The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (42 page)

Shade stared at her, but there was not a trace of irony in her face or voice. She was thinking about pretty little Erma Morton in a jail cell, not about a shady pilot with the face of a stained glass saint. He forced himself to smile. “Let me know how it goes with Danny,” he said, as she hugged him good-bye.

Henry had seemed almost like his old self, no doubt relieved to be on his way home. “I should stick this out,” he murmured.

“I don’t mind,” said Shade. “Go home and get some rest.”

“I would have stayed if it would have made any difference. If I could have saved her, of course I would have stayed.”

And then they were gone. On the drive back to Wise, Shade
wondered what Henry had meant by those parting words, which, he was pretty sure, did not refer to Erma Morton.

HE TURNED HIS ATTENTION BACK
to the jurors, still standing in the box, careful to look at no one. The judge had examined the slip of paper delivered to him by the bailiff, and now he asked the foreman to pronounce the verdict. The courtroom was quieter than it had been for the entire trial. You could hear the intake of breath.

Guilty.

There was one frozen moment in which nobody moved. Then the courtroom erupted in a babel of voices, and above the din, the gravel voice of the old judge thanked the jurors for their service and dismissed them.

Shade reached to the floor and hoisted the wieldy camera and flash gun, shoving his way past the spectators in the aisles, so that he would have a clear shot of the defense table.

Erma Morton, who had stood with her attorney while the verdict was pronounced, sank back into her chair with her hand clutched at her throat. She stared straight ahead, ashen and silent, while her attorney was bending over and whispering urgently in her ear. She seemed oblivious to him, or to the roaring crowd behind her.

Shade managed to get off two shots before a bailiff grabbed his arm and hustled him out of the courtroom. Shade walked hunched over, protecting the camera and its precious cargo with his body. Once the crowd had thinned a bit, he broke free of the bailiff and ran up the aisle, hoping to get more photos in the hallway. He positioned himself against the wall, facing the door he had just come through.

The exiting spectators seemed calm for people who had just watched a young woman lose her future. Shade kept still and tried to catch snatches of conversation as they passed.

Harley Morton elbowed his way through the throng, shepherding his mother out of the courtroom. Mrs. Morton was dry-eyed and composed, and Harley’s expression was somewhere between triumphant and belligerent. They stopped briefly in front of Shade’s camera.

“We’re fighting this,” said Harley, striking a pose. “I’m booking lectures to raise money for the appeal. When I get to New York, come see the show.”

Shade nodded. His editor would make him go anyway.

“Serves her right,” said a spare older man to his portly companion. “Trying to get away with murder by turning the world against the rest of us.”

“Did you notice how calm she was when the foreman pronounced her guilty? Never turned a hair. I wouldn’t put anything past her—”

“It’s her sister I feel sorry for,” said a woman clinging to the arm of her husband. “Such a scandal in the family. Not that
he’ll
be missed by any of them.”

“Now maybe they’ll stop printing lies about us in the newspapers.”

Shade took a shot of the crowd in the doorway. Where were the jurors? He took a step toward the door to see who was still inside the courtroom when someone tapped his arm. Shade turned. It was the skinny young man in the cheap overcoat who had been at the trial every day. He wasn’t a lawyer, a juror, or a witness.

“Yeah?” said Shade.

“You’re with the New York reporters, aren’t you?”

“So?”

“I don’t see them here.”

“No.”

“But you’re the photographer?” When Shade nodded, he stumbled on. “I’m covering the story for a little paper in Tennessee, and it’s my first big assignment, so I wondered if I could persuade you to
sell me one of those photographs you took of Erma Morton. It sure would help my standing with my boss.”

With an expressionless stare, Shade Baker looked him up and down for a moment. Then he turned away. “Can’t help you there, buddy.”

“Please . . . I’m afraid they’re going to fire me.”

Shade turned back and sighed. “Kid,” he said, “it’ll be the biggest favor they could do you. Your ticket outta there.”

