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Volume 26, Number 1, 2002 reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum and Joyce Corrington* THE SOUTHERN REPORTER John William Corrington I It was late in the afternoon when Judge Lambert took a break. It was after a particularly bad clash between Caswell, the prosecutor, and Tony Vallee, the defense attorney. Judge Lambert, an old-timer who had sat on the First Judicial District Court in Shreveport since 1936, who had grown old and even mild on the bench, told Caswell and Vallee that one more such encounter would interrupt the trial while both counsel served a day or two in the Caddo Parish Courthouse jail. –With time enough to contemplate the monument down below, dedicated to the memory of the Confederate Soldier, who did his duty and held his tongue. Dewey Domingue shook his head, spun his stenotype around, and walked out of the courtroom, down the length of the long antiseptic courthouse hall toward the coffee machine. He put his quarter in and watched while the plastic cup filled. A long time ago, Mrs. Mitchell, the deputy clerk, had kept a pot of dark brew cut with chicory on a hot plate in the clerk’s office. The coffee had been good then, the way it should be. The way Louisiana coffee always was. But she had died in 1951, and her replacement had moved out the coffeepot and had a machine put in. Dewey stood drinking the thin, tasteless stuff, watching witnesses, attorneys, parties to suits walking up and down the hall. He had seen it all already. Seen them and their antecedents walking up and down, stopping to talk in twos or threes, standing alone, smoking, leaning against the wall, staring into the late afternoon sun blankly, as if the stench of cigar smoke and snuff which no deodorant could purge from the hall had tranced them all. In the First Judicial Court in Shreveport, both civil and criminal matters were heard. A reporter never knew what he might draw. One day, it was a suit on an open account. The next day it might be an ax murder or a mother who had decided to toss her children down an incinerator. Sometimes Dewey couldn’t believe the words that flowed out from under his hands onto the tape. There were times when, staring down at the testimony, he could not believe those words had passed through his fingers. Sometimes, especially lately, he got the words wrong because he didn’t even know what they meant. Q. What did you do then? [358] gulley. He dropped an uh I tried to catch the Horse an an uh it was maybe fifty sixty bags uncut and uh uh he come up again an he tried to off me an hh you uh know uh . . .Gibberish. And yet every time, no matter what they had done, there was always an appeal. Always the translation of those cryptic tapes into human language. Murray did that. He was Dewey’s typist. Had been since 1949. Before that, he had been in the army. Murray couldn’t remember how he had learned to type, or so he had once told Dewey. Only that he had learned when he found out in 1941 that if you could use a typing machine, they didn’t put you in a rifle company. It had been a natural response for Murray. Yet now he was ashamed of it. When he drank a lot, he would tell Dewey that by rights he ought to be lying dead in the surf of some stinking Pacific atoll or long mouldering under the soil of France or Germany. –One day I hadn’t never seen no damned typewriter. The next week I was doing sixty words a minute. Now that’s a natural-born coward for you. And if it had took a hundred and twenty, I’m mortally sure I could of done it. Ain’t that a shame? Can’t hardly spell his name till the hard rain starts to falling. Then all of a sudden he’s a miracle worker, huh? –I never knew anybody worked to get himself in a situation where he was bound to die, Dewey had told Murray early on. –Hell, I would have got to be a great cook, but I couldn’t boil me an egg without I messed up the yolk. Don’t fret about them days. Man can’t spend his life looking backward, can he? –Well, but I do, Murray said, and drank some more, and then went home out to Dixie Gardens where he had some kind of rundown old home and a wife. He had never asked Dewey out to his house, not in almost thirty years of working together, and Dewey never pried into anything, never asked any questions. You didn’t go to prying when you worked with a man and he did his job. Dewey had learned that a long time ago. You take Murray. All he was was a typist, but he always came to court. Said he could do a better job of transcribing when he’d heard it all for himself. Dewey reckoned he was still down there in the courtroom waiting for it all to begin again. Murray never drank coffee. He drank beer and an awful amount of hard liquor. But he never missed an assignment, was never late. What else can you ask? Dewey finished his coffee, crushed the flimsy cup contemptuously in his hand, and tossed it into a wastebasket lined with a plastic sack of some kind. Let me tell you what you can do with your damned machine coffee and your plastic garbage sacks, Dewey was thinking when Hilda came by. Hilda was old. She was older than the present courthouse. She had worked for the First Judicial Court since when nobody could remember. She cleaned up the courthouse, the clerks’ and judges’ offices. She was old and black and angry and everybody made room for her and nobody gave her any trouble. Hilda paid no attention to you until you had been around the courts for twenty years or so. She was not about to clutter up her memory with names and faces and particulars of fly-by-night people. Enough trouble to keep straight the ones who mattered, the ones who were there all the time. She remembered as if it were yesterday the stir when Huey Long was elected governor. Caddo Parish had gone against him, but Hilda swore she had paid her poll tax and voted for Huey. He was a North Louisiana boy, a Protestant, and had no use for New Orleans. What more could you ask? They said he was a socialist. But what would he do about a parish in his own stomping ground that went against him? –Didn’t do a damned thing, Hilda would recount, her black face seamed with a repetition of laughter fifty years from its first expression. –Didn’t do nothing bad. Didn’t do nothing. No road repairs, no hep for the schools. Lissen, Old Huey lef ‘em alone . . . Strickly alone. Never did ‘em nothing. And they jus’ couldn’t get up to faultin’ him. Them was quiet years, don’t you know? –What you say? Hilda asked Dewey. –Can’t say it, Momee, he answered. If you were an old-timer, you called Hilda Momee. Nobody new had ever tried it. –How about you? –I hear youall got a rape trial in there, she said. –Not yet, Dewey smiled. –All the criminal assault I heard about so far is what them lawyers has been doing to each other. Hilda didn’t smile back. She stuck her mop in the wheeled bucket and took out her pack of Camels. –It’s a bad one, she said. –Girl name of Miranda Ferriday come up from Coushatta and got her a job over to Jumbo’s Bar in Bossier City. Nice girl. Lookin’ to go to Meadows-Draughn Business. Had some typin’ and shorthand from Coushatta High. Fella name of Santidy started comin’ in, sniffin’ round her. She cute, an’ Jumbo make ’em wear them cut-off dresses, see? One night he took her out. Hardly got clear of the bar when he went after her. Poor thing never had a chance. Santidy a big man. Come from out west somewhere I don’t know. He did it, though. He did it, and that’s sure. The essence of a courthouse is the play of stories that moves within it. In the clerk’s office, the civil sheriff’s office, between the judges’ clerks, between lawyers, between the women who clean up the court-rooms and the blind man who sells sandwiches and magazines in the lobby, there is a constant current of telling and hearing, of guessing and supposing as to the cases that are being acted out before the bench. The stories have no necessary connection with what will enter the records of each case. The rules of evidence do not constrain clerks and custodians, deliverymen and lawyers outside the purlieus of the court. What passes in the hallways of the courthouse may be strange, inaccurate, tainted with the passions of the storyteller. Still it may be nearer the truth than those pages that will be read by the court of appeal. –That’s sure, Hilda said again. –Santidy done it, and that poor girl fit him, see? She done tried to keep him off her, keep him away, but he wasn’t havin’ none of that. He meant to git what he went for, see? An’ he did. Yes, he got it. I say jus’ lucky they cotch him. –Who got him? Dewey asked, now for the first time interested in the case, intrigued. He put much faith in Hilda’s version of things. Over the years, had there been a morning line on the result of trials, and had he bet Hilda’s insights, he would have been a wealthy man. She knew. –Well, the police got him. What you think? Happens that poor girl’s brother a police. Come up out of Coushatta a while back. What? Maybe two years. Got him a job with the Benton Sheriff’s Office. Little girl live with him, see? An’ this Santidy goin’ to rape her out in front of the house, not even knowin’ her brother a police an’ him in the very house right then. Ain’t that a shame? –Well, if that’s so, I reckon it is, Dewey said. –What you mean if that’s so? –I reckon I mean, a lot of women claim . . . Hilda looked disgusted. –You bet. Lots do. An’ a good number be lyin’. But not this one, see? Hilda drew on her Camel cigarette, leaned back against the wall. Her eyes, old and filmed, seemed softer than Dewey could remember. He paid a great deal of attention to the old woman. They were friends, contemporaries. They knew what few others knew. –You know, Hilda said almost nostalgically. –I can remember when a man did that to a woman was as good as dead . . . Never got to trial. . . . –But . . . wasn’t it mostly . . . ? –Nigger men? Sure enough. When they took ’em out, I used to say, shame. That’s an awful thing . . . Hilda mashed out her cigarette on the sole of her shoe. –Sure, that’s what I used to say. But now is now. An’ I know what’s goin’ down jus’ as well as anybody. An’ I tell you this: was they to go to lynchin’ again, an’ be fair . . . Take ’em all out that did what that damn Santidy did, never mind no color . . . you know what? –What? –I wouldn’t say shame. I wouldn’t say one damn thing but good enough for ’em. Dewey was surprised. –That’s hard, he said. –Now, Momee . . . –Don’t Momee me, boy. I’m an old woman, an’ I see what we got goin’ nowadays. You know what we come to? No Jesus. That’s what we got. You turn away from Jesus, what you expect? –Not much, Dewey said. –No, I wouldn’t expect too much. –You ain’t got no Jesus, your ass in a sling, see? –I believe so, Dewey said soberly. And he did. That was what he believed. He had believed it for a long time. Dewey Domingue had come up from the Florida Parishes to Shreveport in 1939. He had worked in Hammond on the railroad and out of Madisonville crabbing and had, before he was twenty, gone into New Orleans against the advice of all his people, hoping to better himself. He had a strong clean handwriting taught him by his mother, and he had come to spell English words tolerably on his own. He was not ashamed of his French, but he wanted to go forward in the world, and you didn’t go forward using Cajun French. No, what you did was learn that English that the big people, the important people used. So he had gotten himself a job in the New Orleans Civil