The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (35 page)

Henry, who had heretofore been giving his full attention to a heaping plate of chicken and dumplings, looked at Shade with an indulgent smile. “Yes, we will have to be nimble to counteract the impression made by that worthy gentleman. But remember that our jury—the newspaper readership—numbers in the thousands, and I fancy that we can get them over to our way of thinking.”

“How? He seemed like a fine upstanding fellow to me.”

“Oh, we can get around that. You saw Ryan, but our readers did not. When we write this up, we’ll make snide remarks about his
appearance, or we could refer to his Southern drawl. Maybe misspell a word or two to give the flavor of his accent. Then people will know not to pay him any mind.”

Rose grinned. “Tell him about the horse race, Henry.”

Henry sighed. “It’s a tale I heard in Japan—perhaps it is apocryphal, but the point is sound. It seems there was once a horse race between a Japanese horseman and a rider from Korea. There were only those two horses in the race, and the Korean horse won. So a Japanese newspaper reported this story by saying: ‘Japanese Horse Comes in Second in International Horse Race. Korean Horse Finishes Next to Last.’ ”

It took Shade a moment to work that out, but then he gave Henry a rueful smile. “Well, Henry, I suppose that headline is correct but it ain’t
right
.”

Henry raised his eyebrows. “Depends on your intentions. If you wanted to foster national pride in Japan, then that account would be the correct approach to achieve your aim.”

“Uh-huh.” Shade narrowed his eyes. “And just what are you trying to foster by making these people out to be ignorant yokels?”

Henry ignored the scornful tone of the question. He thought for a moment, examining his reflection in the blade of his table knife. When he spoke, it was in a slow, meditative voice, as if the listeners didn’t matter. “What are we trying to foster here? Well . . . Two thousand years ago, when the Romans conquered Britain, they were invading an island with a complex civilization already in place. The Britons had their own language, religion, customs, modes of dress, system of government. Their customs, quite different from Roman ways, had evolved over centuries, and they had been the way of life in Britain for countless generations. And yet, within a hundred years of the Roman occupation, all that was swept away. The old gods yielded to the Roman pantheon; Latin became the
lingua franca
, and the empire’s customs and fashions prevailed in Albion, as it
became an outpost of Rome. And do you know how this was accomplished?”

He looked inquiringly at Rose and Shade, who shook their heads.

“Not by torture or coercion. Such things would not be effective against a proud people. Violence would only create martyrs, making the natives more entrenched in their old traditions. No, the means of converting the conquered populace to the culture of Rome was much simpler. The Romans simply laughed at them.”

Shade stared. “Laughed?”

“Oh, yes. Ridicule. To the proud, it is quite poisonous. The Britons’ rustic accents were uncouth. Their clothes unfashionable. Their gods mere superstitions. They were yokels. Oh, it didn’t work with the old people, of course. One gets too old to change. But that scarcely mattered. The old would be gone soon enough, and the Romans built cultures as they built aqueducts—for the centuries. Among the young of Britain, Roman ridicule was as effective as a plague. It made them ashamed of their old-fashioned kinsmen. The young people wanted to be modern and sophisticated, and so they emulated the cosmopolitan Roman forces of the occupation. Within a century, as I say, the old ways were gone—laughed into oblivion. And the new generation of Britons were all good little Romans.”

“Well, mostly,” drawled Rose. “As I recall, the Romans had to wall off Scotland, and they didn’t even try to colonize Ireland.”

“Your people.” Henry was smiling. “Civilization-proof. Well, Rose, some things are beyond even the powers of a mighty empire.”

“So, Henry, you think that what we’re doing here is forcing these people to adopt our superior form of culture.” Shade Baker shook his head. “The way you tell it, Henry, that would make us the Romans in this situation. I’m not sure I want to be a Roman putting somebody else’s civilization to the sword.”

Henry gave him a pitying smile. “You made your choice a long time ago, Shade. When you left your home on the prairie and came
to the big city, you made your choice. When you let your rustic accent erode, and you swapped your cowboy hat for a fedora, you made your choice.”

