half of that; but then my mother, cushioned by what my father had left her, maintained the house, on which her taxes were five dollars a month.

We chatted, and Joseph brought the ham, which was good: pink and firm and lean. With it we ate the house salad, tomatoes and sliced onions in a kind of brine. Tangy. Over coffee Hochstadter said, “And what the hell is he going to ask the old man now? The woman's covered it all but he's got to bring the old man back and it isn't fair to Parmelee. If Dietrich has no more direct, then Parmelee's got to cross-examine with a witness in between. God damn it! I should never have let him do that. Dietrich may have maneuvered himself right into something reversible, and lose it all because he couldn't keep his timetable straight.”

“Parmelee agreed to it,” I said. “I don't think they'd come near reversing on that. It's hardly substantive.”

“They've reversed on procedure before, and often.” He shattered his own gloom with a wide grin. “Well, they've reversed me before, too, and I'm still here. I've been through worse. I bet you don't know what I was before I was a marshal.”

“No, I don't.” He sounded like a boy and I was interested.

“Hoo. You wouldn't believe it, looking at me now, a fat old man in a white shirt, but I rode shotgun between Dallas and Santa Fe. It was the emptiest, longest ride in the world and the only company was real live scalping Indians and the toughest outlaws outside of Wall Street. I only did it for eight months and then I quit. Got so I couldn't sleep. Hayes was President then.”

“The Wild West,” I said, and smiled appreciatively.

“It was wild enough for me. There was no honor among thieves, believe me. The easiest way to get rich was to shoot a man in the back and take his money. The only thing that kept the killing down was that as soon as you had the money somebody was likely to shoot
you
in the back. I hated it. I was scared all the time. I once saw a man acquitted on self-defense because half a dozen witnesses swore that if he hadn't bushwhacked the victim, the victim was going to bushwhack him. That was around eighteen-eighty. They talk a lot now about self-reliance in the old days, and believe me you needed it. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “there were limits. With the Comanches riding, self-reliance was not quite as useful as the United States cavalry.”

“Like most virtues,” I said. “It was a virtue only as long as you could afford it.”

“Hoo,” he said again, brows rising. “You're too young to be saying things like that. You're supposed to still believe in truth and honor and such.”

“I do,” I said. “But I don't call them virtues. I call them necessities.”

He laughed from the belly. “That's better. Don't ever change your mind.”

Dietrich did come back to the old man, and among the spectators several women wept. Parmelee sat dour and motionless. “Mr. Hoyers, did your daughter ever discuss with you her inability to bear children?”

Hoyers gulped. “Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She was worried about Sarah and I. She was our only child, you know. She was worried because now there wouldn't be any grandchildren. We used to joke about her having lots of kids to keep us company in our old age. She told me how sorry she was that she wouldn't now, and we both cried some.” In demonstration, a tear slid down his cheek.

“I'm sorry,” Dietrich said. “Your witness.”

Poor Parmelee! Nothing he wouldn't have stipulated, and therefore nothing he could destroy, and the only object of attack a weeping old man. “I can see that you feel very strongly about this, Mr. Hoyers. I'm sorry to have to keep you here, but I'll try to be brief.” Hoyers nodded and swabbed at his eyes. “Of course I don't expect you to have much sympathy for Bryan Talbot. But I want you to try to remember if anything was said back in nineteen-nineteen, or subsequently, by Louise Talbot, that indicated understanding of Bryan Talbot, perhaps even forgiveness.”

“Only that it wasn't easy to leave a man. That's all I remember.”

“No suggestion that there might have been two sides to the tragedy? No sympathy at all for Talbot?”

“No sir.” Hoyers straightened up. “It was his fault, all right, and there wasn't anything to be said for him. Not then or ever.”

“Not by you or Mrs. Hoyers either?”

“No sir. That's a bad man. I wish she'd never married him. She should have left him right away and she might still be alive.”

Parmelee turned to the Judge. “I move that the last answer be stricken from the record.”

“Granted,” Hochstadter said immediately. “The jury will disregard witness's outburst. His answer to the question was ‘No sir.' Mr. Hoyers, please confine yourself to simple and direct answers.”