District Courts. He had learned short-hand after awhile. They paid good money. But God knows he had not bettered himself. It was just as his people had said. New Orleans was a terrible town, and no decent young man could sustain himself there. Not for long. He had lost his faith in New Orleans. He had consorted with whores and men who lived off them. He had taken to the night life. Lord, the things he had seen. Women shameless and forlorn, stripping off their clothes, offering themselves on table tops and long oaken bars. Drunkenness and gambling. Even sodomy. If there was a filth in the world that had not found its way to New Orleans, Dewey did not know its name. Except for one drunken Sunday afternoon when he had accidentally stumbled into Saint Louis Cathedral behind a pack of gawking tourists, he had not been to mass since he left the parishes. Was that bettering himself? Looking backward, Dewey could remember those days as if they were disconnected scenes from an old movie. He remembered working the courts during the day, his mind already on sundown, on the Quarter. He remembered the heat that would rise within him, the fantasies that played across the ragged unfinished stage of his mind as he sat writing, amanuensis with the panoply and color and tension of Saint Anthony’s temptations firing his hopes for evening. At last, more to assure himself those evenings than for any other reason, he had set up housekeeping with a girl from Baton Rouge no wiser than he. It had been the strangest game: the two of them putting aside whatever they had been before they came to New Orleans, wordlessly pretending that this was their place, this the form of their lives. Each night they would go from one steamy club to the next. The one run by a woman, gross and overweight, who nestled an enormous ruby between her vast breasts and smiled off questions, saying that the blood-red stone was the price her virtue had brought so long before when things were really good, before the Navy had put everyone out on the street. Or the one run by a man from New York who had once piloted the China Clipper until the liquor took him, and he found himself in the bowels of Shanghai when it was the sewer of the world. They would drink and sing and dance until they were exhausted with the world. Then they would go back to their tiny one-room apartment on Royal Street, turn on the oscillating fan and make what passed for love between them until dawn. Time for him to go to court. Time for her to go to the oyster bar and wash and clean until opening time. He had known something was wrong. Not the sin or the shame of it, not simply the commonness, the trashiness of living that way. It had gone deeper. It would be years later before he would find the words to say, even to himself, what had really been wrong with it. It was that, growing up in the parishes, somewhere, somehow, he had come to expect more. Was what he felt for the girl (named Viola, for all it mattered then or later; from Clinton, not Baton Rouge, for all anyone cared at the time or afterward) all there was to feel? Was it some flaw in him or in her? In both of them or in the world? They had met and hungered and said it was fine to eat when you are hungry, isn’t it? Who makes promises to gumbo or fried trout? Being free is doing what you want to do, isn’t it? Sure, Dewey had told her, a little less certainly than the question had been asked–but just as sure he wanted to be free. Freedom wasn’t a place or a thing, but what it seemed to be was a golden glow suffusing whatever else the idea of it touched. They were free. New Orleans was free. This life was what it was to be free. Wasn’t it? Sure, Dewey told himself. I can say what I want, do what I want. Can’t I? Still there existed the shadow he could hardly trace through the days and nights, some faintest sour residuum that only forced its way into consciousness when he was exhausted during a trial recess or very early in the morning as he strode out under the faded parchment of the sky in the dark streets before dawn. Then there had been that afternoon in August when it had been too hot to go on, when the judge had recessed court on account of the ungodly heat, saying they would reconvene at seven in the evening and go forward in that way until the heat wave broke. Dewey had been upset, irritated that he would have to lose a night on the town, walking and talking, drinking and dancing with his woman, sitting with the sports and musicians in the clubs, listening to the pulse of real life as it drummed in the streets after dark. When he reached the apartment, he heard sounds inside. The heat was awful, enough to make his head swim. Maybe the sounds were from next door. Maybe he ought to go down to the A & P and pick up a dozen bottles of beer. Maybe he should go by the oyster bar. He shut his eyes, key in hand, defeated, broken already, with nothing fine and free to do or say, nothing at all left but to practice the tiny heroism of turning the key in his own door and walking into the future he already knew lay spread in the stark heat of midday there. All she had said, almost dreamily, was –Oh, shit, Dewey, what are you doing home so early? Later, sitting with his fifth double bourbon in hand, he would remember it as if it had been etched in the contours of his brain so that another angle, another view would confront him no matter what direction he might choose to push his thought. The fact was not so awful as the encounter, the reality of it being stamped in his memory past remove, past casting out or burying or even attempting to forget. Later, sitting there, he thought he had not loved her, could never have loved her. But if that was so, than where did the pain come from? Was it just the instantaneous sight of that pale, naked, hairy body he had glimpsed for less than a moment moving rhythmically, absurdly, over her? Was it some diminution of his own manhood that had called inexorably for violence he had not even thought of at that moment? No. He had not loved her. But she had been what he had voluntarily put in the place of love. He had made himself a life full of substitutions, hadn’t he? Surely he had. He had burned himself out so thoroughly that whatever there might have been in life beyond was now barred to him forever. Not by law or creed or opinion, but by his own loss of feeling, that horror and cynicism now as much a part of him as his eyes, his ears–his memories. He had drunk then. For a brief while, he had managed to hold on to his job at the Civil District Courts, but finally that had gone, the judicial administrator angrily firing him when it was found that the stenographic transcript for a whole trial was a hopeless muddle, which even Dewey himself could not interpret. After that, he had taken to drinking cheap wine and sitting in Lafayette Park in the afternoons as autumn came on. He talked to the men who came there, and they told him that life made no sense at all, that it was good to watch dogs seeking lamp posts or fire hydrants, and to listen to music when one could. But that life made no sense at all. He did odd jobs for people who had known him in better days. When there were no jobs, there was the Salvation Army with good rich soup, a dry corner in a deserted warehouse where amid the cooling nights he could hear the distant, hopeless foghorns of ships entering and leaving the port, sounding as if they were mourning a home they would never reach, perhaps one they could not even recall. It was deep winter when his string played out. He awoke to find himself lying on the grass at the base of the Lee Monument, his eyes suddenly open, staring up toward the chill sky, and finding there the image of Robert E. Lee, arms crossed, hat pulled over his eyes, staring north where the enemy lay, where it had always been. The next thing he remembered was a young resident at Charity Hospital telling him that the Huey P. Long Bridge was a better and easier way to go than what he was doing to himself. And after that, he remembered being on the street outside the hospital, walking along Tulane Avenue back toward downtown, where everything had happened to him. The Huey P. Long Bridge lay behind him. Perhaps there was an inch or two left to his string. As he walked, he found he had no feelings at all–but still there was an awful thirst. Then, almost to Canal Street, at the verge of the Quarter, he had seen an ancient truck from which men were selling produce: oranges, strawberries, tomatoes, cushaws. There were two of them, and they were speaking French. Yes, of course they would share their lunch with him. How had he come to live in this place? No, of course they didn’t. No, they came here only to sell what they grew. This was no place for a decent man to live. Hadn’t his priest told him about this place? Yes, Dewey lied. Of course he had. One more question: Would there be a little work for a man who wanted to . . . walk away? Afterward, when he was himself again, or at least some self that could work and sleep and leave the liquor alone, he had considered going home. Bastien and Robert, his truck-farming friends, said that was the thing to do. Home. Or west to Evangeline Parish where even now people lived life the way it was meant to be lived. No, Dewey thought. At least not yet. There has got to be something else that has to be done. Maybe feelings can be rescued, found again, but not home. Not with a family or normal people watching, wondering what has gone wrong inside their kinsman. Better another place. Surely better a place where one is . . . What? Free? Then he had found himself a map of Louisiana one Sunday afternoon, and looked it over. After considering for the length of that long dreary Sunday afternoon, he had packed his things, gone to the bus depot, and bought a ticket for Shreveport, the farthest place he had any knowledge of. He had heard of Texas and Mississippi. He knew there were such places as Arkansas, New York, and France, but those places had no more real existence for Dewey than did Samarkand or Tycho or the Asteroid Belt. Not in 1939. So he had gone to Shreveport and found himself a job there in the courts. Lord knows he had tried hard to live a good life. And it had turned out to be easy. There was no Bourbon Street there, no steady, inescapable invitation to sin, no depravity so general and sustained hat a man could not avoid it if he walked out into the open streets. All a man had to do was mind his business. There was Bossier City, surely. But that was across the river, and he did not go there. Had no call to go there. He did his work and went home and listened to the radio and read the Shreveport Times. On weekends, he would ride out to Ford Park and walk under the tall pines, or go to the public pier on Cross Lake and hire a boat and fish. He would bring a box of worms and fish from before daylight until after dark, often taking home a mess of bream and small cat. Since he had no place to keep them, he always gave them to Murray. Years earlier, he had hoped–perhaps even expected–that Murray would ask him out to Dixie Gardens to share the fish, fried in cornmeal with hush puppies, french fries, and a little salad. But that had not happened, and after a few years, Dewey had stopped expecting that it might. Still he went on handing the fish he caught over to Murray as if they were in some way an established tribute in kind, something he owed. He snapped out of his remembering in time to see Hilda limping