A Covenant with Death (10 page)

So she was my south-of-the-border lollipop, and the only woman I ever knew with whom love was friendly.

I reached the courtroom at nine-fifteen. Mr. Gorman had said, “I'm very sorry,” as we left the office. I said I was too busy to indulge “the nice sensibility of honor, which weighs the insult rather than the injury,” and he said “What?” and I patted him on the back, and we found nothing at the Territorial, and Ettore winked at me as we passed through the kitchen, and Mr. Gorman vanished from my life, none too soon. Something on that order befell us every three months or so, and we had been caught more than once but nothing ever came of it, and we found it easier to anticipate such investigations than to quash later actions. We had no objections to the Volstead Act in principle but many in practice. Washington was a long way off and we all felt that we could manage nicely without the Great White Father. Since our full initiation into the Union we had benefitted to the extent of one war and the Eighteenth Amendment. And as far as I could see that was all. My mother thought we should have applied to Mexico or set up an independent state under Pancho Villa.

John slid out of my seat, but I motioned him back and squeezed in beside him. He thanked me with a glance and we turned to the proceedings, which were barely under way. An elderly gentleman was being sworn. “Clement Hoyers,” John whispered. Her father.

Clement Hoyers, duly sworn and identified, proved to be a ticket agent for the railroad. He was gray and apparently dyspeptic, belching frequently but with delicacy. He was also grief-stricken and vengeful. Having established, to no one's satisfaction, Louise's virtue before marriage; having revealed that he had opposed the marriage because Bryan was not steadily employed; having sniffled a bit and pulled himself together, he entered forbidden territory at Dietrich's bidding.

“Please describe the tragic events of nineteen-nineteen,” Dietrich told him. “I know it will not be easy for you. And I want to ask you to repeat only those conversations in which you participated.”

Oliver Parmelee rose slowly. “Your Honor,” he drawled, “I object to this as irrelevant. I realize that counsel wants to establish a background of conflict and unhappiness, but I'd like to point out that half the marriages in this world survive in spite of conflict and unhappiness, and that the District Attorney is asking us to believe that a general condition—like marriage itself—goes to prove motive in this case. I don't ask for an offer of proof because I assume I'm right about what he's after. I say it's immaterial.”

A general condition. Like marriage itself. Sad and discouraging words from a father of four. I resented them on Rosemary's behalf, and glared at the back of his neck. Did he believe it? Did I? I had sensed it, the heap of dust left by friable passion, the murderous daily routine, the cold bed; had sensed it in law students married young and soon sorry, in the fussy and resentful child bride deceived and insulted by hairy reality; or years later in the heavy, sullen husband bringing home his sour stomach, turning with distaste from his expanding wife and her inevitable flowered print, eating his supper and communicating in grunts. Sensed it, but not believed it. Never, for example, with my Rosemary! Behind the drabbest façade, I thought, still stood the fancy house. Or half believed it, realizing after a time that I was lucky because my father pawed my mother cheerfully and often and the sound of hand slapping fanny was in our house a triumphal and celebratory clash of golden cymbals; but also that I lived in a world where that might be rare. I could never be sure whether I had been made privy to a loving way of life or asked to stake my future on an illusion. Parmelee thought it was an illusion, half the time, or so he had just said; and he was objecting to Dietrich's hint, soon to be magnified, that out of so general a disillusionment could come so specific a murder.

Hochstadter denied the objection. Parmelee had expected that, and subsided; he was making a record for his appeal.

“Well, in September of nineteen-nineteen,” Hoyers began, “they'd been married about a year and a half, when Louise came home to Dallas one day. She was kind of moody and sad—”

“Objection,” Parmelee called out.

“Denied,” Hochstadter said. “Go on, Mr. Hoyers.”

