A Covenant with Death (14 page)

I lapsed into an unprofessional catalepsy, slumped uncomfortably against the hard wood like a politician in church, and trying to maintain the same expression of interest and dignity. Lacking discipline, my mind drifted off to Rosemary, snubbed her coolly, returned to Talbot, drifted off again, meandering through the past, greeting ladies, reviewing lost opportunities, tabulating handles galbées. It was nothing so dramatic as death provoking lust, though I have noticed at funerals that the fitting answer to death is living flesh, and even in my old age female mourners sometimes take on a beauty and an availability in my mind, as though we were all starting fresh now; the graveyard smells of cut grass and ripe blossoms, and every shrub swells, exfoliates. No. A hardwood bench is the death of affection, and my slumbrous fantasies were without heat or purpose. I was simply bored. Because Parmelee was accomplishing nothing, and perhaps even sealing a doom. Everyone in that courtroom believed Bryan Talbot guilty; they might sympathize, they might admire his brave deception, but he had committed one great sin, and they knew he was guilty of another. Parmelee had at best introduced possibilities, but no sane man lives by the possible. Nor does he live by the certain. He lives by the probable. If he lives by the possible he is sick with fear, and if he lives by the certain he is sick with power. Most of us are not sick. We live by a reasonable, lazy sort of common sense, which is another name for the probable and is often inadequate but preserves us from God and the Devil alike. Talbot was guilty, all right. We were sorry about that, as decent people always are. The Colonel said later that even if Talbot had not murdered his wife, he had made the murder inevitable by his earlier sin.

Parmelee finished at four-thirty, and Hochstadter offered to adjourn and leave cross-examination for the morning.

“If the Court please,” Dietrich said, “I'd prefer to cross-examine now. I'll be brief.”

“Well,” Hochstadter said, showing surprise. “All right. Go ahead.”

Dietrich just looked at Talbot for a long time, maybe a minute. Then he said, “Mr. Talbot: you would like us to believe that a stranger, at any rate a third party, attacked and killed your wife.”

“It's the only explanation,” Talbot said.

“Then can you tell me why, except for a bruise on your own face, there were no signs of struggle? Or why, as Doctor Schilling testified, there had been no criminal assault?”

Talbot shook his head. “No. I can't.”

Again Dietrich just stared for a time. Then he, too, shook his head, but with weary disgust.

“When you got home that night,” he asked, “why did you call the police and not the hospital?”

“I—well—I thought the police would bring a doctor. And I couldn't find a heartbeat.”

“You knew she was dead.”

“I thought she was. I was afraid she was. I don't think I knew what I was doing, exactly.”

Dietrich nodded, and then looked at the floor and said quietly, “I think you knew what you were doing. Exactly.”

Hochstadter struck the remark from the record, and Dietrich said, “No further questions,” and we all went home. I had a headache.

And that was all. Poor Parmelee had no allies. Friday morning he delivered his endless summation as I sat peeking at my father's watch—gift of the Civic Club, Soledad City, in Honor of His Fiftieth Birthday, August 10, 1910. The Law Is Light. The watch seemed to run badly that day, evenly enough at nine but slowing steadily. At about eleven I was seized by sighs and tremors, and one desperate, languishing exhalation, half yawn, half groan, caused my neighbor, a frowsy wife, to peer in maternal alarm. I have the record before me now and I see that Parmelee made a good speech but I cannot recall the emphases, the gestures, the tones. I can reconstruct: he must have spoken levelly and earnestly as he repeated—spiraling infinitely about the fact—that the case against Bryan Talbot was built solely upon inference. He must have been intense, head forward, eyes grim, as he said, “We simply don't know how complicated Louise Talbot's social life was. We do know that she had one lover, and flaunted him; that cohabiting with more than one man was not impossible, and probably not distasteful, to her; how many more there may have been, no man will ever know.” That attempt failed, as I recall it; the jury, sunk in heat, fanned itself in a measured flurry of cardboard and straw, twelve men glazed and still, like a church choir during the sermon. Parmelee reviewed the evidence selectively, quarrying out of it every least statement or implication or possibility that favored Talbot: “He would have had an alibi. He would have taken her out of town, staged an accident; any murderer would have. And Bryan Talbot is a notoriously calculating man. He is considered a cold fish, a planner. He is methodical, and appears to be as passionate about money as about anything else. For three and a half years he persevered in his successful attempt at reconciliation. For two years he acquiesced to his wife's adventure in Dallas. Can you believe that after those years this calm, cool, impassive man went home one night—even tipsy—and destroyed the woman he loved? Why? A whim? A sudden decision to annihilate his woman, his future, possibly his own life, all at once? Nonsense. If you believe that then you must believe that he is insane.”