THERE WAS JUST THAT MOMENT
of uncertainty, when she stood there buffeted by the wind on the metal step of the passenger car, looking out at the little depot at Norton, and wondering what she would do if there was no one there to meet her. But in the next instant, she saw Carl running down the platform, with one hand waving and the other clamped to his new hat, to keep the fedora from blowing away in a gust of wind. He was so proud of that hat; thought it made him look like a real big-city reporter.

Nora picked up her valise and stepped down to the platform, trying to compose her features into a dignified grown-up expression, instead of the grin of delight that was glowing on the inside. Carl was grinning, though. He hoisted up her bag, and let go of his precious hat just long enough to give her a one-armed hug.

“Why that worried face, Nora? Surely you’d have known if I wasn’t coming?”

She rolled her eyes. “Only ’cause I trust you. The Sight isn’t like getting tomorrow’s newspaper, Carl. It never tells me anything I want to know.”

“Well, I hope it’ll tell me something I want to know. How are you? Did you get anything to eat?”

She nodded. “Mama packed me a lunch in a paper sack, same as if I was going to school. A piece of fried chicken and a couple of biscuits. I’m good until suppertime.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it.” Carl looked at his watch. “I wouldn’t have let you go hungry, but since we have most of an hour before I’m due back in court to cover the trial, I was hoping to take you somewhere first, even if it makes me a tad late getting back.”

Nora followed him along the platform, taking two steps to every one of his to keep up. “Take me somewhere? But it must be five miles over to Wise from here. We’ll have to walk awful fast to make it in an hour.”

“Walk! An important newspaperman like me? Not a chance.” He laughed at her bewilderment. “Okay, the truth is that Cousin Araby very kindly lent me her late husband’s old flivver, which hardly ever gets out of the garage these days, so we can have ourselves a little excursion before we head back to town. I want to show you something.”

Nora nodded. She knew she wasn’t going to get the scenic tour of the county, but that was all right. Carl had an important job now, and he had to give it everything he had. If she could help him, she would. It was why she had come.

She climbed into the passenger seat of Cousin Araby’s ’27 Model T, and watched as Carl pushed down the ignition pedal, and set the car in gear. They rolled away from the station, heading up the road toward Pound. As they passed through the streets of Norton, Nora looked around her, taking in the sights, but it didn’t look much different from home, or at least from the little railroad towns in the valley that she visited every now and again. Little wood frame houses nestled under big trees, and, beyond the cross-stitch of streets and lawns, the dark mountains loomed like a curtain.

“Puts me in mind of Erwin,” she said. “I guess railroad towns all favor one another. Where are we going now?”

“To another little town. Just a wide place in the road, really, a few miles up the mountain. Tell me about your trip.”

As they chugged along the winding blacktop, Nora stared out at the wet woods lining the slopes on either side of the road. This was coal country, she knew, and her region of east Tennessee was not, but on the surface, the landscape looked much the same to her: bare hardwood trees, here and there a dense thicket of laurel, and at the very
bottom of the steep embankment a narrow creek cutting through the bedrock on its way down to the valley. The woods seemed strangely lifeless this time of year. Most of the songbirds had flown away for the winter, and while the squirrels and rabbits must still be about, you didn’t see them much. Deer were scarce. Hard times had made hunters out of everybody.

She talked about her train journey, trying to make it seem like a commonplace event for her, but there wasn’t much good or bad about it to make a tale of, so presently she lapsed into silence. She opened the paper sack and handed Carl the last biscuit. “Tell me about this story you’re covering for the paper.”

Carl made short work of the dry biscuit that was the sum total of his lunch, while he considered how best to sum up Erma Morton’s story. “You probably know the gist of it, Nora. We ran stories about it in Johnson City, and you’ll have read those.”

“I did. When I heard you were coming here, I dug them out of the kindling pile and read them again. They say a schoolteacher murdered her father.”

“Right. The prosecution claims she hit him in the head with something. Well, everybody says that, really. Only the defense contends it was a shoe, and I think the prosecuting attorney is trying to prove she hit him with an ax or some such.”