off, pushing her mop and bucket before her. She turned back, fixed Dewey with her eyes. –You gonna see. That Santidy guilty as sin, you hear? –Well, Dewey said, and Hilda disappeared around a corner. But now Dewey was interested. All there had been so far was Vallee, the defense, against Caswell, the prosecutor. Rhetoric against rhetoric. But if Hilda was right, as she usually was, then maybe he should pay attention. Usually he didn’t. Nothing was at issue but somebody’s time, somebody’s money. It was funny how everything got reduced to that in court. Somebody was going to serve time or he wasn’t. Somebody was going to have to pay money or he wasn’t. But Hilda didn’t care about that. She never had anything to say about a case unless there was more at issue. Dewey would pay attention now. Murray came out of the courtroom, wiping his forehead. He almost always came to the trials. He would joke and say he had to be at the trials to make out Dewey’s transcript, but they both knew better. Dewey was the best they had at the stenotype in the First Judicial Court. No, Murray came whenever he didn’t have a transcript to type up because he loved the courts. Dewey understood that. Murray had been hurt in the war. He had lost a leg sitting in a headquarters company office. A shell had come in and killed almost everyone in the office. Somehow, Murray had survived. He should have been proud, Dewey reasoned. How many clerk-typists had been awarded the Purple Heart? But somehow that shell had made Murray ashamed. Now, even though bereft of his leg, he seemed to live in a world of his own, wishing that leg had been lost in some better venture. He had once told Dewey that lesser men had been injured in the Battle of Bulge or the crossing of the Remagen Bridge. Others had lost much less lying amid the ruin of their own flesh, staring across the Rhine toward the smoking distant bank, like Moses at Pisgah, seeing with sadness and relief a shore they would never reach. To lose so much sitting behind a typewriter, typing the company sick list was a terrible thing, Murray would say. –Judge is ready, Murray said. They began again. Vallee’s objections served as punctuations to the testimony. Police officer who had been called. Her brother, her boss at Jumbo’s. Then Caswell, the assistant district attorney, called Miranda to the stand. Dewey watched her walk toward the witness stand. She was small, with dark eyes and long jet-black hair and smooth olive skin. Dewey watched her, his eyes following as she walked to the stand, eyes down, and seated herself in a silence drawn around her like a shawl. Miranda Ferriday did not look like a North Louisiana girl to Dewey. He remembered such girls in the bayou country, in Hammond, in New Orleans. He was drawn to her. Dewey did not care for the washed-out blonds and dull brown-haired girls with freckles and pale skin who peopled the upper parishes. But then he had not much thought of girls since he had left New Orleans for the shame of those days. This girl was different. As she was sworn, Dewey could see the two of them, him and her, together. Lord, how long had it been since he had had such feelings? Twenty years? No, more nearly thirty. It didn’t matter. As Miranda sat waiting for Caswell to begin his questions, Dewey’s fingers poised above the stenotype. From somewhere inside him there arose that power and horror that he almost forgot he possessed merely by being a man. He was astonished at himself. The old Adam might lie silent for twenty years or more and yet not be slain. But then Caswell began, and Dewey’s fingers followed him. Caswell was gentle, considerate. He was a large man, coarse and overweight, his shirt collar pressing into his neck. But it seemed that he knew how awful Miranda’s experience had been, how difficult it was for her to recall it, to testify about it before the court and the jury. Still, in order that justice be done, and that others might not suffer as she had, she realized the importance of her testimony. –Isn’t that so? Caswell asked. Miranda looked up at him and nodded slowly, her expression suddenly intense, her eyes watchful. She told of her home down in Coushatta. Her father had owned a filling station until he came down with consumption and had been sent to the Pines TB Sanatorium. Her mother had died in a house fire, and she had come to Shreveport to be with her brother, a deputy sheriff in Benton, Louisiana, Bossier Parish. Miranda admitted that she did not like the work at Jumbo’s. But Mr. Jumbo was nice to her. He was himself a retired policeman, a friend of her brother’s. Anyhow, you had to have work. Nobody in her family didn’t work. Everyone was supposed to work, weren’t they? Yes, she had met one Santidy there. He had come from the west. He said California. Is there a Bakersville? Bakersfield? All right, yes, I reckon. And he would come in most especially on Monday and Friday evenings, usually late. He liked funny drinks. Sidecars, grasshoppers, screwdrivers, Manhattans. He was tall and dark and always laughing. He noticed her. He talked to her. He took to leaving her five-dollar tips. He liked to buy drinks for everybody in the place and to have people notice him. He worked up at Oil City, sometimes in East Texas: Kilgore, Longview, Tyler, Gladewater, Marshall. It was his job to strip old wells. He was one who knew how to get the last drop out of wells nearly empty. There was good money in it. He used to laugh and ask Miranda if she was a stripper, too. She would blush and ignore him then. As Miranda went on, interrupted by Caswell’s questions, Dewey let her voice carry him back to the long cuts and bayous around Lake Ferdinand, south of New Orleans. He remembered trips with his father to those places, austere, the banks and shores covered with harsh brush and palmetto. His hands worked automatically, putting down the words she said. He could close his eyes remembering and go on typing, listening and recording without hearing or caring. Still, he did care, and he could not tell just why. He wished he could take a break now. He needed to go outside. On a certain night, Miranda said, Santidy had come in. He was flush with money, buying round after round of drinks, people applauding when someone behind the bar would, for a moment, cut off the jukebox and tell who had bought the drinks for the house. The people at the tables, along the bar had come to know Santidy and appreciate him. He drank and she served. It came near closing time. He asked if she had a way home. She said, No, no she didn’t. He laughed and touched her, saying, Let me take you home, honey. You know it’s dark and a long, long night. At first she ignored him. But after all he was very popular. Somehow she supposed that someone so well known, so much thought of in the place, would be trustworthy. At the very least for the distance between Jumbo’s bar and her brother’s home. But it had not turned out that way. No, rather he had taken her in his car, driven away from Jumbo’s, gone this way and that, twisting up one street and down another until her head had begun to spin. Then, somewhere along the levee, he had stopped the car, turned to her and told her in the most obscene terms what he expected, demanded of her. She had almost fainted, but before she could, he was upon her. The rest of it was difficult to follow, the outpouring of one who could hardly remember coherently what she had to tell. What had happened to her? Dewey listened to it all. His fingers moved, independent of what went on, but still he heard. Santidy had brought her home, sure enough. He had stopped his car out in front of her brother’s house, where he had said terrible things to her, where he had taken her again, done what he wanted to do with her. She had fought against him, had cried out, had wept and pled with him. But none of it had mattered. And when he had done with her, he had laughed once more, opened the car door, and pushed her into the street. Like garbage. And driven away. Caswell patted his brow with a folded handkerchief and sat down. –Thank you, Miss Ferriday, he said. –That’s all I have. There was a moment’s pause then. Dewey relaxed, thinking, Hilda was right. Now that’s the way it was. Then Vallee stood up for cross. Dewey hoped Judge Lambert might call for a recess. But the judge looked at Vallee and said nothing. Dewey spaced his tape and waited. At first Vallee was as quiet, as gentle as Caswell had been. He asked Miranda about her past down in the country, asked about her home life, about her religious education, asked if she had had boyfriends back then. Miranda answered openly, like one without guilt. But then the questioning closed in, became more personal. Vallee began stalking her like a wolf, moving question by question from counsel’s table toward the witness stand until he enclosed it, his arms almost around it as he pressed one question after another. Dewey didn’t like his method. It was almost as if he were embracing her, drawing her close, as if his questions were intimate rather than public. He wanted to know about her sexual experience as a young girl. He wanted to know about her lovers, and he was so close to her, it was as if he deemed himself her next friend rather than an attorney doing what was expected, demanded of him. Vallee wanted to know why she had chosen Jumbo’s as a place to work. Surely she had known that Jumbo’s was a swinging place, a place where the live crowd came. Hadn’t she picked Jumbo’s for that very reason? Hadn’t she come up from the parishes looking for action? Wanting excitement? Wasn’t that the way it was? Dewey made a record, listening and typing. Yet still he heard. Surely no one saw him shudder as Vallee pressed on, his voice soft and insinuating. He had heard so many of them, Dewey had. Lawyers who could somehow alter reality to suit their cause. It was like listening to the serpent arguing with Eve. Only Eve hadn’t been to law school as the serpent surely had. Q. Now Miss Ferriday, you’re a grown woman, aren’t you?The lawyers went up to the bench before Judge Lambert, and Dewey relaxed for a moment. There was a nice irony in the fact that when the lawyers reached the very peak of their concern, moving to the bench to argue a point of law, the reporter could relax, because their argument, however intense, was not recorded. Dewey closed his eyes and let all his faculties ease off. Part of being a court reporter was responding to the court, knowing when to catch every word, and knowing when to relax. Over his shoulder, he heard the cut and slash of argumentation passing between Caswell and Vallee. But he also knew who would prevail. In a close matter, the defense always prevailed. Judge Lambert would have it otherwise, but he did not want to be reversed. That would most likely call for another trial. Judge Lambert did not want another trial. He was old now and tired. If he could, he would mete out the death sentence for rape on a prima facie case. But that was not possible. Not with the weight of federal courts above seemingly committed to the proposition that every criminal defendant was a prince, about to be victimized by the prosecution. So Dewey rested, knowing that when they went back on the record, it would be Vallee’s question. That was how the game played. Sure enough, when the conference at the bench was done, Vallee asked his question again. Q. Miss Ferriday, let me ask you again, when Mr. Santidy asked you out . . . asked you to leave Jumbo’s with him . . .There