Juice (15 page)

“Thank you,” he said. Well, what could he do? Marry her himself? Absolve himself by filling the vacuum of responsibility he had created? She could marry again, he thought. What could he do? He had not wanted the man dead; he would bring him back if he could; and now he was sitting here with a plain and apparently emotionless woman, going through motions, and the wrong motions at that. He felt resentment, and the puzzlement again. Then he remembered the man lying at the curb, the blood running from his head, and he lost his resentment, and saw for an instant that all this had little to do with the woman; all this was between Walter Storch and himself, Joseph Harrison, and the woman was important but still alive, never having lost or taken life, and therefore incidental. His thoughts failed him then, although he felt that he had explained part of the riddle. He sipped his coffee. It was not hot. He wanted to go home.

“The children are funny,” she said. “You know, they seem cruel. They cried, all right, but I had the feeling that it didn't really get to them, you know?”

Joe listened. He was thinking of a cat, a big calico tomcat named Dutch Schultz, who had been killed by a Doberman; and of Sally and Dave, who had mourned bitterly—it was five years ago, wasn't it?—for twenty minutes and who had then repeated the story to their friends, each time with a new plot, new images, a richer vocabulary, until finally it had become a domestic epic. The memory of Dutch Schultz, calico and good companion, had lived in folklore, but not in grief. And there was no real grief in this room. There was outrage, yes, indignation, yes, bitterness, yes, but the absence of grief negated them all. And if there is no grief, then maybe there was no love, Joe thought; but again, what difference? This is not between her and me, but between him and me. I owe her nothing; I owe him much. And what would she think if I said that aloud? And how do I know the forms that grief may take?

“They were from the bowling team, those three men,” she was saying. “Walter liked to bowl. He averaged about a hundred and seventy. Once he bowled two twenty-four. They have a team at the shop, at the factory. Walter has his own ball.
Had
his own ball.”

Joe nodded politely. She would marry again—it was obvious—and probably within a year or two. He was lightened by the thought. He knew suddenly what the odor was; it was the woodsy, bed-sheety, humid smell of a summer cottage, or a cabin on the lake; wet lumber.

“I wired his mother,” Mrs. Storch said. “In Michigan. She's coming out for the funeral.”

He sighed inwardly. This is my cup, he thought. I owe Aesculapius a cock. Children, wife, mother; whom else have I injured? For whom else has Walter Storch suddenly become the flower of the age? No; he rebuked himself. Let them. He's dead now; he bowled three hundred all his life. Let one outwail another at the bier. “I don't think it would be right for me to come to the funeral,” he said, “but I'll be thinking of you.”

“No, I guess it wouldn't,” she said. “We expect about twenty cars, anyway.”

Congratulations, he thought, and was ashamed. “Do you need any money now?” he asked.

“Well, we have a couple of hundred dollars in the bank,” she said. “In a joint account, so I can get it out. The payment on the house is okay for this month. I guess I'll get along.”

“It won't last more than a couple of weeks,” Joe said. “Do you have my name and phone number?” She nodded. “I'll send you some tonight. Then call me when you need anything. Will you?”

She nodded again, and looked away from him, and he thought she was about to cry.

He stood up. “I hate myself,” he said. “I hate myself for a stupid, murdering fool.”

She was silent.

“I'll go now,” he said. “Remember: call if you need me.”

“I don't understand it,” she said. “I thought I'd hate you.”

“It doesn't work that way,” he said. “I wouldn't blame you if you did. But it doesn't do any good, and you're so full of other emotions that you haven't got room for hate.”

“I guess that's it,” she said.

“I'll do all I can to help,” he said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” she said without moving.

Joe Harrison left, passing the man in the doorway, who was no longer smoking. A brother? he wondered. Or a suitor? Or a lover? What a cosmic joke it could be: if she hated her husband; if she had planned to do away with him tonight; if the salad he had never lived to eat was sprinkled with ground glass.

He climbed into the cab, settled back, and lit another small cigar. They completed a U turn on the dark street, and drove back toward the intersection. Joe looked for the spot, and found it. It's not the same today, he thought. Twenty-four hours. And that woman didn't help. Well, each of us mourns in his own way. Maybe she thought it was well bred not to show emotion. Anyway I've been to see her. That's done. Doesn't seem like much; why was I afraid? The worst is yet to come.

