F
ORTY-FOUR
On the morning of New Year’s Eve, Brother Jobe received a letter from Stephen Bullock summoning him to a conference in the matter of convening the grand jury for the Mandy Stokes murder case. Brother Jobe would have preferred to be on hand at his own headquarters to receive the two mulefoot boars he had ordered from the breeder over in Shaftsbury, Vermont, and was annoyed at the imperious tone of Bullock’s summons, which stated, “You will appear . . .” as though the prosecutor himself, Brother Jobe, that is, were some kind of common vagrant to be ordered about.
He stopped in on Mrs. Stokes before leaving. Someone had brought a rocking chair into her room where she was sitting in a beam of winter light coming through the clerestory window. She was leafing through a large book about the life and work of Claude Monet, the French painter. A stack of art books that had been brought to her from the old school library in the building lay on the table near her bed.
She looked up as Brother Jobe entered the chamber and took off his broad-brimmed hat. Her demeanor struck him as resolute.
“How you getting on, ma’am?”
“I’m prepared,” she said.
“What are you prepared for, ma’am?”
“Anything.”
“Have you spoken with your attorney, Mr. Hutto?”
“I have.”
“I believe he aims to plead you insane and I intend to not oppose it.”
“I told him I want to plead guilty.”
Brother Jobe felt his innards slide like the wall of a glacier into the cold sea. He had once seen it on television.
“If you do that, Mr. Bullock will hang you,” he said.
“I don’t deserve to live.”
“Miz Stokes, I seen a lot of death these years, just and unjust. Our Lord said,
I desire mercy and not sacrifice.
The book says,
God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
“As far as I can see, death is the only way I can endure it.”
Brother Jobe peered over Mandy’s shoulder at the open book on her lap. It was turned to a page that depicted the artist’s little studio boat on a quiet backwater of the Seine at a late hour of a summer day with reflections in lavender light playing on the water and the artist’s wife, Camille, a shadowy figure within the boat’s little cabin.
“You see yourself on the boat in that pitchur?” Brother Jobe said. He knew that she did.
“She died,” Mandy said.
“Well, we all do, and that was what? Back in the nineteen hunnerds?”
“She died young, a few years after he made this painting of her. See how dark and alone she looks inside there, and the world outside remains . . . so beautiful!”
“I’m going to see Bullock in a little while about the proceedings,” Brother Jobe said. “You give some more thought to that pleading.”
Mandy turned the page. Brother Jobe lingered a moment, then knelt down beside the rocking chair and spoke softly into her ear. “I’m sure you feel sick unto death about what has happened,” he said, “but I don’t see that throwing another life away is the right thing.”
Boaz had Atlas the mule saddled and waiting for Brother Jobe when he emerged from the front entrance of the old high school building, and he had also readied the sorrel horse named Brownie for himself. The temperature had dropped into the mid-20s and clouds coming from the west over the Hudson Valley were so dark that the tree branches on the hilltops stood out in bright relief as if they were lit from the inside, like lamps. The two men, cloaked and swaddled in scarves, rode out toward Bullock’s plantation four miles away. The animals were frisky and didn’t have to be cajoled to canter. All along the way, Brother Jobe’s thoughts belabored his conscience and he barely noticed the grandeur of the winter landscape with its many grays, sepias, and the occasional startling splash of the crimson staghorn sumac bobs.
When they got to Bullock’s establishment and were relieved of their horses, the magistrate kept them waiting in his library office for thirty minutes. Boaz rather enjoyed the idle time there. The fireplace was lit and they were served lemon balm tea with little walnut cakes by Jenny the housekeeper. Bullock had many interesting antique artifacts on display there, a brass British naval telescope, an armillary sphere made in Geneva, 1749. The mantelpiece held a display of Japanese ivory and jade carvings: comic figurines, netsuke in the shapes of animals and birds, a Buddha, and a boat shaped like a dragon. Where there was not a run of bookshelves on the wall, an oil painting hung in a gilt frame. The hand-lettered title on a gilt scroll at the bottom of the frame read:
Arrival of the First Delaware & Hudson Train in Shushan NY, 1878
. Boaz stood before it in thrall. Brother Jobe sat by the fire with his tea and tried not to stew. A clock ticked loudly. At length, Bullock came through the door followed by his versatile factotum Dick Lee.
“Nice of you to drop by,” Brother Jobe said. He did not get up from his seat.
Bullock ignored the remark, saying, “I’ve summoned the grand jury for ten a.m. Monday. You’ll have your witnesses ready, and I’ll assume your people will get what’s-her-name down—”
“Miz Stokes.”
“—to the conference chamber in the old town hall, and we’ll get right on with the festivities.”
Brother Jobe put his teacup and saucer on the side table at his elbow.
“Festivities?” he said. “This is a grave and solemn matter, sir, not some dang fish fry. A person’s life hangs in the balance.”
“And in the balance of things, she might hang,” Bullock said. “In fact, that outcome is looking more and more likely, based on what’s come to my attention.”
“You refer to the testimony of a half-wit.”
Bullock affected to be shocked. “For the sake of decorum we call them developmentally disabled. Yes, that and other information.”
“You used to call ’em ‘retarded’ for the sake of decorum. A spade is a spade, sir, and a half-wit is what it is that you propose to be the principal material witness on the life of somebody.”
“Whose side are you on?” Bullock said, sincerely perplexed.
“I’m on the side of justice and righteousness,” Brother Jobe said.
“The circumstances surrounding the case have developed sufficiently to necessitate that the developmentally disabled witness testify at the trial,” Bullock said. “Consider that my ruling.”
“You mean grand jury, don’t you? Putting the cart before the horse there.”
“Whatever,” Bullock said with annoyance.
Boaz must have been eyeballing the repartee too strenuously, because he caught Bullock’s attention.
