No Defense (25 page)

“Don’t worry, Jolene,” I said. “I
understand.”

“Don’t say nothing,” she said.

“I won’t. I swear.”

Jolene hugged me. “I wish it’d all be over
with.”

“You and me both,” I said.

I had told Jolene about the allegations
against my father a few days after I first saw the FBI
documents.

I had been in the carport, about to get in
my car and return to the restaurant after my afternoon break, when
she’d come out carrying Will and Hank.

“I need to tell you something,” she
said.

I shut the car door and leaned on it. “I’m
all ears.”

Jolene put Hank and Will in the double
stroller and as she strapped them in, said, “I be calling Eddie
today, tell him you miserable and that he best come back home
now.”

“You will not!” I said.

“Watch,” she said. “You been crying for days
now, I know it’s bad for you, girl. You try to hide, but I
know.”

“It’s not just Eddie, Jolene. I wish it were
so simple.”

“What is it? Somebody dying?”

“It’s Daddy.”

“He sick?”

“No. But some people are saying he was
involved in something real bad a long time ago.” I paused. Might as
well tell her. She’d hear about it from someone sooner or later.
“They say he killed Jimmy Turnbow and Leon Johnson.”

“Pooh! Why you take that serious?” Will
began to fuss in the stroller, anxious to get on with his walk.
Jolene stuck his pacifier in his mouth.

“I can’t help it. It is serious.”

“Bless your heart. You should be worrying
more ’bout Eddie than about something like that. People say
anything. Don’t matter. Mr. Newell will be just fine. You got your
life, your own family now. Take care of what’s yours, baby girl. If
you don’t, Jolene’ll take care of it for you.”

“I was worried you’d be mad with Daddy or me
when you heard.”

“You know me better than that.”

During the Labor Day cookout, I sat on a
blanket in a clearing inside a circle of pine trees. I picked at my
hamburger, coleslaw, and potato salad, watched the children, and
tried to ignore Ben. Will was sitting up next to me with a pillow
wedged behind him. Occasionally he fell over without warning, but
it didn’t seem to faze him. Hank was inching across the blanket,
first by putting his head down and his bottom up, then putting his
bottom down and his head up, like a see-saw.

Will toppled over. I reached down to prop
him back up and stopped short when our eyes met. Both of the boys’
eyes, blue at birth, had only recently settled into a gray that was
clearly Eddie’s. It was spooky. Even when I managed to forget about
Eddie for a few minutes, one look at either twin’s eyes brought his
image back to mind. I missed Eddie terribly, more as every day
passed, yet I refused his calls and made sure I missed his visits
out of a combination of guilt, embarrassment, and anger.

Jessie played tag with some of Jolene’s
grandchildren in the yard and the nearby woods. I was surprised and
happy to see that she was enjoying herself so much. That morning
she’d had a horrible temper tantrum, threatening never to go
anywhere with me again. She wanted her daddy, she cried. I’d held
her tight and rocked her in my rocking chair, fighting my own
tears, until she calmed down, a scene we’d repeated several times
since Eddie left.

If only Jessie’s magic wand could turn back
the clock to April, I would refuse Daddy’s Steak House offer on the
spot and stop the chain of events that had brought us to this
point.

“How are you?” Ben asked, looming over me and
the boys.

I ignored him.

He sat down.

“Why are you here?” I asked in a tired
voice.

“I was invited,” he said.

“But you knew I’d be here. You shouldn’t
have come. It’s not fair to me.”

“Of course I knew you’d be here. That’s one
reason I came. Look at your father. He’s having a great time
cooking with Jolene’s husband and playing with the kids. You, on
the other hand, are the most anxious person I’ve seen in a long
time. You need to stop this one-woman crusade for your own
good.”

“Any other criticism you’d like to make
about me?”

“I’d hoped you’d stopped blaming me by now,”
he said. He sneezed twice and I handed him a Kleenex from the
diaper bag.

“You’ve been working hard on ruining my
father’s reputation and my life and I should thank you?” I
asked.

“I’ve been working on a story, that’s
all.”

“Same thing.”

He stood up. “I give up, LuAnn. If you
decide you’re going to act like an adult, let me know.” He turned
to walk away, then stopped. “Did you hear about your memorial?” he
asked.

“What about it?”

“Someone painted it red. I’m afraid it’s a
mess.” He sneezed again and walked toward the lake.

After lunch, Jessie and the older kids waited
on the dock for their turns riding around the lake in Daddy’s motor
boat while the rest of us cleaned up.

“What do you think of Daddy’s trial plan?” I
asked Mother when we met at the trashcan, where we scraped food off
the plastic picnic dishes.

“I guess it’s a reasonable approach, under
the circumstances,” she said. “We’ll have to see.”

“Is Jane going to testify at the trial?” I
asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, Mother, you must know. Y’all talk every
day. Has Junior said anything about her testifying?”

“I don’t want to get into it today,” Mother
said. “It’s been such a fine day so far. Can we just take a break
from the soap opera of Newell’s trial?” She walked away and began
to pick up more dirty dishes.

I followed. “I’m worried, Mother.”

“Don’t be. Your father always takes care of
himself You should be more attentive to yourself, and to your
husband and children, and stop worrying about him.”