“Well, she wasn't happy, I could tell that, and the first night home we heard her crying in bed. I wanted Sarah to go see what was the matter but Sarah said tomorrow, it's just marriage, those things happen. We had our fights too,” he said with visible embarrassment, “so I figured she was right, it was just one of those things. Next morning I went to work, and when I got home that night they was
both
crying. So I said what's the matter, and I went over to Louise and tried to give her a kiss, but she said don't kiss me, and got up and ran up to her room. So I asked Sarah. And after a while Sarah calmed down and said she'd tell me after supper. I said no, now. But Sarah said if I tell you now you won't eat your supper. So I said in that case I won't eat my supper anyway, it's already too late, so you better tell me. I always had a bad stomach. So she did. She said—”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Parmelee was on his feet again. “Witness is about to repeat a conversation that took place between two other people. His wife is on the state's list and can testify herself. I think the District Attorney is working toward a cumulative effect by repetition.”

“He's allowed to do that,” Hochstadter said.

“Yes, but not by hearsay.”

“He can tell us what his wife told him,” Dietrich said.

“Not conversations,” Parmelee said. “Not when the substance is in what his wife said.”

Hoyers belched audibly.

“Just a minute, gentlemen.” Hochstadter thought it over for a few seconds. The audience sat still, alert. “Come up to the bench, will you?”

Parmelee and Dietrich joined him. He told me about it later. “I said to Dietrich, ‘You know, Oliver's half right. There's a point where you're not really asking for testimony so much as prejudicing the jury. If you want to establish facts, I suggest you do it as economically as possible.' Economically. I thought that was a good word for it.” The Judge smiled, pleased as a poet. We were in his chambers that evening, just after adjournment, and he was waving a cigar. “Dietrich thought I was being rough on him, but Parmelee was happy enough. He looked at Dietrich then and said something strange: ‘Emil,' he said, ‘I'm going to tell you something you won't believe: Talbot didn't kill his wife.' Emil said, ‘I know you think that, and I'm glad you do, but you're wrong as hell.' So I said, ‘You can talk about that later. I'm going to sustain this objection.'”

They returned to their tables and Hochstadter announced, “The objection is sustained.”

Dietrich said, “Your Honor, I'd like permission to excuse this witness for a time and call Mrs. Hoyers. After which I'd like to recall this witness.”

“That agreeable, Mr. Parmelee?”

Parmelee hesitated and then nodded. “Yes, Your Honor.”

Hoyers was excused, and his wife was sworn. She was a strapping woman—Louise Talbot's rude proportions were not her father's contribution—with a squarish jaw, small eyes, gray hair, and a little black hat with a black veil dotted by white flowers. Her voice grated, not high and squeaky like Rosemary's but shrill and brassy.

She repeated much of what Hoyers had said. Then Dietrich asked her to tell us in her own words what Louise had told her. She took a deep breath as though she wanted to compress it all into one sentence. “It was late that afternoon. Louise had been moping around all day. Finally she busted out crying again—she was never very, uh, emotional, and I knew something was really wrong.” Parmelee stirred, but gave up and leaned back. “Finally she dried her eyes and told me. She told me that her husband—” Mrs. Hoyers came to a full stop and looked around her. She addressed Dietrich. “I can't say this right out in front of everybody.”

“Yes you can,” he told her. “This is a court of law, Mrs. Hoyers. We're concerned with truth here, and we discuss matters that don't get discussed outside. Just use your own words, and don't worry about technical phrases. You can use your daughter's exact words if you can remember them.”

“All right. I'll try,” she said. “She told me that her husband had been with another woman—”

“Well, now, that's hearsay too,” Parmelee objected. “What Bryan Talbot told his wife is for Bryan to bring out.”

Hochstadter opened his mouth but Bryan spoke. “Oh, let it go,” Talbot said impatiently. “It's true.”

Even Hochstadter was shocked. In the audience eyes widened; I believe they all held their breath. Parmlee sat down and Hochstadter never even ruled. Mrs. Hoyers glared wildly at Talbot.

“Please go on,” Dietrich said gently. Parmalee was staring at his client in some anger.

“She said he'd been with another woman and caught a disease and brought it home and given it to her.” Mrs. Hoyers bowed her head.

“And what was the disease?”