“What is your man doing here in my chambers listening to all this?” he said.
“Brother Boaz is my scribe, my aide-de-camp, and my all-around right hand. He’s attends all my business.”
“Not the business of this court,” Bullock said. “You”—he glared at Boaz—“wait outside.”
“Is that so,” Brother Jobe said. “What about
your
man?”
“He’s an officer of the court.”
“Like fun he is.”
“He’s my bailiff.”
“You’re just saying that. You keep this up, sir, and I’ll move for dismissal myself.”
“I’ll get another prosecutor.”
“No you won’t. Beside Mr. Hutto, who is occupied for the defense, there ain’t another living attorney left in this town except for Mr. Murray, and he’s crawled so deep into the bottle that you could slice him lengthwise and serve him on the side of a hamburger with coleslaw.”
Bullock circled his desk like a confounded predatory animal stalking a resourceful prey. After rotating around it, he slid into the padded leather chair and slumped with an air of resignation.
“All right,” he said of Boaz and Dick Lee with a peevish flapping of his hand. “They can both stay.”
Now it was Brother Jobe’s turn to rise out of his seat. He enjoyed the new perspective of looking slightly down on the magistrate.
“I’m not altogether right with this prosecution,” Brother Jobe said. “Your eagerness to dispense a certain harsh justice is . . . unsettling.”
“It’s going forward now,” Bullock said. “The machinery of justice has been put in motion, just as you exhorted me to do when first we met way back in the springtime of this year. I’d have thought you’d be delighted.”
“I’m concerned that you’re moving too fast.”
“Doesn’t this woman deserve a speedy trial? Didn’t you want me to set a tone for the rule of law in this jurisdiction?” Bullock said with his voice rising. “Didn’t you push and prod and hector me to get this court up and running? Why, we would have chaos around here if people thought they could get away with murder—”
“Are you remonstrating with me, sir?” Brother Jobe said.
“You kill me,” Bullock said.
“Kill you?” Brother Jobe said. “If that’s a suggestion, it’s goldurned interesting, considering—”
“It’s a figure of speech,” Bullock said, overspeaking him, and rather loudly. “I mean by it that you are funny. You crack me up sometimes. The things that come out of your mouth.”
Brother Jobe absorbed the remarks.
“Well, sir, this ain’t no laughing matter,” he said.
“You can address me as ‘your honor’ in these circumstances,” Bullock said.
“All right, then, your honor, I hereby resign as your prosecutor. Do you want it in writing?” He placed his index finger at the outside corner of his right eye.
Bullock met Brother Jobe’s burning gaze and recoiled. Not for the first time since he had made his acquaintance did he see in the fiery pools of Brother Jobe’s eyes a disquieting something that made him twitch and shrink. Then something else came over him, a fugue of sensations and emotions that, when processed in his mind’s temporal lobe, sent a message of generalized alarm to the more primitive regions of his brain. He had to grip the edge of his desk to resist an impulse to flee the room.
“No,” Bullock said almost inaudibly, glancing down at the documents on his desk and then shuffling them without purpose. “I’ll accept the verbal.”
Brother Jobe glanced at Boaz to signal he was ready to depart.
“Oh,” Bullock said without looking up as they crossed the room. “I’ll be sending for the prisoner. The court will have to take responsibility for her custody now.”
“You got a decent place to keep her?”
“Adequate enough.”
“I’m sure.”
Dick Lee followed them out and saw them off silently.
Brother Jobe’s spirits had improved by the time he left Bullock’s property, despite the fact that he didn’t have so much as a notion for his next move, except that he would be damned to let the girl hang. Riding his mule Atlas toward home, Brother Jobe enjoyed the passing landscape in its severe grandeur. Though it was midday, the clouds had grown only thicker and darker. A few rogue snowflakes drifted on the air. Atlas was eager for a fast trot. Boaz, who had been riding behind on Brownie in his own globe of equanimity, came up abreast of Brother Jobe.
“Ain’t that ole boy a piece of work,” Boaz said.
“I’ll say this, the sumbitch ain’t never left me bored. But never wanting more neither.”
“For what it’s worth, you by far the better man,” Boaz said.
“You been measuring?”
“Just observing.”
“Well, thank you, son. You are a sure enough good and faithful servant.”
F
ORTY-FIVE
Stephen Bullock remained at his desk many minutes after Brothers Jobe and Boaz departed, waiting for his vascular system to return to its normal parameters from the state of alarm that this latest encounter with the New Faith leader had provoked. Something had to be done about that man, Bullock brooded. For the moment, no remedy came to mind. But he had a more immediate problem: the lack of a prosecutor in the capital murder case that was going to the grand jury Monday morning. It was just then that Dick Lee returned from seeing the visitors off on their mounts.
“Shall we go castrate those calves now, sir?” Dick Lee said, referring to the next chore on that day’s long agenda. Oxen were in short supply around the county.
“Dick, I’m going to have to ask you to step into the breech here.”
“Beg your pardon, sir.”
“I lack a prosecutor at the moment and I’m going to appoint you.”
“Uh, sir, I didn’t go to law school.”
“I know that. However, there are no more law schools in operation these days, so far as I’m aware, at least not around here. Under the circumstances we have to revert to prior arrangements for manufacturing attorneys at law.”
“I’m, uh, not following you, sir.”
“Say you’re Abe Lincoln, Dick, a young fellow who reads Shakespeare by firelight. You take a notion to become a lawyer. You’re in a semiwild country. The law is trying to become a presence there so that people can manage their affairs in a civilized way. But there are no schools of law on the frontier. So you intern with a practicing lawyer, learn at his feet, so to speak, and by and by, when you have absorbed enough knowledge, you apply to the courts for admission to the bar. You follow me?”