God damn that woman, he thought. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, but he decided to blame it on the cigar.

8

At 10:45 the next morning Joe Harrison and John James Davis, in the long black convertible coupé, parked in Frémont Square before the County Courthouse in Los Pinos. Davis removed his hat and tilted his face to the sun. Harrison sat erect, staring off down the road, watching the parallels converge, trying to draw a moral from the convergence. It was nature's day; the air rose in warm waves, and sound seemed to swim toward them: bird calls, a woodpecker (“Like a rattlesnake,” Davis said), the distant yapping of dogs. Trees rustled lazily, green, some blossoming exotically; Joe felt the warmth through the stuff of his suit, and closed his eyes.

“As always,” Davis said, “I'll do the talking.”

Joe did not answer. Joe was not at all sure that talking was called for. He looked more closely at the courthouse. It was a building he had passed many times, plain, of cream-colored concrete, an almost cubical structure. It might have been a small high school; it was without character, and courthouse kibitzers, lounging on the steps and spitting tobacco, were unimaginable. Along the portico was the inevitable Latin:
FIAT JVSTITIA, RVAT CAELVM.
The sun glistened on broad windows; the heavens would not fall today. A red bird flashed across the street; Joe envied. He was in
terra incognita
now, in a murky region where abstractions—life, love, death—were translated into irrelevant realities: jail, fines, disgrace. The law had been to Joe, as to most of us, a governor of transactions, a regulator of contracts, and Joe knew uneasily that those were its proper concerns. Where man had betrayed himself, or another man, law was inadequate. Now words would be spoken, sections quoted, judgments passed, punishments decreed, all of which was man's reduction of man's own evil—murder, rape—to manageable proportions. More: it had first to be reduced to manageable terms. Murder was not simple, and no fiat—
Thou shall not kill
—could make it simple; the fiat was, after all, suspended regularly by the agencies of law itself. Rape was not simple either—no woman, no bill-board commission, no magazine publisher, no cinema magnate, had, as far as Joe knew, ever been declared a codefendant, indicted for preliminary teasing. In dreams begin responsibilities; but the makers of dreams had abjured responsibility: it was left for the dreamer to make his own stand.

Davis must know this, Joe reflected. Davis was a lawyer; more than that, he was, in many ways, the fulfilled man. Intellectually, at least. He had known all this with Landauer; he had not succeeded in placing responsibility, but he had managed to convince twelve men and women that Landauer's was essentially no greater than theirs. Was that true? Probably. This morning was not the time to work it out finally. Possibly not; and possibly Davis had known it was not true; possibly his cynicism, and not his humanity, had worked for Landauer.

“Smoke?” Davis asked.

Joe shook his head. Waves of heat had begun to shimmer off the tar. Joe squinted. The parallels no longer seemed to converge: perhaps truth and beauty did not, after all, meet at the edge of the universe. Fragment of a long-dead conversation: “Eternal verities, hanging like grapes at the edge of the universe.” Our vines have tender grapes. Aesop's fox and the sour grapes: like all of us, panting and bitter at the edge of the universe. Another fragment came to him: the army of unalterable law. Sonnet; last line. Arnold? Meredith? Equality under the law: the rich as well as the poor are forbidden to walk on the grass.

“It's almost time,” Davis said. “Let's go in.”

The two men crossed the square and ascended the six steps to the door of the courthouse. Davis let Joe precede him. Within the building the air was cool. “Room 101,” Joe said.

“First floor,” Davis said. “Here. To the right.”

They entered the room, and Joe stopped. A dozen people turned to see him; beyond them the raised bench was unoccupied. Joe held his breath while he looked for Mrs. Storch; she was not present. Relief warmed him. The others were there. Pearson. The old lady. The old man, shaved. The old man was not wearing a necktie, and Joe was distracted: good for him, he thought; we yield just so much of ourselves, but we don't toady. The doctor was there, impatient.

