The Man Who Loved Birds (18 page)

For the occasion Johnny Faye had tied back his hair with a rubber band and put on a white shirt cinched with a string tie of black leather with a silver cow’s skull for a choker. He acknowledged that even though he was not conceding his particular guilt, the state police had got the lay of the land pretty much right and he was always one to admire close attention to a job even when it involved his arrest. Although he did want to mention that the county attorney had offered no evidence other than his own suspicions and the fact that Officers Smith and Boone happened to have caught him, Johnny Faye, walking through the field in question carrying clippers and black plastic bags. “I don’t know about you
folks but pretty much every time I go walking in the woods I take along a pair of clippers and a gathering bag, you never know what you’re going to see out there that you want to bring home, and you caint get to those particular woods without crossing that particular field.” In sum, though he acknowledged that the circumstances looked bad, he saw plenty of room for reasonable doubt and he hoped the jury would agree.

Harry Vetch kept cross-examination to a minimum, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that the evidence was circumstantial. The officers ought to have staked the field and caught Johnny Faye in the act of harvesting, but Boone had been scheduled to leave that afternoon on a fishing trip and Smith hated the mosquitoes that clustered in the creek bottoms and they had jumped the gun. In the end the county attorney had no choice but to fudge the cracks. Now Vetch rose to deliver his closing argument, drawing himself up and meeting the eyes of one juror after another.

“Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I pause a moment because I know how difficult this must be for you, not because the facts are unclear but because you will be torn between competing loyalties. I know full well that some among you are related to the accused, however distantly, and that others have done him favors and have had favors done by him in return.

“In the past those connections have earned the accused the mercy of more than one jury. I understand that the roots of those acquittals lie in the most important connections any of us have, which are our ties to our kin and to our neighbors. These are ties that we threaten or break at the risk of our emotional, financial, and community well-being.

“Today, however, I suggest that those ties are being endangered by an enemy of the sort we have never encountered before. That enemy is drugs, brought into our world from elsewhere but here all the same. There can be no turning our backs on this enemy. There is literally no future in pretending it is not upon us. Drugs
are
upon us and they threaten the minds and hearts of
our children in ways you and I, born in earlier generations, can barely conceive.

“What we have on trial here is no less than the criminal element of our society. And in voting to convict you have an opportunity to declare your faith in our community.” Vetch began to pace. “Now those are strong words. But the presence in our midst of a habitual lawbreaker spoils our efforts to build prosperity. And that is what I wish to speak to by way of convincing you of the importance of this particular conviction.

“Thirty years ago life here was hard. A single orange was a treasure and you chopped wood in the summer’s heat so as to stay warm through the winters. Now we’re experiencing some of the conveniences of life and more are available to us every day. We’ve freed ourselves from the tyranny of nature so that we can live in ease and comfort, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow will bring no surprises—we’re prepared for and sheltered against every possibility that nature may send. We have days of leisure, in which we have nothing more to worry about than what to do with our prosperity.

“That leisure time has come about because people agreed—we, you and I, agreed that making money was our first priority. That may sound blunt but in fact it is only common sense. The way to best serve the common good is for each of us to pursue our individual interests to the fullest. When you get richer, our nation gets richer, and vice versa. That philosophy is the foundation of our national prosperity.

“So you may ask, why shouldn’t anyone be allowed to grow and sell as many drugs as he wishes? The answer to your question lies in the particular nature of this business. What Mr. Faye is growing—I beg your pardon, what he is
accused
of growing—is a substance whose use saps our children of their willingness to serve their self-interest. It is the foot in the door, the tip of the iceberg for drugs you have never heard of or imagined that will rob your children of their money, their judgment, and their connections to you, their families.

“Make no mistake about it—we are talking about a war here, and like all wars it will require sacrifice and a willingness to make hard decisions. That we are fighting it in our backyards only underscores its importance. We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. If we lose that war we will lose this way of freedom of ours and if we lose those freedoms we have no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth, and we are fighting a war on drugs in which the enemy has cleverly disguised himself as one of our own even though in fact he is a homegrown terrorist whose target is our children.

“As you know, I’m involved in bringing investments to this county which will enable our prosperity for the future. When I go around the state talking to potential investors they tell me they love my project but they don’t want to invest in such a lawless place. Today you have a chance to change that reputation. You have a chance to declare yourselves and this community on the side of peace, prosperity, and the law.

“Now I know when I mention the law some people’s first thought is, ‘authority imposing itself on my rights.’ No. The law allows you to be more free because it frees you from constant worry. It gives you a future you can depend on. In voting to convict you are voting for that future. You are voting for progress. You are voting for our incredible freedoms in this great land we call America.

“I propose to you that in this verdict you are choosing between committing this county to one of two crops, both green. But one is against the law and the other is within it. For make no mistake—you are not simply jurors for the trial of one man engaged—I beg your pardon,
accused
of being engaged—in the production and distribution of illegal drugs. You’re not just witnessing the struggle for our children. You are being asked to render a verdict on the very legitimacy of the law. You’re being asked to choose between hanging back and staying poor and moving forward and getting rich.

“I ask you to keep these thoughts close to your minds and hearts as you deliberate and that they lead you to the logical, inescapable conclusion: the accused is the enemy of all that we hold dear—the enemy of the church, the state, and the people, and, finally but foremost, the enemy of your wallets and purses. A vote to convict is your best choice for serving yourself, your family, and your community.

“The state rests its case, your Honor, ladies, gentlemen.”

