Decision (65 page)

“Hey, Bubba, man!” a voice cried. “What you got there, man? Somethin’ you need some help with?”

“Hey, Elvis, baby!” the figure called happily. “How you doin’, man? I got me a live one, I think, but I don’t need no help. I can handle this. You jes’ drive on by, now, and everything’s goin’ be okay.”

“Okay, man,” the voice from the car said with a chuckle. “Give it to him good, man. See you roun’.”

“Hey!” Earle shouted, suddenly finding his voice. “Help!”

The car stopped abruptly and a sarcastic voice came back.

“Don’t do you no good to shout, man. Nobody goin’ hear.”

And slowly it resumed speed and dwindled away down the street under the tunnel of beautiful old trees.

“Help!” Earle called again, his voice suddenly cracking. “Help, somebody!”

“Ain’t nobody goin’ help, man,” the figure assured him gently. “Bet you they’s a hundred people behind those doors up and down this street, and
not one
of ’em is goin’ stir out to lift a finger. They’s scared to death, man, just like you are. They’s scared of the night and they’s scared of Bubba Whitby. Now, God damn!” the figure added with a laugh that made Earle begin to sweat. “There I gone and done it! I give you my name. Now I guess I got to go ahead and kill you, man.”

“Why?” Earle demanded, voice in spite of him rising a notch.
“Why?”

“Just ’cause you know who I am,” the figure said. “And just ’cause I’m kind of bored and maybe a little killin’ ’d pep me up. I got me a date later with some little gal and maybe a little killin’ would get me hot for it. Too bad you won’t be around then, man. You could come watch. She’s a real ackerbat. So,” he added with satisfaction, “am I.”

“Listen,” Earle said, trying to get things back on a rational basis, trying to reason, trying to be sane, though he could tell the bastard was a maniac and a real killer: he wasn’t just threatening for the hell of it, Earle knew that. “Listen. What’s the point in killing anybody, man? You don’t solve things that way. You’ve got to talk things out. If I’ve offended you in some way, tell me what it is and we’ll talk. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothin’ wrong with that,” the figure said, “’cept that’s not what I’m goin’ do. It’s just not what I’m goin’ do.”

“Why not?” Earle demanded desperately. “Why
not?”

“‘Cause I’m Bubba,” the figure said, “and I does what I pleases. People been tryin’ hassle me all my life, man, but it don’ do ’em no good. I’s a free speerit, man. I’s a classic case. Ain’t
nobody
goin’ tell me what to do.”

“But that isn’t civilized!” Earle protested. “That isn’t right, man! We’ve got laws in this country! You can’t just go around killing people!”

“I
can,” the figure said softly, and suddenly one long arm had Earle by the throat and he was aware that the other was raised with something gleaming at the end of it where the light fell flickering through the trees.

“No!”
Earle cried.
“Not a knife!”

“Oh, sure, man,” the figure said, the arm pausing at the top of its plunge while the figure chuckled a little. “Oh, sure. Quick, clean, silent. And you can carve ’em up a bit, too, if you want to. I just might do that, before I let you die, man. I just might.”

“No!”
Earle cried again, struggling futilely in the iron grip.
“You’re not going to kill me!”

“Why, sure I am, man,” the figure said amicably as the arm with tantalizing slowness began its sure descent. “Sure I am.”

“But I haven’t got a weapon!”
Earle screamed as the arm began to pick up speed.
“I can’t defend myself.”

“That’s too bad, man,” the figure said as the knife struck home for the first time and Earle, feeling an awful pain in his chest, began to slump toward the sidewalk. “You should have thought of that before you came out here tonight.”

Two more times the arm rose and fell while the world began to dissolve in a bloody haze around the bomber of Pomeroy Station, the deliberate destroyer of so many lives.

The last thing he felt was a terrible raking pain across his eyes.

And then he felt nothing more.

For a couple of minutes Bubba stood quivering with a fierce excitement, hovering over his victim who still gasped and groaned, though with steadily diminishing intensity. Then he straightened and looked sharply up and down the silent street.

Nothing stirred.

Nothing moved.

No one came.

Calmly then, with a deliberation that expressed all the sad, futile frustrations of his already sad and futile life, he drew back a huge hobnailed foot and aimed a savage kick at the face of Earle Holgren, slowly bleeding to death on the lovely, worn old bricks.

Then he turned and skipped away into the darkness as emptily, senselessly and pointlessly as he had come.

The great white building stood serene and untroubled in the hot, steamy night, once more looking as majestic and pure as it had before the throngs of Justice NOW! had seen fit to desecrate its lampposts and paint graffiti on its outside walls.

All that was gone, now.

The edifice seemed the same as ever.

Softly lighted, stately and beautiful, it stood again as it had for five decades, the high and impressive citadel of the law.

In the streets around, hardly anyone still lingered as Washington’s suffocating velvet summer night closed down completely at last upon the city. An occasional tourist couple still wandered arm in arm, careful to walk close to the streetlamps whose pools of light shone down comfortingly through the thickly bending trees. An occasional slow-moving taxi passed, its occupants bent upon the same sightseeing mission. A few late students and researchers hurried nervously to their cars from the Court library or the neighboring library of Congress, feeling fortunate if they had been able to find parking spaces in a lighted area, walking with an extra quickness if they had not. An occasional late-working law clerk, loaded down with books and papers, emerged from the building to make the same quick, uneasy progress to car, taxi or bus.

It was not a very good area to be in at night and was deserted accordingly.

Hardly any people, hardly any traffic … not much doing at the Court, this night.

Very soon, now, there would be activity, police cars, sirens, flashing lights, an ambulance, the convergence of frantically scrambling media and, unnoticed in the hubbub, a white-faced young woman with horror in her eyes.

But for the moment, all remained calm and serene.

Above the great bronze doors through which so many thousands of litigants, so many fateful cases and great causes had passed down the years, the calm affirmation sought, as always, to hold back the night. EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW.

She sat beside the bed, never taking her eyes off the still white face. Doctors and nurses came and went, the hours passed without break or relief. Fear and terror dragged upon her heart.

She had tried to cry but could not.

She had tried to penetrate the impenetrable mask but could not.

She had tried to keep hope alive but could not.

It was not until the first faint light touched the stately avenues, the beautiful buildings and monuments, the slow, winding river, the lush green hills of Maryland and Virginia and the tops of the trees through which Earle Holgren stared up unseeing at the empty sky that there was, at last, the tiniest stirring in the bed.

Slowly the eyes opened, slowly they focused. Slowly the ghost of a smile, the faintest of recognitions, crossed the face.

She and the nurse cried out, doctors and other nurses came running.

“Hi,” he whispered very faintly.

“Hi,” she said and at last began to cry.

The senior doctor passed a hand before the eyes, which flickered and followed; listened carefully to heart and chest, took pulse, studied temperature; finally nodded and gave her hand a hard encouraging squeeze.

“He’ll make it,” he said and she cried the more. “He’s on his way back.”

Justice of a sort—though not in all respects of a kind the Court or John Marshall might have intended—had been rendered.

And, human nature being what it is—and professed intentions having given way in some degree, as they so often do, to the human inadequacies of all concerned—a decision.

November 1980–January 1982.

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