“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO,
Carl?” Nora Bonesteel stood shivering on the platform of the Norton depot.

He had not spoken a word for nearly ten minutes, not since Cousin Araby had driven away and left them there at the station. He kept staring up the tracks as if willing the train to show up, but it didn’t. Nora knew he wanted to be left alone. His eyes were red and he had hardly touched the breakfast Cousin Araby had fixed for them. She ought not to try to talk to him, but she was cold and worried, and she wanted him to tell her it wasn’t the end of the world, even if it was.

So she asked again.

He looked at her with a watery smile. “Can’t you tell me? Can’t you use that Bonesteel gift and look into the future and tell me if I’m gonna be all right?”

“I mean what are you fixing to do?”

Carl stuck his hands in his pockets and began to pace the platform. “I got fired, Nora. I’m sorry I can’t take this with a shrug and a smile like a movie cowboy. Jobs are hard to come by these days, and I set a store by this one. This one was my ticket out.”

She nodded, close to tears herself. “But it wasn’t your fault. You told the truth, and you thought she was guilty. And the jury agreed with you.”

He kept his eyes fixed on the empty stretch of track. “My editor said my stories were so different from the national coverage that he was beginning to wonder if I was even there. And he said that my reporting was dull. Just a string of facts. Not like all those flowery pieces the big-city reporters were churning out.”

“You told the truth, though.”

“Apparently it’s not a marketable commodity.”

Nora thought about it. “You finished college, though. Maybe you could be a lawyer.”

“Now there’s an outlet for truth.” He laughed. “No, I reckon I won’t give up, little cousin. That photographer fellow from New York said that maybe getting let go could be a blessing in disguise, and maybe it is. Maybe it’s a sign that I need to get out of these hills and make my way out in the world. It would have been easier if I’d made a name for myself with this trial, but it can still be done.”

Nora nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “You always wanted to see the world.”

He smiled and patted her shoulder. “I didn’t figure on getting booted out into it quite so soon. But I guess I’m ready. Maybe it was a sign. Our family believes in signs, don’t they, Nora?”

She smiled up at him through her tears. “We believe in you, anyhow.”

One day soon he would be gone, and she would never see him again. But there was no point in talking about it. Knowing is one thing. Changing is another.

So it is over, and all is lost.

Guilty.

In my cell I have a whole collection of newspapers full of stories about me, and my family, and the murder trial, and Wise County in general. I don’t know why I keep them. No one would want to make a scrapbook of such an ordeal as this. I would like nothing better than to forget it entirely. People say that the newspapers have made me famous, but that will be over soon enough. Besides, sometimes I think I could put that stack of papers through a sieve and not find a single grain of truth.

The ones who think I am innocent describe me as slender and beautiful, while the papers closer to home, who have their doubts, say I am gaunt and well-groomed. It is a little game they are playing with the thesaurus, I reckon, because as far as I can tell, they are saying the same thing, just changing the feelings.

The big-city reporters came up with an outlandish notion they called “the Code of the Hills,” which they write about in their news stories, trying to explain why the people of Wise County are out to get me. They seem to think that if I am beautiful and innocent, then everyone ought to love me, and if they don’t, why, there’s something wrong with them. I suppose they got the notion of a Code of the Hills out of a book, maybe Mr. Fox’s from 1908, although if it is in there, then he made it up, because there is no such thing.

We don’t have curfews for girls, or rules against using makeup or
going without a bonnet, as if I’ve ever seen anyone under sixty wearing such a thing in the first place.

To hear the reporters tell it, the county was supposed to be against me on account of this made-up mountain code, and I suppose that if making up such a lie would have got me acquitted, then I ought to be grateful for the deception. I tried to tell one of them that the effect would likely be just the opposite. It would put people’s backs up to have the community criticized on my account, and they would punish me for it by finding me guilty.

