Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (44 page)

Leigh unexpectedly takes my hand and holds it as Grider silently reads the verdict form. Her fingers are rigid as she digs her nails into mine. The room is so quiet I can hear Dan’s slightly asthmatic breathing.

Thank God, Jill didn’t go for the death penalty. I hold my breath as Grider begins reading. And then, suddenly, it is all over acquittal on all charges. As Leigh cries against my shoulder, I feel as if a huge metal ball has rolled off my back. Although I am not much of a believer in an afterlife, I can’t avoid the thought that somehow Chet Bracken is also breathing a sigh of re lief.

Standing in the courtroom moments later with Rainey and Sarah, who are both bubbling with excitement, I watch Leigh’s celebration with her parents and the crowd (presumably from Christian Life) gathered around them. It is hard to escape the sobering thought that a murderer is rejoicing.

“I thought you said you used to play when you were a kid, Mr. Page,” Trey calls as he watches me bend down to pick up the third ball I have dropped.

Beads of sweat from my forehead drop into Chet’s old glove. Maybe I am imagining all those Little League games in Bear Creek. The first ball ever hit to me in areal game went between my legs. I haven’t improved with age.

“I guess I’m pretty rusty,” I say, glancing over at his mother, who is watching us from the deck. Wynona smiles gratefully at me. It has been only a week since her husband’s funeral, and it is nice to see her smile. It is glorious out here behind the house in the April sun. New life is bursting from every tree, every blade of grass. This is the kind of day that must make Chet’s death particularly hard to bear. Yet the air is so soft and the morning so clear and bright with the rich promise of a long Arkansas spring, it is impossible not to feel alive.

After a few more minutes, Wynona tells her son, “That’s enough. Trey. Let Mr. Page rest. I need to talk to him in the house.”

“What about?” Trey asks, throwing the ball up and catching it. I used to do that by the hour in Bear Creek, pretending I was Mickey Mantle.

“He just needs to help me go through a couple of things,” Wynona says gently to her son.

“You play out here by yourself.” On this warm Saturday morning she is wearing a pair of loose-fitting shorts and a man’s workshirt. Chet’s, I suppose. Good legs, I notice.

Trey waves me into the house. I’m no Brooks Robinson, his grin says, but I’ll do until the real thing comes along.

“Thanks for playing with him,” Wynona says, her voice still mechanical with grief as she leads me into the kitchen.

“It’s going to be particularly hard for him.

He and Chet were amazingly close.”

She is talking about herself, I realize, as well as her son. A plain-faced woman in her forties with a kid, her prospects for remarriage aren’t bright. Yet she found Chet, and, I assume, had been married before him.

Some women are better at finding men than others.

“I’m afraid it will,” I say bluntly, thinking of myself and Sarah.

“But he’ll survive. We all do.”

Wynona stands on tiptoes and pulls down a gray metal lockbox from behind a wooden panel above her refrigerator. From the left pocket in her shorts she extracts a key and opens the lock. On top of what appears to be several envelopes is one with my name on it.

Wynona reaches in and picks it up.

“Chet said for me to read this to you, but not to give it to you. Why don’t you go sit at the table?”

Dreading what is coming, I choose the same chair I sat in when I had breakfast with them. Wynona opens the letter, which is not sealed, and begins to read in a clear, patient voice.

Gideon:

I hate to leave you by yourself with Leigh’s trial, but there is no way I can pull this off, knowing what I do.

I feel terrible about deceiving you, but I let myself get sucked into an agreement I know now I never should have made. When Shane first asked me to represent Leigh, he didn’t tell me the truth. He knew Leigh was not her husband’s murderer. Knowing my reputation, he was convinced I could get her off. He didn’t know then I had cancer. I took the case thinking I had more time, and frankly, given the evidence Jill had, I thought I could win it, too.

Here in my final hour of life, I know better than most humans that pride is the mother of all sin. Because of what Shane had done for me, I agreed. Instead of admitting how little energy I had, I convinced myself that I could last through March in good enough shape. You know, of course, what a joke that was.