was a sudden silence, and Dewey’s head turned around to see her. She sat in the witness box helpless, trying to find words to tell the truth. A. No. I mean, I never thought . . .It was almost dark now. They had broken for dinner. Dewey had picked up a chicken salad sandwich down in the lobby before the blind man shut up for the day. He had gotten a half-pint of milk, too. Now he sat in the back bench of the courtroom, eating slowly. Murray limped up and sat beside him. –Shit, I’m tired. Ain’t you? –You know it, Dewey said. –It’s a goddamned shame, Murray said. –I mean having to go through this crap. –Huh? –I mean, you know that lousy bastard did it. He raped her. –Well . . . Yes, I reckon . . . I mean . . . –Aw, come on, Dewey. You better believe it. I mean, that little girl thought she had a ride home, and he pulled her down . . . Dewey chewed for a long time. Then he swallowed and washed it down with some milk. –I just can’t hardly believe a man would do that to a young girl. I mean . . . even today . . . Murray snorted, and a rill of coffee ran down his chin. –I be goddamned if I ever will understand you, Dewey. I mean you live in the same world with the rest of us. You read about that whore in Chicago who wanted to go to a party and couldn’t find no babysitter for her six-months-old baby girl? Huh? Yeah, well, it was in the Journal. What she did? Well, she threw the baby down a trash incinerator. From the sixth floor. Yeah, well, that’s today for you. This world is a shit heap. I mean, that greasy-looking bastard Santidy, he done just what Caswell makes out that he did. I wisht they’d just let me have him. Boy, you just give me five minutes alone with him . . . Us veterans know how to handle ’em . . . Then Murray stood up slowly and limped back and forth in front of the judge’s bench saying what he would do to Santidy if they let him have the motherless sonofabitch. It was bad, what he said, and Dewey almost gagged on his sandwich. While Murray limped and fulminated, Caswell, the prosecutor, came in. He stood back and listened for a minute or two. Then he told Murray he wished to hell he had him on the jury. –That greaseball is going to walk, Caswell said, staring at his fingernails. –You think so? Dewey asked, surprised. –Sure, Caswell said. –Easiest thing in the world. I don’t know why we even try these things. Ought to take rape off the books. Maybe put it under assault with a deadly weapon. Murray and Caswell laughed bitterly together. For a moment Dewey didn’t understand. –Everybody’s a whore–except your own wife or mother or sister. That’s the way these goddamn juries see it. I bet I’ve lost twenty cases like this if I’ve lost one. –That’s . . . terrible, Dewey said. –Sure it’s terrible, Caswell told him. –But that’s the system, ol’ buddy. Can’t diddle with the system, right? Caswell was tired, Dewey could see that. He let his bulk settle into one of the chairs back of counsel’s table. He was not an old man, rather a man of indecipherable age, probably in his forties. But his face was heavy, lined, wise–like the countenance of an elephant, full of scars and wrinkles. Dewey seemed to remember that Caswell had been local commander of the American Legion. –I’ve won a lot of ’em and lost a lot of ’em, you understand? Caswell closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair he had chosen. –Lord God, I been every way you can be. We used to be able to put some of ‘em in the chair. All you had to do was spring that girl on him. Let her tell folks what had happened. Caswell opened his eyes, grinned slowly. –But that was when your old ordinary juror still believed there was such a thing as a nice girl. Seems like a long time ago. –Makes you wonder, Murray said. –Maybe the system don’t work. I mean, what did we fight for? So some nasty bastard could come in here and do whatever the hell he wants. I mean, a girl like that . . . She had to work, and them places . . . Caswell stared at the polished limestone behind the judge’s bench. –Nothing in this shit-eating society works any more. The whole damned thing’s coming unglued. You think this is a bad case? Hell, at least the girl’s alive. He didn’t push her eyes out. He didn’t cut off her tits. I try capital cases. Murders like you wouldn’t believe if I was to tell you. Absolute proof, and the goddamned jury hands ‘em five years. Just time to get ready for the next one. Caswell told them the circumstances and details of a recent case. Dewey and Murray looked at each other, sickened. Caswell laughed sardonically. –That’s what you can do to a nine-year-old girl in Louisiana. And get twenty years. Parole maybe in seven. –My God, Dewey said, numbed by what he had heard. –Evidentiary rules, Caswell snorted. –That dirty piece of filth had three assaults on minors on his record. He’d been a time bomb waiting to go off. Could I show that? Hell, no. He hadn’t been convicted. One thing and another, and they’d dropped the charges or let him plead to a lesser offense. They knew that bastard was gonna kill a child . . . And when he did, I couldn’t tell the jury what he’d been pulled in for three times before . . . –Maybe we’re trying the wrong people, Murray said ominously. –You want things to change? Caswell asked rhetorically. –I can give you a formula. Let every last family in this country have a rape or a murder in it–not a robbery. That won’t get it. It’s got to be one of the big ones. Better it happen all on the same night . . . –Like to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, Dewey put in. –From the White House to the cropper’s shack down on the river. Then these damned beasts of burden would start handing out death sentences like prizes in Cracker Jack. Give me five, six hundred executions a year for ten or fifteen years. You’d be downright amazed how quiet things would get. –Them as do wrong has got to pay the price, Murray said. –Everybody knows that. –Bullshit, Caswell said easily. –Nobody knows no such damned thing. I tell you what. People kinda like to see a smooth operator get by with something. You look at that girl, Miranda. Putting law and decency aside, who wouldn’t like to get her in a car, talk to her. Kiss her. So then she decides she’s gone far enough, but your imagination is already a long way past a little kiss, so you kind of manhandle her a little. You pull off her blouse. None of that old high school fooling with buttons. This is the big time. You just grab it by the front and . . . Ah, look there. Big fine boobs almost busting out of her brassiere. But that can wait, cause when you see what she’s got, you go for the skirt. Get in between her legs with one hand, cover her mouth with the other. Lay on top of her. Don’t let her get loose . . . Oh, them long luscious legs . . . Dewey and Murray looked at one another, then back at Caswell, whose eyes glinted as he went on in more and more bald and intimate detail, describing what it must have been like to rape Miranda Ferriday, rape her right down into the ground. Dewey couldn’t help being drawn along, reenacting in his own mind what Caswell was saying. It was awful, but in the recesses of his mind, Dewey could feel that old Adam pulling, clawing at the structure of his own control. When Caswell finished, he was breathing rapidly, smiling, looking from Murray to Dewey and back again. –Now when you come right down to it, saving the law and decency, all that’s worth a little risk, ain’t it? I mean, just reckon you didn’t know any better, or even knowing, didn’t give a damn? Say you’d been raised in California. Hell of a way to pass an hour, huh? Murray was blushing. Dewey stared at the floor. –Shit, Murray said in an injured tone. –I thought you was against that kind of thing. Caswell’s expression of visionary pleasure vanished as if someone had shut a door in his heavy red face. –I am, he said. –I sure as hell am. But I know what sin is. A man’s got to know what sin is if he’s gonna fight it. You see that, don’t you? –He hadn’t ought to lust after the sin he’s fighting, Dewey said quietly. –He ought not to know it all that well . . . Caswell shrugged, heaved his bulk out of the chair, glanced at his watch. –You boys are nice. But you’re shit-kickers. You got it in for Santidy ’cause he cut that little girl. I got it in for him ‘cause he broke the law. Reckon if he had spent a little time, talked her into a good screw right out in the car, telling her about love and the stars and how happiness was just a pant and a promise away? You’d still have it in for him. I wouldn’t. That’s good stuff, and a man needs it. But the law says you got to be polite. Mustn’t grab. Got to ask. You got to have it given to you. Now a shit-kicker sees sin as corruption and damnation. A lawyer sees it as disorder. It don’t make a damn what’s done, so long as it’s done orderly. And orderly means law. Hell, I’d slap a child away from his own table for grabbing at the chicken on a platter. Same way with Santidy. I’d like to see him slapped right out of this world. Caswell made a broad gesture. –Why, I don’t give a damn if they legalize murder–so long as they set out rules, so everybody can know ’em. Murray stared at him. –What if some woman was to throw her six-months-old baby down an incinerator chute? How about that? Caswell narrowed his eyes. –We got a law against that. Dewey hardly dared ask. –What if we didn’t? Caswell laughed, the sound rich and fluid, coming from deep within him. –Well, you couldn’t get her for littering, could you? –Jesus, Murray said and moved off. Dewey licked his lips. There was something he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure he had the right. After all, he had sinned, had done terrible things even though a long time ago. Still, it seemed something had to be said. –I . . . think . . . Caswell smiled at him. –I bet you do, Dewey. You’re always mighty quiet, but there’s something going on with you, ain’t there? –I think it’s got to be more . . . than just law. Caswell frowned. –Now coming from an old-time court reporter, that’s goddamned near treason. Hell, Dewey, if we ain’t convinced you, I think we got trouble . . . Right here in River City . . . He laughed, but Dewey didn’t join in. Something was hurting him. As if there had been something lost, something he could not name or put into words. Something Caswell purposely slighted in his buffoon’s performance about law and order. Dewey thought as hard as he could, his eyes squinted almost closed. –It don’t change a thing because you say it’s legal. Even if you pass a law . . . Caswell leaned down over Dewey, his large eyes shining with an almost maniacal certainty. –I don’t blame you. I honest to God don’t. When I come up to Shreveport from down at Jena, I felt the same way. Hell, even before that, before I went to LSU Law School, I knew right from wrong better than any circuit judge in this chicken?shit state. My folks learned me good and evil. Reverend Trotter set ’em out clear as good water in a running stream. But . . . things don’t go that way. Caswell stood up, and moved away, his back to Dewey. Suddenly he turned, pointing his finger at Dewey as if court were in session, and Dewey the witness being examined. –You know what’s good and evil. I know what’s right and wrong. But the courts don’t. People don’t. Lord God, the mind of man can conjure up wickedness that decent folks never even thought to prohibit. And that don’t even take into consideration the mind of woman. Do justice, folks say . . . but not to