The reporter assured me that such a thing would not happen. I don’t know why people think pleasant lies make things any better. It just makes you feel worse when you find out that you were right all along to fear the worst.

But I don’t think those reporters really cared what happened to a friendless nobody named Erma Morton, a likely-looking hick from the back of beyond. Not really. I think all this was just a game they thought up to sell newspapers, and maybe to see if they could change the outcome of a jury trial. Or else they were practicing for bigger game.

I thought it might have occurred to them that if they ever got good enough at making people believe their outlandish tales, then someday they might be powerful enough to start a war or choose a president, just by telling tales in their newspapers and bullying whoever didn’t go along with their version of “the truth.” I think they cared about power more than they cared about the outcome of this no-account backwoods trial.

I don’t know. It is all over my head, but I cannot help feeling that none of this had anything to do with me, except for the fact that I happened to be pretty. They wouldn’t have bothered with me, otherwise.

And yet, for all that, maybe those newspapermen were right in a way about a Code of the Hills, only it wasn’t anything like the one they invented themselves. If there is such a thing, it is just a collection of things that everybody in these parts knows without ever having to be told. The unwritten laws of the land that come as natural to us as breathing.

You don’t take charity
.

You don’t meddle in your neighbors’ business
.

You take care of your own
.

And you don’t betray the family to outsiders. Ever
.

If you want to call that a code, then I reckon we do have one, and I followed it faithfully, but unfortunately the Code and the Law were at loggerheads this time. I got crushed between them, but I didn’t have much of a choice in that. You don’t betray the family to outsiders, ever.

Well, what else could I have done?

I came home that night, a little tipsy, and sure enough Daddy didn’t like it one bit that I was out late and smelled of beer, and he groused about it, but that didn’t make me no never mind. We none of us ever cared what he thought about anything. The other miners carried homemade dinners to eat on their lunch break, and Daddy made do with a cold baked potato. That’s what we thought of him.

That night he couldn’t spare more than an offhand harsh word for me, anyhow, because when I got home, he and Mommy were already at it hammer and tongs over an entirely different matter, screeching at each other like a couple of scalded cats.

Daddy was fixing to move out.

I heard it all in the back and forth shouting that started right up again after I got told off for being late.

Daddy was done with us. Said he had made plans to build himself a little frame house on the other side of the river, up near his mama’s house, and leave us all high and dry without him in this shabby old place that we were just renting.

It wasn’t that we would have missed him all that much. We never took much notice of him, but if he had up and left Mommy, who would pay the rent? How would Mommy live? She couldn’t take a job, and my teacher’s pay would not stretch to support the family. Her people were well-to-do, but pride kept us at arm’s length from them. They always said that Mommy had married beneath her, and they’d be well satisfied if he
up and left her, but it wasn’t likely they’d lift a finger to help her. Anyhow, there’s the code again.

You don’t take charity
.

Mommy would starve before she would ask that stuck-up bunch for help, because they‘d be sure to leaven the handouts with
I-told-you-so’s
and make her feel like trash for having to ask. But the shame would kill her first, I reckon. For your husband to walk out on you, after twenty-eight years of marriage, is a shame and an insult. I reckon Mommy has been a good wife to him, for all that there was no sweetness between them, and for him to want to get shut of her now that she is old and tired is a cruel thing. She would never live down the shame in a village as little as Pound, where they don’t hold with divorce. She would have been better off in every way if he were to die and leave her a widow. There would be a little bit of insurance money, of course, but more important than that: she wouldn’t have anything to be ashamed of. As a widow, Mommy would have the sympathy of the community, and people willing to help her out if she needed it, and maybe even her well-heeled kinfolk would lend a hand. Mommy could feel kindly toward her late husband after he was gone. But if he was alive and well, residing over across the river, and up to lord knows what in the way of drinking and women, like as not—why, then he would be a constant shame to the family and no use or support to Mommy at all.