A Covenant with Death (6 page)

“That's right,” they said, recalling. “But just suppose he
did
do it: why would he do a thing like that?”

I gave up. The world was too much with me, from Hochstadter on down, and I was not a peripatetic sophist approachable in the public streets and available for hourly preachments. My telephone rang every few minutes. John told people I was studying documents, which I was not—what documents? The bail bond? I knew little more than any courthouse loiterer: a handful of citizens had spoken under oath to a properly constituted body of solemn soothsayers, who had offered a hypothesis “in which, after the fashion of prophecy, the past is clear and historical, the future is dark, enigmatical, and erroneous.” Politely, bland and impassive, John said, “That was Colonel Oates. He said he'd heard something absolutely amazing about Louise Talbot.”

“I'll bet he did. I agree with you today, John. That man is an old biddy.”

“I have nothing against him,” John said. “He is a perfect example of the superior paleface but he keeps it to himself. He does not accuse me openly of eating dogs, cats and human flesh; but I can't help what my instinct says about him. Anyway, he'll see you tonight.”

“Oh, fine,” I said. “Rosemary's coming down. All we need is an evening with the old folks.”

“Singing some of the great old songs. Judge—”

“What is it, John?”

“What do you think about Bryan Talbot?”

I remember closing a book, Fitzgerald or Sinclair Lewis, and standing up. “I don't want to think about Bryan Talbot,” I said. “I don't think he did it because I never think anybody did it and I shouldn't be a judge, I should be a game warden.”

The noble aborigine picked his nose awhile and then spoke. “The savages of the north, less civilized than my own people, tortured those who broke the law. If the victim died without whimpering, he was innocent. If he confessed, he was executed. Is that what you want?”

“We did that everywhere,” I said gloomily. “No. It isn't what I want. I'm going out now. Close up when you want to and I'll see you Monday.”

“Yessir,” he said, and I took my Stetson and left him. Downstairs Geronimo poured me an ounce of bourbon from a Style-Nouveau reagent bottle and informed me that the sister of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had been released unraped by bandits in Shantung, though her ten companions remained in durance. “Only the men have been molested,” he said gravely, and we drank to Oriental delicacy.

After dinner I treated myself to a boisterous Mexican brandy. La Belle Eulalia had charred a steak beyond recognition, in the Spanish manner, and had then performed her customary magic: the meat tasted of juices, of garlic, of forest and field and bubbling spring. I whined in beggar's Spanish that we were always eating beef and why did we never have beans, and so forth, and the ladies were polite enough to laugh, sipping red wine and gazing fondly at their idiot companion. (My mother was proud of her ancient wisdom and high critical sense, but when I lapsed into Spanish, my mother tongue in the deepest sense, learned at the dug, she yielded to the most naïve maternal affection.) Rosemary was tall, blonde, with a hint of future plumpness, rich and quiet, luxe, calme, et volupté. She transported me (among other transports) to the eighteenth century, and to rural England. She was the squire's daughter, elegant, accomplished in French, spinet, needlepoint, and minuet, but not yet so far from the barnyard that she was above a rousing gavotte or a surreptitious tousling. Except that she was a good Lutheran, and sometimes bleak. Sometimes glum. (I, of course, was the wild, ruddy, black-haired horseman, flaying hounds, dropping grouse, downing claret and siring healthy bastards all over the manor.) But oh that voice! How could she teach, with that voice? I lisped in numbers, and the numbers came; I squeaked arithmetic. She taught third grade, and I suppose they were all tiny sopranos, so no one noticed.

That night I tried to focus on marrying Rosemary. (I assumed that she would have me.) I came to no conclusion because my mind wandered. It wandered to France and to Mexico. To a girl from Rambucourt who looked something like Rosemary and whose endorsement had won me the respect, cheap and stupid, of my fellow officers and gentlemen; and to Rafaela with whom I had milked goats on a hot day, wondering why the somber glance of a skinny fourteen-year-old could make me feel gangling and uncouth. I glanced at Rosemary's divine amplitude for reassurance and inspiration. She was pink and tan and sleepy, and her long hair was braided in a golden coronet.

