Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (28 page)

“It’s been hard for me.

I’ve loved you, and I know my involvement with Christian Life has hurt our relationship. I know what things cost. There have been times when I wish I could just back things up to a certain point and start over again.

But finding that tumor in my breast changed my life.

Either the world is a random series of events held together and perpetuated by blind instinct, or it is a meaningful place created by a loving God who cares in finitely for us and who commands us to love each other.

My response is the latter, and because it is, I can’t pre tend I’m not affected by your decisions about people important to me, no matter how you choose to justify them.”

Rainey is a bit breathless by the time she has finished She isn’t much for speeches. I am moved by what I have heard. I’ve simplified her just as I have simplified Sarah. But my choices aren’t so easy.

“What if Leigh is innocent and she goes to prison the rest of her life, and I could have done something to prevent it?

How do I live with that?”

“How do you know she is innocent?” Rainey asks, her voice betraying her frustration for the first time.

“How do you know there is a loving God?” I shout into the phone, and hang up, angry and frustrated. Lawyers and preachers aren’t that much different. We are both advocates for our clients. We marshal all the evidence, facts, theories, and arguments, and do our best to convince juries and congregations. After we sit down, you either believe or you don’t. But if I had told Rainey that, she would have said it was blasphemy.

As I pull into Chet’s yard, Wynona and Trey are coming out the door.

“How are you, Mr. Page?” Trey calls from the porch. It is easy to forget this individual’s favorite snack is probably Animal Crackers. Dressed in jeans, a lightweight nylon jacket, and high-top tennis shoes, he looks like an advertisement for the AllAmerican kid. Not for the first time I wonder what it would have been like to have had a son. Now that I’m making a botch of Sarah, I doubt it would have been any different.

“Fine,” I tell him, inspecting his mother, who smiles cheerfully in the chilly spring air. It must be at least ten degrees cooler once you get away from concrete and office buildings. I want to tell him that I haven’t been saved yet, surprising myself by the amount of irritation I am feeling. It might be lack of sleep, but it could be a lot of things this morning.

Wynona, in the bib overalls that must be her uniform, tells me, “I’ll be back to cook up some breakfast for you and Chet after I take him to the bus stop. He got up too late to walk.”

Trey grins, pleased at his mischief. It’s not much, but it’s probably all he can get away with, having Wynona as his mother.

“You don’t have to go to any trouble,” I say politely, but the truth is that I am starving. I’ve burned up some calories worrying, not a diet I’d recommend.

Trey marches up to me and sticks out his hand. This kid, I decide, through no fault of his own, could get on my nerves. Like the first time I was out here, his grip is firm, and he looks me in the eyes as if he is deciding whether to offer me a partnership in his law firm. When I was his age I was so shy I wouldn’t answer to my own name.

“Hold your head up, son,” my father used to command me, but with little success. Even when I was little I must have sensed he wasn’t quite right in the head, although he was still making a go of his drug store.

“Dad’s out on the back porch. He likes being out side in the morning.”

It is so peaceful, I wonder if Chet will be buried on his property. Is that against the law? Surely not. We are in the country, but modern life has so many laws and regulations I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a statute on this, too.

“I can see why,” I say, more to Wynona than Trey.

“It’s just great out here.”

“Just go on through the house,” Wynona says as she opens the door to the Mercedes.

“Thanks.” I smile, feeling like the amiable flunky. I am trusted with the silver, but I am increasingly weary of my second-banana status. I know more than Chet does about this case. Who am I kidding? I probably know exactly what he wants me to know, no more, no less. In the kitchen Trey’s cereal bowl has already been rinsed. Wynona probably made him do it himself. I wonder if she and Chet still make love. If he’s in pain, he may not even think about it. Rosa and I stopped making love a month before she died.

I pass through the kitchen door and find Chet sitting on the steps that lead off the deck. With his back to me, he looks like a teenager, but as he turns around, he seemed to have aged since I saw him yesterday. The energy to stay alive seems to be cutting new ruts in his face on a weekly basis. His eyes have the dim look of someone who has insisted on living over a century. He is wearing one of those sleeveless jackets over a blue flannel shirt, jeans, and brown work boots, so I assume he won’t be going into the office today.