“You sound like Jolene,” I said.

“Maybe you’ll listen to one of us. Have you
seen Eddie lately?” she asked.

“No.”

“He says he’s tried to talk to you several
times. He’s very concerned about you. He’d like to talk.”

“I didn’t know the two of you were so
close,” I said. “When do you talk about me behind my back?” I
asked.

“That’s not fair,” Mother said, frowning.
“I’m worried about my grandchildren and my daughter. I have a right
and a duty to help. You seem to be consumed with your father’s
trial, about which you can do nothing, while your life and your
family are falling apart.”

“Eddie and I have nothing to talk about. Is
Jane going to testify or not?” I persisted.

“If she has to, she will, yes.”

“What’s she got to say that’s so important
that Junior has to put a daughter on the stand to testify against
her own father? The FBI can testify about everything she
knows.”

“Not all of it,” Mother said.

“What do you mean? What else is there?” I
asked, not so sure that I wanted to know the answer to my
question.

“Can we please talk after our guests
leave?”

“Just tell me now, for God’s sake, Mother.
Or I’ll go get Jane to tell me.”

“I wish you wouldn’t take the Lord’s name in
vain. Your sister just went home to lie down and she doesn’t need
you bothering her. Her blood pressure’s off the charts,” Mother
said grimly. She put down the stack of plates she’d just collected.
“Let’s go inside.”

We entered through the back door and sat
down in the living room. She took off her glasses and rubbed her
eyes. “I want you to stay calm while I tell you this, please,” she
said. “The night of the murders Newell woke Jane up from a nap and
asked her to keep an eye on you. I was away. He told her he was
going to patrol the road Jimmy and Leon were scheduled to use, to
make sure they’d be safe because there had been some threats
against them. He came home in the middle of the night. The next day
he told her he’d been detoured by a bar brawl, that he’d been too
late, and when he got there they were dead.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“None of it’s true, that’s what. Bev Carter
was at the bar brawl. Your father wasn’t.” She reached for the
cross she wore on a gold chain around her neck and rubbed it with
her thumb.

“Jane doesn’t have to testify! She could
refuse. I would.”

“And go to jail?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.
You know, dear, you could support your father without giving up
everything else. It’s not a war.”

“It is a war, and Jane’s a traitor and a
liar.”

“Oh, LuAnn. Why don’t you believe Jane? She
has no reason to lie.”

“She hated Daddy then, she told me. I think
she still does. She wants to hurt him. Does he know? Does he know
what his own child is going to testify to?”

Mother shrugged. She put her glasses back on
and looked at me curiously.

I jumped up, hurried out of the house, and
ran down the hill to the dock. When Daddy docked the boat and
several of Jolene’s grandchildren got off, I rushed on.

“It’s our turn, Mom,” Jessie whined on
behalf of herself and the other children waiting their turn.

“I need to talk to your grandfather, Jes.
We’ll be right back.” I pushed the boat away from the dock with my
foot, then restarted the motor. I was shaking my head in dismay as
I approached my father.

“You look a little upset,” he said.

“Do you know what Jane says happened, what
she said to the grand jury?” I yelled over the sound of the
motor.

“What did you hear?”

I told him. He just smiled.

“Daddy! You have to tell her not to
testify.”

“That wouldn’t be a real smart thing to do.
If anyone found out I’d have another scandal on my hands. She’ll
change her mind, though,” he said. “She’ll never testify at trial
against me. Never.” He smiled confidently.

I wished I could share in his faith.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

By the first day of my father’s trial, I’d
managed to alienate just about everyone I loved. I had trouble
believing that Jane wouldn’t testify, and in my self-appointed job
as Daddy’s protector had rushed to her house after the Labor Day
picnic and accused her of lying to the grand jury. I’d tried to
convince Jane not to testify, sure that anything she had to say was
not true, only to upset her so much that Buck ushered me out the
door.

Mother, furious when she heard I’d argued
with Jane, who was under doctor’s orders to control her blood
pressure, told me she’d given up on me. “I hope,” Mother said,
“that we’ll be able to make amends after the trial. But I must
admit it won’t be easy. You’re making this so much harder than it
needs to be, LuAnn.” So the first day of the trial, I wasn’t
surprised to find Mother, Buck, Jane, Eddie, and Barbara Cox all
seated on the prosecutor’s side of the courtroom. Maybe I was
reading too much into the seating arrangement, but I didn’t think
so.

The trial began on a Thursday. Because there
would be no jury to pick, no jury to posture and argue to, Chip and
Junior thought the proceeding would last only three days.

“Will Bobby Lee decide the case Monday
afternoon as soon as the trial is over?” I had asked Chip one day
over coffee at the Steak House with him and my father.

“Unlikely,” Chip said. “Judge McNabb will
avoid issuing an opinion while the courtroom is full of so many
fanatics, and he may need to do some research of his own and write
something up. Unless he dismisses the charges after Junior’s
case.”

“That’s my plan,” Daddy said.

“Don’t count on it,” Chip said. “After the
government’s case, I’ll make a motion for judgment of acquittal-an
MJOA it’s called. That’s a hard motion to win, though.”

“If the judge doesn’t dismiss the indictment
and your client still stubbornly refuses to testify, what can you
do for the defense part of the case?” I asked.