Murder at the Foul Line (26 page)

So that’s really why it all happened. That’s why when I was over at Tanner’s trailer and I saw that black pistol of his in
the refrigerator, all of a sudden I got the idea I’d do just what Kyle said. Next time he was making fun of me, I’d stick
a gun in his face.

So that Friday when Tanner carried Jarrad down to the
pond to look at the ducks, I took his gun and hid it in my purse. Then on Saturday Mawmaw watched Jarrad for me and I worked
all day at Pretty Woman. That night was bad because Kyle was trying to make me do stuff in bed I didn’t want to. Sunday morning
he’s mad at me. He’s sitting on the couch in his underpants and wearing his old college basketball shirt, Number 56, click-clacking
with that straight razor blade at his cocaine. I’m trying to get me and Jarrad dressed to go pick up Mawmaw for church and
I’m late. Then Kyle tells me to nuke him a cup of coffee and when I can’t get the microwave to go off Defrost, he starts laughing
about “No-Brain Charmain.” Then pretty soon he starts bouncing his souvenir Sweet Sixteen basketball off the living room wall
like he was in a gym and not our living room.

Then he starts in on me about the Visa bill and what was I buying shoes for “that kid” for anyhow when he was so dumb he couldn’t
even walk yet so he must take after me? I’m looking at Kyle bouncing that basketball while I’m standing there crying, and
Jarrad’s crying too because I’m crying. I’m thinking, How dumb was I marrying this man when I was just sixteen when Mawmaw
begged me to at least finish high school? How dumb was I not knowing maybe he was a freshman in college and a big basketball
player, but he was still, excuse me, a total asshole?

So I’m standing in the living room, holding Jarrad. Kyle’s yelling about the Visa bill, and my whole body fills up with the
idea that year after year after year for the rest of our lives Kyle’ll do the same kind of meanness to me and he’ll do it
to Jarrad too if I don’t make him respect me starting now. And that’s the first time I think about Tanner’s gun since I took
it. So I walk down the hall to our bedroom and I put Jarrad in his
crib. Now he’s crying at the top of his lungs, and I can hear Kyle yelling from the living room, “Shut him the fuck up!” I
go get the pistol out of the bottom drawer of my bureau where I hid it and I walk back in the living room and I stick it in
Kyle’s face and I say, “
You
shut the fuck up.”

He’s surprised and his mouth falls open. But he’s not scared. And then he laughs. “Hey, where’d you get that thing?” he says,
pointing at the gun. “You planning to shoot somebody?” I don’t say a word, I just keep looking at him. He says, “Well, No-Brain,
if you’re planning to shoot a pistol you got to take the safety off.” He laughs some more and then he snatches the gun right
out of my hand. He waves it in my face and says, sarcastic, “Here you go.” He snaps this little lever on the side of the handle.
“That’s the safety.” Then he hands the pistol back to me. “Knock yourself out.”

Off in our room, Jarrad’s bottle falls out of his crib and he cries harder.

All of a sudden Kyle starts throwing the basketball against the wall close to me. He breaks a lamp. Down the hall Jarrad screams
like the world’s gone crazy and Kyle turns purple. “I told you, shut that stupid kid up!”

I say, “You’re scaring him.”

Kyle screams, “I’ll scare him okay!” And then he throws the basketball hard right at me and hits me in the head with it. Then
he grabs the ball back and spins around to run down the hall. And that’s when I pull the trigger. The pistol goes off. The
noise was so loud it hurt. Most of the back of Kyle’s head flies away. But he spins around and it goes off again and then
it flings out of my hand. His knees bend, and it’s weird, it’s just like he’s at the free-throw line and is going for a basket.
But then he drops the ball, which is all crumpled because I shot it,
and his knees give way like the floor fell out from under him. He jerks over sideways and lands hard. The whole room shakes.
Down the hall Jarrad keeps screaming. All I can think about is, at least Jarrad didn’t see it but the noise must have scared
him. I run and go pick up my baby and I hide his eyes against me so he can’t see Kyle lying there and we run out of the house.
I drive Jarrad to Mawmaw’s and tell her I can’t go to church. I say I had a fight with Kyle and I can’t talk about it now.
Then I go back home and Kyle’s still lying there with blood oozed out all around his head and his stomach. I have to run to
the bathroom ’cause I’m sick to my stomach. I don’t know what to do. I just keep wishing I could make it go away. After a
while I get an old blanket and wrap him in it. He’s cold but I try not to touch him. I think I fainted. I don’t remember the
rest but I must of drug him out to the backyard and poured the kerosene on him and lit it.