And so on. While I suppressed yawns he hammered on, pacing, gesturing: we could not have known whom Louise Talbot might have been teasing; Talbot was eminently not the man, as a type or as an individual, to commit that horrible crime; and—this was his peroration, as expected—no jury had the right to condemn a man to death in the absence of direct evidence. The jury had no choice; the sentence was mandatory upon conviction of first-degree murder; but the jury was not there to judge the law. The jury was there to judge the facts, and there simply weren't any facts. Could they, in conscience, take the life of a human being? Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Et cetera. Talbot's blood would be on their hands, and it would not do to share the guilt, like a firing squad with one blank cartridge; every one of them would have to spend the rest of his life wondering if he had done wrong, if he had committed murder himself.

He was sopping when he finished. His shirt was soaked and at the back of his trousers, just under the waist, a stain of sweat was spreading. He was also exhausted. He said, “You cannot convict Bryan Talbot. By all the laws of God and man, you must declare him innocent.” He straightened momentarily and gazed at them and said quietly, “I believe him to be innocent. Upon my very soul I believe that.” Then he said, “Thank you,” and slumped like a wounded bear. He labored to his chair and flopped. He was breathing slowly and deeply and sweat ran down his face. No one moved. He extracted a kerchief from a trouser pocket and sponged himself, and then turned to Talbot and nodded with the weary, somnolent grace of the very old, and smiled a small, tired smile. At that moment the jury might have acquitted; for Parmelee, and not for truth.

Unfortunately for Talbot, the trial was not over. We recessed for lunch. I went home and ate two bowls of chili and packed a bag. I also put on a clean linen suit and felt slightly ghoulish, as though I were spiffing up for Dietrich's summation, like a man in a morning coat at a funeral. My mother sat across the kitchen table and radiated a faint heat of worry and disapproval. “I suppose you think I shouldn't go,” I said between peppery mouthfuls. “Let her stew in her own juice, or some equally original gem of folk wisdom. But a girl like that has problems.”

“And you don't.”

“Now, now. Of course I do. One of them being Rosemary. Another being—would it make any sense to you if I said I was pushing myself to go up there, forcing myself a little?”

“No.”

“I don't think I really want to go. I don't like to argue with women about basic matters. I want to go up to the lake and swim, anyway. I want her to come down here. I hate … I hate chasing after the world.”

“Then why go?”

“Because—well, no man can live that way. You can't just ignore everything. I wish I could. And I—I—” The wrench of desire almost wrestled me out of my chair. I set down the spoon and folded my hands. “All right. I like her. I don't want to bust up whatever it is we have.”

“That isn't what I was worried about,” my mother said.

“I know that too.” I resumed eating. “But I'm going. I can't change anything here.”

She sighed. “You'll never be President.”

“That's right But they don't need me. They have Gamaliel. Gamaliel will go on forever. Like Charlie Chaplin. Anything funny enough is immortal. Gamaliel in Alaska. Can you see him, with the cigar, mushing through the snowy wastes?”

“He'll be in Juneau,” she said, “and they don't have snow there in summer. And anyway they say he has a girl friend. He can't be all bad.”

“I heard about that,” I said. “Maybe I ought to write him for advice. Coffee, please.”

“You don't need advice,” she said. “You need a brisk walk around the block and a cold shower.” And then she was serious and pleading: “You shouldn't go. Not today.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm going. A driven man. It's the prick of fate.”

“Language,” she said.