As I began to investigate the case, it became clear that Pearl Norman knew more than she was telling. Always an alcoholic, she went off the deep end and really crawled inside the bottle. Initially, I thought it was a reaction to the charge against Leigh, but gradually it dawned on me that she might have killed her son-in-law. Finally, in January, after I confronted her, she admitted she went to the house drunk and killed Art after Shane called her from his office and told her that Art had gotten Leigh to dance nude for him. Pearl knew by then about Art’s scam and somehow assumed he was going to turn Leigh into a porn star. She swears she never intended to shoot him when she went there, and I believe her. Knowing his influence on Pearl (and all of us), Shane felt totally responsible for her actions, and begged me to try the case without revealing what I knew. Leigh, of course, was in on all this as soon as Shane came up with the idea. What is most incredible to me is that the disease of hubris contracted through continued success had reached such an advanced stage that, like a damn fool, I agreed. Even as sick as I was, I believed I could pull it off.

As you know now, we went to elaborate lengths to make you believe that Shane murdered Art and that I was being brought around to make that argument, which presumably you made at the trial. Leigh hated this tactic, but Shane and I had finally convinced her that it was the surest way to an acquittal. Much of what I did was to try to keep you off the scent of Pearl.

What you cannot know is how much Pearl means to Shane and to Leigh. They love her very deeply. Both have always felt guilty about her alcoholism and her isolation in the family. Recently, Pearl has been diag nosed as having permanent liver damage. With her prognosis, Shane couldn’t bear the thought of her dying in prison.

I apologize for having deceived you. Though you will try the case without knowing all the facts, you will not be engaging in any act of fraud on the court. I would have, of course, and this is what ultimately I could not do.

What I counted on was your own ambition. You wanted to become the next Chet Bracken! It has taken me a lifetime to realize how much vanity has played in my life. I was an ugly, jug-eared runt from Phillips County who was determined to make something of my self, and I never got past that. Even after my conversion, I never brought my ego under control. But it has helped me understand you. And exploit you. I do not say any of this to hurt your feelings (you have the potential to be an outstanding lawyer) but merely to explain why I have acted as I have.

I have made my peace with God, and firmly believe in an hour I will be in a far better place. If you can bring yourself to do it after what you have learned, please look in on Wynona and Trey occasionally. They deserve far more than they have received. I am no advertisement for Christianity, but they truly are. Chet.

It is only with these last few sentences that Wynona’s voice breaks. She wipes her eyes with her wrist. Too dumbfounded to move, I watch as she shreds the letter, forces it down the drain, and turns on the faucet and the garbage disposal. Pearl Norman! If Jill had asked the right questions, would she have broken down and confessed? No wonder she was almost hysterical. As Wynona turns off the switch on the disposal, she says, “I’m sorry, Gideon. I hope you can live with this.”

Like a stroke victim who has lost the power of speech, I find I can only nod at her. I leave, but not before promising Trey I will return in a couple of weeks to take him to an Arkansas Travelers baseball game. A Cardinal farm team, the Travs haven’t been very good lately, but, who knows, maybe we will discover another Brooks Robinson.

On the winding road back east into town, my mind is a blur of images. I think back to the day Chet showed up in my office and told me that he thought Leigh was probably guilty. I was being set up from day one! I feel my face burn as I remember that I never got around to checking out Pearl’s alibi. Why did I do such a poor job of thinking about this case? The reason is obvious: I wanted to discredit Shane. He was stealing Sarah and Rainey. How pathetic of me! Chet had me eating out of his hand, and so did Leigh. I fell for every lie they fed me. Why didn’t Chet simply ram down my throat that we were going after Shane? I would have bought it. Obviously, because there was a conflict. I was supposed to figure it out gradually and insist on Shane’s culpability after they all rubbed my nose in it. I bought everything, even the taped conversation between Leigh and Shane.

They set me up every time. Leigh must almost have cracked, though, at one point. When she ran off and got drunk, she must have scared Shane and Pearl to death.

And yet, even with Chet’s suicide and Hector’s unexpected testimony, Shane never missed a line or cue. He went right on as if he had a script in front of him. How could I forget to what lengths families will go to protect each other? Driving too fast, I have to brake hard on a curve, reminding myself that accidents can happen.

Maybe Pearl didn’t intend to kill Art, just threaten him with a dramatic gesture. Poor Pearl. Those phone calls.