“Wynona told me to come on through,” I say, feeling a need to explain my presence in his house. I am less comfortable with this man each time I see him.

He pats a place on the wooden floor by him as if he doesn’t trust his voice to carry.

“Have a seat.”

Though the chairs we sat in last time are in easy reach, I sit down on the step by him and see that he is carving the figure of a woman who bears a remarkable resemblance to Leigh. He holds it up to me, asking nonchalantly “You know who this is?”

“Our client,” I say.

“I wish she were this malleable all the time. That’s an incredible likeness.” The figure reminds me of a stylized totem, yet somehow Chet has captured Leigh the day he first introduced me to her.

All made up, with her hair piled high on her head and jewelry flashing, she looked like a member of the Spanish aristocracy. A far cry from what she was wearing this morning.

Chet grunts and puts the four-inch figure aside. Solemnly he says, “I got Daffy to double-check Shane’s alibi between eleven and eleven-thirty. According to a former secretary who worked in the church office, Shane said he had something to do over at his house and left about quarter to eleven and came back in just before Leigh called, which was about an hour later.

Pearl was off in Benton that day visiting her sister, so unless he has someone else to vouch for him he has some explaining to do.”

I knew it. It is all I can do to keep from thrusting my fist in the air like some demented jock on TV after a touchdown. To hide my feelings, I look toward the woods, hoping, I suppose, to see the rabbit that visited chet’s garden the evening I was here. With spring bursting forth in every direction, the woods seem alive but offer no visible sign of warm-blooded life. It is remarkable to me that Chet, who has no fear of man or beast, is so reluctant to confront the man who has become, in my eyes at least, the primary suspect. Everybody is afraid of somebody. Maybe, it occurs to me, Shane has a lot more on Chet than the other way around. No telling what Chet has confessed to him.

There are a lot of stories about Chet that I’ve pushed aside since I’ve taken this case. A minister is supposed to keep the confidences of his flock, but Chet may be thinking that Shane might not be quite so circumspect if he were doing a stretch in the Arkansas state penitentiary in Cummins. Ministers worth their salt know enough dirt to break up half the marriages in their congregation and send the other half to jail. Chet may not give a rat’s ass what the legal community says about him after his death, but Trey and Wynona are in a different category. Their good opinion is important to him.

“This isn’t much to go on,” I say, squinting in the morning brightness.

“What about his car?”

Chet folds up his knife, which looks surprisingly ordinary to have done so much intricate work.

“Nobody remembers,” he admits.

“It’s been too long.”

My stomach rumbles loudly, either in hunger or in protest against last night’s dinner of alcohol and cheese dip. It needs something hard, as my sister Marty, obese since adolescence, used to say. I hope Wynona cooks some meat.

“Shane could have been working at home in his own house the entire time,” I conclude, wondering if Chet is trying to humor me, since I have been so vehement that Shane is a suspect.

It seems as if we have reversed roles. Why, after all this time, has he finally pinned Norman down? Obviously because of me. But now that I have what I want, I’m not sure I trust it.

Chet pushes himself up from the steps.

“You want some coffee?”

I spring to my feet. He’s the one with cancer.

“I’ll get some for both of us.” Coming through the kitchen earlier, I noticed half a pot. After this morning’s earlier fiasco, I’m glad I don’t have to make it. I thought I had discovered a new energy source. He nods, and I retrace my steps and run into Wynona as I go through the door.

She smiles, her pleasant face growing on me. “Trey tried to get me to let him stay home and listen. He wants to be a lawyer, of course.”

Anticipating my mission, she hands me two coffee cups while I think about her son. More lawyers this country doesn’t need, yet the schools keep flooding the market. Half of us in Blackwell County can probably qualify for food stamps.

“How’s Chet?” I whisper conspiratorially.

“Not so good,” she says, her voice dropping to match my own. Standing next to her, I can detect her scent.

