Paris Trout (21 page)

She squared herself and said, "My husband never
afforded me the polite lying, Mr. Seagraves. He did not strike poses
for me, he is not good at that."

He sipped at the drink. A piece of lemon was floating
among the ice cubes, he hadn't noticed it before. "Little lies,"
he said, "flirtations."

She shook her head. "In the week that followed
the killing of that child," she said, "Mr. Trout assaulted
me three times. He forced me to eat rancid food, he attempted to
drown me in my own bath, he abused me in an unmentionable way with a
bottle .... "

Except for the shaking in his hands, Seagraves did
not move. He stared into her face, trying to imagine it. He cleared
his throat.

Mrs. Trout held his eyes for a moment and then looked
out the window. "I expect Reverend Clay was delayed," she
said. "Did you drive?"

"
No," he said, and his voice seemed to
belong to someone else. "I thought the exercise would . . ."

She wasn't listening. He thought of her receiving the
bottle and wondered what it had been. Coca-Cola? Where had it
happened? In this room? He cleared his throat again, warm-faced with
liquor. "I will not break this confidence," he said.

When she looked at him again, she was smiling. "It
hardly matters, does it?"

"
Yes, to the appearance of things it does. To
yourself and to your husband."

"What sort of appearances do you favor, Mr.
Seagraves?" she said.

He thought she was teasing him now, he thought that
she knew what he was thinking. He put the glass on the floor next to
the chair.

"
The appearance of normalcy," he said.

She laughed out loud and leaned into her own lap. It
crossed his mind that she herself had been drinking before he
arrived.

"
Mr. Seagraves," she said finally,
straightening up, "that appearance is the very thing that
allowed this to happen. My husband is an aberration. It is not normal
to shoot children. Whatever effort is made to lend that appearance,
it does not change the perversion itself but only asks that the
perversion be shared. I will not be party to the shooting of
children."

He said, "What if I proved that your husband was
defending his life by discharging those shots?"

Her expression turned unfriendly. "You can't
prove what didn't happen," she said.

"
It's for a court of law to determine."

She shook her head. "There is no story you can
tell in your court that will change what happened in that house."
She looked around the room. "Or in this one."

"
That is a misperception," he said, "that
an act is, of itself, a crime or a perversion. It becomes such only
after it is judged." He had no idea why he was explaining this
to her.

He saw that she had begun to smile again, as if she
were judging him. "The misperception," she said, "is
that the law, and lawyers, decide what already happened."

Seagraves sat back into the chair. She stood up,
checking the window again, and then crossed the room and took the
glass out of his hand. "Another?"

He held his head, deciding.

"
Mr. Seagraves?"

"One more," he said, and when she went into
the kitchen, he followed her. She held her shoulders in one place as
she walked, setting off all the movements below her belt. He passed
through the room with the daybed and thought of her on the afternoon
she had been cut. She had seemed less substantial then. He remembered
Trout's mischief;  and his thoughts came back to the bottle.

He had never heard any woman outside of a courtroom
acknowledge such an act before, and now Hanna Trout, whose life was
as circumspect as anyone's in Ether County, had said it without so
much as clearing her throat.

He realized he had stopped at the daybed, and she had
stopped in the doorway to the kitchen, waiting for him. "I was
remembering the afternoon you lacerated your foot," he said. She
waited. "The mess on the floor . . . I never saw a worse cut.
It's a miracle they saved all your toes."

It hit him then that he had no idea if they had saved
her toes or not.

"
There's no feeling in the ends," she said.

And that struck him as intimate too. He moved toward
her, and she went the rest of the way into the kitchen. She kept the
jar in plain sight, on the cabinet beneath the glasses. The liquor
inside was caramel-colored, and he saw a peach at the bottom. He
recognized it as coming from Elbert Street's still. Elbert was an
idiot with a gift for aging liquor. Seagraves had been told that he
stored it in kegs. He used charcoal, which purified it and gave it
color. The kegs were buried in a cave somewhere on his property north
of Gray for close to a year, and when it was time, he poured it into
fruit jars, usually over a fresh peach.

Seagraves had measured one of the jars once and found
that the liquor brought Elbert close to fifty dollars a gallon. It
was commonly acknowledged as the best liquor in the state, but to
Seagraves's knowledge it was sold in only one place, the Ether Hotel.
You gave the boy there ten dollars and then reached into the pocket
of an overcoat hung on the rack near the emergency exit and took the
jar. He could not picture Hanna Trout giving the boy ten dollars and
wondered if the liquor was something her husband had left behind when
he moved.

"
The last time I was in this room," he
said, "it looked like somebody'd blew up the icebox."

She unscrewed the lid of the jar, and he sat down at
the cable and stared at her while she fixed his drink. The tablecloth
was plastic and stuck to his hands. She brought the glass to the
table and set it in front of his nose. He was still staring at her,
but she did not seem to notice. He saw her chest was not as heavy as
Lucy's but seemed to be attached to her at a more favorable angle.

She sat down in the chair across the table, and for
just a moment he felt the brush of her leg against his, and then he
was dizzy. He recovered himself and said, "Where was I?"

"
You were reminiscing over the kitchen,"
she said. "It looked like the icebox had blown up."

"Before that."

"
The law. My misperception that a crime can
happen without a lawyer there to verify it . . ."

It reminded him again of what Paris had done with the
bottle.