I moseyed back to the courthouse feeling rather plantational in my linen, needing only a planter's hat and an eight-inch cheroot, or some belles to bow to. I also felt cheap. Not because of the clothes but because there was nothing wrong with me. My liver did not ache like Parmelee's or my conscience like Talbot's. No plagues afflicted me, coronary, pancreatic, or theological. Questions, perhaps, because I had no idea why I was here or where I was going, much less when or with whom; but there would be time later for metaphysics. Later, when the more urgent demands—clamorous glands, insistent blood, insatiate senses—died. Quiescence then, and acquiescence. Right now I was perky, and the orange flash of a Bullock's oriole in the courthouse square went to my heart as Talbot never could.

So did the bronze apparition of John Digby, rising to meet me as I approached the steps. “What cheer?” I said.

“Where are you going?”

“Albuquerque. On the four forty-five. You're flabbergasted. Don't lecture me.”

He stared. After a moment he said, “Two things. First, does Judge Hochstadter know?”

“What does he have to know? Is it against the law? I have things to do in Albuquerque.”

“All right,” he said quickly. “That's your business. Second, some people want to get married. They were hoping to come to your office at four o'clock. License in order.”

“Lovely!” I beamed. “Who are the lucky pair?”

“A man named Golub and a girl named Wendt. Her parents will witness.”

“Never heard of them.” I smiled. “I'll be happy to oblige.” But I used them, and evaded one confrontation: “Would you take my bag to the office? I'll pick it up there.”

He saw. “All right.” He hesitated.

“Now what?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Here comes the U.S. cavalry. See you later.”

He was replaced immediately by Colonel Oates, who hove harrumphing into conversational port. “Well well well. It ends today.” The Colonel too was resplendent, in a pleated shirt and what, in tweed rather than linen, would have been a Norfolk jacket. His buff Stetson was freshly blocked.

“It does indeed,” I said. “Four days of courtroom Chautauqua. Grand finale this afternoon.”

He peered anxiously. “Are you drunk?”

“No. Just confused. Flaming youth. Bitter.”

“Confused? He's guilty, isn't he?”

“I suppose he is. I beg leave to point out that you once thought he wasn't. But that isn't what I meant.”

“What is it then?”

“Nothing.” I grinned a glassy grin and clapped him on the shoulder. “It's just me.”

“An eye for an eye,” he said firmly. “I hope you won't be sentimental about this.”

“Sentimental!” I fixed him in a steely gaze. “Colonel, the law is the law. The safety of the people is the highest law. Hammurabi. Good law means good order. Aristotle. Don't forget that. Don't let Joseph Conrad sap your moral fiber.”

“You're spoofing me,” he said. “There's something wrong.”

“Not at all. At four o'clock I am joining Golub and Wendt. This is a day among days.”

“Who are Golub and Wendt?”

“Let's go in,” I said. “I hate people who make noise after the curtain goes up.”

“Golub and Wendt?” he murmured. “Golub and Wendt?”

I weakened again, and sent a note to the bench: must leave at four. Marriage ceremony. Hochstadter adjusted his pince-nez and read it and nodded and waggled his fingers at me. The courtroom was full and I had not been wrong in my mockery: this was a formal occasion, with markedly more neckties and jewelry in evidence, as well as a more subdued and respectful manner. When court had been declared in session and Dietrich rose, the silence was remarkable. And at that moment I yielded to an almost suffocating nervousness. My muscles twitched; my fingers danced on the back of the pew in front of me; I licked my lips and scratched my head, rubbed my face aimlessly, clenched my teeth. In the great hollow room a rite was about to be consummated and the participants were grave, silent, orderly. But I broke away from them, and wanted to shout, sing, make a speech. I know why, now; I did not, then. I was wrong and bad. Somewhere beneath the skin a lily was festering. My fellow citizens, mes semblables, mes frères, killing ceremoniously. Talbot. Rosemary. Bruce Donnelley of the Chamber of Commerce, unmoved and unmoving, the conscience of the people, the rock of our brief age. Hochstadter in solemn majesty, ha! And the disquiet seemed to be mine alone. As if my own shame (at what? at what?) had lacerated my sensibilities beyond theirs so that only my eyes were restless, only my heart was pounding. But there was no real excitement in the room, not even mild perturbation; a lugubrious assembly but not truly sad; earnest, rather, frozen in sober righteousness. And only one man, me, sniffing the wind in sett-judgment, and catching not even the stench of iniquity and corruption, but only a hint of wrong in the warm air, as if a horse had broken wind half a mile away.