The brandy was almost gone, and I was beginning to think of bed—so was Rosemary, I hoped—when the doorbell bonged. (It was a real bell, relic of a mission in Mexico razed by frenzied farmers half a century earlier.) I admitted Colonel Sebastian Oates, who went immediately to kiss my mother's hand and to present her with a bunch of rosebuds. “Sebastian,” she said, “you are a gentleman. My son's idea of gallantry is tickling a housemaid. This home is the richer for your presence.”

Colonel Oates beamed goatishly, cast a glance of ferocious superiority in my direction, and proceeded to his next goddess. “Miss Bergquist,” he said. “Sweet Rosemary,” and kissed her hand.

“That's for remembrance,” I said, bored.

The Colonel vented a series of sniggering noises, intended, I supposed, to be devilish. “You're a bookish lout,” he sneered, and let go of my girl to march to a wicker chair beside my mother's. He sat down in one swift geometric motion, like a carpenter's folding rule; he was still at attention. The room was not constructed, or decorated, for such rigidity: it was dim, with tan walls and dark brown beams, and its furnishings—couches, chairs, tables, lamps, books—were well used, comfortably aged. Even the reds and yellows in the Indian carpets had faded gracefully. “A cigar,” he offered. I declined. He did not offer one to my mother. He did not know she smoked (any more than she knew—I hoped not—of the nocturnal migrations in her own home) and would not have believed it if he had seen it. “Well!” he said. “Anything new?”

“Not since this morning,” I said.

“Rosemary.” He barked the name. “Has your beau told you all about it?”

“Why, Colonel,” Rosemary fluted primly. “You mustn't compromise me. If you mean Ben, he told me that Bryan Talbot was charged with murder.”

“He was indeed.” The Colonel beamed. “A horrible business. Horrible. And the story behind it, the facts, the facts—even worse. Depravity. Sordid, sordid.”

I sighed aloud, and poured him a brandy in silence. Handing it to him I tried to seem concerned and just: “Colonel, you could only have heard what you are about to inflict on us from a member of the grand jury. They are supposedly bound to silence. If you listened, you helped a man break his oath. If you repeat what you heard, you are betraying the spirit if not the letter of the law.”

“That's right,” he said. “Well spoken, lad. You've done your duty. I shall say no more.”

“Good.”

“I hear President Harding is going to Alaska,” my mother offered, “and will return by way of the Panama Canal.”

“Joseph Conrad is in New York,” Rosemary chirped, “on his first visit to the United States.”

“A dangerous man,” the Colonel said grimly. “There is venery in his books. I read one called Lord Jim, and a story about a man with a boat. Mr. Conrad has little respect for law and order. And one thing leads to another, you know. Give me Owen Wister any time.”

To my mother I said, “Your friend,” in obvious disgust.

“You are young,” the Colonel snapped. “You underestimate the baseness of man. Bryan Talbot, for instance. I'd like to know exactly what he was in the habit of reading. Any man who could do what he did—”

“Are you trying to say that Joseph Conrad is an incitement to murder? For God's sake. And Talbot's only indicted, not convicted.”

Rosemary glanced from me to him and back, dreading brouhaha; but the old gentleman, in his white linen, with his bloody military mustache and his ramrod back and his piercing blue eyes and his god damned old woman's mind and old woman's tongue, his glossy tan, the deep wrinkles bracketing his nose, the sleek fine white hair carefully parted and the imitation regimental tie, sat there nodding his iron head. I did not like him.

“Not to murder,” he said loftily. “But to contempt for the decencies, which may lead anywhere.”

Oh, Jesus. The decencies. He was off now and not to be stopped.

“I regret having to mention this before ladies,” he began, and he regretted it as an undertaker regrets, “but Bryan Talbot, four years ago, brought an unmentionable disease into his home.”

After a moment I said what was always said, “It's no worse than a bad cold.”

“It was much worse,” he said quietly. “He communicated it to his wife, who had no choice but to undergo an operation that deprived her forever of the opportunity to bear children.”

After another moment I said, “I'm sorry,” trying to keep surly resentment from my voice.

“It was after that that she became promiscuous,” the Colonel said. “It was after that that she took a lover, with whom she transgressed on her periodic visits to Dallas, ostensibly to see her parents.”

Rosemary avoided his eye, and mine; she was pale. My mother sat frowning.

“And it was as a result of
that
,” the Colonel finished, only the slightest of flourishes in his voice, “that Bryan Talbot strangled her.”

