The Paperboy (12 page)

Still, enough of it was unchanged.

There was a newspaper story in these transcripts about justice in the rural South.

And there was another newspaper story in the possibility that Sheriff Call, who had publicly killed sixteen Negroes and never been called to account for it, had met his own maker at the hands of someone who was never punished.

The champions of social change who set the editorial course at the
Miami Times
, the South’s greatest newspaper, saw the beauty in that, in the irony, and it was the beauty of the story, not the injustice—there was enough of that to celebrate back in Miami—that in the end decided their commitment of money and time to Moat County.

Yardley Acheman understood that better than my brother, I suppose, but then it was his job to see the beauty in these things. That was why he kept himself outside while my brother went in and recorded the details of ruin.

Yardley Acheman sat at his desk now, scanning the portions of the transcript that my brother had underlined in green ink.

The legal injury done to Hillary Van Wetter was clearly delineated in these underlined sections. The ineptitude of his attorney, Weldon Pine, was at least equaled by the ineptitude of the sheriff’s deputies who handled the evidence and the arrest. The knife and shirt which were found in Hillary Van Wetter’s kitchen sink, for instance, stained with blood, had been lost on the way back to the sheriff’s headquarters in Lately.

The story that Hillary Van Wetter told the deputies that night—that he had been working earlier with his uncle
Tyree—was never investigated or explained. Hillary Van Wetter simply said it once from the witness stand and was never asked to elaborate, even on cross-examination.

His uncle wasn’t subpoenaed, and did not attend the trial. Which is not to say that he would have appeared if he had been subpoenaed.

To the Van Wetters, an arrest in the family was like a death. If you were gone, you were gone, and when news of that kind visited the family, they looked another way, not wanting to see it.

Y
ARDLEY ACHEMAN DROPPED
a portion of the sheriff’s department’s arrest report on his desk and leaned back, perhaps having suddenly perceived that finding Tyree Van Wetter meant going into the wet regions of the county where the family lived, explaining newspapers to people who did not read them, who did not see how or why their lives belonged to anyone but themselves. People with knives and dogs, who hung animal skins from the trees in their yards.

Yardley Acheman pushed his feet against the edge of his desk until his head touched the wall behind his chair. He could have been posing for a photograph.

“I think we’ve got enough without the uncle,” he said.

My brother looked up at him, waiting. Yardley Acheman began to nod, as if they were arguing. “We could write around the uncle,” he said. “We could get away with that.”

My brother shook his head. He was not inclined to ignore what was inconvenient. He was not that kind of reporter. He wanted things clean.

“All we’ve got to substantiate here is reasonable doubt,” Yardley Acheman said, sounding whiny. “We get into too much detail, it ruins the narrative flow.”

“Let’s see where it goes,” my brother said, and went back to his work.

A
CCORDING TO THE REGULATIONS
of the Florida state prison system, prisoners waiting to be executed could receive visitors who were not of their immediate families only with the permission of their attorneys.

And so to visit Hillary Van Wetter again, we had to go back to Weldon Pine, who was less accommodating now that he understood the
Miami Times
’s only interest in his career was the trial and conviction of the most famous client he ever had.

He left us waiting outside his office for an hour, and then opened the door, looked at us, and turned back inside, expecting us to follow him in.

He sat down behind his desk and looked at his watch. His wrist was as thick as a leg. “I don’t see good intentions in this,” he said. “Building up a man’s hopes …”

He turned to Charlotte suddenly and said, “Young lady, you are an attractive girl with your whole life ahead of you.…”

He stopped and my brother spoke. “We need to talk to him again,” he said.

“For what?”

“He said he was working with his uncle.”

Weldon Pine laughed out loud. “What was he out working on at night, Mr. Reporter?” he said. “You think I didn’t ask him that? You know what he said?” The old attorney shook his head. “You come all the way up here to find out what Hillary and his uncle was working on, you wasted your time and everybody else’s.”

The air conditioner in the window shook and changed pitch.

“We need to talk to him again,” my brother said.

Weldon Pine thought it over and then lit a cigarette and picked up the telephone on his desk and told his secretary to get him the state prison.

“I ought to charge you people by the damn hour,” he said.

“I’
D LIKE TO FOCUS
your attention to the night Sheriff Call was killed,” my brother said.

Hillary Van Wetter was sitting in manacles, staring at Charlotte. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a shirt that she’d tied in a knot just under her breasts.

She had changed her hair twice on the ride from Lately, pulling it back into a ponytail once and then, a few miles later, disengaging the clasp holding it together and allowing it to fall more naturally across her shoulders. She checked herself that way in the rearview mirror and then took a can of hair spray out of her purse and went over it in small, circular motions, still looking in the mirror, until it glistened.

An hour later, I could still taste hair spray.

“Where’s your dress?” he said.

She looked down at herself, surprised.

“Mr. Van Wetter,” my brother said, “we only have fifteen minutes.…”

Hillary Van Wetter turned to him then. “Paperboy,” he said, “I wisht you’d quit talking to me about time. It’s depressing.”

“You testified in court you’d been working with your uncle.”

“I did, did I?” he said, and turned back to her. “Everybody in this place wears pants,” he said. “I like a dress.”

He fixed his attention for a moment on Yardley Acheman, who was sitting near the door and had been watching Charlotte, trying her on for size in some way until Hillary Van Wetter caught him at it. Something about the room or Hillary stirred Yardley’s interest in her.

Charlotte nodded at Hillary and smiled, doing both those things slowly, drawing his attention away from Yardley Acheman.

“There ain’t no point to come see me looking like that,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he looked away.

In the silence that followed my brother said, “What kind of work were you doing?”

Hillary Van Wetter looked at him without answering.

“What were you out doing at night?” my brother said.

Hillary shook his head.

“Lawn work,” he said finally.

Yardley Acheman sat up in his chair. “As in grass?” A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Where?”

Hillary Van Wetter turned to Charlotte again before he answered him, staring at her until she crossed her arms, covering herself against him. “It ain’t that hard to find,” he said.

Then, without changing anything, he was speaking to her. “You wear a dress next time, hear?” he said.

“All right,” she said quietly.

“I need to find your uncle,” my brother said.

Hillary Van Wetter stood up, the chain connecting his leg irons dropping onto the bare floor. “Yessir, well, good luck on that,” he said, and then he started toward the door, walking like a man whose trousers have dropped around his feet, without another look at Charlotte.

“Where is he?” my brother said.

Hillary walked to the door to be let out.

“Mr. Van Wetter? Can you tell me how to get to his place?”

He turned and looked at my brother again. “You got a boat, paperboy?”

My brother shook his head.

“Then I can’t tell you how to get there.”

And then the guard opened the door. “You entitled to another seven minutes,” he said.

Hillary Van Wetter shuffled past him and out of the room. “I been visited as many minutes today as I can stand,” he said.

S
HE SAT IN THE CORNER
of the backseat on the way back, where I couldn’t see her in the mirror. Yardley Acheman was back there too, and he lit two cigarettes and gave one to her.

She took it the same way it was offered, without a word, and when she drew the smoke into her lungs, I could hear the catching in her breath.

“Tell me something, will you?” Yardley Acheman said. “What do you want with them?”

She didn’t answer.

“All these boys on death row, writing all those letters,” he said. “What do you want?”

“I want to help them,” she said, and he laughed out loud.

E
ACH NIGHT AFTER WORK
I drove back to Thorn and my father’s house, always thinking of Charlotte Bless. You may have seen dogs rolling on something dead in the grass, wanting the scent in their coats. That was the way I wanted her.