That’s the truth. If I could take the stand and tell Dr. Nina Rothmann the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, that’s
what I’d tell her.

But Mr. Goodenough made out how I’d plotted and planned to kill Kyle for his insurance policy and how I sneaked up on him
and shot him in the back of the head from behind. Like I would
plan
for Jarrad to hear that gun go off so loud! The D.A. claimed how I tore up my own house to make it look like burglars so
people would think I wasn’t anywhere around and it was the burglars that set fire to my husband. But how I was so dumb I used
my own brother’s gun and left my fingerprints on it and on the kerosene can too and left them both right at the scene. The
D.A. said I never meant to really commit suicide in the Marriott. It was a “ploy.”

Mr. Goodenough spent a lot of time telling the jury,
“Imagine the horror and anguish” of Mr. and Mrs. Markell when they saw their only son smoldering on a brush pile. Then he’d
hold up the crime scene photos (that my lawyer tried to get excluded but he lost) and wave them right at the jury and shout,
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, just imagine!”

Both the Markells testified against me. They were the State’s last witnesses. Mr. Markell slumped and looked beaten down.
Mrs. Markell could scarcely sit still on the stand she hated me so much. Course that was true even before all this. I didn’t
like her either. She had spoiled Kyle so bad he told me himself how when he was little he would kick and slap her and she
wouldn’t do a thing about it if they were in public except give him what he wanted. On the stand Mrs. Markell said it didn’t
surprise her at all that I’d killed her son and she wouldn’t rest easy till I had paid the price. They had to haul her off
the chair she was shouting at me so loud even after she was excused. Her face looked just like Kyle’s when he was yelling.

I’ll tell you how I could rest easy even strapped down in the death chamber. That’s if I knew Priscilla Markell had lost her
case trying to get my baby Jarrad away from Mawmaw. I can’t stand the thought of her screaming at Jarrad until he turns into
a screamer too. And Tilden Snow has promised me he won’t let that happen even if I do get the maximum. Which he’s worried
I’m going to get if all he’s got on the defense side is character witnesses and the emergency doctor saying I really did try
to kill myself judging from my stomach.

But some things you can’t do. And letting Mr. Goodenough ask me sarcastic personal questions and twist my answers around into
lies and make fun of me and say I don’t deserve to be Jarrad’s mama is one of them.

So that’s all the far we’d got to in my trial by this morning.
And that’s when all of a sudden Dr. Rothmann calls over the bailiff and hands him a note and then the judge studies it for
a minute at the bench and then the judge says we’re taking a recess and he calls Counselor Goodenough and Counselor Snow to
“come in my chambers,” and they all leave us sitting here, waiting and waiting.

About an hour later, Tilden Snow comes back looking surprised but sort of smug. He motions for Mawmaw to lean forward and
he whispers to us all this stuff about how Mr. Goodenough was backing down and dropping Murder One because otherwise he’s
going to get a hung jury and how if they could work it out would I agree to say I’d shot Kyle but I didn’t plan to. Would
I say I did it without premeditating and when I’d gone to pieces for a minute. I look at Mawmaw and she pats my hand. I tell
him yes I will say that because it’s the truth. Tilden Snow says I ought to thank my stars he got Dr. Rothmann put on my jury!
I swear I think he even believed it was his plan all along, after he’d told me I was wrong for trusting her. He runs back
off to the judge’s chambers, all puffed up like a little rooster in a tan suit.

So we wait some more. After a while Mawmaw leans over again from the row behind me and every now and then I can feel her hand
patting me on the back. Right through my blouse I can feel the stiffness of her fingers and the calluses and rough spots on
her hand like each one had a memory in it like a electric spark. I can see her mopping the kitchen floor of this house, and
me helping her make the beds in that house, and us walking in the rain to the bus stop from this other house, dropping off
the trash bags on the way. I can see her fingers working to tie the bow on my dress the day she took me to Tilden Snow’s grandma’s
big house that they called Heaven’s Hill.
That was the day the little boy ran out the front door and hollered, “That’s my swing. Get off of it.” It was only after his
grandmama came out with Mawmaw and told him to be nice to me because I belonged to the cleaning lady that he said, “I’m Tilden
Snow. You want to marry me?”