me. Whatever I do is okay. Abortion, sodomy, adultery, rape . . . Whatever we learned was wrong as kids is just all right today. You got to put good and evil out of your mind, Dewey. You got to. Because they won’t let us keep those words. They don’t mean anything. What I can’t figure is how you’ve held on to ‘em so long. Don’t you see what I mean? Forget good and evil. Think legal and illegal. Maybe we can make a stand there . . . His voice trailed off, and Dewey could hear in it for the first time Caswell’s pain, the sense of loss that was barely papered over by his cynicism. He walked back to the prosecutor’s table and picked up a file. Dewey thought he could see tears in Caswell’s eyes. –You got to take the law and grab hold of it, and say: Law, be thou my good . . . Nonlaw, be thou my evil. Now you got to do that . . . –No, Dewey heard himself say, his voice louder than he realized until he heard it. –Because law is supposed to come out of what’s good. You can’t make no kind of good out of law. . . Caswell sat down again at the distant table, and Dewey could see now, sure enough, that tears were coursing down his cheeks, down that face that looked like a side of fresh-slaughtered beef. Caswell shook his head like an old bull pestered by a myriad of flies. –Well, goddamn it, you got to. You ain’t got any choice. Because if you don’t, it’ll kill you. It’ll break your heart. You know what I mean? –No. –Hell, Dewey . . . –I can’t help it, Dewey said. Things don’t get to be . . . other things ‘cause you put another name on ‘em. You could make laws all year. If they was wrong, they’d be wrong. And a jury can’t make wrong right, –It’ll break your heart thinking that way, Caswell told him. –Look, I’m gonna be district attorney one day soon. People like me, you know? After that, I could go to the legislature . . . Hell, I could be governor. I could do that. I got a lot of support out in the parishes. –Well, Dewey said softly, –I reckon you could do all that. But it wouldn’t change nothing. Wouldn’t make a good man bad, or a bad man good. . . . Caswell rubbed his eyes, threw up his hands. –I’m wasting my time, he said. –You ain’t heard a goddamned thing I’ve said. Can’t you see all that good/evil stuff has gone by the board? Dewey said nothing, and Caswell was quiet for a long moment. –But I wish it hadn’t. I wish, after this no?nut jury lets Santidy go, I wish you and me and that crippled feller . . . What’s his name? Murray, Dewey said. –He ain’t crippled. He’s a war veteran. –Who ain’t? I’d like to see the three of us go find that greasy bastard and give him a little justice. Not law. Justice. –That seems what folks ought to do, Dewey began. –But we can’t. Those old fools on the Supreme Court says we can’t, and all those New York Jew liberals. Mustn’t do. Naughty. Man who does that is not going to the legislature, right? Right. No, he’s gonna pick up a few years for violating that ugly bastard’s civil rights. So all right. I understand. No justice. No damned justice. What we’re doing here folks is the law. We’re gonna smile if we win and smile if we lose. ‘Cause that’s how we all get along, ain’t it, Dewey? –That’s what you tell me. –And it’s gospel, ol’ buddy. You just sit there and do your job, and see how this case comes out, See what happens. Judge Lambert opened the door of his chambers and signaled to his minute clerk who was almost asleep on the last bench in the courtroom. He got up slowly to round up Vallee and Santidy, and whatever witnesses might be left. When he had them all lined up, he would bring out the jury. Then it would all get started again. Dewey went back to his stenotype and got ready. He did not look at Caswell. It was hard to think about all he’d said. The rest of the prosecution’s case wasn’t much. Yes, the coroner said, there was evidence of recent sexual intercourse when he examined Miranda. Yes, there were bruises and minor abrasions. Yes, they were consistent with an assault. No, they did not prove assault. And so on. Yes, the investigating officer said, when Santidy was arrested, there were scratches. Small ones on his hands and face. But . . . yes? Vallee asked, Weren’t there others? Large ones, the officer said. Down his back. Vallee spun toward the jury, his eyes gleaming as if he and they shared knowledge of a certain filthy joke between them. –Where? –Down his back, around his shoulders. –That’s all, Vallee smiled, pleased, already opening another witness folder. When the State’s case had finally wound down to its conclusion, Vallee smiled again, and called his only witness. It was Santidy. Santidy had been sitting, almost slouching in his chair throughout the trial, like some somnolent animal, sleepy and well fed, only marginally aware of what was passing around him, unconcerned that somehow it all had to do with him. Dewey had watched him off and on, especially while Miranda was testifying. As she answered Caswell’s questions, he would turn and shake his head, grin at Vallee, who would smile back and shake his head as if the two of them, firm in the truth of Santidy’s innocence, could only look with bemused indulgence on Miranda’s pathetic, hysterical lies. Santidy rose then, seemed to stretch a little as he walked to the witness stand with measured insouciance. Dewey glanced around and saw Murray’s jaw tighten as Santidy was sworn. Then Santidy sat down in the witness chair, a mild, benevolent smile on his lips. He was tall, well built, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, much like one of those male models who show off expensive clothes for department stores and clothiers. He seemed composed, uninvolved, as if he were at most a witness rather than a defendant. He had a thick bush of silky hair with enormous sideburns, a gold diamond ring on his left little finger, and he wore a tight, close-fitting body shirt open at the collar, with some kind of Indian piece of silver and turquoise on a chain around his neck. His slacks were deep crimson and his loafers were brightly shined. What he said was simple enough, and if he hadn’t been lying, Dewey would have believed him. But you could look at him and see what he was. He thought he was above the law, above anybody’s justice. He was here in the courtroom to oblige, not to be tried. As his fingers raced along, Dewey remembered the old days in Bourbon Street. It had been an outskirt of hell. Women debased, enjoying their shame; men worse than animals, their very senses deranged by whiskey, their minds dissolved in lust and an appetite for disarray. He could barely remember a sequence of bawdy nights there, and the great overarching sense of freedom he had felt. Anything was possible. All was permitted. The deadly sins were a catalogue from which you could pick whatever you chose. Pederasty, violence, gambling, robbery, filthy pictures, whoredom–what was there that the mind of man might contemplate that could not be accomplished on Bourbon Street? So long as it was indecent, destructive of the soul? And then that hot August day. Dewey shuddered as his fingers did their work. He wondered if his years in Shreveport had made up for his sojourn in that place. Who knows? He would wait and shudder until Judgment. What had he done but put the evil aside? Had he ever, even once, struck out against it? Was it enough, to be justified, to flee evil? Or must it be confronted, struggled with, vanquished? Was it sufficient to carry on that struggle within one’s own soul–or must it be carried dauntlessly into the world? Then Vallee began his questioning. What had happened that night? Had there been . . . sex? Santidy was smiling as the questioning began, but his expression became progressively more serious as Vallee pressed on. At the mention of sex, Santidy hung his head like a chastened peacock. As if, on the instant, his flaunting manner faltered, and he suddenly shed years, became younger, more innocent. Dewey watched and could hardly believe. –Yes, Santidy whispered. –Yes, there had been sex. God help him. Vallee was silent for a long moment. As if ritual words had been spoken. Then, most quietly: –Tell us about it. We want to know, to understand. He had gone often to Jumbo’s after work. He was a stranger here, but the promise of good honest work had brought him east from California. He had worked in Texas, then in northwest Louisiana. He would come down to Shreveport to break the monotony, to see people enjoy themselves. To find enjoyment of his own. A lot of oil men came to Shreveport, to Jumbo’s. It was a friendly place. One could enjoy himself there in a decent manner: a few beers, a few laughs with friends. Yes, he knew Miranda. Everyone knew Miranda. Of all the girls at Jumbo’s, she was the loveliest, the most interesting. She was very friendly, and she made him feel less lonely. Bakersfield, California, is a long way from Shreveport. But Miranda’s smile made the distance less awful, less depressing. Jumbo’s was a real nice place, and Miranda was part of the reason. Dewey frowned. Only a little while ago, Vallee had been talking about what a bad place it was, how a girl who worked in such a place should know what men who frequented it really wanted. Now Santidy was making it out to be a home away from home. The jury will notice that, Dewey thought. They’ll have to notice that. Vallee asked Santidy if he had offered Miranda a ride home that night. Santidy smiled, looking a little confused. He didn’t understand. Vallee reminded him that Miranda had made that claim. Santidy shook his head slowly. –No, she must have forgot. It was the other way around. She . . . asked me. And he had been perhaps the least bit hesitant to give her a ride. Yes, he liked her, but he had heard remarks–nothing specific, more often a single word from one of the boys, accompanied by a quick smile. Words and expressions that might make one wonder. Vallee paused, acting as if he were surprised to hear such a thing. –What kind of words? Santidy shook his head. He had sisters at home. He would never smear a young woman’s reputation. His people never tolerated such a thing. Vallee glanced at the jury, as much as to say, see how much all this unpleasant business pains this boy? –We’ve got to know, Alberto. You’ve got to tell us. You understand that, don’t you? Santidy nodded sadly, cleared his throat. They had said that Miranda was a punch, a tramp, that she went from man to man, that she was insatiable, and no one man–or two or three, for that matter– could satisfy her. Of course, Santidy had not believed that for a moment. Caswell was on his feet, objecting, demanding that the testimony cease until he could lodge a continuing objection to this blatant hearsay. Vallee grinned, claiming that the testimony led toward framing the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the alleged incident, hence was admissible. Judge Lambert pursed his lips, ruled sustaining the objection. Vallee shrugged, smiled reassuringly at Santidy, and began again. Dewey found himself sitting at the stenotype, fingers motionless. Testimony was over, final arguments closed, and he could hardly remember a word of it all. Judge Lambert was charging the jury, giving them the law upon which they were to judge the facts presented to them in testimony and by document. Dewey watched dully as the jurors listened, their faces revealing nothing. Finally the instructions were done, and the judge sent the jury to deliberate. The courtroom emptied slowly. Miranda’s brother came up to assist