She wanted to confess to me, I think, but I wouldn’t listen.

Her daughter and her husband wouldn’t let her take responsibility for her life. The American Way. Why?

Easier to make excuses and keep her out of sight. Perhaps I should go to Jill with what I know, but, without a shred of proof, I’m pretty sure I will wait. Chet’s letter to me is part of the Blackwell County sewer system, and doubtless, precautions have been taken to firm up Pearl’s alibi. If she is dying, what would be the point?

As traffic halts at the entrance to the freeway that will take me home, I realize that the case, as it stands now, has generated a lot of favorable publicity. There have been a couple of nice articles that mentioned my name.

No one has yet claimed that I am Chet’s heir apparent, but it is nice all the same. I speed on the freeway, practically begging to be arrested, but there isn’t a cop in sight. Ah, the practice of law.

“Hold still!” I command my dog, who is shaking as if he is about to be electrocuted instead of being given a bath in the backyard.

“You can turn on the water!” I holler at Sarah, who is wiping beads of sweat from her forehead as she stands over the spigot with a pair of pliers. She turns the handle, and water runs from the hose onto Woogie’s back, as he begins to shiver all over again. It is sweltering, and it isn’t even June.

Sarah walks over to us and bends down to take hold of Woogie’s collar.

“What a terrible year for Pastor Norman,” she says.

“First his daughter is charged with murder and then his wife dies.”

I nod in agreement.

“I can’t imagine having to live through both events in the same year.” Unbeknownst to Sarah, I feel Pearl Norman’s death last night has lifted a weight from my back.

“Though I’m sad for him, I don’t quite feel the same way about Christian Life,” Sarah admits, holding Woogie as I soap his back.

“Since the trial, there’s been so much dissension that it doesn’t seem the same place.

There’s talk of a big group of people leaving to form a new church.”

I rub the bar of soap against Woogie’s belly. He looks at me as if I were holding a gun to his head. I grunt, “I noticed you haven’t been going much lately.” Though Sarah was angry at me again after the trial, the main casualty has been Rainey. I have seen her only a couple of times the last two months. My daughter is more forgiving. After all, I am her flesh and blood.

“Do you still believe the Bible word for word?” I ask, trying to sound casual. I rinse Woogie off and pretend to admire his fur in the glistening water and bright sunshine.

“I don’t know,” Sarah says irritably, perhaps betraying that it is a battle she can’t win.

“That’s really important to you, isn’t it?”

I reach down on the grass for the ragged yellow towel I keep beneath the sink for this occasion and begin to rub Woogie briskly.

“I guess while some people have a need to believe,” I respond, “I have a need not to, un less I can understand it.”

Sarah’s mouth puckers as if she were tasting some thing that does not agree with her. She has already forgiven me for going after Shane but wants to have the last word.

“You miss a lot that way,” she says, petting Woogie’s head to calm him.

“It’s almost over, boy.”

“Probably so,” I concede as I dry Woogie’s legs. You miss a lot of nonsense. But I do not say this. I’ve got my daughter back. Now is the time to be relatively magnanimous.

“I could never be a lawyer,” Sarah says and stands up.

She is saying this to hurt me because she knows someday I’d like to see “Page & Page” in the Yellow Pages.

“I know.” She has plenty of time to change her mind. Woogie, freed from the towel, squirms around on the grass on his back. He’ll show me, by God.

“Everything is always the ends justifying the means,” Sarah says unnecessarily.

“I don’t see how you can live like that.”

Our dog runs in circles and then plops down on the grass again. “There are really a lot more rules than it looks like,” I call after Sarah as she goes over to the spigot to turn it off.

She doesn’t say anything, and after turning off the water, she marches inside. I sit down on the grass and watch Woogie take a tour of the backyard. There is a lot more I could say, but I won’t. For starters, I could tell her that my ego nearly did me in, but I escaped. Not with everything. Rainey is gone. I suppose she could come back, but the last time I talked to her she said that she wanted to see if I was the only kind of man she was attracted to.

“What kind of man is that?” I asked. She didn’t smile when she said, “The kind who always does what he wants to and expects the woman to be there to fix everything.”