“What do you think?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think yet. I just write it all down. But I’d better come up with something brilliant before it’s over, because from the way the editor was talking, I think my job may be riding on this.”

“I saw a newspaper in the train. Seems like all the big-city writers think Erma Morton is innocent, and I get the feeling that you don’t agree. Do you reckon she meant to kill him?”

“It’s not up to me to say,” said Carl. “Directly, we’ll go back to the courthouse and you can take a look at her yourself. If any bells go off when you see her, you be sure to let me know.”

Nora opened her mouth to say
it doesn’t work like that
, but since it wasn’t her business to discourage him, she amended it to, “So this place we’re headed to now—is it where it happened?”

“It’s a long shot, I know. But it’s about the only trump card I have. They won’t let me interview the defendant or talk to the family, unless I pay them, so I’m hoping you can help me come up with some other angle, so I can hold my own. It means an awful lot to me, Nora. It’s my chance to make something of myself someday.”

Nora stared out the window in silence for the rest of the drive, because she could think of nothing to say except what he didn’t want to hear.
It doesn’t work like that.
She thought about some lines from Julius Caesar that she’d had to learn for a recitation in school: “ ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in misery . . . ’ ” Having never seen an ocean, Nora didn’t know much about tides, but she thought that this must be the sort of life tide that Shakespeare was talking about. This was Carl’s chance, and it might not come again.

“THIS IS IT.”
Carl parked the car at one end of the row of buildings beside the river. “It will be the building to the right of the post office, so let’s look for that.”

Nora, whose day had started before sunup, had been dozing, but she opened her eyes and looked out at the jumble of shops and houses straddling the riverbank between two high wooded ridges.
It’s just a place
, she thought. It didn’t seem any different from the little communities that dotted the hills back home, and she didn’t suppose the people would be much different, either. Carl had come around and opened the door for her, so she stepped out into the wide main road and looked around.

“Do you see anything?”

She pointed. “There’s a black and white cat just went under the steps over there.”

They looked at each other and laughed. Carl shook his head ruefully. “So, no headless horsemen or spooks in sheets parading up and down Main Street?”

She laughed. “Nary a one, Carl.”

“Well, as long as you’re here, I might as well give you the ten-cent tour.” He steered her gently to the sidewalk in front of a shabby one-story building. “That house there is the Mortons’ place. In there is where Erma’s father died.” He said it offhandedly, but he was watching her carefully for a reaction.

She looked at the dingy little building and the leaf-swept yard. “I wish I could help you, Carl.”

“I must have sounded awful selfish about this, Nora. I’m trying to strike that delicate balance between ruthless and no-account, and I’m new at it, so sometimes I may put a foot wrong. But what matters more than me is the
truth.
If that young woman is being hounded for something she did not do, I’d like to set things straight if I could. I know that this case is already bringing trouble to the community, with all these backwoods stories the big-city dailies are running. It would be worse if this was all done at the expense of justice.”

“I thought the famous reporters were all taking her side.”

“Well, they are, but they seem to think that the only way they can see to help her is to make everybody else in the county look bad. Or maybe they’re not even trying to help at all. Maybe they just flipped a coin, picked a side, and started slinging mud to liven things up.”

Nora shivered a little in the cold sunshine as a gust of wind found the passage between the hills. She wanted to leave. All she felt from the house and its surroundings was a tightening in her throat and the weight of misery, such as anybody might have felt, knowing what had happened in that place. “It doesn’t happen very often,” she
said at last. “Sometimes I’ll touch something that belonged to a person, and I’ll get a flash of a vision, or maybe I’ll see things that other folks don’t, but I can’t make it happen, Carl. Mostly I just wish it wouldn’t happen at all. But these folks are nothing to do with me. I’m sorry for their trouble, and I hope that justice is done, but I can’t say what that would be.”

“Let’s go on back, then,” said Carl. “I just wish I knew for sure, that’s all.”

As they started back to the car a little girl in a red coat came running around the side of a house and nearly collided with Nora. She shook the white blond curls out of her eyes and peered up at the unexpected obstacle. “You’uns seen my kitty?”