Which killed the weekend. When the train chuffed away Sunday night I realized with relief, with shame, that marriage had not been mentioned. And walking home sadly, past Bosko Boskovitch's grocery, dark this Sunday night, past Magratan's hardware and Wapelo's stationery store and Lew's Hand Laundry, crossing Houston Road and striking for the bridge, I saw him. Peter Justin's Billiard Parlor was open but no one was playing billiards. The huge overhead lamps with shades like coolie hats showered yellow light on half a dozen men in the midst of whom Bryan Talbot stood gesticulating as he spoke. All I could see was a white shirt and a broad red necktie, red galluses, and the florid, intense face with brilliant flame-blue eyes. Peter Justin stood nodding, a beefy man, size nineteen neck they said, needing a shave, hair thin and plastered flat. I heard the rapid, businesslike voice but could distinguish no words, and I passed along quickly like a hitchhiker putting behind him the gate to an insane asylum. Thank God! I thought. Thank God this is none of my worry!

And so I reached home, lusts appeased and love not yet reduced to memory and longing, and slept the sleep of the just.

4

Judge Alvin Hochstadter always made solemn efforts to radiate distinction, and always failed. Silvering hair on a massive head, set off by his invariable black string tie, afforded him an initial advantage on which, sadly, he was unable to improve. His voice was soft, his body flabby, his roguishness infrequent and elephantine: the total effect was one of amiable and weak dignity.

George Costa, bailiff-sergeant-at-arms-tipstaff, closed the doors at the rear of the full courtroom. Harvey Bump, court clerk and recorder, oyezoyezed nasally, and Hochstadter emerged from the wings. We rose; he sat; we sat; and on a dusty yellow morning, with bands of sunlight streaking through the rippled panes and stippling the motley audience, Judge Hochstadter faced the state, the defense, and his public.

It was Tuesday, the twenty-second of May, at ten in the morning, and Louise Talbot had been dead for almost three weeks. No delays had been moved; Dietrich's case was, he said, as tight as it would ever be, and Parmelee was sure of an acquittal. Hochstadter had misjudged him altogether, telling me a week earlier, “Parmelee'll move for a change of venue. Then he'll fight the jury. He'll bring out that they've heard the rumors and he'll move for a change of venue again. He'll object and object to make a record. Oh, he'll be trouble, all right.”

But Parmelee was no trouble at all. He was almost silent at the arraignment, and when the trial opened he sat composed, still pale and presumably liverish but quite calm. Talbot was sullen but not withdrawn, and looked about him often. He met my eyes now and then, and I nodded, and he nodded back. (I was in the first row of spectators, a corner seat.) My fellow onlookers craned and whispered and shuffled their feet and flapped at the heat with straw fans and newspapers. My own fan, a handsome and sturdily hemmed concoction like a straw ping-pong paddle, bore the name of the funeral parlor from which Louise Talbot had been buried; it had been presented to me, with suitable expressions of sympathy, at my father's funeral. He had been county sheriff for nine years and had died of a heart attack playing poker at Peter Justin's, with good whiskey in his belly and a good cigar in his mouth and five worthless cards in his right hand. He had been a foursquare Welsh Methodist though a heavy drinker and my mother, a bad Catholic, was certainly not the woman to let him backslide posthumously. The Reverend Doctor Wesley Arthur Jones had missed the point of my father's life but had given him a rousing send-off. If my mother's genius hovered about me in the presence of women—natural enough, I insist—my father's ghost murmured when I was in court; he had been one aspect of the law and I was another. I will not bore you with platitudinous episodes from my childhood in which Bulldog—he resembled one, a big one, and ruddy—taught me justice; mostly he taught me not to inflict pain, and very often that was what justice meant. Or Tightness, and if justice was not rightness, how could it be justice? That was why you shot a crippled horse. That was also why you drank during Prohibition. Because sometimes justice and rightness did not seem to be the same. Justice was public and rightness was private and if they were not the same you chose rightness and did not inflict pain. He killed fish quickly though he had been told that they did not feel pain. A gut shot was unjust and he worried over one gut-shot antelope for many years, referring to it when he was depressed or drunk, but did not worry at all and only snorted when I was taken in flagrante with the younger Owens girl, both of us thirteen and in flagrante meaning that her blouse was wide open. Her chest was much like mine.