She smells like Palmolive soap.

“He’s living to get through the trial.”

Now is my chance to ask what kind of cancer he has, but before I can, Chet comes through the door.

“Planning my funeral?” he asks, but his voice is gentle, and the way he looks at his wife I can tell there is no malice behind his words.

She bumps up against him, letting him feel her warmth.

“Gideon was saying” she winks at me “that he would like to sing.”

Embarrassed, I try to keep from smiling at the thought, but since they both chuckle, I grin, too. This black humor is contrary to my image of them, but I realize I don’t really know them. When our mother was dying with cancer of the pancreas, my sister and I acted as though she had a stomachache. The doctor surely told her the truth, but, as if it were a shameful odor, we never acknowledged it in her presence. The last time she went into the Baptist Hospital in Memphis (and never came out), we all pretended she was going in for more tests. I let Wynona fill up our cups and begin cooking while I sit down across from Chet at the kitchen table.

Chet reaches out and touches his wife, who responds by bending over and hugging him gently as if he were made of glass. There is a calm sweetness between the two of them that is as real as the smell of frying pork. They have something I don’t have and can’t even imagine. All the scientific evidence in the world can’t destroy the bond between them. Clearly connected to their faith through Christian Life, their love for each other, for this moment at least, transcends pain and memory. The cost seems high to me, but watching Chet’s face as his wife nuzzles him, I can’t say it isn’t worth it.

Our breakfast is conventionally good, and there is plenty of it, though I am really the only one who eats.

Serving us first, Wynona picks at a plate from the stove, while Chet manages only a couple of bites of his eggs and a half a piece of toast. Now is the time to ask him about his cancer, but I lose my nerve. Though he is permitting me to see probably more than anyone ever has, he is essentially a private man, and I am loath to risk upsetting him, now that this case seems to be going somewhere.

We move into the main room of the cabin where we discussed the case for the first time. On the table is a mound of documents, and I am cheered by the impression that he seems to have been working on the case.

Now that Wynona is out of earshot (Chet, I notice, is much more circumspect about talking about the sub stance of the case than I am), it is time to get back to the main issue. I ask bluntly, “Are you willing now to go after Shane?”

Chet pulls a toothpick from his shirt pocket and begins to work at a molar as if I weren’t in the room. If he refuses now, after what he has learned, I have decided I will quit the case. If it leaves him high and dry, that’s too bad. We can’t give Leigh a thorough and ad equate defense without accusing her father. He stares into the fire for what seems an eternity. His voice gloomy, he says, “I want us to confront him first.”

Abruptly, he looks up at me to see if I am gloating.

I pretend to have no reaction, though inside I am about to explode with anticipation. For the first time I feel as if we have areal defense. Before I can respond, I hear the telephone ringing in the kitchen, and Wynona brings Chet a red cordless telephone, saying, “It’s Shane. He says Leigh must have left the house early this morning and hasn’t come back.”

Chet looks as if he has seen a ghost. It is as if Shane had had the place bugged. Chet places his hand over the receiver and waits until Wynona has left the room.

“I’m going to let you talk to him,” he whispers. “Tell him we’re coming to talk to him this afternoon.” I nod, and he says into the receiver, “Good morning. Gideon is here and can answer some of your questions about your daughter.”

I take the phone and awkwardly explain to Shane, omitting the reasons, that his daughter was my house guest for a couple of hours early this morning.

“She wanted to talk about her case, but as you know I can’t discuss that with you,” I say, watching Chet’s face for his reaction.

He nods, but Shane is furious that I didn’t call him immediately to tell him she was all right.

“Her mother and I have been worried sick since seven when we discovered she was gone.”

I know the feeling. I don’t mention my own daughter’s absence for fear of what they will think.

“I assumed she was going home after she left my house,” I explain, not quite truthfully, and do not add that she has become convinced she has been living with the murderer of her husband. I know that Shane is actually angry because I won’t divulge the contents of my conversation with his daughter. I would be, too. I tell him we will be out at four this afternoon to talk about the case with him.