Joe nodded at them; they looked away. “Good morning,” Davis said, and they gestured acknowledgment. Only Pearson was motionless, glacial. A window shade flapped; Joe twitched. He examined the others in the room. A bailiff, or tipstaff, or whatever the attendants were now called; a recorder, heavy-set and athletic, drowsing behind a stack of notebooks; two men at a table up front (the enemy); a policeman in uniform; a sergeant-at-arms, probably, the one who could have been a floorwalker (he lacked only the carnation); and, in the spectators' area, four men. Friends of the family, Joe thought, until he saw one whom he knew, Graff, a reporter from the
Intelligencer
; and then another whom he could not at first identify. He frowned, and then remembered not the name but the function. “The insurance man's here,” he said to Davis. “From Pacific American. Does that make a difference?”

“Not to me,” Davis said. “Nervous?”

“No. I'd love a cup of coffee. Can we smoke here?”

“No.” Davis seemed calm, but in his eyes Joe saw suppressed eagerness. The two men walked to the defense table—Joe supposed it was that. Gentlemen taking their places in the pit, he thought. First row on the aisle. The bear-baiting to begin at ten-thirty. Davis pulled out a straight-backed chair and sat, loosely, without elegance; he was imposing, Joe thought, but too long of limb, too ferocious of face, to be elegant. And too indifferent to qualities like elegance. He liked Mozart, Joe remembered, and perhaps there was a resemblance; under the lumpish grace, the attractive exterior, beat the man's heart. Mozart and Landauer, was that it? Did Davis pursue beauty for its own sake, or because he believed Keats? Was that his mainspring—the beauty even in buffoonery, in paternity suits, in Harlequinesque assaults and batteries? And the truth behind the beauty? The infinite potential of the human being? Was Davis the guardian of that potential, murder, buggery, burlesque?

And me? Joe wondered. What is there to be cherished about a drunk in a high-powered car?

He gave up, and waited blankly.

Then he had risen. They were all standing. Judge Francis Winkelmann advanced gravely, nodded, and seated himself. Barely visible at the neck of his black gown, a light blue necktie seemed farcical. The man was blue-eyed and silver-haired, but the hair was not quite believable: it was more judicial than judicious. Winkelmann would indulge a ponderous manner, Joe decided; more judgely than any archetype.

Winkelmann, with a black gavel, rapped lightly, twice, on a block of wood. “Good morning,” he said. “You all understand that this is not a trial, but a preliminary hearing under Section eight-sixty of the Penal Code. It will be held informally; witnesses will, however, be under oath, and the recorder will transcribe. When testimony is complete, Counselor—” Winkelmann nodded to Davis—“I shall entertain any motions.” Davis nodded. “Is the district attorney here?” The judge observed the two young men at the prosecution table. “I see the assistant district attorney,” he said. One of the young men nodded. “Will you and counsel please come to the bench?”

Davis rose and joined the young man before the bar. Harrison could hear only a murmur. He saw Davis shrug, then nod. The young man nodded, unsmiling.

Joe was uneasily disappointed. He felt a gross deception: Where were the trumpets? The
oyez-oyez
? It seemed irregular. It was only a hearing; perhaps this was the equivalent of a coroner's inquest, or a grand jury. It will be found that the deceased had succumbed to an embolism seconds before the accident. No: it will be found that Joe Harrison has run afoul of the army of unalterable law.

Davis returned.

“We shall take the three witnesses to the accident,” Winkelmann announced. “Should counsel then wish to have his client take the stand, he may have him sworn.” He gestured to a clerk; the clerk glanced down at a pad and called out, “Mrs. Thorpe.”

Mrs. Thorpe took her oath. The young man asked her to tell the story in her own words. Her own words were few and simple. The car had come to a stop almost immediately. Mr. Harrison had walked back slowly; she supposed he was shocked. He had given the officer his papers without being asked. White line? Mrs. Thorpe did not remember. Speed? Mrs. Thorpe was not qualified to guess, never having driven a car herself. She smoothed her dress—a violet print—and touched her hair. Her hair was white and carefully brushed.

Joe surveyed the courtroom. The four men grouped toward the rear were taking notes. Pearson was grim. Davis was without expression. Harrison's chair was uncomfortable. The recorder recorded. Mrs. Thorpe stepped down. She had done her duty. The girls, Joe thought—Mrs. Thorpe, too, would have her salon—would want all the details. Mrs. Thorpe walked to her chair with concentration, as though she were fixing those details permanently.