her, casting a venomous look at Santidy and Vallee. Murray came up and sat at counsel’s table near Dewey as Caswell wiped his face with a large pocket-handkerchief. –That sonofabitch is gonna walk, Murray said. –He’s not gonna serve a day or an hour. He’s got it made. Caswell nodded. –You got that right. Vallee’s got the formula down, and old Santidy is a superstar. Why, that boy could bring Miranda’s brother around if he had a little time. –I believe that greaser could rape every woman in Caddo Parish, one at a time, and still walk. He’d only have to spare twelve of ’em, Caswell said. –How’s that, Dewey asked. –Why, he ought to leave enough to make up a jury to acquit him. –Hell, Murray said angrily. –Maybe a couple he stuck it to would vote for him. You never know. Not nowadays. You can’t know. How could you? Caswell shrugged. –Youall want some coffee? We can walk down Milam Street to the Grill. They’re not coming back for an hour or so. Take ’em that long to argue themselves out of following their oldtime instincts. Murray and Caswell and Dewey walked downstairs and outside. The air was cool and crystalline. Only a few cars moved down Texas Street, mostly in the direction of the bridge to Bossier City. Caswell and Murray moved ahead of him, and Dewey paused in the deep shadow beside the Confederate Memorial. It was large and graceful, a spire reaching up into the leaves of the ancient live oaks, pointed toward the cold and distant stars. At the four corners were granite busts of Lee, Jackson, Beauregard, and Allen. High above, looming under the canopy of oak leaves that circled like a garland, was the figure of an anonymous Confederate soldier. He stood, rifle between his broken shoes, staring north out of stone eyes, as if tonight, this very night, it all might begin again, and he was ready for it. Dewey stared upward, feeling for the first time in all his years in town, in the courthouse, that this place was a shrine. He could not say just what it meant, but there was something. Something ravished, taken by force, something lost and gone now. And these generals had fought and spent years of their lives to protect that something, to save it. That nameless soldier had died time and time again for its sake. Dewey felt himself blush with shame for some omission he couldn’t even bring to mind, much less name. He averted his eyes from the monument, as if in darkness it still shown too bright for him. –Hey, Dewey, you comin’? Murray called back to him. –Yes, Dewey said, and walked on after them. The jury filed in, and it was over in minutes. Not guilty. One of the women on the jury was sobbing, but another had something close to a smile on her lips as Santidy came forward to shake hands with them, thank them for their vindication. Dewey watched as if he were viewing a movie, as if what he was seeing had little relation to reality at all, and none whatever to him. He turned slowly, as Judge Lambert discharged the jury, obviously displeased, but not enough so to speak his mind as on occasion he did. Caswell sat sweating, a smile not unlike that of the woman juror’s on his lips. Behind him, Dewey caught only a fleeting glimpse of Miranda, her brother helping her on with her coat, and speaking loudly words Dewey couldn’t make out for the commotion. But Miranda was paying no attention to her brother. She was looking across to the defense counsel’s table, not at Santidy, but at Vallee, and her expression was one of horror so profound, so all-encompassing that it shocked Dewey, making him recall the face of a dead man whose body he had once come across in an alley off Ursulines Street in the French Quarter. While he was a beast. That was how Miranda looked: as if she were about to die, enthralled by the last and most brutal indignity we all must surely suffer. As she turned away–no, was turned away by her brother, who was still talking, something made Dewey turn back toward the defense table where Vallee sat withdrawn into a pool of silence, insulated from Santidy who stood next to him laughing with some of his friends from Oil City. On his face, Vallee wore an expression of cynical and analytical certainty almost as absolute and embracing as had been Miranda’s mask of horror. He’s happy now, Dewey thought. He’s just planning to do it again. He’s just waiting for the next one to come knocking on his door. He’s a rapist, too. Just like Santidy. –It’s no use living in a country where this kind of shit can go on, Murray was saying. –I mean, it wasn’t a sign of justice . . . Not a sign. They were at Murrell’s Grill on Kings Highway. Caswell was eating eggs and grits and sausage. He had stuffed his mouth with biscuit, and thus was forced to listen to Murray’s tirade. Finally he finished chewing, shook his head. –Goddamn it, Murray, what is all this justice crap? You been around the court as long as I’ve been lawyering. Why does this one stick in your craw. Hell, you and I seen a lot worse. Remember the Culpepper case? Murray turned pale, put down his fork. For a moment, his expression was very still, very distant, as if he were having trouble keeping his food down. –I don’t remember no Culpepper case, Dewey said, trying to remember some case, some situation so monstrous that it would gag Murray. –You wasn’t up here yet, Caswell said, his eyes fixed on Murray. –This was way back before the war. I was in law school. Old man lived in Dixie Gardens–near Murray, matter of fact . . . Caswell laughed as Murray, still speechless, motioned him to shut up. Caswell grinned. –It was a tough case. Ask Murray about it some time . . . No one said anything for a long time. They ate, Murray still shivering. Caswell finished his last biscuit, and Dewey sat thinking. –He did do it, didn’t he? Dewey asked at last. –Huh? Caswell replied. –Santidy. He did it to that girl, didn’t he? Caswell’s eyebrows rose as he chewed. He swallowed and grinned. –What do you want, Dewey? You want me to give it to you in writing? I wouldn’t have prosecuted the sonofabitch if it didn’t look like he did. Beyond a reasonable doubt. But did he? I wasn’t there. Maybe he asked nicely, and she changed her mind right in the middle . . . Maybe he forgot to ask . . . Caswell picked up the check, took a few dollar bills out of the pocket of his vest. –I really need to know, Dewey said quietly. –I do. Caswell looked at him with amused weariness. –You’ve changed, Dewey. Hell, I remember when you used to do a hell of a job reporting and kept quiet. Maybe it’s age. Maybe we all done our jobs and kept quiet too long. Caswell stared out the window behind Dewey into the dusty empty street beyond. –You know what, Dewey? I don’t know whether that lousy California greaser done it or not. And I’ll tell you something else. If I’d been there that night, if I’d been in the car watching, I still might not know. Things have their own way of happening, and sometimes you can’t say who did what. Maybe it wasn’t no crime at all. Maybe it was just . . . bad manners. Caswell swung his bulk up out of the booth, and started toward the cash register. –I can’t spend the night joshin’ with you boys. I got me an armed robbery over in Division G in the morning, and I flat know what happened there . . . Caswell paid and left, and Dewey looked at Murray, who was still shook up a little. –He didn’t have to mention Culpepper, Murray said. –I mean it’s been a long day. He didn’t have to bring that back . . . Dewey stared at Murray. –What the hell was the Culpepper? Murray shivered. –Forget it, he said, and rose from his seat. –Just forget it. It was a long time ago, and you don’t want to know. They left then, climbed into Murray’s car. Murray was shot, worn out, shaken. He didn’t want to drive. Dewey barely knew how since he had never owned a car of his own. But he got behind the wheel and started out, driving stiffly, carefully down Kings Highway toward Murray’s home, which he had never seen, never been invited to. When they reached the house, Murray asked him to spend the night on the back porch. There was a daybed there for friends who might stay over. Dewey thanked him, and they went into the kitchen for a nightcap. Murray brought out an unopened bottle of Old Overholt and cracked the seal. It was harsh and rich, and Dewey felt as if he’d been in that kitchen every evening for years. Murray had control of himself now, and threw down two drinks for every one of Dewey’s. –I get drunk every night, Murray said, his tongue going loose, his eyes angry. –You didn’t know that. Well, it’s so. I come home from typing up them goddamned transcripts, and I get drunk. Ever since the war. Almost every night. I may have got to live in this shiteating world, but it ain’t nobody said I got to do it cold sober. No, I don’t have to do that. Murray got more excited as he drank the rye whiskey. He got up, opened a cupboard above the gas stove and brought out a Colt automatic and laid it on the oilcloth of the table. –It’s a .38 special on a .45 frame. Customized. Best automatic pistol in the world. Take a look. No, pull the clip and push back the receiver. Dewey picked up the gun. It was lighter than it looked and felt smooth and reassuring in his hand. As if he had held it many times before. Murray was mumbling now, to himself, drunk, nearly to the point of collapse. –If I could just get that lousy, filthy bastard in the sights of that . . . –Santidy? –Yeah. Him or . . . Culpepper . . . –What did Culpepper . . . ? –Forget it. If I could get that spic in my sights . . . Oh, Lord . . . I never did get no Jap or German in my sights . . . You know what I mean? –I guess so. Murray was close to passing out. –It ain’t no justice left in this . . . world. You know that? Dewey finished his third drink. He had not put the automatic down. –Yes, he said after a moment. –I guess I do . . . Murray shook his head, drunken tears flowing down his cheeks. –It ain’t no justice, I can see that now. He staggered to his feet and picked up the bottle of rye whiskey. –I’m going to bed. I can finish this in my bed. You know something, Dewey? I throwed away a leg. It wasn’t no use. I never killed one of them sonsofbitches, but even if I had, it wasn’t no use . . . wouldn’t have helped anything at all. Murray vanished into a dark hallway, and Dewey could hear him fall against something. Murray cursed, and then there was silence. Dewey looked at the whiskey in his glass for a long moment, remember-ing that Murray had been a typist. He hadn’t killed anybody. Then Dewey drank his whiskey down. He lay on the daybed with a pillow under his head. It was deep night now, and he could see the stars through the screen of the porch. Millions of them standing in the sky unmoving. There were insects strumming against the screen, and he could hear the naive chatter of tree frogs just beyond the porch. From the distant bayou, he heard the deeper, more assured drone of bullfrogs. Dewey lay quiet for a long time, thinking, trying to make his mind focus, but it was no use. There were only images passing across his mind like the motes that pass across the surface of the eye, which can never be seen clearly because they are part of the eye and move as the eye moves. He could not remember anything very clearly. It seemed as if the trial had been a long time ago, perhaps the day after he had come to himself in the French Quarter. Or the day he had arrived in Shreveport. Dewey could not remember clearly when he had not been a reporter. Reporters were pledged to put down the truth in