“It has a long name. I forget. Clement called it the clap.” I find it difficult now, several wars and modern novels later, to convey the horrific echoes of that word in the sudden, ugly silence. The word reverberated; swelled; glided and swooped and eddied in the hot, dusty air. Hochstadter adjusted his string tie. The jury stared into the middle distance.

“Gonorrhea,” Dietrich said softly, and a hundred solid citizens experienced immediate relief. Thus, the proprieties; the comforts of a dead language. A rose by any other name often smells sweeter.

“That's right,” she said. “That was it.”

“I see. And what else was said that evening?”

“Well, we didn't say so much after that. It was like we couldn't believe it. I spoke against her husband some.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“She said things like ‘How could he?'”

“And that was all that was discussed that evening?”

“No. Oh, no. Before we went to bed I told her we'd see the doctor the next day, and I gave her a separate tooth glass.”

“Your family doctor?”

“Not exactly. A surgeon. The one who did my appendicitis.'”

“And his name?”

“Selma. Doctor Hanford Selma.”

I remember Parmelee fidgeting through all that, and reading the record I can see why. He knew the story; was willing to stipulate the entire setting and background, once Hochstadter had denied his objection to it; and resented not only Dietrich's tedious melodrama but also his own helplessness, the impossibility of counterattack; none of this was at issue.

Eventually, and with the help of an affidavit submitted to evidence, Dietrich brought before the jury approximately what the Colonel had so avidly learned and industriously reported. My classic little joke is now obsolete; a clap may be cured in two or three days, but a bad cold lingers for a week. In 1919 pharmacology was primitive; as Dr. Selma's affidavit explained, the possibility of extensive infection made imperative major surgery, a hysterectomy, removal of the uterus, in order to avoid serious and possibly fatal complications, one of which was called gonococcic salpingitis. There was no question of Selma's probity or of the need for surgery. Louise Talbot recuperated at her parents' home, and the infection disappeared; within a month her blood was normal, and toward the end of October she left for Soledad City, exercising, as Mrs. Hoyers specified, her father's privileges and paying only half fare.

She returned to Dallas in March for a two-week visit, and notified her parents that she had decided not to ask for a divorce. Talbot had promised to reform; he had been drunk and out of town, and it would never happen again. She did not trust his promise but was, apparently, still bound to him by the residual strength of their early love; and he had also promised that he was “going places” and would “make it all up to her.”

And Dietrich dropped it right there. “Thank you, Mrs. Hoyers,” he said; and to Parmelee, “your witness.”

It was a cute touch. He left Parmelee with almost nothing to question. When Parmelee, doubtless feeling that some show of resistance was necessary, began by asking, “Mrs. Hoyers: was it your impression that there had been serious discussion and a true reconciliation between husband and wife?” Dietrich was on his feet immediately.

“Objection,” he said. “That obviously calls for a conclusion, and witness is hardly qualified to comment on conversations that took place several hundred miles from her.”

Hochstadter sustained him.

Parmelee tried again: “Would you say that by March Louise Talbot had forgiven her husband?”

Dietrich's head snapped up; his hand twitched; but he thought better of it, and waited.

He was wise to wait; Mrs. Hoyers said, “No. He was kind of on probation.” She nodded sternly, pleased with the word. “On probation. She was giving him another chance, but I wouldn't say she'd forgiven him.”

“Did she say she planned to leave him, or had been considering it?”

Mrs. Hoyers hesitated. “Well, no. She never said that. She was mad at him at first and he made her very sad, but she never said she'd leave him. Of course she thought about a divorce right away, at the beginning, and I told her I thought she should get one, even though we've never had any divorce in our family at all, on either side, but I can't say she ever made up her mind to do it.”

“Would you say she still loved him in March?”

Dietrich made the same old objection, and Hochstadter sustained him again.

“I'll ask it another way: did she tell you she still loved him?”

“No. But she said it was hard to leave a man and she had no place to go. I told her she could come home to Dallas.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said, ‘And then what? Go to work and be an old maid? Who'd have me now?'”