I said to him, “No, I don’t.” And I looked over at Mawmaw ’cause I was worried she’d be mad but she was smiling like I had
said the right thing.

So I’m feeling all these memories in Mawmaw’s hand while she rubs my back. Then the jury comes back with the judge and all,
and Dr. Rothmann stops in front of me for a second and looks right in my eyes. And I nod at her and behind me Mawmaw stands
up and gives her a little bow.

After a lot of talking, the judge tells me to stand up and I do and say I’m guilty and I get fifteen years. The first thing
I think is, I’ll get out in time for Jarrad’s high school graduation. Then they come over to take me out. I turn around and
I grab both of Mawmaw’s hands and I kiss them. I say, “I’m sorry, Mawmaw, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

She says, “You hang on, baby.”

So I do.

Joan H. Parker
and
Robert B. Parker

T
he lettering on the door said GALAHAD, INC. When Jamal Jones opened the door and went in, there were two white people. The
woman was blond with big blue eyes and a wide mouth. Jamal stared at her for a moment. Bitchin’ body. The man was tall and
had a mustache. They both smiled at him. Having entered, Jamal didn’t know what to do next.

“I’m Nick West,” the man said. “This is my wife, Holly.”

“Jamal Jones.”

“Come in,” Holly said. “Have a seat.”

Jamal sat. They looked like money to him. White money. Good clothes. Nice perfume. View of the harbor. He felt uneasy. It
made him aggressive.

“You ever hear of me?” he said. “I play basketball at Taft.”

“You been suspended,” Nick said.

Jamal had cornrows and baggy clothes and tattoos on his neck.

“Tha’s a bad rap, man,” Jamal said.

“Which is why you’re here,” Holly said.

“I read that article about you in the paper,” Jamal said.

Nick grinned at him.

“The Couple of Last Resort,” Nick said.

“Huh?”

“That was what the paper called us,” Holly said.

“Yeah,” he said, “well, I got suspended for groping some broad at a party and I don’t even know the bitch… excuse me, ma’am.”

Holly smiled. “What’s the bitch’s name?” she said.

“Tricia Clark,” Nick said.

They both looked at him.

“She says at a party you came up behind her and put your hand down the front of her jeans.”

“I never even seen her,” Jamal said.

“How do you know all this?” Holly said to Nick.

“I read the sports pages,” he said.

“Sports pages are boring,” Holly said.

“Only to the unenlightened,” Nick said. “Anybody believe your story?”

Jamal shook his head.

“White girl,” he said.

Nick nodded.

“And a black boy with cornrows and tattoos,” Nick said.

“It’s my look, man. It’s Jamal Jones, and I gonna be Jamal Jones and fuck anybody don’t like it.”

“Temperate and well spoken as well,” Nick said.

“You raggin’ me, man?” Jamal said.

Nick nodded. “A little,” he said.

“Nick rags everyone a little,” Holly said. “But there’s a point there.”

“I didn’t come here to take no shit,” Jamal said.

Lotta times you could give a white guy the angry-brother look and he get scared. Nick didn’t seem to.

“Thing is you look like Whitey Suburban’s worst nightmare,” Nick said. “You’re black. You look black. You sound black. Of
course you’d feel up a white coed at a party.”

“Fuck you, man,” Jamal said.

“So what’s your side of it?” Nick said.

“Huh?”

“What’s your side of the story?” Holly said.

“I got no side, except I didn’t do it. Nobody believes it. Soon as the A.D. heard the story he had Coach suspend me. They
takin’ ’way my scholarship. I don’t get money I can’t go to school. I don’t go to school I got no shot in the pros.”

“Kids your age are playing in the pros,” Nick said.

“Sure, like LeBron. Well, I ain’t no LeBron. I’m pretty good, but I’m not ready yet and I know it. Couple years, Division
I, make a name for myself, I be ready.”

Everyone was quiet. Nick and Holly looked at each other.

“Okay,” Nick said. “You didn’t do it, we’ll prove it.”

“You gonna represent me?”

“Yep.”

“I ain’t got no money.”

“Pay us when you make the pros,” Nick said. “Besides, Holly’s rich.”

“We have money,” Holly said. “We do this because we like to.”

“You know what you doing?” Jamal said.

“Nick was a police detective for twenty years,” Holly said. “I was a prosecutor.”