the cause of justice. That was hard to do in the midst of a trial, but he had always managed. And that had been enough. Other people had other things to do, but that was what a reporter did, and no one could expect any more. It was then that he noticed he still had the pistol in his hand. His knuckles were white, his fingers drained of blood, as he held onto the steering wheel crossing the Texas Avenue bridge into Bossier City. It was very late now, and there was little traffic, but the lights of Bossier City were still on. At the foot of the bridge on the left, he could see the Hurricane Lounge, a sign out front that said, WITH MAJOR AT THE PIANO. Down on the right, the Ming Tree, farther on, the K-9, and the Kickapoo Lounge and Motor Courts. Then the lights began to fall away, and the signs said U.S. Highway 80–the highway to Mississippi, to Monroe and Vicksburg. He drove another mile or two, until he saw the stark white-plastered building that said TOWER LOUNGE AND MOTEL and on the right, smaller, lit not by neon piping, but by old-fashioned bulbs, JUMBO’S LOUNGE, Live Music Nitely. Dewey pulled into the large parking lot and turned off the key. He took off his glasses and wiped them. He was sweating, and they had fogged up. Now that he was here, he could not quite determine what he should do. No, that wasn’t right. He knew what he should do, but he couldn’t figure out exactly how to do it. He had never planned such a thing before, had never even imagined himself involved in such a thing. That was a bad handicap, because you couldn’t practice this as you practiced shorthand or stenotype. He could go inside, find him, and do it. Whether he was caught made no difference. But there was always the irreducible possibility that someone might stop him, deflect his aim. Then it would all be silly and useless, like the trial, like his life–and justice would lose again, be raped by his incompetence. It would be easier to wait. Outside no one could stop him. Out here it would work. Then it occurred to him for the first time that Santidy might not be there, that already he might be with some other young woman, willing or not, in one of the greasy motor courts he had already driven past. Dewey had no idea what kind of car Santidy drove, and suddenly he felt his own determination draining away. It was silly. Murray was right. There is no justice any longer, and only its withered institutionalized wraith keeps things from flying apart. Well, all right, Dewey thought. Maybe that’s so. But we got to do our best. The Lord never asked a man for better than his best, did he? He got out of Murray’s Dodge and stood under the stark blue lights that rendered the parking lot almost as bright as day. He pushed his glasses close to his eyes and stared at the door of the place. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw on his right a sudden glitter, as if someone had turned on a light and quickly extinguished it again. He looked over there, and could see no more than a blur. I ought to check that out, he thought to himself. If I’m going to do this right, I ought to check out everything, hadn’t I? He walked behind Murray’s car, and along the rank of cars parked on his right, squinting at each one in turn, inwardly embarrassed at the idea of playing at detective, a grown-soft old man who knew nothing of rough trades, but who had a thing that needed to be done, nonetheless. He had gone perhaps twenty yards, past a dozen or so cars when he stopped. He frowned for a moment, forcing his eyes to focus on a long dull line of metal along the fender of an old Ford that was parked pointed directly at the door of Jumbo’s. He squinted and stared until he could make out, behind the barrel of the rifle, the low-lying silhouette of a man. He was on his knees, propping the rifle on the car fender. He looked tired, and the barrel of the rifle wavered, catching the parking lot lights, then losing them. Dewey watched the man, studied him. He was not a stranger. Dewey had seen him before, and even not able to identify him, somehow his presence inspired Dewey. That means he’s here, Dewey thought. Somebody else wants him. That means he’s got to be here. Dewey stood behind the line of cars, silent, his eyes on the man with the rifle. It never crossed his mind that the man might be waiting for someone else, someone besides Santidy. That never occurred to him. No, the question was, should he speak to the man–or wait and see what happened. It’s important, Dewey thought. I really got to decide. Would it be just as good if some stranger done it? Or is it something I got to do myself? That’s what I got to decide. What counts? That it gets done? Or that I do it? It was then that for some reason he remembered the Confederate Memorial in the court square. Not so much the great men at the four corners, but most especially that single anonymous infantryman at the top of the column, that Confederate soldier without a name who stood, almost a hundred years later, still faithful in memory to his people and his duty. Then, remembering, Dewey began to move toward the rifleman, his own decision made. There was something that had to be done, and he had to do it. But before he had taken more than half a dozen steps, before he could make himself known to that distant anonymous rifleman, the door of Jumbo’s opened, and amid a burst of laughter, five or six men came out. They were all drunk, having a good time. The first one out almost stumbled down the three steps. The others seemed almost like an escort for this first. He steadied himself, then came down the steps smiling, his arms around his fellows. Dewey squinted across at the rifleman, trying to be sure. The man at the foot of the steps was surely Santidy. Dewey couldn’t make out his words, but he could hear the boasting, self-important tone. He was the center of attention, and the others listened to him, hardly trying to put in their own remarks. Of course. Why not? He was the hero tonight, wasn’t he? Dewey stared down the length of the car toward the knot of men. As he did so, he realized that the man kneeling in front of him had hunched forward, his right elbow up, and was leveling his rifle at the group. Oh Christ, Dewey thought, he’s going to do it. –No, Dewey heard himself whisper harshly. –No, Mister. Don’t do it. The rifleman turned, his face pale, distant, as Dewey came abreast of him and moved just as quickly past him. –Wait, the rifleman said, his expression one of astonishment and recognition. –Ain’t you the . . . ? Then Dewey recognized him. It was the brother. The girl’s brother. Miranda’s brother. –Wait, he called after Dewey. –You got no business . . . His voice fell away as Dewey came out from between the cars and moved more quickly toward the men standing, talking, laughing at the foot of the steps of Jumbo’s place. Dewey pushed his glasses back again with his left hand as he came near them. They paid him no mind, and he could see Santidy up close now. It was easy to recognize him. He wore white slacks and a red shirt with a white vest over it. His hips moved as he swapped words with his friends. He made an expansive gesture with his hands, as if in some way he encompassed the world with his actions. It was a good night, a wonderful night. Maybe the best night of his life. Wasn’t that what he was thinking? Dewey pulled the .38 out of his belt as he came close to the men, and one of them saw him coming. The man was short and had sandy hair that looked as if he used grease on it. He called out shrilly, but Dewey paid him no mind. As he closed with them, now only yards away, he saw that all their faces seemed a strange, sickly blue as if they were not human at all but some species of degenerate creature that spent its life in moist caverns where the light of day never reached. It was the hue of the lights above the parking area, of course, but Dewey did not make that connection then. He was in motion. –Christ, the sandy-haired one said, and Dewey remembered later how preposterous the name of Our Lord sounded in the mouth of a beast. –Hey, what is it? another called out when he suddenly saw Dewey. As if he expected an answer, an explanation. What Dewey saw was the tight slacks that Santidy wore. He had no consciousness of aiming and firing. All he thought about was Santidy’s skin-tight pants. The first explosion surprised him as if he had somehow not expected the gun to make such a noise. He paused for the smallest part of a second, shaken by the sound and its immediate echo off the front of the building. Those around Santidy melted away as if they had been no more than mist, projections of his own ego, or as if this strange show were not happening in the physical universe, but on some theological stage, and they had received their cue to exit. But the surprise, the instant of hesitation did not really even slow Dewey down. Now he was facing Santidy who stood alone. They were alone in the sterile blue of the dusty parking lot. Time had stopped, Dewey remembered thinking. It was not happening in the world. Not this. –Aw, Christ, Santidy moaned, staring down at the crotch of his white slacks, ruined by Dewey’s first shot. –Aw, Jesus, Santidy sobbed, staring at the bleeding ruin between his legs. Dewey stepped still closer then, until he could have reached out and touched Santidy with his hand. But he didn’t touch him. He raised the pistol just as Santidy looked up, his eyes hollow and distant and almost objective, as if somehow, even in his hour of triumph, he had been aware in his blood that judgment was on the way, that retribution was no less sure than physics, and that between his acquittal and that doom there might just be time enough for a few drinks, a few laughs. –Aw Christ, Santidy moaned again. –Mister, he crooned, –Mister, for Christ’s sake . . . The sound of the second shot did not surprise Dewey. What was amazing was how Santidy seemed suddenly to rise from the asphalt of the parking lot and hurtle upward into the door of the roadhouse. –Mister, Santidy whispered, the front of his white vest suddenly as red as his shirt, the shirt itself glistening with a hue it had not had before. –Mister. Then he slid down against the door and sat quite still, his eyes locked on Dewey’s. –All right, Dewey heard himself say. –All right. He turned and moved back then toward Murray’s car. He looked from side to side, the pistol up and ready, but the lot was empty. He knew that Santidy’s friends were somewhere, behind the cars, across the highway calling the police. But they were not coming for him. He had expected they would be armed, but even that might not matter. As he neared the old Dodge, he realized that he had never expected to get this far. But he had, and he was still alive. He had gotten the car door open when a figure materialized beside him so suddenly that he almost fired before he recognized the brother, Miranda’s brother. –Don’t try to stop me, Dewey said. –I ain’t done. I know you’re an officer of the law, but it had to be done. It should of been done by the court . . . That’s where it should of been done . . . The brother moved back as Dewey climbed into the car and started it up. He began to back out, the motor roaring because of Dewey’s unfamiliarity with motorcars and his rising nervousness. It was hard to control his hands and feet. As he fought the car into first gear, he could hear over the motor’s roar the voice of the brother. –Mister, thank God for you, you hear . . .? Mister, thank God . . . Dewey straightened out the car and pointed it toward the highway, taking his foot off the gas for only a moment. –You’re a good man, Mister . . . Dewey looked at the harried young man still holding his unfired rifle, his face covered with tears either of tension or thanksgiving, and then awkwardly aimed the car out into the highway as he pushed hard on the gas. After he had gone a mile or two, he slowed down. He had said something to the brother that he himself hadn’t understood. What was it? He frowned and wished he had drunk more of Murray’s Old Overholt. There was something else that needed doing. But perhaps it could not be done tonight. He had done a good thing. His fingers eased around the steering wheel, and of a sudden he began to notice and enjoy the cool breeze blowing in the driver’s window of the car. As he passed between the lights of Bossier City, he thought that perhaps he should have bought a car. For drives on the weekends. He could have gone to Texas to see the sights in Marshall or Gladewater. He felt relieved, fresh, buoyant. He had not felt so good in a very long time. Since he had fled New Orleans so long ago? If not, since when? When he reached the Shreveport side of the bridge, he slowed down still more. He began to consider what would come next. There was a building, two or three stories tall, at the corner of Milam and Spring streets. But it was so late. Perhaps he should go back home, or to Murray’s, and see to the end of his business tomorrow. He realized that despite the freshness, he was very tired. Couldn’t it be done tomorrow, the rest of it? No. If nobody had recognized him except maybe the brother, still people had seen the car. They must have. It wouldn’t work tomorrow. No matter how tired he was, this was the time. They had been tired at Mine Run and Mechanicsville. For no reason, an old song popped into his mind. Now is the hour. That’s right. He twisted the wheel and turned left, almost coasting down Milam Street. When the light changed, he took another left. He inched down Milarn block by block, until he reached Spring Street. Then he pulled to the left curb and parked. For the first time, he realized that he was a little drunk. Not dog-drunk, but drunk nonetheless. Outside, the single streetlight seemed to expand and contract as he watched it. That was how he knew he was drunk. Then there was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he noticed that the streetlight was the same awful stark blue as those at Jumbo’s parking lot. He shouldn’t have drunk so much, he thought. This is important. It’s the only important thing you ever did in your whole life, and you had to get drunk to do it. And you’d like some more. You’d like one more drink before you finish up. If you can finish up, which is doubtful at this hour. Dewey leaned forward, his head on the steering wheel. He felt sick, drained. He called to mind the scene in the parking lot, Santidy staring down at his ruined groin. It had been like a dance, with Dewey leading. Santidy for the first time in his life playing the unwilling maiden, moving away, declining, praying, falling backward, bereft of his weapon, knowing at last what it meant to be raped. Terminally. Dewey’s head rose and he laughed, the sound more shocking than the reports of the pistol at Jumbo’s. Not from the remembrance, or even from the drink. No, it was that he suddenly recalled what Father Ruiz used to say back home at the parochial school when some wayward boy required discipline: Knowledge maketh a bloody entrance. –Sure enough, Dewey heard himself say. –That’s so, Father. Like opening a door and seeing something awful. The remembrance and the laughter sobered him a little. He got out of the car and walked up to the front of the office building. The building was brick, painted white. The door was locked, and Dewey stared at it stupidly for a moment. Maybe Vallee wasn’t there in his offices. In fact, it was silly to think he would be. After a long trial, after a big victory. But no. He knew Vallee was inside. He knew it, had known it ever since the moment in front of the Confederate Memorial when he decided what he had to do. Vallee would be in there. Dewey looked around, then wrapped the .38 in his handkerchief and hit the glass of the door. There was no alarm, and a section of the glass fell away, crashed with little sound on the inside. He reached through and opened the door quietly. As he stepped in, he squinted at the shabby building directory barely illuminated by the blue light from the street. Then he moved quietly down the dark hallway. As he did so, he could see no light from any of the doors on either side of the passage. If Vallee were in there, wouldn’t there be some light from under his door? But the number had been a large one. One-thirty-three. Maybe it was so far in the back that the light was invisible from here. As he walked on, he almost tripped and fell as he reached a flight of steps that went up a landing, then down again. At the top of the landing off to the left were the stairs to the second floor. He looked down toward the back of the first floor. There was light coming from under a door. Not much light. Hardly enough to be coming from a desk lamp. Maybe Vallee had come here alone, celebrated with a few drinks, and fallen asleep; it would be necessary to awaken him. Maybe he was just taking care of last details regarding a case he thought he’d won, but which Dewey had reversed only a little while ago. Dewey reached the door, listened. It seemed he could hear something inside, something hardly louder than heavy breathing, but he could not be sure. He turned the doorknob very slowly. To his surprise, it yielded, and the door swung inward silently. For a moment Dewey hesitated, then moved into an unlit, cramped reception office. No wonder the light had been faint. It was coming from under another inside door marked PRIVATE. The sound Dewey had heard was louder now, and it sounded not so much like breathing as moaning. For a moment it crossed Dewey’s mind that perhaps someone had been here before him. Miranda’s brother, the young policeman? Could he have come here before he went to Jumbo’s? Or maybe some outraged spectator in the court? God knows there was cause enough. What if it was so? What if Vallee was already lying in there dying? What if her brother had done for him? Should Dewey just turn and walk away? Was that sufficient? He thought not. Let every man put his own mark upon wickedness. Perhaps, before morning, there would be a veritable parade of just men who would make this pilgrimage. In fact, Dewey thought, I better get done what needs doing before somebody else shows up. He reached for the knob of the door marked PRIVATE realizing with a strange feeling that he had never in his life gone through a door so marked without permission–much less to murder the inhabitant. He heard the moaning more animated than before. The sound puzzled him. Then he heard the sirens. They seemed to come from Texas Street down near the bridge. That would be the Bossier City police. By now, the confusion surrounding Santidy would have been worked through. They would have tracked the car to the bridge. They would find it soon with the help of the Shreveport police. Only minutes to go. He turned the knob and pushed the door open, still quietly, the sound no louder than the moans within, which had turned now to snufflings, gruntings, choked syllables almost like human words. As the door opened, the sounds broke off with a sharp intake of breath. Vallee sat in a large chair facing Dewey, his eyes almost closed, his face contorted as if in excruciating pain. –Ahhhh, he sighed. And Dewey saw in the weak light of a desk lamp turned away the head of a woman between Vallee’s legs. When he realized what he was seeing, he staggered back a step in astonishment. The woman was kneeling in front of Vallee, and he was pulling her into his groin, masses of dark silken hair in his fingers. As Dewey stepped back, Vallee must have heard him because his eyes opened and he stared, with an absurd smile on his lips, into the gloom where Dewey stood. The smile remained plastered on his swarthy face even after the first bullet had knocked him backward almost out of the chair when it plowed into his chest. Dewey fired again, lower, to erase what he was seeing, but not fast enough, because even as he fired, fired again and again until the hammer snapped futilely, he could still see the face of the woman as she turned out of passion into death. He could see her face even after the bullets had obliterated it, and he knew that he would go on seeing it until his last breath. When he closed the door, he was still controlled. It had not fixed itself on him yet. He looked at his hands. There was a trembling, but not much. Only when he heard, from beyond the door that now said PRIVATE again, a heavy breathing, a snuffling and moaning certainly sounding of death, did he begin to run. He tripped up the stairs and down the far side, almost fell as he ran down the hall toward the blue light, and out into the sudden chill silence of Milam Street. He kept running until he reached Market Street. Then, winded, he slowed down. Walking a little farther, he stepped into the doorway among the display windows of Selber Brothers and stood silent, listening. Sure enough, there were sirens, and down behind him, near the Pioneer Bank, toward the river, he could see police cars. But that was all right now. He crossed the street against a red signal that stopped nothing in the empty street. Under the oaks in the courthouse square, it seemed cooler still as Dewey walked down toward Texas Street, cutting across the corner of the square, already seeing looming before him the shadowed mass of the Confederate Memorial. Dewey paused before it. Down to the right, at the edge of his vision, he could see the stark shining cross atop the First Methodist Church. To his left, the lights on the bridge. The sirens were still at that end of town. They might have found the car by now. They might have found more than that. Lee, Allen, Beauregard, Jackson, Miranda. Dewey’s hands reloaded the exhausted clip of the .38 as if somehow they were independent of his mind. Jackson. Miranda. He could not protect her. No one could. No one could be protected. Not Lee or Allen could protect anyone. It was. A lost cause. He thought, they don’t build monuments to them any more. Because they don’t want to be protected. They hate the ones that fight against the very nature within us. Santidy. Vallee. And someone. Then Dewey felt the tears running down his cheeks and the enormous weight of the gun in his hand. He was immediately very tired. Tired as he had been that hot afternoon in the French Quarter in New Orleans long ago, before he came to himself. There was just no sense in being this tired. Nobody ought to put up with it. His eyes tracked up the monument until, in a light now gray, not blue, he could make out the distant face of that other anonymous soldier there. Now the secret was revealed. He had escaped. In the heat of battle, he had found the stone. The sirens began again, and under their shrieking, Dewey could hear the waking murmur of the courthouse pigeons. It was almost dawn, and an empty Broadmoor trolley passed down Texas Street on its first trip out to the edge of town, and Dewey drew a deep breath of relief as he realized he had only one thing left to do. And then he would be free. © Joyce Corrington |