"
I'll give you the case," he said, and
leaned heavily on the table. He noticed she did not move away, not
even an inch. "What if a woman was to suggest, as you have, that
her husband had in some way abused her with a bottle?"

He saw that she wouldn't stop him. He said, "And
that is a crime in the state of Georgia — "

°°Sodomy," she said, and he felt himself
humming beneath the table. The word sounded different coming from
Hanna Trout in her own kitchen than it did in court. There was a sort
of connection, both of them knowing what it meant.

"
Sodomy," he said. "But what if it
went to a court of law — which it wouldn't, because there were no
witnesses — but what if it did, and all the details were revealed,
where it occurred, what sort of bottle, everything that was said, and
it became evident, in the course of this discovery, that the woman .
. . had agreed to the act?"

She cocked her head, as if she had not understood the
words.

He said, "If the woman had agreed. Or perhaps
she didn't agree, not directly, but she enjoyed it. What does that
say for her complaint? The act still occurred, a crime has been
committed, but now we see it different. It's shaded by the woman's
agreement .... "

He was reckless now, he had taken it too far and
delivered himself into her hands. But part of being reckless was
knowing you were reckless, and he was. He reached across the table
and laid his hand on her arm. She did not seem to notice.

"A conspiracy," she said.

"
It could be," he said. He was suddenly
aware of his breathing, the feel of air over his lips and teeth. "A
thing that could happen spontaneous. Who can say then that what
occurred was even a crime? Law without compassion is not law at all."

She sat still a moment longer and then drew her arm
from underneath his hand. He did not try to hold her. She said, "Do
you believe I asked my husband to abuse me with a bottle, Mr.
Seagraves?"

He did not answer at first. "It was only
intended as a case for argument," he said finally. "I never
meant it in a personal way. It came to mind because you had just
spoken of your problem .... "

He was suddenly panicked.

"Do you believe the child asked to be shot?"
she said. "Or the woman? Do you believe they agreed to it?"

He pulled himself back off the table and reached for
his drink. He lifted it to his mouth and smiled just before it
touched his lip. The smile was wrong in some way he could not
identify or correct.

"
I will tell you this," he said. "There
wasn't anybody in that house completely innocent. Not the way you
think of it. It didn't happen by itself?

It was quiet a moment, and he sipped again at the
drink. He wished she had used less tomato juice.

"
Do you know my husband well, Mr. Seagraves?"
she said.

"As well as I need to," he said. Then: "As
well as I care to."

"
Can you predict what he would do if he walked
in now and found us here talking on him?"

Seagraves pictured Trout coming in.

"I believe he'd bust up the kitchen."

"
Would he speak?"

"
You can't tell with him. He might and he might
not."

"
And when you left, what would he do then?"

Seagraves shook his head. "I never saw that side
of him."

"
You would leave .... "

He did not follow her now. He thought she might be
asking him to stay. He thought she might be offering him something in
return.

"
I couldn't move in to watch him. I got a house
of my own."

"
Then who will watch him?"

"
That's not my end of things .... "

 
Suddenly there were tears in her eyes, and he
moved to touch her arm again. He said, "Perhaps you
misunderstood my meaning, Mrs. Trout .... "

She pulled her arm away, and when she spoke again,
her voice was shaking. "Who will watch him?"

He took another drink, but the tomato juice was at
cross purposes with the liquor now, thick and hard to swallow.

"
It's a simple question," she said. "When
you and the law have decided that the child and the woman conspired
to be shot, or enjoyed it, and have set my husband free, who will
keep him from conspiring with another child to shoot her?"

"
If he goes free, he is free," Seagraves
said.

"And what then?"

He shook his head, wanting to leave now, wanting to
get away from her misunderstandings and her warnings. "It's not
my end," he said again.

She wiped at her eyes with
the sleeve of her blouse. He tried to stand, but he was dizzy and
felt himself begin to pitch onto the floor. She was speaking to him
of the appearance of normalcy, he could not follow the words. She was
warning him. He moved and fell into the sink.

* * *

SEAGRAVES WOKE UP ON the floor. There was a pillow
beneath his head, a light blanket tucked under his chin that covered
him to his knees. He sat up, exactly as sick as he had been in the
morning. His tie had been loosened, and his belt. The room was darker
than it had been, and he had the sudden feeling that people might be
looking for him. He found the edge of the sink with his hand and used
that to pull himself to his feet. He stood still a moment, feeling
the blood wash through his body. His foot was asleep, and there was a
numbness in the left side of his buttocks. He waited, and those
feelings passed.

The house was quiet.

He turned the faucet on and let cold water run over
his face. He saw a box of baking soda on the counter and used that
and his finger to wash his teeth. He combed his hair without a mirror
and then pushed his shirt into his pants all the way around. He
fastened his belt. He walked carefully, not wanting to see Mrs. Trout
again, and headed in the direction of the front door. He thought of
putting off the visit with her husband until the morning, but if he
did that, the expectation of it would be bothering him all night. The
sun had moved to the west side of the house, leaving the side he was
on in a kind of dusk. He did not see her resting on the daybed until
she spoke.

"I hope you're not injured," she said.

It startled him, and in the aftermath he felt his
blood again, returning to places it had left. He nodded, and to calm
himself; he began to speak. "It's the hours I been putting in,"
he said, "they catch up to you.

It happened once before. I'd just got out of the
courthouse, and the next thing I knew I was looking at the squirrels
in the trees."

"
I didn't think you'd want me to call a doctor,"
she said.