“Then it would be fair to say,” Parmelee went on, “that the opinion you formed when Louise came home to Dallas in nineteen-nineteen is the opinion you still hold? Of Bryan Talbot.”

“That's right. I haven't changed my mind about him.”

“And yet your daughter went on living with him, and the only reason you remember her stating was that it was hard to leave a man.”

“That's right.”

“You are a Protestant family, Mr. Hoyers?”

“That's right. Lutheran.”

“And while you don't approve of divorce, you are not forbidden by religious belief from seeking divorce.”

“That's right.”

“Then you ask us to believe that Louise Talbot went on living with Bryan Talbot for three and a half years after the tragedy, being his wife, keeping his home, eating with him three times a day and sleeping in the same bed with him, going on vacations with him and doing his laundry, celebrating holidays with him and going to the movies with him and just sitting quietly with him, when she might have divorced him without violence to her beliefs? Failing that, separated from him? And you ask us to believe that she had never forgiven him, that she never loved him for a minute?”

“Objection,” Dietrich said wearily. “Counsel is making a speech. It sounds like a summation. And what question is witness supposed to answer, exactly?”

“I'm trying to establish a sharply prejudiced attitude on the part of the witness,” Parmelee said. “The question is, whether witness asks us to believe all that, or if not, what part of it.”

“Denied,” Hochstadter said. “Go ahead, Mr. Parmelee.”

“Answer the question, please,” Parmelee said patiently. “You really think all that was true?”

“Yes I do,” Hoyers said, frowning, his jaw jutting.

“Would you admit that your own shock and resentment might have prevented you from forming an accurate idea of your daughter's emotional state?”

“No sir. I knew how she felt. Her husband was a bad one, and she knew it.”

“Then why did she stay with him?”

“I told you why.” The old man was angry, which pleased Parmelee; counsel was no longer brutalizing a tearful father.

“Because it was hard to leave a man,” Parmelee repeated. “Would you agree that you, robbed of grandchildren and suffering for your daughter, might have been blind to, unaware of, the emotions actually alive in her marriage? The accommodation, the reconciliation that would have been natural and inevitable between two people who continued to share each other's lives?”

“I don't understand,” Hoyers burst out. “If she still liked him why would she come back to Dallas and go out with Rawlins?”

Parmelee was silent for a good fifteen seconds, gazing impassively at Hoyers while the jury repeated his questions to themselves and slowly, confusedly, constructed a dubious image of Louise Talbot: at home with Bryan, resigned if not cheerful, then playing the floozy in Dallas.

“You hate Bryan Talbot, don't you?” Parmelee asked.

“Yes I do,” Hoyers said.

“That's all, Mr. Hoyers.”

“Nothing further,” Dietrich said.

“You may step down,” the Judge said.

“I hope he hangs,” Hoyers said, and descended to the beat of the gavel.

The spectators had perked up. A current of doubt animated them, reinforced by Parmelee's show of strength. Sunlight streamed in from the west now blinking off a hundred straw fans. Hands on his cane, chin on his hands, the Colonel hunched forward, nodding, the superannuated ephebe, his eyes bright and avaricious. Far to the rear Bruce Donnelley fanned himself, a cleft of distrust between his brows; heavy, stolid, righteous, he seemed a jury unto himself. As Hoyers left and Rawlins was called, a gossipaceous murmur rose and fell; Hochstadter ignored it, sensibly. When Rawlins was ready and George Costa had proferred the Bible Hochstadter rapped twice, and the murmur died. Rawlins swore to tell the truth.

He was handsome, well set up, with wavy dark hair, dark brows, small eyes, a blunt nose, a square chin. Twenty-seven years old; he might have been a mechanic who had just been promoted to salesman and would someday own the agency and carry his then two hundred pounds to Rotary meetings and smokers. He spoke with a marked drawl and tried to use the language properly. He told us that he had seen Louise Talbot for a week or two at a spell perhaps three times a year, in Dallas; that they had danced or dined out or seen a movie almost every night; that he had urged her to leave Bryan, and she had long refused; that she had told him, finally, in the summer of 1921, of her operation and barrenness, and though he had said it made no difference to him they had agreed not to mention divorce and marriage thenceforth.