Johnny Faye rose to address the jury. He greeted each with a cheerful nod and wordless grin, then cleared his throat and stared out the window for a moment as if gathering his thoughts from the open sky. “When I was growing up here,” he said, “we had thievery from meat lockers, thievery from yards, thievery of cars and whatnot. And the thieves—we know who they were—stole because they were hungry. I listened careful to my friend’s argument—”

“Objection, your Honor. In no way might I be construed as the defendant’s friend.”

“Sustained. Mr. Faye, please refrain from projecting personal judgments onto other parties to this proceeding.”

“Yes, ma’am. Your Honor. But if you don’t mind, Mr.
Johnny
Faye.”

The judge sighed. “Mr.
Johnny
Faye.”

“Thank you, your Honor. I listened careful to the argument of the lawyer who got his education in some big city where you have never been and do not want to go and I found it enlightening as I expect you did too. Before answering his arguments I want to point out that at no place in his enlightening and educational presentation did the lawyer address the facts. I am still looking for evidence that I was the individual who planted and intended to sell the bounty of that particular field. I suggest that you should be looking for that same evidence because without it the state has no case.

“I would also like you to consider another uncomfortable fact, which is that whenever ambitious politicians like our county attorney—”

“Objection, your Honor. The accused is attempting to slander my character.”

The judge shrugged her broad black shoulders. “As best I can tell the accused is summarizing a widely shared perception that impugns no one, since in your own arguments you set forth the presumed benefits of ambition. Mr. Johnny Faye, please proceed.”

Johnny Faye nodded. “I suggest you consider that whenever ambitious politicians are out to serve theirselves they start talking about the interests of the children. This practice is so common that I suggest you duck and cover whenever you hear the word ‘children’ in a politician’s mouth, being sure to take your children with you to save them from this particular form of corruption. But I expect the lawyer who got his degree in a big city has already tested your patience for hearing about children from people who don’t have none, and so I will leave judgment on that particular argument to you all who
do
have children.

“I am brought before this court accused of the crime of being a small farmer—”

“Objection, your Honor. The accused is brought before this court for the very specific felony offense of growing Class I drugs in quantities intended for sale. None of Mr. Faye’s comments are germane to the crime that is the subject of this trial.”

The judge looked over her glasses at the county attorney. “I concede your point, Mr. Vetch, but Mr. Johnny Faye has a way, as we know, of telling a story. I am interested in where he is leading us with this train of thought.”

“But precedent requires—”

“Mr. Vetch. I concern myself as much with justice as with legal precedent, an attitude I recommend to the jury if not always shared by my colleagues, but by my view I am well within the spirit if not the letter of the law. And I will offer a digression born in part, I admit it, of too much coffee and consequent indigestion. In this as in certain previous encounters you seem to assume that a fat woman who talks country and works for the government is by
definition stupid. I suggest you reserve your testing of that theory for your private life.” The judge directed her attention to Johnny Faye. “Mr. Johnny Faye. Please proceed, though in consideration of our collective desire to spend our golden years somewhere other than in this courtroom I ask you to make your point with some efficiency. Much as I know that to be a challenge.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Your Honor. I am brought before this court for the crime of being a small farmer. The crop I am accused of growing was grown by our grandparents and their parents before them and used in everything from the weaving of burlap and rope up to and including a smoke to take care of the aches and pains of old age. They built roads, they carved paths through the wilderness to convey this selfsame crop to market.

“Then one year a large corporation figures out how to make a product that serves some of the same purposes except that it is inferior in every way. It frays faster and gives out sooner, it’s weaker, you caint wear the clothes you make from it without burning up in your own skin. Smoking it is a poor way to meet your Maker. This new-fangled product is inferior in every way except this one: You and I caint make or grow it. It’s made with oil brought from afar, extracted from deep inside the bowels of the earth. And in one of those great mysteries of what the lawyer educated in a big city you have never seen and do not want to visit calls civilization—in the very next year after this large corporation obtains a patent for this
in
-ferior product made from oil taken from below the sands of the A-rabs—a patent for nylon, to give it a name—in the very next year our government makes it a crime to produce the
su
-perior product that our grandparents could and did grow and harvest. I don’t know what to make of this remarkable coincidence. I’m just pointing it out for your consideration.

“I would like to stay on the land. You know what happens to people like me when we go to the big city. We live on the streets because we caint hold down a city kind of job and we caint figure out how to live in a city-type house where your neighbors look
through your windows, if you got windows, and where the landlord is ever ready to put you out on the pavement. Enough living on the streets and we start to getting a little crazy and pretty soon we start doing drugs, hard drugs, and that makes us more crazy, and pretty soon we are a danger to our neighbors and ourselves. To send me to the city would be a bad idea all around—bad for the city and definitely bad for me. But if I am to stay in this place I have only one way to afford to be true to my nature and that is to be a small, independent, ornery, son-of-a-bitch farmer. I do it good—in the way that the hawk soars or a bee gathers honey, it is in my nature to dig in the dirt.

“Now the lawyer educated in the big city proposes to bring more envy and more wanting into your homes and hearts. He wants us to go looking at those big houses he is building on his mowed golf course and say: Why caint I have that? I work just as hard, maybe harder than the folks who live in them big houses. And next thing you know we’re raising prices at the store or charging more to look under the hood of your car because we have agreed to bow down to the boot—we, you and me have agreed that making money is our first priority. Why help your neighbor put a roof on his house when you can charge him money for your time? Why take care of your old folks or your kids at home when you can pay somebody to do it for you so’s you can use that time to go out and make more money, which you are going to have to make if you are going to keep up that big brick house on the golf course and payments to the bank which is what really owns you and your house?